Good morning and welcome to our April 22nd, 2025 Board of County Commission meeting. Please join us for the invocation by Reverend Victor Gomez from the Higher Purpose Pentecostal Church, followed by the Pledge of Allegiance, which will be given by Bill Bergstresser. Good morning. Good morning, all. Let's bow our heads and ask God to bless this meeting. Father, we love you. We thank you for your presence. We love you for what you're about to do in this place. Take all the hearts in this place and make it one that you make the choices that we bring to you in this committee. Blessed in Jesus' name we ask and bless every person that makes these decisions for the community, our commissioners. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen. Mr. Bergstresser? I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. And you are an Air Force veteran. Tell us a bit about your service, please. Okay. Well, thank you for having me. Thank you. Just after the Gulf War ended in the early 90s, I entered the United States Air Force at age 22. This was in 1992. My goal was to fly airplanes. And I had family members that were pilots. I had family members that were involved with jet aircraft. It was amazing to me. So that was my goal. I got in as an enlistee and was chosen to work on F-16s. You'd have to go to a lot of schooling in order to fly. So I was going to go to school and work on F-16s, which is an Air Force fighter jet. I ended up not having enough time for the school and also realized that I was nowhere near as competitive as all the fighter pilots that I worked for. So I worked on F-16s for four years in the military. I got a ton of stories. Some are fun. Some are not so fun. I'd like to just tell one that my mom seems to like because she tells all her friends. So I'm born and raised here in Martin County. I actually happened to be born in Fort Pierce because my family doctor was up in Fort Pierce at the time. But never really got out of the state often, and so I didn't know what fall was. I knew of palm trees and oak trees. That's about all I know. And one morning I'm sitting on a flight line, now a young airman, sitting on a flight line watching the F-16s start up and get ready to go out for practice missions. And between me and the flight line is a nice row of trees, and I'm stationed in South Carolina at the time, and the trees, the color of the leaves were amazing to me. And one of the jet aircraft, during its testing before its flight, ran up to 80% thrust and blew all the leaves off the tree right in front of me. And so it was my first experience with fall. Instant fall. On the other end of the spectrum, at the end of my service, my last year of my first four years, I was to make a decision whether or not I wanted to continue on and re-enlist for another four years. And I was riding the fence on that. I had some other ideas of what I wanted to do in life. And working on aircraft wasn't really high on the list anymore for me. I'd lost hearing because of being close to a jet aircraft, and I kind of wanted to build. And I was kind of, I had a desire to build homes and other buildings. And so I was out in Saudi Arabia in Operation Southern Watch, which was where the United States had the task of patrolling the 42nd parallel, making sure that Iraq is no longer advancing south towards Kuwait. So I'm in Saudi Arabia working on jets. And one evening, I was to go on shift. I was working a night shift. And I was sitting on a couch with three of my fellow airmen. We were in very nice buildings that Saudi Arabia put us up in. They were called the Kobar Towers. I was on third floor. We had eight-foot-tall sliding glass doors with a balcony overlooking a big new mosque, and then in the background, the Persian Gulf. It was quite the scene. And while I was sitting there with these other individuals, I felt my face and realized I'd forgotten to shave. So I got up from the couch, and I walked back into a bathroom to shave. And the building shook from under me. I fell to the ground, realized we had what felt like a missile had hit the building. But actually, 200 feet away, there was a terrorist bombing. And so it kind of helped make my decision. It was a frightening event. I had to offer a lot of first aid to people out in a parking lot. 19 people died in this particular bombing. And again, I guess that's what settled my decisions for not staying in any longer in the Air Force. Those are my two stories. Thank you. Thank you for your service. We have a number of presets today. At 9.05, we'll hear public comment. 9.30, we'll hear the Business Development Board's annual report. At 1.30, we will hear contracts that meet the threshold for board approval of a million dollars or greater. At 5.05, we will hear from the public. There are no additional items. Commissioners, can we approve the regular agenda? Minus the consent agenda. Commissioner Hetherington. Yes. I will move that we approve the agenda. Second. There's a motion and a second. All those in favor, aye. Opposed? That motion passes unanimously. Now we'll begin our proclamations. The first proclamation is Hurricane Preparedness Week. The 2025 hurricane season begins on June 1st, and as a coastal county, Martin County is extremely vulnerable to storm surge, tornadoes, flooding, and high winds. Whether hurricane forecasters have predicted an average, above average, or below average season, it takes only one storm to have a bad year. In recognition of Hurricane Preparedness Week, May 4th through 10th, the board urges the cooperation of municipalities, businesses, homeowners, and condominium associations, hotel associations, and all media to help inform residents and visitors of appropriate awareness, preparedness, and safety measures related to hurricane season. And here to accept, we have Amy Heimberger-Lopez, who is our Deputy Emergency Management Director. Thank you. Good morning, Commissioners. Mr. Donaldson, Ms. Woods. As we observe Hurricane Preparedness Week on May 4th to 10th, it is crucial for both our board of county commissioners and also our residents of Martin County to reflect on the importance of readiness before the next storm threatens our community. The 2024 hurricane season serves as a reminder that early preparation saves lives and protects property. Our emergency management team is working diligently to enhance response plans, strengthen community partnerships, and ensure resources are in place to support the residents before, during, and after a storm. However, preparedness is a shared responsibility, and we encourage every household and business to take proactive steps, such as reviewing evacuation routes, assembling emergency kits, and staying informed through official alerts. We ask for the support of our county leaders in reinforcing the importance of these efforts by promoting preparedness initiatives and ensuring our communities have the resources needed to withstand future storms. Investments in resilient infrastructure, public awareness campaigns, and emergency response capabilities are essential for safeguarding lives and property. As we move forward, let us work together to foster a culture of preparedness, resilience, and swift recovery, making Martin County a model for hurricane readiness. By taking action now, we can reduce risks and emerge stronger from any storm that comes our way. It is our privilege and pleasure to serve the board and our community, so on behalf of your emergency management team, we thank you all and appreciate your support as we head into yet another above-normal predicted season. Thank you. Thank you very much. Our next proclamation is a proclamation declaring Sexual Assault Awareness Month in Martin County, Florida. April is recognized as Sexual Assault Awareness Month, and this observance calls attention to the fact that sexual violence is a widespread public health problem. Every day, too many women, men, and children across our state suffer the pain and trauma of sexual assault in all its forms. At every level, we must work to provide necessary resources to survivors of sexual assault without judgment and with dignity, including medical attention, mental health services, relocation and housing assistance, and advocacy during the criminal justice process. And here to accept from board members from the Inner Truth Project, we have Kerry Norbrotten and Marshall Dees. I'm Marshall Dees, and I'm a member of the board of directors for the Inner Truth Project. On behalf of the Inner Truth Project, its staff, board members, and most importantly, our survivors, we are honored to receive this proclamation from the Martin County Board of Commissioners. Founded 12 years ago by Mindy Fetterman, the Inner Truth Project was established to serve individuals affected by the direct and indirect consequences of sexual violence and abuse. Since our inception, we have provided counseling and other services to hundreds of survivors, helping them embark on the journey to reclaim their power. As a former law enforcement officer, I have witnessed firsthand the devastating effects experienced by survivors, and I am privileged to be part of such a transformative organization. The recognition of the Inner Truth Project's efforts through this proclamation brings much-needed awareness to an often unspoken and underreported issue. So we thank you. Our next proclamation is a proclamation declaring Earth Day in Martin County. Today, April 22nd, marks Earth Day, a global observance highlighting the need to protect the Earth's ecosystems, which span 510 million square kilometers and support millions of species. Sustained efforts by residents and organizations can preserve these resources, ensuring their ecological and economic value endures for future generations. Earth Day provides an opportunity to celebrate Martin County's commitment to green initiatives, such as expanding stormwater treatment areas, promoting native plantings, and fostering community engagement and conservation. And here to accept, I think you all know this gentleman, we have Mark Perry, Executive Director and CEO of the Florida Oceanographic Society. I've got a handout for you, and as I say, a picture's worth a thousand words, so I only have 50 words to say. But thank you, Commissioners, and Martin County for recognizing this important day, which we celebrate back in 1970 when we started. But it's a special day, and the photo that I'm passing out to you here is a NASA Apollo 17 photo, taken about 125,000 miles above the Earth, 1972 in December. It's a beautiful photo of our Earth, and it really shows. So the 8-inch diameter sphere that you're holding here, if we put that into scale of 1 inch equals 1,000 miles, that would put our moon at about 20 feet away, only about 2 inches in diameter, like a tennis ball. And then our sun would be about 72 feet in diameter, and it'd be about a mile and a half away. So it just kind of gives you a little scale. And as you can see by the swirling clouds above in the atmosphere, we're moving rather rapidly. You know, the Earth is rotating at about 1,000 miles an hour, and we're also orbiting around the sun at about 67,000 miles an hour. But it's the 197 million square miles that we just stated that are on our surface. And out of that, of course, 71% is in ocean and water coverage. That's why it looks like a blue planet. And it is, and it's 140 million square miles. And it's a big, big area, but it's also volume. It's about 321 million cubic miles of volume, one of the largest living spaces here on Earth. Our atmosphere above it is very thin. In fact, if I took this paper and wrapped it around that 8-inch sphere, that's about how thick our atmosphere is. But it's a volume of about 5 million cubic miles, 78% nitrogen, 20% oxygen, and 1% water vapor. That's all those clouds that you see swirling around and things are always in motion and energy. It's 62 miles up in space. It goes up, and then we reach space. But the big mass of the atmosphere, of course, is right here near the surface, only about 6.8 miles above. And that's where we get all that energy moving around. Of course, we've caused a lot of change in our climate. The levels of CO2 back in 1970, when I started working on this, was 325 parts per million. And now in 25, they're up to 430 parts per million. That's a higher concentration continuously of carbon dioxide. What does that mean? Of course, you've heard about climate change results, global warming, thermal expansion of our ocean is causing sea level rise. And ocean acidification, all that carbon dioxide sequestered in the ocean is getting oversaturated. And that ocean acidification is dissolving all the shells that we normally think of. So what we need to do is just respect our planet. It's all about what we do on those 57 million square miles of land that impacts the 140 million square miles of water. And Martin County has done a tremendous job right here, right on the coast, to help do that and protect our planet. So I appreciate everything you do to respect our planet. And our next proclamation is 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 access 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 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's our Historic Preservation Board Chair, Evan Anderson. Good morning. Evan Anderson with the Historic Preservation Board. I'm the current chair, and I'm pleased to be here this morning. The Board of County Commissioners will declare the month of May is Historic Preservation Month in Martin County. We'll be celebrating along with the rest of the country. It's actually May has been designated nationally as Historic Preservation Month, and thanks to you guys, we're doing the same. We will also be commemorating and celebrating Martin County's centennial anniversary, which takes place this year, 100 years. We're lucky to live in a county where our elected officials have recognized the importance of historic preservation, thank you, to our quality of life. In 2003, the Martin County Board of Commissioners adopted its Historic Preservation Ordinance that created a Historic Preservation Board, which I sit on, and a designation process to place buildings more than 50 years old on the Martin County Register of Historic Places. Another duty of the Board is promoting an awareness of the benefits of historic preservation to the community. For the past 17 years, the Martin County Historic Preservation Board has coordinated Historic Preservation Month as an important means of accomplishing this goal. 2008 was the first year that the Board coordinated Historic Preservation Week, which grew to a month after that. They coordinated activities with its partners in preservation, including the City of Stewart and many of the organizations that are participating this May. Each year, community support for Historic Preservation Month and Historic Preservation has grown stronger. In 2008, the schedule listed a mere six events, all planned by the Board. In 2019, the year before COVID hit, there were 40 events on the calendar. In 2020, it had to be canceled due to COVID. Here we are, 2025. We have 33 separate events listed on the schedule of events, which looks something like this, but in color. And you can find that at 20 different locations around the county. You can also go onto the county's website and find a list of those events and where they're going to occur. It was the Board's hope when it started celebrating this very special month that, through public education about our historic treasures, a preservation ethic would take root in Martin County. This year's 2025 schedule of events, planned by a diversity of organizations, shows that a preservation ethic has indeed taken root. 2025 is a very special year in that we are celebrating the Martin County Centennial. Martin County was created in 1925. Historic Preservation is an important element of Martin County's quality of life. Historic Preservation preserves valuable local history. Through its preservation program, Martin County has preserved and placed on its local register of historic places valuable historic treasures, such as the Salerno Colored School. The House of Refuge, the Mansion at Tuckahoe, the Log Cabin, and the Captain Sewell House for future generations to enjoy. Historic Preservation is important not only to what Southerners refer to as our sense of place, but to our economy. A 2010 University of Florida report, Economic Impacts of Historic Preservation in Florida, says, Historic Preservation activities in Florida contribute some $6.3 billion annually to the state. Heritage tourism is a great way to bring tourists and visitors to Martin County. According to a 2021 report, Preserving Florida Heritage, more than 6 out of 10 visitors to our state participate in heritage tourism in some form or fashion, knowingly or unknowingly. And those that do participate stay longer and they spend more money. The board invites you to join us at the Stewart Heritage Museum, 5 o'clock, May the 1st, as we join our partners in preservation, Stewart Heritage, the City of Stewart and others, to celebrate the kickoff for our Historic Preservation Month 2025 and commemorate the Martin County Centennial. We also invite you to join us at the Elliott Museum on May 15th when our board will honor the 2025 Preservationist of the Year. The board wants to thank our partners who are participating in this very special month. We look forward to working with you as we celebrate both Historic Preservation Month 2025 and our 100th anniversary. Thank you. We'll take up public comments now. Our first speaker will be Willis Milner. Following Mr. Milner will be Bill Miller. Thank you very much for the opportunity to come and speak with you today. Willis Milner is my name. I like to say that I've been a permanent resident of Martin County, had the good sense to move here in 1999. So I've been here for quite a while. Moved on to Glen Ridge Trail, bought a house on Glen Ridge Trail. Hurricane Francis and Jean took care of that, so we built a brand-new house there at the end of the circle there. So there's a circle at the end of the road, and for years we would put our yard debris down there, which only makes perfect sense to do. However, I learn now, and we know now that there's a rule against it, and so we don't do that anymore. Now, a sign popped up, and I'm not talking about a small sign. I'm talking about a nine-foot sign with a big old white thing at the top that talks about being fined $5,000 if you put yard debris into the circle or any other garbage there. Of course, nobody's ever put any garbage there, and so I went on the website to, I'm not going to use the word complain, to make my concerns known, and the field operations folks came out and put notices on mailboxes saying, please don't do this anymore, neighbors. And, of course, the neighbors and I have not done that since then, and they removed the sign. And, by the way, your field operations folks are super, very good, efficient, and so forth. So I thought it was over with, and now the sign is back. And I'm asking you folks to please, you know, consider, Commissioner Hurd, you go by our street every day on your way home. If you want to go down there and look at what this thing, which I understand could be obviously a rural county sign to keep people from putting trash there, which I doubt works, but it works for us. We're not putting debris there anymore, and I want the sign removed. Thank you. Thank you. That sounds reasonable to me. Bill Miller is next, followed by Linda St. Julian. Good morning, Commissioners. Thanks for the opportunity to present today to you. My name is Bill Miller, and my family and I live in the Cobblestone community. 1268 Southwest Squire Johns Lane is our address. We've been there for the greater part of 10 years and Martin County residents since 2011. I'm a native Floridian born and raised in the state. I appreciate the opportunity to speak with the board today about my strong support for the proposed fire station project on the western side of the county on Martin Highway close to I-95. The fire station project is long overdue and essential to the safety and well-being of our residents, I believe. Our community has experienced multiple total loss of home fires in recent years, in addition to serious unwanted forest fires that required mandatory evacuations of our community and multiple day fire responses. As our county grows and as areas around us grow, emergency response needs on the turnpike, I-95, Martin Highway are creating even more demand for the fire station that currently serves western Martin County. Fire stations are often the hub of communities and provide a sense of security, community pride, and identity. Intangibles that help to uplift and broaden our sense of value for our community and evokes a commitment that we care about our well-being and safety. These are examples, I believe, of taxpayer dollars going to a purpose that uplifts the community and shows a commitment to the people. The needs have outgrown the services provided, and now is the time to take action to approve the fire station project and ensure that all residents of our county receive the protection and emergency response services and emergency response services that we pay for and deserve. Thank you for your consideration, and please vote to approve the additional fire station. Thank you. Thank you. He is frozen. Linda St. Julian is next, followed by John Seymour. Good morning. Good morning, Commissioners. My name is Linda St. Julian, and today is actually my birthday. Happy birthday. Thank you all. What would you like for your birthday? Thank you. Thank you. What would you like for your birthday? A new fire station. Well, how about it? While birthdays are usually spent celebrating, and of course the day is still young, I've chosen to be here with you because I believe so strongly in the importance of ensuring the safety of our community. I've lived in Stewart West for 24 years. In that time, I've witnessed firsthand several house fires in both Stewart West and Cobblestone, and just within the past month, two brush fires in less than 20 days. You may recall the brush fires in 2024 that spread over 100 acres next to Stewart West, where evacuation looked imminent. Our current fire rescue station is at least 15 to 20 minutes away, and that's when they can get drivers to cooperate to let them through on Martin Highway. Commissioners, every minute matters, especially when lives and homes are on the line. We simply cannot continue to gamble with response times this long. As you know, your recent county study clearly highlighted a dangerous gap in fire rescue coverage for Western Palm City. The need is unmistakable. Fortunately, we now have an extraordinary opportunity. Ashley Capital, the developer behind the Martin Commerce Park project, directly across from our community, has been actively engaged with Martin County Fire Rescue. They are willing to donate land as part of the public benefit component required for their project's final approval later this year. Accepting this donation would greatly reduce costs for taxpayers, particularly at a time when expenses related to land acquisition, building construction, and fire equipment are dramatically rising. This is an immediate solution to a dire problem. As taxpayers and as your constituents, we ask you to recognize and act upon the very real dangers we face daily. You've seen the study, you've witnessed the rapid development, and now you have the land practically gifted to you. There is simply no reason to delay. Please prioritize funding in your budget for a new fire station in Western Palm City. We trust you'll put public safety first and make the responsible decision for our community. Thank you all for your consideration. Thank you. I'm not going to be as eloquent as the previous speakers, so I'll try to be shorter. I just note that, as has been mentioned, there have been three total lost fires in our communities in the recent years. Thank goodness there haven't been any fatalities associated with those, and I would urge that we take immediate action to reduce response times and build a new fire station and not wait until after we have had a fatality due to those delayed response times. Thank you very much. Cornelis Pamiger, if I've mispronounced your name, forgive me. Very close. Thank you. Good morning, Commissioners. My name is Cornelis Pamiger. I was elected president of the Steward Board of Directors, and one of the issues that I noticed when I did my campaign was the need and the absolute worry about not having a fire station nearby. I know all of you are very busy. I hope that during the Easter weekend you were able to pick up a short clip that the TV aired. They neglected to tell you that there were only three brush fires. There were three house fires in two and a half years. Two houses were completely destroyed. The third one was partially destroyed. Had the respond time been within normal limits, let's say 10 minutes, 12 minutes, those houses may have been saved. They were not because the fire station, the nearest we have, is at MAP Road. And traffic on 714, as you have all experienced, is not the easiest traffic, not even for an emergency vehicle or a fire truck. We are taxpayers. We choose to live in an isolated area. I admit that. Yet we ask that you consider a fire station in view of the continued expansion west coming from Palm City. We've been here six years, and the change in six years has been tremendous. I did not think when we moved in here that things would develop so rapidly, but they have. As taxpayers, I came up with a rough estimate that we contribute perhaps $6 million to $8 million. So I'm asking you, would you consider allocating perhaps half of that money to get started with a fire station, surveying, determining the suitability of the land that has been made available by Ashley Capital, and then we come back to you next year. I'll be off your back for a year, and I have a year to prepare my three-minute speech next year for more money. I would be very pleased if you would look at it. Of course, I could ask for the full $11 or $30 million, but I approach it very carefully. I understand you have obligations to other people, other projects. I just humbly ask, please look carefully into the needs that we have. Thank you. Thank you. Tammy Mazzotta is next, followed by Tom Pine. Tammy Mazzotta is next, followed by Tom Pine. Tammy Mazzotta here. Good morning. I just want to take a minute to address all of you today and ask you if during today and later today and beyond today, if you could all take a few minutes and reflect on yourselves and your positions here at the commission. Maybe ask yourselves if you're upholding your oath to the communities and doing your best for your community, or are you doing what's best for you individually and maybe a handful of people? Are you listening to your community? Are you trying to help your community? And are you being true to yourself and the community also? Are you being transparent? Are you being sincere or are you being selfish or detrimental to the community? I'm not here making any accusations. I'm just asking you all to reflect upon the choices that you're making for your communities and your districts, and I'm asking you to reflect on the support for each one of you, supporting each other. If you really, truly feel that the decisions are the best for your communities, or are they getting you the next commissioner's vote for you, the next thing that you want, if that makes sense. I have a lot of confidence in every one of you. I see a lot of good in every one of you. But I'm also seeing things in one specific community that are not okay. The community is not being heard. They're being ignored. Things are not transparent. Things are being hidden. And that's not why you are here. You're here to be transparent. You're here to do your best person. Because I believe that each one of you, as an individual person, are really good people. But when you come up into your actual jobs here, I understand it's not easy. I understand you cannot please everyone. But when you have an entire community asking for transparency and to be heard, and that's not being done, why are you here? Okay. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Tom Pine is next, followed by Ken Haynes. Good morning. Good morning, commissioners. My name's Tom Pine. I've been a resident of Martin County for over 50 years. I presently live in the Jensen Beach area. Today in the consent agenda, this county commission will approve $18,615,013.20 that was spent between March 24th and April 6th of 2025 without identifying the payees or the purpose of the payments. Democracy dies in darkness. Democracy dies in darkness. Welcome to Martin County. I have spoken several times about the illegal expansion of runway 1230. How part how the airport director lied to the county commission at a county commission meeting when he stated there were no homes west of runway 1230 and showed photos to back up his statements. The photos were over 30 years old. The vote by the commissioners were five to zero. At least one, if not more of the commissioners at the time knew exactly what was happening. Within a few months of that meeting, two county commissioners apologized in the Stewart News for being duped into voting for the expansion of runway 1230. The airport director was not disciplined in any way for lying to the public, but I got a golden parachute on the taxpayers back instead for doing exactly what he was hired to do. The original price approved at the county commission meeting for the renovation of our county golf course clubhouse was $5.5 million. The final cost is still a secret because it was all hidden in the consent agenda over a few years. Estimates at least double the $5.5 million. Last week, I was at a meeting with our Jensen Beach commissioner and the head of the parks department, where he gave me another presentation of why the county operates the beachside cafes and also noted $300,000 in losses at the county golf club restaurant. I was at the meeting when the contract was awarded. One of the good old boys, I guess. Who else would, but a good old guy, who else but a good old boy wouldn't have to put up a sizable amount of security to operate a restaurant anywhere, even a county facility. $3 million on the taxpayers back. Good deposit for a firehouse. Thank you. Ken Haynes is next, followed by Rachel or Rochelle Goldman. Good morning. Hi, good morning, commissioners. My name is Ken Haynes. I live in Stewart West, and I'm currently a board member of the Stewart West POA. I haven't spoken here for quite a while. It's been over 10 years. I'm one of the original members of the Martin County Consensus, if any of you remember that group. One of the things that our charter really prioritized was to advocate for responsible growth in the county. And along with the many issues that you have before you, part of responsible growth, in our opinion, would have been things like responsible services. As you know, other people have spoken here this morning. The issue that I've come to talk about is the firehouse as a responsible service to the western side of Palm City. I congratulate you for doing that study, and I think the study, from what I understand, pointed out that there was a lack of response time because of the firehouse right now being located in central Palm City on Map Road. There's been a rash of fires, as reported, some house fires, and the response time for the last house fire was over 20 minutes until they actually got water on the fire. Imagine if you were sitting outside your home watching it burn, waiting that long. That's a pretty hard pill to swallow. Now, fortunately, Ashley Capital has graciously offered to donate land for this firehouse. So, you know, that should be half of the battle to where to put it, where to locate it. And it sounds like there's at least a tentative plan in place that that land would be offered. And, you know, I don't know that we would get that out of too many other commercial businesses or commercial developers. So that's a great thing. Now, the thought that the county commission has in front of them is to decide whether they can approve that and, of course, budget for it. And due to the fact, you know, we've had this real estate boom over the past at least half dozen years, you would think that there would be some funding available for something like a vital service of a firehouse, a new firehouse in a highly needed area. Facts are, over time, that area out of Martin Highway is going to build up, and there's going to be even more need for it than there is now. Canopy Creek is there. They would get service by it. Of course, Stewart West, Cobblestone, Newfield Projects coming in. There's going to be vast need for that, and I'm sure the fire station's not going to happen overnight, even if it's funded. So I think, you know, like I said, the responsible growth part, responsible services, it would make just absolute sense for the commission to vote to approve it and to fund it and, you know, take Ashley Capital up on their generous donation. And, you know, I'm sure there's going to be people speaking after me, but please give it some thought. I'm sure this is going to happen over the next few months, whether your approval is yes or no, and I would really urge all five of you to help us out in District 5 with that firehouse. Thank you. Ms. Goldman is next, followed by Rochelle Titko. This is my first time speaking for you all. I'm going to ramble for a couple minutes because I didn't come as prepared as everyone else with my little speech. So, and I'm going to use my phone. Speak into your microphone. Oh, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. I'm going to ramble because I didn't come prepared 100%, okay? So, I'm Rachel. I'm a native Floridian. I was born in North Miami Beach. I moved here 10 years ago. It's a beautiful, beautiful place. I love cobblestones to our west. Beautiful natural place, but this year definitely prone to brush fires. Some of my friends' homes were involved. We also had the house fires some other folks spoke about. One of them was two doors down. I'm watching a fire thinking, wow, I'm about to lose my house. My dad was a firefighter rescue down south. I know what can happen. It's bad. I have a fire hydrant at the end of my street. Not at the end of my street. I'm sorry. At the end of my driveway, okay? It's useless because by the time firefighters get there, they're saving the foundation of my house, and that's it because it's just too far away. And like other people have said, 714. I was late to this meeting. I came in after it started because I had to come up 714. It's a problem. We're about to have a church built at the beginning of Cobblestone Stewart West, the driveway. I don't know if y'all know about that. Well, you must know about it, right? You had to approve it. Imagine what everybody would say if the church burns down. It won't be good. God forbid there's people in the church when there's a fire. That will be worse because it will be bad. What nobody's mentioned yet also is that in Cobblestone Stewart West, we only have basically one access road. In a fire, there's only one way for us to get out, okay? It can burn to the ground. We will be trapped. There is a boat ramp, but we'd all have to go into the canal with the alligators. So you can have fire or you can be eaten alive. Those are your choices there. So it's really, really, really necessary. There's a lot of buildings going up, the industrial center, yada, yada. More risk for fire. More risk for not just for fire starting, but what we can lose. The church, the industrial community, a lot can go badly wrong. Yeah, I think that's all I have. Is that my buzzer? Is that the egg timer? Okay. I'm done. Thanks, everybody. Thank you. Rochelle Titko is next, followed by Deborah Vikotsky. Good morning. Good morning, commissioners. Thank you for allowing me to speak. My name is Rochelle Titko, and my husband, Steve, and I live in Stewart West. We've been there for approximately five years. I'm deeply concerned about the fire response time in our neighborhood, but what's even more alarming is the inadequate ambulance response time. In Western Palm City, it currently takes 15 to 20 minutes for emergency medical services to arrive. That's nearly double the recognized national benchmark, according to the National Fire Protection Association. The standards for EMS response times vary by area. First, there is a target of under eight minutes, 90% of the time in urban and suburban settings. When it applies to a rural area, it recommends a response time of 14 minutes for 80% of the time. Even by rural standards, we are not meeting expectations, and Western Palm City is not rural anymore. We are considered suburban. It's a rapidly growing suburban community that deserves timely emergency care. I personally spent my entire career working on the heart. I saw firsthand the outcomes of patients who received immediate emergency care versus those who did not. The delay of even a few minutes can lead to permanent damage or worse. This just doesn't apply to cardiac arrest. Timely emergency response is critical for strokes, traumatic injuries, respiratory distress, severe allergic reactions, which I'm allergic to bees, I could die, and countless other emergencies. Minutes lost waiting to help can mean the difference between recovery and lifelong disability or even loss. In the case of cardiac arrest, brain damage begins within four to six minutes, and the chances of survival drop by 10% every minute without treatment. They aren't just statistics. They're real consequences for people that affect us in our community. I understand there are a lot of factors involved in choosing the location of a new fire station. But I ask you, imagine if your family was waiting 20 minutes for an ambulance or standing helplessly while your home burns. Western Palm City is growing. We pay significant taxes, and our emergency infrastructure does need to reflect that. I respectfully urge you to support the placement of a fire station to our neighborhood because every second truly counts. Thank you. Deborah Vygotsky is the last request-to-speak form I have. If you would like to address us, please fill out a request-to-speak form and give it to the bailiff. Thank you. Thank you, and good morning. Thank you, Chair. Also, you perfectly pronounced that name, which can be somewhat intimidating. Thank you. So, good morning, Commissioners. Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you this morning. My name is Deb Vygotsky, and my husband, Tim, and I live in Stewart West. We have been residents there for the past eight years and have owned property in Martin County for over 18 years. I, along with many of my neighbors, wish to express strong support for a fire department and rescue on 714 Martin Highway. I am here today not only as a resident, but as someone who knows firsthand how critical response times are. On December 12th, my family lost our home to a devastating fire. By the grace of God, we got out alive, along with our golden retriever, Champ. But between the fire, the water, and the smoke damage, our home is the total gut, and we are the third home in as many years. The fire departments that responded were incredible. They were brave, professional, and they did everything that they could. But 15 to 20 minutes for help to arrive was meaningful. By the time they got there, the fire had already taken a hold. A few minutes could have changed everything. It was gut-wrenching to stand there with many of our community members and watch our house burn and not be able to do anything about it and just waiting for the responders to arrive. And we lost everything that we have worked so hard to build. That's why I'm asking you today to support the proposed fire station near our community. It isn't about convenience. It's about saving lives, protecting homes, and giving families like all of ours here today a fighting chance. Our entire community, Stuart West and Cobblestone alike, supports this fire station, and we're asking you to make it a priority. Please don't wait until the next emergency. We can't afford to lose more than we already have. Thank you for listening, and thank you for your commitment to the safety of our entire community. Thank you. Glenn Harm is the next speaker, Glenn Harm, and that's the last request to speak form that I have. Good morning, Martin County Board of Commissioners. Thank you for giving us the opportunity to speak. My name is Glenn Harm. I'm speaking on behalf of Revive Church. Recently, about a year and a half ago, we purchased 15 acres out on Martin Highway by I-95 with the great idea and the dream of building a beautiful church there to serve the community. We've been serving the community in Martin County for over 10 years now, and we see that there's really a need there for a fire station. So, I want to let you know that I was there when a tornado went through that land last year. I was there, I brought many work crews to help out the neighborhood, clean up trees, brush, and other things that happened there. I was there when the fire went through, and it demolished our property there. I was there with the policemen, the fire department. I was on site. And as a design-certified engineer registered with the Federal Department of Transportation in Washington, D.C., I'm involved with moving hazmat, hazardous material. And I recognize and am involved with many catastrophic events around the United States. And what I don't want to see happen here in Martin County is a catastrophic event with our church. Our church has every plan and intention of building a beautiful building there, having many people congregating and worshiping. And if there was a fire there, I just don't know how it could ever be attended when the closest fire department is on Map Road 20 minutes away. So I would not want to see another event like what happened out in California where they couldn't handle fires properly. I don't want to see this in Martin County. So I would respectfully ask the Board of Commissioners to carefully consider the budget in trying to develop a fire department close by to where we plan to build our church. I thank you for this time. Thank you. Would anyone else like to address us? Thank you. Then we will move on to our 930 preset, which is the Business Development Boards. Anything from us? No. We have a preset. I'd like to make a comment first. Commissioner Campy? Before you leave, I would like to just – we're going to take a preset, but I didn't want all of you to come all this way and not at least hear something back from us. As your district commissioner, I think it's important that you started the process. What you did this morning is exactly what you're supposed to do. You're supposed to come and speak to your commissioners, your elected officials, about your concerns. This issue has been an issue for many, many years, but I think the timing is perfect. Many of you had mentioned the generosity of Ashley Capital, who purchased the property across Martin Highway from you all. That's a multimillion-dollar donation that had it not been for that company. The county and all taxpayers would be responsible for finding the appropriate finances to purchase that land. Not only is it a donation of land, which is super important, it's at the exact right spot for it. I agree with you. Now, some of us will debate on the speed of development, but there is absolutely development happening in western Palm City, Martin County. All you have to do is ride up Newfield Parkway and see what's happening there. The other advantage of some of those projects is they're building a tax base for not just you residents that could particularly benefit right now from that, but for all Martin County residents. We have to be able to look at our tax base. It's long overdue, I think, not just for you all, because if you think about it, you're almost the halfway point from the Palm City Map Road fire station. What about the folks that live out on the Martin grade? They've been asking me since I came to office about how do they have their fire protection. Imagine if you're concerned in Stewart West and Cobblestone, what if you're way out on the grade? That Map Road station or Tropical Farms is their station as well. I don't know if God is sending us a signal, but it seems that there's a lot more fire activity happening in your neck of the woods in the last couple of years, everywhere in America, but especially in yours. The other day, I could see the tower of smoke coming from your neighborhood and your area all the way in Palm City, and I just knew that this—we've received your emails. I think it's not just fire, as one of the speakers said. More likely, it's going to be a medical emergency, and every minute is not only, as some of the speakers said, not only super important from a medical point of view. Emotionally, seconds make a huge difference. I can't imagine standing in front of your home as it burned. I think we can all relate to how horrific that must have been. I would tell you that I can't speak for my colleagues, but we have a large budget. We have concerns, and we have priorities, but as far as I'm concerned, obviously, as one of the five, but you're District 5, Commissioner, I think it's important that we give direction to our administrator and financial staff to prioritize our budget to put this into our mix. There's—I have always said when the fire department comes or the sheriff comes, the first dollar that you give us of your tax dollars, you expect to be public safety, and this is exactly what it is. So I will give you my full commitment, as long as I'm sitting up here, that we move full steam ahead to help you have a fire station in western Palm City. I didn't—I did not want you to leave without hearing that and wonder what's going on up here. So thank you. Now we'll take up our 930 preset, which is the Business Development Board's annual report. Thank you. Let's wait until the room clears. Okay, Mr. Stokes, we are ready. Good morning, Madam Chair. George Stokes, Assistant County Administrator for the record. It's my pleasure to present Mr. William Corbyn, our Executive Director of our BDB, this morning, as well as his, we'll call it, entourage of board members and private businesses. Pursuant to their contract, the Business Development Board is here to present their 2024 annual report as per their contract. In the agenda item is both the—excuse me, the board item, as well as their required annual audit, which I believe showed no findings. And with that, it's my pleasure to welcome Mr. Corbyn to the dais for his presentation. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Stokes. Good morning, everyone. Good morning, Commissioners. Thank you for the opportunity. Appreciate that. Thank you for the opportunity to give our annual update. I'm William Corbyn, and I'm the Executive Director for the Business Development Board of Martin County, and we are the county's officially contracted economic development partner. Before I begin, I'd like to mention and highlight a few facts for you all relating to the agenda item. Number one, the first one is overhead costs have increased, you know, rent and insurance. We are not immune to that, like many of our other businesses in the community and across the country. Number two, the City of Stewart Commission majority voted to remove their annual $10,000 financial contribution to the BDB in support of our services to the city from its budget. And number three, and this is most important, we'd like to implement and include $61,000 of new programming into our operating budget in response to requests from our Martin County small business and entrepreneur community. However, I will say, being a fiscal conservative and a fiduciary of the county's funds, we're only asking for a modest 4% increase from the county's portion, $20,000 from $465,000 to $485,000. We tried to bootstrap around the budget and to more aggressively go after the private side of the funding. I've got only a handful of slides where I'll summarize and underscore the value of the BDB to Martin County as we help grow the tax base and increase county tax revenues while helping small businesses and entrepreneurs exceed. Here's our vision to foster a strong Martin County economy characterized by diversity of businesses and a growing and sustainable tax base. Our mission is to lead economic development by supporting local contributory businesses, attracting investment, and fostering job creation. Here's an overview of what we do. We help select businesses and target industries grow, expand, and stay in Martin County. We oversee and organize programming and events, and I'll talk to that a little bit more. We are a liaison to the government. Oftentimes, as you can imagine, many companies are hesitant for various reasons to speak directly with the government, and we help to escort them through that process, whether it be permitting or anything else. We also conduct individual business visits, and I'll talk a little bit more about that, and that guides feedback, that guides programming and services that we do. And I always like to highlight 80 to 20. Fun fact, 80% of net new local job growth, and you may have heard me say this before, comes from your existing industries, the companies and businesses that are already in the community. And so this really illustrates the importance of what we call business retention and expansion, BRE, in the field of economic development, and that's what we put most of our focus on. And, of course, we do focus on, you know, attraction as well. There are opportunities that we'd like to continue to be a good location for. And, of course, we support the county in their business recovery after disasters, hurricanes, and things of that nature from the business perspective where we're trying to talk to companies and talk to businesses after a disaster to see, you know, whether they're open, to connect them with resources that can help them recover more efficiently and quickly. Responsibilities. Again, I talk about contributory businesses, and I'll explain that in a bit more for everybody and refresh everyone's memory on that. We assist the county, the city of Stewart, the village of Indiantown, with coordinating incentive programs. We're currently working to implement the toolkit, the economic toolkit that the county is updating, and we're hoping to do that with the county by the fiscal year beginning in October. We're the single point of contact for prospect client services as it relates to the State Department of Commerce. As I mentioned, that 20% of attraction and recruitment. And we also oversee the Industrial Development Authority, which is a really important tool in our toolkit, that that organization is able to offer tax-exempt financing and under better terms to certain eligible projects. Thank you for appointing and filling that board. The board is full in terms of the five members, and they are excited to hit the ground running. They met for the first time in over a year recently, a couple months ago, and we're excited to continue to look for opportunities whereby they can help spur development or redevelopment in the county. And we promote Martin County as an ideal place to do business. When people ask me what we do in economic development, we're a cheerleader for the community that we work in, for both existing industry and for other industry that's looking to come in and do business. Contributory businesses, as I mentioned before, these are essentially companies that derive more than 50% of their revenue from outside of the county. Many of these companies are manufacturers. This is where we play mostly. This is our space. And this is the added value that we bring helping these types of companies to come and locate and expand into the county, such as aviation, aerospace, marine, manufacturing, boat building. Service companies are not included in that. Those are oftentimes focused more with the chambers, and those include retail restaurants, which are also important. But the added value of contributory businesses is really where we can see value from the BDB perspective. This is an example of our process where we essentially pulse or visit businesses proactively to speak to them and talk to them about their industry trends, any pain points, challenges that they may be experiencing, barriers to connecting with resources like capital, like access to capital, and technical assistance. And we've done about 50 of these in the past year. The important part here is the last three rows is the follow-up items that derive from those initial visits. And that ranges from anything from, you know, again, permitting issues or even trash. You know, it's surprising how much trash is an important thing for businesses and on-time pickup and things of that nature. Any kind of problems or challenges that they're having. Some of these oftentimes turn into official projects like, hey, we are running out of space and we need to expand or we need to look for new opportunities. We try to keep them in the county. If we don't do that, you don't hear about those companies that may have those issues, and they will just leave the county. And so we're trying to be here to help improve the business environment and help them access all of that. CIS Security Solutions, we're helping them with a, you know, access a foreign trade zone and to help create one for them to expand their reach. We've worked with Palm City Millwork on their property out in Palm City. Grind Hard Ammo, we've been involved in both their steward location and their expansion in the village of Indiantown, over 150,000 square feet out there. IM Group and Pursuit Aerospace are just some of the companies that we work with that a lot of projects come directly out of these Pulse visits. Talking about Pulse, Pulse to programming, the engagement of the business community is really important because a lot of these items that you see here came directly out of that. The Manufacturers Roundtable, we found that companies and businesses are looking for peers to really engage with them, to have a forum to talk about strategy, to talk shop with them, to talk about how, you know, one does talent retention a different way than the other. And so we started the Manufacturers Roundtable a couple of years ago in order to fill that need. Out of that recently became a concern from our manufacturers that work with the Department of Defense. Or you make a part for the Department of Defense. We have one of those companies here with us now. Now the government is requiring companies that do those things to be compliant with cybersecurity. It's called the Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification. That, unfortunately, has a cost to it. And a consultant to help you or a company remain compliant, it can cost up to $150,000 annually. We've received a lot of concerns from our smaller and medium-sized manufacturers who this would have a regressive effect on and who literally the business could close because of this requirement that they have to, you know, be compliant with the government in terms of, you know, cybersecurity from bad actors. So out of that we did a workshop on cybersecurity compliance. And out of that we've been working with our partners, economic development state partners, to create a loan fund for these businesses that would not be able to access those funds through the traditional banking methods. We're working with a CDFI who is able to loan as small as $5,000 up to $150,000 to help fill that gap in that need. So we're doing things and programming like that to help lift up our business community, things like Access to Capital Workshop, Export University 101, which connects companies from a foreign direct investment perspective. And we're working to create a county-focused small business loan fund regardless of your industry to help with those smaller to medium micro loans that businesses have trouble and challenges getting to help scale their business and create more revenue and investment in tax base for us here at the county. I will say that the Entrepreneur Education Programs is another aspect of that. The Small Business Loan Fund and the Entrepreneur Education Programs, they represent about $61,000 in expenses that I mentioned before that we had to cover in this FY26 budget proposal. And so that's really the two newer programming that we have gotten feedback from the business community on what they need. Direct business assistance, Daher Aerospace, as you know, they're recently working on the lease with the county, and they will be implementing $30 million of capital expenditures for their two new production lines. So we're helping connect them with resources related to financing, resources at the state related to workforce, how we can kind of prop them up in terms of helping support their growth and their efforts and their goals here in Martin County. Hinkley Yachts, they're exploring expansion on their campus. We've helped with that in terms of creating a meeting, a pre-application meeting, and helping them along that. Power Systems Manufacturing, they have about approximately $11.3 million in equipment, tangible personal property, and a projected $5.8 million in tenant building improvements in their project that they are potentially coming to the county in terms of an incentive in terms of the TPP exemption that was approved by voters. And so that would bring 101 jobs over three years with average salaries around $74,000 per worker. Last year, we influenced about $150 million of total capital investment in 315,000 square feet of commercial real estate space. And we've also helped bring in an extra $675,000 in tangible personal property, or TPP, to county tax revenues. For example, that $11.3 million in estimated tangible personal property tax with Power Systems Manufacturing represents approximately $386,336 in TPP over eight years. And if they are to get that incentive, this TPP would come back on the tax rolls after that incentive period. But the important part is that it would be plus a $1.2 million return on investment in fiscal benefit over that same time period from offering that incentive. So with that, you know, the BDB is bringing this type of value to Martin County, I believe, on a daily, a monthly, a yearly basis. I believe that we bring value to the county. I believe that we help to raise the tax base and, therefore, ease the pressure and the burden on government in terms of operations. So with that, I'd like to respectfully request your support for this new budget amount for FY26, which, again, is about 4% more than the previous year's amount. And to reiterate the three points at the beginning that I mentioned, overhead costs, they have increased, you know, rent and insurance. We lost $10,000 from the city of Stewart to remove their contribution. And most importantly, we really want to implement what is needed from the business community, small businesses, entrepreneurs who are trying to grow here in the county, keep them here, and we're trying to really raise all boats to increase county tax revenues while helping these small businesses and these entrepreneurs succeed. So I thank you for your time this morning, and I'm happy to take any questions at this time. Any questions from Corbin? Is there a public comment or no? Is there – I don't have any requests to speak. Okay, then I have a request to speak. Please pass your request to speak to the bailiff, please. Looks like an auction for a second. Sold. Let's say. You're out just to hear the story. You want to hear the flu? Sure. Stephen Hartz is first, followed by Susan Rabinowicz. Good morning. I'm Stephen Hartz. I'm the owner of Value Tool and Engineering, which I founded in South Bend, Indiana. And in 2017, we opened a facility here in Palm City. Value Tool and Engineering is an advanced manufacturing operation. We service the aerospace and defense markets with a focus on engine components and ground support equipment. We also build components for missile defense and night vision systems. We're what William calls as a contributory business. All of our revenue comes from outside the area, and we're able to bring those dollars into the local economy. Like many employers, we deal with a large variety of issues, but by far the most complicated is workforce. I am highly focused on talent development. In Indiana, I co-founded a charter school, which has now evolved into four separate schools. And we help prepare the local workforce for successful employment, not only in advanced manufacturing, but in other non-college careers. The Treasure Coast is much like South Bend, Indiana, before our training efforts really got underway. Excuse me. Right now, I'm working on strategies to help cultivate the local workforce, and the Business Development Board and its partners have been an excellent resource in this effort. I've also been impressed with the executive leadership and the staff that has wasted no time in pursuing, that I wasted no time in pursuing, an opportunity to serve on their board of directors as soon as it became available. The modest funding request will help the Business Development Board remain successful in addressing the priorities of industries like advanced manufacturing, and the overall result is more and better job opportunities, which will result in a more diverse tax base and stronger economy. We hope you will approve this request. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Susan Rabinowitz is next, followed by Nelson Levy. Good morning, Martin County Commissioners. Thank you for the opportunity to come before you today and for your consideration of this request. I'm Susan Rabinowitz, chair of the Business Development Board, an organization that I have had the privilege of serving for nearly three years. During my tenure with the BDB, we've assembled a strong board of directors with diverse leadership experience in legacy industries. This leadership deserves a lot of credit for its thorough search for a high-caliber executive director, which led us to William Corbin. Thanks to his guidance and the BDB team, we've concentrated our efforts to relationship building across the business community, particularly with contributory businesses. These are the companies that largely serve national and international markets, infusing capital into Martin County and enlarging the local economy with minimal efforts, offsets. These businesses, primarily aviation, aerospace, marine, advanced manufacturing, these businesses are where high-wage job opportunities are created. Through our Pulse visits, the BDB team has established trust with the CEOs of such businesses and the insights they provide inform many of our programs, including the Access to Capital initiative you've heard about today. Your yes vote will make this initiative possible, positioning the BDB to serve as an essential conduit enabling small business owners who are currently unequipped to readily access bank capital to attain much-needed funding more efficiently and effectively. The monies that will be awarded through the Access to Capital program do not come from the BDB or local tax dollars. They are derived through financial institutions specializing in such funding. And they're assisted by the guidance and advocacy of the BDB. The simplified process and the speed with which the BDB and our financial partners will be able to facilitate the request is the real strength of this program. Thanks to careful and responsible budgeting, the BDB has been able to make the request to achieve this goal in a very conservative manner. We respectfully request your support and we thank you for your service. Thank you. Nelson Levy is next, followed by Debbie Pease. Good morning, Commissioners. My name is Nelson Levy. I'm a IDF veteran. I served over 10 years in combat as a major. I'm here to talk about two points, a little bit about my company and more about the BDB. A bit about the industry I am in. It's the ammo business. And in the U.S., most of the ammo is actually made and owned by entities outside of the U.S. I see that as a national threat. Mr. Skolnik, who is a huge investor, entrepreneur, philanthropist, has decided to invest in this county tens of millions of dollars. And our company is not only making ammo in the U.S. for Americans, for the law enforcement, but it's actually owned here. And I see that as a big ad value. Additional ad value is that we're building two more facilities on top of the one we have five minutes down the road that will create 400 jobs in the next few years. And those are high-end jobs. A bit about the BDB. For us, the BDB has been very impactful in building our business, in building opportunities, in creating avenue opportunities, in saving money, and in making things happen much faster. Examples are working with different entities that give us the licenses for the different businesses we're building and have here. The next point is what we see that the BDB has bought for us. And I think in your eyes, the important thing is to see what is the ROI for the BDB. That's the main point. They're asking for money. What are they giving back? And I'm telling you what they're going to give us from our side. Just the tax that you will be collecting from businesses like our mine or other businesses are huge. And I see that ROI as a huge ad value. I would like to continue in seeing that add value to companies like my own. I deeply thank them, and I hope you consider that in a deep way. Thank you very much. Have a great day. Thank you. Thank you. Debbie Pease is next, followed by Dan Romance. Morning, Commissioner. Pull the mic down a little bit. There you go. A little shorter. Good morning. My name is Debbie Pease. I'm with DeHair, an aerospace manufacturer here at Witham Field in Stewart. Since DeHair's arrival in Martin County, the Business Development Board has been hugely helpful and remains so to this day. At the onset, they helped us get in front of key community leaders and solidify important partnerships. They've helped manage media interviews and amplified the messaging of our presence here in this community. Today, they are helping us achieve an exciting new milestone at the Stewart location. We will soon begin assembly of our TBM aircraft, one of the fastest single turboprop aircraft in the world. In the future, we hope to further expand to include the Kodiak, our multi-purpose aircraft that is popular with government agencies and humanitarian organizations. We are in the process of preparing to replace an existing hangar, building number four, for those of you who have been out of the facility, and upgrade the facilities, which is about a $30 million investment. In fact, there was an article in the TC Palm recently that you may have read. These new facilities will enable us to assemble the TBM and Kodiak on-site right here in Martin County, as well as continuing to build large structures for our customers Boeing and Gulfstream. This initiative will require job creation and expansion. The BDB has assisted us in organizing important meetings with key stakeholders. They've put us together with leaders from Space Florida, Florida Commerce, and FPL to continue to help us access resources and navigate the development process. The knowledge, network of key contacts, and business advocacy of the BDB has really helped smooth our entry into the community and is playing a direct role in expanding our investment here in Martin County. Our experience is testament to the return on investment that the BDB brings to Martin County. I hope you will consider their request. Thank you. Next speaker is Dan Romance, followed by Mayor DiPaolo. Good morning, Commissioners. My name is Dan Romance. I am the president of Indiantown Marine Center. I am also the president of the Marine Industries Association of the Treasure Coast, and I'm also on the BDB Executive Board. One of the key challenges we're seeing in the marine industry, and this is a challenge that's seen across many of the legacy industries, is the need for qualified talent. These days, there's a lot of buzz about the importance of workforce development, and there are a lot of players working in this space. But at the Marine Industries Association, we've benefited tremendously from a direct partnership with the BDB in helping us address this issue for our association. With their help, we're at the table with the leaders of the institutions that we need to work with to find and train the talent that our industry needs. The staff does even more behind the scenes to help put these priorities into action, and we're starting to see real progress on this front. This level of involvement and intention to detail is one way that the BDB serves the needs of existing businesses. This is vital to business retention, and we understand and appreciate our community's discerning approach to business attraction, which actually makes business retention all the more important. None of us want to see existing businesses go elsewhere, especially if there's a way to keep them in our community. That's one of the many reasons why the professional services that the BDB provides are so important. The connections and the trust the BDB is building with the leaders of essential industries plays a vital role in business retention. Their responsiveness and professional service brings tremendous value to Martin County, and I hope that you will support this funding request. Thank you. Mayor DePaulo is next, followed by William David Snyder. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Mayor of Indiantown. Also sit on the Business Development Board. Great things, as you all know, are happening in Indiantown. And we're attracting investments. We're improving our infrastructure. Right now we have more than 250,000 square feet of manufacturing approved under construction. We have seen an increase in jobs. And the BDB is playing a big role in the impact role of efforts to get the job done. I've, as I said, I've been on the board since my election. And I'm very impressed with William. Since William has come to the board, he's made a big impact on the board and on the community. I refer people to him just about two or three times a week. And they're all happy with once they call me back and say, yeah, I spoke to William. We got a meeting set up. Thank you so much. So it's the Business Development Board is a big part of the growth of Indiantown. And that is going to have a positive impact on our tax dollars, not only for the village of Indiantown, but Martin County as a whole. So I ask the commissioners, please support the request. Thank you. Thank you. William David Snyder is next. And that's the last request to speak for him. If you'd like to address us, please fill out a request to speak for him and hand it to the bailiff. Thank you. Good morning, Madam Chair, commissioners. Thank you. My name is David Snyder. I'm a member of the BDB Board of Directors and a second generation small business owner here in Martin County. I'm raising my family here. And Martin County is very special to me. My professional experience also includes service and law enforcement in the United States Marine Corps. So I understand command structure and I understand clear objectives and the importance of mission accomplishment. My interpretation of my role with the BDB is fulfilling the mission as directed by the Board of County Commissioners. The mission is straightforward and it's pretty simple. It's support existing business and strengthen the local economy and help diversify the tax base so the cost of services aren't borne inordinately by our homeowners. A lot of requests today. And I think that diversification of that tax base is very important. There are three main ways we achieve this mission. Number one, we prioritize existing companies through our business retention efforts. You've heard about the Pulse visits today, and I've had the privilege of attending dozens of those. And I can tell you just anecdotally and from my own experience, the impact that that has when you go into a small business owner's office and you sit down and you have a conversation with about the challenges that they're facing. There aren't a lot of forums to express that as a business owner, and so it is a safe environment, and I think that we have begun to establish strong relationships with business owners. But that takes time and confidence to build those relationships. It does take some time. But that's exactly what the BDB team is doing and why the results have been so effective. Number two, we aim to attract business that will contribute to the resilience of our economy. And most important to me, and one of the reasons why I'm on this board, is because our goal is also to find those businesses that respect our local culture and our small-town, family-centered values. You've heard about some good examples today. Just recently, you heard about Grind Hard Ammo, IM Group, Dyer, and I think that really is what we're looking for in this community. So it's our goal to continue to attract those businesses here. And finally, number three, we uphold a positive local business climate so existing businesses and entrepreneurs like me and others in our community can thrive and succeed. That's what this program is about, and that's what this request is about. The BDB is your – we're your ambassador. We are an arm of you. We're the ambassador to the business community in Martin County, and we represent your thoughtful commitment to the business community at large. Thank you for your service to our community, and please consider this request. So I appreciate it. Thank you. Commissioner Campy. Thank you very much. I know that for a lot of the folks that came to speak this morning on behalf of the BDB, they left work to do it. So I appreciate it. I tried to just jot down a couple of quick points because there are so many things to discuss. My regular job beyond the commission is I work for a local manufacturer that is a 90-year-old company, fourth-generation family company. I'm not a family member. They've been in Martin County for over 30 years, and we, like some of the speakers this morning, we manufacture locally, we employ locally, and all of our products, 99.9% of our products, are sent out of the county, the state, the country. Without the organization like the BDB, my boss and our company, like so many thousands of others or hundreds and hundreds of others in Martin County, would be completely on their own, would not have the ability, the financial capacity to, you know, have the foresight to hire consultants at high hourly rates. The BDB has come in many occasions and given them the direction for free. So they are taxpayers. They're employers in Martin County. They're receiving services from the BDB for free. And without them, whether it's small or medium, we don't have to have the concern for the gigantic corporations. They have the wherewithal to do these. But the small and mid companies that are the backbone of Martin County in most counties, we wouldn't have that. I think by offering our support for their very reasonable request today, sends a message to our local businesses, both existing and potential, that we as a board, as the representatives of their local government, as the representatives of the people that are collecting all of these taxes, that we appreciate and understand it. It's not work. I agree that the BDB needs to be a separate outside entity. There has been conversations in the past, which should be inside this organization. I disagree. Folks need to be able to come, and if they have some issues with one of our departments, they can't go to another department to discuss the other, you know, one of our colleagues. So I think it's important that we send the proper message to our businesses as we collect all of their taxes, that we will also support an organization that supports them. Mr. Corbyn mentioned the IDA. I know that it has, we've recently, through our appointment of citizen leaders, has really, we have breathed new life into that organization. And for smaller businesses, you can get better rates, more attractive rates through the IDA than you can potentially through banks. I would say, as a commissioner who's been up here for quite a while, to my newer colleagues, the best way for you to find out who's doing business quietly and professionally in Martin County, many of the introductions and the tours that I have had of local businesses has been arranged by the BDB. And I would not have had that opportunity if it wasn't for an organization that is the liaison between not just the county government, but the five of us individually, your connection to these local businesses is through the BDB. I watch, as I have said in the past, I watch all of the city of Stewart meetings. I think it's important to know what our colleagues at the city are doing. They are the seat of our county. And so I was very disappointed when, after Mr. Corbyn and others made their presentation, to, again, newer commissioners that might not have had the historic references of the value that the BDB, if I feel that it brings it to the county, it certainly brings it to the city. And for them to have eliminated their financial support, in my opinion, was a mistake. And then, finally, I would say that there is a collaboration that I have seen firsthand, not only having served on the BDB board in the past, many years ago, and I would certainly like to be on the BDB board again. When we do our reorganizations, I have always – I'm already a huge supporter and a big believer in the value of the BDB and the people that work for us in it. So I've always relinquished my desire to be on the board to allow new commissioners to have that opportunity to see firsthand. But when I was on, you know, the collaboration that we have with the Small Business Development Center, IRSC, Select Florida, which used to be Enterprise Florida, the Department of Commerce, our local Chambers of Commerce, the Economic Council, the TCBA, the marine industry, and the realtors, that collaboration is a wheel-and-spoke kind of a hub-and-spoke philosophy for me, and the BDB is the hub of all of those spokes of that economic development. So even before hearing from my colleagues, I would hope to kick off and show my continued support of an organization that when we talk about, oh, we support local businesses, we need to literally put our money where our mouths are, and I would make a motion to accept staff's recommendation or at least the BDB's request for that additional funding. I think it's a small percentage of the value that they bring to our community. Thank you. The staff's recommendation is simply to receive the report, not to approve a budget request. Well, then I would make a motion that we approve the budget request when it's appropriate. Mr. Stokas. Madam Chair, thank you for leading this. I just wanted to point a point of clarification. What is before you today is the presentation, but I did hear loud and clear. We've been in receipt of the budget request from the BDB. We will be including it into your normal budget process that's coming before you and about. I think it's within about two or three meetings from today's meeting. But, yes, we're looking to accept the report, which does satisfy the requirement of the BDB contract. And I think what the BDB is trying to do is be very transparent in what they're going to be asking you here in a future date. And I, as staff, appreciate the clarification from the board as to actually including that budget request into your normal budget process. So, just wanted to be clear what you're accepting is just the report with their audit, which does satisfy their contract. Commissioner Capps. I would like to just begin by saying that I appreciate the opportunity to be the Board of County Commissioners representative on the BDB this year. I have learned an awful lot already from each and every one of you. I want to thank each one of you for coming, those of you who are on the BDB, to share your perspective. I have three adult kids and one son-in-law who live in Martin County. And so, good jobs and economic development are certainly close to home in our household. And I see the value of it. We need economic development and good jobs for existing residents, for the future generation, and also to keep our taxes in line. And I think the budget request is very modest and very reasonable, and I would be supportive of it when the time comes. And certainly, I'm in support of receiving the report at this time. Thanks. Commissioner Hetherington. Yes. We'll try not to duplicate. Thank you for many of you business owners for coming here. First, I want to compliment Will Corbin because it is not easy to come in and the board who hired Will Corbin. It is not easy to come in from Martin County, and I've been here for, you know, my entire life, and my family's been here for generations, to come in and really hit the ground running and learn all the intricacies of Martin County and the unique characteristics and then to go and actually start implementing those. So, I'll compliment you. You've done a great job in learning and hitting the ground running. So, and then secondly, on the Pulse program, the Pulse program, you kind of acquainted me with it, and then I went and followed up with some businesses that you did visit and to make sure that the return on investment was there. And I heard nothing but really good things from the businesses in the community that you've been working with for expansion and retention. So, I would say, by and large, that program has provided a measurement tool for us to measure the return on investment. So, I think good for you on the Pulse program. And then on the additional requests this year and some of the tools that you're offering to businesses, until I met with you, I didn't know that this cybersecurity initiative and requirements were impacting some of our local businesses and some of our high-producing manufacturing business as they were. So, you definitely had your Pulse on that community. And to clarify, and I know you said it, a couple speakers said it, we won't be offering loans, but we will be helping those businesses be connected and get the assistance they need. And, again, but for you, I wouldn't have known that cybersecurity issue with our manufacturing businesses was of consequential concern. So, therefore, you also demonstrated your return. And one of the most important things that you said today was talking about the businesses growing and thriving in our community. I, too, like Commissioner Capps, I have adult kids. I was born and raised here. And it's important to me to see us economically being able to have our kids and our people that want to stay in Martin County have good jobs to come back to and to ease the pressure, you said, on the residential tax base. So, the biggest thing that we can do for the benefit of our residents is continue to help businesses expand so we do ease the residential, the burden on the residential tax base. I think that you have, it's, I want to send a message to loud and clear to businesses throughout the county, and it is unfortunate, and I was happy to see the mayor of Indiantown here supporting economic development and growth. And I think that our cities need to be supportive as well, supporting the businesses that are in their districts. So, I will definitely, certainly support your request for this year when the time comes. And I think that you have done a really good job in demonstrating your return on investment. So, thank you. And I certainly will support the receipt of the report today. But when it comes time to review your budget requests, you're going to have to include performance measures to quantify the success of your board, and you're also going to, as I've been saying for 22 years, you're going to have to diversify your investors. It can't just be Martin County taxpayers' obligation each year to support your budget. It has to be the private sector also. It's the way that it is elsewhere. Commissioner Campy. Mr. Corbyn, I asked you that question when we had the opportunity to meet. Can you come forward? I agree with what Commissioner Hurd is saying. I have been sitting here next to her many years when she has said about the diversification. Can you share with us how your funding is now diversified? So, two years ago, the percentage of our operating budget was at about 70, 75 percent. And the last year, and certainly in this budget, we are moving that to 65, 66, 67 percent of the budget. So, we're heading in the right direction, I think. I'd like to really focus on the private sector. I think that there are opportunities that we haven't captured yet in the private sector, in the business community, companies that understand and appreciate what we bring to the community and how that can help them with their growth. We just got a truest, we just is on board now as a new investor. We'll be making an investor presentation tomorrow at our board meeting. And there are other companies like that out there. And I think the business community understands and appreciates the value, you know, our vision, our mission, and the value that we bring and what we're trying to do for the community. And I think that there's opportunity there to make those asks. So, that is my intention, certainly. Thank you. So, you're saying it's about 60 to 65 percent of the funding is still government-related, whereas in the past, as Commissioner Hurd had mentioned, it was much, much higher than that. Correct. And also, can you... A few years ago, yeah, it was at least 73 plus. So, you're definitely heading in the right direction. Can you tell us how long you've been affiliated with the Business Development Board? I've been here for approximately six or so months. So, I started in mid-September of 2024, last year. So, it's been just before Hurricane Milton. And so, we had our big annual event in December and, you know, really been working a lot with the board in terms of what I call board development. We revised the vision and mission. We've refreshed things. And we're looking at strategies to capture additional revenues. And so, I'm trying to, like I mentioned before, bootstrap around. The ask is not 60. It's not dollar for dollar. You know, and I understand, you know, the challenges that you all as leaders face financially in terms of making decisions. So, we're trying to be good partners and good fiduciary for the organization, for the county. Commissioner Vargas. Yes. Several things. We are just going to vote today on their presentation. They've made the presentation. Okay, just receiving it. That's fine. This is an excellent time for us to cut the budget. It is. Reduce our spending and do our part to save our taxpayers money. I urge my fellow commissioners to help end wasteful choices and make bold decisions. I'm a business owner also. You're heading in the right direction, but we're not in that climate anymore. You finished? I am. I don't think we need a motion, do we? Received. In that case, it's received, and we will take a 10-minute break. All right. Thank you. Thank you for your time today. You're on. We are back, and we are returning to Commissioner comments. Commissioner Vargas. I think these are light comments for right now. Sure. All right. Sure. Community Greening Partnership, they had a recent tree giveaway in Hobes Sound last weekend. Well, we're going to have ours this weekend at Indian Riverside Park. It's from 10 until 12, yes, but please get there early because they expect to run out by about 1130, 1145, and it's a free event because we like free around here, and they have Florida Keys black bead, live oak, mango, red maple, Barbados cherry, all sorts of varieties. So, this is a time to spring plant. Thank you. Thank you. Commissioner Capps. On the 14th, which was about eight days ago, I had the privilege of attending the Fire Rescue Class 44 graduation at New Hope Fellowship Church in Palm City, and this event was just done so well. I was so impressed. We had heard very inspiring speeches from Chief Chinchilla and some of the students. It was just excellent. We saw a very dramatic video of what can go on in the lives of firefighters, and there was a very emotional moment where one of the students, early graduates, her father had been a firefighter and had apparently died in service, and this new graduate was given her father's badge number, and it really kind of chugged me up. It was very, very touching, and I left there being very proud of the fire department that we have. It just seems like they're a first-class organization, and I'd like to congratulate the graduates. The second thing I would mention is that I'd like to give some kudos to our parks department for new playground equipment in a park in my old neighborhood in East Ridge Estates in Hobe Sound. We bought our first house there in 1994, 31 years ago, and so the park has a special meaning to me because our kids were small at that time, and we have some really nice playground equipment there for the kids now, so good job to the parks department. Thank you. Commissioner Campy. Thank you very much. This Saturday at the patio in Palm City Place on Map Road, which is just directly next door to the Palm City Fire Station, we're having another edition of music in the park. We're bringing in some food and beverage trucks, an ice cream truck. There'll be live music. It starts at 6 with the food trucks to give people a chance to bring your own chairs and blankets, and the music starts at 7. We've been going through a series of local bands and musicians. This weekend on Saturday stands to be the same. We've had increased turnout each month that we've done it, so I invite anyone who's interested in socializing, being outside, listening to live music, enjoying. You can pack a dinner, you can order from local restaurants, take out, or you can participate in the food trucks that we'll have there, and I invite everyone to come. It is a completely free event, and as Commissioner Vargas said, we like free. We do. Thank you. Commissioner Hetherington. Yes. This morning we heard a proclamation for Historic Preservation Month here in Martin County, and I just wanted to recognize one of our own Golden Gate residents who will be honored in May for Historic Preservationist of the Year, Sadia Safarides, and we will have a chance in May to officially honor her, but she was selected by the Committee for Preservationist of the Year May 15th. We believe we will be officially honoring her, but she spent many, many years on the Golden Gate Neighborhood Advisory Committee on our CRA and as well on the Historic Preservation Committee, so I want to congratulate her and recognize her and thank her for all the many, many years of volunteerism for Martin County, and I look forward to honoring her in May. Excellent. I agree with you. She's a perfect choice, and I'm sure her husband, Chris, could not be more proud. Mr. Donaldson. I have two things. First, last week we had Martin County attended the Safety Council of Palm Beaches, which is an organization that's made up of both private and public entities to deal with safety in the workforce, and we had a number of award recipients, so if you just give me a second to go through them. First, our HR and Risk Management Department received a merit for vehicle employee safety, and we were also recognized as having a 10-year low on our workers' compensation mod rate, which is at .7, so we are well below the average of one for the state of Florida, and that's a testament to our group's commitment to safety in the workforce. Next, our fire, rescue, and parks department, really in combination with the Board of County Commissioners, which we initiated the life-saving initiative for the AEDs in our parks, and so we are recognized for those devices that you all helped and our staff put out throughout our parks department. I think a really unique one, too, was our library system in combination with our Martin County Sheriff's Office, Deputy Jenkins and Remy, the bloodhound, has participated with the library regarding Alzheimer's or folks with a dementia and how we can use the sheriff's department, can help find folks and help educate our residents on that program, so that was a really nice event, and, of course, Remy, the hound dog, it was when we went up to take a picture of the dog, instantly posed, and knew his picture was being taken, and it was a great amusement to the crowd, so that was good. And then, of course, finally, of course, you all know that we have one of our employees of the year, Jose Machado, was also recognized for a hero's award for his previously recognized here for taking swift action when he saw a child in a busy street unattended where he helped get the child to safety, alerted to the sheriff's office, and then got him rejoined with his family. So, anyway, it was, once again, a reminder to me in how our staff and our many awards stacked up to the rest of the group. I thought we were well represented, and, of course, I felt we were the best of all. And, again, there was large companies there, too, with Pratt-Whitney and other large corporations that were represented, but ours, I thought, did really well. Lastly, we have an Everglades Summit on June 10th, and a number of you all have thought that that would be a good week to attend, so we have three commissioners that are interested in, so I'm suggesting that we may need to cancel the BOCC meeting for June 10th, but take a look at that, and then maybe at the end of the day we can discuss that to see if we want to have the meeting or attend the Everglades Summit. So, with that, thank you. Thank you. Ms. Woods? Yes, ma'am. Excellent. We'll take up our consent agenda now. There are several polls, consent 9, consent 10, consent 11, and consent 13. Can I have a motion to approve the remainder of the consent agenda? So moved. Second. There's a motion and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? That motion passes unanimously. Let's begin with consent number 9, which is a code enforcement action. Good morning, commissioners. Jeff Daugherty, director of the building department. This agenda item is for consideration of a fine reduction in accordance with the ordinance that the board has previously passed. The property has come into compliance, which is always the goal, and in that, the county has received the 10% minimum as required by the ordinance, and it has gone through the adjudication process with the magistrate, and the recommended order with the magistrate's signature is attached to the agenda item. Commissioner Vargas? Yes. I had requested that these three be pulled because if you could please explain to the audience and those here in attendance and my fellow commissioners, so what happens if I have a violation on my property? You come out, you cite me, and I refuse to pay it for any length of time. What happens? It just disappears? Do you come back again and put another lien on the property? So I'm unable to refinance or sell the property? It's a cloud on the property. Title? The process is the property is identified as noncompliant. It goes through a formal process of being notified to the owner, and then they're given a time to come into compliance. If they do not, then it's brought before the magistrate. At that point, the magistrate would issue an order as they determine to come into compliance with the timeline. If that timeline is not met, it comes back to the magistrate, and then an order is filed and then a running fine, whatever that is, $100 a day, depending on the situation. That then is recorded in the public records as a lien, if you will, against the property. In order to remove that, you would have to come into compliance, and then you would pay the lesser of 10% of the outstanding fine or 10% of the assessed value. And then you would go back to the magistrate to confirm that it has come into compliance, the money has been paid, and then the signature is done, and then we currently come to the board for the final approval. If you do not pay it, the fine continues to run. Typically, a fine will be addressed when either financing is put on the property and the bank requires it, or the property is sold. If the fine is not paid over a 20-year period by state statute, the fine goes away after 20 years. Our alternative is that is to start a new case as a repeat offender and then go through the whole process again for compliance, go before the magistrate again, get another order against the property, and record it again. We can go, if the board so desires, to the court to foreclose, but we're not allowed to do that on homesteaded property. We're estimating probably half of our liens are against homesteaded, so that would not be an option on them. It would only be on non-homesteaded property, whether it's commercial or a rental type thing. So that's generally the process. If it times out, then our only option in that case would be to start another project, another compliance request again, and go through the process in front of the magistrate. Okay. Is this something that we would have to propose, or is this something already existing within Martin County? I mean, do we need to make a motion to put this on our calendar to be able to review this? Because if somebody stays in the house for 40 years, 20 years, you say it times out. So why wouldn't you go back to renew that? And maybe our attorney can explain that, or you. Well, Madam Commissioner, Sebastian Poprowski, Senior Assistant County Attorney, it doesn't happen very often. As you can imagine, within that 20-year period, someone usually refinances, passes away, tries to sell the property, at which point it's taken care of. I believe, and Mr. Doherty, you can maybe clear this up. In the last how many years, we've had one that's almost timed out? We've had one in, I think, 2011, to the best of our knowledge. And in that case, we started a new case. Yes. Because I definitely don't want us to be a paper tiger here. You know, we told you you have to pay. Well, I'm not going to pay. I'm going to stay here forever. And then the property is still not taken care of properly for whatever reason. So is this something that we need to bring before the board to say that we give the authority for this department to refile again after 20 years? Or how do we handle this? Mr. Donaldson? I was just going to say that there are circumstances under the worst cases, you know, where the property is so poorly maintained that the house is deemed uninhabitable. And in those particular cases, it's not a simple process either where you determine, and we've demolished homes. We haven't taken property ownership, but we've had to remove the structure to deal with it. So it is a touchy issue where the government has the authority to take somebody's private property right. So it's a very, you know, limited process when we do that. I think staff fully has the capability of reissuing code violations, and typically the strongest impetus on maintaining vigilance on these properties is their neighbor and their neighborhoods who see the deteriorated property who are continuing to challenge us to try to bring it into compliance. And so there is a balance between, you know, taking the most, our strongest legal action, which is whether it's foreclosure or in those cases where our building officials had to make a call to have a property demolished, it is, we do take that very seriously, and it's not an easy thing to deal with as your government agents. But I think the staff does have the full understanding that if a property is not in compliance and because of a statute, we will reissue, restart the process to maintain it in a state that it is, it will be brought up into compliance, meeting all the rules of the county. Okay. So it's your understanding that you can go forth and refile again. Is that what I'm understanding? That's currently what we've done on the one case that it's happened. Okay. Now, if the county does have to go in because the property is uninhabitable and does have to demolish, you would have to hire somebody from the outside, an outside vendor, to do this. Is that correct? That's correct. And then we would be looking to collect those fees that would be additional actual costs to recuperate upon the sale or refinancing of the property, et cetera. So that's correct. When we go to that point, the public health and safety, we're expending public dollars to remove the hazard, and we're adding that to the lien of the property so that we can recover it. All right. Sometimes properties are vacant, person dies, property, you know, needs to be demolished. What happens then? What's the path for the county to recoup their money? That's a different path because that follows under the Florida Building Code for Safety as opposed to local ordinance, and they prescribe some methods. In those particular cases, we would hire a vendor to demolish the house, in which case that would be what we would call hard cost lien as opposed to the fines that run, and those are not extinguished to the 10%. They are collected in full before we release any liens associated with it. All right. So my understanding then is the county attorney's office will follow this case in case there are no heirs or nobody is making claim to the property. It's abandoned for all purposes. Is that correct, or is it kind of forgotten? I'm a little confused about that. No, we follow those, but in the case of a structure that needs to be demolished under the building code, those properties are hard lien gets filed, and whether that goes to tax deed, we always end up getting paid on that 100 cents on the dollar. Whether that's resold or some of these properties end up going to tax lien, some kind of foreclosure. I understand about tax liens. I do understand that whoever the purchaser is must satisfy all outstanding liens, including the county. So you file with the clerk's office then? Correct. You do? You follow that? Yes. Okay. I just don't want things abandoned, you know, in midstream because... Well, we do follow the process through the magistrate, the legal due process. We don't automatically, it goes through a hearing before the magistrate, the magistrate makes a ruling, the magistrate creates the order, then we record that. So the magistrate is the one at the hearing that creates the order. All right, for the hard cost and, of course, the liens also. So these particular three cases right here, I think I've seen a few in my short time here on the dice. So tell me about, tell us about these cases, please, if you can. The second and third one are similar. They're weeds and trash in the yard. The first one was they did not obtain a building permit to do the work. In all those cases, they were given a note on the door type thing by our code enforcement staff saying, you didn't do X, Y, and Z. Please come into compliance. At that point, they didn't do it at the timeline, 30, 60 days. We scheduled a hearing before the magistrate. At the hearing, they're given notice to appear. Whether they do or not is up to them. Based on the evidence presented, we have outside counsel that represents code enforcement. It represents the county at that time, Mr. Toohey. And the magistrate creates the order, says you need to come into compliance in so many days. If you don't, the fine will accrue. The broad back, the magistrate, presents evidence again that it was not in compliance at that point. The order is done at $100 a day or whatever it is. Once it's completed, then it's taken to the clerk of the court and recorded. The fine continues to run until they come into compliance. And when they come into compliance, they have the opportunity to come in and ask for a fine reduction in accordance with the county ordinance. All right. So have all of these three come into compliance? Yes. And the recommended order is attached by the magistrate proving that they have come into compliance. Okay. So they're at, what, 10% or is it a negotiated rate lowering? For the ordinance, we are obligated to collect 10% of the outstanding fine or 10% of the assessed value, whichever is less. All right. At this point, even if they've come into compliance, then you will continue to collect, and you'll pass the paperwork so that it's recorded with the clerk, correct? All right. Once they pay. Once the order has been issued by the magistrate, it automatically, we record everything, Commissioner. So it's in public records. Okay. It's then upon them to get into compliance. We do not allow them to, we do not release the liens without their first being compliance, us checking that there was compliance, and then the 10% of either value or the fine. Okay. I think this conversation is valuable. People don't understand it. They see it here. They may be listening. They may be here. And certainly maybe some of my fellow commissioners are not familiar with the whole process. So I wanted just to bring that up this morning. Thank you. Ms. Woods. I'm sorry. It was an old light. Okay. Attorney Poprowski explained what I was going to say. Okay. Commissioner Capps. Yeah. I was wondering about the 10 and 10, the 10% of the value of the house or 10% of the value of the penalties. Does the magistrate have some discretion for those oddball situations where you don't just have an extremely neglectful homeowner, but say somebody's in a really extreme situation, health care crisis in their household, and they just don't have the money to fix the property. Does he have some discretion to go easier on them for extreme circumstances? Prior to the most recent ordinance that was passed, I think it was in June or July of last year, the 10% was a practice, if you will, and the final decision was left to the board. In June, July last year, when that ordinance was amendment, that 10% rule became part of the ordinance. So the magistrate would not have discretion to go below 10%. I think we have on the agenda coming up in a couple weeks one that will say because it is now in the ordinance and it is a rule as opposed to a practice, if you will, that those ones signed by the magistrate that were in compliance with the ordinance would not have to come to the board because that 10% is no longer a practice but actually in the ordinance. So right now it's kind of a hard 10%. I mean, the magistrate has to assess that. So if you had $100,000 worth of penalties, the person would have to pay $10,000. Assuming the assessed value was in line, yes. Yeah, I guess I just feel for that odd situation, you know, and it almost seems to me like it would be better to leave that in the hands of the magistrate and let him use his good judgment on it rather than exacting a firm number. I think that would be my preference, but maybe that's a discussion for another day. We would have to amend the ordinance to allow that. I should let you say that. Ms. Woods. Yes, I just wanted to kind of back up. So Sarah Woods, Martin County attorney, during, Commissioner Capps, during the code enforcement violation hearing, those sort of extenuating circumstances are taken into account by the special magistrate. So when you do have somebody who's elderly or in a state or those type of instances are very often taken into consideration before he or she levies the amount of time they have to bring it into compliance. There are situations where the compliance date they come back in and ask for additional time. So a lot of those, that flexibility is far before it ever gets to the final determination for the lien. You know, they try to, because again, the overriding goal is to get compliance. So we're trying to work with people to get the compliance. So once you're at the lien stage, you've gone through sometimes years or a year or so of going back and forth if it's more complicated. There's a tough balance between coming into compliance and giving them time, and the neighbor's very upset of the situation. So it is a tough job for the magistrate to balance all those. Right. Okay, so let's take up consent 13. Do you need a motion to approve, or do we just hear those? No. We can do it either way. Okay. Which is a request for approval of an interlocal agreement between Martin County and the Treasure Coast Regional Planning Council to develop a complete streets design concept for Southeast Dixie Highway from Cove Road to Jefferson Street. Good morning, Mr. Zamas. Yes. Good morning, Commissioners. My name is George Zamas. I'm the Public Works Deputy Director. This agenda item is to work, facilitate an interlocal agreement to work with the Treasure Coast Regional Planning Council to identify complete street design concepts for the Dixie Highway roadway improvements project from Cove Road to Jefferson Street. As you're aware, the corridor for the project is quite long, and it's bookended by two different CRAs. The Treasure Coast Regional Planning Council performed a study with the NPO in 2018 for complete streets throughout the county. This project corridor was identified in that study, and staff has applied with the consent to the board to DOT for the NPO list of project priorities, which ultimately turns into a local agency program project. And at the request of DOT, Florida Department of Transportation District 4, local agency programming office, they requested Martin County to also apply for a small county outreach program grant. So the county did so. The board approved the permission to apply. DOT approved the project in the SCOP program, and it's now in the DOT five-year work plan, and it also is in our CIP. We are a program for design this year, and Public Works is requesting the assistance of Treasure Coast Regional Planning Council to help scope out the project for complete streets. As you may or may not be aware, complete streets concepts encompass safety, quality of life, and economic viability in urban environments. And in this corridor, it is a constricted corridor, and within several different CRAs, and Treasure Coast Regional Planning Council will assist staff in developing renderings for public outreach. Public Works has taken the next steps in outreach and identifying stakeholders in the public, and we'd like to get the design scoped out before construction. And as many of you are aware, during the construction of the Dixie Highway through Golden Gate, staff had to make changes during construction, and we'd like to mitigate that and identify all the scope, coordinate with the community. And, you know, we feel that Treasure Coast Regional Planning Council can greatly assist us so the community can get a very good visual of what we're presenting for the project. So with that, I'd be happy to answer any questions, and also members of the Treasure Coast Regional Planning Council are here as well to answer questions. Mr. Vargas. Are you making a presentation, Treasure Coast Regional? You're not. Okay, so, you know, this is a new age of minimizing excessive expenditures, and we should capitalize on the chance to do our part and to conserve our taxpayer funds. The Treasure Coast Regional Planning Council is asking Martin County taxpayers to fund another study while they have been unable to deliver on the last research that we needlessly funded. Previous year, a previous year, 23, they were given the opportunity for a $115,500 study of the Treasure Coast Mall, a private entity that was never delivered to us on time. There were no deliverable dates that were made, and certainly this should have been delivered by February of last year. Let's not make the same mistakes again. I'm not saying they didn't do a good job in the past for other studies, but let's tap the brakes on unnecessary expenditures. What are we doing with all of these studies? This is an excellent time for us to cut the budget, reduce our spending, and do our part to save our taxpayers money. I urge my fellow commissioners to help end wasteful choices and to make the bold decisions that they were elected to make. The time is right to lower taxes. I do not agree, and I will not support this additional study. I have one request to speak for him, and that's from Tammy Mazzotta. We meet again. Tammy Mazzotta here. So as he has very well explained to everybody, you know, the road that they want to put through, through Golden Gate, sorry. So this, it seems to be something that's been put into the innovation hub by the business flair about three years ago. This is something that was slid into the business hub, innovation hub, something that none of the residents or local businesses had a chance to even voice their concerns on. So the bridge is aligned directly with business flair's prior recommendations for three walkways in the EFC Railway, page 27 and 29 of the business flair report. While the modernization and safety improvements are important, these plans should thoroughly be evaluated for their real impact on surrounding communities, including the potential disruption of local character, access, and business viability. I also urge all the commissioners to please reconsider the approval of this because there was no transparency in here at all. And I would like to say also that last Thursday we had an NAC meeting, and Susan Kors was there, and Ms. Heard was there for approximately 20 minutes. Neither one of them brought it up in our NAC meeting, but yet it's here today on the agenda. This is something that has been slid in, no transparency, with no community knowledge to a lot of people or input, and it's just not right. Thank you. Thank you. Let's see. Mr. Gordon. Jim Gordon, Public Works Director. The intent of doing this work is to create some public outreach documents that we can then share at future NAC meetings because what we want to do is create some options and some visuals that we can bring to future meetings so that we can share it with the community because it would be a departure from what we have there right now. But because we have several studies, the Complete Streets study that went to the NPO, and then we also have a Safe Streets for All Action Plan, and both of those studies identified this corridor as one that could be improved as far as pedestrian and cyclist safety. So we'd like to come up with some of those design concepts through the use of this contract or in our local agreement so that we can then go out to the public and discuss it with them and to show them some ideas and get input on what they want to see in their community. Commissioner Hetherington. Yes. So as a part of this, it actually does go through District 2 and 4, and I wasn't aware of this until it came on the agenda, but I do support it. And I heard what, Tammy, you said this morning both in general public comment and what you just pointed out, what I think this is not approving an actual plan or a complete straight plan. This particular agenda item is specifically for the Treasure Coast Regional Planning Council to go out and correct me if I'm wrong, if I'm misinterpreting, to go out and to get that community engagement and the public input on the projects that are going forward for pedestrian safety on Dixie Highway so that we can get it right the first time when we design it. And I'll speak as, you know, District 2 Commissioner, the Dixie Highway project started long before I was in office, and it was in the planning process, and we did make changes at the last minute. And those changes that were made, which really, at the end of the day, it costs more to make those changes at the end of the project. So if we had had the proper input many years ago when that project was being designed and planned, I think that the residents, the community, Dixie Highway would have been better off. We did make those changes at the end. And so I do see the return on investment from proactively engaging the stakeholders prior to – and maybe you come back with some of, you know, some of the proposed things that you mentioned were not necessary or warranted or the residents, they want this or that. That's what I think is the objective, and I think it helps us get in tune with what the residents want, how to properly design, fund, and use the tax dollars to build a responsible project. So for that reason, I will support this because it does take into account all that engagement, and it is not supporting a particular design of a project because that's the information I'm thinking that the Regional Planning Council is going to bring back to us so then we can approve a project that is in the best interest of the residents. Is that correct? Yes, Commissioner Hetherington, you're correct. And just to reinforce, so, you know, staff identifies roadway – these really start out as roadway resurfacing projects, and we identify the infrastructure needs, the basic infrastructure needs, the roadway itself, and safety improvements. So – and with that, if we do a project, you know, we always get asked, why didn't you add these other amenities? So we want to make sure as we scope out projects that we include additional requests where feasible from the community. And these efforts assist our staff. Or you might be removing requests. Right, correct. That is absolutely correct. And this really is for transparency so the community can visualize what improvements we are proposing for the project. You know, this corridor has many users, and, you know, we want to identify safety and roadway improvements for motorists, pedestrians, bicyclists, transit users. There's also freight hauling in the area for the many shops and businesses. So, you know, there's many stakeholders, and we want to make sure that all those stakeholders' requests and scope are encapsulated in the project before we proceed with furthering design. Commissioner Vargas. Yes. Don't we already pay $70,000 for the privilege of – and joining with the Treasure Coast Regional Planning Council? Do we? I think it's $0.42 per citizen. Yes, we do, don't we? I don't remember the exact amount, but yes. Well, I'm pretty close to it. I'm pretty close to that. I've already spoken about the Treasure Coast Mall, which that was never delivered. Is there no other entity to do this study if it's so critical to the area? Commissioners, we can employ private sector planning agencies to help us with this. It's just historically we've used the Regional Planning Council for projects like this, giving their local knowledge of the area, and it's one of the services they provide as part of their services to all the counties. Well, the Treasure Coast Mall was farmed out to an entity in Washington, and I believe Massachusetts they have offices also. So it wasn't done in-house. Again, I laid out what happened, and I had to chase that report and also try and find out what's happened with taxpayers' money. They're asking for another $34,000. It's only money, but it's not our money, and we are charged to be excellent guardians of taxpayers' money, of which I am one of them. I didn't hire them, by the way. They just showed up on their own. So having said that, I think we need to back off for this moment right now and really take a hard look at this. And it may be necessary for the betterment and the safety of those that are in that area or that travel that area, and that's fine. But, again, we're in a climate that we have to measure every nickel that we spend, every single nickel. Commissioner Campy. I'll tell you, I'm not sure where to begin. If there's going to be allegations that I have never heard of about a very legitimate organization in our community, very well regarded throughout the state of Florida, the Treasure Coast Regional Planning Council, having had the benefit of being involved here for many years, having seen their work across dozens and dozens of projects, the huge advantage that we have is that other communities have to use the Treasure Coast Regional Planning Council. As outsiders, we have the benefit of having them here. If there is an allegation of some kind of malfeasance, I'm interested in hearing about it, not during this agenda item. I'd like to meet with our staff because when we're up here and people are casting these kind of criticisms and claims, I'm interested in hearing about it. Our staff is tasked with doing all sorts of work. To the public speaker's comments, I agree with Commissioner Hetherington. This is exactly what you would hope for, is an opportunity to have, in this particular case, I know you have some concerns about some of our staff and departments. This would give you an opportunity to have an outside organization do the things that you have felt and others have said to me feel they are lacking. I'm a steward of taxpayer dollars, and we could get into a back and forth on, you know, what dollars are appropriate and what dollars spending taxpayer dollars are not. My plan on doing that in the future. It's easy to get up here and, you know, say, you know, we're saving the taxpayer dollars. Well, the taxpayers have entrusted us to review these. I have entrusted our staff to do the research to decide if there is a time when we can do the projects in-house with our own internal professional staff, and sometimes there's situations where we would take a project outside. Having the benefit of a long history and tremendously positive experiences with the Treasure Coast Regional Planning Council, I may make a motion to accept and approve staff's request for the dollars used for this particular project. I think in particular in the area that it's being proposed, having some additional outside resources available would be beneficial. Second. Mr. Zama or someone, what happens, this is a very important project, and what happens if we don't hire this consultant to do, to help us with design work? Does the project fall apart? Do we advertise for outside consultants to do the work? Madam Chair, the project will still proceed. It isn't within the Florida Department of Transportation grant work program. There are milestones we have to achieve, so we do have to proceed with design. Staff would identify scope. We would present to the CRA community NAC meetings as well as our own public involvement meeting for the projects. We may not get to all the stakeholders, and a lot of times the stakeholders, you know, we could give presentations. We could talk about the project. We could present plans to the project. A lot of people don't know how to correlate that to a finished product. We feel that Treasure Coast Regional Planning Council can help us with renderings and visuals to present to the public, so it can manifest ideas from the public to present to us, so we can encapsulate the appropriate scope for the project. So it's not necessarily an absolute necessity, but it does help us help, you know, talking about transparency. It really helps the public, you know, understand what we're trying to accomplish for the project. I have, it looks like, two requests to speak forms. Walter Lloyd is first, followed by Tom Pine. Thank you, Commissioners. Walter Lloyd, in listening to what's going on and hearing a little bit about it before I came here today, I first of all thank you for making every attempt to manage our dollars and do the best you can for our community, but I would say that transparency, as I heard earlier, is a big concern of ours. We'd like to see exactly how you're doing that. So we would like to see dollar figures probably added to these items on here so that we can understand what the magnitude is. And also, I think it would be a great suggestion to not only depend on just one, but maybe do bids and get several players involved so that there's some sort of pressure on these people that are providing a service to do it at a cost-effective way. Thank you for your concern for our tax dollars, and I hope you all will take that into consideration. Thank you. Thank you. Tom Pine is next. My name is Tom Pine. On this issue, I'm concerned that it doesn't turn out to be another disaster that's already on Dixie Highway, going south from Indian Street. It looks a lot prettier than it was, but it's a lot more dangerous. The median street, of course, makes it look real pretty, and the turn lanes are gone, so people have to stop in the lane that they're driving to make the turn. That's where the accident starts. Speeds are out of control, nothing new, but we can't have that same death trap continue south on Dixie Highway. Are we going to start teaching crossing in the middle of the road is now the right way to do and not at the corners, like it's still starting school, I believe? Please don't let this be another disaster like the one on the Dixie Highway that's there now. Thank you. Commissioner Vargas. Yes, I would like to request that we solicit other bids for this project. I've already given you, and it's not a complaint, it's a statement, it's a fact. We never received the mall report on time. I have no idea why it was done, but it was done. That was $115,500 that they requested, and they farmed it out, and it wasn't delivered. So I've already stated the facts. I had to chase that report also. In addition to that, I think that competition is healthy, and I think this is the moment that we depart from our usual modus operandi that seems to be quite comfortable here with this board. So I would request, I would suggest that you not continue along the same venue, and let's get some other bids for this project. You've stated how important it is. I'm speaking to staff. Possibly they can do some work in-house. We need to be able to save money. We're not in this climate anymore. I stated that earlier. We are not there anymore. Mr. Capps. Mr. Dama, I wonder if you could tell us a little bit more about what a complete street is. Complete street is a concept through a corridor, primarily urbanized corridors, in which there's a constraint right-of-way. Typically, it's a corridor that promotes not only traveling from the motoring public, but walkability for pedestrians and bicyclists, and it accommodates aesthetic features, including landscape and street lighting, as well as accommodations, as I mentioned before, for potential transit users. There's freight hauling. You know, these are areas that get pretty, like I said, pretty constrained, and we try to accommodate all the users in an area. Do we have a couple of examples of a complete street that has been done in Martin County in the past? We have several. Primarily, they are implemented in the CRAs, like Bridge Road in District 3, Map Road. You know, this area, Port Salerno, does have complete street measures in place already, but we're looking to add the potential for a multimodal pathway through the area to continue the East Coast Greenway. Other areas include downtown and City of Stewart, Golden Gate, the area we just completed. So there's several throughout the community. Downtown Jensen Beach, those are areas of complete street concepts. It sounds to me like it's a really complicated thing. You know, you're dealing with an older area of town, constrained roadways, create all kinds of complicated infrastructure issues. You know, I think we need good consultation and advice and input, and the Treasure Coast Regional Planning Council has done that for us in the past. And, frankly, if Mr. Gorton and Mr. Zama think that they need it, I have a great deal of respect for what they do in the Public Works Department, and that is another big factor in my mind. You know, I think their judgment is very important. And I sit on the board of the Treasure Coast Regional Planning Council and I've been impressed with the work that they do thus far. And I think they've done good work in the past. So I would be glad to support their efforts. There is a motion and a second on the floor. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Opposed. That motion passes 4 to 1 with Commissioner Vargas dissenting, and we also have to approve consent 9, 10, and 11, the code enforcement issues. Motion to approve. Second. There's a motion and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? That motion passes unanimously. We will now break for lunch. Want to come back at 1.30? Okay. Thanks. You're on. We are back and we are taking up public hearing number one, which is a public hearing to consider adoption of an ordinance amending Article 12, Land Development Regulations, to revise the standards, criteria, and process of alternative compliance in the community redevelopment areas. Ms. Courais, is that? We have a preset at 1.30. Goodness. Okay. We'll take that up. What is that? Ms. Brotherington's agenda item. Okay. We'll take that up. Department 2. Good afternoon, Commissioners. Christy Brotherton, Chief Procurement Officer. Joining me today, we have your General Services Director, Sean Donahue. The first item for your consideration is the contract award for the House of Refuge Historic Restoration Project. Never heard of it. Nope. Motion to approve. Oh, there we go. All right. I'm done. Recommended action. Staff is recommending that the board award the contract to the sole responsive and responsible proposer, which is the tradesman group, in the amount of $1,792,011. Move that the board approve the revised CIP sheet to fund the project. And move that the board authorize the county administrator or designee to execute all documents related to this request. The next item for your consideration is the continuing services agreement for temporary employment services. This contract has a maximum not to exceed value of $50 million and a maximum not to exceed term of nine years. So this is a three-year term plus two three-year renewal options. And staff is recommending that the board award the contract to the highest-scoring firm, which is Resource Government Services. And move that the board authorize the county administrator or designee to execute all documents related to this request. And last but not least, we have another continuing services agreement. This is for biosolids, dewatered sludge, hauling, and disposal services. And this contract has a maximum not to exceed value of $6,500,000 with a maximum not to exceed term of five years. And staff is recommending that the board award the contract to Appalachian Material Services, Incorporated. And move that the board authorize the county administrator or designee to execute all documents related to this request. And that concludes this item. Questions for staff, or shall we go directly to the public? We'll go to the public. We have two request-to-speak forms. The first is Catherine Larson. The second is Rob Steele. Yes, please. Hi, good afternoon. Afternoon. I am Catherine Larson. I am keeper of the house at the House of Refuge. And I'm very honored to be in this position. And I think that I have been liaising with the county for a lot of maintenance things that have been going on at the House of Refuge. And the time is now because we're going to be 150 next year. And this house structurally. I know. And we'd like to be here for another 150, of course. But as I always say to a lot of people, she's a little old lady with her stockings falling down. And she needs some help. And I hope, and I think my heart, my voice is a little heartfelt. And I had a couple of points that I wanted to share with you. Because, you know, if we don't take action soon, there's going to be some irreversible repair. And we're not going to be able to keep her up and running and very representative of our community. And she is. When we get awarded these wonderful titles, you know, gorgeous seaside town in Florida or actually in the United States, News World Report and other publications, they're always flashing to the House of Refuge. And she anchors us in our history. 1876 was a long time ago when none of us were here. And she is still here telling a tale. And I've got a lot of volunteers here that are here that also feel that strongly because they dedicate their hours to us. And it's a generational thing. We get grandparents, great-grandparents, parents, kids, and ones on the way coming to us to continue to perpetuate learning about our story. And I think it's time to safeguard this legacy. And a big, giant restoration project, I know that these are big numbers, but that's what it is. And if we want to continue this, then I think it's really important that we act now. I have only been here a year as keeper of the house. And I see just last season, it was remarkable. It wasn't even a hurricane. There were just storms out at sea and high ties and waves were crashing, and they do a number on her. But we don't want her to go anywhere regardless. So it's a concerted effort, and funding is very necessary to do this. Let's see. This is kind of a reinvestment into Martin County's cultural and economic vitality. We do use her. We do flash the house. And I just hope that we can act favorably here to secure these fundings because she needs it. And I actually recommend everybody to come out to visit us so they can really learn our maritime history. I sometimes get people that come in and say, well, gosh, I've lived here 30 years and I haven't been here. Well, the history is the same, but come and learn it. Come enjoy it. And so thank you. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I'm Rob Steele, the president and CEO of the Historical Society of Martin County, and it's been my honor to serve in that position for the last six years. It's interesting. I always referred to the House of Refuge as he until Catherine arrived a year ago. And now she has become she, but I'm A-OK with that, just as long as we can preserve her. It's hard to imagine that 70 years ago, the Historical Society of Martin County, which was formed by the Adventurous Women of the Soroptimist Club in 1955, they were charged with the duty of operating a museum at the House of Refuge, and we've done so successfully for the last 70 years. And that's through a partnership of collaboration with Martin County and the Historical Society of Martin County. And I think if you look around, you won't see many 70-year collaborations in Florida or any other state that have sustained that much time, the passage of time, to keep things rolling. It stands without saying that the House of Refuge is the most iconic structure in Martin County. It's certainly the oldest building, and it's certainly under a continual barrage of weather and ocean and wind and sand and everything else you can throw at it. By some miracle, it's the only one out of ten houses of refuge in Florida that is still standing. In 1930, the Coast Guard moved it back 30 feet and anchored it to the rocks, and that's probably why it still stands. It's withstood 22 hurricanes. There could be no better time in history to undertake this endeavor to restore the House of Refuge than on the eve of its 150th anniversary and 50 years after the last major renovation of the House of Refuge. The time is upon us. This is our time to act. We will partner with the county as we have for 70 years. Whatever we can do to encompass the efforts that are made on the main house structure, we will do so. We'll go out and fundraise on our own. Three years ago in our management agreement, we agreed to take care of all the interior spaces of the House of Refuge and the House of Refuge campus, and we've done so very successfully since then, redoing all the exhibits and everything else. We introduced the Refuge Runner, a 12-passenger shuttle, about a little more than a year ago, and we have doubled attendance at the House of Refuge since then. As you know, there are only 15 parking spaces out there, and with the shuttle, we take 40, 50, sometimes 60 people a day out to see the museum and understand about our local history. So we're thrilled with the success of that program. We see it only continuing. Thank you for your consideration to this proposal, and I hope we can continue to partner together. Thank you. Any questions for staff? Commissioner Vargas. Yes. Rob, could you come to the front? Yes, you. Thank you. You can come to the front. Okay, that's why he kind of ran. I do have a couple of questions. What about other funding sources to maintain this? Because I'm looking here, it says $2,249,984. I don't see a minimal amount of grants. I mean, you know, we're in budget time right now. This is really tough to keep coming back. As I mentioned in my comments, we're taking care of all the interior spaces, and we'll go out and fundraise to take care of the buildings that aren't included in this deep, deep, deep dive restoration project. And we've also discussed the opportunity of taking advantage of the 150-year anniversary to do some fundraising to create an endowment for the long-term sustenance of the House of Refuge, come up with a fund so that we can supplement the county budget on an annual basis to make sure we have enough money to keep it under steady repair. It's like a battleship. If you ever stop painting it, if you ever have been on a battleship or an aircraft carrier, they never stop painting 24-7. And that's essentially what we're dealing with now. It's not in the water, but it's close enough to the water that you have to keep everything up on a continual basis. So we'll continue to support that. But this opportunity popped up very quickly, and we'll surround it and support it. But our ability to raise $1.7 million very quickly is somewhat limited, but we can certainly be a part of the solution. Yeah, because I feel that if you have this large bill that you're asking us to cover, then wouldn't fundraising be something you'd be working on quickly? I mean, can this be done in steps? Because it's only about the money, and we have so many responsibilities. You heard some of them this morning, and there are more coming this afternoon. And we have to look at the total picture. I'm certain you understand that. Absolutely. I completely understand. And as I said, we're happy to be part of the solution. We don't actually own the facility or the property that the county does and always has, and we're happy to help and partner and everything else. But ultimately, I think that the party that owns the building, ultimately the responsibility falls on them to make sure that it's preserved or that it's raised. Yes, I understand. But you do receive income from this entity, don't you? We have a management agreement that we do, and then, of course, our admissions income, because there's only 15 parking spaces, even with the shuttle. The income is somewhat limited from the property because of its position and tourism attraction value. Yes, I understand what you're saying. Another question, do you have the 990, Ms. Brotherington, of this organization? Do you never request it, or are you a nonprofit? We are a nonprofit, yes. Yeah, because I think that's important to look at the numbers also. I mean, if you're asking us to give this huge amount of money, I mean, I think that we should have the transparency to look at that. I mean, wouldn't you agree? I don't know how to elaborate on that. I mean, we can do what we can do. We're a small nonprofit. This is a big budget item, and we're happy to help on every front and to continue the preservation. Right. But would you be willing to provide that, the 990? I'm sorry, I didn't hear you. The form that you file with the IRS every year, the 990? Yes, of course. Okay. So I think that would be really important because we have to look at every item that's coming before us. Absolutely. And that's where I stand on that. So I would start making my phone calls to people. Great. Thank you. Mr. Canty. Having had the opportunity to be out to the House of Refuge many times when my children were little, and now they're all grown and long out of college, I remember the last time I toured, I had an opportunity with Rob several years ago to talk about the continuing maintenance that you all were handling, as he had mentioned. You know, he said it briefly, the inside maintenance, which is tremendous amount of effort and work and expense. If you break it down, and I do differently, if you had a 150-year-old house that was well away from the ocean, it would be very, very difficult to maintain a 150-year-old house. Very few structures ever make it to 150 years. Now, combine that with the fact that it's as close to the ocean as you possibly could be. New homes on the ocean are very, very difficult and expensive to maintain. You and your group of volunteers and passionate supporters have been doing both very, very successfully, and the county has benefited from it. As you had mentioned in your comments, that every PowerPoint I've ever seen, any time anyone's doing any presentation about Martin County, you can guarantee one of the pictures is the House of Refuge. If you look at people's engagement photos, it's the House of Refuge. Their wedding photos, it's the House of Refuge. So I think, you know, look, there's five of us for a reason. We all have been duly elected. We all campaigned and presented ourselves and our beliefs and philosophies to the public, and they've decided it's going to be the five of us as this most recent iteration. And that's because everybody brings a different perspective of what they think is important. And, you know, yes, the budget is always an issue. Everyone has their hand out. But having the added benefit of having 12 years plus of sitting up here and being through these presentations and understanding the value of our different entities and our different items that we own, like you said, Mr. Steele, the county owns your building. You're the, I like the keeper of the house. I thought you said speaker of the house at first, but the keeper of the house is very clever. And you literally are. We have entrusted you, the county, not just the five commissioners and our staff, but the community, the residents of Martin County have entrusted you all to take care of our very, very valuable property. And, yeah, a million and a half dollars is a large amount of money. It's not as large as it used to be had you done this maybe 10, 15 years ago. But I'm very pleased with your financial stewardship and your management of a very valuable, fragile asset. And when push comes to shove at budget time and we need to pick and choose where we're going to put our taxpayers' hard-earned resources, I have no problem giving you the number that you're asking for, and I would make a motion to accept staff's recommendation. And if we need to, we can separate. Why don't we do this, Ms. Chair? Should we separate this one out? I'd separate. What number is this? This is A1. I would separate out A1 from the remainder of your agenda item to make a motion to accept staff's recommendation for funding A1 with my thanks. Commissioner Hetherington. Yep. I agree with pretty much all of your comments, and I won't repeat them. And I just had to lean over to our administrator and say, this is a county-owned building. Yes. And I think we kicked off this morning with the historical preservation month, and I think this organization has done a good job in managing our assets. And I see the urgency, and if this is not preserved, then there will be no more house of refuge. And so with that, I will definitely support this motion. I do have a question on another item, if you want to proceed. Are you supporting? Unrelated. I'm seconding your motion. And then after we vote, I'd like to come back with a question about something completely different. Okay. Commissioner Vargas. Yes. I hear all the comments about brides taking pictures and visiting. I mean, I'm from Miami. I was born and raised. I can tell you about a lot of historic places there, and it's a nice property, and I understand it needs work. However, you know, I'm being asked to look at something, this huge number here. We talked about a fire station this morning. That's $17 million. And I have to look at numbers, and that's what makes sense to me. I have nothing in front of me. You know, there's a lot of emotion floating here, but we really have to get down to the facts. And I asked a moment ago, can some of this be broken out? Because it's a big number. We have to take the totality of all the requests and then make a decision how much we can do. And that's pretty much what it is. It's nothing more eloquent than that. Ms. Woods. Yes, I just wanted to make sure, for the record, that it's clear the county owns the property. The county is responsible for the property. The relationship with this historical society is a programming management agreement, which, as they mentioned, they also program, provide the tours and that sort of thing to a county-owned property. So that's their programming and their interior management of that. And that's been in place for decades. So this is an historic building, and because it's an historic building, we are limited in what we can do to repair that building. And one of the constraints is that we are required to use certain building materials in order for it to remain an historic structure. And those building materials are not weatherproof, and the materials that you're proposing that we're going to use are going to require repair and replacement very soon. You can't – the building will not dry. We're going to attempt to dry it out. It's soaked completely through and through. We will attempt to dry it. We will attempt to get paint on it. We will put paint on it. It will adhere, hopefully, for a while, and then it will get wet all again. And we're going to be looking at the same problems that we have today 10 years from now and looking at the same really substantial bills to pay. There are materials today that are far superior, composite materials, that if they were used in order to do these repairs, would last a long, long, long, long time. And the building would look the same, and it would be serviceable for a much longer period of time. But because we desire to keep this an historic structure, we're not going to use those materials that are sustainable. If I may, Sean Donahue, General Services Director, and we have Mr. Brian Lora. He's with REG Architects. We can talk about some specific standards and requirements for historic building renovation and rehabilitation like we're talking about here. Some of the things that we're limited to from a historical perspective allows us to get grant funding. So we received grant funding for the roof replacement in 2023 for this project in the order of $231,000 because it's a historic building. So we need to match those standards and maintain that to be able to continue to work with the historical society of the state to receive some grant funding. Okay. It's $200,000, and our investment is $1.5 million. Understood. So that's rather inconsequential, quite frankly. And the building would look and function as a beautiful historic building if we were inclined to use modern composite materials to make the replace, to do the repairs, right? Yes. Yes. But we'd have to look and see, you know, how we would back out of being a historic building if that's possible. You know, talk me out of it, Commissioners, but this is a really big investment, and it's maybe not the wisest investment that we could make at the moment. Commissioner Campy. Recently, the last several meetings, quite often I feel like I'm in the twilight zone. I can't imagine that we would be talking about stripping away the historic value of the most important historic building we have in our county. I get the nuts and bolts would be like, hey, tear it apart, rebuild it in modern. Then it's not the House of Refuge anymore. It's a model of the House of Refuge. The building has lasted 150 years. It's one of the few houses of refuge left on the coast, and we have been blessed with the opportunity to preserve it. I think if we put this out and the public knew that we were even considering letting it fall apart or completely artificializing it, if that's a word, they would fill this room with people. I'm shocked we're even having this conversation. We spend millions and millions of dollars. Ms. Brotherton, not to put you on the spot, can you tell me the one about waste services again or sludge services? Can you give me, just repeat that one for us? Okay, so for the biosolids, this is a continuing services contract with the maximum not-to-exceed value of $6.5 million over a maximum not-to-exceed term of five years. You can stop right there. Biosolids is a fancy word for sewage, sludge. We're going to spend $6 million for five years' worth of getting rid of sewage. No one blinks an eye because it has to be done. Maybe that's why, again, I'll go back to I can't imagine that we would be debating the value of the House of Refuge. I'm stunned. I will certainly not participate or would die if I had to participate in being the board that after 150 years, and Martin County being in existence for 100, with a 70-year partnership, this is going to be the five of us are going to have our names on the one that pulled the plug on it. I think that's a terrible history for us to have. We spend so much money on so many things. We have a three-quarter of a billion-dollar budget. Yes, $1.5 million is an expensive number. They're not asking for it. Those are the folks that take care of our building. It belongs to the five of us representing everyone else, $1.5 million. We spend more on soccer fields that are not 150 years old. We can't be the – we've been entrusted to take care of this building, and I can't believe we're going to talk about either destroying its historic – I mean, people – preservation, it's all over. Julie Priest is probably in her car driving over here right now. And I can't imagine that we would want that reputation throughout the state or in the historic preservation world that the county would be thinking about stripping away its historic value to make it more weatherproof, or worse, not funding the desperately needed repairs at all. That's not how we want our county to be known throughout the country. And this sounds like a news story to me. Well, I'm absolutely certain that our residents are grateful that we are hauling out between 160 and 600 tons of sludge every month. I will vote for the sludge as well. I was using that as an example that – Commissioner Capps. Yes, I toured the House of Refuge. It was a fun afternoon, and I saw the need. And it was interesting seeing the effects of salt air deterioration on construction, and I've seen this a lot in my own business life, that salt air is hard on things. I think as far as composite materials go, they're nice, but they won't match. It won't look good to have two different kinds of materials, and unless you're going to tear the whole place down again and redo it with composites, you don't want it to look like a patched-up thing. So I think it would be best to use those same materials. And I tend to think that they would last longer than 10 years and probably longer than 20 or 30 years. And I would imagine some of the old boards that I saw that were all deteriorated are probably 50 or 60 or 80 years old. Maybe they're original. I don't know. But I don't think they've rot away that quickly, even with the salt air. And so I'm in support of the effort to restore it with the types of materials that we're supposed to use in order to maintain the historic designation that it currently has. So I'll be glad to support the motion. Commissioner Vargas. You know, the architect there, those that are building, they know how to put the new type of products together, which look authentic but will have durability. Construction costs are going to be going up, so we'll be talking about a far greater number within 8, 9 years, 10 years. A residence, a building on the ocean with the salt air, and I'm a Florida native, so I know it very well, cannot withstand any real length of time and more so. This is a huge number, and it's minuscule what we're getting for the grants. And I think that we'll be able to have many, many more years of enjoyment if we were to take a different tack and use new materials that are beneficial for the integrity and the structure and also for those to enjoy the building. We are not raising the building. We're not abandoning it. We're not destroying it. We're not doing any of those things. That's all emotional talk. We're talking about a number here. We haven't even gotten into the budget items. I can't support this at this time because I have no information whatsoever from this nonprofit. I did tour the building also, and I saw that it did need work, but not just to continue to use the same wood or other products that they used 150 years ago just to maintain a semblance of this is what it was, this is what it is, and this is what it will all be. We'll have more durability and longevity by implementing new products and techniques also. So that's what you're hiring the engineers, the architect, those that will be doing that, and they can certainly speak to the specifics more than I can at this time. Commissioner Hetherington. Next item. After we vote. Okay. How do these items become prioritized and come before us? Because this was a surprise to me. Yes. Like I said before, we received a grant back in 2023, and as part of that grant, you start working with the architects to develop a set of construction plans to implement the grant. So as we were looking at the facility to replace the roof, REG architects and their structural engineers analyzed the facility and found significant flaws that were uncovered as we were preparing the documents. The structural report, the structural analysis was prepared. It created a list of priority items that needed to be repaired. So that's kind of the history of it. But I can't say that the last major structural repair on this facility was back in 1999. So we're looking, you know, 26 years, 27 years later as we're fixing, as we're trying to do this project. It's a long time. It needs some major TLC. These are critical repairs. We have floors that are starting to sag and, you know, other issues that are happening with the building. But it needs some help right now. As far as using different types of materials, we tried to maintain the historic designation and maintain the historic construction. So that's the direction we were in at the time, leading from 2023 to now. I remember going to a couple gatherings there early in the 2002-2003 era, and there were, the facilities were used then because it had been recently repaired, and it was usable, and it was attractive, and it hasn't been since then because it's not as desirable. It isn't as well kept. And I see that this CIP sheet wasn't initiated until last year. I mean, if you knew that the building was falling apart, that it needed, was in desperate need of very expensive repairs, then why wasn't the CIP sheet created in 2015 so that we could begin preparing for it, saving for it, instead of all of a sudden being asked to approve a $1.7 million project that previously didn't even have a CIP sheet? I don't have a good answer for that question. I'm sorry, Commissioner. You know, I started here in 2022, and when we started getting the grants and moving through the process of preparing for the implementation of the roof replacement, and we found this problem. I think, you know, we could do a little bit more upkeep more frequently to try to curtail some of this. I don't think you could do it. I just don't. It's too wet. It's too wet. It's too windy. It's too salty. You know, what kind of repairs or what kind of maintenance are you going to do that's going to stop the deterioration? This is not a weatherproof site, and that's not going to change. The building is 150 years old. They've been doing a pretty good job. But I concur what... Mr. Vargas. I concur what Chairwoman Hurd has said. This building will not survive. They didn't have the materials. They didn't have the techniques at that time. And what we've been doing is just trying to shore it up. I hate to use that word, but we're just trying to, you know, prop it up as we moved along. And I understand what you're saying about when you arrived here at Martin County, and there should have been acknowledgement that this is coming up, and this is the reasons why we need to do this, such as what we're seeing today. I mean, this should be something that, gee, we really have to plan for, or they need to fundraise, or can't keep just coming back to the county and asking for these big numbers. I mean, they're huge numbers. I called a vote. And it's... Excuse me, I'm talking. It's parliamentary procedure. I'm calling the vote. As I was saying, if you can look at other materials to use, you're not receiving a whole lot of money for this. It's 200-some-odd thousand dollars. Versus what you're asking us. Everything that we've spoken about today. It's nice to have historic structures, and where I grew up, plenty of historic structures, but they're using different materials today so that they have some life left to them, and for the enjoyment of everybody. I see the consultant would like to address this. You have three minutes. I called the vote. I'm the chair. You don't have to go to Paris to see the Eiffel Tower. You can see it in Las Vegas. No, that's fake. Thank you. I'm Brian Lahr from REG Architects. No, it won't. It'll be real. The structure has, you know, there's a lot of work that needs to be done from the re-roof to the foundation. There's issues with piles, with, you know, structural issues, and through the assessment with our structural engineer, we're able to uncover that. There's a lot of unknowns once you go into the actual construction or preservation of the building, but the materiality has to match what is there. It's been lasting over 150 years. The wood, I mean, it's essentially sustainable. The materials that you're looking at now and trying to match would be out of polymers and plastics, and those don't tend to last as long, especially in the sun. And sustainability really has to do with natural materials, things that aren't added glue and, you know, pieced together. You want whole wood. You want things that are natural that will last longer, and it will be more as a preservation. It has to match what's in the historic standards, and the historic standards dictates what grants you get, right? So you have to kind of preserve and restore what's there, and, you know, that's one of the most critical things for historic preservation, those materiality. And this is a landmark building being on the water's edge. It's been probably through, you know, 50 hurricanes, been through quite a bit of, you know, time and weather. So it's going to weather, once you replace these materials in kind with what's there, it's going to last just as long or longer. I think it's a valuable asset for Martin County. And, yeah, I think, you know, once we go through the process, there may be, you know, there may be things that are unknown that we'll find and we'll have to address then. But it's fairly, it's really critical that we do maintain it, and we address the issues structurally for the piles and the rafters and the joists and all these things that are in dire need of sustain, sustainability. So, you know, so I think having said that, you know, I think to move forward, we need to really look at it and kind of address what's needed now because time is of the essence. You have to do this. If you don't, it's going to be in disrepair and it's going to decay. And you don't want to have this landmark building in decay. Okay. Thank you. Appreciate it. So it sounds like even you're anticipating that we're going to have to replace piles and rafters and joists. More money. We don't have any idea what the extent of that is, and it certainly is not going to be historic or original when they're replaced. That's right. Not how it works. Yes, that's how it works. You can still maintain its historic preservation status if you go about using the same materials, the same building construction, and the same details of how they do the work. If you've watched any project, it still maintains the historic value if you use similar materials and the same techniques. That's what we're saying, use similar materials that look like that. Now, I will say that there are better products out there for holding up a structure. So that's not something from 150 years ago. And this is what we're saying. So I heard the architects say, well, once we uncover it, we could have other items to tend to, which means more money, more than what this number is here in our book. You need three votes of yes. We have a motion and a second. I've called a question. There's a motion and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Opposed. That motion passes three to two with commissioners Vargas and Hurd to send. Mr. Hetherington. I have a question on the next item, but I would just last comment on this. It might be, I don't want to ever be in this conversation again about historic buildings because they are important to Martin County. So perhaps county-owned historic buildings should have reserve funding put, and maybe they have in the past, I don't know. Like as in the state legislature passed a reserve funding mandate on condo owners that had three-story, maybe there's some better planning we can do in the future. So I'll just leave it at that. And then, Ms. Brotherton, I have a question on sludge. So we bid it out, and it looks like I read in your explanation that the number two – wait, you don't want to listen to the sludge conversation? I guess. The award is going to the second lowest bidder, so it looks like they didn't turn in the proper – they weren't the responsive bidder, is that correct? Yeah, so for this particular bid, we did receive, per the bid tabulation, there was a lower bidder per the read out loud bids. However, they submitted two bids instead of one, and both of those bids contained contingencies or alternate. So it was a nonresponsive bid. So that bid was thrown out. So the lowest responsive and responsible bidder is actually the Appalachian Material Services. Okay. And then as technology, this technology is changing as fast as we can blink an eye. Does this contract give us flexibility to adapt as things change in the biosolid world? I think I can answer that one in that this provision does allow for – we have another solicitation on the street regarding the processing of biosolids itself. This is just the hauling, and this contract would accommodate a change in that activity should we choose that in the future. Okay. Very good. With that, if no one has any, I will motion for this item number three's approval. Commissioner Capps. Here's the point of clarification. This is for hauling and disposal? Correct. You know this thing that might be happening in Indiantown called Sedrong? Yeah, we're actually out to bid. That is the one that Mr. Donaldson was just speaking of. So we're actually under the cone of silence, so I don't want to – you're fine. But we do have an active solicitation for something for the residuals processing recover. I can't remember the title. I'm sorry. Is this the same kind of activity and subject matter? They are the same. They are a similar subject matter. This is simply the hauling of a dried material that's currently being generated at our facilities. Our future action is to have a completely different method of handling, both creating the material and how it's disposed of. And so we don't see – this allows us to keep the operation that we currently have, but it also accommodates, should the commission decide to make a change in how we process and dispose, this contract would allow that transition. Okay. Thank you. No problem. Was the motion for two and three, or just three? Yes. All of the ones that we didn't separate out. Was there a second? Yes, second. There's a motion and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? That motion passes unanimously. Let's see if we can move things along, commissioners. We've got a lot of work ahead of us today. Yes, you are. We will take up public hearing number one, which is a public hearing under adoption of an ordinance amending Article 12 to revise the standards, criteria, and process of alternative compliance in the community redevelopment areas. Sure. Good morning, commissioners. Elise Elder, deputy county attorney. I'm here with Susan Kores, who is the manager of the CRA. Community development director. Director, sorry. We're here to talk about an ordinance. I hear you very well, Elise. Okay. Can you hear me now? Okay. We're here to talk about an ordinance that proposes some changes to the alternative compliance process in the community redevelopment areas, the CRA. Alternative compliance is really similar to a variance. It's when someone who wants to build in the CRA is asking for a deviation from a code provision. And right now we have a current process in the CRA where someone can fill out an application for alternative compliance. Growth management staff will do an analysis, and then the growth management department director makes the determination on whether or not to grant alternative compliance. So the standard that he uses or she uses, it's he right now, to determine that is whether it meets the intent of basically Article 12. So we're here today to propose some changes to that process. This process was changed in about 2021, when the county adopted Article 12 for the CRA. Prior to that, there was a public hearing process. It went before the NAC, and they made the determination. Ms. Gores can tell you, but there were issues with that process, which is why the process now was proposed. We're seeing there are issues with the current process, so we're proposing some new changes. And basically, we are going to make it so the process goes back to a public hearing. So for a request for alternative compliance, right now it goes to the growth management director. There's no notice to neighbors or anybody in the community. And part of the zoning code is so you know what you can build, so your neighbors know what you're building. So we're proposing to give a public hearing process, and we're also proposing changes to the actual criteria to make it more in line with what someone who requests a variance in the rest of the county, the criteria they have to establish. And that's the variance criteria under Florida law. So I'll go over that first. Under Section B, it's right on your screen. This is the criteria we're proposing. It's the criteria for a variance under Florida law, and it's very similar to what you would have to demonstrate if you want a variance outside of the CRA. So it's one through little five, and that's the standard we're proposing. And that is going to be for architectural and dimensional requests for alternative compliance. For landscaping requests for alternative compliance, that's the criteria following in Section C. We mimic that from the rest of the county. We have a procedure for the rest of the county if you want landscaping alternative compliance. So we just took the same criteria for that. And then the final change is really just to change the process. So if it's a major development that becomes before the Board of County Commissioners, the request for alternative compliance would be decided during the site plan approval during the major development. If it's any other request for alternative compliance for dimensional or architectural, it will go to the CRA board, and there will be a public hearing. The growth management staff will present the request, and then the CRA board would make the determination based on the criteria that we're amending. The public would have an opportunity to comment, and they would make the decision. That would be for, like, minor developments, building permits, things like that. That kind of summarizes what we are proposing today. I don't know if Ms. Coras has anything else to add. Yeah, I just had a couple of things to add. Good afternoon, Commissioners. One of the reasons that we wanted to bring it back in-house in 2021 was some of the issues that we had in bringing those things to the NAC. One of the big ones is that they meet every other month, which sometimes can really hold people up in terms of their building permits and those types of things. So that occasionally became, or more often than occasionally, became an issue for those applicants. The other issues that we faced were neighbors judging neighbors, and that was a little bit of a problem as well. NAC members change fairly often so that it was difficult sometimes to get a quorum of folks that understand code and could actually make a decision that made sense, I think, for the applications. I think that it will be easier moving forward doing it this way. It certainly is more transparent. We certainly have public notice. It's a public meeting. It's held once a month. The folks are there for longer periods of time. We will give them some additional training as well so that they can really make good decisions about these applications. And as well, we changed our architectural standards. I think you might remember that. We brought that to you a couple of months ago. And we firmly believe that that is going to cut down the amount of applications because the rules are so much clearer and easier to follow for applicants and for developers and for property owners. So I think for all of those reasons, the change in process is going to be very helpful. And we did present this to both the CRA and the LPA, and both boards approved it, recommended approval unanimously. Questions for staff? I have one public request to speak form, and that's Tammy Mazzotta. Okay, three times the charm rate. Tammy Mazzotta. I would like to draw attention to the proposed changes in Article 12, specifically 12-12, effectively removing the neighborhood advisory committees from the process of approving alternative compliance. These amendments grant full discretion to the growth management director, cutting out all vital community input and oversight. It undermines the principle of transparency, community involvement that NACs are established to uphold. Additionally, the removal of language referencing existing site characteristics such as the historical agricultural features and the acceptance of the generalized comparable but different design solutions is concerning. And some of these changes have such broad discretions that you don't really know how far things are going to be changed because these changes are just way too broad. And so you're saying that you're talking about transparency. And Susan was at our last NAC meeting. She put this on the agenda. She knew about it but did not bring it up to the NAC. It's a prime example of the transparency that's not happening. And the changes will not be transparent. I don't know how anybody can expect us to believe in transparency when it hasn't been happening in the past. So you want to talk about the NAC and the CRAs when there's talks of dissolving the NAC and CRAs. So why would you go through all of that trouble for something that's supposed to be dissolved? It's just strange to me. I understand that I've been talking about transparency an awful lot today. But there really hasn't. How can we trust? We're supposed to trust. But when there's consistently no transparency, how can we trust? We want to trust. We want to support you. And we want you to support us. But there is no transparency. So I don't even know what else to say, honestly. Because we've been misguided, to say the least. Thank you. Commissioner Campy. Thank you. I have received a decent amount of emails on this with people that had concerns. I did have an opportunity to speak to Ms. Corris, ask her some of the questions that were asked of us. I'm assuming when I get them, I look to see they were mostly for commish. I've sat through some alternative compliance presentations at the Palm City NAC. One recently for the Map Road project that's under construction now at 33rd Street. Pretty cut and dry. How often is this, are there requests for alternative compliance? Is this a common occurrence? Is it rare? It would have to be relatively rare, correct? It's relatively rare. We, in 2023, for minor site plans, there were six total for 2023 and 2024. Building permits might be a little bit more, but they're not that frequent. So, let me just be clear. For the year 2023 and 2024, across the six different CRA neighborhoods, there was only six. For minor site plans, for 2024, for building permits, there were 27. And those building permits would then go before the CRA? The CRA board. Whereas, currently, they are discussed exclusively at the neighborhood level? No. The NAC is not part of the process. Once in a while, the growth management director will refer it to the NAC. But the process is you fill out an application, the current process, staff analyzes it, the growth management director makes a determination. There's no public process right now unless the growth management director refers it to the NAC, which happens infrequently, I think. Thank you. The one that I was mentioning, the example on Map Road, was that minor or major? Minor. Minor. It's a full building with a parking lot. So, a lot of those building permits, I would say probably about a third of them are the architectural. So, again, we expect that to be half, if not less than half, because the criteria that they need to follow, like Elise pointed out, is the same as they would follow in the rest of the county. And because we have instituted new standards, we believe that that's going to be easier for the applicants. Now, I know in the past that without the ability for the neighbors to know that someone's up to something, there was another one that I sat in on where a homeowner, residential homeowner, was looking to build a large, do you remember, large garage on the side of their property that was going to go way into the back? Yes. And the neighbors were at the NAC meeting, and some of them were in support, and some of them were not. But the frustration was that they had no idea that that would have come forward, versus if it is going to the CRA level, it would have been decided at a meeting with an agenda where people could come and make a three-minute public comment. That is correct. As Ms. Mazota quoted in 12-12, presently, none of those go to the NAC and haven't since 2021. So we agree that it needs a better public process. So that's why we're changing that part of it. And with that in mind, I remember with that, and I'm just using anecdotal examples that I sat through. Some of the residents, I mean, some of the board members on the NAC felt uncomfortable because they lived directly across the street from that project. They always ask if they can abstain. And I was there yesterday, and someone asked if they could abstain, which is not a thing, correct? Correct. If you're sitting there, you'd have no choice either to say yay or nay based on a very personal, you know, so the neighbors approving neighbors. Now, the CRA board, some people have no idea what we're discussing, that board is made up of an individual from each of the NACs, sometimes the chair, but not only the chair, correct? Each one of the NACs has a representative on the CRA board, and then we have one member at large so that we have an equal, a better voting opportunity. Correct. But the CRA member from the individual NAC is not necessarily the NAC's chair. Not necessarily. But quite often. Most of the time. Okay. So there's still a neighborhood representative that's representing the CRA and an at-large who could just be from wherever. What happens is, in my mind, I'm trying to figure out the differentiation when you have six of them. I would tell you when I polled my NAC members in Palm City, they didn't have an issue with it. I don't know. Obviously, there's other NAC areas and CRA areas where it's a little more contentious. I don't know what my colleagues are thinking about their NACs. Let's hear it. What? Let's hear it. Yeah. But based on that, I understand that I represent each of the six, and I'm pretty tuned in with some of the folks that are in that area of contention. Friends of mine. And so I'm leery, but I think when I weigh it as a county-wide issue, I can see myself supporting it. I think that there is more benefit universally than there would be, and as well as the fact that my last question, I wrote it down. How many items does the growth management director have the authority to approve? I know that if something came forward with live local, that stops at the director of the growth management. This is an area, these minor ones would be approved by the growth management director. So is this, there are a lot of leeway for the growth management director? Is it very rare? And then does an applicant, beyond the neighborhood wanting to participate, does an applicant that's looking to bring an alternative compliance, and it's going to be approved by the growth management director, do they have the opportunity to meet with the growth management director to present their case? How do they, what's the process for that? Paul Schilling, growth management director. Oh, there he is. Thank you. So a couple things. I'll try to address each one of those, Commissioner, if I may. Minor developments are the same with respect to thresholds, so that process would not change. Simply, the only, quite frankly, the only change that is proposed today is taking an application that is currently reviewed by my staff and me and introducing a public participation or a public decision-making element into that application. Major developments do not change. You are the decision-maker for those applications. Minor developments with respect to minor final site plans, you mentioned one in Palm City. The, the, that would not change other than that particular item would be brought to the CRA board. In the cases now, as it is today, the development review team reviews these applications, and then they make a recommendation within the staff report, and I take that recommendation and approve the development order based on the record, based on quasi-judicial, the record, based on competent, substantial evidence, and then the criteria within the alternative compliance. With respect to, the only kind of hesitation I did have with this particular introduction into a public would be not for any reason other than just time, because a lot of the applications we are looking for are at, involve building permits, whether they be a shed or a simple carport or whatever the case is. And we, we do our best to get those turned around within a couple weeks at this point, and maybe it goes a little bit longer for that at times. But this could potentially involve more time, which, as you know, causes some aggravation for the public. Thank you. Commissioner Vargas. Yes, so I had a case in Rio where an applicant wanted to have the ADA ramps. So would this be more lenient for that individual? So if they were looking for a deviation from a code for an ADA provision, they would, they would travel under a different section of code, which would be for reasonable accommodation. That's a completely different standard, and there's no cost to that. We have a hearing officer that comes in and hears them independently, so that this wouldn't really be applicable to an ADA accommodation. It's a different process. So this is less restrictive? This is more restrictive than the ADA process, because ADA, they would, if you're established that you have a disability and you need it, we have to give it to them. Yes, I understand. But this, the changes that you're making, though, the strikeoffs, is that more lenient, or is it? We are proposing a little bit stricter criteria to bring it into compliance with Florida law, just like you would get under a variance. It mimics the variance language, because that's what you need under Florida law to get a variance. So the criteria we're proposing is a little, is stricter than the criteria that we're striking out right now. Commissioner Hetherington. It's always interesting up here to hear people's perspectives and comments for the first time. So I have things that I absolutely don't like about this and that I don't want to support today. And I have some things that I think are of benefit. So I do like the fact, you know, of being notified, the neighbors being notified, and potentially having a public hearing. I don't like the fact that a volunteer-appointed board would be, you know, expected to have technical expertise that I don't think that you can depend on them to have. I think our growth management department and our professional staff is well-suited to analyze these things. And I did ask the question that you had asked of staff, how many people are requesting these, and when are they being requested? So I had a list of, in 2023, six of them. And then in 2024, there were 27. I don't know if they're major or minor, or, you know, so I know you're going to jump in, but I'll just kind of run down because I was interested to see, interested to see what are people asking for alternative compliance for, and how do we make the process better without creating undue regulation and allowing for public participation? And there were things like architectural design in a metal garage, an outbuilding size, setbacks, frontage, open space, architectural design, metal garage, couple garage setbacks, parking setbacks, parking setbacks, and frontage, architectural design, architectural design. Some of them are commercial, some of them are residential. But I think that this, I'm not prepared to support what you have in front of me today. I think that it needs, there are some, a couple good attributes, and there are some things that I think need to be amended. I like having the NACs participate. I agree with having a public hearing process, but I do like professional staff to be determining these. I think if you put this on the CRA, which is, you know, some of them have been there a long time, have a lot of expertise, but there's a lot of very complicated, I think, and technical issues going back to what the code allows, and I think those determinations are best suited for the professional staff, and it's best for the public then to hear and be able to have input in the process. So for that, if this would come back at a different time, and it includes public hearing and public input, but not some of the things that I see in there today, I'd be willing to listen to it again, but the way it's written today, I'm not willing to support it. So for clarification, you want staff to be the decision maker after it goes to the NAC? I would be in favor of notifying, you know, notification and public hearings, but I think professional staff is, there's a lot of technical details in some of these requests, and I think that requires someone who is in the profession and is skilled at looking to these things, and when you bring it to a volunteer board, I think that it's going, and I understand that staff is going to recommend and present in front of the board, but I like the process that is happening now, maybe with some additional public hearing input. Commissioner Vargas. Yes. Could we look at it this way, that the growth management director would make a presentation to the NAC, you know, in layman's language, explaining and fielding questions, which we do here, to be able to, you know, have a meeting of the minds, or a dissension, whichever it may be, or rebuttals. Might that be something that we could craft in this document? So right now, the way it will be is growth management will take the application, and the growth management department will analyze it and make a recommendation to the CRA board. We can't have the NAC make the final decision, honestly, because they're an advisory board, and if you give them final decision-making power, that changes the whole aspect of their board, and under Florida law, it's not really appropriate. So we do have staff analyzing it and making the recommendation to the CRA to make the determination. We do the same thing for our BOSER board for border zoning and adjustment. So we can put the NAC in the process and bring it back to the growth management director to make the decision if the board desires to do that. The remark that I would make on that, Commissioner, is that, again, we're back to two or three months lag time, if not more, at that point, because the NACs meet every two months, and then the CRA board meets every month. So, again, we're moving back to permit holders. You know, a lot of these are, the majority of these things are building permits. So you would hold up someone who wanted to build their home or do something, you know, in their yard for two or three months. Okay, I understand that. Yeah. And I understood that growth management, you know, can make a decision, an approval, right there on something that might be minor. Is that correct? Major would come here. However, I think, as was stated by somebody in the audience, that we don't want to circumvent the public's input either. I understand they're an advisory board, the NAC, and we definitely want to give them the opportunity. I mean, this is a process. It's a process. The CRA has public meetings that are noticed as well. I understand that, but I'm talking about the NAC and those folks that live in the area and, you know, have to live in the area and either appreciate it or, you know, grind their teeth every time they go by. So it would be one or the other. But I understand not leaving you out of the piece, of course. I'm speaking to the director right now. Thank you. Just I think I maybe got a little mixed up, but I don't want there to be any confusion about the fact that either way any of this moves forward. The analysis is done by the department and the professionals, and then that recommendation is conveyed to whichever decision-making body that is. And then currently I have the option of requesting that the NAC weigh in on applications. I think I've done that twice within the last couple years, and in one case the NAC did not make a decision and sent it back to me. So I think from the public's perspective, they're interested in what's going on in their neighborhood, and they're well-versed in what's going on. So just to give you a little idea, the Board of Zoning Adjustment works in that there is an application. We don't typically bring applications to the Board of Zoning Adjustment with a recommendation of denial, maybe once in 200 of them or something if someone insisted. And then it's just a matter of the public having an opportunity to state their objections. But I don't know the process of getting into a neighborhood meeting when there was a resident who maybe had objections and how those could be tailored into the decision in the Board of Zoning Adjustment. That's quasi-judicial. Those are noticed neighbors. And then at times the Board of Zoning Adjustment takes the neighborhood's recommendation and can integrate that into a resolution. That can often take some time and finessing, but that's all I have. Okay, Commissioner Capps. Yeah, I see the problem with the NAC having an advisory role because of the every other month thing. You know, you just, sorry, you just missed the last meeting. You'll have to wait 59 days to be heard again. So that's a serious problem. You know, I think so. It seems like the CRA Board is better equipped from a timing standpoint. But I was wondering if we ought to have the CRA Board make recommendations rather than final determinations and for the Growth Management Department to continue with the final decision-making power. How about that? I know Commissioner Hetherington expressed concerns about whether the CRA Board had the technical expertise. Maybe they could make a recommendation and Growth Management can make the final determination. They make final decision. Mr. Donaldson, briefly. My suggestion was unless you, Chair, think there is a strong consensus to wrap this up, we may want to bring this back. I have a strong feeling to wrap this up. Okay, thank you. Mr. Campy, wrap it up. I think out of all of, look, as Commissioner Hetherington said, and I reiterate it again, we're not allowed to hear from each other. We're not allowed to speak to each other. So we're getting to hear each other's perspective for the first time now. And I hear things that I completely agree with. I do. That being said, I think the most detrimental portion of what I heard is that the NACs, which, look, more transparency, the better. I get that. But I don't think the neighbors weighing in on something every other month. If I was trying to get a garage built or my builder was trying to get my house built in a volatile market of interest rates and two or three months makes the difference between an interest rate lock-in that I have, I think the timing is the most critical decision decider for me. So I would make a motion to accept staff's recommendation the way that it was presented, with the caveat that, as Mr. Schilling said, that he has the ability in his purview to send something that he believes could be potentially conflicted to the NAC to have them weigh in on it. Not every single time, but certain CRAs, it's more important than others to, you said you've only done it a couple of times. Maybe have that as one of your options more readily available to you. I think that might knock down some of the people that feel disenfranchised. Okay, there's a motion. Commissioner Hetherington. Just adding on that, and it does work in some areas, and it doesn't work in some, and I believe it's not in the best interest of my CRA. Even some of the additional language that is added in implements an eco-art element as approved by the growth. There are things that I think are over-regulatory and are unnecessary. I don't think this broad brush approach is the right way to go, and I think the process is working as it is, and I think the process is way more timely the way it's currently operating than it's going to be to bring it to a CRA board. So everybody has their perspective. I just think in the best interest of District 2, I'm not going to support this. Commissioner Vargas. I concur with Commissioner Hetherington. I don't think folks are looking for more restrictions, and certainly not in District 1 at all. The time frame is the time frame. If somebody is planning a project, they will comply with the time frame and make sure that they're aware. But I think it's critical that you allow people to express their opinions. I think throughout the country, people are running away from conformity. You must do it one way, or there's no other way. In this case, I cannot go forward as it's been presented. You said it's more restrictive. I can't. I cannot do that. There's a motion. Is there a second? Ayes for a second. Let's take a 10-minute break. The meeting will resume in 10 minutes, not 12 minutes, not 15 minutes. 10 minutes, and we will be back long. You're on. So does legal want to make a recommendation to the Board of County Commissioners on item number PH1? Our recommendation would be to make a motion to deny or not approve. Based on the previous motion's lack of a second. Correct. I will make that motion. Sorry, I was chewing. Second. There's a motion and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Opposed. That motion passes 3-1 with Commissioner Campy dissenting, and Commissioner Vargas absent. Now we'll take up public hearing number two, which is amending our dock building code. For the record, Jeff Daugherty, Director of the Building Department, this is a simple request. The dock ordinance predates the building code origins at the time. It was very prescriptive in nature, which meant it said specifically material sizes, fastening devices, and connections. And if you followed those that the county designed, you would not have to have a design professional sign and seal your drawings. The building code came into effect in 202, was prescriptive as well, but later additions became more performance-based and required a Florida design professional architect or engineer under the appropriate board sign and seal and prepare the documents. This simply is changing our dock ordinance to mirror the state requirement of the Florida Building Code, Chapter 553, and we are required to do that. Okay. That's it. Questions for staff? Public comment, I think. Is there any public comment? I think so. Is that one? There is. This? Is Mr. Cosgrove, would you like to speak on this agenda item? It's in the lobby. You don't realize how efficient you are. It's going to the parking lot. It says open public. We'll just assume that that's what it is. Any questions for staff? I would make a motion to accept staff's recommendation. Second. There's a motion and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Thank you very much. One second. Les. Mr. Cosgrove, did you want to speak on the dock ordinance? Public comment? Okay. Thank you. The next item is public hearing number three, which is a legislative public hearing to consider transmittal of Complan Amendment 2426. Rural Lifestyle. Mr. Walden. Oh, yeah. On the last, let me go back for the record. On public hearing two, the vote was four to zero in favor, with Commissioner Vargas absent. Now, public hearing number three. Mr. Walden. Good afternoon. Peter Walden, Deputy Growth Management Director. I'm sitting in for Clyde Doolin today. He's not feeling well. He must be feeling pretty bad, because I know that missing a board item would be pretty heavy on his agenda. So, this is a, hold on one second. This is a request to make an amendment to the Comprehensive Growth Management Plan. It's CPA 24-26 regarding the Rural Lifestyle text. I'm going to go into a brief synopsis of the amendment, and then I'll go into Clyde's staff report a little bit. But on December 10th, 2024, the board approved a resolution to initiate a text amendment to the Comprehensive Growth Management Plan regarding the rural lifestyle land use. This is the second public hearing regarding the text amendment. The first public hearing was before the local planning agency on April 3rd. The LPA voted 3-1 to recommend approval as written. Should the board vote to transmit this item today, a third hearing will be held to adopt the amendment once received back from the state agencies. There are currently three existing sites with the rural lifestyle land use, totaling approximately 6,613 acres. There are locational criteria used to limit where a rural lifestyle land use can be implemented. Currently, a land use amendment sought for properties with a minimum 1,000 acres must be adjacent to the primary, secondary, or freestanding industrial urban service district in order to be considered for the rural lifestyle land use. Also, a land use sought for properties with a minimum 3,000 acres must be within 6,000 feet of the primary or a freestanding industrial urban service district to be considered for the rural lifestyle land use. The proposed text amendment would remove the secondary and freestanding industrial urban service districts from consideration of proposed amendments. Staff have proposed additional language to acknowledge existing properties with rural lifestyle and would allow the expansion of the existing properties that have the rural lifestyle land use as they could now propose. Language. Okay, so this is the proposed language scratched out would be removed in order to be eligible for the rural lifestyle future land use designation, removing size and location under the criteria required. And it's a pretty simple process, basically removing the secondary urban service district or freestanding urban service district from the 1,000 contiguous acre criteria, and also removing the freestanding or urban service district from the 3,000 contiguous acre criteria. So staff have recommended some additional language, of having an existing rural lifestyle future land use designation on the approval date, and also to be able to be adjacent to, and this is to expand an existing, to be adjacent to a rural lifestyle future land use, to expand a rural lifestyle planned unit development existing on the approval date. So basically, this is protecting some of the three existing properties that have the rural lifestyle land use. So I'll get into some of the graphics that show how this is implemented. Just a little bigger. This hatch area shows the 6,000 foot distance from the primary urban service district. So if this text amendment is implemented as written, if you only have 1,000 acres, you would have to be adjacent to the blue area. And if you have 3,000 acres, you would have to be adjacent to this hatch mark along where I'm drawn with the cursor. So no longer would the gateway freestanding urban service district expand that area for adjacency or for the 6,000 linear feet. The other area that this impacts is up by the 7Js and AgTech. Same thing, the hatch mark shows, this hatch mark shows the current area available to both 1,000 acre and 3,000 acre land use proposals. And this would be the revised one going back towards the primary urban service district. So basically, no longer would the secondary or freestanding urban services district provide adjacency or the 6,000 foot rule for rural lifestyle. Pretty much is my presentation. Like I said, this is to vote for a transmittal hearing. And it will go to state agencies after this if approved. And we would move that the board approve the transmittal of CPA 2426, rural lifestyle, to the state agency and other state and regional reviewing agencies. Be glad to answer any questions you might have. Questions for staff. Would anyone from the public like to address us? Good afternoon, Commissioner. Afternoon. For the record, Bob Rains. With the Gunster Law Firm, I'm here this afternoon on behalf of a number of clients, Atlantic Fields, excuse me, Three Lakes Golf Club, LLC, and also Discovery Homesound Investments, LLC, Atlantic Fields Club, LLC, and also the Atlantic Fields Master Association, Inc. The amendment is before you today. Obviously, it's this commission's discretion to decide whether they want to curtail some of the abilities with the rural lifestyle. Land use certainly understand that. But representing these property owners that have existing rural lifestyle, we just want to make sure that the language in Section A, let's see, excuse me, Policy 4.13A.18, 1A, that the additional language for items C and D are also included in anything you transmit. You know, these property owners have already heavily invested in this community. These are wonderful projects, and it's important that their rights and property rights be protected in the future, irrespective of what you may do with respect to the rest of the rural lifestyle land use amendment. So our request would be, if you are going to move forward with these amendments, that that language C and D is important to be included to protect the property rights of the clients that I just referenced. So thank you very much. Appreciate it. Mr. Vargas. Okay. So I need to get clarification here. What your department is proposing, give me one or two sentences for clarification, because this rural lifestyle is already. Well, as the rural lifestyle text was initiated, to remove the freestanding urban service district and the secondary from the criteria, the locational criteria of rural lifestyle, and to add this parency and parency language in there to basically protect the existing rural lifestyle properties that are already in effect. Okay. So what the speaker just asked for is he's asking for his clients to be exempt? No. He's asking for this language to be implemented, which would... C is particularly what he's interested in. That's what I thought. If they have an existing rural lifestyle. Mr. Capps. I think our existing rural lifestyle land use designation is too broad and could lead to unintended consequences and unintended pockets of growth throughout the western land. So I'm in favor of slumming it down, scaling it back. I think I would go a little further than the recommendation here and take out the part about 6,000 feet and 3,000 acres and just have a simple amendment that says that your land must border the primary urban services boundary and leave out the part about 6,000 feet and 3,000 acres. Because when rural lifestyle was originally sort of sold to the public, that was the rule at the time. And then it sort of morphed into the 3,000 acre thing and the 6,000 feet thing. So my recommendation would be to take that out and just say the land needs to abut the primary urban services boundary. And then also to factor in Attorney Raines points about preserving the property rights of the current holders of the rural lifestyle designation. So I think I'll just make a motion now to do that. And perhaps I'll be more enlightened from my colleagues after they weigh in. So the ranch, this language, the 6,000 feet and 3,000 acres was created for the ranch. Is that right? That's correct. So you want to grandfather them in? Well, they. So subsection C would, in essence, grandfather them in. That's why we put that in there. So that wouldn't impact. I don't think that would impact the ranch, Bob. You can. Oh, you're not the ranch. That's Tyson. But I don't think it would either. So your motion is to eliminate B. Where is it? Show me again. Here. Right. Okay. Works for me. Any further comments? Is there a second? I'll pass the gavel and second the motion. That was a fast pass. I think we need public comment, too. Is there any more public comment? I have the gavel. Take a 15-minute recess. Any public comment? Seeing none, back to the board. Motion and a second. Are you the second? Yeah. Thank you. I wasn't sure exactly how that was going to work. We have a motion by Commissioner Capps. Excluding, also eliminating B, paren B, seconded by Commissioner Hurd. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. All those opposed? Motion carries unanimously. Thank you. Thank you. Next up is public hearing number 5-4 to consider Comprehensive Plan Amendment 24-21, 9 GEMS. And here to present is Ms. Offenbach. Thank you. So, again, my name is Amy Offenbach, planner with the Martin County Growth Management Department. This is CPA 24-21, a future land use map amendment for the property known as 9 GEMS. The property owners are the South Florida Water Management District in Martin County. The applicant is the Board of County Commissioners, and this was heard before the local planning agency on January 16, 2025, with a vote of 4-0 to recommend approval. The Board of County Commissioners heard this for transmittal on January 28, 2025, with a vote of 5-0 to approve transmittal to the state and local agencies. And this is the final hearing for adoption on Earth Day, which is appropriate for this amendment. So, the request is to change the future land use of 1,533 acres from agricultural to institutional public conservation, and a concurrent rezoning for this, we'll follow this hearing. There is a restrictive covenants requiring a land use that is dedicated to open space and conservation, and the property is located south of Southwest Bridge Road between Pratt and Whitney here and the Turnpike. The parcel, the parts of land that are subject to this amendment is highlighted in blue and red, and the adopted future land use map is here with the subject outlined in red, and it's currently agricultural. The proposed future land use map would be institutional public conservation in this bright green color. Change this. And so, this amendment complies with Section 1-11 of the Comprehensive Growth Management Plan, and all four of the criteria were met for staff to recommend approval. The amendment discourages urban sprawl pursuant to all 13 of the sprawl criteria required by the state. And the amendment also discourages the proliferation of urban sprawl, meaning eight additional sprawl criteria required by the state. And so, this amendment is consistent with the Comprehensive Growth Management Plan, and staff recommends approval. Oh, and by the way, public notice was included in the work file. Questions for staff. Is there any public comments? Motion to accept staff's recommendation. There's a motion and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? That motion passes unanimously. Thank you. Public hearing quasi-judicial number one, which is a public hearing to consider adoption of an amendment to the zoning atlas to change the zoning district classification on nine gems. Commissioners, any ex parte disclosures? If I have any, they've been filed. Commissioner Capps? If I have any, they have been filed. If I have any, they've been filed. Commissioner Campion? I don't have any. And Commissioner Hetherington? I don't have any, and that's been filed. Have you filed all your materials to the clerk? Anyone who's going to be providing sworn testimony, please stand, raise your right hand, and be sworn. Do you swear or affirm the evidence you're about to give will be the truth, the whole truth, to nothing but the truth? Offenbach? Thank you. Again, my name is Amy Offenbach, planner with the Martin County Growth Management Department. This is a request for a rezoning concurrent with CPA 24-21 for the nine gems property. This was heard by the local planning agency on January 16, 2025, with a recommendation of 420 of approval. And this is the final approval on Earth Day, once again, for this amendment. So the request is to change the county zoning atlas from the A2 Agricultural Zoning District to the PC Public Conservation Zoning District on the 1,533-acre properties known as Nine Gems. Again, the location is south of Southwest Bridge Road between Pratt & Whitney and Florida Turnpike in 95. The area for the change is highlighted in blue and red here. And so the only zoning district that implements the institutional public conservation future land use is PC, Public Conservation. And the only use permitted in the district is Public Parks and Recreation Areas, passive. So the development standards and setbacks for this district are in tables 3.12.1 and 3.12.2 in the land development regulations. And so this amendment is compliant with the Comprehensive Growth Management Plan and the standards for amendments of the land development regulations. And staff recommends approval. Questions for staff. Is there any public comment? Commissioner Capps. Move approval. Second. There's a motion and a second. All those in favor. Aye. Opposed. That motion passes unanimously. Thank you. Next up is a quasi-judicial public hearing for number one for a revised major final site plan approval for Florida Superior Sand Mine. Mr. Elam. Oh, well, this is quasi-judicial also. Commissioner Vargas, any ex parte disclosures? If I have any, they've been filed. Commissioner Capps. If I have any, they have been filed. If I have any, they've been filed. Commissioner Campy. Also, if I have any, they've been filed. And Mr. Hetherington. If any, they've been filed. Mr. Elam, have you provided all your materials to the clerk? Anyone who's going to be providing sworn testimony, please stand, raise your right hand, and be sworn in. Do you swear or affirm the evidence you're about to give will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? Afternoon. Please proceed. Thank you, Madam Chair. Commissioners, I just want to say this seat is warm. This is a request by Haley Ward, Incorporated, on behalf of Morandi Properties, LLC, for approval of a revised major final site plan for the Florida Superior Sand Mine. For the purpose of mining to a depth of 30 feet, Florida Superior Sand Mine is an established development approved for mining to a depth of 20 feet in September of 2017. The original approval included a preserve area management plan that covers approximately three acres of upland preserve. Included with this application is a request for a certificate of public facilities reservation. The subject 100-acre property is located at 4700 Southwest Green Farms Lane in Palm City at the junction of Southwest Green Farms Lane and Southwest Secretariat Drive. The existing zoning district on the property is AG-20A, General Agricultural District, with an agricultural underlying future land use. This is sheet one of the revised final site plan. As a mining operation proposing to exceed the 20-foot maximum allowable depth of an excavated body of water, the site must comply with the requirements listed in the mining standards defined in Section 4.348 of Article 4, Division 8 in the Martin County Land Development Regulations. The mining standard regulations require a minimum setback from rights-of-way and property lines to be 300 feet unless Type 5 landscape buffer yards are installed. No excavation is allowed within 100 feet of any property line or road right-of-way or roadway easement. The mining standards require groundwater samples to be collected and analyzed semi-annually to demonstrate site compliance. This proposal to increase the lake depth to 30 feet does not change the approved geometry of the existing lake, nor does it impact the protected preserve area. This proposal includes a Type 5 buffer on the east and south sides where the distance from the boundaries are less than 300 feet, as required by Section 4.348 mining standards. In addition to the Preserve Area Management Plan, the applicant has submitted landscape plans that provide an additional 34.59 acres of preserved native landscape area. This is just sheet 2 of the revised final site plan demonstrating the cross-sections showing the lake, new lake depth of 30 feet. Development review staff have found the Morandi Properties LLC application, excuse me, to comply with the applicable regulations of the comp plan as detailed in the staff report. Review of this application is not required by the local planning agency, and staff recommends approval of this application. We move that the board receive and file the agenda item and all its attachments, including the staff report as Exhibit 1, and move that the board adopt a resolution approving the revised final site plan for the Florida Superior Sand Mine Project. And that concludes the presentation. Questions for Mr. Elam? Commissioner Vargas. Okay, so this is a mining company? Yes. Okay, so what are they allowed to do? I mean, what are we asking for? That's a variance from what is already regulation. Whenever you want to exceed 20 feet in depth, then you have to comply with the standards of the mining section of the excavation and fill piece of code. And so that requires greater setbacks from rights of way than you could if you were just excavating a lake to 20 feet. This site already complied with that, but they had to provide type 5 buffers where their setbacks weren't 300 feet. And so that's all we've done is revise the final site plan to show the new depth, proposed depth of 30 feet, to show the type 5 buffer yards in place where they're required to by code. Okay, so the type 5 buffer yards are what again? Is that a setback from? No, it's landscaping. Okay, so where would they be placing that? It's essentially all along this area here, wherever it's not 300 feet. So it's essentially all along this eastern portion, and then a little bit of the west, I think. Yes, where it's 220 here, whereas the west and the other sides are set back farther. And that's because the landscaping is placed or because that's on a street, backs up to the street or another property? Because I see an equestrian trail. I don't know why the – I imagine that's why. I don't know why they wrote it that way. That's just our regulation that they have those buffer yards if you're not 300 feet or more. Commissioner, may I, Paul Schilling, growth management director. So the criteria are for, as you can imagine, with an operation like this, to just simply buffer it from the adjacent users, whether that be the right-of-way or, in this case, the equestrian community to the south. Any further questions? Mr. Capps. Is there an environmental benefit to having a lake shallower, 20 instead of 30? Or is it harm – is the lake less environmentally friendly when it's real deep? You know, there's been – when Gary Roderick was here, there was some look at lakes. And I think what you find that in most of our freshwater lakes, and our county engineer can chime in, the layer of oxygen-supporting portion of the lake is, like, around 12 feet. So once you get beyond that, it really doesn't matter. And our aquifers are typically – shallow aquifers are sometimes over hundreds of feet. So it really just is a matter of then a function of the geology of trying to avoid impacts where there might be some old saltwater pockets or things like that that staff looks for. And when they look at the geology below that 20-foot limit to make sure that there isn't something that they're penetrating. Otherwise, there isn't much difference between the depths. For the record, I'm Michael Griselka, the county engineer. Yeah, we have requirements in the code now for the mining operations to have to pull groundwater samples to 10 feet below the bottom of the excavation. And we've got minimum standards set for dissolved solids and chlorides, which basically are the salts. And throughout the mining operation, they have to continue to monitor it to make sure that there's no degradation of the groundwater or any movement of the groundwater. A lot of this is done, especially out in these western areas. There's a lot of old artesian wells that are out there that already have contaminated areas because artesian wells came from the Florida aquifer, which is a lot higher in chlorides. So we check for all that or we require them to do all that stuff prior to coming. And then semi-annually, right? Yeah, there's a schedule where they have to do it. Okay. Thank you. Commissioner Campy. Is there an applicant? Applicant, you want to make your presentation? No, we can't mail it in. So I'm with Haley Ward. I'm with Kosh Bassoon. One of the engineers working on the project. Just here to answer any questions you guys might have. Questions for the applicant? How long is the, Madam Chair? How long has the project currently been in existence? I think since 2017. Okay. Thank you. I happen to be familiar with this locations in my district. One of the issues sometimes with, you know, I think the term mining is confusing because you're talking about digging basically a lake of 30 feet. Most people here are mining, mining companies. They're thinking Pennsylvania. They're thinking somehow you're tunneling under the ground. That's not what these are. I learned that a long time ago. This particular location is bordering on the western side of 95. It's in a very undeveloped rural area. I've been past this site many times looking at property in the vicinity. It's actually well done, well kept. It's buffered from view from most of the roadways. There's no real houses near it. I think 20 to 30 is appropriate. The other advantage is being where it is situated so close to 95 that if they're mining product off the property, which I guess they are, correct, they're not driving through roadways that are vulnerable road systems or neighborhoods or businesses. So I would make a motion to accept staff's recommendation. If you look at that aerial that he's showing there, it's really the only thing happening out there for the most part. There's a handful of homes very far away is this. So I think it's an appropriate approval. Second. Is there any public comment? Seeing none. For as long as I can remember, commissioners, we had a 15-foot mining depth for very good reasons, and I don't know when and I don't know why our excavation and fill rules were changed to permit 30 feet. It's a bad idea. You'll remember, Commissioner Capps, that we had a statewide mining moratorium not that long ago, and we had a statewide committee and paneled to study the impacts of mining in Florida because it was contaminating the wells down in South Florida. So mining depth is extremely important. So who can tell me when and why our mining depth was changed from a conservative 15 feet, which it always was, to 30 feet? 20. This guy's going to go to 30. Again, this is Michael Grzelka, the county engineer. The code allows currently right now there's a 15-foot depth in there with a 20-foot additional or up to 20 feet with additional geotech being performed to show that you're not degrading anything. The mining code came into effect four years ago, I think. 2022. 2022, three years ago, which then allowed it with additional testing and geotechnical work and groundwater testing to go alternately to 40 feet. Keep in mind, this up and down the I-95 corridor, there are multiple lakes in Martin County that are over 50 feet deep that were all dug in the 80s for the I-95 as borrow pitch for I-95. So this is right in that same corridor with the other lakes that haven't shown any real degradation to any of our groundwater or anything else. Can I ask a question? Sure. Mr. Grzelka, I'm not sure if you know, but I remember being here for some of those conversations. What is the mining depths allowed in our neighboring counties? I want to say the St. Lucie County, I don't think they have an absolute maximum. They just dig. I think they just dig. That's correct. Donaldson, are you aware? I think in Palm Beach County, I want to say it's 80 feet. I don't recall either. It is much deeper than ours. You are correct. Yeah. So I mean. Okeechobee County goes as deep. Pretty much as what you want out there. So my point being that we are still very, very conservative, environmentally sensitive. It's 20. And what's happening today is you're coming forward asking to go 10 feet deeper to 30. And we've given you a whole set of criteria, environmental safeguards to make sure that you don't just start digging. I know we don't like 50 foot deep ones. But that being said, I think we do have the safeguards in place. I hear what Commissioner Hurd is saying, but we would probably have one of the most restrictive maximums and a lot of safeguards in place that gave me comfort to make the motion that I did. Well, and two years ago, we had even more safeguards in place. I did. Mr. Vargas. It seems as if the safeguards have been eroded in St. Lucie County as 40 feet. We're not St. Lucie County. Didn't say we were. And we want to preserve any impacts that are detrimental to Martin County, which I have to agree with Chairwoman Hurd on her position. Unfortunately, a bad rule is in place, and we have to comply with that rule, whether we disagree with it or not. I'm certain that I didn't vote in support of it two years ago. If I remember correctly, you made the motion. I'm pretty sure. This is very anti-Mother Earth Day. Commissioner Hetherington. I, I, um, that was going to be my question, is that, are we bound to that, um, we are bound to what they're allowable to, right? Yes, it's in our land development regulations that they can go up to 40 feet as long as they meet the criteria, so. Yes, they are, they have a, they have a right to do that based on our land development regulations, and I think they're going to 30, which, so they even have 10 feet to go if they wanted to. I do remember the conversation, and I didn't support it because I thought it needed more, I thought it needed more exploration, but I will support, um, second your motion because the rules are in place. Oh, you did? Yes. Oh, sorry. We'll take you to third. Okay. Who's the second? Oh, okay. Any, any further public comment? Any further commissioner comments? There's a motion and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Begrudgingly. All those opposed? That motion passes unanimously. No matter. Next up is quasi-judicial public hearing number two, which is a request for plat approval for the preserve at Loblolly North planned unit development. And here to present is Mr. Aguilar. Oh, it's quasi-judicial. Commissioner Vargas, do you have any ex parte disclosures? I have any. They've been filed. How about you, Commissioner Capps? If I have any, they have been filed. If I have any, they've been filed. Commissioner Campy? I don't have any. And Commissioner Heathering? If any, they've been filed. Excellent. Mr. Aguilar, do you, have you presented all of your stuff to the clerk? A couple of my work history has been turned in as exhibit one. Terrific. Anybody who's going to provide sworn testimony, please stand, raise your right hand, and be sworn in. Do you swear or affirm the evidence you're about to give will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? Thank you, Madam Chair. Good afternoon, members of the board. My name is Luis Aguilar, principal planner for the Growth Management Department. I'm presenting a plan application for a property owned by Lobloly North, LLC. This is a request for plan approval for the preserve at Lobloly North PUD. The plan is to be consistent with the preserve at Lobloly North PUD Master Final Site Plan, approved by the board on December 12, 2024, which included 13 single-family lots on approximately 51.20 acres. The subject site is located east of Southeast Gomez Avenue, west of Indian River Lagoon, approximately 0.6 miles north of Southeast Osprey Street, and directly north of the existing Lobloly Bay PUD in Help Sound. This is the approved master final site plan for the preserve at Lobloly North PUD. And you can see here an enlarged image of the site plan. You can also see the 13 lots. The plot is consistent with the site plan. The complete set of the plot comprises of five pages, which are included in the attached documents. Review of plots is now required by the local planning agency. Final action on this application is required by the Board of County Commissioners in a public meeting. Development review staff have found the application to comply with all applicable regulations and the Comprehensive Growth Management Plan. As detailed in the attached staff report. Staff recommends approval of the preserve at Lobloly North PUD plat. And we recommend move the board receive and file the agenda item and its attachments, including the staff report as Exhibit 1. And move the board approve the preserve at Lobloly North PUD plat, including the contract for construction of required improvements and infrastructure. And this concludes my presentation. Thank you. Questions for staff. Applicant presentation. Good afternoon. For the record, my name is Morris Crady. I'm here on behalf of the applicant, Lobloly North LLC, and also Lobloly Community Service Corporation and Lobloly Bay HOA. This was a process we started about five years ago with the land swap with Florida Inland Navigational District. This is the last step of the process. And as was mentioned, the plat is consistent with the approved final site plan, the PUD agreement. We've met all the conditions of approval in the PUD agreement. And I'm here to answer any questions. But, again, this will allow us to convey the lots to potential lot buyers. And most of them actually are within the community. So we're looking forward to start that process. Questions for Mr. Crady. Mr. Campy. Mr. Crady. No, nothing. I just wanted to say that I remember when we started this process and it was involved, as Mr. Crady said, in a land swap with the Florida Inland Navigational Find District. Lobloly is a beautiful community. Some people are familiar. Some people are not. Terrific community partner. The residents have been exceptionally generous. The homes are beautiful. The neighborhood is gorgeous. I'm happy that they were able to put this together and add in a handful of additional, probably, premier homes in District 3. So I would make a motion to accept staff's recommendation. Would anyone from the public like to address us on this matter? Seeing none, Commissioner Capps. Second. There's a motion and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? That motion passes unanimously. Thank you. Next up is Department 1, Office of Management and Budget Items, which require board approval. Ms. Murley. Good afternoon, Commissioners. Stephanie Murley, Director of OMB, here to present five items on OMB today. Our first item is a permission to apply for the Drug-Free Community Support Program Grant. Year 6, our Human Services Division is requesting the application of funding to support years 6 through 10 to establish and strengthen local efforts to prevent youth substance use. It's $125,000 per year for five years, so $625,000 over the five years. And the match will be funded through in-kind and opioid settlement funds. Our second item is a permission to accept the Edward Byrne Justice Assistance Grant, or the JAG Grant. Our Human Services Department is requesting the acceptance of a grant award of $75,991 to support Martin County's mental health court staff continuing education and drug testing expenses. And there is no cash match required on that one. Item number three is a permission to accept the Clean Water State Revolving Fund, or SRF, loan for the Old Palm City Septic to Sewer Conversion Project. We have applied and have been awarded the 1.83% interest loan over 20 years in order to construct the Old Palm City Septic to Sewer Conversion Project. That's part of our 10-year Connect to Protect plan. This is for $15,989,523. We've been waiting. Yes. Item number four is a permission to accept the Clean Water State Revolving Fund Coral Garden Septic to Sewer Conversion Project. We've been awarded a 1.83% interest loan for $4,010,477 in order to... I like the clapping. Thank you for that. ...in order to construct the Coral Garden Septic to Sewer Conversion Project. And last but not least, we have been awarded a permission to accept the Drinking Water SRF loan for the Old Palm City Water Main Extension Project, a 2% interest rate loan for $7.5 million in order to construct the Old Palm City Water Main Extension Project. Questions for staff? It's more for Phil. Yeah, Phil's here. I have a question for Phil. Have you applied for the State Revolving Fund for Septic to Sewer for Rocky Point? Not as of yet. When will you? Go in an alphabetical order. We're about 60% design. I thought we were 90. We're a little over 60. We're still evaluating some properties in that area, so we're still at around 60%. And we have to have the design and the permits in place to apply for the loans. And when do you expect to have the design and permits in place? It'll probably be after the first of the year. Which year? It'd be the first part of 26, because we have... So then perhaps, if you're successful, you might get it in 27? August of 26 would be the earliest we could get funding. Of 27. Okay. Thanks. Move approval. Second. Commissioner Hetherington. That was my light. Okay. There's a motion and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? That motion passes unanimously. Let's see. One. Okay. Amazing. Commissioners, you're making progress. I'm so proud. Now it's time. We're going to move directly into the CIP. For a half hour or so. Oh, no. I was only saying I thought maybe you legally have to stop. We don't do it. My badge is coming in the room. Okay, Commissioners, before Shelby gets started with the CIP, just wanted to let you know that this is... We're reviewing a proposed capital improvement plan, which would identify all of the funding approvals for next year. It also outlines more detailed planning for within the five-year planning period. And then in the second five-year planning, it's more gross estimates of what might be needed in various projects. Or those items that are shown in that five- to ten-year period, or six through ten, are projects that are maybe unfunded. But I just wanted, given today's progress to date, I just wanted to remind you that this is for a tentative approval. The final approval, this would also be included in your budget wrap-up in July. And none of this gets approved until your second and final hearing in September. So they will have a couple of times more at this. Typically, most of the items within the CIP you would not review individually again, unless there are some adjustments either to a particular project or to the overall budget that you asked us to look at. And then we may reopen up portions of some or all of the CIP as necessary during the budget review process. As far as today goes, depending upon the speed at which you go through this, we do not have to conclude it today. I know our chair is leaving tomorrow, so that we would not continue this over through tomorrow. We would continue this at another agenda. And I think at one of the meetings in May, we would have time to put it on as it is lightly scheduled. So I don't want to put any rush that you need to finish this today. So go at the pace you feel comfortable with. And if we get it done, great. And if not, we will continue it on into May. Good afternoon, Commissioner. Shelby Baker, Budget CIP Coordinator. As Don just said, we're here today to present to you the Fiscal Year 26 Capital Improvement Plan. Well, I should have some music. During this workshop, we'll walk through the key objectives of the Fiscal Year Capital Improvement Plan. It begins with defining the CIP, outlining project's origination process, and reviewing revenue planning and proposed expenditures. Then we'll move into project highlights, the CIP's impact to the overall budget, and wrap up with board review. When we talk about the Capital Improvement Plan, or CIP, we're referring to a multi-year planning tool that helps identify infrastructure needs and the funding sources to address them. The CIP plays a key role in supporting the public services Martin County provides to the community. It helps ensure that the county plans for constructing, maintaining, and protecting the county's infrastructure over the next 10-year period, which includes fixed asset replacement budgets, also known as far as that you'll hear throughout this presentation. All the revenues in the CIP are both required to be available and feasible. With approval of the CIP, the board acknowledges that the projects contain the plan represent a reasonable interpretation of the anticipated needs for the county. Projects contain the first year of the fiscal year 26 CIP will be included in the fiscal year 26 budget. CIP projects originate from a variety of sources, such as master plans, mandates, infrastructure needs, and levels of service requirements, and many more. The CIP is an ever-evolving process of identifying needs. The Capital Improvement Plan is an important step of the annual budget process. Starting in December, departments create and or refine their CIP sheets, then submitted to the Office of Management and Budget for funding. Sheets are then reviewed by staff and county administration. In April, we have the CIP workshop, as we are here today. With approval, the CIP projects presented to you today will be included in the tentative budget. In July, at the annual budget workshop, the board will review the tentative annual budget and will set a tentative millage rate. The final step in the budget process will be in September, where the annual budget that will begin on October 1, 2025, will be adopted by the board at two public hearings. While most of the fiscal year 26 Capital Improvement Plan is a continuation of previous year's projects, let's take a look at some project highlights included in this year's CIP. In Parks and Breck, we have Jensen Beach Restroom and Cafe, Ecosystem Management, East Fort Creek, Phase 2. Coastal, we have MacArthur Boulevard June Restoration, Stormwater Management, we have the Bessie Creek Retrofit, and Roads, we have the Rail Safety Improvements, Community Development, we have Petway Village and Hopestown CRA, Utilities, Tropical Farms Water Treatment Plant, Public Buildings, Supervisor of Elections Expansion, Library, we have the RFID replacement at Hoek Library. With the CIP as presented today, it has an additional $5.1 million in budget avalorm revenues over fiscal year 25. This slide represents the avalorm impact per department, which totals to approximately $5.1 million increase over fiscal year 25. Here is a snapshot of projects that have contributed to the fiscal year 26 avalorm impact. These will be discussed in depth with each department's highlight slides. The county CIP is approximately 15% slice of the total countywide budget pie, which is still in the budget preparation process and will be brought to the board in July. As we know, CIP projects typically involve the outlay of substantial funds. Therefore, numerous sources of revenue are necessary to provide financing over the duration of the project. Most capital funding sources are earmarked for particular purposes and cannot be transferred from one capital program to another. An example of this would be an enterprise fee-based project, such as airport fees, to assist in the rehab of a runway. Anyway, with the CIP being presented to you today, avalorm only makes up 21% of all the revenues proposed. This ends my part of the presentation. Is there any questions before we dive into department highlight slides? Questions for Shelby. Thank you. Okay. If there's any questions, we can start with airport with Mr. Andrew McBean. Commissioners, department heads will give presentations and then feel free to ask questions about any one of the sheets in their department. Okay, but today is just a presentation. No, you can ask questions about the individual items. I understand that, but we're not voting on anything today. Are we? The request is to vote tentatively. It's not a, it's a simply. It's not binding. It is, it's not binding, but it's what we would be submitting in the budget in July for, um, and it'd be reviewed again, but it is, uh. Today will be part of the budget. But tentatively be part of the budget. Tentatively part of the budget, right. But then at that point, depending on what the revenue is, uh. You can make changes. Then we'll make changes. Yes. Deletions. Okay. Minor. Well, I don't know about minor. I mean, we only have so much revenue coming in, so, you know. We don't have estimates yet, do we? We don't. No, we do not at all. Chair, would we like to vote after each department as we've done in the past, um, tentatively approved? Okay. Thank you. Good afternoon, Madam, Madam Chair and Commissioners. Andrew McBean, Airport Director. Commissioners, I just want to remind the Commission that Witham Field, Martin County Airport remains an enterprise fund, a fully funded, uh, self-sufficient enterprise fund with no support from the local taxpayer dollars. Uh, the airport operates, um, all of its aeronautical facilities, in a safe and serviceable condition, with, uh, adherence to the minimum standards prescribed by the Federal Aviation Administration and the Florida Department of Transportation. Uh, Commissioner, that means that all of the products that you see in the airport's, uh, CIP originates from the airport's master plan, which is approved by this Board of County Commission in 2023, with concurrence with the Federal Aviation Administration and the Florida Department of Transportation. Uh, some changes to the airport's, CIP, Commissioners, is that the airport's finalized a few lease negotiations and adjusted its fee and raise schedules, which enhanced the airport's revenue-generating capabilities and strengthened its position as an enterprise fund, as a self-supported enterprise fund. Additionally, we are also seeing an increase in federal grant matches to 95%, which now provides an additional support to the airport's capital program, reducing the airport's local match from the airport's enterprise fund to either 5% or 2.5%, which share from the state on eligible projects. That being said, Commissioners, in fiscal year 25, the airport enterprise fund used about $400,000 in capital projects. In fiscal year 26, we're anticipating $235,000 in capital projects. This reflects a reduction of $164,841 in our capital project. Some of the projects completed in the current fiscal year, Commissioners, is the Airport Operations Center, which some of you were present at our grand opening last Friday. Our airfield signage design and the roof rehabilitation on the Liberator Medical Facilities. The current CIP projects that we have ongoing is the Taxi Lane Bravo Rehabilitation, that's scheduled to start in July. The airfield signage construction, which is also scheduled to start in July. And the Airport Security Improvement Project, which is wrapping up. Upcoming projects, Commissioners, include the Taxiway Alpha Holdway Extension, the Runway 1230 Precision Approach Path Indicator and Runway End Light Systems, and the Residential Sound Insulation Program. And with that, Commissioners, if there are any questions on the airport CIP has presented, I'd be happy to answer them. Questions for Mr. McBean. I have a question on page 40. It's airport facility improvements. I'm looking at improvements in South Airport facilities in fiscal year 29 and 30. Are those hangers, shade and box? Yes, Commissioner. Is it still a combination of shade and box? It's just a combination right now of just shade hangers, no box. But that will come back for the Commission to make a decision on what the Commission would like to see there. Okay, good. Any further questions? Mr. Campy. I think Hetherington was first. Commissioner Hetherington. I will make a motion to approve staff's recommendation for this airport, tentatively approve staff's recommendation, and my son, who's a pilot, will thank you for the pappies. Any further questions or comments? There's a motion and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? That motion passes unanimously. We'll now move on to community development. Oh, library. Library. Ms. Jennifer Salas. Aye. How'd it go? Good afternoon, Commissioners. Jennifer Salas, Library Director. I also have here with me Richard Riley, our Deputy Library Director. Our FY26 ad valorem request is $110,000. That is $46,500 of a reduction from this current fiscal year. What has stayed the same is a continuation of requests for funds for our radio frequency identification system, as well as our library materials fund. That is funded through impact fees. What has changed is the reduction. We had a one-time project this current fiscal year for an audio-visual equipment replacement. Our completed CIP projects for this year were the Hobe Sound Public Library renovation, which was fully funded by a private donation through estate funds, as well as our Robert Moorgade Library radio frequency equipment upgrade. Our current projects are the Hobe Library Jensen Beach outdoor space, the Blake Library RFID upgrade, the Peter and Julie Cummings Library audio-visual upgrade, and the Hobe Sound Public Library outdoor space. Our upcoming projects include the Newfield Library. You're not going to see this CIP sheet in the libraries category. It is with the other Newfield projects and the miscellaneous fund, in the miscellaneous projects. Which will be discussed shortly. Okay. Happy to answer any questions. Questions from Ms. Salas. Mr. Campy. I would move to tentatively approve the library's CIP sheets. Second. There's a motion and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? That motion passes unanimously. Thanks. Thank you. Next is law enforcement, Mr. Sean Donahue. Good afternoon again. This is Sean Donahue, General Services Director. The law enforcement CIP is maintaining the budget from last year, $4.9 million request. We are asking for, we still have the need to protect and maintain the sheriff's assets, including the old buildings, new buildings, replacement buildings, and whatever maintenance needs they have. There are maintenance expansions and priorities that the sheriff has outlined, and then also there's a continuing need to keep the sheriff's training current. We can talk about a few of those projects. What's changed is a prioritization of the sheriff's requests. The fuel depot is the top priority right now. The firearms range would be second in funding requests, and then lastly would be the sheriff's logistics and operations center. That's been rearranged since past years. Who's the sheriff in town? Current projects that we've completed, the maintenance or the marine operations facility at the Sandsprit Park, the canine operations facility at the Holt Complex, the Holt Correctional Facility Enhancements or the Hardening Enhancements where we had the vehicle issue last year, and then we did a weatherization project on the entire jail facility. Current projects include the new Monrovia substation. We did an exterior weatherization roof and walls and windows on that. We are replacing the 30-plus-year-old firearms range modular building with a couple new modulars. We'll talk a little bit more about that. We are planning later this year a dispatch renovation project, 9-1-1 dispatch renovation project. That's grant-funded partially, and then the Holt Correctional Facility Mental Health Pod, which was an appropriation by Representative Snyder, has helped funding that. Here today to talk about some of the improvements is Major Cluster from the Sheriff's Office. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. Commissioners, Ms. County Attorney, Mr. Donaldson, thank you all for having me. I'll start by saying that last year, myself and Mr. Donahue were asked to prioritize our CIP needs, and what you're going to see here today is that we did just that. We went through and triaged things based off of necessity and public safety being the first and foremost as we look at these projects to keep us on track with serving the community the best way we can. Before I get started, I would like to hand out, if I can, a couple of packets I have with some pictures on some of the top priorities just so we can kind of follow along and you all can see exactly what I'm talking about, if that's all right. The first four photographs that are in that packet are going to be of the fuel pump project. That is our number one priority, and after that, the following three photos will be of the logistics center. So, Commissioners, what you're looking at in that first picture is our current fuel pump area. This has four gas pumps and our main tank. Just to kind of give you some history and back story on the fuel pump area itself, it was built in 1987. It was built to support the fleet at that time. Our current fleet today is 380 vehicles with over 500 assets. The tank last year has deteriorated immensely. As you can see from the canopy itself, we actually had to take down the canopy because it was getting ready to fall down. So, for safety issues, we worked with the county CIP group, and we had that removed so that we wouldn't have an accident or anything go wrong on that end. The tanks themselves are degraded to a point where they're probably breaking biweekly, if not more frequently. We actually received gas cards today that our CIP team back at the sheriff's office had to do through Palmdale Fuel Company. They have two stations in the county, but we got enough gas cards for every watch commander and lieutenant in the agency. That way, we have a contingency in place in the event this tank goes down. That's where we are as far as our concerns with that. Additionally, with the tank, the window that we have to get a refueled tanker in there is about a three-day window. Without going too much into the numbers, these fuel trucks that we have delivered carry about 8,000 gallons, and to prevent us from using the bad fuel at the bottom of that tank and not doing a complete offload of the fuel truck, we have about a three-day window to thread the needle with that order. And what we found is, based on the current size of our fleet, we're using fuel more frequently. We're not using it at the same rate we did back in 1987. So we've actually, since I've been in this unit over the last year, I think Captain and Mordino two or three times since we've been in these spots, we've actually run out of fuel and had to figure out a different way to get fuel, and that was through using the county's fuel tank off-site and the fire rescue tanks as well. So I'm happy to answer any questions on the fuel pump project itself. Okay. I'm going to move on to our next priority, which is going to be the shooting range project. So as a whole, the range project itself, what we'd like to see out there is two standalone buildings. One would be a firearms training classroom, and then the other would be for weapons storage and maintenance. Right now, what we have is two modular buildings that were delivered about a month ago, and that was part of last year's CIP budget. Those are temporary buildings, which we are extremely grateful for. They're a huge improvement from where we were last year and some of the old buildings that were deteriorating. So looking at this project as a whole, as far as triaging it and prioritizing it, what we found to be most beneficial, which could benefit our agency in the community right now would be a live fire training firearm shoot house. And what that is, is a complete cement block building where our personnel could train in a real world application with the guns that they actually use, long guns, handguns, and an assortment of firearms. The benefits that this building would provide, I don't think I can expound upon how many. There is nothing that can prepare you for a real world tactical situation or get you as close to be ready as a live fire shoot house. It's one thing to be shooting at a paper target, which is currently what we have out there. It's a plain target with a threat, whatever we decide to put up there, hostage situation. It's one thing to shoot at that. But to actually go through and do a building clearing or a reenactment of clearing a school, a public building, a house, whatever it may be, there's nothing that can prepare you better than the live fire shoot house. And we've seen that when we send our SWAT team to train. From what they brought back, they train with live fire shoot houses. And we're trying to bring that back here and be able to have that capability with our agency. And I'm happy to answer any questions on the training center if needed. Questions? Yeah. Thank you very much. Where, when you said the SWAT team goes somewhere else, where do they go? Right now it's Little Rock, Arkansas. Okay. And so I remember when we were discussing the necessity for us to create our own fire rescue training facilities that our members were going to other counties, utilizing services of other counties. Are any of your department utilizing services in other counties, or are you just making do with what we have here? So we're making do with what we have here. We do branch out. We work closely with PBSO and our partners in St. Lucie County, but the capabilities that this certain training center has in Little Rock, Arkansas, we feel is what's best for our SWAT team. And those members are able to bring some of that back to our agency, but it's not the same thing as everybody experiencing that in that firearms training center here. Correct. Yeah. My question is based on the fact, like, would you allow Stewart or Jupiter Island or Sewell's point, would they, your other brother and sister agencies here in the county, would they be able to use your facility as well? Absolutely. It'd be no different than we do today. We partner out with all those agencies and allow them to train with us, and we do cross train, so yes. And they would pay you to do that? I don't have that answer. Just wondering, because I know that when we were doing it with fire rescue, we were, there was an income potential opportunity for smaller communities that didn't have the ability, if we're trying to look at, first off, I'm completely in favor of doing this, but if there's opportunities where we could start to create some revenue streams, that never hurts, especially if it's with brothers and sisters in law enforcement, because then we would be offering them a local benefit as well. Yes, sir. Thank you so much. Commissioner Hetherington. So the way, and you did a nice job explaining it, because in years past, I thought it was an outdoor, so is it a mix, is it an indoor shooting facility, or? So the range today is completely outdoors. This facility, when it's constructed, is going to be made up of concrete walls, it's going to have 15, 20 different rooms that you can come through, different hallways, and it'll have a catwalk above that, so you can walk upstairs, there's a catwalk, so the trainers and supervision command staff can actually walk the catwalk and look down live and watch the training operations, and then above that, it'll have a pole barn-style roof that'll keep everybody shaded and out of the weather. So it'll be open air, but it will have a covered roof. I'm looking at your capital improvement plan sheet for this facility, and I'm seeing $15 million in total. $8 million of it is in 31 to 35, so that means that $7 million of it is before then. In 2026, you propose to spend $850,000, and in 27, you propose to spend $4.3 million, and it says that the initial phase is at 26 and 27? The initial request is the shoot house facility. When we brought in the new modular buildings to replace the classroom building now, we've kicked that need down the road a little bit, and that's what you see in the out years, the $8 million or so in the out years. What's that? That would be to replace the modulars with the hardened classrooms. So what's the $850,000, 26, and the $4.3 million in 27? $850,000 is to design the entire site, including the shoot house and the classroom building down the road, and the $4.3 million is to build the shoot house, and we would hold on the classroom. What's the $8 million for five years hence? If we're building the permanent facilities, not interim facilities, in 26 and 27, I hope that we don't have to build a permanent structure in 2030. The plan would be to replace the modulars with a hardened facility at some point in the future. We've bought some time with new modulars, but it's not the ideal solution. So we're going to build these at a cost of $6 million and their interim? No, ma'am. We're replacing the modulars now with current funding. But then you said that you're going to be constructing hardened facilities in the 31, 35 year? In the out years, yes, ma'am, to replace the current modulars that we're putting in now. Not the shoot house? Not the shoot house, no, ma'am. Yeah. Okay. Excuse me, which page are you on looking? 63. The final priority that we have is going to be the logistics center. So that is the last three photos. That current site is over 50 years old. Right now our body shop is operating out of there. Fleet maintenance. And we also have very minimal asset storage that can use that building. You can see from the photos the building itself is deteriorating. It's not ideal for what we have to do out of there. We had a space needs analysis done that kind of coincided with this project. And what we found based off the amount of assets we have that this building would need to be demolished to help for current asset storage. On the conversation of asset storage, we are currently renting a space out at Sands Commerce, which we've been renting for the last five years. And that's used to store 15 to 16 assets. And three of those assets are high water vehicles. Speaking of high water vehicles, our preference is to have them kept at headquarters, which would help with an efficient response time. The location of Sands Commerce is about 15 or so, 20 minutes from the office. So that's part of that conversation is keeping those assets housed on site and not having to pay rent out there at Sands, trying to get away from that. Right now, as far as the total assets we have that are being stored outside because of insufficient storage, that number is around 37. And that consists of generators, watchtowers, trailers, and message boards. In addition to the asset storage side of the Logistics Center, a proposed component of it is going to be an indoor two-bay firing range for annual qualifications. And these annual qualifications would mainly be for the corrections staff who is across the street. Those members have to re-qualify once a year. And to do so, they have to go out to our current range, which is out at Western Martin County. To do the qualification and do a round-trip drive takes about an hour and a half. With the 135 deputies that we have doing an hour and a half trip to include the qualification, that equates to about 203 man hours. And those could be hours that are unmanned at the jail, which would have to be backfilled with overtime, or a shift running short. That is just one of the benefits to having this also on site. The next benefit that this site would provide is a purchasing space. The current purchasing space that we have at the Sheriff's Office for outloading, or excuse me, offloading pallets, is a 9x9 space. And that has been there since that building was constructed. It's not ideal for deliveries and offloading the pallets. So with this building, we would also be moving the purchasing unit over to the Logistics Center. Okay, so currently, we are spending $65,000 annually for storage. And this proposal proposes spending $16 million for some very specific buildings. And we're going to start saving up our money this year by dedicating $566,000 toward this new Logistics Center. Next year, we're going to dedicate $3.2 million. Next year, we're going to dedicate $3.5 million. The year after that, we're going to dedicate $3.5 million. The year after that, we're going to dedicate $3.5 million so that we can build this facility for $16 million that we're currently renting for $65,000 a year. The facility we're currently renting is a quarter of the size of the space that's needed. Okay. Rent something that's four times that big. The asset that we're replacing is 50-plus years old. It was the old packing warehouse from when that land was an ag field. It needs to be replaced. It's way beyond its useful life. It's to the point where it's going to be deemed unsafe at some point down the line. So the plan would be to replace it with a larger, hardened facility to store the sheriff's assets on site. But right now, we're spending $65,000 a year, and what you're asking us to do now is to dedicate $3.5 million a year. Where's the money going to come from? Commissioner, there's... I see it's ad valorem. There's only so much ad valorem. What are we going to... Tell me what we're going to give up in order to be able to dedicate $3.5 million a year for five years. So what they've done is they've taken the existing revenue stream. This isn't adding new revenue. So they're taking the existing revenue stream through the priorities of putting the money where the sheriff felt and staff felt it was their highest priority. And so this was also the replacement of that building. So whether you kept renting the space out for the vehicles, you still need to replace the existing building that is there now. And that is a cost. So they're really taking the current revenue stream that you have today and not adding to it, but just prioritizing it. And this logistics facility that also included storage for other equipment is what the $16 million is for. So the rental space was just a small component of what we're doing. And they're not asking for you to appropriate more money next year. They're taking the same money that we appropriated last year. What's the $3.5 million next year, the year after, the year after, the year after, being spent on now and last year, if it's existing funds? So some of it was a logistics facility, right? $65,000. And, well, there's always been a logistics CIP project in here that we were saving up money for. So, yeah, that CIP started in 2000. 2021. Sorry, 2021. So there was money being saved up for that facility. That money is being reprioritized to the firearms range shoot house. We can get that. The carryover is $173,000. It's just not making fiscal sense to me. And the ad valorem that we're requesting would stay the same next year. It would be reprioritized to the firearms range facility. What's that money being spent on now if it's not new revenue? It was for the marine ops facility, the canine facility, the gym, and all those projects are done. Okay. That is all I have. Thank you. There's one more slide or picture on the upcoming projects. It's the bottom right one. This is a replacement of the sheriff's Holt Correctional Facility pod windows. Those windows are 30-plus years old. They're original construction. You can see in the picture there's delamination happening. There are hundreds of windows in that facility. This would be a multi-year plan to replace those as needed until complete. Mr. Campy. Barring any public comment, I would make a motion to tentatively accept or approve the law enforcement CIP sheets. Second. Is there any public comments? Please come forward and speak on the record, please. Maybe we can find a... He's going to bring you the mic, ma'am. You don't have to... I'm going to bring the mic to you. The growth factor in Martin County needs more sheriffs and more departments on the west side of 95 or the toll road. Is that in consideration for this year's planning, financial planning, or we have to wait another 10 years before they consider that? It's me. There's not a current plan to build any new facilities off-site. The plan was to consolidate facilities on to the Holt Complex site for speed of use instead of going all the way across town to get certain assets when they're needed was the initial plan. Commissioner Vargas. As I said at the beginning of this meeting, there's only so much money to go around. There's been no money saved, and money's been appropriated where they felt it was more important at a given moment. We have a lot of asks here, and I understand, I concur with Commissioner Hurd's statements. Spending $65,000 and get a larger facility, we have to wait. There's a motion on the floor and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Opposed. That motion passes 4-1 with Commissioner Vargas dissenting. Thank you. I'm going to sharpen your pencils. Next is miscellaneous capital. This is a $510,300 request this year. Let's say the same. This section of the CIP was created, I believe, back in 23 due to the new field project development sheet. This sheet in the CIP is page 258 in the book. The sheet in the book is to show the impact fees we are receiving per the comprehensive plan. Along with that sheet, you're going to find the new field library as we are planning for the construction of that. What changed this year was communications equipment FARB was created for $10,300. Stephan Nielsen is here to answer any questions on that. And then the countywide radio replacement, which is a $500,000 ask this year, and Russell Norville is here to ask for any questions, questions. I have a question on the library sheet. So it looks like they're getting impact fee credits for $2,054,000. Is that correct? Yes. So they are going to talk with the developer to fully outfit the building for a move-in ready space for us. So there would be no cost for construction for the county. So what is this sheet telling us? So it's just breaking down where we will be getting the funds. So the private contribution would come from our library foundation. They would cover the equipment, furniture, and any type of collection materials that we would need. The builder would build the building, and then there's a note at the bottom for the operating budget impact. So we're trying to keep it to the impact on the county to just be staffing. So this building is not going to cost, and all of its belongings, all of its furnishings, are not going to cost $2 million. They're just going to get an impact fee credit for $1.7 million. Correct. Okay. But they are going to provide the site and the building, and the private contribution is going to provide for all the furnishings? Yes, the equipment, furniture, and collection. Okay. Commissioner Vargas. Yes, that was my question. So this has already been agreed upon with the developer. You said you were going to ask the developer, so I'm a little confused. So we have been in talks with them, and we've drafted an MOU with them to outline our agreements. And so far we are in agreement, but we have not brought that forward for approval yet. Might that be a good idea to do? Our legal teams are still working on the agreement. Any further questions on Newfield? Barring any comment, I'll move tentative approval of this item. Just a point to make. Earlier today we were having a conversation about our historic buildings, and there was a good suggestion of creating a historic building FARB. Would that fall into miscellaneous capital CIPs? We do have one in public buildings, a historic FARB, currently. That's funded every year. Okay. See that? That's a question. So, Sean. Yeah, here he is over here. Sean Donahue, Growth Manager. I'm sorry. General Services. Yes, we do have a historic building FARB. We have a couple other FARBs fixed asset replacement budgets. We did use some of that money to fund the House of Refuge rehabilitation project along with public buildings and building envelope. But the FARB wasn't so gigantic that you could pick up the tab for the whole thing. It was not big enough to do the entire project on its own, no, sir. Okay. Thank you. Mr. Vargas. How much do you have in the fund, then, to put towards the House of Refuge, as we spoke about this morning? It was all funded by current FARBs, current budget. There was no new money requested. This was all ad valorem money that was in the FARBs already and approved. Yeah, but didn't they ask for money this morning for that building? It was a request to pull that money from FARBs to put it in the CIP project to do the construction rehabilitation. For the House of Refuge. Do you have a second? No. I will second it. There's a motion and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? That motion passes unanimously. Public buildings. Mr. Sean Donahue. Okay, this is an ad valorem request of $7.8 million. It's an increase of $1.45 million. What stayed the same is the funding. Would you pull your mic closer? It doesn't pull closer. It's fixed. Move your head lower. You're too tall. Pull your head closer. Head shorter. What stayed the same was the fixed asset replacement budget funding for most of the FARBs. We are still continuing to upgrade some fire stations. That also stayed the same. We're moving some MSTU money into Fire Rescue FARB to do some more building envelope work on some of the older fire stations. And then we are still maintaining funding for building systems, life safety, and security systems. What's changed is an increase in the ad valorem in the fixed asset replacement budget for generator replacements. We had to replace a couple major generators this year, and that ate up our budget. We have a couple generators that are coming up next year that also needed to be replaced in this program. So we're asking for a little bit more funding to accomplish that. We will talk about, in a couple slides later, the increased ad valorem funding for the supervisors of elections expansion. And Ms. Vicki Davis is here to help us discuss that. And then there's a new project that we're requesting some funding for down the line, which would be a safety security enhancement program for the space between the two courthouses and to create a secured entrance facility between the two courthouses. The completed projects include redoing the roof and the facade on Fire Station 32 in Hope Sound. We added a fuel facility at the Fire Rescue Fleet Maintenance Facility. We've been working on trucks for several years and didn't have any fuel station to fill them. There was a jury room. Excuse me, Mr. Donahue. Commissioner Hetherington? Before you got too far into that, I just wanted to reference the FARB again. What's the methodology that you use to fund the FARB? Is it a percentage of facilities? What is the methodology you use? Because obviously the methodology, as we talked this morning, you know, and the suggestion of the historic buildings probably could use some refining. But it seems somewhat low. So how do we calculate the FARB? Mr. Donahue, before you chime in, Mr. Donaldson would like to put his two cents on. I just wanted to – so the FARB has been an important discussion for over 20 years, and it really wasn't until recently public buildings was the very last of your FARBs that you've attempted to address. If you recall that in the – we attempted some sales tax referendums to deal with our backlog. Roads was one of the cornerstones of that deficiency with the Jackson Pollock roads that we would use the tar to just cover up the cracks. And we attempted – and we included all of our backlog at that time, which was parks, buildings, water quality, and then you all helped with the franchise fee to kind of catch up on roads. And water quality was a contribution to the kickoff of the septic-to-sewer program. And then since that time, we've been slowly trying to inch up the fund for public buildings. And it was really only, what, two years ago that we got the FARB. There has been – and Sean has been instrumental in actually going through the buildings, and he can elaborate on the analysis on every air conditioner we own, all of the different things to try to catch up on them. And that's why we use these other contracts like with TRAIN and others to try to buy down the cost of those by energy-saving contracts. But I can tell you that from my experience when I was public works director that the building directors are general services manager from Harold Markey on. There is always a long list of backlog in public buildings. And I think Sean's done the best job thus far in terms of identifying more down to the units of every roof, every component that we have. And, Sean, you can describe what you've done. Yeah, we do have a capital expenditure plan, a five- or a ten-year plan, depending on what it is. This right here is an HVAC capital expenditure plan, and we work with TRAIN on. We project out when we need to replace certain items in certain buildings. This is every building across the general services maintenance area. So we do try to plan out and strategically fund FARB and move monies to certain FARBs to cover certain expenditures. Unfortunately, we had a major hit in the generator FARB. There was a large generator that – actually, it's the Supervisors of Elections generator – that died unexpectedly this year. As we looked into replacing that generator, we found out that only half the building was being served by a generator with backup power. So we have to double the size of the generator to capture the entire building and put that on emergency power. So that's just an explanation of things that happen as we uncover them. I would agree with your assessment that we still haven't – The mic's off. We still haven't caught up on all of the, quote, backlog, but I think we've made a huge dent in the last few years and are comfortable with where the board is funding it, but we're going to have still some failures here and there that set us back. So what I understood you to say was it's sort of a building-by-building assessment. You're not taking into account a particular percentage for a building with a lifespan of X, Y, Z, or you're doing a building-by-building assessment? That's – yes. Yeah, we try to be more strategic than doing a rule of thumb or a cost per maintenance. There are ways of analyzing that, and we're meeting those needs based on those analytics, but this is more on a specific equipment replacement. So when we do quarterly or monthly or annual inspections of the entire building and its systems, we can categorize and we can strategically say this needs to be a 10-year replacement cycle. This unit's good for another 15 years. We don't have to worry about it. And then we can start building that budget and that FARB request based on those inspections. So to our award-winning budget preparers, are there recommended percentages that we should be using in best practices for your – I will say that there is no set hard and fast rule only because each government works so differently as far as planning for your maintenance. But I will say I think we probably have one of the more robust methodologies for projecting at an asset level, specific asset level. But it's something I can definitely dive into and see if there's any additional best fiscal practices on that. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Back to completed projects. We did a renovation of the jury courtroom in the courthouse building, and then there was a major renovation of the Hopestown Library interior space that was funded by a donation to the Library Foundation. Current CIP projects include the House of Refuge rehabilitation. There's a building department expansion that's currently underway. Hopestown Beach Ocean Rescue is under design. We've made some big progress with the town of Jupiter Island recently and then the Supervisor of Elections General replacement that I spoke of earlier. Upcoming projects includes the Supervisor of Elections expansion, and with us we have Ms. Vicki Davis that can help us provide some explanation of that need. Good afternoon. Thank you, Sean. Thank you, Commissioners, Don, Sarah. Thank you for the opportunity to be here. As many of you know, and thank you, Commissioners, for meeting with me and Sean on an individual basis so you could really hear us lay out the need for expansion of the building, renovation, first phase, and then actually expanding to the west side of the building for warehousing. Early voting has become such a trend and popular way for voters to cast their votes. 2002 was the first year that early voting was actually made available in the state of Florida. It was not mandatory, but we did have it. Voters still went to vote at their precincts in 2002, 76% in 2002 voted at their precinct, 8% voted early. So the trend has really changed throughout the years, and you've all been in the office. You've all seen the backup in the foyer of the office. It's become really, really tight and congested during that period of early voting and when the elections start. So this proposal will actually move the early voting room into our training and canvassing room. So that actually means that our canvassing, which has become very tight as well, would encroach into the current warehouse, creating a need for the expansion to the west side of the building, which then takes up parking spaces. So if you need stats, any additional stats than what I've already provided when we met on an individual basis, I'm more than happy to provide those early voting for the 2024 election, just in the elections office, 9,000 voters voted in the office in a matter of 12, 13 days. And then we had 3,738 ballots dropped off during that same 13-day block of time. So you can see that almost 13,000 voters were in and out of the lobby, just the lobby area of the office, which, as I said, becomes very congested, very tight, and then also canvassing. In 2018, when we had three statewide recounts for the very first time in the state of Florida, when you have a recount, and they were high-profile elections. It was a U.S. Senate race, the governor's race, and commissioner of agriculture's race. Statutorily, if you have recounts, individuals representing those individuals are allowed to be in the canvassing room itself, and court recorders were in the room. It's extremely tight whenever we have a recount for an election. Fortunately, we haven't had any since 2018. But we do need additional space. Vote by mail is increasing. In 2020, 44% voted by mail. We had an 83% overall turnout, almost 100,000 votes cast. So 44% were by mail. All of that is tabulated, all of those ballots in the canvassing room. They're all laid out in the canvassing room. They're protected. And that's one of the main things about this renovation process is the security and the integrity of the elections and of the building itself. And timing is really going to be crucial as we go through, if approved, to expand this building. The timing is going to be crucial because we're so cyclic. We can't have construction taking place during an election. And in 2026, we will actually start our election process the last quarter of 2025 because we have a presidential preference primary, which will be March of 2026. So as you look at these plans and proposals, please keep the timing in mind as you go through because of the election process. You have to keep it secure every step of the way. Questions? Sure. We do. We have a question from Commissioner Hetherington. I've had the pleasure of serving on the campus board for a number of years. And it actually is a pleasure to serve on it, and I enjoy it, and I've learned so much. And bar none, we have the best supervisor of elections in all the 67 counties of Florida. Everything goes without a hitch, and it does so because of the supervisor of elections, you and your team. And having sat on that canvassing board and been in that room and watched the number of people over the years, and I've done it a couple different election cycles, the sheer volume of people walking in with questions to drop off their ballots, and then the sheer number of ballots we have as the canvassing board. Because if you think about that, not everybody thinks every one of those as vote-by-mail increases. And how much did you say the vote-by-mail percentage? Well, in 2020, 44% voted by mail, but that was through COVID. This past election cycle, there were 30% that voted by mail. But that increased the early voting. 51% actually voted early throughout the entire county. So between all those people coming in early voting, which many, many in Martin County do, and the vote-by-mail, and for the general public, every one of those vote-by-mail, you know, they're verified, and then they're opened, and the canvassing board sits there through that chain of command, and they're organized and categorized and protected. And I can tell you that room was busting at the seams because of so many. And I think we had like 86, whatever the general election turnout was very high of all the voters. Yeah, we had 85% that voted overall. So almost 100,000 voters cast their ballots in this last election. I think it's so necessary, this expansion, and I wanted to ask Sean about the timing because I could see you need to have this project completed by general election of 26, if at all possible. So how does that work? What is the process, design, planning? Yeah, so that would be really the last quarter of 25 would be the latest for completion. It's going to be very difficult to accomplish it before the next election, the next major election. You can do it. Can you, with the funding, with this in two-year cycles, can you do this with the funding 1.5 and 26 and 27, or is it necessary for us to make sure the funding is available to shift some things around and make sure the funding is available when the design is ready to go to have it, the facility ready for the next, because election integrity is going to be the most important thing. So is it, we need to kind of harden fast this deadline. Would that be achievable? We're going to need to speed it up, yeah. To get it done before the March 26 election, early voting is going to be very difficult, if not impossible, right now. So, yeah, speeding it up would be the best plan. Yeah, and the really positive, too, about early voting and moving it into the training room is voters would come in through the front doors and immediately make a right, go into the early voting room, and then exit out the side door. So it will eliminate that turnaround in the lobby. I would ask that we try to facilitate, here are my board members' comments. Commissioner Vargas. Yes, Ms. Davis. I think that we talked about a quarter of a million dollars for renovation of the existing building, reconfiguring, in other words, taking down walls, that type of thing, to facilitate, you know, as best as we could because, you know, this is ours, you know. Another is another and another. You know, we can only do what we can do. And, again, we don't have the numbers yet as to what we're bringing in this year. So, very leery of saying it, I agree that your office is, I think, one of the most important for us here. I truly do, but it's a matter of the numbers, getting them in. Sure. So, you know, we can say we can try and push things up, but we have to make sure we have the capital to do it. I understand. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for your consideration. Thank you for all of your support, and I really want to thank staff, too, because staff is always very, very supportive of what we do in elections. So, all of you who are here, thank you for what you do. The next upcoming project or new project on the list is the Courthouse and Constitutional Office Secured Entrance Building Edition. Clerk Timmons is here to help describe that need. I've been waiting patiently all day. I just want to preface that Commissioner Capps and I don't hold any grudges. Thank you for that. Thank you, Commissioner. More of an inside joke, but if you think about it, if you know, you know. It's the first time the three of us have been together. Not really. In our official capacities. But thank you for giving me the opportunity to come here and speak about this project. To me, I believe it's extremely important. Second, my main job is public service, and that's what this particular project is really all about. And I thought it would be helpful if I kind of gave you the current situation and then told you about some of the benefits of this particular project. And I don't know, Sean, if you had anything else that you just wanted to add to it, like the cost? I can describe it a little bit more in detail. Okay. So this would be about a 4,000-square-foot improvement in between the two buildings, the two large four-story buildings. Currently, as you see in the top right picture on this slide, there's a stairway and a walkway between the two buildings right now. And you have to go right or left to get into each facility. This would be a combined entrance, secured entrance, with some hardening included. It would move the X-ray scanner devices to the central facility and allow a better motion and a more secured and free-flowing motion from each side to get into the courthouse or the courthouse office building. The current estimated budget, because we really haven't started a design yet, the design would be about $500,000. And then to construct it and still keep the courthouse open and still manage the construction with the stairwell and the walkway in between it, would be about $4 million, $3.5 million. So the total request is $4 million. It's currently listed in the unfunded category at this time. Okay. Thank you. Madam Chair? Thanks. Go ahead. Go ahead. Sure. Okay. All right. As you heard, there is a walkway that connects the two buildings. So when we call the constitutional office building, at one time when it was originally built, all the constitutional officers had a presence there. Of course, Martin County's grown. That's no longer the case. My office takes up most of the building. My office is. The sheriff's office has a civil division there. We have the local public defender's offices are there. The local state attorney office is there. And, you know, it really brings in a lot of individuals. Right now, I summoned about 24,000 jurors a year. So that's just a small number of individuals who are coming into this building. Roughly, we have about 200,000 people coming into the building every year. Right now, the majority of those people go between the two buildings. And there was at one time, and that was before the tragedy of September 11th, the buildings were open air connected with that walkway between the two buildings. And individuals could go back and forth. They could go from court over to my office. Things had moved around a bit and changed where the individual offices are located. But after that, and then there was a security analysis done by the U.S. Marshal's Office, and then that walkway was closed. So it's been closed since that time with the gate. This project would allow that to be reopened, which is really significant, to allow individuals to go directly from the courtroom to the clerk's office. They could go to the Sheriff's Civil Division. They could arrange for paperwork filings. They could get documents immediately. We've moved forward greatly with efficiencies in the courtroom process, where we are now doing in-court processing of documents. So they could effectively go from court and get their final paperwork and just walk right across and do that. Now they have to go back downstairs. They have to go back through security again. And many individuals, quite honestly, they're eager to get back to work or they're nervous, and they don't necessarily do that last step. They're not coming to my office to pay their court-ordered financial obligations, and they're not picking up the documents that they need. This would allow that to be far more seamless. And I am certainly not a law enforcement expert or officer. There are some here if you had any specific questions on that. But when you talk about the two entranceways, there's an entranceway to the courtroom building, I'll call it, and an entranceway to my offices. If there was an altercation, which we do have altercations in our business, if there's an altercation in between those two buildings, law enforcement effectively has to face each other with that individual in between because those two doorways face each other from the opposite buildings. This would close that off and have one entrance, one secure entrance, where all individuals would come in. You would still have employee access or badge security access through the other side, but there would be one public entrance. And that would be far more efficient and really far more safe. Right now, there are no lobbies. If you go into the courtroom side, for those of you who've been in there, the elevator's right there. You're lucky if four people can stay in there to get the elevator. People are waiting. It's congested. It's not a safe environment. On my side, there's a little bit more room. We have a reception desk. There's no room for any public messaging. We can't put up any type of – we have a little video screen, but we can't really provide information to those individuals coming in. If I need to come out and talk to someone who's in a stressful situation or one of my staff does, there's really no safe place where we can do that. This would provide a centralized lobby where individuals could gather. We could come out and safely talk to people because there would be security there, have a real good presence there. We'd have that reopened area between the two buildings. It would be far more efficient and far more effective for everyone. We hope to add a walk-up window to the outside, which many clerk's offices are doing now, where individuals can just come up. They can pay. They can pick up documents, not have to come in through security, not be nervous about that particular process. It's faster and, again, far more efficient. We would not leave that open 24 hours for safety and security reasons, but I would staff that during the daytime. I mentioned how many individuals come into our office. I know a lot of you are familiar with some of the more stressful things that we do, domestic violence injunctions, for instance, risk protective orders, when law enforcement finds it necessary to remove weapons from an unsafe situation, and mental health cases, which are unfortunately on the rise, as I know you hear about from the sheriff's office. So we have all of those things going on where we really need more safety and security. We also have happy events going on. So we perform a lot of weddings here in Martin County, by the way. They're growing in number, which is great. I know we're all a little bit concerned about the potential loss of maternity services, which is another happy event. I certainly don't want to lose our wedding services. And now, when individuals come in, quite often, because of the costs and other things, they're coming in with a full wedding party. You have brides in their gowns, and you have, you know, all these individuals and family members. They come in, and there's no, excuse me, there's nowhere for them to gather either. They're crowding into the room where I'm trying to do passports and recording and those things. They're trying to crowd into the jury room, which is certainly not open to the public at all times. We don't know when we'll have jurors in there. So we want to make sure that those individuals feel welcomed as well. And when I mention jurors, law enforcement, so we have deputies. Our sheriff provides full sworn deputies. They are escorting the jurors at all times. So when a juror comes from the jury room and has to go over to the courtrooms, they're going over, they're walking out in the open air for the most part. There's a little overhang. And then they're going in the other building and up those elevators. They can't gather in that lobby. They'd finally have a place to wait or to gather, or certainly in inclement weather, where they're all trying to huddle outside on a, you know, a little bench, or try to stand under a small awning to stay out of the weather. This would provide a safe and secure location. We don't like our jurors to leave the building. Right now we have to let them because there's nowhere else for them to go out. When they go out, believe it or not, we've lost a couple. And that's never a pleasant situation when you have to go find them again, as our officers in Green know. We also hope to be able to provide public kiosks, and that would be in that central lobby area. Again, it's a very big efficiency issue. It saves a lot of money. The easier it is for people to pay, the greater our collections are. That's the reality of it. And I would have more staff available to help people with things like payment plans and all of those things to make it easier for them to pay, less intimidating to come into the buildings and not having to go through security twice if they're going back and forth, and greatly increase those collections on behalf of everyone as well and to make it easier for them. There are certain documents that, according to Supreme Court rules, you can only look at in my office. So I can't put them online for people to see. This would provide them with that opportunity to come into the lobby, go to a kiosk, be able to look at their documents in a safe, secure location that's also accessible to them. So there's a lot of benefits, I feel like, for this project. I know it's a big project. I hear certainly what everyone's saying. I have the same concerns. I am the chief financial officer for the county, so I'm very much aware of all of those concerns, and certainly with investments and all of those other issues that are going on with it right now. I tend to look at this, as I said, public service, efficiency, and also I'm hoping to be able to increase collections and increase that revenue stream where possible and then cut back on some staffing costs on some of the things that we can then shift to electronic means and more access that way through our kiosks and payment window and things of that nature. So I'm happy to answer any questions about it. I know you have a lot to think about and a lot to balance, but I hope that you can approve this project. And if not, I will continue working towards it. Questions? Thank you very much. Thank you. We also have the best clerk of court of six. Thank you. I appreciate that. Thank you. Okay, and then the last two items on the upcoming projects are the library outdoor spaces. There's a pavilion ready for construction. We're just waiting for the materials to come in at the Hoke Library and the same thing down at the Hopestown Library. And then finally, on the last bottom portion of the slide, generator replacements. We have not only the supervisor of election generator to replace, but we have the fire station 16, the Blake Library, and the public works general services field operations generator are all under or scheduled for replacement for next year. That concludes my presentation. Questions for Mr. Donahue? I have some. I'm on page 108. Admin building, first and third floor remodel? Correct. That's the third floor is the IT area, the cubicle area. Those cubicles are 25, almost 30 years old at this point. They are in a state of disrepair. We're having major problems finding parts and keeping them safe and operable for the workers, for the employees. So we'll be looking at replacing those areas. We have a little bit of a project started now with some FARB monies that we can replace a few of them, but there's 30 or 40 more in that space that need attention. Same thing in the first floor, gross management area, the old, I think it was the building department service desk. There's cubicles in that area, and that area needs to be remodeled at some point to make it more useful for that department. I didn't realize that cubicles had a shelf life. Over time, when you start moving them around and changing use, you start losing parts and things get old. And administration building third and fourth floor window hardening? That is an unfunded request. We're seeking grant opportunities for that to harden this building, so we have kind of a placeholder there if we can find some hardening monies. And there's a lot of money out there from the previous hurricanes. Okay. I'm on page 112, Martin County Operations Facility, and this project is dire, and it's unfunded, and it doesn't appear to have a future. So what are we doing in order to move this project forward? George Zama, Public Works Deputy Director. We are currently under contract for conceptual design. We've performed a conceptual site plan design and schematic floor plan for the facility. We've done a full-blown needs analysis for all three departments that would occupy the facility. Moving forward, we will be presenting a board item to discuss the future progression of the project, whether it be in phases, multiple phases, or a single-phase project, which may include a public-private partnership. Okay. When do you think that that might come before us? I think it's safe to say within the next three months. Okay. Good. I'm on page 113, Fire Rescues, FARB, it's $600,000 in FY26, and every other year it's $250,000? Correct. As I stated before, we are working through the older fire stations, looking at weatherization upgrades to those facilities. So there's a few more fire stations on that list that we would capture with the funding for next year. And page 114, Fire Rescue, Fleet Services, Storage, Expansion. When did we do the initial one? The initial construction of fleet services? The storage, the building that we currently use, I think it's on Ronke? Yeah, 2009. And we already have a need to expand it? They are storing, Fire Rescue is storing all the pieces and parts, their stock equipment. There is a need for additional storage to keep that in-house. Okay. We get to these new fire stations. And it seems to me that they're all responses to approving development outside the urban service boundary. It's based on the fire station needs assessment that the county just performed. Yeah, but the big group that was here this morning from Stewart West and Cobblestone and the Revive Church, those facilities have been outside the urban service boundary, knew they were outside the urban service boundary forever. And yet, now there's a need, because commission majorities have approved development outside the urban service boundaries, now there's a need to create urban services way outside the urban service boundary in order to serve these communities that are no longer in our urban service boundary. And this is just one of the costs of sprawl, and it's a huge cost. Chad Shane, Julie, Fire Chief, Martin County Fire Rescue. And you're correct, there was comments today, and that was about outside the urban service district. But I think what's important to understand is in our current comp plan inside our urban service district, we are not meeting our comp plan. So the need of that Western Palm City station, it'll fit that need. So currently, in the comp plan, it addresses that we have to, inside the urban service district, respond within eight minutes, 90% of the time. We are in 21 zone, Palm City, only doing that 77% of the time. So we are already, if we just strictly want to talk about inside the urban service district, we are not meeting the mark of what is identified in the comp plan. If we address both outside the urban service and inside the urban service with one fire station, we can accomplish the task of meeting the comp plan inside the urban service district and provide a service to Western Palm City. With one fire station, the fire station that's proposed on 714. That is correct, yes, ma'am. Well, I disagree. That's from the farmer study, ma'am. And that's, he identified that if we put that study there and we already mapped out the road miles and what Newfield is doing with their construction, their infrastructure and the roadway that is connecting Bush Street to Citrus, it's going to give us that corridor to where we can access Newfield and, because it's inside the urban service district, within the eight minutes. And then it will also allow us to service the areas of Western Palm City, including Stewart and Palm City, Stewart West and Cobblestone, in a timely fashion. It will completely change the landscape of Western Palm City. That doesn't change the facts that the reason that we're having to construct new fire stations outside the urban service boundaries is because we have never built, we have rarely built developments outside the urban service boundary until very recently. Stewart and Cobblestone are the exceptions. And it's extremely expensive. And the cost of the fire station is just one small component of the expenses. It doesn't include the land, it doesn't include the equipment, and it certainly doesn't include staffing. So this is the, we are seeing the repercussions of urban sprawl. Commissioner Campy. Try to keep it nice and polite. Stewart West and Cobblestone are decades-old communities. The folks that were here this morning were not from Newfield. They were from Stewart West and Cobblestone. They've been taxpayers. You heard them say this morning when our board sat silent that they spend millions of dollars in taxes. They've been out there for decades. It has nothing to do with urban sprawl. What about the folks that live west of 95, all the way on the Martin Canopy, out on the Martin Grade? There was an old derelict fire station building out there that was utilized, you know, 40 years ago. So there was a need when it was volunteers, there was a need to have a fire rescue facility way out on the Martin Grade. They knew then that it was important to have response times. To try to bundle this up into some sprawl conversation again, and when you add it in land, if it wasn't for a very generous business owner and project developer across the street who's willing to donate up to five, seven acres of property, which no one has ever done, what is Station 21 on currently? How much acreage is 21 on? I think they're less than two acres, preferably an acre and a half. Average is about two and a half acres. Yeah, so he's willing to donate five or seven acres right next to 95, which is probably worth millions of dollars. So that's that. And I don't understand how those residents are somehow classified as, hey, you live too far away. I heard the same thing when we were talking about our interlocal agreement with Evergreen. These are Martin County taxpayers. They don't get a discount. They pay the same amount of money that everybody else is paying. And it's easy when the room is empty. But if I have to fill the room up, I spoke this morning to that group because it's my district. It's everyone's district, all five of us. And when the residents come and they say that there's, you're the chief, much more brush fires. That's happening nationwide based on a whole multitude of reasons. They're entitled to rescue. We, you, have to respond to the full Martin County length north to south on the Turnpike and 95. That would give you access to immediately get on 95 and respond to all sorts of traffic incidences. I don't understand how we're going to make it like, oh, shame on you. You have a sprawl issue. They've been out there for decades. They're entitled to the services. Everyone that lives from the Turnpike to 95 on 714 in Palm City Farms, they're entitled to fire rescue services. It's not a sprawl issue. It's a matter of public safety for our residents. New Field will generate so much tax base that everyone will be glad to put into the situation. When we talk about how are we going to pay for these things, the three projects that, you know, the majority, and it's a different majority now, Atlantic Fields, Apogee, and the Ranch, that's nearly 9,000 acres, less than 500 homes, that will generate approximately $60 million in tax base. That doesn't sound like a bad idea to me. So I don't want to get into a sprawl, no sprawl, growth, no growth. This is the finances. I disagree with my colleague respectfully. She's always had that opinion. That's fine. But when she says that the farmer report is wrong and that your decades of experience is not adequate, her opinion should trump that. I disagree. Mr. Vargas. Yes. Okay, I agree with Chairwoman Hurd. There's been, yes, those folks, they chose to live way out there. My understanding is that St. Lucie County is closer to New Field for response time. And I understand that, you know, the insurance costs are higher if they're living further out or the response time isn't there. But, you know, we're talking about a lot of money, as Chairwoman Hurd said. It's not just the building, and it's just not the land donation. It's the cost of the employees that you have to be there and their benefits also. So, you know, it's not an isolated thing, and, you know, we can get the emotion in here, and if you have to fill the room, and whatever you have to do. But that's why we have to be very judicious in what we decide to approve here. We cannot keep going to do this. We don't have the funding. We just don't have it anymore. This is a time for belt tightening, as I said this morning, if you were listening to our meeting. And this is something that this commission must, I would suggest strongly, keep at the forefront of their mind everywhere in the county. This is our responsibility. Commissioner Hetherington. Yes. I pulled out this level of service. Every department has one. And I just want to reiterate and make sure I heard what you said properly. We are not meeting the level of service outlined in our comprehensive plan for basically outside the urban service boundary in the area of the western Palm City. No, ma'am. That's not correct. What I'm saying is we're not meeting it inside the urban service district, not outside. Outside in the comp plan is identified as 20 minutes 90% of the time. We are barely meeting that, 20 minutes. Inside the urban service district, we have to do it within 8 minutes 90% of the time. We are not meeting that. We're not even meeting it inside the urban service boundary. This is before Newfield isn't even built yet. I'm talking about right now. When Newfield gets built and all the other developments get built, the calls for service in western Palm City could increase roughly by 88%. And I'm telling you today, we are not meeting the level of service inside the urban service boundary. This all came from an unbiased study that came in and did a needs analysis, and that's from the David Farmer study. That's what was identified. Well, I think that we need to take action and do something. I mean, the people here this morning, and I'll have to say about people that chose to live out in rural areas, they've been there for generations. And we are required to maintain a level of service, I think, both inside and out for the residents. I mean, you can build a one-acre house on any 20-acre parcel per, and we're required. Yes, it's expensive, but I support the folks that were here this morning regarding the western Palm City Fire Station. I see a need not only today but yesterday for it, and I think that we need to actually find funding for that particular one. And of all the public buildings in here, I think there's needs versus wants, right, and we have to prioritize those. The western Palm City Fire Station, I think that we can't wait. That would be a need to me versus a want, and I think that we need to find funding for it to meet our obligations to our residents for our level of service. Needless to say, I agree. You need anything else on this particular item? I would make a motion to tentatively approve this public buildings CIP project. Second. Commissioner Capps. I was just going to add that, you know, there's been a lot of development in the western part of the county that some of us were not a part of approving, and we're doing the best we can to control it. You know, we just voted today 5-0 to limit rural lifestyle significantly. You know, but we do have an obligation to take care of the needs of residents, even though perhaps we might not have approved certain things in the past, there's still a pressing need. So I support the western Palm City Fire Station project, and we're going to need to do something. So my sentiments are with the motion. Is there any further public comment on this agenda item? Yeah. I certainly support most of the agenda of the CIP sheets, but not all of them, so I'm not going to support this motion. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Opposed. Opposed? That motion passes 3-2 with Commissioners Vargas and her dissenting. And Matt Rush is here to speak on behalf. And Chief. Fire Chief. Are we good? Yes. Yes? Okay. All right. For the record, Chad Chanchuli, Fire Chief, Martin County Fire Rescue. So today we want to present our FY2526 CIP budget. But first, what I'd like to do really for the general public, and I think it's important to do, is I'm going to highlight just five equipment items that is important to talk about, and I'm going to go back to the date of 2019 because those are pre-COVID dollars, and I want you to understand the financial impact that we absorbed along the way and still pulled off what we did. So first, let's talk about a fire truck. Since if we go back to 2019, a fire truck has gone up by 70%. We used to be able to buy a fire truck for $540,000. Today, that same fire truck, spec'd the same way, is $920,000. A ladder truck used to be $752,000. It has gone up 72%. So that same spec truck now costs $1.3 million. Bunker gear, this is the ensemble that our firefighters wear going into a fire, has gone up 67%. I used to buy one set for $2,500. Now, that same set, $4,200. Patient stretchers, this is where we load our patients up to put them in the trucks, gone up 50%. Used to be able to buy them for $14,000. Now, $21,000. And then last thing I'll talk about is the cardiac monitor. Cardiac monitor, this is the item that saves lives. This is when your heart is in the irregular heart rhythm. This is the thing that makes the difference and really has an impact. They have gone up by 27%. It used to be $30,000. Now, $40,000. So, barring all of those significant increases, since 2019, our CIP budget has only gone up $43,785. What that really does is clearly demonstrates the fiscal responsibility of this organization, and we're able to push through these tough times. So, with that, I'll conclude my portion of the CIP presentation, and I'm more than happy to take any questions. Questions? Proceed, Matt. Do you want to add to me? We're short and sweet. You've been here all day. Any questions? Commissioner Campy. I appreciate that, Chief. I think everyone that is bemoaning the cost of living increases and how things are changing, that's not even, you haven't even begun to discuss how tariffs could relate into all of those things with the types of materials needed to manufacture the equipment you need. You know, in certain other areas of the county government, these increases can be absorbed or if we postpone them. But the things that you're talking about needing, stretchers, bunker gear, heart equipment, that's life or death issues, and you've still been able to keep a real handle on it. So, I do appreciate that effort. I think we should also acknowledge when our departments are, you know, meeting the fiscal challenges that everybody is. So, with that, barring any public comment, I would accept, tentatively approve the fire rescue department's CIP sheet. Second. Any further questions, comments? There's a motion and a second. Any public comment? There's a motion and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? That motion passes unanimously. Thank you. Thank you. And now it's time for 505 public comments. Sir, would you like to address us? Thank you, guys. Please come forward. You'll have three minutes to address us. Thanks. Thank you. Actually, my name is Joe Cosgrove. I live in Stewart. I was here about six or seven months ago. There are different people out there now. Congratulations. I was here about a major safety issue. I spoke about these e-bikes, electrical bicycles, go-carts, golf carts, scooters, skateboards, you name it, on the sidewalks. From what I understand, the Florida statute, 316-1995, prohibits anything except human-powered vehicles on the sidewalk. These bicycles are not the typical 20-pound bicycle we think of. These things get up to, like, 75 pounds. They can carry 300 pounds. They can go up to 30 miles per hour. Big knobby tires, like a motorcycle, they have throttles. It's not just peddling. They have an actual throttle. They can throttle these things up. My concern is safety. I know we all talk about safety. That's a big item, and I understand we're all on top of that. I'm just concerned that someone's going to be seriously injured or worst by one of these vehicles on the sidewalk. I know there are certain classes of them. There are state statutes that address it, but I was wondering if there was any local ordinances or something that may be able to bolster that enforcement of restricting these vehicles where pedestrians and bicycles now enjoy. Right now, if you can go anywhere in the county, you'll see that a bicycle and a pedestrian is a minority on the sidewalks. We're the minority. They're more powered. There is some gas-powered, in fact. It's getting to biblical proportions, and I'm seriously concerned with injury, damage to property, someone seriously injured or worse. That's why I'm here for the second time. I wonder if there's ever been any progress from the first time when we spoke about this, and I believe people concur. This is an issue that it's becoming something we're going to have to start to deal with. Those are all valid concerns. I agree with you. Commissioner Campy. Sir, I wholeheartedly agree with you. We have had a fatality on an electric bike in Palm City several months ago, but beyond that, I think that the other point, everything you said in those statistics are accurate. The only other thing that's really scary is they're silent. If someone was riding a motorcycle, you would hear it. You'd have a chance to at least step out of the way. You know, we've been working on Map Road for a long time. I spent a lot of time there. We widen the sidewalks to make it more pedestrian-friendly, but it's also completely made it much more friendly for – there are several new battery-operated versions, and you're right. They can go up to 35 miles per hour, and, you know, I remember in the old days, I worked in New York City, and there used to be bicycle messengers that would be on a 10-speed bike. And, you know, they would race all up and down the streets and everything, and even if you're a pedestrian, if you got hit by someone riding a bicycle, you could be seriously injured. But if you get hit by someone riding, you know, a 50-, 60-, 70-pound electric bike that's got the batteries, and you're exactly right about those big tires. They look like motorcycle tires, and there's no rules or regulations. So it could be a 10-year-old on it. They don't wear helmets except the kids. I see them now wearing full-face helmets because they're just doing that not for safety so that no one knows who they are, so they can hide who they are. And then they have the other version, which is the stand-up scooter. In the old days, they used to have a little Razor scooter that then could barely get out of its own way. These scooters are super fast. So even if you're driving in your car and you're looking to pull out of a side street and you look to the left and you don't see anybody, so you start to pull out, and then someone who's going 35 miles an hour, 30 miles an hour, on the sidewalk, crashes into the car, and everyone looks at you like that was the motorist's fault. So my dad's been asking me about this every week. He's like you. He sees it. He's focusing his attention on it. I don't know what the answer is. We're going to have Mr. Donaldson look into it. Yeah. Most of it is state statute, so it's not like we can do local. I have asked our local police in my district, the cops, the community-oriented policing, and we've been trying to catch them. But it's hard, even if you're on foot as a police officer. Or even educate them, right? Oh, you know, they're not looking to be educated. The parents spent – those bikes are expensive. They're $3,000 or $4,000, $5,000 a piece. And the parents give them out for birthday presents or Christmas and then just send the kids out to just do whatever they want. But it's a – they're wreaking havoc in the community. I may say one more thing. On that same vein, these things aren't insured. They don't have tags. There's no signal like this. Well, a motorist like ourselves, we have to have insurance. You have to have – and probably half the people on these vehicles have had their license suspended or revoked so they can't drive an automobile on the street. But now we have one – here we are, the general motor in public, required to have all these licenses, insurance, safety equipment and such, and they can just go unscathed. You know, that's it. That's what my concern is. Thanks for coming to see us. I was always hoping there was something – the local ordinance or something maybe could do something with it. I don't know. Well, at least put the police – say if you get to see something, do something. And technically, by statute, you have to be – if you're 16 years old, you have to wear a helmet, which they don't do either. Don't confuse the story with the facts. All right. Thanks. Thanks. Thank you. Continuing on, Office of Community Development, Ms. Susan Correz. And Sheldon Bistar. Good afternoon, commissioners. Good evening, commissioners, maybe I should say. So, you can see from our first slide, our budget for 2025, Mrs. Murley and Ms. Baker then perform their formulaic calculation, because that's how that works, and an estimate of what the projections would be. And they have estimated that we will see an increase of 1.695 for FY26. So, let's stay the same. As always, we look at infrastructure as our focus, and you're going to see in the upcoming slides lots of different ways that we're doing that, and we have done that. What has changed? So, new communication strategy. I'm just going to point out a couple of things. We have a new communication strategy, and we're doing that so that we can increase participation and knowledge in our communities, in our six NAC areas. And what I mean by a communication strategy, it's a three-touch strategy. We call it our community pulse. Maybe you've seen some of those e-blasts that have gone out. So, we send out an agenda for a meeting. Then we send it again a couple of days before, and then we do a recap a few days after so that the community gets touched three times. And we're seeing already an increase in participation, and certainly in, I believe, the knowledge that the community has of the projects that we're doing and the initiatives that we're moving forward. We've gotten five project awards this past year. That's been really exciting. We've got three for Ripple, one for Golden Gate, actually, our monument sign in Golden Gate, and one for the patio in Palm City, and one for the Rio Bioswale. So, just important to note as well that we often, very often, work with other departments here, so we want to give a big shout-out to Public Works Field Operations Division because they helped us with three due to their expertise and their work on three of those projects, and a nice assist from Parks and Rec on another one. So, thank you to my other departments. I'm going to move forward and just pick out a few projects from each slide to talk about, and happy to answer any questions on any others that you may want to discuss. So, completed projects for us recently. Again, looking at infrastructure. This is some of our above-ground infrastructure. We did unpaved roads in Golden Gate with Public Works, as a matter of fact. We did a manatee pocket boardwalk enhancement with parks, Cove Road sidewalks, very important. Seems like a small thing, but sidewalks get kids to school and keep people safe. And the underground infrastructure that we completed, Ripple Stormwater Eco Art Project, Palm City Patio in Place, which was a mix of both underground and above-ground, and infill sewer in Rio. And that's something to note. We now have three CRA areas that are complete with water and sewer. And thanks to the county for the Golden Gate assist. We appreciate that. Moving on to current projects. We are excited to talk about El Camino. Maybe you can all see the big sign that's now on Indian Street. It says that the project has started April 8th. So, I know. Every time I drive down there, I big smile. So, we're excited about that. That project should take a little over a year. We are continuing to work with affordable housing in Petway Village in Hope Sound. Unpaved roadways in Hope Sound is also a big focus this year, and we'll be doing that with Public Works as well. Park Drive Improvements in Port Salerno, that project has already begun as well, working with utilities and with Public Works on that. New Monrovia Park Improvements, a really well-loved neighborhood park in New Monrovia is getting a beautiful facelift. Dixie Park Sidewalks, that's something new that was added recently that came from the neighborhood. And the reason that that came up, and it was something that they were interested in, is Public Works is doing a project there now, and it was a great opportunity for us to add. I know earlier today, we talked a little bit about Complete Streets. It was a great opportunity for us to add some dollars in there to do sidewalks and landscaping, which really adds to the project that Public Works will be doing and a great amenity for the community. In Palm City, we're looking at Southwest Cornell Avenue improvements, and again, that's going to be a more complete street kind of concept. If no one has ever been down Cornell, it is one of the streets, well, probably the only other street other than MAP Road that goes north and south. I'm really bad at that. It goes north and south, runs parallel to MAP, and the sidewalk butts right up to the street where you can, and the sidewalk is only about four and a half feet. It's really tough to walk down that roadway and not get into trouble. It also has terrible drainage issues, so we're looking at doing some nice infrastructure work there, again, with utilities and Public Works as well. And in Rio, we are looking at town center redevelopment. That's going to take into account the Civic Center and some other properties that the CRA and the county own right in the center of town, and looking at also a big streetscape enhancement as well on Dixie Highway. So that's some of the things that we're working on currently. Upcoming, we're looking at a huge project in Golden Gate. It's a neighborhood improvement project in there. Community redevelopment plan, Golden Gate, really focuses a lot on infrastructure and complete streets. So we've started working on that, getting them curb and gutter, getting them on street parking, all of those things that really add to a neighborhood. And we're doing that by doing some concept drawings and some initial little bit of engineering so that we can go out for grants for that. So that's what we're focused on there. In Hope Sound, huge project in Hope Sound, Dixie Highway, Stormwater, and Streetscape. That's the project that you might have heard that will take into account the historic train station, Plaza. It also takes in – so it's Dixie Highway from Bridge Road all the way to Saturn, and it takes into account Old Post Office Alley as well and seven of the connecting side streets, and it's going to complete the drainage, the stormwater, and new roadway, and sidewalk, landscaping, all of those things. And, again, we'll connect to that historic train station, Plaza. Jensen, we're looking at Church Street, which is, again, probably one of two or three roads that connect Indian River Drive with Pineapple. And we're looking to do some redesign on that street so that we have some on-street parking and some sidewalks undergrounding the utilities. Port Salerno, of course, septic to sewer, we'll be throwing some money towards that project and looking at some unpaved roadways. And I'll stop there and be happy to answer any questions you might have. Any questions? Commissioner Vargas. Yes, what are the SPARC funds? SPARC is a program that allows a property owner, a business owner, a developer to pay in lieu of the required parking. So, in other words, if you are located on Bridge Road, for example, and you want to open a particular business that requires five parking spaces, and you have a small piece of property that you really can't make any bigger, it is what it is, you can pay in lieu, meaning you pay money into a fund that will take up, say, two of your parking spaces. And I don't remember off the top of my head, Commissioner, all the criteria that goes into that. So there's a certain you can only do it in certain subdistricts. There's a certain amount that you can do, et cetera, et cetera. So it has those kinds of boundaries to it. I know you have revenue in your CRA in Jensen from SPARC. Okay. So when we meet, maybe you can have those particulars for us? Absolutely. Any further questions? Is there a motion to approve? Motion to tentatively approve Office of Community Development's CIP sheets. Second. Second. There's a motion and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? That motion passes unanimously. Thank you. Thank you. Parks and Recreation, Mr. Kevin Abate. Good afternoon. Good afternoon, board. Kevin Abate, Parks and Recreation Director. As you see before you, we are requesting $200,000 over last year's CIP, and that's primarily to develop a master plan for Pineapple Park Pickleball Complex, which we can go into in the next sheet. But right now, the funding levels for our fixed asset replacement budget that parks buildings and pavements, and pavement, fiber security, and Wi-Fi have remained the same. We also are going to try to maintain our funding for boat ramps over the 10-year plan. We are capitalizing funds within the current CIP sheet to rebuild the old Jensen Beach Cafe and public restroom, which was caught on fire during New Year's Eve of last year. We are also going to continue our phased capital improvement of Wojasek Park small-sided soccer fields. This is the last year of the funding. And, of course, and finally, we are this year, this summer, this fall, we will be looking at replacing the aging pumps, motors, and pump houses at the golf course, the three pump houses we just received, if not this week or next week, the permit from South Florida Water Management District for our consumptive use permit at the golf course. And our goal for the next capital improvement is to replace those pump houses so we don't lose our golf course's water supply. So last year, we completed the concrete pads, the first phase of it, at Phipps Park Campground. We paid for that with the revenue from the campground that we achieved over the past few budget years. That being said, the campground has done quite well. We are sitting on, right now, roughly $623,000 in net proceeds that will go in towards the second phase of adding the concrete pads throughout the campground. And then we completed last year the Indian Riverside Park Boardwalk Expansion over at the Ipe Wood. If you haven't seen the Boardwalk Expansion, it's done quite well in terms of its use. When we posted our video on it when we opened it last month, it had over 170,000 views from the public, and they really enjoyed it. It's 1.5 miles long. We also finished our San Schmidt Park boat ramp renovation, and, of course, the final project was the Indian Riverside Park Bird Fountain. So currently, we're working on Charlie Layton Park improvements and the boat ramp. That project just came in. The bids were within budget so far, and we will hopefully be awarding a contract soon. We've completed the playground at East Ridge Park, and we also used some funds for that from the American Rescue Plan dollars to help pay for most of that. We are now in the middle of our Langford Park Playground, which also has ARPA funds. We expect that to be done in May. And then we will be starting Tropical Farmers Park Playground, which also has ARPA funds attached to that one. Also, upcoming, the continued funding of Wojesec Park small-sided soccer courts and restroom facility. And what that is, it's been on the CIP for a couple budget cycles. What that is, it's four artificial turf fields with fencing for soccer at Wojesec Park. It's about a one-acre project, and its capacity were probably 80 percent design. We expect it to be fully designed by the end of this fiscal year, with construction starting sometime at the end of this year or early next year, when that final round of funding becomes available. The Jensen Beach Cafe and public restroom, that restroom was burned down on New York's Eve of last year. We're working with insurance right now to get some recovery. In the CIP, we have capitalized other sections of our budget. For example, under the public buildings CIP sheet, we moved that money to pay for the public restroom. And we've moved some funds around, similar to what we did for Charlie Layton Park, to get the project completed. We are in the middle of design right now for the Jensen Beach Cafe and public restroom. We just moved past conceptual, and we're now moving towards vertical design. The Francis Langford Dockside Pavilion improvements, that was on the first floor of the building. It's been vacant for more than a decade. And, of course, unfortunately, we had a fire there just a few weeks ago up in the attic, and that has caused early damages through our insurance of $275,000 between cleanup and dryout. So now we're relooking at that project since we have right now programmed about $1 million for improvements. But now we're working with insurance to get some immediate payback from insurance due to the cost of it. So we're using our fixed asset replacement budget to front the funds for this cleanup. And then we'll go back to the proverbial drawing board to look at the top floor to see the improvements that need to be made, and hopefully it will be covered by insurance. But we will take this opportunity to look at the first floor to see if we can harden the building with impact windows and just do some efficiencies, but it'll be quite the project for us to conquer over the next year. The Vince Bocchino Community Center is also a funded program where we are basically modernizing the inside of the Vince Bocchino building. The building is in need of improvements. And then, as I said earlier, selfish ends, golf course, pump house replacements is the first thing you do before you start replacing or improving any grasses. We have not made any improvements on the 18-hole course other than adding pathways many, many years ago. But we need to get our water situation straight. That was kind of a board directive. That is our plan over the next year is to make sure that we have adequately working vertical turbine motors and pumps that we are, if there are water shortages, that we are having a good water source. We have struggled with water in the past, and the golf course, while it's financially doing really well, I pulled some numbers this morning. The golf course, as of this morning, was $636,000 in net profit, just the golf course, not the hitting bay. So it's doing quite well. And the last thing that we want to do is lose our grasses in our program that we work so hard and we have invested in over the last many years. And that's the end of the presentation. Questions for Mr. Abate? Mr. Capps? Move approval. Second. There's a motion and a second. All those in favor? I've got some questions. Let's don't vote. Commissioner Hetherington. Okay. So the first one is the Parks FARB. We talked about FARB earlier for public buildings. What's the methodology that you use to calculate the Parks FARB? So long, long ago when we were trying to initiate a sales tax initiative for parks for our backlog replacement, which we have right now excluding assets like the water park, the golf course, the cafes, and mooring fields, about $100 million in assets. So we use life cycle replacement costs. So we have, you know, for example, the best example I can give is playgrounds. They have a 15-year life cycle replacement cost. So we have 23 or 26 playgrounds. I have it here. And those playgrounds, you know, to replace them are quite expensive now versus what we paid for them. So we paid $3 or $4 million for them many, many, many years ago. And as a part of replacing them, after every 15 years, we sometimes squeeze it to be a little longer. We will replace them based on their years and their life cycle. And everything in parks has a life cycle. Every pavilion roof, every sidewalk, every grill, every building. And so we use life cycle replacement costs. And what has happened for us in the past, in 2022, for example, we had Hurricane Nicole hit. We had just restarted our fiscal year. And we had all these projects that we had planned. But as you recall, Sanford Park got hit pretty heavily for about $700,000 of damages. So we used our FARB program, unprogrammed, to replace all those piers, docks, seawalls over the next year to be reimbursed 14 months later. So we put every single project that we had in parks FARB on hold for about a year to take care of all the Hurricane Nicole projects, which we're still doing some, to make sure we got proper reimbursement through FEMA, which will probably come in many, many years from now. So we were able to get some fund balance 14 months later. So we ended up having a bigger lump sum because we kept the funding the same. And then we spent $2.7 million that year between Nicole and $1 million worth of FARB projects. But when you have $100 million in assets in parks just for the Parkside, not including these self-independent FARBs, that Phipps has its own FARB now and the cafes have them because they're generating net cash. Which ones have their own FARBs? So we got the Beach Cafe. Well, they're creating their own FARBs because when we have net revenue, over the last few years, we've created ones for the hitting bays, the golf course, the mooring fields, the cafes, and the campground. So we've created these fixed asset replacement budgets so that we can use them towards those amenities. And so as we move along each year, you know, we haven't shifted funds outside of those because at the campground, for example, we cut all of the concrete pads as a budget reduction many, many years ago. And we found out that we actually – so we're putting those back. They're a lot more expensive now concrete than it was when we cut it long, long ago. But we'll return those because the customers want to be on concrete versus gravel that moves around and weeds grow in it and all the issues that we're having with the roadway moving around through these very expensive RVs. That's a – for example. So generally speaking, we program our fixed asset replacement for Parks FARB on life cycle replacement costs of those assets. But we can't exclude all the emergencies that we've been under, like hurricanes, fires, things are unplanned. And what we do is we fund them with FARB, unprogrammed, like the cafe that we had bulldozed down, like the dockside pavilion that just happened, hundreds of thousands of dollars. So we always like to hold back a little bit of money in our FARB for those moments where motors fail, pumps fail. And we've done a really good job of it. And generally speaking, in a given year, we complete roughly 100 projects a year through our FARB program. So you're carrying over, like, $2.6 million, or did I – That's correct, yes, because we were reimbursed in last year in March $1.7 million during fund balance of the money we spent in fiscal year 23. We received that money 14 months later. And then so that $1.7 million that we spent on Hurricane Nicole repairs moved over into this fiscal year, and that's why we're carrying that fund balance. And then we have a new $2.2 million for basically this year allocated for all the other parks. Correct. And so when Nicole hit, for example, we paused every single project in the Parks Department for a year, unless it was a dire emergency. We didn't know the extent of the damages, you know, at Sandsport, at the causeways and the seawalls. So we paused everything until we really understood. So we didn't spend any money because we didn't know how much money we were going to spend. And we didn't, you know, at the direction of administration, we were using our FARB money because it was available as opposed to using reserve dollars. So we used that for – and it was a brush by storm from the Hurricane Nicole, which hit north of us. So we were lucky in that regard. So we had the money to make those repairs, and that's why we're carrying more of a fund balance. But I can assure you that I'm looking at a $4 million list of stuff that has not got done yet, and it really comes down to resources. Our Parks team handled 100% of all repairs. I mean, our superintendents, $1.7 million of working with La Conte Engineering from start to finish to make sure that we did it properly so that we could get reimbursed by FEMA. And they did a fantastic job. The team just – my hat's off to them. But everything else suffered in the balance, meaning products that should have been done, things that should have been replaced. Yeah, I don't love fronting from FARB money for other projects, but – and Park Building Improvement Program, we've got nothing this year. We've got – you've got $40,000. So we moved – And typically it's $535,000 every other year, but $40,000 this year? If you move to the – so we moved those funds to the Jensen Beach Public Restroom and Cafe Project so we can take those funds and capitalize it and reallocate it to that CIP sheet so we can be part of the rebuilding efforts. Now, I will tell you the restroom will cost more than $535,000, but we did move those funds there so that we can start that project sooner than later. When will we get our insurance proceeds for that? That is – it's – I will say that we are negotiating with insurance. We had an exact estimate done that was done to submit to Trico, you know, to challenge their numbers that they gave us. So we're asking them to look at – reconsider. So I don't know what the final amount will be. I'll give you another example. We – another storm that came by, not Nicole, that damaged the mooring field dock. It's a year later on insurance. Sometimes it's quick. Sometimes it's not. We don't have – I don't have a lot – I don't have any control over when they submit to us. We will get it at some point back and replenish those funds. For example, the $275,000 that we're spending right now is improved by insurance that the contractor at the Dockside Pavilion agrees that this is this much cleanup and cleanup and dryout that needs to be done. And so we'll get the money back. Same thing with the other projects, the dock, the cafe. We front it for insurance to get – so we can get it going and cleaned out so we don't have a moldy building. I mean, it could take up to a year. And so – but I'm – I, along with my team, are quite pushy in terms of trying to get it back. As long as it comes back by the time we're ready to build, I'm okay with it. Do you anticipate that the rest – the public restroom facility will exceed the insurance proceeds? It always does. And it – it looks like that Jensen Beach public restroom is at the tune of, like, $4.5 million that – So that's the entire project itself. That is, you know, doing crossovers, sidewalks, replacing the cafe that we demolished a few weeks ago, rebuilding that cafe back in its place. I don't know – we basically have about 9,000 or so square feet of space available. I don't know the cost of what the cafe will come out at because we are an early – an early vertical design. So once we – we just square foot cost estimated at $5.50, but it could be less. That was the high number. I'd rather just put a number out there. So we're – we'll know a lot more by the end of the year. But this is – this is a multi-year funding project for the cafe and the restroom. There is a restroom that's further to the south in Jensen Beach, but there's – it's quite the walk when you have a very popular crossover near a lifeguard stand. So we're anxious to get the project going. So are we serving – just aside, not from the – are we serving the public by having temporary restrooms right now? Not yet. We just demolished it. We're going to – so the Port Salerno Mooran Field building, we have our – we'll call it our Parks Portable Temporary Restroom Trailer that's currently servicing that area until that building is done. It should be done within a few months at most. We're going to see the condition of it, see if we can trailer it over to Jensen Beach to see – because it's high volume. So right now what we're doing, we have a restroom we call the Octagon Restroom. We're servicing it three times a day right now. So to make sure it's clean. And so we'll determine that, you know, probably this summer sometime to see if we can get that thing over there. But I'm really not a fan of portalettes. I'd rather have a restroom trailer with that kind of volume, at least at this moment. Parks, you said earlier in your intro that you were going to try to fund the Parks Boat Ramp, but we're going to actually – we're going to continue funding – Yeah, I meant – Yeah, sorry. Well, the board funds it. Kevin Abate doesn't. But the good news is we're – many of the boat ramps that were – what's up next is Jensen Beach, and we're submitting for a nice grant to match half of it. So this funding source will fund it fully. We're projected to be around a million in our grant. We submitted basically almost half, so if we have that funding. But the way it's working now, we're designing these – we're designing and permitting these boat ramps like we did at Sandsprit. Up front of the design. Yeah, and all the design money was funded by the Florida Boater Improvement Grants for all the boat ramps. So we've got all those funded. Now we're on the permitting side. And the nice thing about what we're doing, Mr. Kerwin has done, is he has submitted these fully funded and permitted plans to the fine, Florida Inland Navigation District. And usually it's a lot more well-received when you have a fully funded program. So we're excited that that Jensen Beach boat ramp will be done. Layton Park is fully funded. That will be going on work this summer. And then we'll fund the next boat ramp and probably a few more after that. Good job on the boat ramps. Thank you. Paving. There's – so we have no park – we have no paving. But subsequent years we have $300,000 for every year. So in 2026 you have no – So part of the same, we are moving those dollars to – reallocating those dollars to capitalize the Jensen Beach project, the cafe and public restroom, so we have the funding to build it without asking for new dollars. You know, because it's going to require sidewalks, et cetera, to move to that cafe and a walkway up to it. So we're just taking the dollars that we have in our CIP and moving it to this project so we can get it funded. That's pretty much what we're doing. Okay, so speaking of moving money in the CIP, you have Parks, Fiber, and Security. There is an $85,000 item for cameras, Wi-Fi, and you've reallocated that to Jensen Beach Public Restroom for this year when I believe, particularly in my district, there's a need for cameras and security. So why are we moving items out of a designated CIP fund to allocate to another project when we do have needs for that particular category? So we currently have, again, as part of capitalizing the cafe project, we know that we're going to need security there, security cameras there. And $85,000 is not going – really what $85,000 does for us, generally speaking, is replace cameras from time to time. And then that's really about it. A full system approach to a building or to a park is pretty costly because you have to run fiber there. You have to have a server in the building, and you have to have the equipment. It's pretty expensive, and it's getting more expensive. So we move those funds there, again, as the effort that we have fiber there. We have some license plate capturing cameras at Jensen Beach right now. But we would really like to have more cameras on top of what we have at Jensen Beach when we build the parks because of the fire. But this park's fiber and security is, I assume, presumed countywide. So you've taken the entire – which is only $85,000 a year. But you've taken it out and put it into Jensen Beach public restroom, and there's not even a public restroom right now. We're working on it. When there's a need in another part of the county, like Lamar Howard Park, that needs a camera today, the community policing officers, they've been saying it. The Neighborhood Advisory Council have been saying it. And they've been – so I don't believe that you should be reallocating the funds that are needed in other parks to fund the public restroom. What I would offer is that our current FARB carryover could help do those things. And we – Mr. Cohen has met with the community policing division. The one that has some carryover we can use for projects like that, correct? I look forward to. So Jensen Beach public restroom, we talked about that. It's a $4.1 million project. And we're going to be determined what we're getting for insurance proceeds? Correct. So we're going through that process now. We've had many insurance adjuster meetings there. And we'll determine what the final amount is. We'll use it to be – if you look on the CIP sheet, you're going to see a million dollars in park fees. So what we plan on doing is the Seaside Cafe, as of today, probably has around $1.2 million in net revenue. We're going to be moving some of that revenue over to fund this project. Along with insurance. But there wasn't a drop-down button for insurance. So we put it under park fees. So it will be a combination. So as we get closer to the project and we look for our funding source, we're going to look at as much revenue that we could stand. So we can keep some revenue for repairs and maintenance at the cafe. And as much insurance as we can so we can get the project fully funded one time. That's the goal. Sounds like a lofty goal. A lot of belt tightening with that project. Yes. A hundred percent. So the – we'll just – I'm familiar with that. Pineapple Park Pickleball Complex. It says master plan. When is the last time that the board approved a parks master plan? So 2016 is our last master plan. We'll be having meetings with each commissioner over the next month. We're starting to schedule the meetings. We've – the master plan is in draft form. To no surprise, you know, pick a ball, trails, something's rice to the top. So we'll meet with each commissioner, meet with the administration, go over the results of that, and then we'll do a fully adopted master plan, a 10-year plan sometime in 2025, this year. And we will adopt that. And, again, it doesn't identify funding sources. It just identifies what the community says it wants. When was that master plan – the community's wants, which is included in the master plan, when was that presented to this board? We haven't presented it yet. We will. Who determined that it gets – this is a new project, right? It's a 12-acre new facility in Jensen Beach. So – and I'm not disputing that there have been – you know, public has asked for pickleball. They have also asked for fire stations. So what – who determined that it goes into the CIP this year when we haven't yet had a master plan that included it? So we do surveys for the community. We get inbound emails probably in the hundreds for pickleball. What we've done in the past for pickleball in general, which is our hottest sport for the last eight or nine years, is we have stolen tennis courts. We've taken tennis courts. We've converted pickleball. And the Jensen Beach community in particular over the last many years has – we've looked at some vacant property like this in Heritage Ridge about planning documents, about the opportunity to do some planning. And I'm being more forthcoming now, and the results that I know that are going to come to the board to talk about a sport that the community wants, and especially in the Jensen Beach area where we really haven't done anything for pickleball. It was probably about 12 years ago. So I took the opportunity to talk to – have this on the CIP sheet, fully knowing that this year we'll bring the master plan to the board to talk about all the wants and needs. And so really it's more of a planning document to have the discussion about the things that are going to be coming up. And there's a lot in the master plan, things that are going to be surfacing, indoor space, trails, shade and playgrounds, all these things that we do on a constant basis. Did all those other things that you talked about, indoor spaces, did they make up a sheet in the book? I did not do that, no, ma'am. So I guess then my question is because I have a lot of people that want new outdoor baseball and softball fields, and the Tourism Development Council talks about softball fields and how much revenue they bring into the county. So who determines that this makes it in the book but that doesn't when we haven't received the new master plan? I will take full responsibility for bringing the CIP forward as a planning document for discussion about something for the last decade that is something that I've talked about with many board members in the last 10 years to talk about something that is going to be a need that I know is coming. I think this has to be removed until we actually receive the master plan and we find out. And I completely support the idea of building additional pickleball courts. But I think we need to see the county in a totality to see what that master plan is going to look like. So then we can make an educated decision up here on what things we might fund, what things we might tighten our belt upon, and how we're going to move forward. And I like that you said wants versus needs because I think this year it sounds like we're going to need to have a very serious conversation about wants versus needs. Absolutely. That's all. Is there a motion to approve parks? Mentioned. I'm going to see a master plan. I second. There's a motion and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Opposed? That motion passes 4-1 with Commissioner Hetherington dissenting. Thank you. Thank you. Next starts public works section. We're starting first with Coastal with Mr. Jim Gorton and Mr. George Zama. Nice. I like the little intro. Very nice. Is that nice? Yeah. That was good. Good evening, board. Jim Gorton, public works director. With me, I have George Zama, our deputy director. We have the next five sections, so we're going to take turns. With these sections. Very well. So with Coastal, we kept a constant level funding for the inlet management, shoreline nourishment, artificial reef, and then the BAFTA beach and salvage point restoration. The additional ad valorem of $100,000 is to the MacArthur Dune Restoration Project, which is a project that's largely funded by DEP grants and an MSBU on the island, and this is just our match money to go with that project. Some recently completed projects are on the screen there. We just finished the Twin Rivers Living Shoreline Project. Our artificial reef staging area right near the Arundel Shop Bridge has also been completed. We did the nourishment project on BAFTA beach and the St. Lucie Inlet dredging this year. Projects that are underway, Indian Riverside Park Living Shoreline. That one's well underway. If anyone has been out there, I would suggest you take a look at it because that's going to transform the shoreline protection at that island, at that park. It's critically eroded right now, and this Living Shoreline is going to protect it. And then we also have the Hutchison Island Shore Protection Project, the Four Mile Beach Project that's going to be in winter 2025. Upcoming projects are another dredge project in the Inlet in 27. We have the Dune Restoration Project, also programmed for winter of 27, and then the South Jetty, which is a joint project with the Army Corps, which will be in summer of 27. With that, are there any questions on the coastal element? I just have a comment. This funding on MacArthur Boulevard Dune Restoration is astonishing. Good job. No admonium. And it's a big project. Is it necessary? Do we need to tentatively approve these one by one or what? Okay. Is there a motion to approve? So moved. Second. There's a motion and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? That motion passes unanimously. Ecosystem. Second. Clicker work, or you could just do it. I'll move it for you. All right. On to our ecosystems section. We've, staff has done a great job of leveraging a lot of funding for projects over the years, and that will continue. So there will be a constant level of funding for stormwater treatment area, water quality improvement projects, as well as the implementation of our BMAP and TMDL compliance projects. As most of you are aware, we have met our thresholds for nutrient reduction, but, you know, we set the bar high, and staff is continuing to implement water quality projects to stay well ahead of the curve. We also have constant level of funding for environmentally sensitive land management and public access, and those funds will increase with the addition of properties that we acquire. So we will receive additional, up to 5% of the acquisition costs for improvements to the properties we acquire. Some of the completed projects, East Fork Creek Phase 1 has been completed. They're in Hope Sound off of US 1. Hawks Hammock Preserve Access has also been completed. There is also 16 acres of seagrass that has been planted. And Jensen Beach Impoundment Restoration has been underway. What we're currently working on is East Fork Creek Phase 2. It's that linear lake that's the second addition to the project, and we should be completing that later this year or early next year. We're also going to continue seagrass planting. Another 20 acres is our goal. We also have estuary poor water and water quality analysis that we're continuing. And as I mentioned, our Martin County Forever Land Acquisition Program. We had our first Environmentally Land Acquisition Committee meeting last week, so we have officially begun the process. Some of our upcoming projects, we've been working on design and modeling for the Cypress Creek floodplain we're. We've received concurrence from the district, so we're positively moving forward. So we're going to be finalizing design and hopefully moving into construction. Manatee Pocket Southwest Prong is a little mini STA in Port Salerno that we're also wrapping up design and will be going to construction. And Fiddler Crab Access is a kayak launch across from Jensen Beach. Um, so for access of, uh, to the estuary and Golden Gate North Outfall project, uh, will also begin soon. And that wraps up ecosystems section. We're happy to answer any questions. Questions about ecosystems. I have a comment and that is that this is my favorite CIP sheet ever. Martin County Forever. 20 million bucks a year. Best CIP sheet ever. It is. Is there a motion to approve? I'll move, um, staff's recommendation for approval. Actually, just, I'll move approval. Second. There's a motion and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? That motion passes unanimously. Okay. This is the, uh, public transportation sheet for, um, our transit system. So we have a constant level of funding for the, uh, fleet replacement budget. And then, uh, as well for the facility installation and maintenance. This is the only sheet that there is. Largely it goes to, you know, the bus is kind of like Chief, uh, Chan Chuli would mention about, um, fire trucks. Buses also have gone up in cost. So that we have to do multiple years of funding to, um, fund the replacement. Uh, this sheet is, uh, this program in capital projects is funded with 86% grants, and then the rest are local funds. Any comments? Commissioner Hetherington. I, I think that number 150, I, I think we're going to need to have a conversation in the future on how to retool this sheet as we start having the conversation to revamp public transportation. Uh, I get it. It's not funded and it's in there, but we're going to have to have a conversation in the future on what's the next vision. Stay tuned. We just, uh, awarded a new, uh, contract and we're, um, very engaged and excited with some, um, proposed improvement. So once we get, uh, that coalesces a little bit more, we're going to schedule meetings with each of the commissioners to talk about the, you know, what, what we see and then get your input on what you guys would like to see. Okay. I'll, I'll move, uh, approval and I look forward to that conversation. There's a motion. Second. And a second. All in favor. Aye. Opposed. That motion passes unanimously. Okay. Roads. Um, what stayed the same? We'll start with what stayed the same. So we've had a constant level of funding for our traffic safety measures and traffic signal maintenance, as well as intersection improvements. So our traffic program has, has stayed level. We also stayed level for our bridge maintenance program, uh, which we set aside, um, money every year for, for our, for our bridge maintenance improvements. We're trying to get to a systematic approach for our bridge, bridge maintenance. Um, and we also stayed level with our heavy equipment replacement purchases. Um, what's changed as you could see, it is a big jump. Um, we've, uh, requested an increase in one for $1 million in ad valorem and 500,000 in road, MSTU, for our roadway resurfacing program, uh, which also includes neighborhood restoration projects. Um, our goal is to really focus on resurfacing itself and roadway improvements. Um, as you're aware, road, road costs have, have gone up substantially, uh, in the past four years. Uh, we used, we were four years ago, we were just standard milling and resurfacing roads for 125,000 and now it's up to 190 for a mile. So, um, uh, and, and that doesn't even call, uh, account for the drainage costs. So in our, in our neighborhood restoration projects, there, there are multi-phase projects and, uh, we set budgets and, and, uh, we try to set a five-year work plan for our neighborhood projects. And we also work with utilities with that phasing. And, um, over time, these increased costs have really, um, uh, uh, the phase one costs and drainage has, has taken away from the resurfacing on the back end. So, um, in addition to that, we also have, uh, what I refer to as one-off projects. They're projects that are within our resurfacing program that aren't identified in a, in an individual sheet. Um, those projects we need to provide funding for. And so that's where our increase is, uh, one, one example is 84th Avenue in, uh, Palm City, um, which has, um, been susceptible to, uh, increased volume of, of heavy truck traffic. And, uh, I don't know if any of you have seen a pavement deterioration curve, but there's a, there's a tipping point where the, the pavement condition will, will really drop off. And, uh, and we've really hit that point, uh, a lot sooner than I anticipated. And, um, it's, you know, we try to do our best with these higher volume roads to get, uh, in a, in a Florida Department of Transportation grant program. Uh, but it gets to be difficult whenever you have, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, basically one or two roads a year that we could program. And, um, so some of these roads, um, to, to these industrial and commercial areas, uh, have fallen off at a rapid pace. Um, we also have, uh, uh, an increase of 300,000 in ad valorem, as well as, uh, 300,000 in road MSTU for rail safety improvements. And this, this really derives off of the, um, the presentation for, um, uh, the rail presentation for the, the crossings, the, um, the quiet zones. Thank you, Don. Um, so we identified, we also, we recently applied for a grant, um, uh, with the, with the board's permission, um, for intersection improvements, uh, five intersections in Hope Sound. It was about $3 million. So we programmed 600,000, uh, per year, uh, to move down the line. So the, the goal is to, to move, uh, and, you know, perform improvements for one crossing a year. You can take all of the district five, uh, crossing improvement cash and use it elsewhere. I, I, I donated it all back. Remember that one. I need some cash later. We'll have one crossing. Well, just to highlight some of our, uh, recently completed CIP projects, uh, MacArthur Boulevard has, has recently been completed. That was a multi-phase project. We installed a, uh, uh, a wall under the dune. Uh, the wall will hold the line for erosion and we raised the road two and a half feet, uh, uh, uh, next to bathtub beach. Uh, so kudos to staff for facilitating that project. It's, it's been a long time coming and, um, you know, that's, uh, that was, that was a resilience project before that, that was programmed before resilience. You know, I became cool. You know, that's, that's, that's been my motto. Martin County has been, been, been performing resilience before it became a thing. So, um, kudos to staff on that. Uh, East Fork Creek box culvert. We're continuing, uh, our, our bridge. This is part of our bridge maintenance program. Unfortunately, a lot of the highest cost of bridge maintenance is replacement. But, um, thanks to the board for, for dedicating funding. We've, we've really, um, uh, come a long way with, uh, preserving our, our bridge assets. And, um, we have one more bridge project, um, which we'll be performing this year. And we are, we are going to be sitting in a very good position with, with well over 95% of our bridges in excellent condition. So, or, our, our high sufficiency rating, uh, Golden Gate neighborhood restoration. We recently completed the, the resurfacing of that project. Uh, so all three phases are, are done. Uh, it's a totally revitalized neighborhood. The, the roads, uh, did cost a little more than we expected, but, um, uh, we had to perform a lot of reclamation in, in, in that area. But, uh, we hope those roads will, will last for, for well over 25 years. Um, beyond a normal life cycle, uh, Jensen Beach Boulevard resurfacing and Indian Street resurfacing. Both of those were. There's a question from. Just, just a comment. I wanted to compliment, uh, how you have worked together with utilities to collaborate for these neighborhood restoration projects and time them so that the neighborhoods are least impacted and we're getting the most efficient bang for a buck. So, um, compliments to both you and, uh, public work, public works and utilities. Thank you. Yeah. Uh, yeah. Staff has done an excellent job. We meet quarterly. Um, we want to work together and, uh, we actually are going to be bidding, uh, it's, oh, it's on this next slide. Port Salerno, uh, well, ports. No, it's not on this one, but, uh, we're going to be doing Port Salerno, uh, neighborhood projects, uh, together. Uh, it's going to be a drainage and sewer single phase projects. So, um, we're looking forward to that. Some, some of the other current CIP projects, uh, we'll be, we're wrapping up Southwest Waterside way. That is the road to our 30 acre operations facility property. So we'll be completing that soon and we'll talk more about the facility itself. Um, County line road bridge replacement. We received our $3 million, uh, federal appropriation through HUD. Um, so we'll be moving forward with that. That's $6 million contributed to the count, uh, to, uh, the, to the project of, of three of which is state appropriation and another three federal appropriations. So, um, uh, I commend the staff for, for leveraging more grant money to complete county projects. Kudos. Yep. Uh, Port Salerno Peninsula neighborhood. We just started with that. That's another, uh, project where we're teaming up with utilities. Public works is installing the low pressure force main along with the drainage. So it's a single phase underground project and afterwards we'll be paving the neighborhood as well. Rocky point neighborhood restoration. This is, uh, uh, the first of, of, uh, multiple phases to about 25% of the neighborhood already has water and sewer. So public works is going to those areas now and we'll be performing drainage and resurfacing, uh, this year, uh, Southeast Avalon drive sidewalk. That's a, uh, transportation alternatives project. It's, uh, it's administered to the local agency program grant, uh, lap grant. Um, so these are projects that are three-year work plan projects and, uh, we, we execute these projects for around, uh, anywhere from five to nine cents on the dollar. So, uh, we're able to add, uh, pedestrian pathways, um, within our, uh, county facilities. And then, uh, Fox Brown Road, we just received bids and we'll be, begin resurfacing that project in the very near future. Upcoming CIP projects, Old Palm City North neighborhood restoration. This has been in the CIP for a little while. I am getting the look from Commissioner Campy. It's, it's, it's been delayed, but with reason. So we originally identified this project as a normal, uh, what we'd call a typical neighborhood restoration project where we replace all the metal pipes and just simply resurface the projects or the, the roadways. Um, but this project is very, uh, vulnerable, um, it's a low-lying area susceptible to sea level rise. And so we, uh, applied for a Brazilian Florida grant. We received 3.2 million for design and construction, and, um, we will be looking to, uh, perform this project, uh, for about 50 cents on the dollar. So this is really our, uh, our first neighborhood, neighborhood restoration project, uh, for drainage and, and, and paving that we actually received a grant for. Kudos. Um, county, uh, Bridge Road, Basco Bridge. We've, um, there's two bridges in the county that are scour, that are labeled scour critical by the Florida Department of Transportation. Um, Bridge Road, Basco Bridge, and Arundel Bridge are two of them. They're both in the FDOT work plan, uh, for SCOP, small county outreach programs. So these are projects we'll be, we'll be, um, uh, adding riprap around the pilings to protect from scour. And after storms, uh, DOT requires us, after a hurricane comes through, we have to perform a scour analysis and survey. Um, this will mitigate us from having to perform, um, those surveys. Um, Island Way West Bridge replacement. This is, uh, another small bridge in South County that we are going to be starting design. And we're also going to be seeking appropriations and grant funding to replace. Um, County Road, oh, Dixie Highway, Cove to Jefferson. We discussed that this morning. We'll be starting that design here soon. And, uh, we also will be starting Southeast Washington Street sidewalk in the near future. That's another, um, uh, TAP project. And that wraps it up. We're happy to answer any questions you may have. Questions. No questions. I will gladly, um, move tentative approval. Second. There's a motion and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? That motion passes unanimously. Okay. This is the last of the five from Public Works. This is for stormwater management. Uh, we've kept a constant level of funding for our stormwater management and flood control. And largely we use this funding to leverage our, our, um, local funds with grant funds. So, uh, we try to find matching funds to be able to construct projects. Uh, we did ask for $600,000 for stormwater infrastructure. Uh, it's going to a project in Palm City for some, uh, Bessie Creek improvements. Uh, in Bessie Creek, uh, we've done a study and it's determined that some flooding that occurs in the Bessie Creek basin is related to the crossings that exist in Martin Downs. So, this year we have an appropriation, state appropriation, to do some design for those bridges. And, and this funding is to carry that forward into the, the future years to, to try to pull off, uh, each, each one of those, uh, three phases. So, um, once we get those three crossings completed, we won't see the flashy flooding that occurs in the, in the Bessie Creek basin. So, completed CIP under stormwater was the Palm City Farms stormwater modeling, which we just, just talked about the Bessie Creek, um, analysis is a part of that, that model. That's what the number one recommendation from that model is to improve the drainage in, in Bessie Creek. And, and I just want to point out that the, the, that improvement actually is not in Palm City Farms. The improvement is in Palm City proper. It's all interconnected. Yes. Yep. Uh, our current project, Southwest, Southwest Mockingbird Lane, that is a resilience project. It's at elevation one and a half. And, uh, that roadway floods more than 30 days out of the year when we have, uh, king tides and, and lunar tides. Uh, so during high tides, you see the, the photo there, that's what the roadway looks like. It is passable, but it's, it's not ideal. So this project is to raise the roadway. We've got two grants for that one, an HMGP grant through FEMA, and then a resilient Florida grant. And then the homeowners that live along that road will also contribute to the project. The other one is, uh, something that is also related to sea level rise, which is backflow preventers. So on, on the lower roadways, sometimes we can install backflow black, uh, backflows in the pipes themselves. And that keeps the water during those high tides from backing up and flooding the roadway. So, um, Pine Tree Lane is one of those. That one's in Palm City. Um, but so too is, uh, old Palm City backflow preventers. That's another project that's upcoming is to address some of the backflow that occurs in that neighborhood as well. And then, um, we also have some stormwater enhancements that are, that are going to be done. Uh, that one is an STA for the Danforth Creek. And, um, we, we need to adjust the weir to improve peak flows through that weir. So any questions on stormwater? Move approval. Second. There's a motion in the second to all those in favor. I oppose that motion passes unanimously. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Solid waste. Take the rest of the day off you guys. Go home early. Make sure you introduce yourself. Yep. Good afternoon, commissioners. Uh, Jeremy Covey, deputy director of utilities and solid waste department for the record. Um, we'll start out with solid wastes. Um, we're currently asking for $2.1 million in fees for fiscal year 26. These are solid waste fees. Uh, no ad valorem. Um, the impact is a negative $648,000 from the previous year. Um, what stayed the same? Um, renewal and replacement projects are still, such as roadways, capital improvements, and scale replacements are still on the CIP. Um, we also continue to fund replacement of equipment used on site. Um, a little fun fact, we have over 50 pieces of equipment on site, um, from tractors to gators to vehicles. So, a little fun fact. Um, what changed? Um, in fiscal year 26, um, we actually include the construction of the fuel island proposed. Um, in fiscal year 25, the fuel island, uh, design money was anticipated. Um, also fiscal year 25 included the one-time water and sewer installation, um, which should be wrapping up hopefully this month or early to the next month. Um, and an additional project in the actual CIP now is for $200,000 for a feasibility study for the, uh, South County yard processing facility in Hope Sound. Um, going into the completed projects, um, we have roughly about 500 plus or minus vehicles per day that come in and out of the site. Um, so paving is a constant need out there. So, as you can see at the upper left picture is, uh, the transfer station roadway resurfacing we just recently completed. Um, to the right, the photo there is, uh, rehabilitation of the transfer station restrooms. Got a nice little photo showing it there. Um, and then also recently completed is the covered storage shed for all that equipment I mentioned. Um, the pole barn on the bottom. Bottom right. Current CIP projects for solid waste is the design of the transfer station fuel island. Um, currently we have three tanks there, uh, off-road diesel, on-road diesel, and also, uh, gasoline. Um, that was installed back in the 1990s, early 1990s. We're going to replace those single-walled tanks with dual-walled tanks and get rid of that, uh, containment area. Um, the upper right shows the solid waste administration building, which is currently under construction. Um, one nice feature about this administration building is currently the customers have to use a port-a-let on-site or multiple port-a-lets on-site. Um, so this will actually have a bathroom built into the facility. Um, there you go. Literally and figuratively. Um, and we're also going to do rehab to the hazardous waste storage shed is on the photo on the bottom right, or upper right. Um, and then also the water and sewer line installation is expected hopefully early this month or early next month. Upcoming projects, um, right now roughly 60-plus percent of our budget is, uh, equipment replacement. So that's the largest chunk of the $14 million over the 10 years. Um, the largest piece this year is a new excavator in fiscal year 26. We also have a covered area for employee parking and equipment. It just says part employee parking there, but this is kind of located right where all the birds are, and, and there's a massive amount of, uh, debris falling from the birds. So you got to say it the right way. And then also the construction of that fuel island that I talked about. That's it for us all, please. Questions for Mr. Covey. Is there a motion to approve? So moved. Second. There's a motion and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? That motion passes unanimously. Home stretch. And here we are. Last one. Utilities. The last one and the big one here. So, uh, we're currently asking for, uh, $60 million in funding for the, uh, uh, uh, just out right there, huh? For the utility side, which is obviously an impact of $37 million over the previous year. And we'll get into the reason of that in a minute. Um, what stayed the same? Well, we're currently focused on the septic sewer program. Um, you'll notice in here the, the four large vacuum program, uh, projects, Port Salerno, Palm City, Rocky Point are not in here. That's because they were funded in previous years. So that's why you do not see them in actual CIP. Um, we still fund, obviously, the septic sewer, ongoing R&R projects, rehab and rehabilitation projects. Um, we also have specific rehabilitation projects and also the water and wastewater treatment plant projects for, uh, concurrency. Now, the main driver of this $60 million, where pretty much the $37 million impact is two projects to increase the capacity at both our North Plant and Tropical by 5.1 million gallons per day. Um, the largest project is Tropical Farms, which is $40 million in there. Um, what changed? We added an additional project in the CIP for the Martin Downs chlorination facility. Um, recently we put a potable re, uh, re-pump station at Martin Downs, but are running into issues keeping chlorine residual in the system with that online. So this helps keep the, uh, minimum of, uh, 0.6, uh, milligrams per liter in the system. And then we also added the North Water Treatment Plant filter media replacement projects. Um, the media and associate equipment is roughly 20 plus years old at this point and is in need of rehabilitation. All right, um, current CIP projects, uh, the Tropical Farms, or completed CIP projects, the Tropical Farms Water Treatment Plant CO2 project, which added about 0.7 million gallons per day of per minute capacity, um, was recently put, put online. The Martin Downs potable re-pump station I just mentioned to help with pressures in Palm City, mostly western Palm City, um, was recently put online last month. Gaines Avenue Harbor Estates water main extensions to serve roughly 150 people. 150 homes was put online in December. Um, the Rio East Crossroads Hill, small diameter force mains, which was roughly 332 properties, was put online back in August of 2024. Um, we did, uh, the South Sewell's Point phase three water main relocations in conjunction with, uh, Sewell's Point. And over the past year, we've installed 175 grinders. And also, we've also done our, uh, lift stations, collection systems, water meters, chemical tank placements, the rehab programs. Uh, current projects, Evergreen Windstone started construction in March, which is roughly 400 homes. And hopefully we're going to finish that one late this year, early 2026. Um, proposed to start in May is the Beau Ravage water mains and forest mains. It's roughly 259 homes. Uh, South Sewell's Point phase two water main relocations will start in May or June of this year. The Rio force main extensions just wrapped up to three streets, Banyan, Exor, and Orange, which is roughly 40 homes. The North water treatment plant high service pump improvements is currently under construction to add two VFDs at the North plant. The Dixie Park generator replacement, which is replacing our 400 KW generator with a thousand KW generator is currently under construction. Um, a third pump at the Martin Downs wastewater treatment plant, or wastewater repump station, uh, is anticipated to be constructed, hopefully in the next couple of months. Uh, now the big driver, the tropical farms water treatment plant expansion, which will add roughly 4.6 million gallons a day in capacity is currently in design. Um, the estimated construction cost for that is $40 million. And, uh, in addition to that, we have currently in design the North water treatment plant up rating, which is additional 0.5 million gallons per day. So a total of 5.1 between the two projects in design. And also our rehabilitation projects, such as lift stations, hydrants, meters, that kind of stuff, the ongoing projects. And then upcoming CIP projects is actually construction of the, uh, water treatment plant expansion and the operating that I talked about. Um, the new project, the Martin Downs chlorination facility, uh, replacement of 156 vessels and membranes at the North water treatment plant, which is done every eight to 10 years. Uh, parallel forest pains and Palm city to handle additional flows from new field and also old Palm city when it comes online, uh, advanced wastewater treatment plant pilot to begin to look at the feasibility of treating, uh, wastewater at high level disinfection standards to hopefully use that as a groundwater recharge. And then also our additional lift stations, fire hydrants, meters, the rehab projects. Questions. Motion to, oh, there are questions. Commissioner Hetherington. On the, the water main replacements, do we have people that are in this day and age, we're still reading individual meters? Yes. We still manually read, I think roughly about half of our meters at this point. Yes. How many full-time equivalents? We have six, six meter readers. That's not an easy job. No. Any further questions? Is there a motion to approve? Yes. I would make a motion to tentatively approve the utilities CIP sheets. Second. There's a motion and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Opposed? That motion passes unanimously. Thanks, Mr. Covey. Thank you. That brings us to the end. We don't need, are we, we need to do anything? Nope. Intentatively approved all sections. Okay. Well, in that case, Mr. Donaldson. Your mic isn't on. Just as utilities are leaving, but I think they were also an example where you've asked many questions about how we do farms. And if you look at our utilities department, it's very similar in their detailed analysis of what they own and operate in terms of rehabilitation costs and their ability to plan ahead so that we're fortunate that we have a utility that is ahead of the curve in terms of their maintenance and their future capacity needs, where a number of communities, if you, when you talk to members at Florida Association of Counties, where they're struggling with a utility that's behind in maintenance or behind in capacity, and the numbers that they have to deal with are extraordinary. I mean, the Charlotte County, they were talking, they were trying to do an $80 million upgrade to meet their capacity needs, and the bids came in at $120 million, and they're trying to scramble, figure out how they continue to find service and deal with those. So I just wanted to point that at our departments over the years, and it really started with the board hammering on maintaining what we own and dealing with our, it took us a long time to build up some of these farms, as you know. But as a part of that progression is, was a constant questioning on the details of how we came up with the numbers. And I think that has done this county well in terms of all our departments identifying down to the unit of what, when that air conditioner has to be replaced or when that pavement needs to be replaced or that bridge or that, or that building painting, all those different things really are reflected in this budget throughout. So I just wanted to thank you all for going through that and providing the staff with the tools they need to at least keep up with what we own. Thanks. Do you have the over-under for 7 p.m.? Is that what you do? Yes. 7.04 is what my number was, so I'll give you a few more minutes. Tell us something else about Charlotte. The last thing, though, the last thing, if you do have to give me some direction on, is are we going to keep the meeting in June, or do you all want to head to the, and maybe you can get back to me before the next meeting we'll make the announcement. We'll keep the meeting. You can go. You can come. All right. With that, I'm done. People need to see us. Shelby, thank you. Terrific job. Thank you. What about that other person? What's her name again? What's her name? Ms. Murley, department heads. Any commissioner comments? Nope. Saturday, music in the park in Palm City, 6 to 9. We are adjourned. Free giveaway. Time to stand. Time to stand.