you're on good morning everybody and welcome it is july 11 2023 i'll call our board of county commissioners meeting to order uh our invocation this morning will be a moment of silence followed by the pledge of allegiance which we will be led by sam heaton army special force combat veteran so what we'll do is we'll stand for the invocation and the pledge then you'll sit and we'll offer mr heaton an opportunity to share a little bit about his illustrious life if you would all please stand thank you morning everybody please stand thank you i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you thank you i've got to talk now that's right usually it takes six men take up the money after i talk but uh you know when mike asked me to do this he said can you say the pledge of allegiance i said well i've been saying it since i was six years old in elementary school and i think that they need to start that bag so you know i heard a story the other day at the va hospital and it's it was pretty good i was sitting there in the waiting room to see a doctor and i had on my ranger hat and by the way i was a ranger not at special forces we didn't get any ice cream but he said oh i see you were a ranger i said yes sir i was he said uh well that's a mighty dangerous job i said well it was dangerous sometimes sometimes it was kind of boring he said uh i said what did you do he said well i was a postman i didn't do much i said a postman and you didn't do much you were the most important guy on the whole damn base i mean without them letters from home we would have been lost so every job is big in the military i don't care where your navy army air force what are you doing every job is big as you say it takes seven men to support one man in combat and i agree with that um you know and i'm so proud to serve the united states of america and i'm so proud to be these two guys with our veterans here our veterans administration they have helped more people they have helped me we don't know as a veteran and a layman we don't really know the ins and out of computers that what to what they actually what we're actually reading so these guys have helped us so much and please do everything you can to protect them because without them we'll be lost you know the price of freedom was bought by the blood and sacrifices of our veterans world war one world war two korea vietnam iraq all those places it was bought by blood and dedication and loyalty to that flag right there and we don't ever ever ever want to lose that i know and it's also up to our and i was told not to say this it's also up to our politicians our leaders our city council our leaders in the community to protect those rights that we have earned i can't earn them anymore i'm too old to go back to war i'd like to be able young enough to go back but i don't think lisa my wife would let me and i'm so grateful to her she has been a godsend to me it took me a while to find her but i got her and my granddaughter in the joe so god bless our veterans god bless our country and please do everything you can as a leader to protect it thank you thank you sir thank you very much i always think that's an excellent way for us to start the day um our agenda today is as you see it there is no additional items so i would entertain a motion by commissioner smith approval of the agenda and the consent agenda i will second that oh he beat you to it we have a motion to accept the agenda as presented by commissioner smith seconded by commissioner jenkins all those in favor aye all those opposed the motion carries unanimously we have two proclamations one is appropriate to our speaker from this morning and the other is also uh very important to us here in martin county we will start with the treasure coast waterway cleanup week and it'll be presented this morning by miss mary k um the treasure coast waterway sorry mind me treasure coast waterway cleanup week is being observed july 15th through the 23rd and residents are encouraged to participate in the 16th annual cleanup event scheduled for saturday july 22nd over 1200 volunteers will participate in cleaning up our precious waterways through martin st lucie and indian river counties the board commends the sponsors and volunteers whose contributions to this effort are so important to its success thank you for having us we're so excited over this year we're coveted free but we're still doing can you hear we're gail bird with marine industries of the treasure coast and i'm representing the florida inland navigation district today because they're a big sponsor of the waterway cleanup this is our 16th year let me give you some data please uh since 208 we've removed 99 tons of trash 125 miles of waterways including indian river st lucie and martin counties and 15 miles of beaches we have over 5 000 participants and i think that was in martin counties since it started right um we have data collection cards all you do is sign up online it's tcwaterwaycleanup.com you sign up online and you receive a data collection card when you fill it out volunteers um when they submit it are automatically uh enrolled in a raffle for a lot of prizes the event is on your own from 15th to 23rd on the 22nd at at the boat ramps and like nine parks in martin county um there'll be people handing out pendants for your boat or t-shirts for each volunteer um we think it's very exciting and we've done uh let's see there's been 3 400 boats since 208 um 13 over 13 000 volunteers since 208 99.25 tons of trash removed and um oh i want to remind you if you haven't seen your treasure coast magazine um this month i just received mine and there's four pages on the economic impact of the marine industries in the in this congressional district i'd like to introduce butch olson with the port salerno community dock authority go ahead thank you so yes thank you thank you gail that was um so yeah this is a very successful event so when we started this you know 16 years ago you know we we have you know maybe maybe 4 000 volunteers treasure coast wide and our numbers our trash numbers are around 10 000 pounds 10 000 tons and now now we've brought that our we've doubled our volunteers and the trash volume has gone down by half so very successful and we realize it's because that's because of things like today on television what the communities uh what the counties what the um municipalities have done for us we appreciate that so this is working so the port salerno dock authority historically has worked in conjunction with the treasure coast waterway cleanup marine industry association treasure coast to do the pex lake reef dive cleanup so last year we had uh 51 participants in the uh reef cleanup less than 50 pounds of trash when this thing started a decade and a half ago we were several hundred pounds of trash other great news is that um through through sefcre and other things that we work um organizations and entities that we work with you know the message is out there obviously that you know be responsible about your trash in the waterways and the reefs um so our partners i just want to mention some of our partners with the reef clean uh fwc uh sefcre which includes dp and noah and it's just a great event and we have seven as gail mentioned we have seven sites in martin county and any uh volunteers that want to join dive or what are we clean up or just walking sites which are very important as well go to tcwaterwaycleanup.com and we greatly appreciate you folks and i also want to throw a plug into parks and rec your parks and rec department with this event as just carlos the the whole team has just been amazing with this event for over a decade and a half thanks it's a real camera that little cube flashbulb you put on top if it needs it it'll pop open everyone that knows how to do it's just watching come on give her a few minute more minutes i've got another one they want you to shoot a super eight film yeah our next proclamation is declaring purple heart day in martin county florida yes the purple heart is the oldest military decoration in use today and evolved from the badge of military merit created by general george washington in 1782 the purple heart is awarded to members of the united states armed forces who have been wounded or died in combat with a declared enemy of the united states of america the board recognizes august 7th as purple heart day in martin county and appreciates the sacrifices of our purple heart recipients and all of our veterans that have made in defending our freedoms uh just to note uh with sam uh sam here he did receive a combat uh action ribbon and a bronze star with valor speaks uh volumes for for his heroism we also have mr bill isador he's a vietnam veteran also a purple heart recipient to receive too much i could say after that gentleman before me had a spoke about the vietnam the veterans of america and the support that we get there's not too much more to add to it but the veterans council in martin county and the border county commissioners have always helped us in everything and we really appreciate it thank you thank you sir okay martin thank you very much appreciate it you took it to the podium up there it is i see it tucked in okay um thank you very much we appreciate it we have uh several requests to speak forms some of them look like new names to me so i'll explain how our process for public comment works you'll each have three minutes to make your public comments at the two minute and 45 second point you'll hear a tone that doesn't mean that you need to stop that means you have 15 seconds to sort of finalize your thoughts and if you are going to speak on a topic that is also on our agenda later in the day if you speak this morning you can't speak again on the same topic later so or if you want to speak on the topic that's later in the agenda and you won't be able to be here you can of course do that now and with that we will begin with our first request to speak form by mr craig nowicki sir good morning and welcome uh my name is craig nowicki i live in danforth um i'm here several of us are i believe to express our opposition to the 90 unit construction project that's been proposed or that's been applied for right outside of danforth next to palm city elementary school um there's not a worse location in this county to build 90 apartment buildings over 90 apartment units and 120 parking spaces um it's going to affect our property values for the surrounding homeowners it's going to cause uh safety hazards for thousands of kids going to palm city elementary school and going to uh hidden oaks middle school twice a day there's already traffic jams on martin highway because you have drop off and pick up a pce drop off and pick up up at homes it takes us residents getting into danforth sometimes 15 20 minutes just to turn left off of martin highway into our own community an additional 120 vehicles is going to make that intersection a larger disaster than it than it already is um there's flooding concerns danforth creek there's flooding concerns in our community of danforth edifice or three edifices on that parcel could potentially worsen the environmental and flooding situation that we experience in danforth and danforth creek um crime that's another potential issue with that many people living in such a small area um i spoke with law enforcement officers i'm a law enforcement officer and i know where there's a cluster of people living in one area and um the increase in the potential for crime also goes up so i'm here we're here many of us are here to encourage the county to look at purchasing that parcel it's a perfect parcel to purchase and turn into a park a public land a dog park um it's one more thing um that's it i drew a blank on the last thing point i want to make but we're just asking for the help of the commission we're not here to you know raise cane and get mad we're here to ask your your help it's um oh a if this construction project comes through that will it will change palm city it'll be disaster absolute disaster to palm city and we moved here for a reason it wasn't to have a lot of traffic and uh unsafe areas for our kids we moved here for a small town feel to have less traffic and to have a safe area for our kids to live and go to school so that's all i have to say thank you very much for your time i appreciate it thank you sir appreciate it our next request to speak for him is mr robert carl good morning sir welcome good morning uh i'm here on this on the same uh issue that mr nowicki um i'm a resident of hammock creek uh so we're very close to that um my sentiments are exactly the same i can't understand uh the location for this uh 90 apartments in the middle of speaking to the mic a little more thank you it's um it's a terrible location to have 90 apartments in front in uh in the middle of all these single-family uh communities um you know i the the traffic already we all talk about the traffic if you sat at the uh the intersection of canner trying to make a left onto us1 north um you know the approval of the costco the growth in martin county has to stop there has to take a pause you have to think about are we improving the roads to allow this growth and i haven't seen that i haven't seen that at all and putting this in the middle of two school zones with not enough parking for the amount of units that you have it should never be approved um there are issues with flooding in that area um you know you have so many children i mean all the children from hammock creek go to these schools they ride their bicycles they take their scooters and you know i i've i applaud martin county out there uh running radar but it is a speed zone that drops down to 35 miles an hour there but nobody drives 35 there and you have all the children going there in the mornings you have two school zones i can't imagine what that's going to look like when um costco opens and you have anybody from the north you know uh traditions or something like that that's going to get off at the turnpike that's going to get off at 95 martin highway is the road we can't add another 90 apartments over there um and increase the traffic over there so um you know hammock creek is affected by this as well um you know all three phases or three developments of hammock creek are also part of this and uh we need the uh the commission to to help us uh you know buy this land do something other come up with a better better option for this okay thank you thank you very much appreciate that our next request to speak for him is mr tom pine mr pine good morning good morning commissioners my name is tom pine i've lived in florida martin county for nearly for 50 years now in today's consent agenda total is 23 million 638 574 dollars hidden hidden in the consent agenda is a contract for 10 million 500 10 million 500 thousand dollars to centerline incorporated for water main and force main extensions and lift stations improvement also hidden in the consent agenda are an excess existing contract for five 5.5 million dollars will increase to 6.3 million dollars for five vendors that supply water and wastewater chemicals these two items don't belong in the consent agenda because they are not routine expenditures and they total 11 million 35 point 35 million dollars by continuing to use the content agenda in this manner our mountain county government is violating the essence of the florida open government sunshine laws only people who think climate change is a hoax would continue to push walkable neighborhoods in south florida in 2023 yesterday's high temperature was 96 degrees and the low was 77 that's according to the palm beach post i moved martin county 50 years ago and if we were going to be pushing walkable neighborhoods that would have been the time to do it not now to have a real walkable neighborhood the first thing that needs to be need first things that are needed are trees to produce enough shade to make a difference at the rate temperatures are increasing today i don't believe we have enough time the last county commission meeting several sewers were the most important part of the meeting and it was quite shocking at the figure that were presented for hookup in the porcelona area total hookup for a single family home eleven thousand nine hundred and twenty four dollars or you could pay it over 20 years with interest and fees seven forty nine a year for a total of fourteen thousand nine hundred and eighty three dollars there are also other charges such as old septic tank removals and more it was brought up at the public comment that one man checked saint lucie county was told the entire hookup was five thousand dollars well i counted i will i contact safe louise county and port city of port st lucie and got an answer from the city the hookup for the full hookup in the city is six thousand one hundred and sixteen dollars or 120 payments of fifty dollars and twenty two cents with no interest or fees these words these rates were effective in july 22 what you permit you promote what you allow you encourage what you condone you own invention in jensen beach we want our sidewalks back before someone's hurt or killed they gave sent me a rate increase for all thank you tom our next request to speak for miss maria skumanich ma'am good morning and welcome nervous you'll do fine i freeze so um i just want to say that everything that craig said matters to me also um i moved here from south florida from uh south dade i moved here from south florida from dade county and i watched um the development of um south dade and when i left it was bad because um they were building communities that were too large for the um you know for the traffic and for the we didn't have the facilities to to to support all the of the development that was being done so we moved here and it was a beautiful place to be and i'm glad we moved here when we moved here because um i was able to enjoy a life with my children and my grandchildren now that i don't think i would have been able to have when i lived in in florida in south florida um i'm concerned about the same things about traffic affecting the children about people moving in into rentals i'm assuming that these are rentals that are um largely transient mostly can be mostly transient you don't know who's moving in or who's that close to the schools in this world where we have to worry about our children when they leave when they leave our door and get to the school so anyway um i'm hoping that this thing does that this project doesn't go forward for that reason and many more and i'm shaking here so i don't know if i can say anything more um just we need your help and i i hope i hope it doesn't happen anyway thank you very much for listening thank you very much for coming our next request to speak for miss miss joanne black miss black good morning hi so my name is joanne black i live in the evergreen club in palm city only a couple of miles miles away is um port st lucy and becca road becca road now is building like it's insane so all these animals have nowhere to go well they must like my yard because i've turned into jurassic park and um uh you name it i have it other than lions and tigers and bears and um my husband is killing east back um uh rattlesnakes um we got boars we've got um uh bobcats everything so i don't know where all these environmental people are about animals but evidently they're not concerned about that now as for the flooding you know i'm not that i have um citizens as an insurance company but now they have mandated that if you have their insurance you have to have flood insurance now there's a big ding ding ding why because we're building like crazy that we're turning into a concrete jungle we have no place for this water to run off of we're building in unsafe areas that you have children in schools you have parks like on map road they're building there everywhere it's getting ridiculous now our governor really believes in expanding us and bringing more people here well that's great but where are they going in our backyards we loved being in a small county we loved having our input count now we feel our hands are tied and nobody is listening to us and so i'm here to say we need to use some common sense there may be a lot of people that have a lot of brains but you can't put common sense into their brain and i would like to bring that back thank you for your time thank you ma'am our next request to speak for him is sherry brown miss brown good morning and welcome i'm changing subjects here but i really support everything all these people have been saying but um i really just have a question and it's um to do with the the development the infrastructure that is going back in like the seven jays area over in palm city we own a couple piece of partials of property and so we're being assessed all the people there being assessed which is fine it's going to help our property value um the question is though for where all the current homeowners or current owners of the property are the ones that are paying for the infrastructure to go in what happens in the future when that area more people come in and are tying into the infrastructure that we put in do we get any part of like our assessment back on that that for what we've put in since they're benefiting from it and i that's pretty much it i don't know if i've never been here before so we're glad to have you uh those agenda items are coming up okay so if you have the opportunity yeah one second if you have the opportunity to stay you know they're coming up before lunch this morning and yeah we got a couple of different items some of them are coming up next so mr donaldson if you wanted to i was gonna say mr amberson is here let's wait until the item after i have several more requests to speak forms okay but if you could stay some of those questions will be addressed okay and then we'll bring them up when you're here our next request to speak form is miss diane caskey good morning glad to see you welcome she didn't plan to speak this morning hello i'm here um i don't consider myself an activist but i do consider myself a person that when i hear or learn of something i like to assert my at least my thoughts and my opinions i live in danforth community which is across the street from the proposed 90 unit apartment complex um i said by many before me i agree with all the the statements they made so i just want to say i support what they have said already but in addition i come from michigan west bloomfield area suburb of detroit and when i moved into my community it was a new community and i was the liaison between the builder and the homeowners until we actually took over the association at that time it was a newer development a lot of young families moved in um there was a four four streets that came together that was near the front of the subdivision that really needed a stop sign we fought diligently the community to please add stop signs to our community because we knew what the amount of children in the neighborhood and with the school elementary school being right across the street in a middle school maybe within two miles we knew that a lot of children were going to be young children riding their bicycles and they don't always have the uh foresight to realize that you know on the street you stop you wait you look and whatnot um we fought diligently for that unfortunately the road commission denied it due to their study that they didn't feel there was enough to support stop signs within a few months unfortunately an eight-year-old girl was killed by a car was riding her bicycle and within i don't remember exactly but very short amount of time stop signs were installed and now there's a park in our old neighborhood that's uh donated in memory of this little girl why i'm bringing this up is this is what i see this is what i envision with that many people coming off i believe from the side street where the children are going to be walking whether it's the middle school the the elementary school these are kids they're not going to be thinking and stopping and looking and whatnot i just think we're putting ourselves in a really dangerous situation god forbid if anything happens and i don't mean to lay any of that on the commission or anybody else but i experienced it so i feel like i need to at least add that to the conversation that there truly was a death of an eight-year-old child because of the lack of um insight from the road commission to install stop signs where we knew as a community it was very needed but i hope you um take our comments i'm sure you will and i would appreciate uh you supporting our community and blocking the development of that 90 complex um building thank you thank you ma'am our next request to speak form oh you're allowed to have your purse back our next request to speak form is miss medora reading reading good morning and welcome first and foremost i'm going to do something unusual we want to thank most of the commissioners when we were angry at many we were not understanding completely what was going on there are three sides to every story we have been able to meet to talk to learn about sb 102 those of you in the audience who do not know about this you all need to educate yourselves and learn that being said thank you please continue to guide us help us and work with us unit 90 whatever one wants to call it is a horrific disaster it is a disaster for local businesses for children for safety for schools but most of all flooding danforth creek will flood it's not probable we have proof and it will flood the area creating a massive mess for homeowners children schools businesses you name it it is totally should be outlawed it shouldn't have even been considered that's where many of us were in shock how did this suddenly happen then we are learning so that being said i loved i was here at the original meeting with the developers forgive me everyone very arrogant and they actually said well we'll tell everybody in the apartment building they get one car you know that anyone who wants an apartment will say okay let me do that the next thing you know there will be cars visitors parties all over 714 there will be massive like this woman who just said you wait till someone not you all generally you wait till a disaster happens and then we get the stop signs no let's stop it before let's correct this there's a lot in martin county jensen beach excessive overgrowth we are not blaming you all originally we were but we are not but we need when i moved to martin county and i first came here in 79 i knew i would live here someday in 84 my parents moved i moved in 91 i made it happen i worked in fort lauderdale with profanity my husband worked in boca we drove 95 to live in martin county the promise of protection of our environment this was a choice we people my boss kept saying move closer am i done you have a little bit more um and what forgive me i have no idea when you say something goes on this afternoon i'm not sure different topic okay so i'm educating myself and bear with me thank you all but we can't let this happen let's stop it thank you thank you very much our next request to speak for him is mr steve clark mr clark good morning uh martin county resident for 30 odd years um enjoyed living in martin county for that amount of time and uh liked the uh old way of uh martin county's restriction or at least limiting and controlling the growth that we had in uh in the town in the county uh one of them being the height of the buildings that were allowed to be constructed um historically that is something seems to have changed in the last few years uh uh this change appears to be something to do with uh governor de santis um in uh his approval of commission's ability to make decisions that represent the uh residents um just as governor de santis changed the law recently to allow him i believe to run for president while still holding office of governor um it appears that him and lobbyists or whatever up in legislature which i know isn't you guys but are they actually restricting the commission on what uh they can do uh what the residents can have an opportunity to stand up for what they believe is uh that i've got questions more than anything else i know this isn't a q a um and is there state legislature restricting in any way the ability of residents is that in their plans to oppose construction and development that's basically it thank you sir um we're having an agenda item on august 8th correct when is the treasure coast regional planning council coming to discuss the live local yes i yes it is mr stokas has verified that thank you um a couple of different topics being discussed today but the live local or the senate bill 102 as it was as it worked its way through is new for all of us uh the ramifications and the application of that is new for all of us including our staff we're having um representatives of the treasure coast regional planning council which is a professional body very talented and uh knowledgeable group make a presentation to all of us the commission the staff and the public on august 8th so you can either watch it at home on your computer on the 8th you can come here to hear it or obviously uh it'll be on the county's website permanently afterwards which will get into a lot of those types of issues um so yes for that particular issue uh about oh my time is up our last request to speak form and if there's anyone else that would like to speak either generally during public comment now or on an agenda item that's coming up uh you can let us know our bailiff can give you one of the forms you can speak first and fill the form out afterwards if there is anyone left our last request to speak for him this morning is mr greg coleman mr coleman you're batting cleanup welcome i'm not a real good public speaker but i'll do my best yes you are um i work for tri-county towing our business is in palm city on 2019 poma drive i'm here to request some city sewer and water back into that portion by the landfill we have many of these we work for martin county sheriff's office steward police department fhp provide a service to the county um we put in a request for it i just ask that you would approve that request because the water back there is non-potable i don't particularly like where the employees washing up in it and whatnot i think it would be a good service to the community there's many businesses back there that would like to have it thank you for your time thank you excellent public uh speaker we're going to be taking that agenda up next so if you want to hang in there we'll be discussing it and with that that's the one more wait until you get to the mic please and then just state your name for the record good morning commissioners my name is allison rampersad i live in palm beach county the reason i'm here is because martin county is on my radar to move i very much like it here palm beach county is way too crowded and we have too many things happening that are pushing people out so i want to move to martin county and one of the main reasons that i want to move here is because it reminds me of where i grew up kind of a small town feeling uh people know everybody i have a lot of friends here and this just seems like the perfect place to be so i'm not real happy with what i see uh with all the expansion uh buildings higher than four um stories and and things like that not making me happy so i may have to look somewhere else i'd love to be able to spend my money here buy my home here um so i hope that uh you guys will keep things the way they are and consider uh what the folks want thank you very much thank you good morning good to see you please state your name for the record and fill the form out afterwards good morning good morning commissioners my name is linda fithian and i am a resident of palm city i've lived here for 13 years and i just wanted to make a comment to everyone who is here today and thank them so much in regards to senate bill 102 and i know commissioners you are very much tried to oppose that bill but everyone in the room please know that your legislators john snyder toby oberdorf and gail harrell all voted for sb 102 and one of the recommendations that i have for everyone in the room is to contact their office flood their office to let them know how how um you are so opposed to this bill because it does affect everyone here in the community because they do say in the in the bill that they can override our zoning not only height but densities and where these buildings can be can be built so um i just wanted to let everyone know that and i thank you commissioners because i know that you all know that and um we all as community when we're against this we need to let our legislators know that this is not acceptable florida is a huge state and um one size does not fit all our county is not the same as what broward county is or dave county and we need to let the state know that they cannot treat each county the same thank you all so much thank you ma'am miss fithian will be our last request to speak for him unless someone else feels motivated seeing none we'll come back to the board and we'll start with you commissioner smith thank you mr chairman good morning and thank you to all of our speakers and our veterans this morning they did a great job miss fithian what i what i think what you just said i think was um maybe spot on what i what i would modify a little bit in terms of reaching out to our delegation with all legislation that gets passed uh there is always the opportunity to modify and fix and address things that are um one size not fitting all um it was a it was very early on in session and it was going to pass and both houses knew that um both leaders of of our of our respective houses were very supportive of a bill at the end of the day that doesn't mean that it's a perfect bill and that doesn't mean it doesn't need modification and so as a community what i would suggest you all do when you reach out to your delegation is talk to them about issues that would be important to martin county and not the other 66 counties that make up the state of florida if there is to be if there are to be fixes in this coming year which there's always that potential to do ask for changes that are reflective of what you think martin county should be relative to the height issues at least as i understand the legislation the legislation calls out for nothing higher than what already exists in your existing laws so you couldn't go to a six-story building in martin county because of senate bill 102 that doesn't happen it doesn't exist um and there was some discussion about the tallest you know the the highest tallest building in your community within a mile of that i'm pretty sure that legislation was modified or that language was modified to reflect it still has to follow local county law so you can't go outside of the law however the idea about commercial and industrial zoning and not having to go through a rezoning or not having to go through a new land use change is accurate and so it's a good thing that you're all paying very close attention to it but i would encourage you when you reach out to our delegation if you so feel the need to do so talk to them about things that are important to martin county and talk to them about things that you'd like to see changed that are reflective of us and not worrying about the other 66 counties because as you said miss fithian we are not broward we are not dade we will never be broward we will never be dade but there are things that are maybe too homogeneous for all counties that don't fit us and i would be important to point that out to them and see if they can't work on crafting language that could be added into language this coming year or next year that could help address some of those issues and with that mr chair i appreciate your time thank you commissioner smith we appreciate that insight commissioner hetherington i would agree with all those comments and i'm really pleased to see that we're having um an informative session on august 8th that both you know staff residents can all participate in because i think this is going to be a journey for all of us in the coming year so thanks for bringing that agenda item on august 8th as well and that's all i have today thank you very much commissioner jenkins i concur and uh i'm good thank you oh good for you you yield the remainder of your time i do thank you commissioner hurd i'm set even better um a couple of brief points uh more from mr donaldson i believe i know that when we have our grants and aids process that new non-profits that are looking to participate there's a very specific process and a small window and i have heard and i'm not sure if it is accurate or not that if you are not officially on that list to apply that you can't and so i was instructed to mention it during commissioner comments i am still a big proponent for eraf which is the equine rescue out in palm city that started originally as a group of volunteers to take care of mistreated and abused horses they were expecting to have about a dozen in their care there have been times when they've had over 60 horses in their care they are currently at 40 horses the organization was really for a long time backed almost exclusively by a very generous woman from the community that paid hundreds of thousands of dollars if not grand total millions of dollars of her own money because it was a passion of hers she is no longer as involved in the organization the other woman that was sort of her her partner if you will sadly passed away from cancer so the group has reformed reorganized and has done remarkable work and for people that are not familiar we have the humane society which is based on state statute that every community county has to have some kind of uh humane society operation and ours is handled through the humane society of the treasure coast uh and there's a large amount of money that goes to that organization to handle those issues they also do animal control for the sheriff's office we are blessed to have the treasure coast wildlife hospital in martin county for any kind of wildlife birds eagles pelicans turtles whatever and many communities don't have that and if an animal is struck or found or stuck in a fence they normally would die because there'd be nowhere for a citizen to take them we have that and we do uh offer some funding to that very worthwhile organization for me i have one of my colleagues once said if if it is that important to me in my district i should use district funds to offset some of their costs and i do because i thought that made perfect sense that the district commissioner should put the district's funds where where he believes or she believes that they should go this the operation is becoming so expensive and the fact that you know i'm not saying that they would necessarily go out of business if you will or stop doing their services palm beach county has something similar it's primarily for polo and racehorses st lucie county doesn't have anything like that so if this organization god forbid were to go out and there were a situation where the sheriff several years ago had to um seize 13 horses that were completely mistreated uh he was able to bring them and drop them off at irref they currently have 40 horses like i mentioned some of them will never be adoptable some of them could be you know uh companion horses but it's not the same with all due respect to my friends at the humane society it is much easier to have someone adopt a puppy or a dog or a cat than a horse and so they have done this work that quietly for many years everyone's been happy that they're doing it but if we don't allow them even the opportunity to apply and present their case to our organization to our committee that decides whether or not this is a valuable asset for martin county residents i would ask my colleagues that they at least be given the opportunity to make an application for assistance from the county because when they close their doors and sell off their property there's nowhere else for these horses to go and i don't mean to sound like a doom and gloom guy but you know what happens to horses that no one wants and this has been a remarkable quiet organization handle it all on their own i'm using district funds again to assist them but i'd have to use nearly all of my district funds to assist them in the to the level that they need the help so i would ask that mr donelson we allow them at least to make an application uh thank you the last thing i wanted to say is more just informational finally after a long long delay the project that we had been working on with susan chorus and jordan pistorius from our cra department community development um between on map road between the fire station and dr rex centell's office we have a storm water retention pond we're calling it a lake it's very pretty we've been working in phases we have paved a walking path completely around the entire the tire area dr centell has been very generous with his private funds the clock that's on map road the four-sided sort of community clock was completely paid for by mr and dr centell he has a couple other uh ideas that he'd like to fund personally uh to incorporate in that area we're calling that palm city place and in that front corner where uh the mabel witham's the belasco house was was not torn down it was relocated and still is a historic house somewhere else in palm city that will be the patio there'll be some picnic tables there there'll be a little music bandstand there'll be landscaping a fountain a little tea fishing dock on the back side of that area it's not meant to be a big grand park it's just meant to be sort of a community kind of uh effort and it was supposed to start probably a year ago and you'll notice it is starting now we've asked the contractor to be very mindful of map road with construction vehicles the sidewalk there as well uh they will be fencing off to keep it safe uh they will fence off on the western side so not including the sidewalk you'll still be able to walk on the sidewalk but you'll see activity there and i just wanted the residents of palm city to understand my brother is a contractor and he's always said you have to break a few eggs if you're going to make an omelet so for the you know next six months or so it'll be a little more of an active construction and work site but when it's done i think the residents not just in palm city but in martin county will be very pleased with how it turns out and with that mr donelson do you have anything to include i do not have a few things i'll bring up at the end of the day thank you very much miss woods thank you thank you with that we will take our next agenda item uh public hearing number one public hearing and final assessment resolution for the western extension of wastewater municipal service benefit unit it'll be presented by mr phil keithley and also by mr sam emerson gentlemen good morning welcome you are recognized good morning commissioners for the record once again phil keithley chief project manager for the utilities and solid waste department as the board is aware the utilities department has been working towards design and construction of a wastewater collection system for several parcels located along state road 714 and bush street more particularly known as 7j's industrial park the solid waste transfer facility sheriff shooting range and martingale commons since adoption of the comprehensive plan amendment these next slides show the general breakdown of square footage of existing facilities and also undeveloped properties which is converted to 25 gallons per day per thousand square feet as per utilities department policy so for the developed 7j's lots the south area the expected wastewater demand is approximately 5 526 gallons per day for the undeveloped 7j's lots the anticipated demand is approximately 5939 gallons per day based upon allowable build-out requirements the 7j's track to the north is approximately 22 762 gallons per day based upon a master pud agreement limits the existing martin county sheriff's range is 350 gallons per day the existing solid waste transfer facility is approximately 7 277 gallons per day of leachate disposal and martingale commons now known as martin commerce park llc is estimated at 26 410 gallons per day it should be noted this that this project receive a two million dollar legislative appropriations grant now as indicated on this slide the total project cost is four million eight hundred and ninety eight thousand three hundred and eighty dollars and seventy five cents there is a contribution of two million dollars from a legislative appropriations grant reducing the amount of the accessible cost to two million eight hundred ninety eight thousand three hundred and eighty dollars and seventy five cents now for the purposes of this special assessment because it's not entirely existing users and because it's made up of mostly commercial and industrial components the department is utilizing an estimated total gallons per day of sixty eight thousand eight hundred and fifty nine gallons and converting that to a total of sixty eight thousand eight hundred and fifty nine apportionment units for the benefited properties which breaks down to a cost of forty two dollars and nine cents per apportionment unit so for an example if you have a forty eight hundred square foot warehouse divided by the twenty five gallons per day per thousand square feet you come up with a hundred and twenty apportionment units and now a hundred and twenty apportionment units times forty two dollars and nine cents per unit the total lump sum assessment is five thousand and fifty dollars and eighty cents and if the property owner chooses to pay over time that equates to an annual payment of three hundred and sixteen dollars and eighty cents which includes an interest rate of one point three four percent plus standard fees over twenty years on the annual tax bill please be aware that each benefited property has a specific number of apportionment units assigned in lieu of balloting the properties the department mailed out certificates of acknowledgement forms that indicated the number of apportionment units assigned to that specific parcel and to date parcels totaling fifty thousand seven hundred and eleven apportionment units or 74 percent of the sixty eight thousand eight hundred and fifty nine total apportionment units executed the acknowledgement forms and they are attached as exhibits to the resolution to be adopted today it should be noted the assessment does not include any capital facilities charges or costs associated with on-site connections once the project is completed the property owner would be required to execute a developer's agreement just the same as any new customer to the utility so with that a staff level workshop was held on may 16th 2023 with the affected property owners and the initial assessment resolution was adopted by this board on june 6 2023 with adoption of the final assessment resolution today the department anticipates commencing construction in august of 2023 and completing construction in june of next year lump sum payments of the assessment by property owners would be due by august 1st 2024 and any payments not received by that date would be shown on the annual property tax bill in november of 2024 and that concludes my presentation mr keith lee thank you very much questions from the commission for mr keith lee commissioner heard yeah um so in public comment this morning mr pine said that the uh assessment for port salerno new monrovia residential community uh for wastewater is eleven thousand nine hundred dollars per unit it which is correct and why are these less than half that so here okay an assessment for a forty eight hundred square foot warehouse is five thousand dollars why is it so much more expensive particularly since this particular uh extension is really really at a uh a long one so lots and lots of infrastructure so why is it less than half the price yes good morning commissioners uh it's good to be here sam amerson utilities director uh the reason is the assessments are based on the actual cost of the infrastructure in this case it's several miles of water main uh i'm sorry sewer main on this assessment and so it's the actual construction cost to provide that infrastructure uh divided uh by the apportionment units a number of gallons that just doesn't make sense to me if it's if you're putting in more infrastructure because you're traveling because the project is bigger it seems like the infrastructure costs would be more expensive well as far as port salerno we're looking at a vacuum pump station and a vacuum assisted gravity sewer system which is quite expensive and you know those costs are about twenty three thousand per unit we get it down below the twelve thousand because of grants uh state revenue sharing and others to buy that cost down that's why that's a lower cost at about twelve thousand dollars in this case this was a straight up cost minus uh two million dollar appropriation which further reduced the cost and the and the assessment associated with that so what's the expensive part okay so we're saying you're saying that in port salerno which is it which is an historic community extremely compact we're not covering much distance uh it says geographically it's a small project and you're saying that the costs are are based upon infrastructure costs so the per unit cost in compact port salerno is twenty three thousand dollars per unit and to go from 31 miles is five thousand dollars per unit bill if you could go back a couple slides i think you uh there were other costs that aren't included in this assessment so if you notice that since the industrial park if you have to have their own lift station there are other costs that actually are not included in this project that are included in the residential piece so so each user has to have their own lift station so it depends i think um in for instance in the in the residential component we included the capital facility charge within the assessment and that cost was included in this particular case you can see that each project has to have their own capital facility charge which also is a function of the amount of water that you're using so you know if you really got down to an apples to apples comparison you'd have to look at all of those other pertinent costs that go along with the project that aren't included in just the backbone system so this is just the system in the in the in the road you know the each because of the unit types the type of square footage is available each project will have to have its own connection and they'll be unique and those costs are are added those are uh to the property owner on their self and not included in this assessment so i don't think you can use the the assessment rate that they had and compare it to salerno without first computing the additional cost for each one of these individuals um lift stations other uh and capital facility charges um yeah which would be the total cost there are other charges for residential too there's hookup charges there's decommissioning septic tank charges that we also don't include in the assessment we do include the capital facility charges all of the only thing that was not included in the uh uh in the salerno cost was the septic tank abandonment hookup which they had bid out um to do that on a uh per per per you know as a fixed cost um which was running around eighteen hundred dollars i think it was our current costs and so that was the only additional cost everything else was entirely included in in the assessment this simply is the backbone infrastructure um provided for um the industrial park users including ourselves okay thank you any other questions from the commission any public i'm gonna do that now uh anyone from the public looking to address us on this topic that has not spoken about it earlier this morning ma'am come forward you can fill out one of the forms afterwards you might as well just keep a stack of them with you welcome back thank you thank you again my name is linda fithian and i am a resident of palm city but my question is and i've come in late on this discussion is what's going on with the septic tanks why are we why does this have to be done in the first place in regards to port salerno they've been there for a long time why are we reconstructing the wheel i'll take that when that was my question thank you commissioner heard was asking a question about a separate project separate agenda item just for comparison sake of the dollar amounts from this to that um not to confuse you at all one is totally separate from the other the conversation in regards to port salerno new monrovia was from our last commission meeting and will be coming back uh in the future for a further discussion um but has nothing to do with this particular agenda item anyone else looking to address us on this yes ma'am good morning commissioners thank you so much for your time my name is audrey creech i'm with gunster and i'm here on behalf of martin commons park and seven jays just wanted to point out some things that may or may not come up as you go through not only this public hearing but the other public hearings as well as i believe the the vendor contract that will be a part of today's agenda um essentially the comprehensive plan text amendments that were required and were approved to kind of set the framework for these uh infrastructure improvements were done quite a bit of time ago i believe there was about five years of consistent grinding which i uh applaud the county for doing additionally industrial commercial as somewhat stated by miss heard or commissioner heard it is a little different than residential there there's different as the county um administrator and county engineers will probably attest to it's it's it's a very different load of of uh of water of service etc and as stated by one of the public commenters today there are quite a few businesses as well as my clients um that really do need this to come into play because industrial and commercial is really not a good fit for septic and well um additionally two million dollars in grants which i appreciate the county for tracking down has been acquired for this particular project um and most of the property owners as stated 74 percent uh included in the resolution uh were in favor of this um that's kind of unheard of uh to a certain extent so it's it's very favorable and and uh nice to know that this is going to be something that most of the community can uh can be behind of course we're not going to get everyone because it's almost impossible to get everyone to agree to a uh construction that will at least initially be somewhat inconvenient but the overall ability to get on this backbone infrastructure throughout palm city will be a boon especially to not only seven jays and martin commerce park but all the other businesses uh that really do work outside of palm city thank you so much thank you um commissioner smith is yours a end sort of an end comment if commissioner heard wants to go before well there was just a question from uh a person who lives please address future users connections yeah my question was going to be similar to what we heard this morning um if someone is initially assessed as part of the beginning of this project and someone comes in several years later is there any advantage or reimbursement or what what would be the situation for people that are in i mean in my mind i know that the property without those as the as the previous speaker said backbone infrastructure once you added your property values uh for a lot of people one it's more uh appealing to people that won't purchase property that doesn't have that and two i think it would make the property more valuable but beyond that is there any well it's my understanding that the board approved the comprehensive plan amendment a number of years ago around 2016 i believe uh to allow for utility service to these parcels and that would be the former martingale commons at 95 and 714 also the seven jays the landfill as phil mentioned and the sheriff's shooting range outside of that i don't believe anyone would be allowed to connect without a comprehensive plan amendment right now i would defer to the county attorney but that is my understanding now if someone came in in the future and received a comprehensive plan amendment to allow for utility service that's a different animal and i'm not sure how we would address equity in that case good point thank you commissioner smith that was going to be part of at least what i was going to talk about which thanks sam for doing that um but also to just two seconds worth of history on this part of this came from litigation that arose on the martingale uh common site and and out of that came a resolution that we would provide water and sewer to that site in combination to seven jays landfill and to the sheriff's range um which was which was a good resolution to i think what we were up against relative to the litigation but it was also sort of the impetus behind this the seven jays has been platted for decades as an industrial subdivision and when we were coming out of the recession or trying to come out of the recession everybody statewide was trying to find a way to improve upon the economy to try to find a way to combat the recession and how could we create jobs and without having to create new land use without having to create any new additional industrial it was sitting there waiting and ready for the ability to do improvements and to help it grow and help it hopefully facilitate jobs unfortunately it took eight to ten years for that to happen um but nonetheless that's where at least as i understand it that's where we are today and so i appreciate staff's work on getting us here uh i do very much want to call out senator harrell um she was incredibly instrumental um in helping us get the two million dollars from the legislature it was not a grant it was a legislative appropriation which is entirely different um in many ways uh legislative um appropriations are the hardest funds to get because they are subject to veto by the governor and gail uh was a super champion on making sure that the governor knew the importance of the economy the economic impacts of it to martin county uh and quite frankly the ability to get uh more property off of septic tanks uh if they were to not have done uh water and sewer they would have been on septic tanks like the facilities that are out there today so again thank you to senator harrell for her persistence and her support and with that i would move a staff's recommendation thank you sir commissioner two more questions one is so each owner has to install their own lift station and also so this project is a very very long project and it begins at seven jays and goes out to martingale and so there's a there's a a space in in the middle lots of space of space in the middle and those people cannot connect without a comprehensive plan amendment that's my understanding commission is is that that's correct but that's just a matter of three commissioners voting to allow them to connect correct it's legislative it would require a request from the property owners to process a comprehensive plan amendment for whether it's one or multiple properties to be have their land use amended to allow for or water and sewer and the uh owner installed lift stations does that differ from a package plant that's probably going to be in most cases um for the developed and undeveloped commercial a grinder a duplex grinder system is typically required by the state for commercial properties so it would be similar to our uh the grinder program that we have it would just have two pumps and a little bit larger storage tank sam i think the question was what what's it it's not a package plant and that the wastewater is still treated at their municipal treatment plant it's just a way to pump the um the sewage to the plant so it's just the method of how it gets into the end of the pipe in the in the residential side we either have the vacuum system or or the grinder system which is part of that program in this particular case all we have is a as a pipe in the road they have to push it into the pipe and that's used by a either a grinder system or a lift station and the the vacuum system is a far superior system and you didn't propose that because of cost that's correct all right thank you thank you we have a motion by commissioner smith for staff's recommendation second second by commissioner jenkins all those in favor aye all those opposed motion carries unanimously thank you uh we're going to take this next item which is a companion item and then after that we will take our break for closed captioning so our next item is public hearing number two public hearing and final assessment resolution for the western extension water municipal service benefit unit it'll be presented by the same two gentlemen that presented the last item mr keithley and mr amerson you are recognized thank you once again phil keithley chief project manager for the utilities and solid waste department as the board is aware the utilities department has been working towards designing construction of a water distribution system for several parcels located along state road 714 and bush street more particularly known as 7j's industrial park the solid waste transfer facility sheriff shooting range and martingale commons since adoption of the comprehensive plan amendment these slides show the general breakdown of square footage of existing facilities and also undeveloped properties which is converted to 25 gallons per day per thousand square feet as per utilities department policy so for the developed 7j's lots in the south the expected water demand is approximately 5 526 gallons per day for the undeveloped 7j's lots south the anticipated demand is approximately 5939 gallons per day based upon allowable buildout requirements the 7j's track north is approximately 22 762 gallons per day based upon master pud agreement limits the existing martin county sheriff's range is 315 gallons per day the existing solidway transfer facility is approximately 6 630 gallons per day and martingale commons now known as martin commerce park llc is estimated at 26 410 gallons per day it should be noted that this particular project is receiving 2 million dollar contribution from the american recovery and protection act as indicated here the total project cost is 6 million 377 dollars i mean 77 000 897 dollars and 25 cents there is a contribution of 2 million dollars from the american recovery and protection act reducing the amount of the accessible cost to 4 million 377 thousand 897 dollars and 25 cents now for the purposes of this special assessment because it is because it is not entirely existing users and because it is made up of mostly commercial and industrial components the department is utilizing an estimated total gallons per day of sixty one thousand five hundred and eighty two gallons and converting that to a total of sixty one thousand five hundred and eighty two apportionment units for the benefited properties which breaks down to a cost of seventy one dollars and nine cents per apportionment unit so for an example if you have a forty eight hundred square foot warehouse divided by the twenty five gallons per day per thousand square feet you come up with 120 apportionment units the 120 apportionment units times seventy one dollars and nine cents per unit the total lump sum assessment is eight thousand five hundred and thirty dollars and eighty cents and if the property owner chooses to pay over time that equates to an annual payment of five hundred and thirty six dollars and forty cents which includes an interest rate of one point three four percent plus standard fees over 20 years on the annual tax bill please be aware that each benefited property has a specific number of apportionment units assigned in lieu of balloting the properties the department mailed out certificates of acknowledgement forms that indicated the number of apportionment units assigned to that specific parcel and to date parcels totaling fifty thousand five hundred and ninety one apportionment units or eighty two percent of the sixty one thousand five hundred and eighty two total apportionment units executed the acknowledgement forms and they are attached as exhibits to the resolution to be adopted today it should be noted that the assessment does not include any capitals facilities charges or costs associated with on-site connections once the project is completed the property owner would be required to execute a developer's agreement just the same as any new customer to the utility the staff level workshop was held on may 16th 2023 with the affected property owners and the initial assessment resolution was adopted by this board on june 6 2023 with adoption of the final assessment resolution today the department anticipates commencing construction in august of 2023 and completing construction in june of next year lump sum payments of the assessment by property owners would be due by august 1 2024 and any payments not received by that date would be shown on the annual property tax bill in november of 2024 and that concludes my presentation mr keithley thank you very much commissioner hurd yeah the comprehensive plan requires that um water and sewer only be provided in the primary urban service boundaries is that correct and that priority be given to the properties inside the urban serve primary urban service boundary and yet these two projects are well outside of the urban service boundary so is the reason why the uh comprehensive plan is not being uh observed is because there are comprehensive plan amendments that allow water and sewer to leapfrog over uh primary urban service boundary and into rural areas well i can tell you that my understanding is the board approved the comprehensive plan amendment specifically to allow utility service to these parcels uh included in the special assessment so that comprehensive plan allowed an exception to the comprehensive plan requirements i may need some help with it yeah the text amendments amended the comprehensive plan to allow water and sewer to be provided at these specific locations that's why they're allowed to leapfrog over properties that should be served first let me make it clear this does not violate the martin county creates an exception plan that's not the same as a violation all right then then i i understand it creates an exception commissioner smith when the county lost uh its litigation with martingale were we not required to provide a resolution to providing some sort of um resolution to water and sewer for martingale well i was not involved in that uh litigation yes though we were required as part of the settlement to um consider the extension of uh utilities to that um parcel yes sir because that project was denied and then i believe it was also the land use and zoning was stripped or the zoning was stripped from the property um by the board at that time correct yes sir thank you yes i also remember when we had that initial conversation about this suggestion which mr emerson didn't you say was 2016 that's my recollection right i think it was about that where this initial conversation came up in the first place and for folks that are not familiar with this location and what we're talking about here martingale is the southeastern corner of martin highway and 95 uh that was originally approved as a neighborhood during a different not this board some of the board members are here from that point some of us were not here then there was a change in what was initially allowed there was a lawsuit a litigation if you will and the the line the property owner won for lack of a better term and was allowed not only to have some type of um sewer water hookup they were also approved to build a package plant which the county is not interested in having package plants they are like a miniature utility if you will and fraught with the possibility of failure they're very expensive to manage and maintain they're forever versus having it be our system they were separate from the conversation seven jays or the area familiar with what you're talking if you've ever brought anything to our county landfill or if you've ever dropped off hazardous chemicals or materials to our drop-off site most residents would be the only reason that they would go down those roads would be for that the sheriff has a shooting range there's also sort of tucked in there most people are not aware is the seven jays which is a industrial park commercial industrial park there's a multitude of different types of businesses there more on the heavy industrial side than more it's not an office park um and then it is also adjacent to the um the c-23 canal so when i was here for not for the litigation but afterwards came back in 2016 when this issue became a situation and i remember thinking the same thing this is much further out uh and then bypasses a large section of martin highway for these utility services however there is an industrial i don't know if the proper term is heavy industrial park uh utilizing all sorts of different businesses out there on the c-23 we were going to have to come up with some solution for martingale which has now become martin commerce park uh they did at the time agree that if they were allowed to participate in this they would not be looking to create their own package plant which was their option so those those reasons is why i voted to do this it's taken seven years to come up with the with the answer to it i'm appreciative of the grants uh these businesses are are long time you know seven jays is the poma family they've been out there for a long time paying taxes martin county residents so it's not like someone just showed up and jumped to the front of the line this is these are long time martin county residents and businesses that um because of the nature of what they do i was i was comfortable with that it also will work and benefit martin county the the entity the governmental entity at the landfill they don't have any of these services out there and they will uh in the future to commissioner hurd's point you know about uh changing the comprehensive plan there is a mechanism in place that would allow a majority of the board to amend it based on current set of circumstances and that's why i did um it i'm remember that the the safety mechanism was that no one else can just automatically as mr amerson said you cannot automatically just hook up to this in the future you'd have to go through the exact same process that these applicants including the government itself had to go through it's not an easy process it's not impossible but it's by design not easy and each of those if if a group came forward and could make a compelling argument that three commissioners whether it's the five of us or folks in the future agreed that it was appropriate to do that then that would be the case at the time so that's sort of the history for folks that are just not familiar with what this is or not familiar with the history commissioner hetherington just for clarity and i wasn't here in 2016 when this was adopted but for the gentleman that took his time to come from the towing um facility i'm not sure exactly where that is is that included in this area or yes ma'am he's located along poma drive so it's on the um southern j south system so he was asking if what he would have to do to be petitioned to be included so but he he is included that's my understanding yes from what i saw this morning i'll get with him and confirm that okay i think he was just here to sort of encourage and sort of promote okay i took that as a question whether or not he was included so i just i think he was there supporting the effort i see him shaking his head in the back of the room i'll take that as an affirmative uh any other questions from the commission any members of the public would like to make a ask a question or make a statement welcome hello again audrey creech with gunster and on behalf of martin commerce park and seven jays i just want to state for the record since this is uh basically a offshoot of the original issue all my comments for the record uh are made as to this item as well except instead of 74 i believe we had 82 is that correct 82 approval for this particular item so i just wanted to uh restate it for the record thank you so much thank you the final point that i will make on this is that this location the seven jays in particular and some of the rest of them are adjacent to our uh former um landfill it's a transfer station now but it does have a a encapsulated mountain of uh trash that i'm sure is handled appropriately but if you are digging wells you can imagine you would prefer to have water come from the city's or from the county's uh water uh treatment and uh supply line then digging a well next to a historic now uh offline landfill i think before we create additional problems where there's going to be potential health concerns in the future this is one of the reasons that tips the scale in behalf of their uh that specific location that far out of town if you will getting an approval today with that we have to approve second we have a motion for staff's recommendation of approval by commissioner jenkins seconded by commissioner smith all those in favor aye all those opposed that motion also carries unanimously let's take a 10 minute break for closed captioning and we will be back thank you so much we are back from our mid-morning closed captioning break it is still july 11 2023 we're continuing with our board of count excuse me our board of county commissioners meeting and uh we're going to have public hearing quasi-judicial number one a public hearing to consider adoption of amendment to the martin county zoning atlas to change the zoning district classification for c 173-001 county operations it's going to be presented by miss carolyn grunwald with some assistance since it's quasi-judicial i will run through our process of asking my colleagues if they've had any ex parte communications commissioner smith thank you commissioner hetherington if any they've been filed thank you commissioner jenkins if any they've been filed thank you commissioner heard if i have any they've been filed thank you um do you have a copy of your work history you have to say yourself too oh i have thank you i have none and i have filed that we have a copy of your work history in the agenda item let the record show that it's been submitted are there any return receipts that are necessary for this no no sir verbal we need uh anyone uh intervening no no it's a hot topic um and anyone that will be offering any testimony if they would stand to be sworn in please change your right hands do you swear or affirm that the evidence you're about to give will be the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth thank you and i think that checks all the boxes miss grunwald you are recognized to begin this is the second public hearing to consider the adoption for county operations rezoning c 173-001 the parcel which we're speaking is south of 96th street west of canter highway and north of bridge road the current zoning on the parcel is li which is a limited industrial with a future land use of industrial there are three options so there's limited industrial general industrial and heavy industrial we believe that general industrial is the most appropriate for the parcel and the use is required the setbacks are the same for li and gi when you go to hi they're a little more restrictive um it will meet the minimum lot size area and there's a little bit difference in building height and coverage but not much staff recommends that gi is an appropriate zoning district with respect to the application of the goals and objectives of the policy of the comprehensive plan this concludes my presentation do you have any questions thank you very much questions for staff seeing none um you are the whole thing right there's no no one else anyone from the public looking to address us on this topic also seeing none comes back to the board with commissioner smith staff recommendation second thank you very much mr donelson getting closer to your vision your dream this has been something that you've been contemplating for how long sir since childhood 29 years okay and we still going to be putting that living roof on this building we will put on everything that we need and then anything you want as long as it has three votes as long as it has three votes 29 years in the making getting closer okay with that in mind we have a motion by commissioner smith's first for staff's recommendation of approval seconded by commissioner hetherington all those in favor aye all those opposed that motion carries unanimously thank you very much thank you our next item is departmental quasi-judicial number one request plat approval for the hunter lake project h096-009 it'll be presented by miss elizabeth nogal and it's also quasi-judicial so i will start with commissioner heard do you have any ex parte communications if i have any they've been filed thank you commissioner jenkins if i have any they've been filed thank you commissioner hetherington if any they've been filed commissioner smith haven't been filed thank you i have none and that's been filed uh if you're going to be offering testimony please stand to be sworn in raise your right hands do you swear or affirm that the evidence you're about to give will be the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth copy of your work history in the agenda item if you could submit it please let the record show she has i'm assuming there's no interveners no interveners and so with that i would ask you to begin good morning chairman and commissioners elizabeth nogal principal planner no notices were required for this application we are here to talk about the hunter lake plat project h096009 the project is located on southeast salerno approximately 600 feet west of southeast federal highway in stewart the subdivision minor site plan was originally approved january 7th of 2019 it's a 9.4 acres parcel and 20 single family lots ranging from 7500 to 8197 square feet with access from southeast salerno road the site does have a pamp that was approved in 2015 for a 1.55 acre preserve minor technical changes associated with this plat were approved in june 16th of this year and also associated with this plot as a 17.5 wide right-of-way dedication on southeast salerno road it's the minor final site plan the revised minor final site plan from june of this year minor technical changes and the associated plat pursuant to martin county martin county land development regulations article 10 review of this application by the lpa was not required final action on this application is required by the board in a public meeting pursuant to table 10.5 f9 land development regulations martin code and with that the recommended action is to move that the board receive and file the agenda item including the staff report as exhibit one move that the board approve the hunter lake plot including contract for construction of required improvements and infrastructure and move that the board adopt a resolution accepting and approving a warranty deed from hunter lakes llc florida florida limited liability company to martin county for right-of-way on the north side of southeast salerno road as a condition of approval of the hunter lake plat and authorize the chairman to sign any and all documents necessary to complete the transaction thank you i'm sorry could you say that again um nicely done questions is that the end of your presentation yes yes questions for staff seeing none applicants turn sir good morning and welcome good morning for the record scott montgomery on behalf of the applicant um this uh hunter lake project has essentially been completed the infrastructure there's some remaining landscaping and close out um as liz mentioned this is 20 uh units um allowable density was five units an acre we're at about 2.1 uh 25 percent of the property is in preserve uh in addition to the right of way dedication um there is a contribution um there are funds however you want to refer to them being um it will be conveyed to martin county for salerno road improvements leaving 100 greater than 100 000 dollars anyway for some uh portion of improvements in front of this property so uh support uh in approving the plat today thank you sir questions for the applicant seeing none anyone from the public looking to address us on this agenda item commissioner hetherington i will move staff's recommendation for approval second thank you commissioner smith second okay we have a motion by commissioner hetherington for staff's recommendation of approval seconded by commissioner smith all those in favor aye all those opposed that motion carries unanimously thank you very much thank you sir thank you our next agenda item is also quasi-judicial dp departmental quasi-judicial number two request for replat approval for the canopy creek planned unit development project p101-012 it'll be presented by mr brian elam yes yes every time i look at it i could think of two to three different ways to pronounce it um thank you for being here i will ask my colleagues if they have any ex parte communications commissioner hetherington i have none and they've been filed thank you commissioner jenkins i have none and they've been filed commissioner hurd i have none they've been filed commissioner smith i have none and they've been filed do you have a copy of your work history and the agenda item thank you um any interveners no interveners if anyone who's going to be offering testimony could stand to be sworn in raise your right hands do you swear or affirm the evidence you're about to give will be the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth sir you are recognized thank you chairman commissioners for the record brian elam principal planner with growth management a copy of the agenda item and my work history have been provided this is a request by casey canopy creek llc for approval of a replat of lots 276 277 and 278 of the canopy creek pud formerly known as tuscowilla tuscowilla received pud and master site plan approval on june 28 2005. this replat is four lots 276 277 and 278 which were made smaller to make room for amenities the revised master and final site plan detailing these changes was approved in 2008 with the third amendment of the canopy creek pud zoning agreement the total area of the proposed replat is approximately 6.6 on three acres minor technical changes to the master and final site plan were required for plat consistency and uh so attached with this agenda item is the fourth amendment of the canopy creek pud for the purpose of updating the master site plan and a resolution for revising the final site plan picture of the three lots this area here 0.616 acres 6.613 and development review staff have concluded the application complies with all applicable land development regulations and the comprehensive growth management plan staff recommends the board move to receive and file the agenda item and all attachments including the staff report as exhibit one move the board approve the revised final site plan move that the board approve the canopy creek pud fourth amendment and move that the board approve the canopy creek pud replat of lots 276 277 and 278 includes the thank you sir appreciate it questions for staff seeing none is there an applicant i don't think they're here okay no applicant presentation no questions for the applicant anyone from the public looking to speak to us on this seeing none commissioner smith thank you thank you i would say just in my own personal opinion i personally would like an applicant to come i guess it's sort of like a sort of a technical kind of a push through understanding but there is an applicant but i don't think we're unaware why they're not here honestly no i i'm not saying it's our fault i'm just saying that traditionally there's no rubber stamps and as far as i'm concerned the applicant should attend someone a representative for the applicant should attend i mean i it's very very rare that it's not but it's just it's in my opinion it's respectful of the process staffs work they should be here to at least stand up and say we agree we have a motion by commissioner smith for staff's recommendation second by commissioner hetherington all those in favor aye all those opposed motion carries unanimously thank you very much now we're moving right along departmental number one office of management and budget items which require board approval there's 13 different items they'll be presented by miss jennifer manning this morning um if there's any that my colleagues have to want to separate it out please let me know other than that we will go through the process miss manning good morning you are recognized good morning commissioners jennifer manning omb director uh first item under the agenda is permission to apply for the fy 24 mosquito control uh funding in the amount of sixty eight thousand seven hundred fifty six dollars those dollars money will be used for chemical to purchase chemicals it requires a 25 match the matching funds or program in operational budget does it mean we'll actually use them yeah okay i just think this year's mosquitoes have been extra special oh they are okay second item is a permission to apply for fy 24 environmental protection grant for water quality monitoring of nutrients which includes nitrogen and phosphate for 10 to 15 sites the request amount is for four hundred thousand dollars it requires an eighty thousand dollar match which is programming the ecosystem restoration operational budget and the next three items are just different contract numbers and it's for the same purpose but i will start with item number three is permission to accept the funding for the housing and urban development uh hud grant and those funds it will be used to provide rental assistance and support services for individuals with disability who has experienced homelessness the first grant award amount is for 130 thousand two hundred eighty four dollars item number four is through the is the hud program as well that is for 130 thousand eight hundred and forty eight dollars the fifth item of course another hud grant uh award and that is for ninety four thousand seven hundred fifty two dollars item number six is permission to apply to the federal emergency management administration also known as fema and this is for public assistance administered through the florida department of emergency management for hurricane nicole commissioner heard do we know the amount of this grant no not not offhand i think as we apply for the different areas that were impacted then we will get reimbursed and and how do we fund the local share the local share is is funded through our disaster fund that we have set aside okay so our emergency fund yes yeah that's correct commissioner uh we have uh um our emergency funds that uh you set aside in your reserves and then some of the departments have some also reserved funds for disaster uh that we've we've tried to um set aside because in the past fema would we would get reimbursed quicker now it's taking a couple years um also the reason i also spoke up because they the state just part of their budget i got a notice last week that um there may be additional funding for the state to help us cover these twelve and a half percent costs so uh and maybe even help us up front some of the costs so i think the state's recognizing the delay and getting funds to our local so i think that's an another area that um we'll be looking forward in the next couple weeks to see what's available for us to um speed up the time to recover thanks thank you please continue okay um item number seven is permission to accept the emergency management preparedness and assistant trust fund grant funds and it's for 105 806 the funding is used for salary training and planning to enhance the emergency management programs and this is what we receive annual we get an annual allotment every year item number eight is permission to accept the florida resilient coastline program grant and those funds uh will be used for stormwater backflow prevention um insulation and the grant award is 198 380 it requires an equal match which is programmed in a stormwater cip item number nine is permission to accept the indian river lagoon national estuary grant award for 35 360 to replace two dilapidated uh floating treatment wetlands within the stormwater wetland area they required matches forty thousand dollars which is also a program in the ecosystem cip item number ten is permission to accept the florida department of environmental protection funding for old palm city vacuum sewer project this is a really good um award it's uh it's a the grand award is ten million dollars and it'll be used for old palm city communities for the water sewer system i mean the sewer system and um it requires a 50 percent match and those funds are for you know revenue sharing um franchise fees and and uh and assessments thank you one second please commissioner heard there's they're just discrepancies it's um under the purpose of the agreement contract it says that there's a requirement of at least a 50 percent match and in the cost of martin county it says there's a 10 million dollar grant match which one is it the grant is 10 million 10 million and it requires a 50 percent match so why are we matching with 10 million that's 50 it says in the cost of martin county the grant match of 10 million dollars will be funded by fpl franchise fees state revolved revenue sharing fund um assessments and the assessment so are we matching 5 million or 10 million oh so the grant is is 20 million the grant is 10 million it requires a 10 million match but it says in the top part that it only requires a 50 percent match so it's okay maybe just yeah i think it's just the way it was worded but it it meant it's it was meant to say that it requires 10 million dollar match so sorry about that confusion five million dollars so yeah i can understand what what commission 50 50 match but not a 50 percent match exactly okay so do are all of these these we've we've been wonderful about getting these grants do are they all 100 percent grant match yes they're all grant matches uh okay at least 50 percent on the local funds okay just a caveat that i'd say most of them are there are a few that come in that uh that were a legislative appropriation that may not require a match it's just here's the amount and um and and in the request that you all made for um uh the salerno project we're looking for funds that would possibly not require a match to or consider what we've already done um as a part of that so and so just a caveat there are some funds through the dep that they will allow to go over and that's what we're seeking for salerno okay great jobs stand please continue item number 11 is permission to accept the drinking water state revolving fund loan this loan is for several areas and that includes uh the western extension as well as the harbor estates gained avenue and bober barge as well as evergreen and windstone water the grant loan will be 12.9 million roughly rounded and uh the interest rate is 1.52 percent and it's over a 20-year period item number 12 is permission to accept the federal transit administration section 5307 america rescue plan act this is for fy 21 and they're receiving 611 287 dollars there is no match required the funds that will be used for operating assistance a small amount will be used for security projects i mean for safety projects as well as security projects final item is a request for budget approval for the fy 24 allocation of the federal highway administration funds for the mpo organization the amount is seven hundred and eleven dollars five hundred twenty one seven hundred and eleven thousand five hundred twenty one dollars thank you quite a few a lot of positive news there questions for staff if not commissioner smith there's no public comment i'll move staff's recommendation any public comment on this agenda item seeing none we have a motion by commissioner smith for staff's recommendation seconded by commissioner hetherington all those in favor aye all those opposed that motion carries unanimously thank you thank you our next agenda item is departmental number two contracts that meet the threshold for board approval one million dollars or greater and it will be presented this morning by mr seth mcconaughey yes sir seth mcconaughey purchasing agent for the record i have two items for your consideration today number one being the western corridor water and sewer main extension rebid rfb 2023 3489 staff recommended action move that the board award the contract to the lowest responsive and responsible bidder centerline inc in the amount of ten million four hundred and forty one thousand one hundred and twenty five dollars which includes base bids a b c and d and move that the board approve the revised cip sheet recognizing the grant revenues for the western corridor water and sewer main extension project and move that the board authorize a county administrator or designee to execute all documents related to this request and my second item for your consideration today is a contract amendment to the water and wastewater chemicals for the martin county utilities department currently serving under rfb 2019 3133 the purpose of this amendment is to increase the maximum not to exceed contract value by eight hundred and fifty thousand dollars to cover the county's current chemical needs over a four month period this will allow staff adequate time to complete the procurement and contract award process and allow for a continuation of services until a new contract is executed staff recommended action move that the board approve the amendment to the agreement for rfb 2019 3133 water and wastewater chemicals for the martin county utilities department to increase the not to exceed value of the contract by eight hundred and fifty thousand dollars for a revised maximum not to exceed value of six million three hundred and fifty thousand dollars and move that the board authorize the county administrator or designee to execute all documents related to this request and that concludes my presentation excellent presentation we'll make sure miss brotherton knows what a fantastic job you did um questions for the staff commissioner smith no public comment move staff recommendation is there any any public comment anyone looking to address us on this agenda item we do have someone actually really put the pressure on you good morning uh my name is jill marasa i am with ashley capital who represents and owns uh martin commerce park i just wanted to take a quick minute to say thank you to staff um both procurement and utilities as you learn today um this was a big process and a lot of work went involved and i just want to say personally they've been very responsive to me and my knowledge and learning about um what we are uh enduring in the expansion and extension of the utilities and appreciate everyone's time and effort so thank you very much thank you that was okay great very positive with that in mind she looked she looked very angry i thought she was coming up to tear you up uh not today probably not miss marasa anyway but with that in mind we have a motion by commissioner smith seconded by commissioner hetherington thank you uh for mr mcconaughey's presentation and the items all those in favor all those opposed the motion carries unanimously write that down you got another unanimous decision our next item departmental number three is a 2 pm preset so we're moved past that one to departmental number four approval of a third amendment to the fifth amendment and complete restatement of agreement of lease it's going to be presented by two people mr andrew mcbean and mr george stokas the two of you are welcomed and recognized thank you mr chair uh george stokas assistant county minister it's my privilege and honor to introduce you uh to the gentleman on my left mr andrew mcbean our interim airport manager who will be presenting this item that's fantastic welcome sir thank you good morning commissioners the item that the airport presents today is an approval of the third amendment of the fifth amendment and complete reinstatement of the lease agreement between the martin county board of county commissioners and app jet center and fbo service provider at the airport the purpose of these amendments is to authorize additional conditions and improvements on their leaseholds those additional conditions include uh parking enhancements as well as a contribution of 55 000 to the airport enterprise fund in lieu of a self-service avgas station the recommendation is that the board moved to approve the third amendment to the fifth amendment and complete reinstatement of the agreement to the lease between martin county and app jet center commissioners any further questions on this item as presented very nice uh quick presentation thank you we have some lights we will begin with commissioner hurd where is exhibit c i see exhibit b but i don't have an exhibit c i believe exhibit c may be that in that site plan that's to the very back that that sheet there with the parking plan along with him field drive yeah i'm not going to support this the only thing that was that was of benefit to martin county to our taxpayers to our airport to our general aviation is self-service gas and that's been removed we desperately have needed self-service gas at with him field for ever and giving it up is the wrong thing to do so i'm not going to support this i'm very disappointed that our staff saw fit to agree to eliminating self-service gas we're we just we we ignore general aviation at with him field and that's wrong commissioner smith to see if there's any responsible um mr stokas when you and i had a conversation we did have uh discussion about that and you had a forward strategy can you share it yes when when staff was made uh app's desire to to not build the self-service station we conferred with our legal our outside legal counsel peter kirsch as well as our inside legal counsel mr lee baggett uh and we are prepared staff is in the process of preparing a uh declaration document where the airport will then recruit uh will then basically garner the exclusive right for self-service and staff has prepared a plan that once uh the county has vacated the public work site which i believe you guys had an item on that today um we plan to install a self-service station and that public work site that will serve the piston market of general aviation which would be the with the marrow club the t hangars that are located at atlantic aviation and if the board continues to move forward with what was recommended it will be the 60 some odd approximate shade hangers for the piston aircraft and as well we do plan to move forward with uh a wash rack station as well as a for lack of a better word clubhouse bathroom facility back there in public work so yes um one could argue that the self-service of fueling at this time is off the table but staff is creating an essence to delay it till we uh we get into the public work site so we understand both sides of that argument thank you commissioner heard why is martin county the only entity providing benefit to martin county these are very generous leases and we never have any teeth in them that make these very very profitable fbos contribute all those improvements i don't understand the the question why is why is martin county the only entity providing self-serve gas why is martin county the only entity providing uh uh hangers well i think the reason why martin county airport enterprise fund would like to seek the self-service the exclusive right self-services we believe we can do it far cheaper than the private sector uh because we will obtain that self-service tank at an 80 or 50 50 percent grant number one number two we believe that with its self-service we also are able to i believe i haven't fully researched this but i believe we're able to buy the fuel and not and buy that fuel without uh certain taxes that are imposed and i think thirdly it's i think we i think the fbos have argued that the market the piston market is dwindling in fact the conversation started in 2012 or 2013 that as the country moves to unleaded fuel um there is a transition between leaded fuel and unleaded fuel and the state has said look we will pay for that transition with fuel tanks as far as the shade hangers it's because none of the private sector of the private market has decided that they want to build shade hangers now we do have ramp space we did have shade hangers that were torn down because they had reached the end of their life um but the reason we're claiming for exclusive right is so that we don't we let our private partners our private entities know that we're not wanting to compete with them but rather they will have a different segment of the aviation market and the airport enterprise fund itself will have these other parts that would be federally and state subsidized certainly that the general aviation and piston market is dwindling because the jet market is forcing them out because they're not as profitable as i said i'm not supporting this it's a it's a shame that that our staff negotiated this contract that's extremely favorable to the fbo um when i had that conversation with mr stokas the answer that he just presented i thought made sense if there's an opportunity for us to build that uh fueling option and get an 80 percent grant from the faa that the that the um fbo's wouldn't have the opportunity to get that if we have the opportunity to purchase fuel at an advantageous rate that we could then pass along on to our general aviation constituents um that works for me i do understand and agree with commissioner hurd that it would be nicer if it happened right this minute but with that in mind knowing that there is a an opportunity that will present and it's not like in the old days that the conversation of moving moving our staff off of the uh that's from the side from the galley gallery uh from the we are genuinely going to move the maintenance facility off that site so it's not like some crazy pipe dream of things that won't ever happen i think that the timing is moving and i agree wholeheartedly with commissioner heard that we need to uh once and for all give whatever catering uh cater to our general aviation and our and our local pilots it's it is an area that is you know fading but it's not gone it hasn't faded there's plenty of folks that are been here for a long time that enjoy it and appreciate it so i'm one for keeping it going but this particular case the explanation that was presented to me works for me commissioner smith yeah i just want to i just want to commend staff honestly for having a a plan and not not having a plan um the explanation seems to make incredibly prudent sense it seems like a really good use of the space and that we've thought this through and we're ready to implement this the chair just said we will be moving general services out of there and um i have no doubt that our staff will come up with a really super project and we'll do it cost effectively and uh to the benefit of our general aviation customers with that i move approval second second it thank you anything we have a motion by commissioner smith for staff's recommendation approval seconded by commissioner hetherington all those in favor aye all those opposed opposed that motion carries four to one with commissioner herd dissenting gentlemen thank you very much thank you commissioner yes mcmean welcome good to see you thank you okay departmental number five request for approval of the sailfish sands restaurant bar and hitting base service charge policy it'll be presented this morning by mr kevin abate our parks and rec director sir welcome good morning uh kevin abate parks and recreation director um and on june the 6th the board uh asked staff to return with a service fee policy for sale fish hands restaurant bar and hitting base um so we've come up with a program that's attached to the agenda item a policy if you will basically the policy is is quite simple um that the uh selfish hands restaurant um bar and hitting base will operate a point of sale system that will generate a service charge appropriate for the current industry standards for all food beverage and hitting bays rates to the final bill 100 of the service charge will be reconciled recorded daily and reported weekly to the county's contracted uh employment services resources government services and that the this service charge will be distributed equally equitably into the employee paychecks um and the service charges of note the service charge uh may be paid by cash or credit card additional service charges or tips are not allowed by policy and the service charge procedures will also adhere with federal and state laws relative to compensation you'll see in the item um the positions um that are eligible for the service charge um for this um uh for the for the building of the bartender a server the food runner and our bussers get a percentage of that uh service charge based on position and um we will also notice the uh service charge on our menu and also at um table cards on the tables and that is the um the the basics of this policy there's a lot of moving parts in it with our point of sale but that's mechanics we leave that to you uh thank you for the presentation questions for mr abate and by the way we're going to open on the 27th of july okay questions from the public for this policy adaptation adoption before all sorts of lights came on um i just wanted to reiterate my position that i appreciate very much that you're doing this i think it's appropriate for the level of service that we'll be offering um i'm also happy that it'll be reopening and i still just wanted to reiterate that i'd like you and your team to run through the process get it going to the way that you um believe that it can be and should be run but then still in the future um give the opportunity for a request for proposal to because i still even as recently as this week have had people ask me if there would be an opportunity for outside vendors to come and run it i think the set of circumstances will be completely different than the first time because now people know what it looks like what it is a lot of people i don't think comprehended hitting bays if you're not familiar with the top golf or you know drive shack and the rest of it big shots um i think it's you and your staff have done a remarkable job of creating this facility in my opinion it's still something that would be easiest if handled by an outside entity in the future commissioner hetherington you are next i appreciate your work on this i of course my original position on this is that it should go out to bid immediately and be run by the private sector so um while i appreciate the work i just can't support because my you know my belief is that it should be run by the private sector so understood commissioner heard so it's reopening on july 27th soft opening hard opening opening at noon opening for dinner what's going to be the schedule do you know we received our alcohol license last friday so we're we intend to fully operate on the 27th we'll be doing training between now and then but we'll be fully operational okay so then it's open for lunch and for dinner yeah 11 o'clock and uh friday night it closes at 11 okay saturday nights and then 10 o'clock during other times so yes good thanks well announced it all over social media and etc move approval second okay we have a motion by commissioner heard for staff's recommendation seconded by oh sorry commissioner smith and i said this before in the last agenda item just a quick thanks to all of our staff that pitched in to pull the pieces back together a lot of work has gone into uh where we received it from to where it is today yeah i will echo the sentiment mario agreeas our um administrator and less than seven weeks and we'll have this thing fully ready and uh from what we've been through it's been quite remarkable that he actually got it done no he's a superstar see if he's got a brother or sister um with that in mind we have a motion by commissioner heard seconded by commissioner jenkins all those in favor aye aye all those opposed the motion carries four to one with commissioner hetherington dissenting thank you thank you uh our next item is departmental number six a final approval of a contract to purchase vacant land and adoption of a resolution approving and accepting warranty deeds for the purchase of environmentally sensitive lands from audubon of martin county inc for conservation it's going to be presented by miss carla segura and it looks as though mr john mail will be assisting in that the two of you are both recognized good morning carla segura real property manager this item is a request for final approval of a vacant land contract in the amount of 119 543 for five parcels totaling 119.543 acres currently owned by audubon of martin county inc the ecosystems and restoration division currently manages approximately 35 000 acres of environmental land acquisition of these parcels will add to the inventory all of the parcels have significant environmental values and are near or adjacent to currently county owned parcels and managed by the county this purchase will improve the efficiency of management efforts for continued controlling of invasive exotic vegetation by doing this the county will be able to leverage state resources to help cover the management costs which is currently not available to audubon the five parcels were acquired by audubon through various sources and will carry the same environmental reservation and reverter language deeds as when accepted by audubon nothing will change on these parcels with regard to use and conservation efforts funding for the project will come from the conservation land impact funds all title work has been reviewed and all documentation will be reviewed and approved by the legal department prior to the scheduled closing date we ask that the board approve the purchase and sale excuse me contract for the vacant lands and adopt a resolution approving and accepting the purchase of these environmentally sensitive lands and authorize the chairman to execute any and all documents necessary if there's any questions we'd be happy to answer thank you commissioner heard yeah um i'm just unclear parcel three which is just under three acres and parcel four which is just under three acres are submerged well depending on the high the tide levels they come up and down and sometimes they're above ground and sometimes they're not okay and how about um parcels one and two are they submerged also no not there they look like they're in the the river parts of it will go in and out but most of it is um above the levels they're they're islands in the river yes south for so um john mail martin county ecosystems um when when we negotiated this with audubon we negotiated it really as a package deal we didn't go parcel by parcel um and and try to you know derive values by each parcel so some certainly have more value to us than others but it was a collective uh negotiation so parcels one and two were formerly uh pipers landing are they mangroves there uh i'm not i'd have to look at the map but there are a couple of parcels that really have almost no vegetation they're just sand and and they they're they're title they're dry on low tides and extremely wet on high tides um and even the mangrove islands are are more or less you know wet almost entirely there's only really one parcel probably that has upland um one one of the islands has a small portion of upland but most of it's going to be title on all 119 acres and and how is the um what's the condition of those parcels are they infested with exotics there are some areas that we certainly will be able to um we'll have an opportunity to improve the vegetative makeup with some exotic removal and we have sources um for funding that those projects that audubon does not um some of the islands are in great shape and we'll just be in a maintenance condition um some of the uh edge of those islands that are going to require some exotic removal particularly um and one of the one of the reasons we were most um interested in this acquisition is because some of those are adjacent to existing martin county conservation lands where you know we're constantly dealing with exotic removal on that edge and while we can control it on our property if it comes over from theirs as continuing seed source or exotic um from that boundary we can now control it and put it all into a maintenance condition and um spend less in the future and are there any birds roosting or nesting on these islands i couldn't say first hand but i'm i'm i'm sure they are as they are in our conservation islands we you know we have active rookeries it's you know it's as you know it's the most diverse uh estuary in america and we have um we enjoy a very robust diverse um rookery and these islands i'm sure we're going to have similar habitat to what we already manage thanks um i have some interesting news to share this agenda item this agenda item the commissioner heard had mentioned that originally two of the parcels uh came from a donation from the piper's landing developer back in the 80s uh before then as the neighborhood was being built he donated two to audubon uh for exactly what you'd think audubon would have them for there are two sister islands smaller sister islands i know that this is a is a is a purchase from the county to to audubon for 119 000 which i think is a very fair price considering it's a thousand dollars an acre but all of the rationale that you said the piper's landing community had two smaller um islands you know right there next to them with their sister islands if you will and they would like to donate those two islands uh at no cost so that the same rationale that you were saying for the reason that we would take them over there are birds i had had the opportunity to be there there is birds that are nesting on these islands i think it's a mr donald's is about three acres two and one something like that that two acre island and a one acre island that i would like uh that i would request that we include into the language it might be separate language from this since this is a purchase but um to include them so that it's all consistent and uniformed that the same reason we would take these that we would take those three at no cost so commissioner we'd have to bring those back so i think but i wanted to mention it to my colleagues here now so i think as long as the rest of your fellow board members concur we'll move forward with worker you know at piper's landing on that donation okay thank you i just wanted to it made sense that it would tie into this commissioner smith i'd move staff's recommendation and the addition of a item coming back to us when appropriate that would include the extra parcels donated by pipers and all the sporting language and whatnot from a donation as an agenda item thank you thank you um i appreciate that and then it'll come back as another item um i'd like to thank the piper's landing community i know that they had to discuss that as a neighborhood to decide if they wanted to do that or not and for mr brian rich who's their manager who was instrumental in putting that together uh with that we have a motion by commissioner smith for staff's recommendation seconded by commissioner jenkins all those in favor aye aye all those opposed the motion carries unanimously and that brings us to the end of this portion of the agenda the only thing that we have left is a departmental number three the martin county innovation hub which is a two o'clock preset it'll be presented by mr george stokas and a group of others i know that they're coming from out of town otherwise i would have asked to try to speed it up but so we will come back at two o'clock for that presentation from them and with that we'll see you at two o'clock thank you from our lunch break we are continuing our july 11 2023 board of county commissioners meeting we have one agenda item left uh on our official schedule uh where we're going to have a terrific presentation uh but it'll be introduced to us by our assistant county administrator mr george stokas mr stokas why don't you introduce our guest yes uh thank you mr chair uh to my left is mr kevin crowder he is i believe the owner and founder and no you don't have to press the button you're good now he's got to turn it off of business flare which is the firm that we had selected uh to conduct uh numerous studies with the innovation hub as well as the uh cares act as well as arpa uh and the innovation hub presentation you're about to see is is the third uh study uh that we were served with that and with that i'll hand it off to mr crowder all right thank you welcome thank you uh it's nice to be back here um again this time not on crutches and uh as george mentioned this this is a series and uh a number of things that we've been able to do for the county uh again my name is kevin crowder i own business flare but the work that you're going to see is the work of a lot of people and a lot of our team a lot of partners about 10 or 12 folks on our team that all came together to contribute with to this along with some other some other folks here that we'll we'll mention and in a few moments as george mentioned this came out of the recommendations that were part of the economic development action plan that was done uh as the pandemic was going on as we did that we had about five main areas that we focused on and and the top recommendation that we had was to move forward looking at an innovation district so in that plan this was the original thoughts that we had on where an innovation district would be um we had thought looked at okay we do have the asset with the airport and and aviation tech we do have the working waterfront down uh in port salerno and then we found the vast majority of patents that have been filed from martin county were there within this area in the in the commerce park there down towards port salerno so it seemed like a pretty good fit and then as we went in to the next phase thinking about what are the real boundaries of that we thought well it's a little bigger than that we want to make sure and grab the part of the airport where a lot of this innovation is going to happen we want to make sure that we're tapping into and connecting to both health and wellness as well as higher education with indian river state college i'm going to make sure that we we do take advantage of the fact that you do have two cra's and here you'll see the different jurisdictions that make up part of the hub because the cra's play an important role at that local economic development level and really creating a place which is so important for innovation and and that part that kind of economic development to happen and we will talk about that a little later as well so you see uh the city of steward is in part of this you have the golden gate cra you have the port salerno cra and then you have unincorporated parts of the county through this we've had leadership not just from the county but from your partners at the business development board the regional planning council the economic council martin county and the city of steward have all been active um and fully engaged with us as we've we've we've worked to worked with you to come up with these recommendations for the innovation hub and i will say in the original plan we had caught it in innovation district we shifted and and went to a hub concept instead because a district just sounds defined and one thing one of the reasons we had come up with this concept originally in the original plan was we saw innovation happening countywide it wasn't just in this area but you see it in chinson beach you see it in the agricultural areas you see it all over the county you'll see it out in newfield and so we thought you know this is the place where we see it maybe more in a better way to define and give it an identity in a way that becomes a hub that can connect to all of this innovation happening throughout the county going forward there's a lot of other partners that will be need to be engaged and worked with as you go into the next steps of implementation of the different things that you will see coming up in the in the following slides so here's a list in the plan itself you see them organized by the different subject areas and and project type areas so we looked at four different areas in in how we structure the hub infrastructure identity and brand the aesthetics and engagement how people interact with each other the innovators and the creators and then regulation i'm going to start just here on the regulations and tell you there we don't have recommendations we didn't find a need to make recommendations that have to do with zoning those land use type type recommendations there may be some regulatory things you may need to address as you get into implementing some of these things like when we start talking about electric vehicle charging stations and you start talking about air mobility and some of these other things there may be some regulatory pieces that you'll have to consider but there's not a there's not a rezoning or a land development regulation component to our recommendations um everything that we've identified that that we think that we recommend that you do you can do under your current current ldrs and so in the infrastructure side the first place that we looked at is is the need to to really have a stormwater master plan and look at whether it's a unified stormwater system different more innovative approaches to addressing your stormwater uh especially in a way that can encourage the type of innovation and development that that can drive the innovation and kind of respond to that really address the stormwater issues throughout the throughout the hub areas you've done some of this already you've done some innovative stormwater approaches you look up at map road and things that you've done there and so this is something that you're you're fully capable of of continuing down that path of innovation i think what you'll find is as you get get moved forward in in approving this and moving forward into implementation you'll find more of those innovators in this field seeking you out and wanting to help you and engage with you to come up with those solutions for stormwater the next piece we looked at is the complete streets just the and the complete streets is really connected to your public realm it connects to things we'll talk about later in aesthetics and the the walkability so that that multimodal approach to how you connect people to a place and and within a place and so as we look at at how this area grows and evolves with innovators the complete streets becomes really important some of those elements here's an example of sort of the existing conditions along commerce uh and how it could look with complete streets you add parking you add bioswells a multi-use path almost think of pieces of that multi-use path in your bioswells almost as a linear park that can run up and down commerce the good thing about your hub is is while you have um dixie on the on the east and you have federal on the west you have commerce running through the middle of it without that that sort of movement of traffic you get on those other tubes and so to and so it gives you the opportunity to use commerce as that sort of central spine that can give you that that flow within the district and and help especially again when you do complete streets and you do the aesthetics in there help reinforce that identity of that place um as as a specific place help uh enhance its place brand and some of those things come in different elements of the complete streets of the multimodal is that you're addressing you know making sure that it is comfortable for pedestrians as they move both within the hub and as they connect to the places on the the outer edges of the hub as they connect from the commerce park to either golden gate or to port salerno to the other places that that these folks uh may want may want to visit um some of that pedestrianism is dealing with being coming across the fec corridor in parts of this you have a canal in the plan we looked at three different locations uh obviously locations are are subject to uh you know future real policy discussions we're still in sort of a conceptual but we did look at you know up at indian here around miami to jefferson where there's a lot of connection of workforce that comes over from golden gate into this area and then also the pedestrian connection from east to west across the tracks down in port salerno area as we looked at this we started looking at some different examples and things we thought well when we looked at a bunch of different pedestrian bridges we had worked in the city of titusville a few years ago where there was a bicycle bridge to connect the east west uh bicycle trail across the state and and a lot of those bridges were just very standard and ultimately that's what they were is they were pedestrian bridges and we thought you know there's a way that you can take this and make it fit into sort of the outdoor character of the area um make it more of a place and make it as almost as much of a park as it is a bridge and create it as another one of those places that people can even engage with each other one of the things you'll hear me talk about periodically through here is innovation hubs are driven by that engagement of people it's people meeting who wouldn't otherwise meet and from that you start seeing innovation they figure out their work you know one's working on something one's working on another thing and they find that they can help themselves out we found a lot of these stories already in the work that that we've done in meeting with folks uh we did a lot of work with bill west as he went out and did did his his meetings you know and he introduced us to a lot of entrepreneurs who are already doing this but those stories aren't being told so so creating those we call them collisions collision theory uh we call it the economic development version of collision theory uh out of chemistry uh and places like this taking an ordinary pedestrian bridge and make it into a place where that sort of engagement can occur are things that can can again establish this as a place that those sort of innovators and and businesses and creators want to be uh and locate and and continue uh growing as entrepreneurs uh the greenways are another one of those things you know greenways are recreational corridors they're also real transportation corridors they are they can be viable real alternative modes of transportation we've seen this in in a number of places that would work and you have great potential to do that here you have throughout the hub some areas where you have really wide rights of way where you have the ability to really provide uh this sort of amenity that really helps helps enhance the sense of place part of that is the running and biking the you know the having those opportunities for people not just when they're working and not just when they're creating but for those other things that they engage in running and biking is some of that dog parks can be part of that and important places where you have those meetups a lot of a lot of these types of creators will are looking for places when they're coming to their facility places that they'll be bringing their their dogs but all of these types of places again that that are something right out the door of their where they're innovating that's why i become it's important that it is an overall master plan not just focused on just create and say maker space or wet labs or just those facilities that are about the innovation transit is another thing that we talked about both marty we had conversations with the city of steward as well in as the hub grows how do you create these different modes of connectivity throughout the the hub one of the things we looked at is is up north what's the opportunity to at some point in the future connect what's happening in the hub to downtown stewart downtown stewart where they already have their their shuttle you see it there there at the top and looking at some alternate routes there because again the in attracting innovators and attracting entrepreneurs you want one of the things we look for are third places and third places are essentially a place that you want to be around other people if you're not at home and you're not at work port salerno is a great third place and has opportunity to be that much better of a third place and create have those third places pop up the city of stewart downtown stewart is a great third third place city does third places very well but creating those connections becomes very important because right now um everything's kind of a little uh disjointed and so the transit becomes one element of that but so are uh evs and especially e-bikes we think that electric bikes are a very viable transit alternative for you especially within the hub and around the hub as it connects to workforce a lot of the ev charging stations and stuff will be provided by the private sector at their facilities but we do want to look at where where would we you know do we initially think that some of these opportunities need to be provided uh and in the plan you'll see it both for electric vehicles as well as for e-bikes utilities and broadband in a lot of the conversations here uh the providers have been doing a lot of work there and and and and the broadband is there and the fiber is there the biggest issue that we heard was the need for redundancy uh there's a lot of very high volume data users in the hub um and they some of them are doing the type of work where they can't lose that connectivity so having that redundancy of that high speed connection is is what we found was the most important there um and i think that your utility partners are working you know working on that and are aware of that and are responding i think reacting to responding to that need can you go back mr chair i just want to add when we started this project about about a year ago we recognized there was a need from sewer and water in in the uh innovation hub and i want to want to commend our utilities department because they did recognize it and they right away went ahead and started extending where there was little gaps uh to put in uh sewer so we've been able to address that immediately um so this is one of those those industrial parks now where it's got sewer on every uh i guess rung of the ladder shall you call it so with that air mobility is something that we talked about also this is moving this area is moving really fast i mean i mean from the time that we probably even had our our briefings with each of you we've had we're just seeing one thing after another after another come out about how fast some of this technology is moving um so this is a piece that obviously we don't know exactly where what's going to happen here in martin county with this but it's something to be aware of it's something to pay attention to it is one of those areas where you'll have to be thinking about um the regulatory side of this um but it's a place where a lot of innovation is happening where there is some potential you know drone delivery is something that's already happening it's being tested in more and more and more locations one thing that that came to mind here when we think about our mobility is ship to shore is is the thing that that kind of was forefront in our minds about a place that there there could be some innovation approaches after the infrastructure the next area was the messaging and the networking again creating those collisions those engagements between innovators so you know and this is why your partnerships with your partners with the city of stewart the bdb the economic council the regional planning council are so important because you as a county are not going to do all of this stuff you're going to you're going to have the lead and you're going to do a lot of the infrastructure side in as george says in setting the table for a lot of this to happen but there's other things that need to go along with that and one is making sure that that that identity of martin county in this area being a place for innovators and that innovation can happen getting that word out is important that's where partners like the bdb come in in helping carry that message developing that message and carrying that message and so some of the the key things that go into that is identifying what is the place brand that we want to convey what is that identity and that clear mission that we want to put out there that people will respond to uh identifying the champions within the hub you've got a lot of great entrepreneurs already in there so getting them more engaged in this process is critical because they understand that entrepreneurial mindset and how how you can come out and connect both within the hub with other innovators and entrepreneurs in the rest of martin county and then even with opportunities with innovators as well as supply chain uh even bringing them from outside martin county to support what you already have happening here and that turns into a marketing campaign different marketing strategies that are focused on certain targeted audiences and then innovative networking as described how do you curate this how do you create the different types of activities and opportunities for those engagements to happen and those are kind of done through again some things that the county or the cra will have more involvement in some that you'll be working with irsc uh maybe your chambers other groups to do but one is creating those places and those can be public areas parks plazas open spaces just just anywhere in the public realm that people may engage and it's also those those third places those those private places privately owned places where that networking can happen what are the programs the different types of entrepreneurial and innovative activities that can go on that will attract innovators entrepreneurs students researchers all those different types of folks that we want to come together um understanding okay here's the things we want to ask of our entrepreneurs that are here that we need them to help us do to make sure that this is going to work and that we can carry this message in a way that we're successful and then again creating those engagements between the innovators entrepreneurs and and and the rest of your local supply chain that supports them we looked at aesthetics uh how do you create sense of place we looked at wayfinding what are the different elements of the wayfinding that we need to be and where would they be where could we establish gateways and think about the gateways that that help define it um gateways can be signage they can be different types of of structures um they can be how a building is designed can be thought of as as defining a gateway that's why we identified some some gateway opportunity sites as well and then we looked at okay what about the third places what about the public activation spaces third places being more of the private sector ones things like craft breweries or coffee shops or gyms or cafes uh public activation spaces can be things like camino trail and golden lake gate um you know manatee park the ball fields in port salerno just any of those public areas things that the cra's are working on to enhance the public realm and their areas would be those third places and then opportunities especially on the opportunity sites to attract more of that and and even fuse some of those together some combined you know where where you have publicly activated spaces along with those those private sector those third places we did look at some of the opportunity sites again in our look at opportunity sites is where we we saw and and confirmed that we don't really need any changes to your zoning to be able to um address the types of facilities that innovators would be able to look at this is just in one example that we did uh facing us one uh three story in the front four in the back green roof um lots of open space around it but just an example um conceptually um the different opportunity sites we did look at um included some in the cra's included some of the vacant uh the open vacant lots of law and commerce and then we move uh that's that's sort of a summary of the plan and then takes you know the next phase is the implementation of the different elements that we've recommended in the platform and mr chair just to wrap up our presentation i want to thank uh you'll see a lot of folks in the audience they were all contributing or collaborate with our consultant and staff to make all this happen it was an opportunity to talk with folks and we're more than happy to answer any questions or address any concerns thank you very much crowder thank you for your presentation of reaching out to all of us over the last couple of months i will acknowledge the folks that are here behind you our sort of uh a team but any info questions or comments from my colleague not at this time so i would acknowledge a couple of folks first uh it's the first time that we've had an opportunity to have him here and to congratulate him in person the new city of steward manager mike mortel sir welcome we're glad to have you oh round of applause for mr motel did i do that the way you you had asked me to and then also dr terry graham from irse our new head of the chastain campus those are new um either promoted or new but we also have the treasure coast regional planning council is here the bdb the economic council fpl the palm city chamber the stewart martin chamber the hope sound chamber the house of hope mr bill west you got a shout out there's a second one uh the united way the marine industries association so um literally a real uh conglomerate of all of the different stakeholders i know you dealt with irsc i'm sure you dealt with the school district um so it's an exciting opportunity um i guess my question to you would be you know you your last slide said implementation what do you recommend you know you've done this in the past why don't you give us a little bit about um business flair and you know what you have done in the past and what other communities uh if you will what other communities have started this implementation process and and how do you recommend we proceed sure so i think a couple of the examples so i've myself i've been doing this for about 30 years i did it 17 years with the city of miami beach and a lot of the focus there uh that's the first place i would mention because we had a lot of focus in areas that were not our traditional our foundational industries obviously we wanted to always be working on our foundational industries tourism and health care but we look for opportunities to create innovation um it's where i started doing the patent searches i was there and started finding all of these businesses and entrepreneurs and places that no one had any idea existed in our city because they're not they're not our traditional businesses that join chambers they're not businesses that have you know parking and sidewalk cafe and all these issues that they're always coming to city hall about they're just looking for that place to come in create do what they do and and focus on that and so that's that sort of formed our approach and as we started finding them in miami beach it led us to being able to find the right private sector partners that could understand that vision and work with them to to start working towards providing the space for more of those types of users to come in um and start attracting sort of our non-traditional type of users um another thing that that i want i want to mention as part of what we did here and and one of sort of i would say my number two i mean everyone on my team is a number two but uh one of the gentlemen ken stapleton who's one of my partners on this project had recently been as he came out of that and into this the director of partnerships for the innovation hub at the university of cincinnati which is one of the leading innovation districts that there is and he was the one dealing with those private sector partners and then the ones in cincinnati the krogers uh the procter and gambles and and all of those and so as we do that what what i find is is is the first thing is is understand that you do have to take this this full package approach and at the end of the day recognize that you're you're creating a place for innovators where they want to be if you really want to do this you've got you've got to make it that place and so it's not just having again those facilities but it is the things that the cra is doing is doing and the cra in the county are already doing a lot of this work already and and are moving forward in this you know i think the biggest part is how you move forward in telling that story um the storytelling becomes the most important piece and it has to be told in the right way it has to be told in a way that your target audience understands it um you know it's not again going back to miami beach we a lot of the times ended up being sent sort of over to the convention and visitors bureau which was always our marketing arm and we all struggle struggled there because it's a different type of story from what they tell um it was even a different type of story than even we normally were telling in economic development so so having that clear focus and engaging with your entrepreneurs and your champions in the area is going to be one of the most important things for you to do you're going to have to engage with them on some of your infrastructure work that you're going to do anyway as the county but thinking doing that from the from the perspective of the bigger picture of what you're trying to do and getting them on board as champions and then moving forward with with those stories told in the way that they need to be told is that one thing but the other piece is back to to the county is moving forward on implementation of some of these infrastructure projects in a way that's visible in a way that your prospects see that you're serious about this and that you're committed to moving forward with this the things that are on your side i would say is is more of that let them see that that you're taking those next steps and that you continue to move forward with implementation and you're doing some of that already thank you sir appreciate that commissioner heard yeah i really appreciated this presentation and and um i i really really like your approach that you understand that each community has distinct needs and characteristics and it's not a cookie cutter approach because that's not going to help us you know port salerno isn't golden gate isn't rio and you've really made some some uh uh i i think i think correct conclusions about some improvements that need to be made in port salerno which is in my district i'm really looking forward port salerno is poised for greatness if we do things right and um it's attracted investors who are going to make changes and we want to do everything that we can to make sure that they make the changes that we want to see that we're proud to see that are um taking into consideration the unique character of of port salerno and not changing it into miami beach it's going to be it's going to be port salerno it's going to be recognizable as port salerno but boy is it going to be improved and i i i love the idea of the uh the pedestrian bridges i can envision one in port salerno uh crossing uh over uh tixie highway and crossing over the the railroad and and connecting with the linear parks that i also envision so these are these are great uh unique concepts that are very very geographically specific and thank you for for recognizing that mr stokas yes mr chair just to go back to your question i think from staff's perspective there's really two areas that we need to focus on is that is again moving forward with the infrastructure component uh that and working that into our capital improvement project and i think from my perspective it's it's been a long time and it's time for us to update our economic development toolkit um i think that hasn't been revised since 2010 i know the business development board will be giving us their suggestions uh in september of 2010 or i'm sorry september of 2023 uh and staff pretty much at this point intends that we we will need to take a look at them possibly rfp for a consultant to also assist us at looking and updating those tools so they're the right tools for our size community and how do we how do we effectuate in looking at private to private financing and private to private interaction thank you any members of our public esteemed public that's here would like to come forward and opine sir please come forward when you're done if you could fill out one of the requests to speak forms but in the meantime if you could just state your name for the record welcome uh cory crowley i am the chairman of the solano downtown authority a newly established organization to address this specific issue so a long time ago scripps came into town with a lot of um government support and originally they bought mecca farms where i used to go out there with my father and we used to pick tomatoes and the county built a lot of infrastructure water and sewer etc but it was ultimately rejected by the scientists because they didn't want to live in luxegi and then they had to go to jupiter and they had to build the whole thing all over again to kevin's point about third places uh and to commissioner heard's point about it's port salerno uh if you support the innovation hub uh port salerno is critical uh the people who are going to come here from scripps or in this and whatever um california a lot of times for the aviation and aerospace or texas they want to come they want to come someplace to go that they're going to enjoy going out uh and also this interaction that's collision interaction they're going to want a little porcelaino place to go and have a beer and talk about you know the the new technologies that they're working on and so forth so we've done a lot of work to get us to the point in port salerno we've organized the investors uh thankfully uh business flair kevin's company has been hired to provide renderings and sketches for the linear park and for a lot of connections and so we're we're so far along the lines one of the problems is when i hear conversations this morning about water mains and the uh insistence that the county doesn't connect doesn't allow for the connection of other people the the issue is that is a very anti-development culture in martin county which i support uh i think anybody in martin county supports uh keeping it small but at the same time there's that when you ask um commissioner campy about what can we do the county is actually the developer in the cras but they haven't necessarily been acting as the developer they've been working on the code they've been trying to instead i call a long line development you know you put a you put a change in the code and then you hope somebody comes along this is too critical we need too many things that are happening all at the same time sb 102 is here i've been fighting personally with with property owners not to build apartments i've been being dragged down the street like a dog on a chain and i've gotten one person to build half of his apartments he's going to build 12 instead of 24 and that's just and there's a whole series of stories like this in terms of keeping port salerno small we have tons of space we have tons of opportunity but we're at this collision point where if we don't act and i know the government is known for acting in a hurry but if we don't act in a hurry i'm telling you this opportunity in port salerno will be lost and if it's lost in port salerno it's lost for the innovation hub in general it's the ramifications of what we're trying to accomplish in port salerno are are enormous and these these things are great the vision plans and the plan is great but i've had experience in the trenches with investors and working with growth management and and i'm i'm saying that sorry you're three minutes thank you that's that's my comments thank you thank you anyone else goodridge good afternoon welcome joan goodrich with your business development board your economic development one of your economic development partners just wanted to thank you all for your continued investment in this extraordinary work also to thank mr donaldson and mr stokas mr crowder and his team at business flare to bring forward a real compelling inspiring vision for this part of our community i was just recently with one of our new startup entrepreneurs that located in palm city and so as i was sharing with with adam about the idea of the innovation hub he was like that would be amazing you know he comes from the university of pennsylvania has had done all of his doctoral work in coming up with his new products and services landed here in south florida because his wife had connections to our community he had wondered if there was a startup scene you know kind of nearby so just in in declaring this project as the innovation hub certainly is turning on some of our startup entrepreneurs that you know as mr crowder had said are quietly working in our community already but gives that an impetus for us to bring it out in a in a very strong way moving forward so thank you very much for and and your support of this continued work thank you of course he's not allowed to leave palm city but i'm sure there's plenty of other people that can go to the hub mr ranieri sir welcome good afternoon good afternoon commissioners for the record rob ranieri with house of hope um so i just want to actually point out i'm sure you all are thinking about the obvious connections with a lot of the arpa investments that you all made uh in agencies like house of hope and many others for workforce development um i think there's some great connectivity with what we saw here today and uh opportunities to make some of those grants that you invested in all of us with uh to come to fruition and do some great things for our uh local residents as far as career opportunities and um really putting them on the path to economic sustainability um the one piece that belongs in this conversation too as you're looking at um the the career side of things the innovation hub side of things is that housing piece i think all of these things connect and i would just urge the county to um when you're looking at it don't forget all the pieces of the puzzle that will make us successful as a community for everybody that's here thank you thank you sir carol i'm not sure if i recognized the united way when i was mentioning i didn't i couldn't remember i want to make sure i did i appreciate two two shout outs for you now everyone's going to want to hope sound chamber palm city chamber steward martin chamber fpl pretty sure all of us get our power from you marshall uh anything else from mr crowder mr stokas you know if you leave the board speechless that means you made a good presentation we're not known for our silence it's actually very uncomfortable mr chair i just mr chair i need you to make it i we would need we would like you to accept this uh report so if you could denied it was good it wasn't that good um for my colleagues turn your exuberance into action move to accept second there it is we have a motion by commissioner hurd for this economic development uh vision so i like it good for you uh seconded by commissioner jenkins uh all those in favor aye all those opposed the motion carries unanimously thank you thank you very much a round of applause for you you're used to that stay healthy don't get hurt remember him coming out me neither okay with that in mind we have reached the end of our official agenda i know that um we will ask for 505 or in this particular case 241 p.m public comment seeing none we come back to the board commissioner smith hit us with some pearls none this afternoon i'm all good really commissioner hetherington thank you we can always count on you i'll leave it up to you commissioner hurd i'm set it yeah i will pivot a year longer yeah i mean donaldson has some fantastic audience of people that make things happen let's hit them with something donaldson you have several things correct yes i do i have a couple items uh thank you uh chairman campy um the first item i left a letter on uh in front of each of you from the florida water environmental association and i know that um mr amerson and his staff have talked to you a little bit about the pfos and pfos chemicals and certainly i'm sure you all read about the the uh city of steward and their successful um uh uh conclusion of a mediation on on a potential lawsuit but this is not related it it it falls on the issue of pfos and these chemicals of forever chemicals and uh the this water association has asked us to sign sign on to um uh senator rubio uh is looking to file a bill that would uh make the manufacturers of the chemicals be continue to be liable for their cleanup as opposed to um municipalities who may have to who may find them in their drinking water wells or whatever else that may come up um and uh and then the um hazardous waste rules would fall on the municipality to be responsible for cleaning up all that chemical so this is a to keep the liability with the manufacturer and we're just simply asking uh for your authorization for us to sign on perhaps allow the our utilities um sam to sign uh the letter or the chairman your your choice uh so that we can support um legislation that would keep the manufacturers of these dangerous chemicals to be liable and not uh municipalities thank you we do have a local expert here from the city of stewart very successful in their efforts would you like to share anything okay gag order until the check cleared yes but uh so do you need an uh i will i just like a motion to authorize staff uh chairman um uh endorse the legislation for uh by senator marco rubio i will move uh the chair to authorize a letter um authorizing or supporting senator rubio's legislation yeah thank you i will do it we have a motion by commissioner hetherington seconded by commissioner smith all those in favor aye all those opposed we'll do it and uh the second item i had thank you for that um uh was just simply we had the florida association of counties uh conference uh uh a couple of weeks ago uh and during that attendance i had the opportunity to talk to uh st lucie county's administrator george landry and uh john uh ticnic uh the indian river county um administrator and the topic was um uh an unsolicited uh bid by fpl to st lucie county for a um waste to energy plant and i'm just really just as here to give you guys a heads up that uh the st lucie county's going through the process they figure in about three months they'll have more information on how it will be done no yes it'll be done but uh on on how um they're certainly focusing on that on st lucie county's waste stream but there may be opportunities to uh to provide a larger scale in the event that indian river and martin county would be interested in it and so um we'll find out more about it probably in about three months so i'm just giving you a heads up that that's uh that's out there um certainly waste energy um it would be uh a beneficial uh for us i know what we looked at it in the past with them but this is probably the most significant um realistic waste energy proposal that's been proposed in our area in the last decade well we happen to have a high ranking fpl official here with us yes well he perhaps he would like to come i don't think marshall you know that's putting him on the spot that should be interesting he was born on the spot yes exactly marshall you have to come to the microphone if you're going to say anything on the record good afternoon everybody marshall critchfield with florida power and light unfortunately i'm under what they call a cone of silence on waste of energy in st lucie county so i i don't have the ability to give you an update but i would say that the what they filed publicly is pretty inclusive if you want to read up on it and we can talk soon thank you i think i think that's the the least that marshall said in the time it gets paid to give his uh to engage the community he does that well he does commissioner hetherington wants to opine what a totally different subject yes we're done with that it was just that was just a heads up thank you oh but you you've sparked something in my mind on that florida association of counties conference there happened to be i think four out of the five okachobe county commissioners there and we were talking a little bit um individually about the alignment and they seem to be very receptive so i was curious individually individually separate yes not at the same time with the four indian town i mean okachobe commissioners but i was curious how that talks going because if you talk to them they were on board and ready to communicate with the dot and get this alignment done so uh at this time i know the conversations with dot have been positive um in terms of some of the um pd needs that have been done in the past so that it could be brought forward faster but i'll next meeting i'll give you an update on um on on on any potential timelines i know we got a letter back from dot recently but uh staffs had some conversation with district four uh but i think what dot was seeking was an agreement between martin county and okachobe commission yes so and we were going to engage with okachobe so that's that is the update i was looking for because into talks with them they seem like they were ready to communicate with dot and let's get started i and i don't have the most recent update for you on that but i will get back to you thank you here we go commissioner hurt and also um jackie thurlow lippish just finished a wonderful term being a south florida water management district governing board member um she was one she was terrific for the whole district and especially for martin county and i would appreciate it if we would send her a letter of of uh thanks i would agree she was a strong advocate for us disappointing that i know she wanted to continue to serve the community and through a whole gyration up in tallahassee i believe didn't work out in her favor i hope whoever gets an opportunity to fill that position would advocate as strongly for us here in martin county and the treasure coast that miss thurlow lippish did i know she was disappointed that she wasn't able to continue she in my opinion did an excellent job um really was passionate about it and uh very knowledgeable in in her protection of our community so i agree with you we should send her a letter thanking her for her efforts on behalf mr donelson this morning and then i guess last week there was some conversation about how when we do our conversions from septic to sewer uh mr amerson there was a whole process that i think we go through very carefully we try to uh engage as many granting agencies as possible we've been very successful in getting multi-millions of dollars for those conversions our utility department kicks in money we try to craft the least expensive uh options for our residents in our effort to continue to convert from sewer to septic there was some conversation that up in st lucie county or in port st lucie more specifically they have a flat fee with zero interest and that it was dramatically less expensive for their residents than it was here when i asked you that question you laid out you had done some research and figured out exactly why that is the case can you share it with us please so the term exactly why may not be accurate but i do know that the the uh the city after i think it was some fires in the 90s they uh engaged in a significant installation of water and sewer throughout the the city um and uh they did they did finance that at a low rate they still have a significant number of properties even though the sewer is available in front of them that still haven't hooked up and they still have a program to encourage their residents to hook up to the lines that already exist in front and which they invested in i guess 30 years ago so or 20 plus years ago so that's so they're that just in terms of their a lot of their infrastructure is now already in place and they have a program to allow um their residents to hook up to it when those septic tanks fail or for new construction so to clarify the city multiple decades ago laid out a grid of municipal services in the street pattern that is already in place our situation is different because we have to put it all in it's not there already correct that's correct commissioner smith just a tad more detail from what i remember on that they went out for a 10 year blanket order i think was 10 10 or 15 years where their contractor or contractors gave prices for 10 or 15 years on installation for all of port st lucie they were able to get that kind of pricing and that kind of volume from committing to a plan where they were going to do all of the city of port st lucie and don's right following the fires out on gatlin boulevard back the early 90s where you know 20 homes burned down because there wasn't any fire service out there really kind of facilitated that conversation to happen but you also have to remember too that was almost 20 years ago relative to costs and and whatnot so they were able to secure i seem to remember this maybe mike rumors from the city side of things but they were able to secure pricing for like 10 or 15 years as a blanket order because they committed to doing tens of thousands of units versus us going in neighborhood by neighborhood and trying to do a block of a design and dealing with all sorts of different variables that happen when you do a project and that's not to say that our staff is not still diligently working behind the scenes to lower those costs and i think i'm hopeful that we'll have some positive news news at the next agenda item when this appears again with that miss woods anything else for the good of the group uh our next commission meeting is monday july 17th at 9 a.m where we will begin our budget workshop hopefully begin and finalize and complete our budget workshop uh monday july 17th and with that we will end our meeting and we'll see you on monday thank you very much