All right. Welcome to our May 14th, 2024 Board of County Commission meeting. If we could all stand, the invocation will be a moment of silence and then remain standing. And Commissioner Smith will be introducing our guest that's going to lead us in the pledge. Thank you. Commissioner Smith. Mr. Chair, thank you. This morning, we have a very special guest with us. We have Ms. Bailey Pierce with us this morning. Bailey is going to lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance, and then she's going to share about that little sash that she has on and what she is about to endeavor and do. So, Ms. Pierce, if you'd come forward and lead us in the pledge, that'd be great. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Good morning, Commissioners. Thank you guys so much for having me. It means so much that I can be here this morning with you guys. So, my name is Bailey Pierce. I am currently a senior at Jensen Beach High School. I will be graduating next Monday on May 20th. And it's been really exciting, this whole experience of Ms. Jensen Beach. I applied and was appointed title of Ms. Jensen Beach Teen USA, and I will be representing our town and kind of our little neighboring towns in the Ms. Florida Teen USA pageant. And hopefully, the Ms. USA Teen pageant. So, for this pageant, I wanted my platform to be centered around something that I really felt in my heart and in my soul. And something that really stood out to me when I was looking for things that could make me stand out as a candidate was mental health. Mental health has always been something that not only the youth has struggled with, but everybody has struggled with. And it's become an increase in society where it's something we need to address and we need to focus on and get ahead of the issue. At nine years old, I did not want to tell my parents that I was being bullied at school. At nine years old, I didn't want to tell my parents I was throwing away school lunches because I couldn't bring myself to eat them. At nine years old, I didn't want to tell my parents that I had a fear of going out in public because I was scared people would laugh at me. At nine years old, I didn't want to tell my parents I didn't want to be here, even though I didn't know what that fully meant. I don't want to have those nine-year-olds who felt like I did. I don't want to have nine-year-olds be scared and feel alone because they don't necessarily understand what's happening. It's normal for bullying, but it shouldn't be. It's normal for eating disorders to happen, but it shouldn't be. It's normal for depression and anxiety, but it shouldn't be, especially in youth. Because at nine years old, you're supposed to be focused on going outside on a sunny day or who your friends are at school. Or what are you going to wear tomorrow? But at nine years old, that's not what I was focused on. And it became very isolating. It became a place of solitude. And within that solitude, I felt alone. I didn't have anybody. I had my parents, but I wanted somebody who was like me, who wasn't my parents because, in a sense, it felt like they had to be there for me. I didn't want my friends because it felt like they had to be there for me. I wanted somebody who didn't have to be there for me, but who chose to be there for me. I wanted somebody to go out of their way to not just see me, but to make me feel free. So that's what I'm doing with my platform. I don't want to just go out of my way to say, I understand you. I know what you're going through. I want them to feel that I know what they're going through. I want them to be able to say, she understands. She can accept me and accept what's happening without judgment. Because I don't want a nine-year-old to be scared to tell their parents that they're getting bullied at school. I want them to say, hey, mom, dad, this is an issue. Can we fix it? I don't want them to say, I'm throwing away school lunches because I can't eat. I want them to fix it. I want them to be able to express that without fear of what will happen, without worry that they'll get in trouble, and with hope that it can get better. I don't want them to have fear going out into public. I want them to be brave going out into public. I don't want them to have fear that they're alone and that this time is only going to get longer where they're alone, where eventually their group is going to shrink to nobody, to just themselves. I want them to know that with me and with everybody else, their group can grow. Their group can be supportive without judgment, and the time is only temporary. I don't want them to feel like they don't want to be here because they don't know what that means. From nine to even now, I've struggled with mental health issues. I know what it's like, even though it's not the easiest. It's an ongoing battle that can never be won, and I want people to know, especially the youth, that it's a battle that they can stay on top of. It's a battle that they can get ahead of. So, thank you. Mr. Chairman, thank you very much, and I think you can appreciate when she came to our Jensen Chamber meeting the other morning. I was like, you've got to come to the commission, and you've got to tell your story. I have no doubt that you are going to win, and I would say this for your generation. If anybody thought that there wasn't hope for your generation, you are it. So, thank you very much. Thanks for coming, Bailey. Good luck. Thank you. Okay. We have presets, 905 public comment, 505 public comment. Additional items is consent 20. Adopt a proclamation declaring travel and tourism weak in Martin County, Florida. Department 5, discussion of a reversible nine-hole golf course at Selfish Sands. Department 1, adding to our OMB items permission to apply to the Florida Inland Navigation District 2024-2025 Waterway Assistance Program, Port Salerno Commercial Docks. This has been requested by Mr. Donaldson. And with that, we're going to move on to proclamations with Laura Bupree, and I will stand down there, and you will do the – uh-oh. Just approve the agenda first. What? Oh, yeah. I guess we'll do that first. Yeah. Let's do that first. Sure. Move approval of the agenda as presented with the additional items of consent item number 20, department number 5, and department number 1, and no consent polls. Second. We second. Okay, we have a motion by Commissioner Smith, seconded by Commissioner Campy. All in favor? Aye. All opposed? Motion carries unanimously. Now we'll go with the proclamation. Good morning, Commissioners. Our first proclamation this morning actually ties in very nicely with our speaker we just had, declaring Mental Health Awareness Month in Martin County, Florida. Mental health conditions often have a negative effect on families, creating tension, uncertainty, stress, and significant changes in how children and families live and cope with problems. Mental health is an essential part of the overall health of children and youth and plays a significant role in their physical health and their ability to succeed in school, at work, and in society. Hibiscus Children's Center provides mental health services to children and families in its residential facilities and in the community, serving over 550 children and families annually. In recognition of May as Mental Health Awareness Month, the board commends Hibiscus Children's Center in their efforts to help children have hope for a brighter future. And here to accept, we have Michelle King, the Chief Development Officer with Hibiscus Children's Center. Michelle? Good morning. I'm very happy to be following Ms. Jensen Beach, soon to be Ms. Florida, because she did raise some very critical key points. And as the mother of a child who did suffer from bullying, mental health is extremely important. Excuse me. 50% of lifetime mental health problems start in children before the age of 14. One in six children have a diagnosable mental health disorder. That's five in every classroom. Mental health conditions often have a negative effect on families, creating tension, uncertainty, stress, and significant changes in how children and families live and cope with problems, which results in more problems for family dynamics, things that they have to deal with, their social situations, and many more things that they have to struggle with. Hibiscus Mental Health Services focuses on helping children overcome trauma and move forward in life. Hibiscus therapists are trauma-trained, master's-level clinicians with a wide range of experience and expertise in child and family therapy. Hibiscus Children's Center provides specialized sexual abuse treatment services to victims and their non-offending caregivers. Hibiscus is the only Department of Health sanctioned sexual abuse treatment on the Treasure Coast and one of only 14 in the state of Florida. Support is a vital component for a child to heal from trauma. Hibiscus Mental Health Services help nurture strength and resilience by providing support to children and families. Together with the community, Hibiscus is helping children heal and have hope for a brighter future. Thank you, Michelle. Our next proclamation is declaring Nurses Week in Martin County, Florida. Professional nursing is an indispensable component of the safety and quality of care of hospitalized and non-hospitalized patients. And the demand for registered nursing services will be greater than ever because of the aging American population, emerging health challenges, the continuing expansion of life-sustaining technologies, and the explosive growth of home health care services. In recognition of Nurses Week, May 6th through the 12th, the board asks residents of Martin County to honor and celebrate registered nurses' accomplishments and efforts to improve our health care system and to show their appreciation not just during this month but at every opportunity throughout the year. And here to accept, we have Maritess Quinto, I hope I'm not butchering your name, with the Florida Nurses Association. She's the Southeast Region Director. Nope. Okay. Come on up. I think I have the wrong name here. Introduce yourself, please. Oh, here she is. Oh, here she is. Schnucking on me. Well, there's a seven-second delay in the lobby, so they've got to head start. Good morning, everyone, and thank you so much. Thank you very much for the proclamation. As you can see, I just was coming in, and I really appreciate that Martin County nurses are here as well to represent the many nurses of Martin County. And on behalf of FNA, we are very thankful for our Board of County commissioners for this proclamation. As you probably know, Nurses Week was May 6 to May 12, which was last week, and it was a success. Every hospital in our county, Martin County and all the different counties in Florida celebrated this week for the nurses. And we want to appreciate your support for this continuous support, especially with the workplace policies that we're working on for our nurses, for supporting the nursing shortage that have been happening in our country. Nurses are the backbone, the heart and soul of our community. And we are experts in our field, and we wanted to serve you. We wanted to really care for our community. So I share this recognition on behalf of all the nurses of Martin County, and really appreciate that we're working together, and together we are going to make a difference. Thank you. Would you like to? Gina. Thank you. Next, we have a proclamation declaring Historic Preservation Month in Martin County, Florida. Historic Preservation is an effective tool for revitalizing neighborhoods, fostering local pride, and maintaining community character. Historic Preservation plays an important role in our lives, helping to preserve the tangible aspects of the heritage that has shaped us as a people. The Martin County Historic Preservation Board has planned events throughout the month of May to increase awareness and public participation in historic preservation in order to help save our local treasures. In recognition of Historic Preservation Month, the board calls upon the people of Martin County to join their fellow citizens across the United States in recognizing and participating in this special observance. And here to accept, we have the Historic Preservation Board Chair, Evan Anderson. Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Good morning. Evan Anderson. I'm the current chair of Martin County Historic Preservation Board. And if you aren't familiar with our organization, we're a board of appointed citizens that the Board of County Commissioners empowers to promote preservation throughout our county. The Martin County Historic Preservation Board, HPB, as it's known, was created in 2003 when the Board of County Commissioners adopted its Historic Preservation Ordinance. And we've been supported by the commission ever since. Some of our powers and duties include designating structures that are more than 50 years old to the Martin County Register of Historic Landmarks, recognizing the people who have been influential in recording our history and passing it down, promoting an awareness of the benefits of historic preservation to the community. That's why I'm here today. The Board has helped Martin County's residents preserve valuable local history by designating historic structures such as the mansion at Tuckahoe, the House of Refuge, Captain Sewell's House, the new Monrovia One-Room Schoolhouse, also known as the Salerno Colored School, the Golden Gate Building. The HPB also coordinates Historic Preservation Month each May to educate the public about Martin County's historic treasures and the importance of historic preservation. Please support your community and our history by attending the events listed on the Preservation Month flyer, which looks something like this, except in color. It's available on the county's website and at many public locations around the county. These events are put on by your friends and neighbors, all volunteering their time to share a part of the county's history with you in a fun way. And they're all free. Finally, please join me in declaring the month of May 2024 as Historic Preservation Month. Thank you. Yes, yes. And anyone in the audience who's interested, there are copies of that list of events on the table in the back out in the lobby. So please help yourself. Our final proclamation is one declaring Apraxia Awareness Month and Apraxia Awareness Day in Martin County, Florida. Today marks the eighth annual Childhood Apraxia of Speech Day, during which awareness will be raised throughout Florida about Childhood Apraxia of Speech, or CAS, an extremely challenging speech disorder in children. CAS causes children to have significant difficulty learning to speak and is among the most severe speech deficits in children. Without appropriate speech therapy intervention, children with apraxia are placed at high risk for secondary impacts in reading, writing, and other school-related skills, thus diminishing future independence and employment opportunities if not resolved or improved. In recognition of May as Apraxia Awareness Month, the board encourages all residents to learn more about Childhood Apraxia of Speech. And here to accept, we have Jackie Dillon. She's with Helping People Succeed Baby Steps. She's the administrative coordinator, and she's also a volunteer for Apraxia Kids. And thank you for having me. As Laura said, Childhood Apraxia of Speech is a very rare and misunderstood, challenging, neurological motor speech disorder. It's diagnosed and treated by a licensed speech-language pathologist. And the most obvious characteristic of a child with apraxia would be significantly limited or unclear speech. But don't be fooled, because children with apraxia often understand everything that is being spoken to them, and they know what they want to say. I am currently the Baby Steps Coordinator at Helping People Succeed, helping to ensure early intervention. I volunteer for Apraxia Kids, the nation's only 501c3 dedicated to CAS. I also am a board member for Socially Synced, which is a new local nonprofit helping neurodivergent children be seen in the community and see the community as well. And my most prized role is a mother to a child with apraxia. And alongside all of incredible parents and professionals in the community, we're helping raise awareness. So on behalf of my son, Joseph, and all of the children who struggle with childhood apraxia of speech, thank you for proclaiming today Apraxia Awareness Day. Joseph. Nice head of hair. Thank you, Joseph. Thanks. And Mr. Stokas will be taking the next item, which is proclamation number two, acknowledging those citizens who have participated in class of 64 of the Martin County CARES program. Yes, good morning, commissioners, members of the public. Today, I'm pleased to welcome some representatives of our 64th CARES class. Through our CARES class, Martin County provides our residents an opportunity to meet the people who plan and build projects, carefully manage tax dollars, and are stewards of our land. They learn about county's history, tour county's facilities, and gain a strong understanding of how local government works. Additionally, we are excited to have a few employees in the class. It provides perspective, strengthens connections, and gives them an opportunity to see some of the projects and places and the people they work with, but have never had the opportunity to meet face-to-face or see the project through completion. Upon completion of the program, they have now joined over 3,000 residents who now have first-hand knowledge of the structure and function of our local government. At this time, I'd like to read the names of the entire class in alphabetical order and invite those representatives that are present to come up over here on my left side as their name is called to join us for a photo. And, commissioners, if you could join these folks in the well. Yes, that would be the correct music. It is the week. The first name is Don Britton, and I will apologize in advance. I may get the names a little bit wrong. Melanie Britton, Ann Barnes, Audrey Capozzi, Melanie Cassavant, Ellen Chamberlain, David Diversa, Terry Ellis, Kelly Forbes, Lois Grace, Jose Hernandez, Tanya Honey, Pamela Jones, Jillian Killeen, Bruce Klingerman, Susan Klingerman. Don't be shy. Come on in, Terry. No, no, no. On my left. No, on my left. Right here. Here we go. Bill Custers, Carol Custers, Cher Luis, Tracy Madden, Catherine Mayer, Joseph Mayer, Olga Manus, Charles Marchand, Levi Miller, Rosalyn Miller, David Mitchell, Leanne Mitchell, Bob Nesiba, Michelle Nesiba, Michelle Ocino, Susan Page, Sean Reed, Shelly Sandora, Megan Shirley, Alex Siegel, Myra Smith, Chiloia Tong, Caitlin Willis, Sylvia Wood, Holly Young. Squish in. And I'm back here. We're going to take your photo in the way. I know. Squish back in. Squish back in. Yeah. Okay. In there? Yeah. I think towards the middle, we'll switch in for a picture. We'll have to be like two kind of two girls. You're all going to have to pretend like you like each other. You're going to have to kind of squeeze it in a bit. I'm just going to start going towards the middle. We need some layers. That would be great. We need some layers of people. Yeah, we need layers. A little more layers, please. All right. Okay. You guys ready? One, two, three. We'll do a few. Smile, smile, smile. Say Martin County. Martin County. Okay. Thanks, guys. Woo! We'll have your certificates in the lobby. Yes. Who was the first class? I will have to look that up. It was a while ago. I'll have to look that up. Are you choosing to do the rest of the meeting as well? Thank you, Mr. Chair. You were one? We were in class one. When was that? Yeah, I think so. Interesting. Now they're going to project graduation where we lock them in at the YMCA. All right. We're going to move on to public comment. We have two public comment forms. First being Mr. Joe Banffy. Welcome home. Oh, that's a familiar name. Yep. I'm going to have it. While you come up to the mic, since we are in election season, politicking is prohibited, which is defined as advocating the election or defeat of a candidate for public office, either partisan or nonpartisan. This includes the use of words, dates, signs, props, and or wearing apparel that convey a message of support for a person or a group of persons. Thank you. You may be in. Thank you. Thank you. My name is Joe Banffy. I'm the president of the White Marsh Reserve Homeowners Association. We're located on Canter Highway. We own 50, approximately 50 acres of waterfront property directly adjacent to and south of the Kiplinger Preserve. The property has the same ecosystem as the Kiplinger Preserve, and it also has the same ecosystem as the Della Plain 35-acre property that the county purchased for $2 million. My reason for being here is to propose that we give this property to the citizens of Martin County, if you're interested. We have worked on this proposal for over two years and have gotten nowhere, and that's why I'm here. Your staff at the Ecosystem Public Works Department is very aware of our proposal and is very interested in receiving this piece of property to add to the Kiplinger Preserve. We have three conditions. We would like the property to be used for the same purpose that you're using the Kiplinger Preserve and the Della Plain Preserve. We would like to reserve a small easement adjacent to our home so that we can maintain our perimeter property that will be left, and we would like this proposal to be at no cost to our homeowner's association. So I come to you with two questions. Are you interested in this property, number one? And two is, if you are interested, please help us expedite the transfer. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Commissioner Smith. Don't leave yet. Wait, wait, wait, wait. Good to see you again. Thanks for the idea. Two questions, really. Number one, I assume your board has voted and you have some kind of documentation from the board. Yes. Not only the current board, but previous boards have acted to make this proposal unanimously. And so that request you've sent to Don or to us formally, or is today the formal request? Well, we have made a request. We've met with the, I guess it's the ecosystem staff, the manager that runs the Kiplinger Preserve. Just the first I'm hearing of it, so that's why I'm asking. Sorry that this is the first time you've heard of it, but we've had numerous contacts with the county on this issue. And the second question was, so the first question was about the board and the request of us formally. Are there any other issues with the property that we should know about? None at all. It's very pristine. It's very similar to the Kiplinger Preserve. We have sand pine on the property, slash pine and wetlands, and a very large forest of Loblolly Bays, which is very, very nice in Martin County. So, thank you, Joe. Not at all common. Thank you, Joe. So, Mr. Chair, I would make a motion that we ask staff to bring back an agenda item that outlines all the conditions, all whatever exists. I mean, you know, it all sounds good, Joe. I just think. We would love to work with your staff to give them whatever we need. I would just like to sort of have a formalized. I understand. Here's what exists. Here's the conditions. And here's what we could do. Thank you. Sounds good. Okay. We have a motion and a second, but we have a whole bunch of lights up here. Commissioner Hurd. Yeah, I'm familiar with this proposal, and it definitely is a property that would be very complimentary with Della Plain and with Kiplinger. It's a beautiful piece. It's substantial, and it's free. So, great. Expedite the acquisition. Thanks. Commissioner Heathernton. This is the first I've heard of the proposal, but you answered the one that your HOA or POA would provide authority via letter to the board. We can certainly do that. So, and I agree with having an agenda item come forward. Thank you. It's a beautiful park. I walk Kiplinger Preserve quite often. Commissioner Campy. Mr. Banffy, it's good to see you again. Would you like to sit for old time's sake at the? No. First off, this is also the first time I'm hearing of it, but as you were explaining it, I kept waiting for another shoe to drop, but there was no other shoe. So, I just wanted to say thank you very much to you and your residents that, on the face of it, sounds like a fantastic contribution to everyone else in Martin County. So, I appreciate you, and I thank you. Thank you. I agree with the rest of my. Commissioner Speth. Joe, just one other thought. And I'm assuming staff will do all the due diligence they need to do, but I'm sure it's part of your PAMP, the Preserve Area Management Plan. We do have a PAMP. It's part of our PUD. So, the PUD will have to be amended. The PAMP will have to be amended. Land use plan will have to be amended. The normal things that are done when, like you had to do on the Della Plain property. Yeah. I'm just, there'll be a fair amount of work behind all this. We just triggered that thought, I'm thinking. Yes. A perimeter survey, all kinds of things. Okay. All right. No, I appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Thomas. No, there's a motion in a second. Oh, I'm sorry. All right. Thank you for reminding me. We have a motion by Commissioner Smith, seconded by Commissioner Hetherington. All in favor? Aye. All opposed? Motion carries unanimously. You are not Thomas Glass, but I will take you now, since you're standing there. I know. And he is Thomas. He is Thomas. He is Thomas, so, and he is there, so. Tom Pine. Good morning, Commissioners. My name is Tom Pine. I've lived in Martin County for over 50 years, presently living in the Jensen Beach area. Several weeks ago, in the Stewart News, they had an article written by one of their local reporters about the St. Lucie County Commissioners abusing the consent agenda during county meetings. It would be nice if that same reporter could do the same investigative reporting in Martin County of the questionable use of our consent agenda by our county commissioners. The last county commission meeting was exactly what most county taxpayers expected. Not what we wanted, but expected. The elimination of our Martin County Growth Management Plan to suit the ultra-wealthy. What else could we expect? After all, this is Martin County. This is just one more learning experience, that democracy, as it's operated in America today, is not working for all Americans, and it's getting worse fast. Between 1979 and 1921, worker productivity growth in America, 64%. Worker pay growth during that period, 17%. CEO pay growth during that time, 1,460%. These examples show that the American dream is being strongly controlled by America's wealthy class. This is not how democracy works for all Americans. According to the New York Times, May 12, 2024, in the United States, more than 60% of the workforce lives or workforce lives paycheck to paycheck. So it turned my stomach when I read that the developer owner was donating over $800,000. If his land scheme is passed by our county commissioners, of course it was. Yes, we are for sale to the highest bidder. Yesterday, May 13, 2024, I checked once again my local pickleball court, and still no defibrillator that I could see. And yes, there were people playing pickleball at 1 p.m. So it's May, and real soon it's going to get real hot and sunny here in South Florida. And I would have to be, I would hate to be that person that has to make that phone call because someone died while playing pickleball. Especially when that person on the other end of the phone asks if the defibrillators weren't installed yet. It's been more than a few months since this issue has been brought before this, brought up and approved to be addressed. And as I recall, the pickleball players collected their own money and bought three defibrillators. Palm Beach County to the south, St. Lucie County to our north, both have defibrillators at their pickleball courts. What's the holdup? The public deserves open sidewalks in downtown Jensen Beach. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Mr. Glass, followed by Terry Kogel. My name is Tom Glass. I'm a member or resident of Jensen Beach. I have a document I'd like to enter into public records. I have accrued code violations. I didn't realize that they'd gone on for so long, since 2010. I received this letter. It's all been brought into compliance. Received the letter and the amount of a little over $1.2 million in assessed fines. And it's my understanding that it's not to punish the residents, but to rectify the issue. And I would humbly like the case to be closed and the fines and liens to be forgiven. Violations have been corrected to meet Martin County code enforcement. And I'd just like to go ahead and get this taken care of and move forward. I'm a longtime resident of Martin County. I went to St. Ann's, you know, grade school. I was lead welder on the Roosevelt Bridge that everybody loves so much and drives across daily. I worked on it. I'm a welder, third generation, local 630, worked nuclear powerhouse all over Martin County. And it's just upsetting. You know, I mean, this has locked up all my assets. I can't even get any to the, sorry, with the insurance on housing and everything that has gone up to even put a roof on my house. This has got all my assets tied up to where I can't even do anything about it. And I just would really like if I was told by the code enforcement to come before the commissioners and, you know, see where we can go for that. And I humbly would like any assistance that I could get from you guys. I really appreciate it. Thank you very much. Commissioner Hurd. Yeah, Ms. Woods, I certainly, we certainly want to reassure Mr. Glass that there's a process that he will undergo, but we're not the people who are going to be decision makers. Yes, this is a special magistrate decision. I understand. And, you know, there's a board policy, board approved policy for fine reduction. If you're asking for zero, I'm not sure that that's in the policy, but we certainly will work with you. I want to move forward with resolving this. I mean, the amount that's on there is, you know, the property's not even worth that, you know. But, I mean, I'd like to move forward. I mean, I don't even know how to come here today because John Colano had emailed me and said to bring it before the Board of County Commissioners, and that's why I'm here today, and to move forward with this so that it can be resolved. Commissioner Smith. Where do I go? Hold, sir. Mr. Glass, and I, Kathy, I think, received the copy of the email and the correspondence. I'm troubled a little bit that if our staff told you this was the place to come to resolve your problem, that is not our process at all. And I think, Kathy. You're actually my district commissioner, and, you know, I've emailed and called your office as well to try and speak to you to try and move forward with it. Right. And so what I asked Kathy to do, and I'm fairly certain that she did, but if she didn't, I apologize, was to convey to you that there is a process that I am, I have no doubt that code enforcement would have conveyed. As Ms. Woods said, there is a special magistrate process. And if this violation has been in place since 2010, you said? 2010. I'm sure there have been a fair amount of correspondence, but all that being said, there is a process by which we follow, as Sarah just said. I'm just following the email that I was directed. And, again, I apologize if that's what was told to you by our staff because that is not the process. This board does not handle that at this level. It has to go before the magistrate, and the magistrate, if it's been brought into compliance, that will all be taken into consideration at that hearing. And the code enforcement magistrate will levy some fair, appropriate response, as they always do, I think, for those that have brought their code violations into compliance. Well, I've gone nowhere with them receiving response from them, so how do I go about? I have no doubt after this conversation, there will be a phone call, and somebody will reach out to you and make sure that the special magistrate process is explained, and it is scheduled for a hearing. Mr. Donaldson, our county staff. Yeah, I'll have Mr. Colonzo. We'll contact you with the full details on the exact steps you need to take in order to get your case heard and your fines reduced in accordance with our process. Thank you very much. Thank you for coming in. Terry Kogel. And that is my last speaker form for the day. Anybody else wants to speak, let me know. Good morning, Commissioners. Before I even start, I'd like you to look around and see what the attendance is in this morning's meetings. And this is basically what our attendance is every meeting. Okay, as I start, I would like to address the Board of Commissioners for the purpose of changing the public open meetings from 9 a.m. to 5.30 p.m. Mr. Crowley, in furtherance of his financial motivated development plans, recently passive aggressively threatened the county commissioners by instructing them to consult with the town attorney to review the sunshine rules, which is actually the law, that prohibits the NAC members from communicating outside of meetings. Mr. Crowley further stated, Port Salerno is a very small community, and the NAC is purely advisory with no power to make recommendations. It is counterproductive to have so many members of the community forced to choose between collaboration and representation. Rest assured, we, the public, do not need the protection of stifled speech by the Board. We are intelligent, we're educated, and hardworking people. We are capable enough to prevent being forced to choose between, again, collaboration or representation. Mr. Crowley's passive aggressive letter is not only an insult to every resident of Port Salerno and Martin County, it is counterproductive to the Board's state constitutionally mandated duties. The number one purpose of this Board and the NAC alike are communications with and from the public. Martin County needs the exact opposite of what Mr. Crowley sought within his email to this Board. We need increased communication with the public regarding development decisions for our county and our neighborhoods, not decreased. The Board of County Commissioners has held meetings regarding various development issues and projects within Martin County at 9 a.m., thereby making it nearly impossible for the majority of the working class taxpayers to attend the public Board meetings. Having the open meetings at 9 a.m. limits information, communication, and education to the public. It limits the public's input to the Board. If the Board truly wants the public to be informed and educated on development issues and projects within the county, the Board should change the time of open meetings from 9 a.m. to 5.30 p.m. Such has been done by the City of Stewart Commission. Thank you. Thank you. And that is the end of public comment. So we are now going to move on to Department 1, Office of— Commissioner comments. Oh, yeah, Commissioner comments. I'm needing a lot of steering today. That's okay. Commissioner Smith. Nothing. Commissioner Hetherton. A couple things, actually. So just a quick report on our Indian River Lagoon Council meeting, which was held on Friday as your representative. We talked a lot about our DEP grants and several other counties, although Martin County presented at that board our subject to sewer program and seems to be a shining example of the program that many counties are following. It begins to get harder and harder as funding slims down and the competition dwindles and the bids are coming in so high. So other counties are certainly feeling that pressure as well as we are. And then part of what Indian River Lagoon Council does, and we talked a lot about this on Friday, is in addition to the small grants and things that we provide, education and communication outreach. If you've seen, you've met our Indian River Lagoon Council community outreach representative. Sometimes she's in this building. We have three of them that spread between Martin County and Volusia. And as 1,000 people a day or more move to Martin County, it's imperative that not only as county. 1,000 a day to Florida. 1,000. Oh, I'm sorry. 1,000 a day. 1,000 a day move to Florida. It's important that not only this board, but the Indian River Lagoon Council has communication efforts because those that are moving from the northeast, they don't understand always the significance and the uniqueness of the Indian River Lagoon. So we put a lot of time and energy into educating because, in addition, that helps when we're putting in these infrastructure projects, stormwater, when the folks that are moving here from other parts of the state are looking at our budget and they're looking at these septic to sewer problems, they understand the significance as it relates to the entire lagoon. So I would encourage us to continue to, and with the Indian River Lagoon Council's assistance, they have some really amazing communications and some communication outreach folks. So if we could kind of piggyback on that and continue to educate for the significance of the lagoon because that helps us in educating on these infrastructure projects. Secondly, I wanted to say that Martin County High School has a really awesome, amazing program, which my son just graduated. It's a career program. Now, I don't think he's going to use it as a career. He's going on to pilot, but it's a dispatch program. So I see some of our fire rescue in here. So the dispatch program through Martin County High School, those folks are local residents in Martin County High School that go through this program. They get their certificate at the end of the program, which allows them to enter, to test, be certified, and go right into the dispatch program. So I know it's offered at Martin County High School. I have an interest because they are needing some resources. I have an interest as the District 2 representative next year and supporting that program additionally because they were lacking some resources. And I think it's important to many of our departments because I'm always seeing on our agendas that we're hiring dispatchers, and I would love to be able to have a pipeline and recruit some of those local dispatchers. And finally, I want to wish all of the graduating seniors from Martin County, South Fork, Jensen Beach, Clark, congratulations, and I wish you a safe graduation week. And I look forward to celebrating with my own son who's graduating on Friday. Congratulations. Congratulations. All right. Commissioner Campy. Yeah, I know we're going to bring this topic up later today, but while folks might be paying attention to the beginning of the meeting and not the end, I wanted to give a brief update on where we have been with the AEDs in our parks. It has been a couple of months since the folks had come forward, and that was an issue that we were already addressing at the time. But these things do take a little bit of time because it's not just simply a matter of placing an AED out in our parks. One, they have to be secured so that they're not stolen. They're very expensive. And two, so that they're not vandalized and then also maintained. And we have been working behind the scenes with our parks and rec department and our fire rescue department in the collaboration that the parks will place these units. Our goal is to place 24 of them in public parks, 12 in highly frequented parks, not just for pickleball, but, yes, by pickleball courts, but also by some of our other more active areas in the parks. These are very expensive machines. They are very complicated. However, they're very easy to use. And, of course, they do save lives. So we have been working. You're going to hear a little bit more about it today. We wanted to make sure that we didn't just buy machines and place them out there to have potential problems. Just I'll share with you an experience that a family shared with me from Palm City. A young baseball player, Little League baseball player, was playing in Fort Lauderdale, but a Martin County resident, Palm City resident, and was struck in the chest with a baseball and went into cardiac arrest. They did have AEDs in the park. The first one that the families raced to get was not charged. And, thankfully, they were able to get to a second machine and save the boy's life. So I think all of us knew ahead of time, but there's a lot of stories. There's also tragic stories like the gentleman, also a Martin County resident, who with a lot of heroic efforts from medical personnel that were at the pickleball court at Hal Petiocchi, the man passed away. Now, if an AED was there, would that have saved his life? We'd like to believe that it would. Maybe it would have. Maybe it wouldn't. But we're all on the same page with how important these things are to be there. But, and I agree, because I was one of the ones that was really pushing to make this a very fast process. But it is a process, and it has to be handled appropriately so that when you think that these machines are there, that they are there, that they are charged, that they are ready to be used. And, sadly, in not just our community, but in many communities, people will steal them and or vandalize the box that it's in. So we have found a system that has worked very well in other communities where the box is locked and fortified. You will dial 911 from your phone. You will get a code that allows you to push the buttons on the box, opening the box, and then having the equipment available to you. I think that's a pretty clever strategy. 24 is not the entire county's park system and other areas where they should be, but it's definitely a step in the right direction. And so just to Mr. Pine's point, that is important that they're there, and we are definitely working on them. And I think based on some of the conversations that we'll have today, we're just about ready to launch them. And I'm looking over at our fire chief, and he's shaking his head in agreement. So I just wanted to give an update. Thank you very much. Mr. Hurd. Yeah, last Wednesday evening, Maggie Herchala, former county commissioner, was inducted into the Environmental Studies Center's Hall of Fame, a well-deserved induction. And I was one of the speakers, and I was reflecting on the history of Everglades restoration and remembering what it was like back 20 years ago, 25 years ago, and it was a very, very different partnership that we had with county government and state government and federal government. And so we've certainly come a long way, and the ceremony was very nice, very well attended. And following that, on Thursday morning, I attended the South Florida Water Management District Governing Board meeting, which was held in Martin County at the Indian River State College Wolf Center. And it's great for the governing board to travel here. It's an inconvenience. They have to bring all their resources here. But it was a terrific program. It was well attended. Martin County residents came out in full force, and there was a presentation by Drew Bartlett, the executive director, about the progress of Indian River Lagoon South in Martin County that was just remarkable. I've asked that he make that presentation before this board. He assured me that he would, but we've come a long way, baby. This partnership is strong and respectful and harmonious, and we're really making extraordinary progress, so much so that I read in the Stewart News that flamingos were hoping that they start nesting here. And I don't think that they've nested in Florida for 120 years. So it's a remarkable achievement that we're finally doing enough environmental restoration that we're getting some of our native birds nesting once again in South Florida where they're supposed to be nesting. And lastly, I've been noticing aurora borealis, the northern lights. My mother lives in southern Illinois, and I got photos of aurora borealis from there the other night. It was just astonishing. And then I saw that Tallahassee had them a couple of nights ago. So these natural phenomena are surprising me. I was in Jacksonville, and we saw them there. Was it purple? It was remarkable. I mean, I've never seen them anywhere else in person. They weren't perfect. Perfect was a little cloudy, but you could definitely see them, and it was wonderful. What? Purple, yeah, but multiple colors, you know, but purple. Commissioner Smith. I would add to Sarah's comments on the whole wildlife issue that all the more reason why we're pushing through the Regional Planning Council to get from Indian River County, Martin County, St. Lucie County, and northern Palm Beach County our section of the state designated as part of this wildlife corridor program with the state that we have somehow inconveniently left out of, but clearly there are the benefits of what we are doing, and I, too, appreciate the district being here. It was great to get up and talk with them about the successes we have had and the progress we are making because Sarah's right. Twenty, 25 years ago, there wasn't a lot of progress at any level being made, and people were very frustrated that there was a lot of talk and a lot of discussion but no actual progress in the ground, and we are making huge strides. And so, Sarah, thank you for that. That's it. And for me, seeing one of my fellow board members sitting in the back of the room, Mr. Mike Redling, that he's from Habitat, but he sits on the board of the Martin County Community Land Trust, which I just want to announce is actually official. We received our 501c3 thing from the federal government, and we want to thank Brian Mast and his staff for maybe putting their hands on the shoulders of some IRS person that it was sitting on their desk. So we are officially a recognized tax-free organization. George is working with us also, George Stokas and staff, reviewing county-owned property that would be appropriate to include in the land trust. So I just want to announce that we are actually up and running and very exciting, yes. And other than that, South County is pretty quiet, so that's all I've got. Mr. Donaldson. I'd just only add that the district opening meetings we had, Commissioner Smith and Hurd, I think, made the best opening comments of the entire group there. So thank you for representing Martin County so well on water issues. All right. Moving on now, Ms. Murley. Department 1, Office of Management Budget, items which require board approval. There's actually five items. Do you want to bundle number five, or do you want to do that separately? It's your choice. I can add into it as they go through, and you can do one motion wrapping up all of them if you choose, or individual. Ms. Murley. All right. Good morning, Commissioner. Stephanie Murley, the Director of Office of Management and Budget, here to present five items on OMB today. Our first item is permission to apply for the FEMA Assistance to Firefighters Grant, Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response, or the SAFER Grant. The SAFER Grant is a federal program created to provide funding directly to fire departments to help increase the number of trained firefighters available in the community. The Fire Rescue Department is requesting approximately $5.9 million for permission to apply for the FY24 SAFER Grant to add 18 additional firefighter paramedic positions for levels of service and potential overtime reduction needs. The future impact of year four would be approximately $2 million and an initial cost of approximately $100,000 for uniforms and PPE. We also have Matt Resch and Chief here to discuss more about SAFER. Good morning, Commissioners. For the record, my name is Chad Chanchuli, Fire Chief, Martin County Fire Rescue. To my right, I have Chief David Hayes, and in the middle there, we have Fire Rescue Administrator Matt Resch. So today, we're here before you to talk about the application of permission to apply for the SAFER grant for FY24. And you've obviously seen me sue this song and dance quite a few times, but I think for the general viewing public, it's important to recap what the SAFER is and what actually brought us to the table and what were the contributing factors. So first, again, what SAFER stands for, Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response. This is a FEMA-funded grant, and it's 100% paid for to allow municipalities to bring on a set number of full-time employees for a three-year period. They fund it at 100%, and that allows them to slowly absorb them to the budget after that three-year term. Then they onboard the employees into their budget, and then they own them. But this is probably one of the most competitive programs that we have seen. This is across the nation. It is highly, highly sought out, but there's only so many dollars that are allocated to different organizations. And as we come to find out over these last few years, we have not been accessible for it, but we're making another valid attempt today. So if I can just kind of go back a couple of years, FY22, we came before the board, and we made a request, permission to apply for that same FEMA grant, and we wanted 40 full-time employees. And what we had at the time was a huge impact on our operation with the increase of emergency calls. And the increase was so much that we had to put five additional rescue trucks on the road to meet the demand of the public. So that was the initial ask. We were unsuccessful that year. We still had that impact on the organization. We made a request mid-fiscal year for 20 to onboard immediately to offset what was happening with our personnel. And at the time, what that impact was negative to our personnel is we were funding unsustainable overtime. Those five trucks had no personnel to staff them with, and we had to do it with 100 percent overtime. But it came to a point where personnel were burned out. They stopped taking the overtime, and then we had to transition to something called mandating them to stay at work. Mandation means they come to work for 24 hours at a time. If I cannot fill that seat with an overtime shift, they cannot go home. I cannot shut that truck down. And that was something that was requiring them to stay for 48 hours at a time, and they didn't have a choice in the matter. That was something not sustainable. He allowed us to bring those 20 on board, and it's relieved us a bit, and we have not mandated since that time frame. Now we're trying to capture another 18 just to make sure that we have the healthy, long-term effects of the organization. But let me ask the question of what brought us here? Why are we here? What was the impact? What was the increase of these emergency calls to have such a demand on the community? So first let me start with this. What it's not. What it's not is the growth of Martin County. What it's not is the census in Martin County. It doesn't support that. But let's talk about the contributing factors that it may be. First, if you think about assisted living facilities, if I go back to 1999, we had five assisted living facilities. In 2024, we now have 26. One assisted living facility generates multiple calls a day. That's one. That's not the only contributing factor. We just talked about it. Commissioner Rappentine just mentioned it. Martin County hasn't sustained the growth, but the state of Florida is having massive growth. You stated we have 1,000 per day moving to the state of Florida. What I want the public to understand is the landscape that Martin County covers for fire rescue operations. We are responsible for the major thoroughfares in Martin County. We cover 95. We cover the Turnpike. We cover Federal Highway. We have multiple motor vehicle collisions daily. Minimum, we have five a day. Now, they may not be county residents, but it's happened within the county, and we have to respond. Now, why that's happening? The increase with motor vehicle collisions over the last few years, it's been well over 30%. That's a whole other story of why, and that's what we're not here for today. Fact is, we have to respond. The other, which is important to know, is we do have tourism in Martin County. When you look at hotels and you count heads and beds, that's easy to do. What is difficult to do is when you talk about the rental community, you talk about the Airbnbs, the VRBOs. Those are very difficult to count of what that impact is, but it is an impact. And lastly, this is a little more unfortunate, but there are residents that cannot afford health care, and they have learned to use 911 as their primary care provider, and it is an impact because they know that you dial 911, we will respond, and we will treat whatever their circumstances are. So those are many contributing factors, but just to leave you off with a couple data points that I think is important. I want to go back to 2009. It's a benchmark date for us because it's the first time we ever used SAFER grant. Since 2009, if we look at the overall emergency responses for Martin County up until 2024, we have gone up roughly 65% in that time frame. But let me just dial in just a little bit deeper and just give you one specific geographical area within the community. I'm going to talk about Port Salerno, Station 30. If I go back to that same time, 2009, our rescues ran roughly 2,400 calls in just that area, just that zone a year. Fast forward to today, they're roughly clipping 5,000 calls in that same area, so much so it's one of the stations we had to put two additional rescues for. So it's kind of a high-level view of why we are requesting permission to apply for the SAFER grant to make the organization healthy and just to fill the ranks. So at that point, I'm going to conclude my portion of the presentation, and I'll be more than happy to ask any questions, or I'll answer them. You can ask them, I guess. Commissioner Smith. Chief, well done. Thank you. I don't think you looked at your notes once, which is really cool with all the numbers that you used. So when we weren't successful last round, there were probably some contributing factors to us, whatever approach we took, whatever we need to do behind the scenes, in front of the scenes. And so not that I think today that we have to have a conversation about what do we as a board need to do, but if there is something we need to be doing at the agency level or wherever FEMA level is being dealt with, please let us know. And it doesn't have to be today, but let us be involved if there's a role for us to play, because it's important. And I think, you know, the idea of what you experienced and what you went through is significant, and we should not have ourselves in that place, which obviously brings forward why you're here today. So just let us know what we can do, if anything. And, again, I appreciate all that you do. And I think from an informational perspective of the increases and why and how. Oh, the other thing I was going to ask you, too. Some years back, maybe 10 years ago or so, I forget if we started to charge or we tried to charge for 95, I-95 reimbursements, and then the state passed some legislation or did something that said we couldn't do that moving forward. It might be healthy to, if that still exists, to sort of reopen up that conversation at the state level again. And maybe you already have that conversation. But I know from what I remember, I think the response was that we are all responsible for the moving traffic through our state. And if you're in the county that it ends up happening in, you're part of that movement. But at some point, the state, I think, has to recognize that those are burdens on the Martin County taxpayers. And I understand they're on Palm Beach taxpayers and St. Lucie and Indian River as well. But there ought to be somehow a different collective strategy, I think, from the state as to how is that done and how is that reimbursed, maybe, because that would help a lot. I was on 95 twice last week, and there was something going on in the turnpike. I don't know what happens in that stretch between Hope Sound and Canter, but there is almost every day something going on in that stretch. And I don't know what the contributing factors are to that, but I'm sure it's not cheap and so on. So, anyway, I thank you for all you guys do. I appreciate it. Commissioner Campy. Thank you. Yeah, I happened to be here in 2009 when the SAFER grant was first strategized, and we used it successfully to knock down a lot of overtime. So I know some people are frustrated by the fact that, oh, you're hiring more people or bringing on more personnel. And, yes, it's three years up front paid, but then eventually the rest of their careers are on us. But I think, you know, you and your predecessors have done a good job of explaining you either pay up front or you pay, in the end, much more in overtime. But I thought the point, two points that you made that deserve repeating. The first one is, which I don't think in any other industry you hear much about it, mandatory overtime, mandatory, that after you put your entire shift in, because the organization doesn't have the personnel in place, you as an individual, an employee, if you will, are forced to stay. So I think if people, in their own minds, wherever they work, if you got to the end of your day, 5 o'clock, 5.30, whatever it is, and your boss said, hey, listen, the person that's supposed to replace you is not available, you need to stay. Well, no, I need to go home, it's a birthday, I don't feel good, I'm tired. No, no, you need to stay. I mean, I don't think I've ever heard of that happening in any other industry. And I think with all the other issues in terms of the counties to the south of us trying to pick a way at our top-notch personnel to go down there, if they're running their organizations without the necessity of mandatory overtime, it's very appealing to folks, young or old, to go there. And so I think what you're asking for is an interrelated kind of a circle or dominoes, if you will. If you don't do this, it creates a personnel or staffing, it creates a fatigue, it creates a mental distress issue, and it comes around, as well as the fact that the other point is Okeechobee doesn't have 95 in the Turnpike run through their county, or U.S. 1. And we have it from top to bottom, and I think all of us, everyone that's listening, can tell of the horrific accidents that they see on 95 that require a tremendous amount of personnel, more so than if you got in an accident on Canter Highway or Salerno or Cove, even though those are very dangerous roads as well. But the accidents at that high level of speed and the danger to your responding personnel requires you to have so many people. All the other things you said about the nursing homes, and I know, you know, my parents live in an older neighborhood, and there is conversation that instead of if a resident has a minor health issue to go to the emergency room, they know that if you drive yourself to the emergency room, you might sit in the waiting room. But if you call 911, you know, so we call it the taxi to the emergency room. And so with all of those things, I think we could separate this one out, and I would make a motion to allow our fire rescue department to apply. It doesn't mean they're getting it. It just means that they're applying again. I don't know if when the deciding entities look to see if it was a unanimous vote or not, I hope that at least giving you the opportunity to apply for it would. And for the residents that could panicky about these kind of things, I would say that it's a fail-safe. This Safer Grant application process means that there is an outside organization having nothing to do with Martin County, completely unbiased, looking at all of the different requirements in the industry, would say, no, we don't think you necessarily need additional people at this time, or yes, you do. And so I have no problem, and I appreciate the fact that you would once again, and I know Mr. Resch is behind a lot of this, would put a beautiful application together to help us compete very successfully in this case against everyone else in the United States. So thank you for your continued protection of our county. Commissioner Hetherington. I just want to touch on something that Commissioner Smith, because it's become quite a competitive process where we've been successful except for maybe the past year or so. So I would add on to Commissioner Camby's motion, anything we can do in addition as a board to advocate or support. We've been always very successful when we go and meet with our delegation, our representatives. We go up to Tallahassee or Washington, D.C. to talk about water quality. And if this is something that we need to do with this to encourage, rather than just submitting the application, I think that it's an important enough program, as you expressed, that we should do all we can to make sure that our application is set apart from all the competition that we have. Commissioner Smith. Second Ed's motion. And just a thought, Stacey triggered and Ed triggered. Do they, does the application, does it have public input at all? Or is it purely you all apply, there's a form, we fill it out, and that's it? I mean, are there letters of support? Are there, I mean, should there be, could there be? Yeah, Matt Resch, Fire Rescue Administrator. In previous years, they used to have a section in the grant where you could attach a letter of support, and we have done that in the past, whether from a local congressman or woman, support from the board. Currently, they don't have that functionality, but you can still send a letter in support. Last year we did. Congress and Brian Mast submitted a letter on our behalf in support of the program. A suggestion just as a thought. First, I mean, we'll vote on this, and I'm sure it'll pass. First, we might want to send a separate letter from the county commission as a add-on. Sure. I would certainly suggest that perhaps we get Brian again to do so. And I don't know at what level, you know, do senators and congressmen want to compete with each other on these kinds of things, because if there are X amount of dollars and everybody's applying and someone's going to be a winner, or somebody's going to be a loser, but all that being said, we should probably reach out, Don, to our senators' offices and ask for letters of support. And then what wouldn't hurt, and this is what triggered it when Ed was talking about his parents' neighborhood, is maybe we should get some of the assisted livings and some of those folks that have become one of those user groups, saying that there is absolutely a need for more staffing because of the requirements that our facilities are putting on the system. And exactly, Chief, what you laid out, kind of having them tell their side of the story in some kind of communication that would also get added on, whether it's allowed or not. I mean, you can certainly send it, because I'm sure others will take some sort of an approach to put themselves somewhere in the process in front of others. So just as a general idea or a thought. Understood. I agree with all of that. So we have a motion by Commissioner Campy, seconded by Commissioner Smith. All in favor? Aye. All opposed? Opposed. Motion passes 4 to 1. Commissioner Hurd dissenting. Moving on to number 2. Thank you. Thank you. The next item is permission to accept the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant, or the JAG Grant, for the Human Services Division. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement is awarding a grant in the amount of $70,370 to support Martin County's mental health court staff, continuing education and drug testing expenses. There is no match required for this grant. Number 3 are just budget adjustments to the fiscal year 2024 budget. We received multiple checks, refunds, and insurance proceeds for the Martin County Fire Rescue Department. We have received a refund in the amount of $268,730 due to a purchase order cancellation for a new pumper truck that did not meet the design and functionality for the Fire Rescue Department. The second item is some insurance proceeds for a Martin County Fire Rescue Ambulance No. 22 in the amount of $64,849. And the third item is Martin County Fire Rescue Ambulance No. 23 insurance proceeds in the amount of $19,577. And OMB is just requesting budget resolutions to accept the deposit of these funds so those repairs can be made. Number 4 is permission to allocate the unanticipated plan unit development public benefit contribution for orchid protection. The Three Lakes Golf Club PUD has contributed an amount of $30,000 for the protection and relocation of a state-listed terrestrial native orchids that have been identified within the proximity to the development. Field Ops is going to be utilizing this contribution to protect and relocate these native orchids. And OMB is requesting the adoption of a budget resolution to appropriate these funds into the budget. They need a place to put them. They can put them in my area. And number 5 is a permission to apply for the Florida Inland Navigation District Waterways Assistance Plant Program. And this would be the county acting on behalf of the Commercial Fishing Authority. Their desire is to replace some docks and upgrade their facility. In this case, it's a request. The grant request is total project cost is $120,000. A 50% match would be provided by the dock authority. The county, as the agent, because we do own the plan, it is a public purpose. But the dock authority would be paying the county for our administration of the grant and bidding out the project on their behalf, much like we do with the city of Stewart and others. I will say that for a number of years we've had a CIP item in the county anticipating that someday the authority has looked at either dredging or doing other things within the county's own lease for the submerged lands for the working waterfront area. And this is the first year that the dock authority has been able to have the funds, have their permits, and ready to proceed with the project. The late delay in getting this on had to do with the resolution and some details that we fell behind on. I apologize for not getting it on earlier. And the resolution, which is attached to this, is required to be executed and submitted this week. So we could not wait until next meeting. So if your indulgence is, as I think the project, the other opportunity is when this comes back for award, it still will have to be accepted by the board for execution. Commissioner Smith. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And, Don, thank you for that. And I think long ago when we created the opportunity in Salerno to create the dock authority and the agreement between the county and the working waterfront's concept, I think the vision way back when was that we would see things like this happen moving forward in the future. And I'm really happy that we've reached a point where we can actually execute some of the ideas that we conceived of over 20 years ago. With that, I would move approval of the request. For all Ms. Morley's items. Two through five. For all of them, right? Two through five. I'll second that. Okay. Commissioner Campy. Yeah, I don't mind that, and I appreciate that you were effective in bringing it forward to us today versus letting an opportunity slip past us purely because it required a little bit more of out-of-the-box thinking. I appreciate that you would do that and bring it to us to let us make that decision. I agree with what Commissioner Smith said. I think we are one of the very few remaining working waterfront areas. I was just recently down there walking around touring it. I hadn't been down in a while, and so my wife and I were walking around there, and it's a working waterfront. I mean, there are trucks and fishermen and activity and productivity happening, and it's nice that it's, you know, I don't think as many people in our community realize that this is still taking place right here in Martin County. And so, one, for them to participate financially instead of just looking to us to say, hey, handle it. I personally appreciate and like the fact that we are trying to, again, as our staff is very good at, is looking for opportunities outside of our traditional budget to find funding to support things that are important. In this particular case, the improvements are not only will beautify and make it a little more of an attractive and appealing situation, it's also safer. So, I'm all in. Commissioner Hurd. Yeah. How many existing slips are there? Let me see if we can get to the summary. They are. George Zama, Public Works Deputy Director. Currently, in our lease, there's 30. Okay. So, this is a proposal for 45. Why the expansion? Who's going to be eligible for the additional 15 slips that are owned by Martin County taxpayers? They are currently in for permitting to expand the amount of slips. Why? We had an understanding 20 years ago that there would be 30 slips, and they were to be sunsetted at the time as the members ceased fishing. So, now, why the proposal to expand, and what's the justification for expansion? Commissioner, the justification to expand is to continue to partner with the dock authority in maintaining a working waterfront, and that the commercial fishing activities that have occurred in Martin County in this particular area, certainly during peak season, would allow for those commercial fishing vessels that are harvesting mackerel and other species here during the run to have space available. But we had a justification for 30, 20 years ago. Why the expansion to 45? Well, I think, Butch, if you want to speak on this behalf, but it's the dock authority has made the request to make the improvements and to add the slips based upon the need to provide the slips for commercial fishing vessels. So, yes, thank you, Butch Olson, for the record. Thank you, Don. In conjunction with that, we're working on a lease renewal, which we hope to have before you at the next commission meeting. So, I can't put it any better than Mr. Donaldson did as far as the reasoning. And what's the lease renewal? What's the term? I'm sorry? What's the term of the lease renewal? We are asking for an additional 20 years and some various amendments. What are the various amendments? It would take me a bit to go over everything. We're asking for, obviously, additional slips, which we have to wait on DEP permitting for that, which we are working towards. You know, this is a Martin County asset, and so I think we need to be careful about how we're leasing this space. And I don't have the justification for the additional 15 slips, nor do I know what the term of the next contract is. Again, Commissioner, we hope to be before you next week. Well, that doesn't help me today. Okay. And, Commissioner, this is just an application. It does not – we would still have to bring this back for an award, and so should the board not approve the lease, then this grant would not be executed. If the lease is approved, then this would facilitate them being able to move forward with the plans they've been working on. Commissioner Smith. Yeah, so the – I think the intriguing part of all this for me is that this concept of what the DOC Authority has created over all these years does two things. One, it is a historic vital industry in Martin County that is quickly disappearing in the state of Florida, and our folks have been able to keep it in place and keep it intact. And the second piece of that, they're actually growing the business. And I think relative to the historical nature of the commercial fishing industry in Martin County, the idea that in a time where it's being pushed out all over the state of Florida, because people want to move in and they want to live on a waterfront, they want to do away with commercial working waterfront ideas, ours is growing, and it's continuing to grow. And I think for our economy, for our marine industries, for the families and the employees that have spent a lifetime working to make sure that we can continue to exist as a commercial working waterfront, I think it's exciting. And, Butch, all of your folks should be congratulated, and the idea that you consistently continue to keep pushing for its success I think is great. And I think if every industry in Martin County had the kind of support group like you and others behind them, we'd be a better place for it all. So thank you for all that you're doing. Thank you very much, Commissioner Smith. And Commissioner Hurd, kind of to your point, I mean, we have a wonderful working relationship with county staff, and we were looked into by you and county staff months ago, as you mentioned at your town hall meeting. And we found that we were doing everything right, and we have always done everything right working with county staff, and we will continue to do so. Mr. Olson, I appreciate that, but I haven't been approached about this expansion, and it's substantial. It's not 2%. It's not 3%. It's increasing it by over a third. And it's a county-wide amenity. So I'm sensitive to, you know, giving that county asset to one group. I think that all of us should have access to this county asset. Well, it's been there for over 100 years for the fishermen, but I understand. It's Martin County's asset, though. Ms. Woods. Yes, I want to add a little historical perspective. There's no sunset in the lease agreement. There was. There was, by vote of the Board of County Commissioners, because of the great success of the commercial fishing dock, and they received quite a few awards over the years from the state of Florida for that preservation of our heritage. And I want to make it clear, the dock authority asked for an extension of their existing lease. Any extension of the existing lease wouldn't include docks that don't exist. It would just be based on what's currently in existence. If they were to receive this grant and if the Board approves acceptance of the grant, then at that point, once the docks were constructed, we would amend the lease again and provide for all that. This is just an application for a grant to help in Phase 1 of the construction of it. And again, the use of those additional dock slips would be governed by the lease, and that would be a subject of negotiation and what the dock authority's explanation to the Board would be in conjunction with negotiation with staff. So we're not at that point at this point. Thank you. Commissioner Hetherington. I'll be brief, but Commissioner Smith mentioned the significance and the heritage and the historical significance. I think it would be interesting because, as I mentioned earlier, as many people move here to Florida each day, and then some of them move to Martin County to have an informational item when time allows to educate the significance of the commercial fishing industry, how it started in Martin County and what it is today. I think it would be a good educational, informational item to bring back to the Board at some point. Agreed. Okay. It's been so long. We have a motion by Commissioner Smith, seconded by Commissioner Hetherington. All in favor? Aye. All opposed? Motion carries unanimously. I was trying to squeeze you in, but it's 1030, and we're going to take our 1030 break. Closed captioning break. Welcome back. We are going to skip down to Department No. 3 because we have some people that need to leave. A management agreement for the Martin County Courthouse and Cultural Center Historic Courthouse. Mr. George Stokas. Good morning, Mr. Chair. George Stokas, Assistant County Administrator for the record. Thank you very much for letting us skip ahead in line for our commitments. Before you today is a renewal or a new management agreement for the Martin County Courthouse and Cultural Center, also known as the Historic Courthouse located on Ocean Avenue. The old agreement that was adopted back in 2019 will soon be set to expire in 2024. The agreement was prepared by our county legal department. Many thanks to them. It's between us and the Arts Council. Ms. Nancy Terrell is in the audience here to answer any questions. And the purpose of the agreement is for the operation of the courthouse, which includes, you know, the electrical, plumbing, and having it open for the public to enjoy that wonderful facility, which I believe is on the National Historic Register. If not, it's definitely one of our historic buildings. The duration of this agreement is for three years, and it does require direct agreement for the user of the facility, and it does require public access. And I do know that they do provide public access, because I've been into that building many times, both invited and uninvited, and the door is always unlocked. So when I'm there, there are some times it is locked. And the annual management fee for this is for $70,000. So if so, move the board would like to enter into this. That is our staff's recommendation. Commissioner Smith. How appropriate would be before us on the day that we also had our proclamation this morning for Historic Preservation Month as one of our iconic historic preservation sites. And certainly for both the county and for the city, it holds a tremendous amount of history and meaning to our community and to our county and city. And with that, I would move staff's recommendation. Second. Oh, man. She started talking before you, though. She was doing a prequel. All right. Any other comments, questions? We have a motion by Commissioner Smith, seconded by Commissioner Hetherington. All in favor? Aye. All opposed? Motion carries unanimously. Unanimously. Thank you. Thank you very much. It would be nice to have that same kind of thing come back someday with a high school. Yeah. I'll add to high school. One of these days. Okay. Back to Christy Brotherton's item. Department number two, contracts that meet the threshold for board approval, $1 million or greater. Good morning. Christy Brotherton. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Commissioner Hetherington. Oh, Mr. Chair, I'm going to recuse myself from item A1, MacArthur Boulevard. As an employee, our consultant of Ferreira Construction, they bid on the, although not the awardee, and with that, I will abstain from the vote. Noted. Good morning. Christy Brotherton, Chief Procurement Officer. The first item is the MacArthur Boulevard Roadway Elevation Contract. Staff is recommending that the board award the contract to the lowest responsive and responsible bidder, which is J.W. Cheatham, in the amount of $2,931,651.75, and move that the board authorize the county administrator or designee to execute all documents related to this request. Want to talk now or? Yeah. Absolutely. Commissioner Smith. Chairman, I would move approval of item 8A1, right? A1. A1. Sorry. As a separate item because of Commissioner Hetherington's need to abstain. Second. Ms. Woods. I just wanted to put in for the record. I have turned in my form A-B. Yes. Yes. Thank you. Okay. Motion by Commissioner Smith, seconded by Commissioner Campy. All in favor? Aye. All opposed? Motion carries unanimously. Thank you. The second contract for your consideration is the grinder station installation and septic conversion continuing services contract. This contract has a maximum not-to-exceed value of $3 million with a maximum not-to-exceed term of five years. And staff is recommending that the board award the contract to the lowest responsive and responsible bidders, which is Meeks Plumbing and Baker Underground contractors, and move that the board authorize the county administrator or designee to execute all documents related to this request. And that concludes this item. Moved staff's recommendation? Second. Okay. We have a motion by Commissioner Smith, seconded by Commissioner Hetherington. All in favor? Aye. Aye. All opposed? Motion carries unanimously. Thank you, ma'am. Moving on to Department No. 4, Transit Development Plan, TDP, Major Update, Final Draft Report. Mr. Ashman Beecher. That's him right there. And the whole team. The whole... I ride the bus to school with these folks. There you go. Good morning. I'm Beth Beltran, MPO, Administrator of the Martin MPO. I'm here with Ash Beecher, the Martin County Transit Administrator, and Lucene Martins, the Transit Planner for the MPO. We are here to talk about the major update of the Transit Development Plan, or TDP. And I just wanted to explain a little bit about what this document is. This is a major update, and it's required every five years in order to get transit block grant funds from the state of Florida. So it's required to get funding. The state does require annual updates or minor updates between that five-year period in order to get an idea of how the transit operation is moving along. So what we're doing is a plan. About 18 months ago, the transit agency asked the MPO to develop the major update to be a guide, if you will, for the next five to ten years. But the implementation of... or possible implementation of these recommendations would happen between that five-year period. And like I said, there's an annual update that we'll, Ash and team, and we'll be talking about during that five-year period between major updates. So the MPO had requested that Marlin Engineering, one of our general planning contractors, develop the plan along with Kittleson and Associates. Jeff Widener is here from Marlin, and Jessica Mackey is here from Kittleson. And they will present the hard work we've done for the last 12 to 18 months. And afterwards, we'll be happy to answer any questions you all may have about either the process or what's in the document. Thank you, Ash. Just a reminder, the transit development plan, I'm regurgitating some of what Beth said. Speak closer to the mic. Sorry, I apologize. It's part of the legislation for this Transit State Operating Block Grant. The state of Florida provides an operating block grant to the 30 transit agencies in the state. As part of that, there's a regulation to every five years, do a major update and identify a 10-year business plan. Again, this is a dynamic document. It empowers the county to take advantage of new opportunities for grant funding and to address community needs. The scope of work, we've been through all of the tasks, and here we are with task eight. In your agenda package, you'll find a final draft copy of the transit development plan, and we're here today for your approval in forwarding the document to the Florida Department of Transportation for approval and then re-upping your block grant for 2025. Just a refresher, you have a system with five routes. Route one pretty much dominates the ridership numbers. 35-minute headways, 6 to 8 p.m. All routes are Monday through Friday. There is no weekend service. You do have an extension out to Indiantown to serve that community. And, you know, your headways vary from 35 minutes to 60 minutes to even 95 minutes back and forth to Indiantown. National trends, starting in 2014, the data shows across the United States and across Florida that there was a reduction in transit ridership. There's been a lot of speculation in the industry as the cause of this. One of the reasons could be the evolution of transit network companies, such as Uber and Lyft, and there was probably some folks that had opportunities for those types of options. Conversely, Marty was growing at the same time the state of Florida was going down. Then COVID hit. It was pretty significant impact to the industry as a whole. Many transit agencies across Florida and across the country shut down, and it certainly had an impact on ridership. Marty did not shut down, but people were probably adverse to taking public transportation during that time frame. The good news is Marty has rebounded with some very significant jumps in ridership from 21% to 22% at 21%, and then 16% to get over 100,000 rides in FY 2023. We presented this to you before in our previous presentation. The TDP requires a peer review. We scoured the state data and the national data to look for communities with a similar population and similar income. Martin County, Marty, is in the first column. It's a small, condensed system. It's 65 square miles serving. But it has the lowest ridership of all the peer agencies, and the cost per rider is very high. We had a lot of discussion about Indian River and why is Indian River County so good. I believe in the last meeting I used the word gold standard. Everybody in the state of Florida looks to Indian River and what are they doing and why is it so successful. The team huddled, and we talked about some of the things that are happening in Indian River County that would lead to that significant ridership of over a million riders a year. First of all, accessibility to the service. 92% of the county is within the service area of their 15 bus routes. Here in Martin County, it's 58%. It's fare-free. Going fare-free has been proven across the country to increase ridership. St. Lucie County went fare-free a few years ago, and their ridership doubled. Weekend service, having Saturday and Sunday service is important for people, particularly that are economically disadvantaged and working in the service industries. And then there's a number of other reasons. They have centralized hubs. It's very well marketed. It's coordinated with their Transportation Disadvantage Board. And another reason is that they are still below 200,000 population, and they can use their federal dollars for operations, which allows them to have more service at a lower local cost. Public involvement and outreach. We went to every commission district. And we had two meetings in District 3 because Hobe Sound and Indiantown are very far apart. We didn't do traditional outreach. We didn't set a meeting, will we here, come see us. We went out and met the people. We literally met hundreds of people and a few hundred children. Um, it was a lot of fun. Um, Jim and Jensen, we were at the Publix between the parking lot and the event, and we lured people in with cookies, and we got to talk to a lot of people. Um, some, most of the people were snowbirds and visitors. They talked about Brightline and opportunities for regional transportation, Golden Gate and Indiantown and, um, Hobe Sound and Banner Lake. We were working with the local community, and we went to aftercare centers and the community center in Banner Lake, and met quite a number of people, uh, Morgade Library and the Peter and Julie Cummings Library. Uh, right now I'm going to bring up Jessica Mackey, uh, Kittleson and Associates, our national experts in, uh, the technical estimation of ridership and cost, and Jessica Mackey is going to talk about the opportunities that we looked at. Good morning. So, um, one of the purposes of the TDP, because it's done every five years, is to look at the community's transit needs today. So we ask ourselves, where do people live, where are the jobs, and where are trips taking place? So using T-BEST and FDOT transit planning software, we did a hotspot analysis of trips in Martin County, and those are shown as the red dots on this map. We also located areas with a high proportion of transit-dependent populations, like zero-car households, households living under poverty, older adults, and disabled adults. We then looked at which of those locations lie beyond the walking distance of existing bus stops. So those areas are shown in yellow. Those are the transit gaps, and they lie outside of a quarter mile from the existing bus stops. So then we started to do some planning strategies. We know we wanted to improve ridership for the existing system while exploring other innovative approaches like microtransit that made sense for the community. The four different strategies we developed are based on technical data and feedback from outreach. So the first scenarios are low-cost, no-cost scenario, and these are improvements that could be made in the short term for little to no cost. We also have scenarios for expanding the service span, adding bus stops, and an aspirational network with microtransit. And each of these strategies had several alternatives that we costed and ranked to help us guide us in the recommended plan. Scenario one, our low-cost scenario. We found that there's many opportunities to improve today's operations. For example, we know that the buses need to be better coordinated. A COA, which is a comprehensive operational analysis, would better increase connectivity in the region as well as convenience for riders. A COA is also where a review of stop-level ridership would take place to evaluate bus stop utilization. And during outreach, we learned that a number of people in the community were not aware that the transit system exists or how to use it, so we included a targeted marketing campaign that leverages South Florida commuter services to help get the work out about the service and to improve ridership. We heard from residents in Indiantown that they needed to go to shopping destinations like Walmart, so we proposed extending Route 2, where this green-dotted line is, to go from the Robert Morgade Library to the Walmart in Stewart. And we saw that Route 3 had unproductive segments, so we think splitting it into two circulators would better serve several important new destinations, including the Walmart in Stewart. We also explored extending Route 20X to the tri-rail station in Mangonia to increase regional connectivity. And for Route 4, it currently has limited bus stops and crossing opportunities across US 1, so we think converting it into a flex route would more effectively service this service area. And an added bonus is that flex routes are not required to provide ADA paratransit service, so there's potential cost savings. In Scenario 2, we looked at adding weekend service and later service, because that was one of the needs that the public identified. We explored different ways to add it, including transportation networking companies, and we found that it could be cost-effective when compared to adding fixed route service in certain areas. There's a number of ways that TNC service could be implemented, but should the county want a more enhanced customer service with branded vehicles, we could be looking at roughly $15.50 per trip. And this is close to what Broward County reported for their TNC program, which is lower than Marty's cost per trip for local fixed route, which was reported as $26.70 per trip in 2022. Later service was also a need, with Route 4 being the one with the highest need, as its last southbound trip leaves at 5 p.m., so we explored extending Route 4 service to 8 p.m. using TNCs. I'm going to hand it, Joe. So just very briefly, we wanted to share with you some of what's going on in southeast Florida with transportation network companies. This is some highlights of municipal projects, and it's very similar to the city of Stewart Tram, where a transportation network company with a small vehicle can create circulators and tie into your transit system, better connecting neighborhoods to the trunk line system. And then there's other services that can provide different levels of vehicles. They actually have all-electric Teslas, again, trams that are localized, and they can use vans to better penetrate the community. They're very good at writing competitive grants. They know the DOT process. DOT has funds for 50 percent operations to operate one of these transformational transit services connecting into your trunk line system. And it's an opportunity that we've included in your proposed plan for the future. So for our third scenario, adding bus stops, that was a major need because there's wide areas of the counties where the bus passes through but is not servicing important destinations. So to give some more background, the industry standard for bus stop spacing in urban areas is every quarter mile. And Route 1, the average spacing right now is 0.96 miles. So there's many destinations like shopping centers, Home Depot on US-1, the Regency Square Shopping Center that currently have no service. So we identified some locations, some priority locations, if we were to add bus stops. We identified 40 potential locations, and it's based on feedback from outreach as well. Destinations include the Kane Center, La Jolla, the Health Department, the Publix at the Canter Crossing, the Banner Lake Community Center, the House of Hope, and various along US-1. And we also tested how ridership would improve using T-Best, and it estimated an increase of over 77,000 riders annually, just if we increased, if we added bus stops to the current routes. And obviously the downside to having more bus stops is that the bus schedule would need to be reassessed, but we think increasing access to people and to jobs would be well worth the tradeoff. So we also heard from the community, as well as you all, that there's a desire for microtransit service. Because of the long walking distances in certain communities that have no service today, we also saw it as the most cost-effective way to provide transit. The benefits of microtransit are enhanced safety. There's a lack of safe crosswalks and sidewalks in many areas. It's a first-mile, last-mile solution to fixed route transit, and it would likely cost less than today's cost per rider. So we created an aspirational network. It looks at the development of five TNC zones, and we also have two trunk line routes. We kept key routes that better accommodate the long trips that folks need to take throughout the county. So you'll see Route 1 is still here, Route 2. We also envision having an intermodal hub located in proximity to the proposed Bright Line station and with time transfers. The recommended plan that we developed is a realistic business plan based on the best results and the areas that had the highest need. It also looks at how we can transition into microtransit. So we're proposing off the bat all of the no-cost improvements that will improve ridership. That includes splitting Route 3, converting Route 4 to a flex route, and extending Route 2 to the tri-rail station. We also included a marketing campaign as a low-cost improvement starting at $15,000 a year. We included planning products that Marty will need to do in the future, like the comprehensive operational analysis and the bus stop study. And we know that, based on our analysis, the demand for transit, microtransit is high in areas like Stewart, Jensen Beach, and Palm City. We explored different cities to implement this in, and microtransit in Palm City might be a good place to start, as it currently has no service. We also included a pilot program for Saturday service for Routes 1, 2, 3, and 4 using transportation networking companies. The 2034 cost per rider for all the improvements in this plan is estimated to be $1632, which is lower than today's cost at $29.80 per rider. We also used T-BEST and other planning tools to estimate ridership for the recommended plan. It's anticipated to generate 294,000 trips annually by 2034, but we also think this is a conservative number because when we tested ridership, we looked at them individually and not synergistically. So when you implement them all, there would be more transfers occurring, and connectivity would increase. So this is actually a conservative number. Additional details like cost, headways, and spans of service for all these improvements, as well as the other alternatives, are included in the TDP report. I'm going to hand it to Jeff. So implementation. Our thought process was to get the cost per rider down immediately. And in the first few years, we talked about a number of low, no-cost approaches and strategies. First of all, FY25 begins in September. Having a marketing campaign, a targeted marketing campaign, can be low-cost. You can also leverage South Florida Commuter Services, which is an alternative mode of transportation. What do you call it? Agency. Advancement agency. And they have staff. They actually helped us at the public meetings, and they can provide that service free of cost. Route optimization. Just looking at the timing of your routes and synchronizing at major transfer points, there's some significant wait times. And, again, this is just reallocation of resources and reorganizing your schedules. Adding bus stops, you know, bus stops can be very expensive. They can be up to $50,000. But they also can just be a pole and a sign in the road. And strategically adding bus stops at a low cost can generate more ridership. And then two years later, your federal grant goes up because it's based on ridership. Scope, microtransit. Let's start the conversation. Transit staff could be talking to or do an invitation to bid or an industry form and have these competitors come in and tell you what they think they can do for you. Route 4, late shift. You know, there's a two-hour time differential. Somebody can get on a bus on Route 4 and expect to go home, and they can't get the bus. This flex route is low cost. It's like $14,000 to have this added service right away next year. Extending Route 2 to the Walmart, reallocation of resources. Extend your headway. And it provides, you know, access to the Walmart from the folks in Indiantown. Splitting Route 3 is a wash. It's taking the two buses and turning it into two cycles. It's going to increase ridership. Extending the 20X to tri-rail. Again, it already has a long headway. Extending it to tri-rail. It shows in the tool that we use, which is called T-Best. And then a fleet plan. So a big part of the capital costs in your 10-year plan is your buses will be expiring starting in 2027. You'll have 14 vehicles. Think about, do you want to go electric? Do you want to diversify the fleet with smaller vehicles and larger vehicles on the trunk line routes? Think about it before you jump into 2027, where you're going to purchase your first new bus. Bright Line Hub, big opportunity. You'll have an identifiable transportation center. Bus replacement begins in 2027. Then we start getting into the transformational network that we heard in a direction from you all, is piloting a Saturday TNC program. This is something that the transit agency, I'm thinking of Broward County Transit, when their service ends, they give shift workers free Uber and Lyft rides. We're focused on the medical industry because it's a 24-hour operation. Doing a comprehensive operations analysis, this will really give you some very much detail on how to synchronize your system. Then 2029, you need to do this all over again and do a refresh for the next five years. It's probably time to look at re-looking at your IT or intelligent transportation system, and then the first transformational TNC zone happening in 2031. Now, we provided to a document that has all of the details and the cost. You can mix and match. You can advance the transformation. The important point is let's get ridership up as quickly as possible with the least amount of cost and start getting more revenue, both from the fare box and from the federal government. These are some of the things that were in the aspirational or transformational network that didn't get into the recommended plan. Again, all this information is provided, and you can pick and choose, and these are interchangeable. And develop your plan as you move along. You just need to do an annual progress report to DOT on what you did, and if you didn't, do it in the TDP. Other policy and capital improvements, you know, explore fare increases. We talked about fare-free with the public. The survey came out. We got 732 responses. A lot of people felt $1.50 was fare. And we didn't build in any fare increases until 2031, which is really conservative. And looking at additional fare, especially when you're rolling out these new innovation transformational services, would probably be palatable with your community. Increasing the sale or locations of fares. Your paratransit vehicles are idle pretty much most of the day or some parts of the day. Maybe they could be interchanged. Comprehensive plan and development reviews. Getting developer dedications for bus stops is a freebie. And participating in the development review to have transit-ready developments. And then the potential future maintenance facility. Just next steps. Here we are in May. The blue dots represent. We went to a joint advisory committee board meeting and shared this presentation. We were at the MPO policy board last week. And we're here before the board of county commissioners. This is your document. It's due to DOT by September 1st. DOT does a review. We make some revisions. It needs to be approved by DOT by December 31st. And with that, we'll take any questions. Commissioner Campy. Thank you very much. Can you go back to the slide that compared, that showed Martin County and Indian River and... All of them? Yeah, the one that had the other communities on it. That one. This is the one that is the closest comparison for, you know, I don't, from Collier to the right, doesn't really affect us. It's our neighbor. I had the opportunity to recently travel up to Indian River County with our transit team, Mr. Donaldson and Mr. Gordon. And we met with their folks in their offices at their maintenance facility. They showed us everything, where the drivers take their brakes, their maintenance, how they maintain. You know, they have computerized tread to see the tread on the tires. Very well done. They're using senior resource associates? Yeah, association. As their transportation manager in conjunction with their MPO staff, not in place of, as an outside. And they do our transportation disadvantaged here. Correct. So it's not like we don't know them. They've been here before. Then we took a ride to the hub. They use a spoke and wheel, hub and spoke system. And then we rode the bus. And I wanted to thank Commissioner Susan Adams, who came with us. And we rode for a while, most of the morning on the bus. We went out from there, sort of their main hub. And I thought there was a lot of things that they were doing very, very well that, in my mind, is easily duplicatable here. And, obviously, the proof is in the numbers. If we just look at this, and this is an older document. This has been out for a while, right? Because we're up to 107 riders now, 107,000. And this is showing 92. So let's just say 100. And they're over 1.2 now as well. And their system has been in place for quite a while. But that being said, for folks that are not aware, we're, I always use the same expression, we're sister counties. Their population is similar to ours. You can see it right there. Their miles of acreage is similar. Their economic sort of makeup of their community is similar. It's just that they have had a longer history with their transit system, and they have embraced it more. Their system is a half an hour out and a half an hour back. I think that makes perfect sense in terms of, they also said that one of the advantages that they had up there is more of a grid system. Their roads and things were designed, and when they put it originally together, it's a little more like a grid. It's easier to create versus ours, sort of runs out in certain directions. But they had Felsmere, and they had other communities like we have. So I took some things that stuck with me. 30 minutes out and 30 minutes back makes it reasonable. Because if you are going to try to get to a job or to school or something, and it's a 60-minute one-way, you're probably going to pass. Because you've got to get to the bus station, and then you've got to wait there for a little bit, and then you're going to be on for. And that's also assuming that the 60 minutes here in Martin gets you from your beginning to the end of your destination, not to a transfer point. And then you've got another amount of time. So I think that's our number one issue. We have to, like, where do you get on? Where are you getting off? How long is that period of time? Because I think most reasonable people, a half an hour, obviously works. As far as I'm concerned, Indian River County gave us the answers to the test. They were using software tracking. As you got on the bus, we're still tracking ridership on a clipboard, and the drivers have to write it down, correct? No. Yes, we have a mobile device on the buses where the drivers tap. But they're still manually entering it. Correct. That is correct. And I'm not saying shame on us. I'm just saying sharing with you my experience. They have a system where as soon as the passenger walks onto it, it tracks them. So you can see exactly where people are getting on, how long they're on, when they're, you know. That was very interesting. They had bus stop shelters, which I understand are expensive, but they had a lot of them. But they also had something that I think is important that we could at least do here is I thought one of the most disheartening things I had seen is right outside our building where we, and this is several years ago, where we had a bus stop, and the people that were waiting for the bus were either sitting in the grass, grown-ups, sitting in the grass, or worse, sitting on the curb, basically in the road. And we talked back then about, hey, how do you treat people with respect and put a bench there, and some of the property is ours and the right-of-way, and we quickly talked ourselves out of it. They have a fold-down seat off of their bus stop pole that you could just fold it down, and at least you're sitting. I think that's a very easy thing to sort of, you know, treat our riders with a little different level of respect. They have 500, if I remember, 514 stops, and we, I kept asking when they showed them their slides, I said, well, what about us, and what about us? 514 stops. Now, you hit the nail on the head when you said it doesn't mean the bus stops. Some people have never ridden a bus, a public bus, in their whole entire life. You're on the bus. There's a cord that runs from the front to the back on both sides of the bus. You know your stop's coming up. You pull the cord, and the driver knows to stop. Or if the driver is approaching a stop and there's no one standing there, the driver doesn't stop. It just keeps on going. So it's not like, you know, you're making every single stop. So it's also pretty customizable. If you're on the bus with five or six other people and no one's getting off on the next 10 stops, the bus just keeps on going. They had no fare. Now, I thought it was interesting that you had said originally that no fare increases ridership, and that's a terrific way to increase ridership, but one of your future strategies was that we would increase the fare. For the nickels and dimes that we get from the fare comparable to the whole cost of the experience, I would say we should follow their lead, and people just got on and got off. There was no swiping and tapping. There's no money. There's no worrying about all of the accounting services necessary for what I think is a small amount of money that we're bringing in. Saturday, I think, is important because if you're an employee and you're working on the weekends, and a lot of retail and service jobs are not Monday through Friday, so if you're telling people, hey, we need to train you to ride the bus to get you into the habit of riding the bus, but you can't do it on the weekends, then you're forced to still have a different transportation strategy. Young riders. I kept asking Commissioner Adams and the rest of their team. They have a lot of young riders, and that's how you continue to grow this system generationally. They had not only the bike holder that could hold up the three bikes on the front of the bus so that if you rode your bike to a bus stop, you could then place it and then take it with you and get off so that even like that last first mile, last mile kind of a thing, that could be a bike. But they also had, in several of the locations, I noticed bike racks at the bus stop, a permanent one. So if you rode your bike from your home to a bus stop, you could lock it up there, get on the bus, and come back. I think our demographic and dynamic is going to change before your, if you could go to that last one that showed Palm City out like a decade. It was almost the last slide. It was that one. I mean, you're showing Palm City service, even the microtransit zone starting in 2030, 2031. New field could potentially change quite a bit of the dynamic out there. Indiantown, I think, has to be taken into consideration. Terra Largo and Indiantown is in the complete renaissance, if you will. So I don't know if you'll need to have a loop that stays within Indiantown or more service that goes back and forth because just in the first couple of phases of what the Indiantown village government is doing out there is hundreds and hundreds of homes, 600 homes, but right off the bat, 600. 2,100 homes eventually, but 600, like right off the bat. That might change this. The other thing that they did very well in Indian River that I think could work here is they had specific lines that took people to the beach. And we have the same beautiful beaches. And so I think, and you've heard me say this sometimes sort of with humor and sometimes serious, Palm City is the largest community in Martin County, 26,000 residents. It's bigger than all of the other communities and in most cases bigger than a couple of them combined, yet we have zero service, none, for the largest portion of our community. I think it's important, and we talked about it while we were up there. Ash had some good suggestions on how you'd come over and you'd loop. It's sort of an easy kind of a process that'd be worth a try to see. And I don't want to wait till 2030 because I'll tell you, I believe, oh, the last thing I'd say is that they also had, like, Commissioner Adams and her family own a restaurant. And they have lots of employees. It's a big restaurant. And they, as employers, are thinking about buses as a transit option for their employees. And I think maybe if we reached out to our largest employers and said, you know, how do we incorporate this? Instead of doing your community, not instead of, in addition to your community outreach, let's go into some of our larger employers and say, can we have 40 minutes? Can we send our A-team in to explain to people? And then maybe the owners of these businesses and these employers can create a program where they're encouraging their employers to utilize this new strategy. If we, the other thing that I liked is, and this is everywhere, because I remember even my daughter that took a bus in Gainesville, the days of rushing to the bus stop and having no idea where the bus is, those days are over. You could use your phone and know exactly when your bus is coming. So if you knew you lived a five-minute walk from the bus station or the bus stop, you can time your exit out of your home. You could ride the bike and know I'd be there. Or if you are just missing it, but that consistency of knowing exactly when the bus, did I just miss it or am I just in time, is very helpful. And they also had a QR code on their bus stop signage that you could just scan it and immediately know where the bus is. The last thing I would say is this. One of the things we're hearing the most of is, in Martin County, is the sense that there is an unbelievable amount of traffic. Some of it's valid, some of it's not, some of it's timing issues. And we don't need to get into why there are so many cars here. But the only way to combat this is to start, you know, educating our residents to understand that there's another option than just purely getting in a car and driving all over the place. But I think we need to speed this up, because I don't think our public is going to wait this many years. And I don't know if it's these five people or a different five or a different sum of us. This system will get a vote of no confidence well before you get to truly engage your whole multi-year system. The public is starting more and more to pay attention on if this is a good idea or not. So I think, from my perspective, you need to sort of double down and prove that this works or prove that it doesn't. And you're not going to have a decade to do it. I think the public, the Taxpayers Association, other organizations are starting to look at this. We know about it, but they don't. And I know that the Taxpayers Association has sort of given us and this program a thumbs up. But that being said, if the public doesn't embrace it, there's no reason to continue to do it. Thank you very much. Commissioner Smith. That was a hard act to follow. A couple things I'd like to tag on to Ed and just some other observations as well. Nothing of what Ed said do I disagree with. I think Ed's 100 percent on. And Ed, thanks for taking that trip up there so that someone firsthand could explain exactly. I mean, we've heard anecdotally what Indian River does. But I mean, to go up there and actually see it and experience, I think, is great. You know, the large employer, I'll start there with all the notes I took when you were speaking. We took a group up to North Carolina 18 years ago or whatever and toured the Research Triangle. One of their cities up there had fully 100 percent embraced public transit to the level of, to the extent that no new development got any parking spaces. Like, if there was an employer coming in with 200 employees, they got five for their employees. And the money it took to fund all of that transit requirement on the business side went to their public transit system. So any development that moved forward put into, like, an impact fee, but it wasn't an impact, well, I guess it would have been an impact fee of sorts. But it went into their transit system and they got no parking. They were going to force it to happen one way or the other because they didn't want to turn their downtown, which is a lot like Stewart, and it was about the same scale as downtown Stewart, into a parking lot. They wanted transit, they wanted it to function, and it took about five years, but it was remarkable. I mean, it was absolutely, and this was 15, 18 years ago, free cell phones probably to the extent that we have them today, the tracking information that, incredibly successful. I would say this about the conversation that the MPO had, and because the City of Stewart folks aren't here to represent themselves, there was a lot of conversation about microtransit, and I agree with them. I think, Ed, to your point, the public is not going to wait 10 years for us to develop a system that is going to implement itself. Because the public has, in the last eight years, 10 years, become completely embracing of the microtransit world. The Ubers, the Lyfts, the freebie, whatever. Airports, international airports, domestic airports, have completely redesigned their pickup drop-off areas in every major metropolitan airport that I've been in the last 10 years to deal with the expansiveness of microtransit because it's everywhere. And they couldn't blend it into the regular pickup drop-off bus pickup drop-off, blah, blah, blah. We are still fighting the idea that I, me personally, Ed, and I don't know what they said about this, I think this bus idea is going by the wayside. I think it's great what you've designed. I don't, for a second, don't think that the improvements that you have, if we were to continue on, are the right direction. I just think society has moved on without us, and if we took all the funding, all the energy, and this, again, hopefully I'm paraphrasing for the City of Stewart representatives, and plowed it into microtransit, and it were free, and you could go to any destination you want. If you're in Palm City and you have no service today, and you can go on your phone, and within five minutes you've got a Lyft or an Uber driver at your house, and you want to go to downtown Stewart and get off in front of the Gafford, it's not even a bus stop and a shelter location. You're going right to the destination you want. Within seconds you're in the place or where you want to go. I think that's what the public has embraced everywhere in the world. We just as a society here have not embraced it fully because we're still trying to make this model fit, and we're still in the mode of trying to fix our model to an older model. Anyway. Can I just jump in with you there for a second? I completely agree with you, but I think there's levels of types of transportation. The folks that were riding the bus in the Indian River are not going to call Uber. These are working class people. These are service people. These are, you know, hardworking men and women that are not going to be able to, like, pop into a Lyft or an Uber. It's a tiered kind of an approach. The last thing is here my kids have – they're gone now. They've moved away. But when they were, I remember, like, hey, they were going to a birthday party up on Hutchinson Island, and we couldn't drive them. And so they dialed for an Uber, which still, you know, six, seven years ago was still sort of cool. But quite often there's just not enough Uber and Lyft drivers right here to constantly make it all the time. Because we haven't yet sent the message and embraced the idea that that's where we're going. I agree with you. I like it. I remember when this conversation first started in Broward, and I can remember being in public hearings and this conversation about the rules of Uber and Lyft and all that kind of stuff. There were young families in Broward putting their two, three-year-olds in the backseat of an Uber and sending them to daycare. And everybody was freaking out about the idea, is that the right sort of socially conscious thing to do? I mean, can you really trust the idea that that child is going to get where you want to get? And it has moved in that direction. I mean, that generation fully embraced that. Your kids' generation fully embraced that. Well, mine weren't high school. They weren't toddlers. No, but them having children now, they would probably do it. Whereas some of us would go, no, I'm not doing that yet. You know, in the old days, you used to be able to mail your baby across the country. With a stork. No. Look it up. You could mail your baby, and they would bring your baby from one location to another, the mailman. We're off base. The other thing, and I'm curious, Ed, where you were talking up there, and maybe have we figured out yet the library and Walmart? Is the bus going to go to the front door of Walmart, or is it going to drop you off on Commerce or on Pomeroy, and you have to walk through the parking lot to get to Walmart? So there's an existing bus stop already at the Walmart. But on the property or out front? On the property. Actually, two. Okay. So we've crossed that idea with Walmart, right? It's legal to take our bus and go on to their property and pick up and drop off. Absolutely. So there was a time years ago, and to the point of the conversation about sitting on the lawn or sitting on the curb out in front of the library, one of the heaviest destinations in Martin County is the library right next door here. And we were told at the time, no, you can't take the bus through the parking lot and pick up people at the front door of the library and drop them off, which would have been incredibly convenient. So that's why we put them out on the street, and that's why they were standing on the street corner or on the side of the road or on the grass. So have we crossed that border yet? Can our bus or whatever it's going to be, can it come into the county property and pick somebody up and drop them off? There are a couple of issues here. First, operational. Speak into the mic. A couple of issues here. First, operational. If you were to go on site at every stop, your headways would be expanded exponentially. The next issue is the property owner and their desire to have buses on site. There have been experiences in my career where a shopping mall allowed buses to come on and have a transfer facility. They sell it. The next person doesn't want it, and you have to move it out to the street. The transit agencies have stopped going on site, and I would think the on-site issue may have been something to do with legal or liability and being on site. But those are the two issues there are. All of that, I only labeled two, Walmart, because you all highlighted two improved connection points to Walmart. That is acting as a hub for you all, yes. And so is this over here, in my opinion. I mean, we have hundreds of thousands of people that use our libraries. And so I just never understood that. Like, if we wanted to improve ridership, I agree with that on the whole fee thing. I have never thought, based upon my experience out in Park City, it is free in Park City. And they have a world-class, like Indian River County, development of public transportation, and it's free. And everybody uses it. It's fantastic. If we are truly to do it and if we're truly to expand the bus service here, I think we have to get past the idea. And if it's us here in the county building that said no for liability and we're not going to let the buses come on our property, that's ludicrous. You know, it would be like telling UPS, let's take the UPS box out here and the FedEx box out here and move it out on Monterey because we don't want the FedEx trucks on our property. That's nonsense. The microtransit thing, I think, you know, I agree with Ed. We have got to engage, I think, at a faster, higher level. I mean, I'm willing to support where you are today. I just don't think it's fast enough. And I don't think the public will tolerate the idea that there's a really lot of good ideas in here, that if we don't implement it faster, that acceptance level will wane and something else will replace it. There is nothing in this plan that does not say that you can move faster. Okay. I'm just emphasizing the support. And that's why we provided the aspirational, and I want to call it now the transformational network. You can move faster. We were moving under the objective of low to no cost and to increase ridership. But you're absolutely right. Everything that's been said, everybody's right, and you can do whatever you want under this TDP. The last piece of it, and Ed said this again, that I think is intriguing, but it's to the point of Park City. Park City built their bus system around the Olympics. They didn't have one prior to that. And Utah embraced the idea that the Olympics were coming, and they were to service the outside world as a worldwide destination. The interesting thing, I think Park City is the only Olympics winter site that stayed. Like all the improvements that they did, usually those towns fold up and they die. Park City didn't. Utah and Park City embraced the idea of what it had done and kept on going with it. But the interesting thing is you can get on a bus anywhere in Park City and go to any skiing access point that they have and multiple access points to those mountains, the resorts, and their different lodges that they have. The beach is the same thing. We have 27 beach access points or something here in Martin County, some number like that. If you had half of them that were on a route system that a kid in Palm City can hop on a bus with a surfboard, like I hop on a bus out there with my skis and boots, which you don't have boots here, that everybody does, by the way. Everybody hops on that bus with their skis and their boots, clunky as it is, and they go skiing. If you had it built into our service, and I know Harold's done with mine, you could go to the beach. And I think as a destination like a Walmart, you engage a whole other level of the public that we don't engage today because we don't have that as a system. Anyway, thanks for listening. Harold, I'm sorry. It's going to be my turn, even though your lights are. Let's not forget about one of the epic fails that I did as a commissioner. A no-brainer. And maybe if Ash was our director then, we'd have a little more whatever than we had. But everybody remembers we added a temporary route for a year from Indiantown. Myself and a number of my compadres in South County that are in the agriculture industry, whether it be landscape, nursery, farming, or golf course, identified a hundred jobs that came out of Indiantown. And everything that we heard from Indiantown was that we have unemployment because these people don't have transportation. A-duh. We do two routes in the morning, two routes in the evening. We did it for a whole year, and we got zip. The dynamics of Indiantown has completely changed, or the demographics of Indiantown has completely changed even further because now with their economic development, those folks ain't leaving Indiantown. My company right now employs 25 to 27 guys that come from Okeechobee. They have over an hour, one-way trip. They bought some old piece of junk, which I worry about every day, a school bus that my mechanic usually every evening has to help them jump off to get back to Okeechobee. So, you know, having housing, I mean, we've got looking at $32 a ride right now. I just did Uber the other night from Fort Lauderdale back home. I don't do Uber very often, but I would think that we could give everybody in Martin County a thing for Uber, and we'd be saving money, and we'd sell all our buses. You know, and I tell you what, my constituents that see those empty buses riding by every day, they'd be happy with that. So unless we can figure out how to do a much quicker, much more effective transit system in Martin County, our constituents are about fed up with it. And, Doug, I see the teeth of the Taxpayers Association biting down on us right now, and we've got to do something drastic. I'm sorry. Okay, your turn. Commissioner Heddington. I agree wholeheartedly with what you just said and most of your comments. I think microtransit is probably the conversation we need to be having now for the future. And you mentioned, I was wondering if you were going to mention your route from Indiantown to Hope Sound. And part of the problem, first of all, let me compliment you, too. You have done, your team has done a heck of a job of doing public involvement. Because at the beginning of this years ago, there was only a person or two weighing in, seven, eight, nine people weighing in. And you really did an amazing job of going out on the street and collecting the data. So I must compliment you because that's the first step is to get the data. And if I look and I ask you in this one of your interviews, the people that I think are going to be needing transportation the most are labor force. And then what you see now, seniors cannot afford to hang on to their cars. Maybe their vision, you know, there are certain reasons they're letting go. Car insurance, the expense of vehicles, they're needing to ride more. And I know people that do not, you know, as crazy as it seems, have these smartphones. It's, you know, hard for them to get on the app. They want to get on, figure out where to go, pay cash. And, you know, again, the labor force doesn't trust this. If I put in right now, I'm going to leave from here, my location, go to Hope Sound Library, it's going to take me an hour and 21 minutes once I get on the bus. So I think microtransit is the way of the future, and we should really be starting to have that conversation now. And I hesitate, as I said at the MPO, to even in the reallocate resources, which is probably the plan that we would hear that we're going to be on for now and encouraging microtransit, adding 40 stops. I don't know how we do that without adding additional expense, and I think some stops should be looked at to see if they're not efficient. I have a, this drives me crazy in my district every time I pull behind it, heading north on US 1, going, there's a bus stop just at the corner, the east, northwest, the northeast corner of Indian Street and Federal Highway. And if you're stopped at that traffic light, that bus will stop there, and if you're in the far right-hand lane, on the other side of it, you're stopped at the light, and you can't go through the light. It seems like the most illogical place in the whole world to have a bus stop. So I would think that we would analyze some of those before we add 40 stops, and I think whatever we need to do to start that microtransit conversation now, that's what our, I think, the future of our transportation is going to be. Mr. Hurt. Yeah, I agree with all the remarks that have been made. Who's going to be the final decision-maker for where we continue to spend money, how we continue to plan for transit, how we are going to transform our transit into something modern and usable? You all are. Is it going to be the BCC? Yeah, yeah, the Board of County Commissioners. Not the NPO. No, no, no, the BOCC. The NPO did this for the Transit Division, for the Board of County Commissioners. So this is a guide that offers some scenarios, and like Jeff said, you know, within the next five years, if you all, you know, want to move ahead with some of these items or not move ahead, you know, that's up to you. It's certainly the final decision. But what this document does is continue the state grant funds. It meets the requirement for the state grant funds to come from the state and provides what the state wants as a major update. And like I said, the annual report or the minor updates between now and the next one, that's when you all decide whether you want to move ahead with microtransit, whether you want to do a study about the bus stops or whatever you all want to do. So this is just offering scenarios, giving our environment and the data right now and public involvement right now. Thanks. Commissioner Smith. That's a wrap. Listening to other board members, is there anything preventing us from approving this but also adding to this the requirement or the idea of going out for an RFQ for microtransit today? I think that's part of it. I would just say, if you look at the fourth item starting right away, to start scoping microtransit. But, Jeff, I'm going past scoping. Okay. Maybe that's what that means. I'm thinking scoping means a study. I'm saying go out to bid for qualifications to see what the three or four of the industry reply as. Because if they come back and it says, you know what, we can do this for $16 a trip, and we're spending $23 a trip now. We could cut everything we're doing and go into that mode of delivery, and Palm City automatically gets service. I mean, that's how I'm processing all this. You know, I used the term invitation to bid, and I used to work for the DOT, and when there was something unique and complex that you couldn't sit down and write an RFQ, you actually put out an invitation to bid, invite them to come, and share with you their ideas how to move forward and then do an RFQ. But we are proposing you think about it, plan for it, right away. So I'll try to land, Mr. Chair. I would move approval of the implementation plan of the 2025-2034 plan with the notation that as one of the first components of this scoping transit layout here is to do exactly just that, is to go out and ask the industry to, what was the term you used? Invitation to bid. Invitation to bid. I would request, could that, if y'all don't mind, could that be two different motions just because by approving the TDP, that shows the state that the Board of County Commissioners approved the TDP, so we're moving ahead, so we'll get the grant funds. And then if that, the scope for the microtransit, if that could be a separate motion, that, I mean, I think it would just to be more clear for the state to have. The only question, Beth, I added is because it's on your chart there, and it's included. Yeah, and so that means y'all did the, y'all wanted to move ahead with the first, one of the first recommendations of the TDP. I mean, that would just, would be my request. So should I remove it from the chart? No, no, no. If you can just make it two separate motions, if that's okay. That would just be in my comfort zone, but y'all do whatever you want to. What I don't understand, if this conversation hadn't happened, and I just said move staff's recommendation, right, or the consultant's recommendation, included in that, in phase one, is scoping of that process. Okay, that's fine. But if you're going to have heartburn, I don't want you to have heartburn. Thank you. I'll pull out and make that a separate motion. So I would approve staff's recommendation as submitted, and then I'll make a second recommendation. Okay. Can you pause there? I think Mr. Donaldson would like to say something. No, just in relationship to the scoping is a separate item that we would bring back. I just want to remind you all that, you know, we provide a match to the federal funds, and there's a lot of rules that come to that. So what portion we go with microtransit and how we, you know, change the system, we'll bring back to you on those different options. So in relationship to how you provide ADA services, those that are, you know, wheelchair and other bound, you know, if you only spend your own money, you can do whatever you want. If you want to have access to state and federal funds, you have to do it a different way, and that's all I just wanted to remind you. May I add to that? Because this is a very, very important point. So we showed a transformational network that had TNCs, but you maintain some trunk line transit services. You need to have some guardrails because if you're offering free Uber rides or a $10 subsidy, you're going to have all of the general public using it, and you're going to blow your budget in a few months. If somehow it's, well, just think about it, because if you can use it to feed into the transit system, you'll still be able to get your federal and state dollars. So it's a balancing act. If I may also add, if all fixed route services and the county would have to return the remaining federal share of the heavy-duty buses, which as of today is roughly $2 million. And I think I did this calculation during our MPO meeting. If you were to take the $2 million, if you had $3 million to spend, right, how many rides, if they come back and tell us it's $15 a ride for Uber and we're free, 15 into $3 million goes how many times? Quite a bit. I can figure that out for you if you'd like. 200,000. 200,000 rides. Today, on our bus system, we're doing 102,000 rides, and the public doesn't get to go to immediately where they want to get to and when they want to go to. I mean, Jeff, I've thought about it. I know you're cautioning us to think about it. You'll get more than 200,000 requests. 10,000 people ride the Uber once a week is $520,000. And, you know, if that's so, when you start looking at what does a parking space in downtown Stewart cost? What is the cost of having an extra 30,000 cars a day on the road that if you're supplanting it with something else, are we nixing it down? I mean, you know. A lot to think about. I am. Have. Go ahead. No, no, I just wanted to, because that's why it's maybe a good idea to have a separate, you know, have the motion to approve the TDP as one motion so we can confirm, you know, we can submit this document to the state to make sure we get the grant funds and then have a second motion where we can talk more about. I translated to you and said yes. Okay. Okay, thank you. Commissioner Hurt. Yeah, I just wanted to exercise caution also. When I see reticent people like Jim Gordon and Don Donaldson pushing their buttons frantically coming up to the mic, I know that we're in trouble. We have some existing contracts. We have existing obligations to the state. We have existing obligations to the federal government, and we do not want to blow those up. So we need to proceed. I agree. We need to take a different direction, but we need to do it mindfully, knowing that we need to satisfy the requirements of all of our partners because we rely upon them for all of the funding. Jim, I volunteer to use Palm City as a beta test. Beth, do you have a light? Oh, okay. All right. Oh, I'm sorry. Sorry. I just wanted to bring up that the funding we currently use to comprise the $3 million includes federal, which is a little over half, state, which is about half of what's left, and then local funds. If we went to a different method of delivering this service with the TNCs, you're not going to get the federal and the state funding, or you might get a reduced amount of that funding, and you're going to be floating it all locally, which is fine. So what I would propose is we roll it out in a smaller area to implement it and then see how it works before we consider major changes to the system. Look at lower-performing routes, perhaps, or the flex route might be an area that we might be able to implement it, and then see how it works and then report back to the board with those findings. Commissioner Smith, the plane was supposed to be on the ground. Well, Jim, I agree with everything you just said. I think when it comes to the federal funding and state funding, it's times like this that everybody is very comfortable in their box, but the world has moved on regardless of where we are comfortable in our box. The world is moving on to the point where they have spent millions of dollars with federal funding. I have no doubt at airports modifying every single access point at an airport you can modify because they physically couldn't manage the three different types of delivery in those pickup-drop-off areas. The cautiousness, I agree with all of it, but if we don't push and we don't ask our federal partners and state funding partners to, if the contrary happens and we actually increase ridership, I somehow think that translates to those funding partners, and you said it in your report, we get more money if we increase ridership on the bus system. Okay. Will we get more money if we increase public ridership in a microtransit fashion? It's just a different vehicle that delivers the service. That's all. Anyway, I've separated the motion. It got a second, and I'll come back with a second. Who seconded it? I was the second. Okay. What's the first motion? Just to approve the plan as presented. Okay. We have a motion by Commissioner Smith, seconded by Commissioner Campy. All in favor? Aye. All opposed? Motion carries unanimously. Commissioner Smith. I would move that we ask our staff and consultants to prepare a what? Invitation to bid. An invitation. It might also be called an industry forum, but depending on, but anyway, the thought is there. Industry forum invitation to bid and to at least offer from Jim's comments, whether we target it to a smaller area as a pilot, maybe that's Palm City, or we look at some areas of convenience that make the most sense, that just come back to us with those options so that we can see what best fits and how maybe the industry would best respond. I second that. Okay. We have a motion by Commissioner Smith, seconded by Commissioner Hetherington, Commissioner Hurt. Just, Mr. Gordon, Ms. Beltran, are you comfortable with this? What? Well, the NPO is responsible for the first motion, which was the approved, the TDP, so I'm comfortable with that. Okay. Mr. Gordon? Yes, I'm comfortable with it. We'll bring it back to the board with some data to support, you know, the route that we're going once we start having those conversations. Okay. All in favor? Aye. Aye. All opposed? Motion carries unanimously. Mr. Abate, I was trying to squeeze you in, but you're out. We're going to break for lunch and see you at 1.30. Welcome back to our Board of County Commission meeting. Mr. Abate, Department No. 5, Discussion Reversible Nine-Hole Golf Course at the Selfish Sands. Mr. Abate, I'm actually looking forward to understanding what you all are talking about, irrigating a nine-hole. You've got to irrigate it whether you're going one way or the other way, so this is one item I don't necessarily understand. So, Kevin Abate, Parks and Recreation Director. Before we get started, I do want to just kind of give you kind of a state of the golf course, where we are today. As you know, this board unanimously voted to implement a pretty aggressive plan to put the golf course on the map of the sport of golf in this county. And, you know, we've been, over the last few years, we've been very, very successful. If you kind of take you back down memory lane a little bit, you know, the golf course was established in 1925, so we'll hit our 100 years next year. And, unfortunately, during the pandemic, we came up with a program. And at that time in our fiscal year, 21, our budget at subsidy for that golf course, our tax subsidy, was $763,000. And it was growing. And as a matter of fact, when we went under construction, it grew up more than that, over to a million dollars. So, since then, we've implemented all the strategies and programs from the hitting bays to the restaurant to the reversible nine to the technology at the driving range. You know, just this past year, we've had some great successes. We hit 2.3 million golf balls at the driving range and hitting bays, excluding the months of June, July, and August when we were closed. And to date, we've sold almost 600 summer members, which is something new we implemented last year. And I'm happy to report, too, that our revenue is at 2.5 million, and our net operating fiscal year-to-date revenue for the entire facility is $809,000 in net revenue. Now, we know that that will go down some during the summer, but we've had some operational strategies to take maintenance in-house and reduce some costs on maintenance plans. But I do want to, again, thank you for, you know, approving the vision of this community and then my team, more importantly, for implementing the entire plan, which will segue nicely into the reversible nine. And so we believe that we've met our goal, which was to grow the game of golf in the county through all generations. That was kind of our common goal through all the – whether you – I was just at the hitting base, and there was a two-year-old hitting on the mats today, and a bar full of people just played golf afterwards. It was wonderful to see what has happened over the last few years. So I'll get into the presentation here to talk about the reversible nine-hole golf course, some of our successes and our challenges. So you'll see this is an aerial photo of the golf course. For those in the audience that don't understand what a reversible nine-hole course is, we created something that has what I call very family-friendly tee boxes. There are five tee boxes per hole, and we have 11 greens. So when we flip the course, one hole is open, and we use that for other activities like short-game areas. So the course is surrounded by a 13-acre driving range that's powered by a top tracer. And then you'll see the rounds of golf are right around – right now we're averaging about 24,000 rounds of golf of nine-hole rounds on the nine-hole course. Of course, we've implemented the strategies of typical greens and environmentally-friendly landscaping, removed all these exotics. And to kind of give you some understanding, we have two directions the course can be played in. You can play it in the clockwise direction or the counterclockwise direction. When we first opened up the course, we were changing the course biweekly. And then after the first year, it became very, very expensive because every time that you take a course and you flip it in the opposite direction, you have to take five tee boxes and, you know, 10 tees times nine holes, 90 tees, move them in different directions, remove all the cups and the flags. And so it became complicated, so we went to monthly. We were getting lots of complaints about constantly flipping it because the golf cart technology wasn't precise at that time. But through the years, we got a lot better. So our goal with flipping it monthly at that time was just to – last year before this season was to focus on really good customer service was our goal because we were getting lots of complaints about people getting lost and which way are we going today. So this past season, we kept the reverse ball nine in the current direction, which you'll see here in the Sands Black direction. So you'll see the star here on the right-hand side of the screen. It starts at the pro shop where the carts are staged, and it loops around really nicely, kind of like it did at the last 99 years when the course has always been going in that direction. So it's a very easy route. And then throughout the last few years, we've had some lessons learned for the golf course in the Sands Black direction, which is clockwise. It's a simpler pattern for flow. It did fortunately create a new short game experience for some golfers where you can hit a ball 70 or 80 yards in. So that was a free service that we provided over the last four or five months that the golfers really enjoyed. It does require less signage, and it created an instructional hole for the open hole behind the driving range. And then, of course, it's closer to the cart staging. And then actually, because we didn't flip it during season and with the intention of flipping it after season, we didn't get any complaints. So it was nice. So the Sands Black course is a nice course. And, of course, the Sands Gold course, which is counterclockwise, starts on the other side of the driving range. So it's a little further away. And then over here on the top left corner, you can kind of see it kind of goes across the green. It gets a little bit more complicated. And our golf course technology was we have to put out about an additional 30 signs for some routing. And so we did that many, many times, of course, in the past year. But it does become a little bit more complicated. So we had some lesson learned for the Gold course. One of them is the Gold direction does provide a great new experience. And that's kind of what we came up during some of the program goals when I presented to the board. It's having Florida's only reversible nine hole course. I think it's very important to always maintain the fact that we have something that we can flip when we need to. And it's super, super, super important. And it does remove, of course, a new game, a new short game area that we discovered. But it does keep a short chipping and pitching area on the open tee box in the opposite direction, the open green. I'm sorry. So, again, it does require, as I said earlier, additional signage. And, again, on holes three, four, and five, back to the other screen, it can be a little confusing. But with good signage, we believe that we can adequately manage the course. And then, of course, we believe because we hear from customers that some folks don't like to go in the gold direction and some folks don't like to go in the black direction. So there may or may not be a slight decrease in the rounds of golf. We're not too sure if that will happen. So concerns and considerations, obviously, labor costs every time we flip a course becomes expensive because we're replacing all the tee markers. As I said earlier, we install signage and new flags. And then we also, flipping it often also has some concerns with liability because some golfers will, if there's not a starter or a ranger that day, they may go off in the opposite direction if you're flipping it very often. And then limiting flipping the course does, of course, reduce complaints. And then, of course, the gold and black course, providing a limited schedule, I think, would be a good approach. We've heard from some of our golfers wondering, are you going to flip it? And our intention was to flip it in May until this item. I'll have a recommendation coming up to look at doing it in June. I believe there's value in flipping it, but I believe that it should be flipped in a very limited manner. But overall, the reversible nine has lived up to its expectations over the last few years in the community. So real simple, relative to the nine-hole course, the black course, you know, I commit with a recommended schedule for the board to consider so that the community will know this is how much we'd like to flip the course. Of course, we can do it more or less or not, but there is value in having a course that you can flip in both directions. So that's my short presentation. So if you have any questions on the reversible nine, I'd be happy to answer them. End of presentation. I thought this was about irrigation. I don't know how we got. Anyway, go ahead. So, commissioners, I will say, because we talked last meeting about bringing this presentation, and I think the way it started was, as District 2 commissioner, I was getting a lot of calls from different constituents, golfers, residents, some of them that were saying, when are you going to flip the course? Two, actually, I was getting two phone calls. One was the monstrosity sign that we met out there that is on St. Lucie. Some neighbors are not real happy with the sign being twice as tall as their wall, but that's how it started. Then the conversation of when are you going to flip it? So I said to Mr. Abate, hey, I'm getting phone calls. When are we going to flip the course? I didn't know if we flipped it weekly, monthly, every three months. So he got back to me and said, okay, well, we're going to flip the course. There was no time. So I was surprised when Commissioner Hurd said we shouldn't flip the course on May 1st as directed because of irrigation concerns. And I think that there is some will by whether it be Parks Department or what have you to not reverse it or some golfers to not reverse it. I have heard the same things that some people like the short game. So my whole issue was when you say you're not going to do something, you need to come back and be transparent about it and say we touted this as one of a kind. We spend a lot of money on architects and design and RFPs for people to design this. So we just have to explain to the residents what we're doing and why we're doing it and how we're using their tax dollars. And I don't care. I've played it a number of times. And I don't care if it's played one way or the other. I enjoy it. But I think in all transparency, it has to be discussed. And you have to say why. And I think that this was sort of a maneuver to not reverse it. And, again, I take staff's recommendation because if it didn't work out like you originally said, then by all means, maybe there's a better way to do it. Be transparent. Say why you're doing it. And I think we will all be on the same page if the transparency happens. Can somebody explain to me what irrigation has to do with this? Nothing. Or was I asleep at the switch last week? In my opinion, irrigation didn't have anything to do with it. It just – there was some deadline that some – I don't know what the May 1st deadline is, but the deadline was determined that it had to be flipped by May 1st. And I think that maybe staff wanted more time to talk to the commissioners about it. Commissioner Hurt. Yeah, I brought this up last week because I am at the golf course frequently. And I play the golf course frequently. And it's – we are in a drought. And the – therefore, the maintenance, landscaping maintenance crews were – we were playing the black course. So they were irrigating and feeding the black course to make it as playable as possible because it is dry out there. And they weren't giving the same level of care. And they weren't giving the same level of care to the gold course, which is perfectly understandable because no one was playing the gold course. So my impression was that it was inadvisable to switch that quickly without giving the greenskeepers, the superintendent, the opportunity to prepare the gold course to be playable. That was what the whole thing was about. It wasn't about some political maneuvering. It was about there was a drought and the course was brown. And we were going to – if we switched over without giving the superintendent some preparation, that we were going to lose customers and satisfaction. And we definitely don't want to lose either of those things. So the holes that are not used going one way or the other way are not irrigated during the time of their dormancy of use? The level of maintenance – so everything is irrigated. Its system is a whole system. So the course is all irrigated. The level of maintenance on the fairways and greens on the open holes that were not being used are not maintained. We're not cutting the greens, for example, every day. But irrigating. Yeah. But we've been struggling for water for the last 90 days. So, I mean, we obviously – I think the day of the – when Commissioner Hurd made the comment actually poured five inches the next morning. So we got a little bit of a relief. So – but we're – like I said, we're prepared to move the course on June the 1st. You know, we'll get some rain this week. The team will be ready. And the course will improve – the conditions of the reversible night going in the goal direction will improve over the next three or four months as we play. Okay. Commissioner Smith. That was sort of like the question I was going to ask. I'm just sort of confused that the black course is the gold course or just the other way? Correct. But there are 11 greens and two are always open. Not in use. Not in use. Okay. Just curious why? Because when you flip the course, the greens on the opposite times that you're flipping them become a practice facility. So we have open greens that allow for it to be reversible. You can't flip it nine for nine. You have to have an open green available. And that was created that way and designed that way so that the ninth hole of either direction can be played for it as a short game area. And that's still the case today. They can be played as a short game area. It is in use. Pardon me? It is in use. But not for putting. So what happens is on the current direction we're in now on nine black, there's just dimples all over the course. So we'd have to give itself, you know, a few weeks to roll those greens and, you know what I mean, and sand them. So, correct. So I'm sure there's an obvious answer to my next question. Why don't we just maintain them all the same? Well, you know, so we do, but we don't have to. So if we have an open green or open fairways that are not in play, we're not going to spend all of our resources and time. We're going to spend all of our resources and time on the actual nine holes and fairways and bunkers that are in play. And then when we flip the course, we would focus our efforts on those two open greens that were not in play that will be in play. How long does that take to get them into it? I think it depends, you know, with our, I'd have to talk to our superintendent, but we gave him, we gave him a few weeks. Of course, it didn't rain at all. He was out concerned about rain, but we gave him a few weeks to get ready for it, for May 1st. I think that would be, I sort of understand the logic, but at the same time, from an appearance, from a visual, I'm thinking if we're in the black with revenue, right, I wouldn't let the maintenance of something go until we switch, I think I would keep everything at a constant. That's just me. And I'm sure you have a much better explanation, and when we go see it, maybe it'll all make much more sense. But I'm just processing this by going, okay, how much more could it cost to manage two? And in the grand scheme of the whole thing, the brilliance of this nine hole was to eliminate nine holes altogether, which should have shaved off a whole bunch of maintenance of the other nine that we did away with. Correct. And we did that, and we created these waste bunkers for non-irrigation. You know, one of the things we did, and while you said that, we got rid of our old contractor, and we took it over. We were a little upset that on one of the fairways, they let it go completely. They stopped mowing it. We didn't know it was happening. They just stopped mowing it. They thought, well, you're not flipping the course for another couple months, and it was pretty upsetting that they did that because we always want to be able to flip the course. We were never told them to stop doing the maintenance. So we actually had to get that back over a period of time. And then the other thing on the water too, Kevin, I'm just trying to understand. So we are tapped into Willoughby Creek's western discharge from the school board property area, right? Yeah, so the flow into Willoughby Creek, we're able to divert the water to the blue course if we need to. But the black and gold, we can't? No, the blue course is on an island, and so we are actually working on a purchase order now because our permit expires with South Florida Water Management District in 2025. And part of one of the goals of this project is to ultimately evaluate, because IQ Water is close by on Dixie Highway, whether or not we need to move to IQ Water. But we are evaluating connecting all the lakes in the courses so we can lower the number of wells that we have on the course. So we're doing a study now with a vendor that's approved from South Florida Water Management to undertake our concerns with water. So I didn't know that before. That's great. I was under the assumption, falsely, because I just bought it. I thought it was all tied together. And if it's not, and if you need encouragement to do so, then do so, I think. Because, I mean, the idea, which I thought was brilliant from the inception of tying it into Willoughby Creek, was that we were consuming excess water we didn't want to put in the estuary anyway. And if that requires us to do something above and beyond to tie it all together and have all the lakes tied together, I'm 100% supportive of that. It is a board goal to evaluate IQ Water. There was a plan that's about 10 years old that the City of Stewart presented to us on that. And whether or not we're going to go that route or we're going to just use water, because the water from the STA just can't fully support water in the golf course. It does assist. But having water from rainfall or down at our deep wells in the aquifer and the combination of what we can and can't do will be dictated probably by the state based on our consumptive use permit. Again, that's something that I think as a board, if it requires something extraordinary with the district or some conversation for us to have, now knowing that, I would certainly have that conversation with Mr. Bartlett. Like give us, we're trying to do the right thing. We're trying to consume water we don't want to put in the estuary. Give us the flexibility to do as much as possible, I think. That process is starting now. Thank you. I honestly thought when we were sold this that that was the whole concept of us using Willoughby Creek potentially polluted water for irrigation water that actually brought in nitrogen that we wouldn't have to fertilize. I mean, the whole thing. And if now we're saying this new part of the golf course isn't even connected to that, it is troublesome because that. So Willoughby Creek was obviously created much long after the blue course was designed. There just happened to be a transfer pipe, if you will, gravity fed to one of the lakes on the blue course. And when the Willoughby Creek was built in design, we realized it was there. We were able to close one of the weirs off with plywood and direct water back to the course during these times of years when we need it. And so we're able to use that stormwater runoff to irrigate the blue course. The other troublesome statement for me, being in the business, not necessarily a golf course maintenance business, but being in the landscape maintenance business, is the idea of being able to, just because a particular area is not being used by the client, that we're going to somehow do less of a standard level of maintenance. I've found that to be catastrophic in my business. Once I've watched my competitors go down because of that, I cannot wrap my head around that. So that is something that we're going to have to agree to disagree on. But anyway, Commissioner Hurd. We agree. That's why we got rid of our maintenance people and took it over. And it's looking much, much better. Also, too, because what I didn't hear in all of this was that from a policy perspective, take care of it all year long, all of it. I think that's what Harold just said. Absolutely. Whatever was the transition between whether it was the contractor or us just saying we have two holes that aren't going to be used as much, just maintain it all the same. Well, also, the consumptive use permit that we have now is an old one. It was, that permit was issued before the golf course was redesigned. Correct. So that's another thing that we're fixing. Correct. It was based on 36 holes of irrigated water, and we don't have that anymore. So where are we going with this? What do we want to provide staff direction on recommendation schedule for the reverse? Oh, I'm sorry. I see a light here. Commissioner Smith. You want a motion of some sort? So really what I wanted to do today was really get some direction. I know that, listen, the reversible nine, of course, has merit. I believe we need to flip it minimally at least once a year. I kind of went to the points of the troubles of when we financially, what it costs to flip it. My goal for this project is to not use a tax subsidy. That's my goal. And so however operationally and the hundreds of decisions that are made throughout the years, but I like the public kind of, we just developed a new schedule that's going to launch next week on our website for the golf course. And it'd be nice to have them log on and know when we're flipping the course as a kind of a standard schedule. If it needs to change, I'll come back and ask. But that's really the intent of today. So I would move a couple of things. One, that we entrust the decision-making of the reversible timelines to the Parks Department to manage that in the most appropriate way that makes the most sense for the public to understand, but to use from the cost of running it. It's part one. Part two, that whatever, if there was any confusion relative to how we maintain the entire course, that the entire course gets maintained at the same level of care, regardless of whether it's used or not used. Number three, that as Sarah just said, and I don't know what the status is, but are we in the process of applying for a new consumptive use permit or? Yes, so we are hiring a consultant that's approved by South Florida Water Management to take us through that process. And that we further acknowledge and support the concept of redoing the consumptive use permit to fit the needs of the golf course as it is today versus it being 20 years ago on a 36-hole course, whatever that means, Kevin. And the fourth part of that would be, and that may be in the consumptive use permit discussion or it may be a separate issue, but that we give the Parks Department the direction, the authority, the budget to tie in all of the lakes and all of the connections so that there is the option to use Willoughby Creek water. The IQ water is another discussion, I think, relative to the City of Stewart, but that we give ourselves the most flexibility in operating the entire system as possible. Commissioner Hillington. I agree with the first part of what you said, that Parks Department should have some kind of, you should manage the course. Just make it advisable to the public and transparent on how and when. We shouldn't be getting a lot of phone calls on when and what, and nobody knows the answer. So we have a motion. Do we have anybody a second or any other input? I think we're proceeding with these things anyway. Yeah, I just, I don't want to talk. My point of making a motion, there are times where we say things here and it doesn't necessarily get captured in that way. If I left something out or if I added too much, I just, I want Kevin to have the most language support of the board he needs. Not that he didn't hear it, but in writing a motion that everybody else surrounding this process understands. The district understands what we just did. Anybody else has got anything to do permitting wise. That's why I would make a motion to do that. Y'all don't want to do it. That's fine. Commissioner Campy. Mr. Robote, are you comfortable with Commissioner Smith's motion? I am. Second. Okay. We have a motion by Commissioner Smith, seconded by Commissioner Campy. All in favor? Aye. All opposed? Motion carries unanimously. Oh, Commissioner Hetherington. Maybe don't go anywhere. So we were, while you're sitting there, we were going to have an agenda item come back at the beginning of the year, speaking of the golf course, to talk about the clubhouse and it's currently being run by Parks and Rec. So that was supposed to come back January, February-ish. When is that agenda item coming before us? We issued a memo to the board as an update. When we have a one-year kind of here's where we wind up financially. And part of the, just to let you know, part of the $809,000, $189,000 of that net profit is at the Hitting Bays and Restaurant, your fiscal year to date today. So as we kind of, like, finish the last few months as we get in, because we opened in August of last year, I think we need to, as we said, I think last year during the summers, we need a full year under our belt to understand what we're dealing with. And as we move through summer, we're going to know a lot more about whether or not this is something that we need to outsource. Obviously, that'll be a board decision, but we talked about this last year as having one full year under our belt and then bring it back. I thought the direction of the board was to come back at the beginning of the year. So maybe in the future, you're right, Commissioner Smith, motions need to be made. I thought the direction of the board was to come back in the beginning of the year with an agenda item that talks about putting together an RFP and a discussion item for the request for proposal for another vendor to run the clubhouse. Commissioner, you're correct, and that falls on me, that the staff did request that we wait a year. The memo was issued in March to give you a heads-up where we're at. If the board wants the agenda right away, we can do that. But it was my direction to staff to allow them to continue on with just the update to the memo, did not bring it back to the board. So it's the pleasure of the board if you want to put this on the agenda right away or, as the parks director suggested, waiting for one year. Mr. Campy. Thank you for that, Mr. Donaldson. I think I'm trying to think back to that conversation. If I were to guess, it was one year, not the beginning of the year. However, I was with Commissioner Hetherington on the fact that with all due respect to your first-rate team, there are certain facilities that I think are appropriate that remain in-house from a concession point of view, the swimming, the selfish splash and the beaches, the issue with the golf course, I think, which was the initial recommendation, was that it would go to an outside vendor. And to remind the public only one person applied to that, and that person was selected, and that situation sort of caved in on itself. But it was a unique situation because I had been to those hitting bays a couple of different times, and if you didn't know the behind-the-scenes from the public's point of view, it looked like it was working real well. The quality of the food and the quality of the service, at least in my perspective, was very good. Of course, they didn't want to pay their rent. They had a lot of things happening behind the scenes. So you had asked to have your staff come in, which they did an excellent job, and I've seen the photographs. It was so disappointing in such a short period of time to go from a brand-new facility with all brand-new equipment and make it look like it was 25 years old. And your team had to go in there and handle all sorts of disgusting things and get it back going. I think there is times where it's, in my opinion, appropriate that we keep certain smaller-scale facilities in-house. That particular one, I was not opposed to having go out to the public. But if you want, we have minutes of all of these. We have agendas and video. We could find out specifically what it was. I'm only guessing that it was a year, and I would also be interested in at least having the opportunity for an outside source to bid on the management of that specific portion. Because I'll tell you, I've had golf course operators reach out to me and ask me, could they have an opportunity to do that? Now, asking and then actually going through the process of doing it, maybe we end up in the same situation where no one applies to do it or no one is qualified to do it, we've learned some lessons. I think one of the downsides of not getting more qualified people to do it was what your original vision was for a municipal course was quite ingenious. There were not a lot of hitting bays with top tracer golf technology handled at municipal courses. That was much more of a private sector thing. I've been several times while your team has been handling it, and it's well done. So I just think that we owe it to the private sector of our community to at least have an opportunity to compete. Maybe three of us don't agree with that, but that being the case, whatever the date was, at the very least we should just put something out there to see if there's interest. If there's not, then we know that we have a terrific plan in place to handle it. But I think that particular location lends itself to being handled at the private sector. Commissioner Smith. Yeah, for me, it's very simple. The most important piece for me of this is our constituents that use the course. And I hear time and time again from, I heard just somebody literally last week at lunch come up to me, didn't know them, and they said, I just want to tell you how fantastic Sailfish Sands is and all aspects of it. And I said, oh, great, thank you very much. So we can say how important it is for someone else to run it or do so, but at the end of the day, it's our constituency that uses it. It is a public golf course, and it is something that represents our brand here in Martin County. And the feedback I get from the user group is that they're very happy with it. And I would, for one, not want to mess with that and go backwards, that's for sure. Commissioner Hurd. I agree, Commissioner Smith. It's, I can tell you from experience, it's very, very well run. It's not broken. It doesn't need fixing. It's fixed now. Go ahead. I'll just give my final word. First of all, I didn't get a memo to the board, so I guess that didn't land on my desk. But secondly, the constituents, who I agree, many of them are happy, they don't get memos to the board either. And when they ask questions, someone needs to have an answer for them just in the name of transparency. Whether it's broken or it's not, it wasn't originally intended. We had a public conversation, whether we were going a different direction, and just sweeping it under the rug doesn't do anybody any good. We either talk about it in public and make a decision, or it just doesn't simply disappear. So, in all transparency, I think the memo to the board was not the right strategy. It was to have this conversation and let the public know what we were going to do with it. My recollection is that we were going to run this operation ourselves for a year's time to have historical knowledge of how to design an RFP, what works, what doesn't work, experimenting with our own personnel. Now, I did get the memo, and I did think that in August we were going to have an agenda item. Am I missing something? But anyway, so, but having the experience that we had, the whole idea was for us to run it, because we're doing it very successfully at the beaches, and on a much larger scale for a year period of time. So, we've gone through the gravy time, right? So, now we've got to go through the lean time. So, this is going to tell the tale. This is actually the most important time that the county should be running it from now until August, maybe even into September, because that's the lean time. So, we've got to know how that we are going to lean ourselves down to survive without an additional, you know, and keeping the profitability, let's call it, of where we're at. I get it, but you're not going to put a high-end restaurant in that's not going to survive during the – I get it. Yeah. So, anyway, that was my – yes, sir. To your point, so, last year at this time, we were closed. The old tenant left after Mother's Day, and we were closed all the way through August. So, we have no historical knowledge on how well the facility will perform. We're going to learn a lot in three months. Like I said, we're up, you know, $199,000 in net revenue, but that can erode away very quickly. Obviously, we are lean there. We have no full-time employees working there as a strategy to not displace someone if we were to outsource a sink down the road. So, we have all contracted staff. So, we did as a strategy. And so, we will know a lot more after one year how the profitability of this facility in conjunction with the golf course. Okay. Thank you. Oh, thanks. Thank you. Okay. Next item is a workshop. Review the physical year 2025 tentative capital improvement plan. Murley and Shelby Baker. Good afternoon, commissioners. Again, my name is Shelby Baker. I'm your budget and CIP coordinator. Today, I'm going to talk to you about your physical year 2025 capital improvement plan. Today, we're going to – during this workshop, we're going to define the capital improvement plan, CIP project origination process, revenue planning and proposed expenditures, FY25 capital and CIP project highlights, FY25 CIP impact to the overall budget, and the board review of the CIP. So, what is a capital improvement plan? The CIP is a proposed schedule for the expenditure of funds to maintain, construct, and protect the county's infrastructure for over the next 10-year period. So, all revenues in the CIP are both to be required to be available and feasible. With approval of the CIP, the board acknowledges that projects contained in the plan represent a reasonable interpretation of the anticipated needs of the county. Projects contained in the first year of the FY25 CIP will be included in this year's FY25 budget. CIP projects originate from a variety of sources, such as master plans, levels of service, advisory boards, and infrastructure needs, and many more. The CIP is an ever-revolving process of identifying needs throughout the county. The capital improvement plan is an important step in the first step in our annual budget process. While most of our FY25 CIP projects is a continuation of previous year's projects, there are many projects worth noting this year, which will be discussed in further detail by the respective departments. Keep your eyes and ears open for details on the following projects, such as parks, we have Bojizak Park. Ecosystems is East Fork Creek Phase 2 STA, Coastal Stormwater Management. Stormwater, we have Hope Heights Outfall. Community Development, we have Old Palm City Place and El Camino Trail. And Utilities, we have Connect to Protect, Force Main, and Grindr Systems. Public Buildings, Fire Station Bay Door Replacement Program. And the Library, we have Peter and Julie Cummings Library Audiovisual. For the CIP this year, we're looking at a $500,000 increase over fiscal year 24 CIP. This slide represents the ad valorem impact per department, which totals to approximately $517,000 increase over fiscal year 24. Here's a snapshot of projects that are contributing to the FY25 impact. For Coastal, we have St. Louis St. Inlet Management of $500,000. Public Buildings, it's roughly $104,000 increase over several farms this year. And Roads, we have Heavy Equipment Replacement of $100,000. Resurfing and Neighborhood Restoration Program of $150,000. Library, again, we have the Peter and Julie Cummings Audiovisual of $61,000, and then the RFID replacement of $5,000. The county CIP is roughly 13% of the total countywide budget pie, which is still in the preparation and will be brought back to the board in July. And because CIP projects originally typically involve the outlay of substantial funds and numerous sources of revenue or industry provide financing over the duration of the project. Most capital funding sources are earmarked for particular purposes and cannot be transferred from one capital improvement plan to another. Such an example would be like an enterprise fee-based project, such as airport fees, couldn't be used on another project, such as utilities. Okay, that ends my part of the presentation. Does anyone have any questions for me before we get started on department highlight slides? Yes. Oh, sorry. Commissioner Spence. Thanks for that. Just, I think, for the public's consumption of all of this. So, this starts the CIP process today, right? Correct. Walk us through, or whoever, either one, whichever one wants to do it. So, when we approve the CIP, it will come back to us in June for our first- July. July, sorry, for our first budget hearing. And then we will have our second budget hearing- Mid-July, or September. September. Yep. We'll do our trim notice. We'll go out in July. August, the first week of August. August, sorry. And that will contain this, the CIP. It will contain the budget for the rest of the county, correct? Correct. And then it moves forward to October for- Fiscal year begin. Fiscal year begin. And then following October, projects will start happening that we approved in the CIP. Correct. Right. So, we will have had three hearings, including this one today, right? Correct. Four. Oh, yeah, four. Four. We will have had four public hearings on the adoption of components of our budget. Correct. Right? Correct. And so, in January, you might have something on the agenda in consent that is a $3 million project that we have fully vetted, discussed if somebody wanted to, at one of four or all of four- Correct. Hearings. Correct. And so, when that item moves forward from the administrator's discretion or your discretion to the administrator and to us, and there is an approval and consent for X amount of million dollars, that's not the first time we would have ever heard of that item. Correct. And there was a full disclosure, full transparency, as Commissioner Hetherington uses on a regular basis, thank you very much, of every item. I know this is sort of very simplistic, but I think there's sometimes a misunderstanding that when something shows up on our agenda that we never talked about it. So, maybe even in the reverse of that, does anything ever come to us as a capital improvement plan other than something that was an emergency that we didn't know about that we had to allocate funds to that was not put in to the program? So, Stephanie Murley, Director of OMB. So, the only time that occurs is if there is something catastrophic that happens, and you'll see those types of items with an amendment to the CIP on an OMB item or another agenda item in front of the board. Otherwise, these CIP sheets, as adopted, and then furthermore, within the budget document that you'll receive in July with the budget workshops and then the two subsequent public hearings, all of those expenditures are voted upon each time and reviewed. Are they still sent to the state? Oh, yes. It's a very stringent process, and we have to meet a lot of what's called truth and millage requirements in order to adopt the budget, which even includes our non-advalor funds, such as airport enterprise, utilities, building funds, and such. Thank you. I know that's probably very elementary for you all, but. It's okay. Yes. Commissioner Hurd. Yeah. Where's the Brightline Station in the CIP? The Brightline Station funding is still being worked out with the City of Stewart right now, but I plan on bringing that forward with our budget workshops once we have more concrete details on the funding plan. But shouldn't it be in our CIP, even if we're still working out funding sources? There are plenty of examples in here where it's unfunded, but we have the sheet, and we don't have a sheet, and we know we're going to be building a station. You can absolutely add it for our budget discussions. Okay. Let's add it today. Pause there for a second. Sure. We're not building it. We're paying for it. We have grants that I don't know about? Yeah. So at this time, you're correct. The money would be a transfer to the City or to Brightline directly, but you could include it in your CIP like we have done with DOT projects that are fully funded and built by them. So it could be a CIP project and sort of. The only nuance I say is that if, and Commissioner Hur, I'm not trying to pick straws here. I'm just saying, if you say we're building a station, we're not building it, to the best of my knowledge. The agreement is either the City of Stewart is contracting with Brightline or Brightline is contracting with the City of Stewart or however that relationship works. We are merely funding our piece of it to them, but we're not, we have no ownership over the building or over the construction design or anything like that. Mr. Stokas, you want to elicit a little more detail on where we are with the Brightline station? I was just kind of hoping to sit here. We are still working in negotiations with the City of Stewart as far as a transition of the property over to the city. Can you hold on just a minute? Our attorney, which I always, she's got something to say. I'm thinking that maybe she wanted to preempt. I just wanted to say that as we're dealing not just with our proposal to Brightline, which this board was aware of, and then Brightline's response to us, but also our settlement agreement. But factually, we are not building the station, nor are we going to own the station. We are going to contribute $15 million to Brightline and also to agree to convey certain pieces of property to them. That's the theory. We're in the process of amending our settlement agreement, drafting amendments to our settlement agreement, as well as developing a transfer agreement with the City of Stewart. All of those things will come to you, of course, for full discussion and a public hearing. And, Mr. Chair, the only thing I'd like to add is we are working with our county attorney's office. There are reverter clauses that are being built into all the agreements that if the said service suspends, it comes back to the county, and we're treating, I guess, from a staff's perspective, we are treating the $15 million contribution as almost like a reimbursable grant. So they have to perform and build the station. It's not like we're just going to hand the money over. There are many loops or hoops that we will have to jump through. Of course, we're going to come back to you with a separate board item that will lay all this out very, very systematically and simply, and I am working with our Office of Management and Budget on non-ad valorem sources in order to fund that. But Brightline's going to construct the station. Yes, Brightline will construct it. I think we had a discussion at a previous board meeting about we believe that we're following the Boca Raton model, which was where the City of Boca Raton gave money, and I believe land, and Brightline builds its own station. So Brightline's going to build this thing. Commissioner Hurd. But we have an obligation, we have an agreement that we are going to fund $15 million toward the station, and that's not in our CIP. I recognize that we hope to receive grants. I hope we receive grants too, but it needs to, the CIP needs to reflect the expenditures that we are expecting to spend this year, and there's nothing in the CIP that talks about spending $15 million for a Brightline station that we are, we've agreed to fund. Mr. Donaldson. I'll try to be brief. So if you were to include it in the CIP, it would either be added today or, as we've done in other projects, at the time you do the approval, Stephanie could put the CIP sheet when we actually have the full document together. The second piece is, since the station is not subject to our adequate public facilities ordinance in terms of a level of service item, it's as a planning tool or as the CIP reflecting construction, given the nature of the Brightline station not going to be owned and operated by the county, and we're not going to construct it, it's the pleasure of the board to either include it in the CIP or amend your budget through an item to have the budgeted agreement and to provide the City of Stewart funds. So it's really up to the pleasure of the board whether you add the CIP sheet as a yes or a no. And if you do want to add it, it could be either added as a placeholder today, or we could wait to add it when we do the agenda item that includes all the pertinent agreements. That's a placeholder. Commissioner Smith. My concern over the entire discussion is that the CIP, the budget, is already confusing enough to most people that don't deal with it on a regular day basis. Somebody that's new to the process picks up an approved CIP plan and says, oh, there's a station in the, there's a $15 million station in the budget. That must be the county doing that. That's where that, from my lens, that's where that leads us, that we will be criticized for building a station or not, you know, because it's in the CIP, whether it's understood or it's not, and this conversation will never be watched again. It'll only be somebody picks up the document and looks at the document and goes, oh, there's a sheet there for a station. I guess the county's funding and building a station. So I, you know, I asked for, I asked the question about how this CIP process works for a reason, because there are some generalized comments that are relatively raised about EIP not being transparent. It's very transparent. It's very public. And I'm just, I'm concerned that we do something like this, unless it's like incredibly boldly printed on the CIP sheet, you know, built, operated funding by others, contribution thereof, or something, you know, whatever. But if it's just a CIP sheet that has $15 million and they're going towards the station, I don't know that that will be helpful to people that don't necessarily follow the document that well. Commissioner Campy. Ms. Murley, as our financial budget director, what is your preference? What do you recommend to us? Do we put it in as a placeholder? I would prefer to just have it on hold until I have all the details to place with our July budget workshop. Thank you very much. Moving on. First department is airport. Thank you. Airport is looking at an additional $39,000 in additional capital enterprise fund capital needed for this fiscal year. Andrew McBean. We can go through. Good afternoon, commissioners. Andrew McBean, airport director. So Shelby mentioned we're looking at additional $39,841 in the fiscal year 25 capital improvement fund. That is coming from the airport fund, which is a fully funded self-enterprise fund. The current projects that we're doing at the airport are as follows. This is the airport operations center. That project is currently in construction around 80% complete. The taxiway alpha rehabilitation project is around 90% complete or 99% complete. The automated weather observation system is around 99% complete as well. We have two projects in design, which is the runway 1230 hold bay extension and the taxi lane Bravo rehabilitation design project. The upcoming projects that we're looking for in fiscal year 25 would be the taxiway alpha hold bay extension construction, the taxi lane Bravo rehabilitation construction, the runway 1230 EMAS field strength test, the airfield signage replacement construction, the runway 1230 PAPI replacement design, and some security enhancements at the airport. Are there any questions on the CIP for the airport as presented, commissioners? No. Thank you. Next is community redevelopment. Pardon? Do you want approvals after each item? However you would like to do so. Yep. I would move tentative approval of the airport CIP. Okay. We have a motion by Commissioner Smith, seconded by Commissioner Hetherington. All in favor? Aye. All opposed? Motion carries unanimously. Good afternoon. Susan Cora's manager, Office of Community Development. I'm going to start with what stayed the same in our department. We continue to focus on our infrastructure projects as we have really for the past seven years and on following our community redevelopment plans to the best of our ability. So what changed? We did get a new employee that was in our fiscal year 2024 budget and approved. Her name is Elise Rafa, and she'll be managing art in public places, historic preservation, and communications for all of our activities, CRA included. We've had some amazing big projects completed very recently. The RIO CRA bioswale is completed. The RIO CRA infill sewer is complete. And Old Palm City's CRA ripple stormwater eco-art project is also complete. So as you can see, that we are following the things that are staying the same, which is infrastructure, infrastructure, infrastructure. We're really very intent on getting all of our CRAs sewer and water, and we're very close to that. One of our other larger projects is infill sewer for RIO as well is complete. So now we are complete in Jensen, RIO, Golden Gate, with a very nice public works utilities county assist. And hopefully we will be in Old Palm City soon as well. So I like to say that we do infrastructure projects with a twist, a little CRA twist. We have also completed art in public places projects, two of them this year. One of them are the stainless steel pelican sculptures that you can see on the Manatee Bridge and Gateway down in Port Salerno. And another, which are an additional eight mosaic benches and bike racks in RIO that really do kind of give you a flavor of RIO. Every one of them is different and gives you another feel for what RIO is and what the history there is, et cetera. Current projects. Palm City Place and Patio is our latest addition to our beautiful redeveloped map road. The patio is going to serve as our town's, Palm City's town square. It's adjacent to a beautiful stormwater treatment area, and it's surrounded by walking trails. They'll have lots of community amenities, including a pavilion, a fishing pier, game tables, landscaping, lighting. Construction should be finished this month. And on June 1st, I'd like to invite you all to our ribbon cutting and grand opening, 11 to 2. It promises to be fun. You can come and walk the trails and fish off the pier and eat at a food truck. There might even be, I don't know, a scavenger hunt. And there'll be music as well, provided by the Nouveau Honkies. That's right. Another current project is our Port Salerno Sierra Park Drive. It's a small but very pivotal roadway that kind of feeds the docks, the commercial docks right there. And that's being enhanced with sewer, repaving of the roadway, additional drainage, and additional concrete for trucks so that the commercial endeavors can happen, crosswalks, new park equipment. And we are looking at construction starting in the fall. Projects about 90% designed. Upcoming projects. Thank you. Welcome. In Hope Sound, we have a very large, complex project coming on board. It's the A1A streetscape from Southeast Bridge Road to Southeast Saturn Street. This is going to enhance and, I should say, expand the downtown. So Bridge Road was one piece, and this is the next piece of that enhancement. And the project will include drainage and stormwater, which are very important elements, not just for Dixie, but also for Post Office Alley, which is included in that. It's going to include parking, lighting, redefined pedestrian spaces, and the renovation of the historic Hope Sound train station is a piece of that, thanks to Commissioner Jenkins. It's going to be just a beautiful element in this redevelopment effort. And, of course, El Camino. We've been talking about El Camino for a long time. It is out to bid again. So we're all crossing our fingers and hoping for the best. This will be a multimodal trail that will bisect from the north to the south in Golden Gate, CRA, constructed along an unopened county road, which is actually called Camino. So you can expect to see picnic facilities, community garden, exercise stations, and a new soccer field, or I should say a redone soccer field with dirt mounds for the community's enjoyment. And that's all I have for you today, and I'd be happy to answer any questions. Commissioner Hetherington. I didn't recall the FTE with the Art in Public Places and the Historic Preservation Board, but what is the scope of that? And have we considered that the Arts Council could run the Art in Public Places if we provided them funding rather than provide another FTE position? This was a 2024 FTE, so this was approved last year. We've recently hired the person in April. As far as the Martin Arts running Martin County's Art in Public Places program, that's certainly a decision that I will leave to you, all of you. We were given that program when I started in 2017, as well as Historic Preservation. Both are Martin County programs, not specifically CRA programs. So what's the scope of that? It's an administrative position to run? Yes. So they both have boards. There's an Art in Public Places. It's called the Public Art Advisory Committee, Historic Preservation Board. And they both are tasked with, for historic preservation, I think you heard a little bit about that this morning, doing Historic Preservation Month, coordinating all of the activities, running the board, looking at what historic properties may be in the county when they come up. So, for example, we get dinged if it comes up in the building department that somebody who has a property that could be deemed historic is coming in to ask for a permit. So then our staff would go out and check that out and see if that was something that maybe we wanted to add to making sure that all of the historic places that we have here in Martin County are taken care of. Not that we do that, but we do work with tourism and with general services on those. Art in Public Places, again, also has a board and funding. And we are tasked with increasing public art for the community's enjoyment. Commissioner Hurd. Yeah, I'm looking at the Port Salerno improvements. There's $1.2 million budgeted. What are the projects? Look at that. So in Salerno, we received – our 2025 TIF is 1.241. Is that what you're looking at? Well, it just says that that's going to be the – Yes. Yeah. So what's been – how those funds have been allocated is half of that has been allocated towards infrastructure partnerships, which is going to go towards sewer. That was recommended by the NAC, approved by the CRA board. And they also added New Monrovia roadway improvements, which is a project that's going to take into account sidewalks, repaving, lighting, and landscaping in the New Monrovia community for $500,000. And then the New Monrovia park improvements was the last piece of that allocation. And that's – I think that you've seen some of that, Commissioner, the park improvements. We're going to be redoing the basketball court, adding some drainage to it, leveling out some of the ground there, and hopefully doing a shade structure over the playground. I was mistaken. It's $1.7 million. So that includes 500 for – what's the infrastructure improvements? Is that design? Is it construction? Is it – It's both. It's called – we call – or that line, we call that CIP infrastructure partnerships. Well, I would assume that the water and sewer project is already fully designed since we were out to bid. The water project that the CRA did was completed last year. The sewer project that I just spoke about on Park Drive is just for the Manatee Peninsula. But that's not – in this – that's not a project that's being funded this year in the CIP, is it? It will be funded through that line, yes. Is land acquisition in – funded? No, the NAC recommended that the money that we had allotted for that, which was $596,000, be put into the sewer line. So that's where that is now. No additional monies were put into property acquisition. Okay. Thank you. Sure. Commissioner Campy. Thank you. Commissioner, I just wanted to also say that the new employee in Ms. Corris' office, when we had a meeting to discuss what kind of programming we were going to do on MAP Road, she came forward with a fully worked out plan of exactly what it needed to be, and we just all looked at it, and normally we don't all agree. We just said, yes, this is perfect. It was kind of amazing. And we ran with it, so I give her credit for putting that together beyond the scope that Ms. Corris had mentioned. She will obviously fill in wherever she needed to fill in, and from my perspective, right off the bat, she filled in excellently. She is also responsible, which I did not mention, Commissioner Hetherington, for communications for all three of the programs, CRA, Art and Public Places, and Historic Preservation. Motion to accept staffs. Tentative approval. Tentative approval of the OCD. A motion by Commissioner Campy, seconded by Commissioner Smith. All in favor, aye. All opposed. Fire Rescue. Before Mr. Resch begins his presentation on the Fire Rescue CIP, I would like to request an addition of the CIP sheet that you were given on the dais earlier today, called Automated External Defibrillators, or AEDs and Parks, for the Board's consideration, based on the Board's request to potentially implement an AED program. Originally, the proposed Fire Rescue CIP was requested as a decrease of $407, but if the Board moves to adopt this AED sheet for the enhanced level of service, it would be an impact of approximately $153,000 to the Fire Rescue MSTU fund, so I'm just throwing that out there. All right, good afternoon, Commissioners. Playing pong with my chairman. I just wanted to speak to the AED. I don't know how the funding would work. I understand that you have to put it somewhere, but I certainly don't want to wait another six to seven or eight months before we make those purchases, so I don't know if you have to. If you make a motion today to add this in, I can include that into the budget. For when? For the July workshop discussion. When will they be purchased? FY25. I would prefer that you figure out a way to purchase them now and reimburse yourselves in the fall versus waiting. I don't want to be the one. We said this morning the public has been waiting. Our staff's got it all figured out. If we're waiting, this is a life and death issue. It's not some basic thing that we could do it now or we could wait. None of us wants to be sitting in this room when some family comes forward and says that we had an issue at the park because we didn't have them there. So I think it's urgent, and if you want to fund it into the future, fine, but we need to fund them now. And if you can't, I'll fund the parks that are in my district with my district funds, or I'll have a fundraiser, but I don't want to wait any longer. I was just going to suggest if we could at least add the CIP, then we can bring back at a future agenda item under OMB how it could be advanced sooner, if that's the board's pleasure. I like it. Make a motion. I make a motion that the sheets are brought in and that this conversation is had at our next meeting, which is next week. Mr. Smith would like to talk about that. So first and foremost, I think it would be helpful for the chief to share with us what this thing is going to look like and how it's going to work because there was a lot of conversation by Commissioner Campy this morning. And so it would be nice for the public, I think, to hear that whatever needed to get worked out got worked out. That would be where I would start. And then what this is reminiscent of, I believe, is when the sheriff came to us mid-year for his body cams request, we were able to do what we needed to do and move funds around to make that happen. But I just think before we jump completely off the edge that tell us what we're doing, and then I think Ed or I or somebody can make a motion to figure out how out of reserves we get the purchase order done, if that's the right thing to do today, and we can move forward even faster. Report of the record, Chad Chanchuli, fire chief, Martin County Fire Rescue. So this AED program, if we were going to do any program at all, this is the program to do. It's a phenomenal program. It's advanced in technology. We're getting more of a lifespan out of the AEDs, but it's a collaboration between us, parks, and then also we're going to have fire prevention included on it. But just for the public's perspective to understand how this is going to work, it's going to be out in the open in select parks right now. We're going to run out a pilot program. It's going to be in a secure box. And the beauty of this box is you still have to activate 911. They give you the code of the box, and then they can get access to the actual AED. There's a couple things you need to know about the AED, though, as well. That's why I'm saying this is the best program. We have something that's a dashboard that's actually within fire rescue to where we can view all AEDs at the same time. If anything happens with one of these AEDs, we are immediately notified that there's an issue. It could be a dead battery. It could be something where it was vandalized. Anything that was missing, we would know. We would know to act on it quickly. As far as inspections, we have our fire inspectors that will be able to look at this on a weekly basis to make sure they're running through their inspections. And then parks on the collaboration is more of where they have to do a visual inspection to make sure that the boxes won't vandalized at all. So the program is phenomenal. The batteries, the pads are four-year lifespans, which is newer. Usually they have to be replaced every year. And the other beauty about it is the pads themselves. For those that know about the AED market, how they work, you used to have to have a difference between an adult pad and a pediatric pad. This pad is one and done. So it makes it easier for the end user of this product that they don't have to decide which is the weight, which pad we have to pull out. It's one pad. You follow the prompts on the AED, and then hopefully at the end of this you have success. But 911 is activated during this whole process. So it's a phenomenal program to put together. So one thing that's worried me about all of this is that there's an incident on a field, and a resident goes to the box, dials 911, they get the code, open up the box. I assume it activates the AED, right? Can you screw it up? So there's a human factor in anything you touch, of course, but it is a very... I appreciate that. But if you are doing it, or one of your staff are doing it, or one of the park staff who is fully trained at doing it, I just wonder what happens if a resident gets to it and goes to do the best of intentions, but can you mess up? This AED, the worst thing that you can do to a patient is shock them in a rhythm they should not be shocked in. So that's the worst-case scenario. But the AED won't allow you to do it. So the worst thing they can do is grab the AED and just seize up and just not apply it. Does that make sense? So if they apply it... If they apply it, yes. Is there literally like a five-year-old, you put it here, you put it there, you push it here, you push a button, and you go? If I put an AED in front of you and I turn that AED on, it walks you through a step-by-step process of how to activate the AED. How to apply the pads, when to do CPR, and let's just face it, not everyone's going to do perfect CPR because not everyone in the community is trained in CPR. However, any type of CPR compared to no CPR at all is better than nothing. So if we initiate compressions, compressions is what saves lives. The AED, it shocks in only certain arrhythmias. It's not every arrhythmia that a patient would be in. But the ones that they are in that requires a shock, that's when an AED does save a life. So how do you know when they're in that right shock? The AED, it analyzes the heart, it recognizes the rhythm, and it will tell you when to shock. Like, what it will do is tell you to pause, it will analyze, and then it will tell you either continue CPR or shock the patient. So if you would have taken or would take the CPR course of my namesake, I can't remember his first name, Mr. Jenkins. Josh Jenkins. Josh. Excellent. Part of that is using this, and it is literally dummy proof. Yeah, no. Anyone from the lobby will try it on Commissioner Smith right now. Yeah. Great. No, I just, I, that's, all this is great. I just think that, you know, I think of like, I think of my mother can't operate her cell phone, right? And so I just, I just think of, and as long as there's no way for someone to activate it if it's not needed to be activated, like if you're telling me you put the pads on the patient, and you, then it does its cycle, and it says pause, or do not, you can't, can you actually hit them with it, or it won't let you? The monitor will not let you shock in a non-shockable rhythm. That's what I'm saying. It can't be done. It's not like paddles you see on TV. Correct. It's clear. It's not that. Right. Somebody just texted in a question. We want a video. Okay. If somebody's, because of a heart monitor or defibrillator, can you, does it tell you, or can you damage a implant defibrillator? So that's, that's a good question. If they had a defibrillator, a heart monitor, if it was working properly, they wouldn't be in the condition that they're in. Bingo. So it would override that, and then it would, it would give the shock that's necessary to get them out of the rhythm that they're in. So I want to reiterate something that if we do have a funding issue, the parks that are in my district, which I only have two, you just chill out. I would be more than happy to contribute to the cause out of my district funds. The second thing is Indiantown is in my district, but it's its own municipality. Have we brought this to maybe Taryn's attention? Maybe she wants to, to pony up to us with this program? Just a thought that, I mean, there is what, three or four parks out there that aren't ours. That, anyway. Just a thought. Okay. Go ahead. Okay. So, um, you answered everything I needed to want to know and hear, which is great. Um, and so, um, I would, I would move today that we did what we did with the sheriff's, um, body cams and that we go to reserves for the hundred thousand, whatever it is, Stephanie, a hundred and four thousand. $153,600. And that covers all of our parks or portion? Portion of the parks. Portion. Um, 80% of our parks. Some parks will have more than one unit. That's why it's the number like that. Hal Patiochi has more than one. 24 units over 12 parks. 24 over 12. But there was a, there was a, uh, factor that we added to the estimate of that cost because we weren't sure when this project was going to come to fruition. I think it was about 10 or 15% if we were to wait till October with the way prices are increasing. So we, we likely will be able to purchase more than 24 with the full 153. I agree with Ed and others. I don't, this isn't something that should come out of your districts. That's silly because that's, this is a county wide issue, not a district issue. Um, I, and if, and for the purpose, we're doing it in the first place. If you guys are satisfied with the equipment and the program and the thing, then I, I wouldn't wait. I would say order today. And I think we give you the approval or the ability to purchase them today or however long it takes to deliver them. I'm assuming you don't get them like on Amazon the next day. Um, you know, I'm sure there's some lead time, but I wouldn't. And then they have to be installed. Yeah, I, I mean, I would move that we, we approve or Don, unless you have a better source that of reserves, the 152,000. You could second my motion that I already made. Did you do that for that? I did. I tried to. I don't think I heard that part. I only heard that you were going to fund it all out of your district. Whatever it takes. We need to get it done right away. The general fund reserves is where the funds would come from. And, uh, other than we would get the October one, when we do our, our new budget. Yes. Second. I'm just curious to know what parks. I saw a list. There's a list. Mr. Vot, they have it there. I saw a breakdown. Hal Patiochi park Langford. One second. Hal Patiochi more than one. There's four there. Okay. Um, Langford park for Justin Wilson park to William doc Myers park to. Indian riverside park to Jensen beach to Stuart beach. One JV Reed to pineapple park. Two timer powers. Park one. Wojcac park one. And Jock Leighton park. What about Charlie Leighton park? I've been told this is a pilot program. Lamar Howard park, Charlie Leighton park with your extra money that you got there. There's a boat ramp. Very dangerous. You're done. We've got a motion. I'd like Lamar Howard park in there. If we're going to put them in, I would just add. If you'd like, if I can make a suggestion, if since there's going to be some, a little bit of additional funding, which will allow us to buy some more units, let us reevaluate the parks and see where we can put some extra ones. And then we can bring it back to the board and let you know what, what we have, but we're still voting today. Correct. And if there is a chance of buying in bulk, please at least approach Indiantown to see if they would be wanting to participate in our purchase agreement. Mr. Just, you know, I know we didn't do an agenda item on this to go more in detail, but part of this isn't just installing it, but it's a routine daily inspection by the parks department every day. There's the fire prevention staff dealing with them. It's the training and staff and the, and the nine 11 service being aware of when the box get opens that operate automatically. So it is not just simply the purchase of these things. It's, it's also an operational duty. So that the reason why we selected the subunit of this is to get a handle on all of the staff resources it will take just to keep these operational on a daily basis. And, and I think this is a good start of the program. And if we can do it efficiently and we can expand it throughout all our parks when we get some better data on, on, on its maintenance. Commissioner Smith. I would go along with the acquisition of the land this morning. The only thing when you do that, when you redo the analysis of like where you might and might not from comments, the board members, if we're going to do two at Jensen, I would certainly do two at Stewart. Stewart's long enough and wide enough between farther sends of Stewart was one and Jensen was two. Anyway, I just, however you're going to evaluate it. The Southern end of Stewart beach versus the Northern end is like, like years apart. So. Understood. Commissioner Hetherington aggressively pushed her button. So I will take her now. I don't know how you're going to explain to some residents that some parks merit an AED yet when we have soccer fields. And so if I have to pay for it out of my own district funds, the unit itself for Lamar Howard park, if all these other parks are getting installed, I would prefer that not to have them wonder why they also don't have a unit in their park. I would agree with you. Maybe he should come back. No, no, no, let's get it going. Let's go. Okay. We have a motion by commissioner Smith. Campy seconded by commissioner Smith. It's been a long time. I'm all in favor. I all opposed motion carries unanimously, but I do think we need to have a conversation more about this at a later date. I agree. Shall I continue? Please. I have to shift my script here. Okay. Good afternoon, commissioners, Matt rush, fire rescue administrator. So this project represents our capital improvement plan for fire rescue apparatus replacement, as well as any major fire or medical equipment needs. The apparatus replacement program is based off of 15 years of total service life with 10 years as a frontline truck and five years as a backup. There are two matrices attached that outline in more specific detail, both the replacement programs for the apparatus as well as any of the major fire medical equipment needs. The primary funding source is the fire rescue MSTU. And as you can see, we are not seeking an increase over last year's budget now. Over the years, we've been able to offset the ad valorem impact and absorb any price increases with the help of the Medicaid reimbursement programs that we participate in. However, over the last two years, we've seen such significant price increases across the board that's making it increasingly more difficult to do so. For example, the ladder truck that we just recently purchased back in March with the board's permission cost $1.3 million. We purchased the same exact truck 18 months ago for $952,000. That's a 36% increase in just under a year and a half. In addition to price increases, we are experiencing exorbitant build times to build these trucks. What used to be a one-year process has ballooned to now a three-year process. So to account for this and to stay on schedule with the replacement program, we will be looking to move forward some purchases in FY26, which will have a temporary impact on Avalorum until FY27, when some of the current active leases that we already have fall off. So with that, I'd be happy to answer any questions. I get it. Move. Okay. We have a motion by Commissioner Hetherington. Sure. I'll second. Just curious, Matt. The year to three years, how much do they require up front? We typically take advantage of prepaying for the trucks because we get somewhere between a 10% to 15% price reduction. So they don't require you to do that, but it behooves us to take advantage of it considering the- Do you have any additional break because you're paying three years in advance? No, but that's a good point. I should consider- My assumption is if it's a million two, you're dishing out for a truck, right? They're holding on to that money for two and three quarter years or two years and then a year to construct. Right. But they're sitting on interest. Mm-hmm. I mean, perhaps some of the way they may look at it too is that there's such a head of marketplace for these trucks and people are waiting so long that if we ever decide to back out of it, they could probably sell it for a premium over what we prepaid for it. So they may- But it's definitely something to consider for sure. I like that idea. Okay. We had a motion and a second. All in favor? Aye. All opposed? Motion carries unanimously. With that, we're going to take our closed captioning break before we go to our next item. Marsha was really trying. Okay, welcome back to our commission meeting. Carry on. Law enforcement with Mr. Sean Donohue. Hi, good afternoon. Sean Donohue, General Services Director. We're asking for a zero ad valorem impact. Oh, you do approve. I stopped. Maintaining our FARB funding, our fixed asset replacement budget funding, credit school to the jail operations. We're still funding some of the long-term projects, the firearms training grounds buildup, the logistics center, and the chiller plant connection for the PSE. We're adding a couple new projects that I'll talk about in the slide later. Current projects, we're finishing up our jail pod renovations later this year. We have one more pod after the one we're going to finish in a few weeks here, and then we'll be done with that project. Jail exterior painting is pretty much done. That's more of a weatherization project, but it did bring it in line with some of the newer colors we're putting on the newer buildings. The boot camp gym and the K-9 construction, K-9 building construction. K-9's almost done. We'll be in substantial completion about next week. The gym's a little bit behind that, but they're both on schedule. And then the Marine Patrol building is well on schedule. That'll be completed later this summer. Law enforcement upcoming projects. We threw the New Monrovia substation in the mix. It needs a little bit of TLC over there. There's some radio upgrades and CCTV upgrades, as well as access management that needs to happen within the jail itself. And then we have an unfunded CIP sheet for the new mental health pod as we get funding and appropriations and things like that for that project. That's it. Any questions? Commissioner Hurd. Yeah, I'm looking at the Logistics and Operations Center, which is $11 million. What's up with that? That's been a project we've been working on for quite a while. It is a replacement of the oldest building on that campus, on that complex. It actually was the old, I think it was a packing house, packing warehouse. So it's pretty aged. It does need to be replaced. It's certainly seen its time. So replacing it with a similar size building, that would encompass the purchasing department for the sheriff's office, as well as warehouse storage and a few other uses. And those things cost $11 million? It's about a 20,000-square-foot structure, all in all. And also the firearms training facility, $10 million? Yeah, currently they are in a portable trailer. That trailer is seeing its end of life, and we're replacing that as soon as we possibly can. The plan would be to build about a 10,000-square-foot training facility with classrooms, offices, storage, all the components you need for firearms trainings, as well as bolstering and enhancing the berming and the safety features around the range as the new development comes in. And the lobby of the jail for $1.2 million because it hasn't been updated for 16 years? It's actually a combination of projects. It would be the lobby, it would be an attorney inmate visitation room, a body scanner area, and then a staff parking, a secured staff parking lot. And what we'd like to do is master plan that complex to see where we can put that in conjunction with building a new mental health pod. So the first part of this is kind of master planning it, seeing how all these things are going to work together as we start planning this larger construction project. So that lobby is not the $1.2 million. It's a combination of all those. Okay. It just looks to me like next year we're going to be on the hook for nearly $10 million for two projects, that being the logistics and operations center and the firearms training facility. I don't have any idea where we're going to come up with $10 million for those two facilities next year. The logistics project is over time. There's still several years of funding that we would need to bring together for that. It's not what it says in the sheet. It says next year we're going to spend $7 million. Thanks. Commissioner Smith. Not that I oppose it, but I guess the question with the firearms training facility, there was some discussion a while ago whether or not it was staying there at that current site or we were going to move it. So I guess building a permanent facility means it's staying there. I was going to ask the same question because I thought it was moving too. I'll retract my question. You can ask it instead. No, go ahead. Done. So in order to move the facility, you would need to buy additional property. We had looked at the Lake Point property, which is not eligible, would have to change. So the other conversation with the sheriff's deputies, that they're happy with that location, just it's convenient for their commuting from their office to do the training. And so the preference would have something similar close to town. The site there can be upgraded to meet the requirements to shield from the adjacent community. So the plan at this point was to continue to look at the existing site, upgrade it to be a more modern facility, and do there as opposed to if you take the costs that are anticipated in this and then added a couple hundred thousand an acre for property, you get the idea that that would be the total cost for a firearms facility, of which we don't have any land available at this point in time to move it, nor is the sheriff's staff enamored about moving something further out west. So at this point in time, we're looking to do the design where it's at. I'm just thinking the fairgrounds would be the perfect spot out in the middle of literally nowhere. They don't want to be out in the middle of nowhere. They don't want to be next to Newfield either. No, he's saying they don't want to drive further west. I'm sorry. So I'm also assuming that sometime in the future we'll see another CIP for other improvements to the berm and to other – That's what I was going to ask. Yes, that's – There was always the question, I think, when the shooting range lengths were built and the size, whatever, that there was probably more to come. So in order to fully utilize the site, it will require – and that's, I think, what we're anticipating is to improve the boundary conditions while also improving the course itself and the classrooms. So is that part of the classroom funding or the classroom and then – No, it's part of the classroom to do – Yeah, to design the bullet traps and to design the safety features as well as to design the classroom. That's all. It would all be in one project, and we would enhance the funding as it came in and designed. Thank you. Commissioner Hetherington. I think that answered – I was under the impression that it was land acquisition in this sheet, but we basically need a berm and a small, modest classroom. Yes. So they're going to come back with a separate sheet for that? No, well, it'll be all in the sheet. This sheet will reflect all of what – I think they will come back with – Indoor shooting facility? That's what I thought. It's – 10,000-square-foot building. So it's over shooting – No, that's for training. It's an outdoor shooting facility. It's the indoor training classroom. I mean classroom – classroom, offices, storage, armory. Okay. Even more reason for it not to be there, but okay. I thought it was a berm that we were – we were either going to buy land to move it or build the berm, and I didn't even realize that we did training on site in the classroom. They have a trailer there now, and it is a substandard training facility in what the sheriff needs to train their folks to have them through their various exercises. The rehabilitating and using the existing site is preferable to moving further out west in my conversations with the sheriff. So we can certainly come back while we're under design and have some further conversations with you. But the idea was is that where the location – if it could be made safe the way they want it, they would – they were happy with staying where they're at. Commissioner Hurd. Yeah, it says – the sheet says that it's immediately adjacent to Newfield, which, of course, makes me think about Palmar. And so it sounds to me like as Newfield gets built out, we'll be moving this again at great expense. It's next to the open space area. It's not next to the housing. It's next to the preserve areas. Yeah. Have you ever heard about any problems at Trailside and Palmar? These are sheriff's deputies shooting, not just the general – Yeah, but there's going to be a lot of shooting. Oh, no. I asked Commissioner Jenkins, can you hear it from those – will those residents be able to hear it? Sure. So, I mean, maybe we need to have this conversation with the sheriff. Or at least his – unless his representative is here. Oh, come on. You can commit it. His representative is not. I think we have to have a conversation with the sheriff. I would agree. It's big money, and the future site might not be ideal. No doubt. And you don't have to necessarily move further west. You could move on the same parallel north to south. There's a property around, down onto Citrus along there on the way. That's real. Someone will donate the property. How many acres is it? It's about 50. I think some of it's undevelopable, though. They're not using 50, the footprint. So what do you need? A temporary – we're just doing this temporarily, and then we'll bring the representatives in. That's the only group so far we've needed to have further explanation. I'll make a motion to – to accept the tentative CIP sheets for law enforcement, knowing that we need to bring the sheriff's representatives to explain more succinctly what their future vision is. Second. There you go. Thank you. Okay. We have a motion by Commissioner Campy, seconded by Commissioner Hetherington. All in favor? Aye. All opposed? Opposed. Motion carries. Opposition. Four to one. Commissioner Hurd dissenting. On speed. Library. Good afternoon, Commissioners. Jen Sells, Library Director. For FY25, we are asking for some additional funding for a project to replace the audio-visual equipment at the Cummings Library in Palm City. Right now, the equipment is about 15 years old and is not accepting the different newer technology that both our presenters for library events and our outside public who books the meeting rooms are requiring. Our current CIP projects, we are actually just starting our Hobesound Public Library Improvement Project. That was from a $1.6 million private donation. We are closing down the library starting tomorrow for about three months. That will include planning for an outdoor space, as well as interior improvements. We are, just because it's so new and making the announcement to the public, we are going to have some events and classes at the Hobesound Civic Center at Zeus Park, as well as an outpost where people can pick up their library holds at the clerk's office in Hobesound. So we're launching on that starting tomorrow. We also are currently working with the vendor for our radio frequency identification system replacement at the Robert Moorgade Library. That is our 10-year life cycle replacement program. Upcoming projects in the next few years, we will have a new library branch in the Newfield community. And we are currently in the planning stages for the Hoke Library outdoor space in Jensen Beach. Happy to answer any questions. What's that? Outdoor space going across the street. So if you're looking at the entrance to the building, it'll be on the right-hand side in the grassy area. There's a rain garden right to the right, and it'll be closer to the library, not to the strip plaza that's there. The backdrop-off for the book drops? Well, no, it's in the front of the building where you park is where the book drops are, and then just to the right back that way. Commissioner Kim? That thing's going to fit there? P. This is just a design potential. We're working right now with the architects to decide what it'll look like. Is this going to be an octagon-ish or? We're thinking about doing, yeah, a different design shape. We can do fights in there in the octagon? Absolutely. We'll include you in the process. Go. The Newfield Library will be built by the developer of Newfield. Correct. Do they have to build it out and put the books and everything else and then we'll run it, or do they just build you a shell and you have to take it over? We're still working out the details. They are going to help a little bit with the interior. However, we expect to apply for a state library construction grant to help with some of the funding, as well as our library foundation doing some fundraising. So what we would probably come back to the county for at that time would be staffing and, you know, utilities that would be included in the building. Is that something that you felt was an appropriate extension of your library system or is it because it seems like it's on them? Yes. Well, I mean, if we're going to have a library in our community, I would like it to be part of the Martin County Library System so that we can oversee the operations of it. Are you in negotiations with them currently? Yes. Yes. We've met with them multiple times to decide, you know, what the space will look like. I would love to attend. Okay. Thank you. Because I think they're going to owe you some stuff. Move to approve. Second. Okay. We have a motion by Commissioner Hurd, seconded by Commissioner Hetherington. All in favor? Aye. All opposed? Motion carries unanimously. Award winning. Jennifer Salis and Library Team award winning. Welcome, Parks. Good afternoon, Commissioners. Kevin Kerwin, your deputy director of the Martin County Parks and Recreation. Department here today to present our FY25 CIP request. As you see, we came in just under last year's request. Highlights are that we're maintaining our funding, our fixed asset replacement budgets, our historic preservation and building, paving equipment and Wi-Fi. Our boat ramp projects are moving forward. As you all know, we just completed Sandsprit Park boat ramps, both of them, and they're opening, open and operating very efficiently. We're continuing with phase two of the water sack park projects, adding the additional futsal and small-sided soccer courts, and then the restrooms and a multi-purpose space there. And then, as we discussed earlier today, phase four and five of Sailfish Sand Golf Course and the improvements there. The big thing that's going on is we're going to be finishing the boardwalk at Indian Riverside Park and also installing this summer the Joffrey Smith Fountain. Coming in Palm City this fall at the Charlie Layton Park, the park improvements are planned. They're permitted. The boat ramp is planned. We're going to be receiving final permits any day now. I might have them already in my inbox. And that will be the complete park. We do have a fine grant that we applied for for that park, so we'll be making the presentation, and we'll hear about that. So with that, are there any questions? Mr. Smith. Just a comment. Not that everything the parks department doesn't do is fantastic, but if you haven't been to Wojcac Park since all the improvements have been done, it's amazing. I mean, it is a fantastic transformation. I was there a couple months ago, and it was just fabulous. Nice. Thank you. Our team did a phenomenal job on that. It was a heavy lift, but it is beautiful. I'd move tentative approval. Second. We have a motion by Commissioner Smith, seconded by Commissioner Hurd. All in favor? Aye. Motion passes unanimously. Public buildings. Welcome back. Did you change your outfit? Cool my hair. Again, Sean Donahue, General Services Director. The public building request has a slight increase for some FARB enhancements. We are continuing with the courthouse and the courthouse office building VAV replacements. That's been a long-term, five-year project. That should finish up just next year with a smaller portion of that. We're maintaining our critical FARB funding across the county, and then we're maintaining some funding for important fire station projects for next year. Pretty sure that's what he's saying. What's changed, we are starting some funding savings up for a larger courthouse and courthouse office building air conditioning replacement project. This is the larger units on top of the roof, about $6 million total to replace those. They're near their end of life. And then we're adding some VAV replacements in the Blake Library and in the Indiantown Governmental Center. Current projects that we're working on, Hopestown Ocean Rescue, in the planning phases, working with the town of Jupiter, we're replacing two generators at the hangars at the airport, the Lifestar and the Fire Rescue, or the Sheriff's Office. We are, like Jen was talking about before, we're working on the Hopestown Library remodel project. She explained that well. It's the Stewart Health Department building VAV replacements. That's going to kick off very soon. And this is the fire station 32. That's an example of some of the roof and facade work we need to do on several of our fire stations. That project's complete. Upcoming projects, like I talk about, the courthouse and courthouse office building HVAC unit replacements on the roof. We're working on the design for the fire station doors. That's a multi-year project. We're going to look at all the older buildings and try to replace those with the bifold doors for quicker regress. The supervisors of election has asked for building expansion. Their warehouse space is packed, as you can see in the picture. They need a little bit more room there, and they want to use the existing warehouse space to expand their offices. And then the operations complex is something in planning with capital improvements. Any questions? Commissioner Hurd. Yeah, fire station 22 relocation. Have we gotten any developer contributions from any of the rural lifestyle approvals for the funding of this? Not that I'm aware of, ma'am, no. How about Western Palm City fire station? Is Newfield building a fire station? Does anybody? There's been discussions about the donation of property. At this point in time, there isn't actually a building construction. There's also been a look at working with the chief on the actual best location for a fire station in Western Palm City to serve both the I-95 and turnpike corridors, which we've talked about earlier, in addition to the growth in new field development. So the other locations are along 714 may be a more appropriate location for the fire station. So that's all a future consideration, but we're in the planning stages of it now. Jim Gordon, Public Works Director. We've looked at the contributions that are going to occur through impact fees through new field, and they're going to contribute about $7.5 million toward a new fire station just through their impact fees. But that funding won't come until build-out. But other development that may occur in that area could also contribute to it through PUD agreements. Do you know what the average new fire station costs these days? Yeah, the fire rescue has estimated it at about $10 to $11 million. Does that include land acquisition? That includes land acquisition, yep. Okay. So not nearly enough. Well, we're getting there. Commissioner Smith. Just to the chief and capital side of all this, can we further talk about all that? I just, the theory of where, how, what, that happens out there, I'd just love to have a broader conversation about. And that may also go along with the shooting range conversation, too. Because a lot of those things start tying together with new field and the road that's going to get built there and so on. So, anyway, just for conversation points. Mr. Campy. The, if there's a fire station built with somehow conjunction with new field, it wouldn't exclusively be for new field. It would be a western-located fire station that could respond to western Palm City calls. So, it's not, I get $7 million and we'd want to make sure we get the most out of them. But it's not going to be an exclusive new field fire station. We've needed one out west for a while. I see the chief. Are you representing the fire department? Yeah, for the record, Chad Chancher Lee, Fire Chief, Martin County Fire Rescue. Just to add to what you said, you're correct. Of course. Leave it at that. Western Palm City, that is our next place to build a new fire station. It is definitely in need just with the responses that we have out there, the emergency calls, our response times. Not only western Palm City, but we're talking about the encroachment of Indiantown as well. Because if we get the station out there in the right location, we can close that distance out in that outwesterly area of Indiantown that we need to address at a point in time. This is the best way to do it, is to push us further west in Palm City. And then over the years, obviously, things progress from there. But as far as our next step, this station, western Palm City, absolutely, there's a need right now. The chief has actually attended a number of community meetings that we've had with the people that live out on the grade. And they're horrific stories of some horrific stuff that's happened out there. And, you know, we're doing the best we can. But sometimes our response times are – anyway, they are desperate for – I remember the response times were much quicker when that was my district. Mr. Hurt. And the Indiantown Fire Station 24 replacement, whose responsibility is that? Do we have a contract with Indiantown? What are our responsibilities for public buildings? What kind of contractual agreements do we have? Those kinds of things. Why is this in our CIP? So currently, Indiantown is essentially – we are providing fire rescue services throughout the village boundaries. We have – we have – the county commissioners have an interlocal agreement with them. Before we would build another station out there, we would revisit that agreement to ensure that the long-term commitment is there if we're – where we build that station. Anyway, that's where we're at. What kind of a contractual agreement do we have? We have an – Operationally. We – the village – the town is providing an equivalent amount of our taxable value, the MSTU, the fire rescue MSTU, is being essentially applied within the village boundaries. And so they are paying proportionally the same for fire rescue as everybody else. Commissioner Campy. Thank you. So, again, like we discussed this morning, the dynamic and makeup of Indiantown will dramatically change and increase very soon. So I think, you know, the rural town that our fire rescue was handling out there, I think if you're talking about new community impact, Terralago would have a large impact on anything that's happening out there, staffing, equipment. And so that's going to have to be a part of that conversation. But also, if Newfield created a need for additional fire rescue services out west, it doesn't necessarily have to be built on the Newfield property. Because maybe if what the chief said about trying to reach out to the grade and capture some of the eastern, northeastern Indiantown area, perhaps some of our other landowners that are out in western Palm City, several of them that I'm familiar with would be more than happy to potentially donate land, knowing that they would then have the fire services closer to their operations as well. So if that's a conversation you'd want to have beyond just within the footprint of Newfield, which might put it a little kind of east, northeast, maybe it needs to be closer to the 95 intersection. And I've been involved in a lot of meetings recently, community and otherwise, where that question came up, where is their western Palm City fire station? And I think some of them might be willing to at least contribute the land, as long as the impact fees from Newfield could be used still to purchase, because they will create an impact. Don't you think Newfield would want the new fire station on their property? I understand, but if we're talking about for the whole county, just having it in the heart of their village might not be the best use. If you're on, you know, coming off of Newfield Parkway, north of Martin Highway, and that's where the station is located, but you're trying to get out to the grade, that's not ideally what's best for the county as a whole. I get that it's best for Newfield. If it was on 95 and Martin Highway and any one of those four quadrants around that intersection, that's much more centrally located. Still get to Newfield, but then benefit the rest of the county versus us taking their money and saying, look, we're going to make this and it's basically yours. So it won't be basically theirs. It'll be for everybody. That's correct. It's going to be for the county. And there is already some conversations taking place regarding what you're speaking on. But it's the need for a western Palm City station. It happened prior to Newfield. Whether Newfield exists or not. It's already there. Yeah, absolutely. But, yes, it has to benefit the community. It's a whole, not just one development. Commissioner Smith. That's why I'd like to chat about this, like, one-on-one, because there's a lot of dynamics going on with this, whether Newfield is going to be its own sort of town. And there will be a lot of response calls to Newfield at some point in time. Western Palm City is a whole other issue. And I don't know how you best do that. But I know when we used to do our station location response time studies, there was, every time we did one of those, there was a logic as to where we would site a station to get to our eight-minute, seven-minute response time. I just happened to go out there yesterday up to County Line on Newfield Boulevard. Parkway. Parkway. It's a hall up there. I mean, it's further than you think when you're looking at a map. And so, you know, I just, I think if the distance you've got to go on 714, if that new road isn't going to be the feeder road, if it is, then maybe the Sheriff's Shooting Center location makes more sense because that's kind of splitting the thing in half. I don't know, but I'd just love to chat about it on a, how does it, where does it sit, where does it site, and how do you get the best response time to build one station that's going to service a whole broad range of. Mr. Don. I would just suggest we'll bring an item back that looks at, I mean, one of the things we look at is we have a gross management invested in a gross model kind of, and would layer it in that you can do some predictive call loading. And so there's the art of it is the ideal location versus properties that are available for lowest cost acquisition. And between those two, this board can make the decision. Yeah, because if you're putting a circle around the station, and that station is close to the northern county line, a lot of the circle would be out of the county. Correct. Okay. It's been so long, I don't remember if we had a motion or anything. Or if we finished. Yeah. Well done. There wasn't. Okay. We have a motion. Second. We have a motion and a second. All in favor? Aye. All opposed? Opposed. Motion carries forward to one. Commissioner Hurd, dissenting. Did I figure that out? Coastal. You don't look like Kathy. You can. Oh, she's in New Zealand. All right. Good afternoon. I'm George Zama. I'm the Public Works Deputy Director. And with me is Jim Gorton, Public Works Director. We're going to kind of tag team these next few sections of the CIP that are under the Public Works purview. But before that, I know we're speeding through, but I do want to highlight just a level of grant funding that we are able to attain year in and year out. I think it's super important. I think it's super important. So I just really wanted to express my sincere appreciation to our staff for their exceptional work in securing grant funds to expand our critical programs and project goals. We in public works, as well as other departments, O&B, administration, we have great pride in leveraging county funding to the greatest extent possible. And staff's dedication, perseverance, and grant writing, and more importantly, project execution and effective grant administration plays a vital role in sustaining successful partnerships with federal, state, grant agencies, and legislatures. And we all know if you spend money well, you usually get more money. So I just wanted to share a few brief statistics. Over the past, I have a lot of data in front of me of a lot of these sections we're going to be talking about. But in the roads budget, over the past three years, we were able to obtain, with design and construction, $20 million out of $60 million total funds. So it's about 30%. Ecosystems, over the past three years, about 31%, averaging of $13 million total funds. Coastal, we're averaging 44% over the past three years. Grant funding, both state and federal funding, out of the total funds of around $32 million average. And then our stormwater, which is really, I mean, it's just because of the FEMA and the state DEP Resilience Grant Program, we're at 81% over the past three years grant funds out of the total budget. So overall, Public Works, we're operating over the past three years, about 39% average of the total projects that you approve is grant funded through the state and federal legislatures and agencies. So I just wanted to say that this is a testament to the high-caliber staff that we have throughout the organization, especially in Public Works, which I hold dear, and also the board's commitment to supporting our efforts to fulfill these goals. So with that, I'll yield it to Jim. We're on to coastal. So the coastal program, we're recommending a $500,000 increase from fiscal year 24 to 25. The reason we're asking for that increase, that money was taken out last year at the tail end of the budgeting system to reach our goals. And the reason we need it back is because we have a number of projects that are coming to fruition in the next year. Most notably, we have an inlet management plan that requires us to share in the cost for beach management on Jupiter Island. And there's a large project that's going to happen that we're going to have to contribute to. And then we also have the South Jetty is another project that we're partnering with the U.S. Army Corps. But that's going to be a rather expensive project to protect the south side of the inlet and the north end of Jupiter Island. Because right now, that jetty is pretty much shot. We've had a couple of hurricanes that really did some damage, and it's been breached in several sections. Also through this program, we're also funding our Resilient Martin program, where we're doing countywide analyses of impacts of sea level rise and climate change. And that's for both the county and our municipalities, so we're sharing that information with them. Our current projects, this is a list of several of them that are happening. Bath to the Beach, we just about wrapped up. We just have some planting to do. Otherwise, that has 260,000 cubic yards of material there. Twin Rivers, we have the shoreline project that's kicking off soon. The Manatee Pocket Mooring Field, we just have the upland facility to build. And then the Living Shoreline is getting close to being put out to bid. On the upcoming projects that we have, I touched on a few already. The South Jetty Project, four-mile beach renourishment, which is the four miles starting at the north end of Hutchinson Island, running down to just past Stewart Beach. MacArthur Dune Restoration is an important project. There was a lot of damage to that dune in Hurricane Nicole. And what happens any time we get a large wave event, it actually overtops what's left of the dune. And we have sand and water going across MacArthur Boulevard, and we have to, you know, clean that up to make it safe for motorists. So we need to restore some of that material. It's going to be a joint project partially funded by the property owners that benefit from it. And then the 96th Street bulkhead is a facility that we're building so that we can store and launch our artificial reef material from there. Do you have any questions about Coastal? Second. We have a motion by Commissioner Smith, seconded by Commissioner Hurd because she was louder. All in favor? Aye. All opposed? Motion carries unanimously. Okay. Ecosystems, we're staying flat as far as our ad valorem impact. We have a constant level of funding for our STA water quality improvement projects, as well as our BMAP TMDL compliance projects and our environmentally sensitive land management projects. Current projects, we just wrapped up East Fork Creek STA phase one. Phase two is currently out to bid. That's the area that's along US 1 near Heritage Ridge. And we also completed Hawks Hammock access improvements, which is part of our environmentally sensitive land management and public access program that officially provides access to the trail system at Hawks Hammock. And we're working on the modeling and design for construction of a weir in the Cypress Creek floodplain basin in the state park. And we looked, hopefully, we'll be able to obtain permits to get that project started soon. And we're also finalizing design for some upcoming projects for the Southwest Prong Manatee Pocket STA in Port Salerno, as well as the Kitchen Creek Eastern Flowway, where we'll convert channelized basin flow into natural wetland systems for the eastern flowway, which eventually makes its way into the North Fork of the Loxahatchee River. And that's one of my pet projects, that we have a property acquisition problem, that we would really like to see this underway before November. Anyway, Commissioner Smith. Thank you, Mr. Chair. So are we changing the water flow through Kitchen Creek, making it back to what it was historically? Right now it's like channelized through ditches, like there's a primary ditch. So, yeah, we're going to... We're not taking the, like, the peninsula that got built and we're not removing that and putting... I mean, it almost looks like there's lines in there that kind of... We're not changing that. No. Okay. This project's actually further east. You're talking about Kitchen Creek STA? Yeah. This is further east of Powerline Road. It's on the other side of Powerline Road. Yeah, pre-development, there were three flowways that existed. And as development occurred, it all got channelized into a central flowway that runs down Kitchen Creek Road. And this is going to restore some of that flow and put it back into the eastern flowway. We still have to do the western flowway. But this is going to allow another outlet for that water. And it's also going to rehydrate the wetlands in Jonathan Dickinson State Park. That north section of the J.D. State Park is so dry, the wetlands are just not healthy because they're not getting the water they historically had. So that flooding that we had in Hope Heights, we had no water in Cypress Head in the area that Jim was just talking about during all that flooding. Yeah. So when you all have time, and I don't know if it's you that will do it or John Mayle that would do it, but can we take some of these and do like an agenda item with pictures and aerials and stuff to show us like what's happening and the progress that's being made, like the East Fork, if you go back one slide? Yes. I just, it's an amazing project, but I'm guessing hundreds of thousands of people drive by it a day and have absolutely no idea what that thing is all about and what it did. And not that everybody watches this, it just would give the opportunity to talk about it, see it, and put it into context. And exactly what Harold's talking about, I think if we could show it, just the progress it's made. Because when we talk about it to people, sometimes they have no idea what we're talking about. But I just, if we can put some more visual to it, it would be great. Yep. I think Michael Houston has put a lot of his heart and soul to that. He's crawled through the mud there a lot. He'll be a good presenter. Thank you. Tentative approval if you were done with that one. Second. Thank you. We have a motion by Commissioner Smith, seconded by Commissioner Hetherington. All in favor? Aye. All opposed? Motion carries unanimously. This next one is the transit CIP. So what the CIP sheet is for generally is to accumulate funding for capital replacement of the buses. Based on the discussion this morning, the next bus doesn't need to be replaced until 27. So we have some time to make some decisions. But we are accumulating that funding so that we can replace them as they reach their effective service life. There's also a smaller amount of funding that's on the CIP sheet for bus stop construction. But the vast majority of it's for the capital replacement of the buses themselves. I am absolutely flabbergasted that one of those buses cost almost a half a million dollars. It's crazy. They, too, have a long lead time. So you have to order them about a year in advance. Not quite as long as the ladder truck. But same thing with all heavy equipment these days is just second motion by Commissioner Smith, seconded by Commissioner Hetherington. All in favor? Aye. Aye. All opposed? Roads. Okay. Roads. We had a constant. What stayed the same? We had a constant level of funding for traffic safety measures as well as signal maintenance, intersection improvements, and our bridge maintenance program, as well as our annual commitments for the railroad leases. We are requesting an increase in roadway MSTU for our roadway resurfacing program and neighborhood restoration, as well as an increase in our stormwater MSTU for our heavy equipment replacement program. It was at, I think, $600,000 a year for the longest time in equipment. We just talked about equipment costs, and we have to keep up with our program and upgrade our equipment, as a lot of them are at the end of their life cycle. Some current CIP projects. We're currently underway with the Dixie Highway East Fork Creek Bridge Replacement. It's currently a box culvert, a double box culvert, that we're replacing with a precast concrete arch bridge. We've replaced, I think, about seven culverts with this type of bridge structure in the past six years or so, and it's very streamlined construction and less of an impact to the public. Really good bang for your buck. So we're currently underway. Typically, we close roads during bridge construction, but we're keeping the roadway open at all times during construction for this project. Indian Street resurfacing, we're just getting started with that. Folks may have noticed some work out there. It's a two-pronged project that's not just resurfacing the road, but we're also performing intersection improvements, and we're going to be doing mast arm upgrades for a new traffic alignment. We're adding dual left-turn lanes, both eastbound and westbound, in conjunction with the grant resurfacing project. And then we're doing a number of neighborhood restoration projects year in, year out. We just wanted to highlight Coral Gardens. We're wrapping up the drainage phase in there, and we'll be on our way to the next neighborhood in the program. Upcoming projects, we just wanted to highlight just a grant project. A lot of these missing link sidewalks, they go a long way in the community, so we just wanted to highlight we received a TAP grant through the MPO process for Avalon Drive in Hibiscus Park. So we're finalizing design with that project, and we'll be constructing that this next fiscal year. And then county line road bridge replacement. That bridge will be scheduled for closure in South County. We have finalized design. I do want to highlight we received a state appropriation for $3 million as well as a federal appropriation for $3 million. So we have $6 million for the replacement of that structure. Hopefully it's almost 100% funding for that bridge. So kudos to staff and our state and federal legislatures for helping us fund that project. And also we'll be coordinating with the village of De Cuesta. And our emergency or our fire rescue staff is in coordination with the village as well as Palm Beach County and that area. And they'll be actually – they're planning a little satellite station on the west side of the bridge during construction. Any questions? I just want to note that page 171 is the bridge road turn lane on the power line. And just if I don't show up here one day, not to be funny, but not to be funny, it's because I died at this intersection. I'm sure that this condition is repeated throughout the county, but this is – I turn left there two times a day, and at least once a week I'm thinking I'm going to die. God forbid that be the case, but I would tell you we will vote to name it after you. So Jenkins Memorial Turn Lane. I love it. I love it. Well, maybe not Jenkins. Maybe just like Hope Sound. Okay. All right. District 3. No, but I'm just saying, and I hope that we had talked about maybe including this in the ecosystem project that we were talking about before. So the Kitchen Creek Eastern Flowway project, part of the modeling is sizing the pipe culvert that will go under the road at this location. So we are working together to – you know, obviously we want to do the underground first, and we'll incorporate that before we perform the turn lane project because that will be a sizable footprint at the intersection. But I just see this going out 30 – or 2030 to 2034. So anyway, just saying. Don't mean to be selfish, but I'm going to die. We're fatalistic. Yeah. Kind of late. Oh, I'm sorry. Commissioner Hurd. Yeah, I'm looking at the intersection of U.S. 1 and Canter Highway, and it says that there are going to be three northbound left turn lanes on Canter at the intersection. Are those three new? Is it one new? It's one new, a total of three left turn lanes. And there's going to be an eastbound turn lane on to Colorado? There's going to be a right-hand southbound turn lane on to Canter. Okay. Okay. And that definitely backs up. I just wanted to bring this up because – so it's not scheduled for construction until 2028. I don't think we can wait that long either at that intersection. That's a DOT project, so it's a concurrency project, so it's in our CIP. But, yes, they understand that we would like to advance that project. It's something we can – the MPO board can also help to expedite by prioritizing it. It's our number five priority. So we are prioritizing. Yep. You're getting it back. I'm not back. I'm getting added. Yeah. Me and you. Just putting the team back together. Now I'm on resurfacing and drainage maintenance. We are never going to catch up at this rate. We really need one of these years to prioritize to put about five times as much funding in this every year. And, lastly, Citrus Boulevard resurfacing is – I'm showing 2027 resurfacing. It's a grant. Who's grant is it? It's a DOT, small county outreach program grant, 75% grant. So, yes, we – that's the timeline. We've started design, and we're in the design cycle right now. Okay. Thanks. Yep. You're welcome. Yes, sir. Oh, I'm sorry. Side note to that SCOP grant, probably 10, 8 years ago, we asked the legislature with the small county coalition to modify the population-based number. I think it was 147,000 or something like that, and we got it moved up to, like, 160,000. I forget exactly what the number of people were, but I know we'll be bumping up against that soon again. And so we rely a lot on that SCOP grant process and scrap, right? Scrap and SCOP? We're solely SCOP. Just SCOP. Scrap is a smaller threshold or lower threshold. Just something that we need to – if we need another 10,000 population, something we need to be thinking about asking the legislature to modify maybe how we fit in that still, if we want to rely on that for the future, that's all. Yeah, and we have a close relationship with FDOT District 4 Local Programming Office, and they work with us. We're one of two counties in the district that qualify under that threshold. The other is Indian River. And there are a lot of years that Indian River does not request the funding, and it's upwards of $2 million a year. So they try to equitably distribute every year. And so we like to have projects lined up. So if the money is available, they program it, you know, because our staff does a good job of administering the grants. Our number is hitting the top of that threshold, and we're out of the allocation side. Right. All together. Commissioner Heather. I rarely find myself finding this – saying this, but I think we probably need more funding in the future in this, too, because we are going to – with the neighborhood restoration and the resurfacing, we're going to find ourselves in some of these older neighborhoods like Golden Gate that have a lot of unanticipated occurrences, and I don't think that in future years we probably have enough. So I think we need to look really closely and do some of these sampling and make sure that we have enough or contingencies or something, because we might have to program more money in next year. Okay. Move tentative approval. Motion by Commissioner Hurd. Seconded by Commissioner Hetherington. All in favor? Aye. All opposed? Motion carries unanimously. Thank you. This is the – stormwater management is the last CIP for public works. Sorry, I already flipped the page. I thought you were done. So what stayed the same is constant level of funding for stormwater management and flood control. A lot of that funding is for the repair of drainage facilities and also retrofit of our stormwater treatment areas over time. They do their job. They're like a sponge. They soak up a lot of nutrients, and then you have to remove those nutrients over time. So a lot of this CIP sheet provides for that maintenance that needs to occur. The other funding is for the hoe pipes drainage improvement. So we were accumulating our match for the project, for the outfall project. We've already designed it. We've already permitted it. It's with FEMA. They're just reviewing the design and cost, and once they approve that, we'll be able to put it out on the street. So with this CIP, we'll be able to accomplish that project. Can you also – when you do your update with John or whoever, can you bring back that as part of the update? Like what all happened? How did we – where are we? Sure. It would be great to see it. Yep. Yeah, no, that's a – there's a lot of engineering that went into that project. If it was easy, we would have done it years ago. Move tentative approval. Okay. Motion by Commissioner Hurd, seconded by Commissioner Smith. All in favor? Aye. All opposed? Motion carries unanimously. Thank you. Thank you. Hello. How are you? Welcome. Here's Sam Emerson, number one in the number two business. I was expecting nothing less, Commissioner. Thank you. I very rarely get to use that line, but whenever I see you, I can. Got to. Number one in the number two business. I appreciate it. First of all, let me put my glasses on. It's good to be with you and present our request for the CIP for 2025. As you can see, our request is about $2.8 million less than current year. What stayed the same, we've got some recurring rehabilitation projects and replacement projects, such as roadways, resurfacing, pavement repair, some minor capital improvements, tipping floor replacement, and some scale replacements. And what changed, we've got some additional CIP projects. This includes on-site water and wastewater for the facility. As you know, we're on well and septic tank there now. Not the best situation, but as soon as Western Extension is completed, we plan to have that system constructed and ready to connect. We also want to design next year the fuel island replacement, and I'll get to some photographs in a minute to further explain that. And then one of the great largest reductions was we removed the CIP sheet for the public convenience and the single stream recycling adjacent next door to the property we purchased from waste management. We didn't, we've asked for funding this current year, and so we're not requesting any additional funding at this time for that. So a couple of the new projects currently ongoing. We've got the construction of a solid waste administration building. That's been designed, permitted. All the architectures and civil site work has been designed, and we plan on constructing that later this year. I mentioned the transfer station tipping floor replacement and also some general capital improvements to the transfer station building. So I mentioned the on-site water and wastewater system. That's about $735,000 request. We're asking for funding for the design of replacement of the fuel island. As you can see, this fuel island is old school, kind of like me. So I understand what I'm looking at here. That one's gray also. Excuse me? That one's gray also. It is, absolutely. That was coincidental, by the way. But you can see this is a single steel tank. This is our diesel and gasoline storage tanks. And this is a secondary containment that's blocked the wall around it. So if we have a leak or a fuel spill while fueling, dispensing fuel, it's contained there. It doesn't run onto the ground. It's concrete slab. But this is old school technology, and we want to replace it with a dual wall tank that's encased in concrete, if you will, a convolt tank, hurricane-proof, wind load-proof. And they also want to put a canopy over the top, so when folks are there filling up a vehicle or a piece of heavy equipment in the rain, they've got some protection, just like at a gas station. And so our increase in request for those three projects totaled about $1 million. And so that does it for solid waste, if there are any questions. Commissioner Smith. Solid waste side. That was an old light, but I'll move tentative approval. That's what I'll second. Sorry about that. Motion by Commissioner Smith, seconded by Commissioner Campy. All in favor? Aye. All opposed? Motion carries unanimously. Thank you. You'll see a pretty good impact here on our request, about $11,700,000. Some of the projects that stayed the same are recurring septic-to-sewer projects, ongoing renewal and replacement projects, water and wastewater plant projects. Proposed projects in FY25 do not require any increase in rates. We stick with the current indexing rates, and so we'll be good until 2025. It also allows the department to provide water and wastewater service to customers at a comparable rate. So we're fairly competitive. We completed a rate analysis, rates efficiency study, I should say, and a 10-year financial outlook. We'll be bringing that to the board in January or February, and looking forward to present that to you. Some of the projects that we – can you go to the next slide, please? Yes. Of course. So a couple of the current projects, as you know, we've got force mains for the grinder system. We're continuing with the vacuum sewer systems in a number of neighborhoods, rehabilitation and replacement projects. Those are typically chemical storage tanks, some capital equipment, lift station rehab, and sanitary collection system slip lining and waterproofing of manholes. We also have an ongoing water meter replacement program as well. The Tropical Farms Water Treatment CO2 facility just came online. We've had some issues with our surficial wellfield. That's what we use to blend with the RO. We're blending about 80 RO, 20 surficial, and that's because we need the minerals so we can buffer that water and it's not corrosive. We're having some issues with that wellfield production, and so we put in a CO2 system that will provide the minerals and CO2 to buffer that RO water. So we'll be going to a little bit higher blend of RO. And the Martin Downs repump station, this is a water system repump station. We've experienced some residual pressure issues in the Palm City area, Canopy Creek and those areas. What we're finding is we have a number of homes that irrigate with potable water. They've got their sprinklers on five and six days a week, and it's a huge demand. They've got the sprinklers on coming on after midnight, and they'll run until 6 a.m. That's overlapping with the peak when people are getting up in the morning for the morning, the peak. And so we're competing with irrigation versus just the regular household use, and so we're addressing that. We're going to be doing some direct mail-outs to some of those highest-using communities, remind them, send a copy of the recent ordinance that was adopted, and we hope to curtail some of that potable use for irrigation. Does that ordinance have any teeth? It does. It will require some assistance from code enforcement, but absolutely. All you have to do is drive around and look at who's got lush green lawns. Yeah, it's basically overwatered. An ordinance requires two days a week, so we'll be doing some direct mail-outs. We'll do some follow-up, knock on doors, leave some door hangers, try to encourage. It wasn't affecting anything. That would be one thing. But you're actually having to alter your system to make up for that. I would probably send some folks around. And real quick, some upcoming projects. We'll continue the small dam or force mains for our grinder system, rehabilitation and replacement I mentioned, fire hydrant and water main replacements. And we're going to be replacing the bar screen at Dixie Park, adding some disc filters, and some iron filter rehabilitations as well. And we plan to – we're requesting funds, $6 million, for a north plant aquifer well. That's the RO well, the deep well. We'll also be applying for alternative water supply funding for that through the district. We haven't been successful through the district, but we continue to apply. We want to add the third clarifier at the Tropical Farms Wastewater Treatment Facility. It's intended for capacity, but it's not necessarily needed next year for capacity. It's more for operational concerns and gives us a lot more flexibility on taking one offline, having repairs done, and we still have two clarifiers in service at all times. But that will eventually meet concurrency for us. Sam? Sure. The deep well that you just mentioned up in Jensen that we haven't been successful with, how, why, what, where? That's an additional RO well. We have four, and that will be the fifth well. And we have four, and they don't want us to have five? No, no, no. It's just we just haven't been successful with grant funding for that through the district. So there are times where we can be helpful maybe? I didn't know that. I mean, I didn't know that we struggled with a grant request for an additional well. So it would be helpful to share that kind of stuff with us so we can talk to others about it. Thank you. Doug knows a guy. But that will be an additional RO well and raw water main to the North Treatment Plant. And I think that's all I have. I didn't mean to rush through, but you were looking a little tired. No, it's fine. I would do my part. It was. I don't think it was. Like the Red Bull of presentations. It was the, what's the right word for it, the gray fuel tank. And I think that was all part of that, the age and the. Thank you. I should have asked you this long before, but we had a neighborhood request information on fire hydrants relative to who owns them, who maintains them. And it's apparently they're their own fire hydrants or something in their neighborhood. Do we have a lot of that? Not a lot. We typically own, once a subdivision's constructed, we will own and operate the water system, distribution system, and the fire hydrants. But if you're talking about off, I think, Canter Highway and is it South River? This is on the island. On the island? I just, I thought it odd that we'd have fire hydrants that we would use, if you needed to, that we don't maintain and take care of. Anyway, I just, at some point, if there's a policy direction, like, should we know how many of those exist and what is the liability for that if they fail, if they're not maintained properly? Yeah, that is an issue. So, let me, we'll get with staff, and we'll go through, and let's pull up, do some summary report of all of those subdivisions where they're private hydrants. Yeah, if it's a hydrant, that'd be nice to know. If it's 20, that'd be nice to know. If it's 5, that'd be nice to know. I mean, at the scale at which, you know, we have privately maintained fire hydrants, probably, they're probably, I'm sure the roads are probably private. They're probably not our roads, which would mean that they'd probably take care of it, but nonetheless. If you dial 9-1-1, you come hook up to the thing and it doesn't operate, whose fault? Oh, it's an issue. Yeah, whatever. Thanks. Move tenant approval. We already didn't. We have a motion. Second. We have a second by Commissioner Hurd. Motion by Commissioner Smith. All in favor? Aye. All opposed? Motion carries unanimously. Correct. That's it? That's it? Really? Yes. Oh, man. Do you want to keep going? Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Mr. Campy. Thank you. Mr. Donaldson and Ms. Murley, I appreciate the presentation, and I know that there wasn't a lot of additional increases, but what I would like to see potentially over the next couple of months before we meet again on these topics, if there are items that are older, that were sort of placeholders, if there were some things that seemed like a good idea a couple years ago that have been sort of following along on their five-year journey on a CIP sheet, if the departments, and I trust our people, if there are items that can be subtracted out. I'd like to see, you know, I know there wasn't a large increase, but there is also the possibility of having a decrease. Keeping the things that are necessary. But if there are some projects that are just like, ah, we're not going to get to it, it seemed like an idea, I know that those are probably gone already. But if not, I think it's important. We don't have a crystal ball of what the next six months will look like. But that being said, the CIP sheet, I know when we get to budget time, we start to potentially scramble and look for items. And last year we pulled out the CIP sheet when we were trying to negotiate the budget, and people said, well, this should have been discussed when we were doing the CIP sheets, and it wasn't discussed. So I just wanted to bring up that if there are things that the board without having a, not the board, the staff without having a gun to their heads have the ability to do as a put aside, you know, postponement or elimination, it might be easier to do that with some time to make thoughtful consideration versus we're giving Don a two-week ultimatum to find $5 million. Just if you could keep that in your head for me, please. In other words, don't do it on the last day. Don't do it on the last day. Okay, we have reached the end of our meeting. A 505 public comment. I have no public comment sheets. Does anybody want a public comment? Seeing none, how about the commissioner comment? None. I'm all set. None. I'm set. All good. Me too. And our next meeting is May 21st, and we are adjourned.