Board of County Commissioners on 2025-08-26 9:00 AM - Aug 26, 2025

meeting us this morning. We're going to begin with a moment of silence followed by the Pledge of Allegiance, which is going to be led by Sergeant Joe Angelico, who is a U.S. Air Force veteran. And after he leads us in the Pledge of Allegiance, he's going to tell us a bit about his career. Thank you. Thank you. Please come to the podium. 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. Good morning and welcome. Good morning. Thank you for having me. So for those that don't know me, my name is Joe Angelico. I'm currently a sergeant with the Martin County Sheriff's Office in our community policing unit. And my history goes back to getting out of the, I graduated high school in 76 and I went into the United States Air Force in 77. So I've been around a minute. And I served four years in the Air Force. I was honorably discharged as a sergeant. While in the Air Force, I was a law enforcement canine handler. Go figure. So I like the field. I stayed with it all through. I got married when I was in the service. I'm still married to the same woman. We got married in 78. So you can do that. Don't hold me to how many years that is, but it's a lot. We have four children. I have 12 grandchildren. And then on the professional side of it, I've been in public service ever since, 77. Don't do the math on that either, but it's been a minute. I worked with the Sheriff's Office in Nassau County, Long Island in New York for a little while. And then I came down here and this is my 36th year with the Martin County Sheriff's Office. I love it. And public service has always been my calling. And I appreciate all you do for public service, obviously, because we got to get involved. And the people here getting involved is the way to go. That's why I love community policing. I love the whole genre of public service. And I hope to be around for a while longer. I'm not ready for retirement. Thank you. Let's see. We have two presets today. We have public comment at 9.05 and we have public comment again at 5.05, which I don't believe we will make today. I think we'll have our public comment at the end of the meeting much earlier than 5.05. Is there a motion to approve the agenda, not including the consent agenda? I will move approval of the agenda. Second. There's a motion and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? That motion passes unanimously. We now have two proclamations. The first is a proclamation declaring Faith Foundation Day. Good morning, Commissioners. The Faith Foundation is a student-led, faith-rooted, non-profit organization committed to inspiring personal, spiritual, and communal growth in Martin County and beyond. These student-led efforts reflect the values of kindness, hope, generosity, and responsibility, uniting young people from diverse backgrounds around a shared mission of faith and community care. The foundation exemplifies the strength of youth vision, volunteerism, and collaboration, inspiring a culture of purpose and compassion across Martin County. The board recognizes Faith Foundation Day in Martin County in honor of the organization's devotion to youth-led service, spiritual empowerment, and transformative local impact. And I don't believe they were able to make it. I do not see Ava Lopez here, so we will accept on her behalf. Okay. And our acclamation. The mission of junior achievement of the Palm Beaches and Treasure Coast is to inspire and prepare young people for success through transformative programs that promote financial literacy, work and career readiness, and entrepreneurship. Junior achievement equips students with essential skills for today's world of work, such as communication, problem solving, financial decision making, and professionalism, while introducing them to a wide range of career pathways. The board affirms its commitment to youth education and workforce development and recognizes August 14th as National Financial Awareness Day in Martin County. And here to accept, we have Erica Henn, who is the Vice President of Education for Junior Achievement of the Palm Beaches and the Treasure Coast. Good morning, Martin County Commissioners. On behalf of Junior Achievement of the Palm Beaches and Treasure Coast, I want to thank you for this proclamation in recognizing National Financial Literacy Day and the vital work being done to prepare our students for success. We are grateful for your continued support of our schools, community partners, and volunteers who help bring opportunities like this to life. Junior Achievement's mission is simple but powerful, to inspire and prepare young people to succeed in a global economy. Here in Martin County, we are proud to say that every elementary and middle school student now has access to JA career readiness programs, including JA career exploration fairs and JA inspire middle school career fair. This expansion ensures that every child has the chance to discover their potential and envision a brighter future. Through hands-on experience and connections with local business professionals, students learn how their education links to real-world opportunities. These events spark curiosity, build confidence, and give students a clear picture of career pathways and what is available to them. This proclamation celebrates more than a single program. It celebrates a community-wide commitment. Together with our educators, civic leaders, and business partners, we are shaping a stronger future workforce and a more resilient community. Thank you. Thank you. Oh, wow. Does she have her own channel? I think so. I have no idea what it is. She does the pictures. I'm glad I have simple boys. Yeah, it would be so much easier. Dr. Hetherington. Oh, that was for the agenda. Okay. I have two requests to speak. No, I have several requests to speak forms. The first is Dottie Lancey, followed by Terry Kogel. Good morning. Good morning. Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you this morning. My name is Dottie Lancey. I don't know if I said that, but I live on Hutchinson Island. I've lived there for quite a long period of time. But I've come here this morning because of an important issue that is facing our community. This issue appears to be political, but I think it is really, in reality, much more than a moral issue than a political one. This past Sunday, our pastor at church made us aware of what is happening right here in Martin County. This past week, 30 Hispanic families from our own congregation alone have been affected by the current government policies. Family members have been taken away without warning, and those left behind have no idea where their loved ones are or what will happen to them or if they will ever even see them again. All these individuals were contributing members of our society. They had families that they were supporting. They were regular churchgoers who were just trying to live their lives in peace and hope and do the best that they could for their families. They were hardworking volunteers at our church. Many were living here for years, and they were very grateful to God and the United States for being given the opportunity to live in this wonderful country. Certainly, our country must have laws regarding immigration, but there are moral ways to go about this, and there are senseless ones. There are compassionate ways to address this issue, and there are mean and cruel ways. There surely are individuals here illegally who might deserve to be detained and even deported. But they are the criminal element, not my law-abiding neighbors who deserve to enjoy the rights that our Constitution gives to everyone who lives here. This past week, four pastors from different congregations spoke with the Martin County Sheriff about the situation. They were cordially received and listened to. However, at the end of the meeting, they were told, and I quote, perhaps this was God's will. I don't know what God they were talking about, but the God that I taught, that I was taught to respect, was one who said, love thy neighbor. There is an immigration facility right here in Stewart. Because of that, our residents are being singled out with greater frequency than in most areas. I come here today to make you aware of this issue. I hope that some solution can be found to correct it. That's why I came. I leave it to you. Thank you. Terry Kogel is next, followed by Tom Pine. Good morning, Commissioners. Good morning. Morning. I'm not going to go through my usual three-minute speech on evening meetings. This time, I'm going to ask you, I have also, what I'd like to say is, I have sent two emails requesting an agenda to the Commissioners. Only one Commissioner has responded to me to that. The other thing is, is I would like to have it voted on today. Actually, I would actually have a motion to be voted on today regarding the evening meals. I mean, evening meals. I'm doing well. Evening meetings. You voted on Brightline in one day and gave away $45 million of the taxpayers. I think the taxpayers have a right to know what is going on in this community. So I do thank you, and I would like to have a motion to have this thing voted today. Thank you. Thank you. Tom Pine is next, followed by Derek Powell. Good morning, Commissioners. My name is Tom Pine. I've been a resident of Martin County for over 50 years. Today in the consent agenda, this Commission will approve $16,424,705.89, which was spent between July 28th and August 10th of 2025, without identifying the payees or the reason for the payments. Last year, the chairman of the county commission at the time had the county administrator give the definition of the consent agenda at a county commission meeting. It was quite lengthy and hard for me to follow along. I googled the definition of the consent agenda again yesterday, just to make sure it hasn't been upgraded to Martin County's version. The definition of the consent agenda is a tool to streamline meeting procedures by collecting routine, non-controversial items into a group, where all by are passed in a single motion and vote. What should not be in the consent agenda? Topics that have not been discussed by the board in the past. These are both definitions from Google. It's this backdoor operation that this county government has operated for over two decades that has added a lot of the growing trend to the second gilded age in Martin County. Stewart News 2011 editorial board policy is clear. The Martin County commission should use its meetings consent agenda only for items that are routine in nature, implement a prior approved board plan program or directive and or require no separate discussion by the board before a vote is taken. So states the county rules and procedures. Policy is one thing. Adhering to policy is another. The following week, a county commissioner answered the criticism, noting nothing could be further from the truth. The public right to know is paramount. Then county officials should be very judicial in their use of the consent agenda. The fail safe, the commissioner continued, is that any one of the commissioners can pull items from the consent agenda. That's not good enough. The only true fail safe is adhering to the county policy and limiting consent items to those designated to the rules of procedures. To do otherwise fuels perception. Commissioners and the county administration do indeed have something to hide. If county officials are going to err, they should err on the side of transparency. Democracy dies in darkness. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Our next speaker is Derek Powell. And Mr. Powell is the last request to speak form that I have. If you'd like to address us, please fill out a form and get it to the bailiff. Good morning, Commissioner. Good morning. My name is Derek Powell, a resident of Martin County over at Cove Road. And I'm very nervous. So the precursor, I was here in regards to the Pepperwood development and prior to the approval. So here I am now living through my concerns. I have something prepared. My name is Derek Powell and I live at 1155 Southeast Cove Road. I'm here today because my trust and the trust of many of my neighbors and this board's willingness to act for the good of the residents is wearing dangerously thin. For years, we've raised the same concerns. Our roadways are deteriorating, traffic is worsening, and the drainage problems are left unaddressed until they become costly crisis. At my own property, drainage has become a major issue. When new developments are approved, the land is raised, and all that water has to go somewhere. Right now, it's flowing into the yards and homes of the people who have lived here for years. Flooding, pooling, and long-term drainage are being pushed onto us, your existing residents, while developers move forward without meaningful accountability. This is not just an inconvenience, it's a threat to our homes, our property values, and the quality of our life. Drainage is a health and safety issue, and yet our repeated requests for solutions have been ignored. At the same time, the county has imposed burdens on homeowners like myself, such as requiring me to build a costly concrete driveway in the right-of-way that benefits the county's design more than the resident. Meanwhile, developers aren't held to comparable requirements that would protect us. If the county can mandate that kind of expense for a single homeowner, it should also be able to require developers to install proper drainage, buffers, hedges, or tree lines to protect the privacy and safety of the people already living here. And let's be honest, this is part of why the public doesn't trust you. We see developments pushed through despite overwhelming opposition. We see infrastructure improvements promised but never delivered. We see hearings that feel like procedural checkboxes instead of genuine opportunities for the public's input. Trust is earned by action, not by glossy plans or vague assurances. And right now, many in our community believe the interests of large developers outweigh the needs of the taxpayers who elected you. I'm not here to just complain. I'm here to ask respectfully but firmly for action. Make infrastructure and roadway improvements a genuine priority, not just in plans but in the budget and real work on the ground. Address drainage issues proactively before residents are forced to deal with preventable flooding and damage, property damage. You still have time. Good. It's all, it's very short. Hold developers accountable. Require them to put in drainage systems and adequate buffers to perfect the people living next door. As the woman stated early, love thy neighbor. Restore trust through meaningful public engagement. Listen, respond and adjust plans based on resident input. Thank you. Mr. Powell, Mr. Powell, is it is it just pepperwood that's negatively impacting your residents? My residents, yes, but my life, no. Okay. Well, these developments are not allowed to negatively impact your property. So we will make sure that they are not doing anything that's that's causing any damage to your private. It'd be great to get that in writing. It certainly. Thank you very much. Thanks. Anybody else want to talk, want to visit with us this morning? And we'll go to Commissioner comments. Commissioner Hetherington. Yes. Oh, two items. One, not necessarily in my district, but I've received a number of complaints on our County Road 609 between 710 and say Morgan Street where vehicles have struck power poles. And recently they were, there were about 95 homes without power for 20 some odd hours. So, and it seems like it's a, there's a frequent occurrence of those power poles being struck by cars on 609. So I would ask that we would look at that and see if there's something that a solution actually pull up the accident reports and then see if there's any resolution. I know down to the North where FPNL built the solar fields, they, they did move those power poles in off the right of way a little bit. So that was one of the things. And then the other thing I've been listening to this dialogue and we haven't really discussed it up here on different counties that are challenging SB 180, Senate bill 180, which is basically an attack on home rule. And I know that Martin County has always been very responsible, slow growth and respected property rights, but done the right thing for our residents and adhered to the Martin County difference. But I think it's worth taking a look at what we're going to do to proactively support and engage home rule. I know we have our legislative priorities and that certainly has been included and should be included. But with some of these other counties reaching out and asking for support in challenging this, I would be interested to know from administration, you know, what, what if, if a county were to join this lawsuit, what would be the pros and cons, uh, what kind of fiscal, um, participation is necessary? What are the chances of the lawsuit being, um, successful? And if we were to participate either in the challenge or, or how we're going to move forward a little bit more proactively in, um, standing up against the state for eroding home rule, but I would like to at least have administration bring back something where you outline what the options would be and the pros and cons of taking action like that. That's all for my comments. Madam chair. Thank you very much. Good morning. Um, I try, commissioner comments are interesting and I feel like I'm falling into the, the position of constantly sharing sad news of members of our community that pass away. But I also think that it benefits us for me to use this time to share people that have done remarkable things for the community and made us who we are. Recently, we lost a member of the East Stewart community, pastor Jerry Gore senior. He was very, very well known. A lot of the commissioners know him because he made it an effort to reach out when new commissioners got elected to share with us his concerns, uh, talk about East Stewart, talk about his, his, uh, parishioners, his concerns. He was a pastor for 20 years, a Pentecostal pastor. He was a member of Martin County high school class of 1975. He worked at Publix for 33 years and he was the president of the NAACP for nine and stayed on as a, that's where I met him and his wife, Jackie, uh, remarkable person. And they gave him a, a service and a send off this Saturday, um, befitting a man that has done as much as he has. He is, he was small in stature, but he was absolutely a very big man. He, um, he suffered greatly at the end of his life. He battled incredibly, he had several organ transplants, he battled cancer, he had heart attacks and, and even at the end had nearly a 16 hours worth of surgery in an effort to save him. He was, you know, as those of us, as we get older, he was a relatively young man in his early seventies. He had the lovely family, his wife, Jackie of 25 years. He's just a remarkable person. I was honored to have him as a friend. I think the probably thousand people that showed up for his service, dozens and dozens of pastors, people from all over the region, because that's the impact that he had. And he is certainly one of the people that made Martin County steward and East steward as great as it is. And then just recently reading someone that we're also very familiar with, Ken DeAngelis, excuse me, Ken DeAngelis from Jensen Beach. He was involved with the Jensen Beach chamber for decades and decades and was also an elected official in Ocean Breeze, friend to many. And I was, I was shocked when I read about it because I didn't even realize that he was sick, which is not uncommon that a lot of people just keep their sicknesses and their battles to themselves. And then you just, you know, social media is a time for people celebrate and time for people to, to put notices of sad passing. So I don't mean to be a downer, but I don't want to not celebrate these people from our community, especially these two gentlemen that I would have considered, that I consider dear friends and a dear loss. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Capps. I'd like to highlight two things. About two Saturdays ago, I went to the Kiwanis back to school event in Indiantown at the Indiantown YMCA. And as long as I've lived in Martin County over 40 years, I had never been to the Indiantown YMCA. And I think that's one of the cool things about being a commissioner. Uh, you're asked to, uh, learn about things and all over the County that you're not, wouldn't have any reason to go and be exposed to. So, uh, the, uh, Indiantown YMCA is kind of tucked off the main road there. And, uh, I'd never even really noticed it before, but it was a hot Saturday morning and, uh, there's a big pool there and the kids were pretty much all in the pool. You know, when I, a few of us adults were also in the pool, but, uh, it was, it was a great event. And the, the new Kiwanis club in Indiantown is, uh, doing great work helping the kids of Indiantown. The second thing I want to mention is that about 10 days ago, we went back to the Petway Gomez neighborhood and, uh, the Petway neighborhood in Hobesound to the new missionary Mount Zion Baptist church on Petway street to talk to the residents about hookup charges for the new utility water lines that we're putting into their neighborhood. And the thing that stood out to me was what I learned about the ship program. That's called the state housing initiatives program. And two things jumped out at me. Um, uh, there are two, two groups of people that can really benefit from the ship program. One would be, uh, low income homeowners. If you know of someone in your life who owns a home, but they don't make a lot of money. Uh, it's amazing what can happen with the ship program. You can like borrow up to, I believe it's $61,000 per house, you know, for like new roofs, windows, doors, uh, remodeling, that kind of thing. And what they do is they pay for everything. And then they put a lien on your house that ticks down every year. And then at the end of about 15 years, if you're still there, you don't have to pay the, uh, the loan back it's forgiven. So it's kind of like, uh, free money ultimately for a low income homeowners. Another group of people who can benefit from the ship program are low income, aspiring homeowners. And when I say low income, it's, it's surprising what the numbers actually are. You can make a decent living and still kind of qualify, but low income, aspiring homeowners can get down payment assistance and closing costs. And, uh, so if, if you have questions about the ship program, if you, or if you know of someone who you think might benefit from it, uh, just talk to our staff, um, and they will probably direct you to Michelle Miller and the human services department, uh, or perhaps someone else, but think about people in your life that you know of who might benefit from it, because a lot of people I don't think are really aware of how much help there is out there. Good information. Thanks. Commissioner Vargas. Yes. Uh, I would like to follow what commissioner Hetherington, uh, spoke about this morning, the SB 180. Now I believe all of us on this dice, um, have expressed concern about this bill that is in effect and taking away home rule and is leaving us and the Martin County residents and taxpayers powerless as to how they want to see this County, their County grow or not. So my question is at what point do we all step up commissioners and protect and speak up for our constituents and hardworking taxpayers? I suggest that we have the resolve to join our sister Florida counties and participating in this lawsuit. This is not going away and we need to put a stake in the sand. It's critical right now. I understand what you've asked the commission, the County administrator to do. However, this is not going away and we will be powerless imminently. Anything else? That's it for right now. Well, we're going to have an agenda item on the next meeting. And so we can discuss the, uh, ramifications of SB 180. Mr. Donaldson, Ms. Elder. Excellent. Then we will take up, uh, commissioners get your voting sheet to Ms. Gordon and let's take up public hearing number one, which is a public hearing to consider adoption of an ordinance amending the land development regulation regarding plats. Good morning, Mr. Griselka. Good morning, commissioners. Um, for the record on Michael Griselka, the County engineer, this is an ordinance to bring our LDRs into compliance with the resolution. You all adopted, um, several weeks ago to remove the, the signing authority of plats from a board item to make it an administration. Um, so what we've done is we have brought the ordinance into compliance with, with that change along with, we went back through all of chapter 177 in the Florida statutes and have updated our ordinance to conside, to coincide with their, um, definitions and some of the other stuff that's in there. So basically it's, this ordinance, all it does is solidify in the LDRs, the, the change of the, the plats recordations. However, I've got one item in here that we're going to, I'm going to ask you all to remove, which is section 4.911 E, which, um, we had added in there. It's something that we currently practice. Um, however, it was not in our code and we were going to try to add it in as a, to be codified as part of this thing. But after discussions among staff, we have decided to, um, remove that particular item, line item so that we are not in conflict with Senate bill 180. So, um, that just, so we wouldn't get challenged on that item. So that's what we've done. Um, I asked the, the LPA to make the recommendations with the removal of that item as well. So that's how I would like to, um, ask that you would adopt the ordinance with the removal of section 4.911 E. Senate bill. Sure. Can you, uh, once again explain what that is, the thing that we're not recommending that be, that, that it be added? Okay. What, what we, what we currently practice is that we don't approve a final site plan on a commercial site without having the, the lot already established. So we were going to put that in, into the code that the plat had to be established before a final site plan could be approved and allow that building to go forward. Um, what we currently do allow is if all the properties under the same ownership, then they can get a final site plan as long as it's over the entire piece of property prior to plotting. What we didn't want happening is that we're approving a final site plan on a particular parcel that has not been created yet by, by way of plat. Okay. So this or change is in response to, um, Florida statutes. So this, the legislature decided to take away our ability to approve Plattson and said it confers it on the administration staff. So a whole lot more has changed in 4.911. Why all the other changes? If all the, if the only purpose was to change this one little matter and instead we've eliminated entire sections. Um, most of the sections haven't been eliminated. They've been relocated. The, uh, the eliminations came with some of the, the definitions because we were in conflict on definitions with one 77, which is the, the plotting for, uh, state statute. But if you, if you go through it and I mean, I've kind of laid it out in the agenda item, you know, what actually got moved and what the changes were. I mean, I'll be glad to discuss anyone individually because like I said, majority of them with things we moved around just to put them where they're more convenient and with the grouping that they should be. Is it possible to get clarification if you point out to the pages here in our binder as to what you're referring to specifically? All right. I mean, I'll, I'll, I'll be glad to go down the entire list because we've bullet pointed what was, what was changed. If you want me to read them, everyone, we can, I can sure do that for you. Section 4.911A, um, we updated, uh, for consistent, consistency with chapter 177, uh, 9, 4.911B, subdivision definitely not defined. We updated for consistency with chapter 177. 4.911E, we were going to add in that section. However, I am asking that we remove that at this point in time. Um, section 4.911F, same issue with the building permits. It updates it for consistency with chapter 177. That is particularly what happened last session with the, um, the building permits being allowed to be issued prior to the plotting up to 50% of them and some of that other stuff that, that came out of last year's, um, session. Um, 4.911F, authority of county inspectors. We just moved that section from being under general provisions over to the required, uh, improvements in infrastructure because it was more appropriate to be in that section. Testing requirements moves the same thing with testing required 4.911G. We moved that from underneath the, the general provisions over to the required improvements in infrastructure section. Under section 4.912A, purpose of intent and plat requirements, it includes provisions for a successor agency, officer, or provision of law. Um, under definitions, it updates for consistency with chapter 177. By removing redundant definitions, introduces a definition for utility, moves the provision for successor agency, officer, or provision of law. Um, 4.912C, plat standards reorders, consolidates, and clarifies the plat standards, moves the provisions for inspection of PRMs, PCPs, and lot corners prior to recordation, uh, the, on the monuments. On 4.912E, monuments broadens the title. Updates for consistency with chapter 177 includes provisions for inspections of PRMs, PCPs, and lot corners prior to recordation, um, under section 4.913, required improvements in infrastructure. The authority of the county inspectors, uh, includes the authority of the county inspectors. That's the movement from the general provisions down into that section. The testing includes the testing requirements. Same thing. That, that's where we moved from the general provisions down into that section and provision of security in lieu of completion. We're removing the option to post an escrow account because in the past we had some issues with an escrow account that, um, the bank released the funding and we didn't have any ability then to then pull the money from the escrow to finish the project because the bank had already released it to the contractor without our okay. Um, and then on article 10, the development review procedures, um, under 10.1 general, 10.1 B specifically includes, uh, the glossary includes parking areas and the definition of final site plan introduces a definition for infrastructure, final site plan. Um, that then clarifies some, some, some stuff with, um, the site planning in not including the vertical construction that time, just including all the horizontal, like what we've done with, um, uh, South Florida gateway. We did a infrastructure final site plan and then came in with site plans for each individual parcel later on out there. Um, the application review process, this, this updates the decision maker side of it, which removes the decision making for the plats from the board of county commissioners and puts it with the, um, administration specifically the, the county administrator has that function functions of the county administrator. It updates for consistency of 177. This is the same thing that we just talked about and appeal of final actions. It, it, we are updating it for consistency with 177. That's the, the highlights of all the changes that are in there. I mean, yes, it sounds like a lot, but it's really a lot of it's just moving it around and making our stuff consistent with 177 as chapter 177 has had multiple changes over the last several years. Mr. Kraselk, I'm looking at the table for, um, the responsibility of review and final action for applications. And I see that the county administrator has responsibility for most of the approvals have in the, and the, the, uh, board of county commissioners has fewer and fewer, uh, final approvals. Have most of those been taken away by the legislature or have we removed the final authority from the board? No, that, that all got removed by the legislature. We did, we did not add anything different that was not done by the state. Just that one. I'm just looking at the, at the first, at the first column, which is county administrator approval. And there are lots of them. Most of them get county administrator of final approval. Half of those, fewer than half of them get board of county commission approval. So I'm asking these, these are, these are currently the standards. We're not, we're not changing anything at this point in time. These are, these are current as to who has the, the, the, uh, approval. The only thing we're changing that in this ordinance is the plot. Ms. Elder. Um, Elise Elder, acting county attorney to answer your questions. Like Mr. Kraselker said, these are the current approvals. They're not mandated by statute. The only one that has been mandated by statute is, um, the plot. So if the board wants to change that, we can bring an item back. And I was just going to summarize that the, the whole purpose that we're revising this land development regulation is because this past legislative session, they passed Senate bill 784, which took the board's authority away to approve plots. All plots have to be administratively approved effective July 1st without any board action. And that is in the statute. So that's what caused us to bring this ordinance forward. Um, in that process, we added 4.911 E because, um, engineering services cleaned up the whole plat section. And our practice is not to approve site plans that only show a portion of a parcel. But after evaluating that, we took it out because of Senate bill 180, because it can be viewed as being more restrictive in our land development regulations. We will continue that practice. We're just not codifying it just so we don't get a challenge because the whole ordinance would be null and void if we did. But we're still going to keep that practice of not approving parcel site plans. Um, they have to have an entire parcel, not just a little section of it. So that's kind of the, what brought us here today. So that's all I wanted to summarize. Commissioner Vargas. Okay. So, um, as I understand this, this all came about to speed up the process for the developer. Is that correct? Um, I'm guessing that's what it came for. It came through the legislature. I think that was their intent, but I, I honestly don't know what their intent was, but that seems like an accurate statement to me. Okay. It's, it's everyday language. Yes. Um, the state no longer wants the counties to dictate. So henceforth, we have this change. Okay. Yeah. They required the board not to approve plats and that it be done administratively. So, okay. All right. And it could be anybody that within the county that obviously has the expertise. It doesn't have to necessarily be the county administrator to be the sign off. Is that correct? No, I, the county administrator will be the signature on the plat. That is presently it would be the chairman when you approve a plat would be signing it. And so as your chief administrative officer, um, the county administrator would sign it, but only after it's been reviewed by growth management and, uh, and the public, uh, the county engineer and the county surveyor also specifically sign it. And I believe the county attorney does as well. So from a legal document, that's what you'll find on the, on the plats, the, the, in the clerk. So the last, uh, the, the main change is you'll no longer see the, the chair of the county commission as a signature to the plat. Okay. I understand that, but my concern is it goes through growth management director, uh, with the county engineer surveyor legal also involved with this. You mentioned the county clerk also she signs it. Yes. And then there would be the formality of you signing or it would be the chair. No, it, it presently, it would be the chair. Uh, with the change of the legislature, it would be the county, uh, uh, administrator. Okay. You signing off as the last signature because everybody else has done their due diligence and that's what you do. All right. Uh, plus everybody else in your department too. And I think that's the proper way to do that. And you can sign off just to submit, um, for that. And I know you have an engineering background, so I'm not usurping that. So, um, I understand the state of Florida must still give approval for developments. Is that correct? And has to comply with the comp plan is so the, uh, the, the process would still be that, uh, the, a minor site plan would be filed or a major site plan that comes before you. So you would still have the responsibility of, um, ensuring the comp plan and the zoning are correct for the site. Then the, the, uh, the property owner would have a plan, whether it's a small or larger plan, the, the, in order for them to sell the property, they have to plat it. So this is typically, it's not always the last step, but it's usually one of the, um, a lot later steps. Uh, this process dealing with the plats would no longer come before the board. So those other processes as defined are still, uh, are still available, um, today. Okay. So the infrastructure must be in place. Is that correct? So the infrastructure has, uh, under the rules allows for a bonding component. So the infrastructure has to be either in place or have some sureties or guarantees that it will be in place. Okay. So then in effect, if they do not comply and they fail, the developer that Martin County can go in and make a claim for the bond to hire somebody else to complete the process. Is this correct? Mr. Schilling? Uh, Paul Schilling, growth management director for the record. Yes, commissioner. That is accurate. Yes. Well, it's something else for you to do, right? Not us. Unfortunately, that has happened in the past. It's been rare, but, uh, where typically the bonding company hires a separate entity to, um, to, uh, actually finish the project. Mr. Capps. We got a couple of emails about an interesting requirement that perhaps we should discuss. Um, and it has to do with notice to surrounding property owners. And even though the plat issue will not be coming to the board, should we still send those notices to surrounding property owners so that they could come in and speak at public about their concerns about a proposed, uh, plat approval that's going to be approved by the County administrator. And they, they could come in and they could still register their concerns. And we could even have discussions about it too, to perhaps, uh, influence, uh, about, uh, details of the plats and whether modification should be made. And on that issue of, of sending those notices out, is there enough benefit that could be gained from that process and expense, uh, to justify doing it? I'd like to get some perspective from those in the know on the issue at this time. I don't believe plats require notice to surrounding property owners, but they do require the yellow signs be posted on their property. So that sign would still be, um, posted on the property. So all their neighbors would know about it. Um, as far as public participation, every plat must be consistent with the final site plan. So the public, if it's a, if it's a major final site plan, the public would still be able to participate in that process and come to the board meeting to express their concerns. Um, once the final site plan is approved, they kind of have some development rights and the plat must be consistent with that. So it's really, the law says it's a ministerial approval of a plat because it's consistent with the final site plan. They have the opportunity to participate in the final site plan with the board, or if it's a minor with the growth management department, they can always send in, um, written emails to the board or to the growth growth management department. I would, um, caution the board in having discussions on plat because the statute says without any approval or action by the board, it's pretty specific. So we just have to be careful there, but we can certainly discuss it at the final site plan stage. Um, and, and there will be public participation for that and the signs will still be up. Okay. So I think what you're saying is it's not really needful to send these notices. for the plat issue because the public is going to get a notice about the final site plan on the same parcel. Uh, and, and that will be their alert to come in and to participate with public input. Uh, no need to send that notice for the plat since they're going to get it for other processes. Yes, sir. Commissioner, uh, Paul Schilling for the record. So the, the thresholds of review are not changing today. A minor development is approved by, uh, myself is typically the approving body. The major developments are approved by the board of County commissioners. Of course, typically that's an advertised public hearing depending on the threshold and whether or not there's a previously approved master plan. Uh, there is a requirement to post the property, and this goes for any development, rezonings, applications, uh, final site plans, plats with the project number. We field those calls, uh, day in and day out if public is interested in those. So that is not changing. And then the thresholds of development with respect to noticing are, um, are in article 10, those remain untouched. So, uh, for the most part, the nuances of the development with respect to density, building height, uh, wetlands, uh, preserve areas, those have all been established prior to a plat previously arriving to this board. So, uh, those discussions have been had, uh, the, the, the, the gist of the application, uh, with the public, with the board previously was to ensure that it was compliant with the land development regulations and the comprehensive plan. My staff and our team do that day in and day out. So when we bring an application to this board, it is in compliance. If there's something that needs, uh, some tweaking or there's some nuances with it, then we make the board aware of that. None of that process is changing. The simple answer to all of this is the signatory authority with the county, uh, administrator, and there will not be a public, uh, unnoticed meeting, meaning there is not a requirement to notice plat applications. Thank you. Yes, sir. And what's the difference between a public meeting and a public hearing? Public meetings are depending on the threshold in article 10. For example, if you have a previously approved master plan, uh, could be in a PUD or not. Uh, the final site plan is consistent with that master plan. So there is not a requirement to notice that phase two or three or whatever the case is. That's an example. Public here, at least elder public hearings require notice to surrounding property owners. If it's just a public meeting, um, there's no notice to surrounding property owners, but the yellow sign is posted. So that kind of helps. So the final site plan does not receive the notification and also doesn't, doesn't receive a public hearing, a public meeting. Yeah, it does not. It's a, the mass, the major development master site plan that requires the public hearing at this time. Well, one more thing, a major development final site plan that is not part of a master plan. In other words, uh, vacant land would require noticing. How can you have a final site plan without a, a master plan? Uh, one phase project would authorize construction. For example, uh, perhaps a commercial buildings, some, something along those lines or a, uh, uh, residential development non PUD that was above 50 units. That would be a major development final site plan and that would require noticing. Mr. Campy. Thank you for the explanations. I think that there's an obvious frustration from the board. I'm sure from our staff and definitely from the public that Tallahassee seems to continue to strip away our authority and, and our abilities. Um, what the motivation is, is there's a lot of different possibilities. I am always fearful of a one size fits all approach from the state because obviously communities, both municipalities and counties have a unique character and what might be right in West Palm or Broward or Tampa or Jacksonville is not going to be right here, but under the circumstances that we're in, uh, I feel as I always have confident in our staff's ability, uh, their professionalism, their education, their training to review these things as they always have. And although it might not come to the five of us, which I get where the elected officials, I think the, the bigger portion there is if there's ever an opportunity for the public to participate or to be notified. I want to be clear that those things are not lost if they don't need to be, but having our staff review it, bring it to either Mr. Schilling, Ms. Elder, or, uh, or in the final case, Mr. Donaldson, I'm comfortable under these sets of circumstances that we have no control over, that at least we have the proper people in place to review it as they always have. And so I'd make a motion to accept what Mr. Griselka has presented. And we make the determination of what's a minor development and what's a major development, do we not? Or has the state taken that ability away from us too? No, ma'am. That is the Board of County Commissioner's purview. And it is 25 units, 50 units? 50 units is a, 50 units are above. Residential is a major development. None of those criteria are changing. And for commercial? I believe it's 50,000 square feet and above is a major. Um, and there's some thresholds within previously approved platted industrial subdivisions. And I think that's a hundred thousand square feet somewhere thereabouts. I would need some time to, to refresh my memory. So commissioners, we still have some discretion. If we have changed it in the past, since I've been a commissioner, uh, our thresholds used to be lower and they were doubled, uh, about 20 years ago, 15 years ago, something like that. So if, if you still think that we're being squeezed out of final decision-making, we still do have some discretion. There is a motion. We, we need public comment. Sorry, commissioner. Would anyone like to address this from the public? Seeing none. There's a motion. Is there a second? Second. There's a motion in the second. Any further discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? That motion passes unanimously. Thank you. We'll take up department one, which is office of management and budget items, which require board approval. Does she have them all? Okay. We'll do that next. Good morning. Good morning, commissioner. Stephanie Murley, director of OMB here to go through 15 OMB items today. Our first item is a permission to apply for the hazard mitigation grant pro program or HMGP, um, for FEMA funds for the automatic transfer switch replacement. Our general services department is requesting a grant award in the amount of $112,500 for the replacement of the automatic transfer switch at the public safety complex. This will ensure uninterrupted public safety operations during emergencies and disasters. It requires a $37,500 grant match, which is already budgeted within the public safety complex, um, replacement CIP. Item number two is a permission to apply for the FY 2627 local government funding request or LGFR for, um, the Florida department of environmental protection, um, St. Lucie inlet management project. Our environmental resources division is requesting a grant award in the amount of $3,825,000 for the St. Lucie inlet management plan implementation project. It requires a match of the same amount, which is already programmed within our coastal St. Lucie inlet management CIP. Item number three is a permission to apply for FDEP bathtub beach joint project. Our environmental resources division is requesting, um, grant funding in the amount of $4,508,936 for funding for the bathtub beach sailfish point beach restoration project. There is a match of up to $2.8 million, which is programmed in the coastal bathtub beach CIP. Ms. Murley, what is this project? We just finished a gazillion dollar project, you know, six months ago. So what's this? Jessica Garland, the coastal program manager, uh, this is for the 27, 26, 27, um, bathtub beach project. So we have to apply for it now. So by the time the funding is allocated, um, it's available for the next construction project. But so it's, we do a bathtub beach nourishment project on every three year cycle. So we just completed a project in April of 24. So the next project is for the winter of 26, 27. Commissioner Vargas. I was going to say the same thing. I have a lot of discussion about it happens to be my district and it's very beautiful. It's very nice. It's great for families and older folks too, but it does have that movement of the water that sweeps right into the inlet and it's just a natural occurrence. It is a natural occurrence. And it's also part of our inlet management plan that we are required to bypass a certain number, uh, cubic yards of sand back North from the inlet to the, um, beaches North of the inlet. I really wish I could make it a bathtub so it doesn't go anywhere, but I don't have that power. So, so we don't have to spend this money, the gazillion dollars you referred to Mr. Capps. I think I just heard you say that at bathtub beach, we actually perform re-nourishment or sand replacement every three years at bathtub. It is scheduled every three years. Um, it doesn't necessarily always happen on an every three year cycle, but it is scheduled every three years. Is that uniquely different than other beach re-nourishment, uh, work that we do in the county, say on Jupiter Island or Hutchinson Island? Correct. So the Hutchinson Island project is, uh, every eight year cycle. So the last time we did the four mile beach project was in 2018 and it will be occurring this winter. Um, Jupiter Island occurs every five to six years depending on storms. Um, so that's bathtub beach is a much more reoccurring project. Interesting. One, one other quick thing. Uh, I often think about, uh, bathtub beach and the unique condition that exists there. I think they call it the worm reef. Correct. And which is really fascinating to, uh, natural, uh, phenomenon, um, there and seems very unique and all. And this, the sand work that we do at bathtub, you know, uh, the concern would be whether or not it harms the worm reef and whether it like covers it up and chokes it out or something. So the, the worm reef is very healthy and stable and we're actually very picky on what sand goes where during that project. So we get sand from the inlet and the flood shoals and the sand back in the flood shoals is much finer than the sand in the inlet. So the sand from the flood shoals goes more in front of selfish point and the sand from the impoundment basin and the inlet goes in front of, um, bathtub beach because it's coarser and the worms in the worm reef enjoy the sand better from the inlet. Um, so we want to make sure that they enjoy the sand. Um, so we, um, use it specifically in certain spots. How, how unique is a worm reef? Like, like, do these exist in other plates of parts of Florida or is this something really unique to our Martin County? No, they're in other spots around the state. Um, we just happen to have a large grouping of it, right? Very close to shore. Cool. Thank you. Continue. Okay. How do I follow warm, warm reefs? Um, item number four is a permission to apply for the, um, FY 26, 27 FDEP MacArthur Boulevard Dune project. Um, this is a requested grant award of $2.2 million, um, for the immediate post-construction monitoring, um, for MacArthur Boulevard Dune. It is, has a required $2.2 million grant, which is already programmed within our MacArthur Dune project CIP. Item number five is a permission to apply for the FDEP shore protection project. Um, this is a requested grant award for $206,865 for the Hutchison Island shore protection or four mile beach project. Um, there is a grant match of $243,000, which is programmed within the coastal beach management CIP budget. Item number six is a permission to apply for the Spencer Educational Foundation, um, summer internship grant for a risk management student intern. Our human resources and risk management division is requesting, um, $7,500, uh, for a paid internship for students interested in the risk management field. There is no grant match required for this. Item number seven is a permission to apply for the U S department of Homeland security, federal emergency management agency, FY 25 port security grant program. Our fire rescue department is requesting a grant of $1,650,000 to establish a comprehensive maritime operations capability. Um, this investment will deliver to specialized vessels and assist in expanding the capability to respond to terrorism, hazardous materials, incidents, and other major maritime threats. Um, this requires a grant match of $25,000, which is being waived due to the training value that is already being, um, done within our fire rescue department. Ms. Murley, there's no mention of the follow-on costs of this, uh, approval of this grant. It sounds like we're going to require additional personnel and maintenance of specialized equipment that we don't currently fund. Fire rescues here. Good morning. For the record, Chad Chang, Julie, fire chief for Martin County fire rescue. To my right. Good morning, commissioners. Matt Rush, fire rescue administrator. Good morning, commissioners. Joel Labosco, district chief fire rescue. So, uh, commissioner, uh, you're the, your question that you have, you're concerned. I'm actually going to address it for you right now because that would be a valid question. Um, before we even get into the grant and what the grant is funding, I want to explain the team that together collectively, we are about to build from ground up this team. When we're talking about maritime response, that's going to cover all of Martin County. And it is not only going to be recognized within the region. This team will be at the level to be recognized across the country. So let me just talk a little bit about it first. And it'll give you a little bit of perspective regarding the operational and the level of services can increase in the community. So the team is going to have a minimum of 12 members. They already exist. This is an additional full-time employees. They're within our organization right now. The qualifications minimum standard is going to be firefighter EMT, firefighter paramedics, typical what we have in our organization. And then on the scuba side, they're going to have a basic minimum standard of open water and advanced dive. Don't let the minimum standard really fool you. The level that they're going to have just on the scuba side is going to be open water. It's going to be advanced. It's going to be a rescue diver. It's going to be a dive master. It's going to be a dive instructor, and it's going to be an emergency response diver. So this is really getting to the next level regarding what this team capability of. But when you talk about any kind of team, any kind of addition to our level of service, you got to do a needs assessment in the community. So, and I'm going to briefly go through this because I know you guys have a busy schedule. But first off, let's talk about the fire suppression we have on our waterways right now. It is practically non-existent. You really don't have fire suppression. What you do have is you do have a fire bump on law enforcement's boat. It's not a very effective program. Law enforcement is designed for a certain capability, and so are firefighters. So right now, it's just an inefficient program, and we want to rip that Band-Aid off and make it a full-fledged scale right operation for fire suppression on our waterways. The other, and this is important, we don't have any medical on the water, none. We are a very active community in our waterways. We have a lot of kids that go out to the sandbars on the weekends. We have a lot of activity there during the holidays, and there's a lot of bad decisions that are made out there, and I want to help rectify as far as how quick we can get medical then. Also, as far as our dive ops, we do have a dive team. Our dive team is really based off a recovery mode of operation. What do I mean by that? There's two modes of operation you can be in on a dive call. This is when you have a missing swimmer. Somebody goes off into a canal. Somebody's in a car. A rescue mode of operation is what we want to transition into. That means I need to deploy assets within 60 minutes from that incident to actually have a viable outcome. When I cross over that 60 minutes, which is where we are now, we are in a recovery mode, which means I'm just pulling bodies out of the water, and I'm not making a recovery effort, and I want to transition that, and this is an opportunity with this team. The other that we don't have in the waterway is our hazmat responsibilities or capabilities on the waterways. We have a lot of hazmat that transits this community, and they go over waterways, whether it be the bridge, the rail. If we have something catastrophic here, and it involves the water, we don't have that capability. We are a land-based operation. This will change the unique training of this team. We'll be able to enter water like that and still be in a rescue mode of operation. And then the other is just the overall safety of the community when they're actually on the waterway. So let's just talk about Martin County in general. 753 square miles in total. You have 210 square miles. That is water-based. This is where you have the opportunities to get better with our level of service. Registered boat owners, Martin County, 18,000. Treasure Coast, 40,000. Marinas in Martin County, you have over 20. And I'm going to go into a little bit of the details about a fire at a marina. But our current boat operation, we talked about. Law enforcement has a boat with a pump. It's not even in the water right now. In fact, it's being built and supposed to be sent here. This is an operation that we try to work the best we can, but it is a band-aid on a bigger issue that we have. And then obviously the fire operations I'm going to have with the training on the waterway is going to be a completely different landscape. Next. So let's talk about what the capabilities are. So we talked about the marina fires. Let me explain to you how we actually fight a marina fire today. You all know that we have a lot of boat industry out there in our community. When we have a fire, these large vessels, these slips are very close together. We have to do a land-based fire suppression effort, meaning we fight that fire completely from the dock, which means all the vessels near the vessel that's on fire and now exposed to that heat. And guess what? They have the damage and they too also catch on fire. That is millions of dollars that I'm talking about. With this team, we will have the proper vessel, the capabilities to pull this boat out from that marina, bring it into open water, and properly mitigate that incident without extending that further damage. Dive rescue recovery, we talked about. Want to switch to recovery mode? Swiftwater, though. This is the one I really want to talk about. Swiftwater, if you think about the hurricanes that we have here and we have those tidal surge, you have the potential to have swiftwater right here in Martin County. And when you have those surges and those water in the streetways, it's a whole different animal. It's a different level of training. You have to have the right skill set. You have to know how to operate to effectively mitigate a quick rescue. I'm going to take you back to Texas. Everyone knows about the flash floods that happened in Texas. They went through the camp with all those kids. Let me talk about the agency that was on scene, fire rescue, completely overwhelmed their resources. They didn't have the training for it. They didn't have the know-how for it. They could not immediately respond to that incident. So what do they do? They called for outside assets. It took 12 hours to get them on scene to start performing rescues. 12 hours. We don't have that. I'm going to take you back to our last hurricane we had. Last hurricane we had, we got decimated by tornadoes. I had one community in itself had over 50 structures that had collapsed. We have to do what we call, on a technical side, light tunneling. And when you do that, it's a very unique skill set to be able to accomplish that. But I'm telling you, our resources were completely outmatched at the time. SO was out there all night. We were out there all night. So what do we do? We're in the emergency operations center. I'm running incident command. I have the emergency management director with me. We call for those outside assets. Get on the phone. I talk to the National Guard. I tell them what our concerns are, what the immediate response is that I need, and what the technical side of that's going to be. They tell me, Chad will be there in two to three hours. I'm like, we don't have two to three hours. But I'll take what I can get. We perform our operation. We work all night long. Guess when they got here? 14 to 16 hours later. We cannot wait that long. This team in that type of incident for Swift Water will be able to perform immediate operations on site. Then when those outside assets come in, they collapse on our operation, and then we expand from there. But we're not sitting on the sidelines because you do not have time to sit on the sidelines. Urban search and rescue, bread and butter. Codex. Codex is ocean rescue refers to as a missing swimmer. This is something you've read in the papers we have from time to time, and it's unfortunate. Our ocean rescue people are good. They're extremely aggressive at what they do, but their numbers are limited. This team, while I'll be able to collapse them on that operation, double their numbers within minutes, which means I make a more aggressive search on that shoreline, which means we have a higher probability of a better outcome. So this is a multifaceted team. Let me get into the hazmat side that we were talking about. If you think about the ICW, the offshore, the rivers, canals, railway, we are loaded with hazmat crossing us all the time. This team will have the radiological and nuclear capabilities of detection. It's also going to have the CBRNE, which is the chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, and it will also have explosive capabilities within the team. You know we are in the emergency planning zone of the St. Lucie nuclear plant. If there is a plume, we wait for outside agencies to detect the area to let us know what happens. We're in the emergency operations center. We're waiting for that feedback. Why? Because we have to make actionable decisions based off that information. So once these outside agencies get there, and it goes through this whole loop of communication and a chain of events, and then eventually it gets to the EOC, and then we make actionable decisions, now we have a team out there. We get immediate detection direct to the EOC. That right there means we are ahead of the curve, and we're making actionable decisions operationally right then and there. That's the capability of this team. So you're going to ask, what kind of calls do you guys have? And I'm going to just highlight just a couple, because I don't want to get too much into details unless you bring me there. I will. But we recently had a bridge jumper not too long ago. What I would like to do is be able to get on scene much sooner. That rescue mode of operation in the first 60 minutes, it's a difference maker. I'm not saying if we had this team in place, it would change the outcome of this individual. But I am saying if we had this team in place, and we're able to respond directly to the incident, they had a higher probability of survival. There's absolutely no doubt. Last year, we had kids navigating the waterway, didn't know the waterway too well, tide was up, went under a rail bridge, first kid ducked, the girl didn't, got hit, trauma alert. Here's how it happens now. Firefighters have to respond to it. We don't have a vessel. We go to a dock. We go to a seawall. We wait for a boat to come pick us up. And then we get on that boat with all of our medical equipment. We go out to this scene. We stabilize the patient. We bring them back on the boat to the dock that we came from, put them on a truck, send them to the appropriate facilities. What I'm attempting to do is lose all of that lack of time. And I'm trying to engage directly. When the incident happens, we go directly to the incident, stabilize, bring to the dock, and then fly to the appropriate facility. That time alone will change outcomes of people's lives. The other is the Manatee Pocket Fire. So this is someone I think we're all familiar with. The operation we have with S.O. today. Talked about it a few times. Manatee Pocket Fire. They had a boat that was on fire. They had a person trapped inside that boat. S.O. is doing what they're supposed to do. They get the fire boat. They're coming to pick us up, right? But they come across the boat that's on fire with the person trapped in. Boats are fiberglass. They're plastic. They burn hot. They burn fast. What do they do? They stopped. Like anyone in their right mind would stop. They did the right thing. They got on that boat and they saved that guy. They rescued him. Here's what happened. Unfortunately, the law enforcement people that got on that boat and performed that rescue inhaled those toxic gases. That right there is what we call an ideal age atmosphere. Immediate danger to life and health. That right there can have life changing outcomes of your health long term. They may not even know. I want to remove that liability from the sheriff's department and put that on the fire department because we're trained for it. We have the proper gear for it. Let's protect the law enforcement. Let them do the job they do really, really, really good at. Let us do our job and do the fire suppression efforts on the water because this team will be capable of doing that. All right, we'll go to the next. So I want to talk about the location. So this is something that we've talked about in the past. This team, Station 14, the people are already in place. There is no full-time employees. We select the individuals that actually have the capability of what I'm talking about right now, and then we train them up even higher. We are going to locate them on the Hutchinson Island Station, right there on the Island Station 14 just built. We have a relationship with IRP. We reached out with them. They're going to go ahead and loan us a boat slip. We would negotiate a little bit of a deal with them, as in we can offset some of those costs with training. So we're going to limit how much that would even be. Long term is to build a dock behind Station 14 and then collaborate with the Ocean Graphic Institute and then build a dock, but the location itself would be ideally what you see in the map. If you look at my travel time from the sandbar, I'm about a mile away. One mile of travel time in the water, that's about two, two and a half minutes, depending what they're navigating. Think about that, two to two and a half minutes. If you told me today to get to the sandbar at best to get crews there, get them on a boat, get them out there, I could be 25 to 30 minutes. Now I want you to think about what happens on that sandbar. If we're not there, you have a couple of options that happen. One, you'll have a bystander who knows nothing, takes the patient, whatever their injuries they sustained, throw them in the back of the boat, and man, they just book it to the next dock they can get to, to go ahead and call 911 first to come in. That transit, if they don't know what they're doing, could change the outcome of these patients. Or you have where they call us, boat comes to the dock, we get our stuff on, we go out there, stabilize, bring it back. You understand the process now. It doesn't make sense. There's a better way to do this, and we can really enhance the level of service. Sandsbury Park, 3.6 miles, and then St. Lucie Inlet, we're four miles away. So as far as the location of the team, the design of the team, this is such an opportunity for us to make a difference that you all can be a part of because this is going to be a ground-up build. So let's talk about what the actual FEMA grant is. So the FEMA grant, Department of Homeland Security, Port Security Grant, this right here, this grant, yes, it has a value of $1.65 million. The 25% from us is waived because of the caliber of the people that I just described to you. That level of training, that equals dollars and cents. They recognize that. There is no out-of-pocket. You asked about the future, what happens? Year two, am I going to come back to you and ask you for more money? It's not how this works. If you do this grant, and we do it right, and we do it well, because everything we do in Martin County Fire Rescue, I'm telling you, we strive for excellence, and we will do it well. This could be in perpetuity. Because if you show that you have the correct training, the correct skill set, and you were collaborating, and you were there as a secondary response to the Port of Authority, you were going to continue to get these grants. This will have no impact on the taxpayers. This is federal dollars that we can continue on as long as we have this team going. This is a huge opportunity. So with that, I'll conclude the presentation. If you have any questions, it'll be more than happy to answer. Mr. Vargas. You put a lot of effort into this, your whole team here and those that aren't here. But I do have a question about the ongoing cost, because every time you show up here, you're asking for money. And these people, let's see, 16, I think it is the number here, 15, excuse me. They're employed right now by the fire department. That's correct. Uh-huh. Okay. And so what other expenses are there above what you've presented here? Because I see that there's equipment that you're buying for this amount of money and training. Is that correct? So tell me about that. Tell us about it. So that's everything that I just described to you, the equipment, the training, everything is embedded in that grant. That's where it comes from. Our people right now, a lot of our people already have this training. We already have something called tuition reimbursement. We all have it. The county has tuition reimbursement. Some of these specialty classes they want to go ahead and go out and get, it could be, I want to take an English class or I want to take a dive class. It's the same, same. The money is already allocated for it. It's not increased costs. It's how you spend the money that you have within the budget. Chairwoman Hurd, you had a question, which is very viable. Could you please address this further? Sure. I don't know what the clarification is, because this is something we can't approve blindly. I will go first of all to Commissioner Campy and then Commissioner Hetherington. Thank you very much. A lot to unpack here. First off, thank you. Obviously, you were prepared for this agenda item. And to me, I think the information that you gave with all due respect to budget shouldn't have been one of 15 items in the agenda. It should have been its own agenda item. I think it's that level of importance. Not so much from the financial side, which makes sense that it would be in the budget, in your agenda item. But for when you presented it, each slide and each little bullet point, I'm like, that's right. That's right. You know, you don't think about how far, you know, the low level of emergency coverage that we have had, which gives me, asks me the question, I'm surprised we waited this long to do this. And what, thankfully, you listed a couple of historic examples, but thankfully, we haven't had more catastrophes, catastrophic incidents. So we've sort of been blessed in the past to not have this completely just collapse. I don't want to say blow up in our faces, because that's, I'm not trying to make cliches. But literally, for all of the possibilities of problems that we have only encountered what we have, I think it's a real, you know, historic day today that you're adding this into the protection that I believe most residents, me being one of them, assumed we had a higher level of rescue coverage than we do, considering how everyone would say, we're a marine county, we're a boating county, we are boating industry, 20 marinas. But also, I thought it was important that you showed not just registered boats in Martin County, because a ton of folks come from Port St. Lucie to the Palm City boat docks. So you have to look at the more regional number. I appreciate you creating this program. And I know you put your whole team together. It's very well thought out. When you said if there was a problem, and remember, a couple years ago, or a decade ago, someone was killed at the sandbar, I think two, right? Didn't someone get punched in a fight, and then someone else, you know, got hurt? Sometimes I had a friend that I went to college with, you know, it's not all about boat explosions and accidents. He dove off the back of a boat into water that he thought was deeper than it was, and he became paralyzed. He's still paralyzed. But the people quickly picked him up and moved him all around and put him in the boat, which didn't help the level of injury, because they didn't realize, not being medical professionals, he didn't look like he was hurt because he wasn't bleeding, but he was catastrophically hurt. I'm fearful of all those things. Does the hospital have an emergency dock where you could bring your boat instead of going somewhere on land, transporting, transferring to an ambulance, a rescue, and then having to go to the hospital? Can your marine boat go directly to the dock at the hospital since we're so fortunate to have a hospital on the water? So that's a great question, Commissioner. A couple things. One is, as far as them having a dock, not only do they have a dock on the water, they have a landing pad on the water, meaning if this is a trauma patient, which most of these will be, we drive straight to that dock, to that landing zone. Lifestar is sitting on there. It's an immediate transfer of care. Instead of the way we do it today, we bring everything back to shore base, put it in the rescue, go around to the closest landing zone. There's just time delay after time delay after time delay. When you say landing zone, you mean helicopter. A helicopter landing zone, specific for that. So you've heard me over and over again with just different presentations that I talk about that 60-minute, that golden hour. This is real. It's not just theatrical. This is real. We're trying to close that gap. On the water, we have an issue with it. But I'm going to mention this, and I'm going to mention this briefly. We talk about catastrophic events. If I go back several years ago, and this is probably one of the most disturbing calls that I had been on, I've been on a lot of calls in my career. But this one in particular, Shepherd's Park, and I don't know if any of you remember this, but there was a boat fire that was out there in mooring off of Shepherd's Park, and there was a child that was in to battle that boat. That boat was on fire. We've responded to that, and we did not have a fire boat. So here's how the operation went. We get on scene. We get a fire truck on that dock. We finally get there. Then we have to wait for a boat to show up to get firefighters out to the boat that's on fire with the child trapped inside. Real call. Then, once the boat gets there, then we grab, I want you to try to envision this. We grab our nozzles, our hoses off the fire truck, put it on the boat. It's still connected to the fire truck, and we have to add so much additional hose and drive that boat slowly out to the boat fire, and then start extinguishing the fire. The outcome is not the outcome we wanted, but that's how the operation is. It is an ineffective operation. We are too active of a community to be in the waterway to operate the way we do. This is an opportunity to build a team from within our own, from the ground up, with federal dollars. Not taxpayer dollars, as far as our local community, but federal dollars. Thank you. One more point, Madam Chair. The point that you come looking for money. Today, you're not looking for our money. What I wrote here is, I appreciate the grant mindset. Mr. Resch is an expert at this, but we have lots of experts in the county that are, I've always said, even from the very beginning, Martin County employees can take a dollar and turn it into four, five, six dollars. That grant mindset, where you, before, I'm sure, the reason you're here today looking for permission to apply for a grant, is because you went looking elsewhere first for the money to do this. Because everyone knows, you can't just show up at Mr. Donaldson's office with your initial idea and say, I need to go before the commission and ask for money. Well, have you done anything looking for money elsewhere? No, we just wanted to start here. That's the easy way. We don't, we, by the time you show up looking for something from us, which I don't count today as doing that, because you're, you said it's federal money, which people like, well, federal grants is still our tax dollars. Yeah, but if we don't get them here, they go somewhere else. You don't get a refund. They go somewhere else. I think one of the best things that Martin County has ever done is, and I would put us up against anybody, whether it's septic to sewer or anything else, we get way more clever grants and find money better than anyone else, even for counties much, much larger than us. So I don't mind if you want to bundle these things all together or separate it. I'd like to be part of the record that made the motion to accept this new program. Thank you. Mr. Hetherington. Yeah, I agree. It was a well thought out program, and you certainly demonstrated the need in the community. We are a significant water-based community, and I think it speaks to the professionalism of the department and the trained folks that we have that they would waive the grant match due to the trained professionals that we have. I will certainly be supporting it, and I do hope that we obtain the grant. I would say that the one thing in your presentation that I have questions, if we do obtain the grant, I'd like an agenda item on the location of the dock and the resources, because I think that you're going to be responding to Palm City, and that location seems like maybe not the most efficient for responding to our waterways throughout the county. So when we get the grant, I would love for that location discussion to come back to see if there are other alternatives, and what are the pros and cons of those other alternatives as far as location? Understood. So I will second whether it be the bundle. Well, we haven't seen the rest of the items. Separating that one out. Yeah. And tell me about team pay for these, for this team? That's a great question, Commissioner. So the team pay, because the union and administration understands the need, that's when we came, and it's on your consent agenda item today, that's when we came together collectively. We saw an opportunity. The team pay is zero dollars, because they're all in to serve this community. There is no team pay. They want to be here. They want to make a difference. They understand what we can really impact the community with our level of service, and the union agreed they're all in. And Mr. Donaldson, please tell me about the estimates for the docks. Do we have a CIP sheet for those? How many are planned? What's the cost of each? At this time, Commissioners, the dock would be presented in your next CIP. This grant will take some time to get awarded, if it gets awarded. So the chief espoused that, one, they're on trailers, but they would have a lease at the Marriott for a slip until such time as we either build a facility for it or continue to use the private sector marinas as a resource. And so that would be presented to you should this be awarded with your CIP discussion next year. So no study has been made of future locations, costs? There have been looked at docks in the past. We've had, of course, the sheriff has built facilities at Sandsprit, so we know the unit costs for those. We also have looked at Fire Station 14 over collaborating with the Florida Ocean Graphics Society as the other location. And then we've had the experience with docket space from various vendors around the state through other programs coastal. So we do have, you know, those sorts of numbers we can present to you, but the options at this point for this facility would be, first would be to use our private sector marina operators to provide us a slip until such time as we have found the optimum location for where they should be deployed from. Also, this is subject to actually getting the grant. So we, I think this will be some time before we actually hear, and then the delivery of a vessel like this would be over a year. So I think this is really step one in a probably two-year process. Do you know what length these boats are? Yes, we do. Joe? Yeah. So the one that would be docked at Station 14, proposedly, is a 32-foot, and then the second boat would be a 28-foot rib, which would be on a trailer, which can go to any part of the county as far as fast access goes. So then you have to wait for, if it's on a trailer, you have to wait for access to be able to use a launch. So for example, if it's the weekend and you need to launch out of Sandsport Park, what do you do? That would be dependent on a few variables. So it would be the, obviously the conditions of getting from Station 14 down there as far as the time it would take. And then second, we have other avenues we can look at as far as the sheriff's dock at Sandsport as well, as far as dropping in there. So where's the closest, if you're, if you're, if you're on a trailer and you're at Station 14, where's the closest boat ramp? Well, where are we going? The causeway right there on, Stuart Causeway has boat ramp. One's already in the water, Madam Chair. Yeah, but they perform two different functions according to this summary. Yes, they do. They do perform two different functions, but if we have to dive off the suppression boat, we can. So we made it to where it's multifaceted, to where we can run operations off both. One is better designed for suppression, but we can dive off it. So it's built that way. Commissioner Campy. Well, I like the fact that we've already like mentally preparing that we have the boats, considering now we have none. Correct. Right. And so the point I want to make that, as Mr. Donaldson said, has, you know, it's all dependent on the grant. It's on the grant. It's on the grant. If for whatever reason you don't get the grant, I'm saying you need to come back because everything that you said in your presentation is still true, whether we get the grant or not. This is a big void. As far as I'm concerned, you've waved a flag on a very big void that I bet if we went out and asked the residents what level of protection they think they currently have would be very surprised that you've done as well as you've done with nothing. I get the concept when Commissioner Hetherington said, well, you know, if you're all the way over there, like it doesn't necessarily help hope sound. But here we went from nothing to now we want it everywhere. It's not helping out in the canals and the C-44 if you're heading out. Plenty of people live along there and there's a lot of situations that can happen. Obviously, I like everything to happen pretty close to Palm City, but the advantage to your location, which I'm pretty sure you didn't pick out of a hat, was there's already a fire station on the coast versus the rest of them. Like I was thinking you could put something potentially in the South Fork of the St. Lucie in Palm City and then station out of 21 and just quickly go through 34th Street and get to the water there to give you some more coverage. But we're going from nothing. So I appreciate how well thought out the plan is. I wouldn't expect you to come with anything less. But if you don't get the grant, we still need to hear about this because I would tell you this is an important aspect that until you brought it up, I don't think people were thinking about. It's important. It's a big void in our current protective status, which I hope you get the grant. And the other thing that I think might be potentially lost is if you're asking the grant is $1.6 million and normally would have been 75-25. I don't know what 25% of $1.65 million is. But because of your efforts in the past, the grant funding agency has waived that, that's hundreds of thousands of dollars that we would have had to pay if you weren't doing what you were doing already. So well done. I'm keeping my motion in place. So not to get too far in the weeds operational, and I was trying not to make this presentation too long for you all. But all those contingencies that you all are asking about where the boat ramp is, what if it's in the C-44 canal, we already have it worked out. And it's simple. I just don't want to kill you with the details. As in, we have a 55-gallon barrel drum that literally has a rib in it. This is what we would have. It's part of the equipment. It inflates with a scuba bottle and it puts a little like, you know, five-horse, 10-horse motor on it to where we can transit areas like that. You can't go to every water base and drop a water in at a boat ramp. We recognize that. We have the contingencies. I just don't want to kill you with the details, but I promise you this, this team, like Fire Rescue is today, will be all-encompassing. All of those details, I trust you, it will all be worked out if we're not already ahead of the game today. It's not an issue for us. We just need to get this grant. I'm also concerned about follow-on costs because they tend to be very, very expensive. And if we're looking at getting a grant, they're like the safer grants, you know, we get a grant and we upfront our, it's a really good deal for us, but the follow-on costs are really, really expensive. So is it worth it to get a $1.65 million grant if you're obligated to spend $5 million for facilities to supply that? Those are tax dollars. Commissioner Capps. I won't make you go into too much detail, but just generally speaking, when we're thinking about South County and waterway emergencies in Hobe Sound and even in Indiantown on the St. Lucie Canal, I suppose the dock and the boat up in the northern part of the county would not be that useful for way down South. You would probably launch a boat at like Jimmy Graham boat ramp or something like that. I say you had a problem off of, you know, down below Hope Sound, you know, somewhere. Would you launch a boat? Is that the way you would handle things? So the way we would, if we have a long marine travel time, we would drive the boat and then launch the boat to the closest area. The other part is, and I'm trying not to get too in the weeds, but what we're looking to do long-term within the department itself is locate these ribs in these barrels in certain areas of the community to where things could be more rapidly deployed. And then you get the larger vessels on scene. That's where I'm like, operationally, I can really take you in the weeds, but all those contingencies are built in. But it just depends on the location, where it is, what we're up against with traffic. Traffic preemption is a game changer for us as far as travel time on the roadways, but all that has worked out. So we're not going in Hutchston Island and like the rest of the community, forget about it. We haven't all worked out. It's just a different type of dive operation, which we are suited for. Thank you. Mr. Vargas. I agree with Chairwoman Hurd. Her concerns are valid. You can apply for the grant, but it doesn't mean that Martin County has the money to just write a check to you. Shifting your budget around, making deductions, looking at it more as a business, I would suggest that you start to think along that line. And it's all very fine, everything you're asking for. However, it costs money to the hardworking taxpayers of Martin County. Not everybody's a voter. And it's just like insurance. You can have insurance for every little thing that you want in life, but there have to be modifications. And I am very concerned about this. And I support what Chairwoman Hurd has referenced several times in this conversation. Taxpayers, money. Mr. Donaldson, do we want to vote on this one separately? Yes. All right. And you made a motion. There's a motion and a second? Yeah. Second. We have a second. Yeah. I will support applying for the grant, but man, we've really, really got a whole lot of homework to do before we start building facilities. And you say you have all this ironed out. Well, if that's the case, then please share that knowledge with commissioners because we're going to be the ones making a decision about funding. Understood. There's a motion and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? That motion passes unanimously. We're now going to take a 10-minute break. No, just number seven. We're taking up item number eight. Eight. Oh. All right. It is what it is. Item number eight is permission to accept the public transportation grant agreement for FY26 for the public transit block grant program. Our public works department is requesting the acceptance of $398,093 to provide operating assistance for the Martin County Public Bus Service, Smarty, in the urbanized area, as well as Americans with Disabilities Act Complementary Services. A match of the same amount is required and is included within the FY26 transit operating budget. Item number nine is a permission to accept the FDEP amendment number two for the Martin County Shore Protection Project. This is an amendment for $206,865 for the four-mile beach project funding. It requires a match, which is already included in the beach management capital improvement plan already. This does not increase our match requirement. And, Ms. Murley, how often do we do this? Amendments? The four-mile beach renourishment? About every eight years. Eight years. All right. In this last time, the federal government, because it happened under a storm, was paying most of it. And, in fact, when our last visit to D.C., we asked the Office of Management Budget to increase the amount to cover losses since the storm, and they agreed to. So that was one of the successes we had in our last visit is they're upping their contribution. Item number 10 is permission to accept the FDEP St. Lucie Inlet Management Plan Implementation Project grant. This is for grant expenses up to $13,350,000, or 50% of the total project costs for construction costs for the self-bypassing project and all permit-required sediment bypass monitoring costs. There is a grant match of $6.6 million, which is programmed within the St. Lucie Inlet Management Plan CIP. Item number 11 is various adjustments to the fiscal year 2025 budget. We're winding down to the end of this fiscal year, and there are various resolutions to allocate funds that we have received. Item A is a budget resolution to allocate the voter-approved half-cent conservation land sales tax. In November of 2024, which was after our budget was already adopted for FY25, the voters in Morton County approved a half-cent discretionary sales tax for the acquisition of conservation lands. And the Office of Management and Budget requests the adoption of the budget resolution to allocate the collected and anticipated half-cent sales tax revenues for this current fiscal year, which is estimated at $11.9 million. Item B is a budget resolution to allocate stop-loss insurance proceeds into the health insurance fund. The county is in receipt of stop-loss insurance proceeds of approximately $4 million as a result of claims that reach the stop-loss threshold in the county's health insurance fund, and the Office of Management and Budget is requesting a budget resolution to accept those revenues into the budget. Item C is a budget resolution to allocate insurance proceeds received for Hurricane Nicole into the disaster recovery fund. The county is in receipt of insurance proceeds of a little over a million dollars due to claims that were related to damage incurred by Hurricane Nicole in November 2022. And OMB is requesting the adoption of a budget resolution to allocate those proceeds into our disaster recovery fund. Item D is a budget resolution to allocate revenues collected over budget to fund contractual needs for the building department. The building department is attempting to bring the department's web-facing forms into compliance with the Americans with Disability Act, and it is necessary to comply with legal requirements for local governments. The building department's generated surplus revenue, and we're requesting that we allocate these additional funds for this purpose in the amount of $15,000 to offset the cost of this. And last but not least, we have a budget resolution to allocate additional fire impact fees to fund the fire rescue level of service analysis. Fire rescue staff is requesting a scope of service from Metro Forecasting Models, or Metro, to use Martin County Interactive Growth Model to analyze the LOS, or levels of service, and provide strategic planning initiatives at optimizing response times. This will assist with defining areas for future stations through 2050. We've over-collected our revenue estimates in the fire impact fee fund in the amount of $50,000, and they're available to pay for this analysis. And that is all I have today. Questions for Ms. Murley? Commissioner Capps? Move approval of the remaining items. Second. Any further discussion? There's a motion and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? That motion passes unanimously. Thank you. Shall we take up the appointment of the ANAC board? Oh, we didn't? Well, first, okay. According to the vice chair, we haven't approved the consent agenda yet. So is there a motion to approve the consent agenda? Move approval. There's a motion and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? That motion passes unanimously. Thank you. And Ms. Gordon? Donna Gordon, Airport Noise and Advisory Committee. We're asked that you appoint one person for the two-mile radius, two-statute mile radius of the airport. Ms. Christina Ouellette received three votes. Dr. Anita Kokovas received two votes. Is there a motion to approve Dr. Ouellette or Ms. Ouellette? I'll move approval of Christina Ouellette. Second. There's a motion and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? That motion passes unanimously. We'll now take up Department 2. No, we won't. There aren't any items. Department 4 is Martin County Vulnerability Assessment. Is Ms. Eason here? Department 3. With them field. Oh, sorry. Let's take up Department 3, which is a request to approve scoring criteria and begin the request for proposal for office space at the Martin County Airport. Good morning, Mr. Bean. Morning, Madam Chair. Good morning, Commissioners. Andrew McBean, Airport Director. Commissioners, this item concerns the review and the approval of the scoring criteria for the office space at the Martin County Airport located at 1921 Southeast Airport Road. What's happening there, just a little bit of history, is we have BD Bard Liberator Medical Supply, who is a non-aeronautical tenant at the airport, currently leasing two buildings. They've elected to keep one of those two buildings, the larger of the two buildings, which is their corporate headquarters and some IT infrastructure, and to return the smaller building at 1921 to the airport. The airport is proposing this request for proposal and the attached scoring criteria to put this property out for public solicitation to find a new tenant. In the scoring criteria, Commissioners, it matches the 2021 scoring criteria that was developed for this building or these two buildings a few years ago. We've added two new items to the scoring criteria. Those items are aeronautical affiliation for 10 points and economic compatibility for an additional 10 points. The aeronautical affiliation items, Commissioners, is to help the airport remain compliant with its federal obligations. And the economic compatibility score is also to aid the airport in its objective to become a financial sustaining enterprise fund. And with that, I'll entertain any questions, Commissioners. Questions for Mr. McBean. You told me the other two criteria were swimsuit and evening gown, so I don't understand what these were. We changed it a little bit before we got here. Commissioner Hetherington. Yes, we spoke briefly about this, and I certainly agree with the aeronautical affiliation. So in two criteria, it references economic objectives and the economic goals of the airport. Can you just give a brief description of the economic objectives, the economic goals, and where they can be found for the airport? Right, so the current economic goals for the airport can be found in the 2010 airport business plan, which is currently being reviewed under an FDOT grant for a new business plan. And we should have papers on that business plan before this body shortly. But at a high level, the economic goal for the airport is to become a financially, is to remain a financially self-sustaining enterprise fund, as well as to continue diversifying our sources of revenue at the airport in order to support that primary goal. Thank you. Commissioner Vargas. You said to become. You mean to remain. To remain. Commissioner Kapps. Yeah, the FAA's requirement that we move toward having all the tenants at the airport to aeronautical-type tenants instead of non-aeronautical. Is that the case? That is the case, Commissioner, yes. Right, right. So the FAA is pushing us in that direction. And what do you think the economic consequences of that are? Like, say, this empty building. You know, I've found that, you know, in renting things in the past, if you have a lot of conditions, like, oh, you have to be an aeronautical-type enterprise, you know, it might sit there vacant for a year or two before you find the right guy, you know? And does it make it a lot harder? And do we have risk of vacancy more so than we would if we could open it up to other types of industry? A good question, Commissioner. I think at this point in time, so yes, the FAA, as a response to a recent RFP, is urging the airport or strongly recommended that the airport release, put out more properties for aeronautical use at the airport. And this is a result of the increased aeronautical demand in the Martin County area as well as in the state of Florida. At this point in time, Commissioners, we do have a list of interested parties that would like to occupy that space. The majority of those individuals are aeronautical users. So I do not believe that we'll have a difficult time finding a tenant to occupy that space. But in other conditions, the aviation industry fluctuates. In some conditions, it could be difficult. I believe in 2021, when we put this property out for RFP, initially, it was difficult to find a tenant. But in this climate, I don't think we'll have that difficulty, Commissioner. Thank you. Has this been reviewed legally? Yes, Commissioner. By who? By our airport council. Senior Assistant Attorney Sebastian Poprowski. Just wanted an opportunity to wish you a happy birthday. Thank you. Thank you very much. Mr. Hetherington. Yes, I will move staff's recommendation for approval. I will second it. There's a motion and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? That motion passes unanimously. Thank you. Thank you, Commissioners. We'll now take up the Martin County Vulnerability Assessment with Amy Eason. Good morning. I believe it's still doctor, correct? Whatever you wish. Raise your hand if you've heard this presentation. Raise your hand if you've heard it two or three times. I might step out for a minute or help you give it. You excited? Do you have, like, the Broadway play version or if you change it up every time? I actually do change it up every time. This is the poor time I've heard this, but it's compelling. It really gets better and better. It's getting better? Oh, awesome. Amy Eason, Environmental Resource Engineer and Program Lead for Resilient Martin. And I'm here to present to you today our vulnerability assessment. This is an update to our 2021 sea level rise report. And I like to start with asking questions. So have you ever seen roads flooded? Have you ever experienced a hurricane? Have you experienced increased heat, drought? Well, then you might feel a little bit exposed. So what is a vulnerability assessment? A vulnerability assessment is used to measure certain impacts of acute shocks, which could be those hurricanes, things that are instant, or chronic stresses such as increased rainfall, increased sea level rise, increased temperature. And vulnerability is measured off three prongs. The first is exposure. Are you wet? The second is sensitivity. How wet are you? And the third is adaptive capacity. Are we sinking? Are we drowning? Have you heard save your money for a rainy day? Well, you are actually practicing resiliency. So why should we care about vulnerability assessments? Well, it actually helps us determine how resilient our system is to certain climate threats and hazards. It also helps us prepare for emergency situations. Where is the best route to place our emergency vehicles during these storms? It helps us plan for future projects. As we are projecting and seeing different sea level rise and different climate threat conditions, it helps us prepare which project should go first. It also helps us prioritize those projects. It also helps us prioritize land acquisition. It helps establish policies and code. You know, should we require higher standards for building within these zones? And lastly, it helps us get grant funding. Well, Florida statute actually dictates what needs to be in these vulnerability assessments. We need to look at the county as a whole, and we need to look at critical assets, such as our transportation, roads, bridges, marinas. Critical infrastructure, like our lift stations or water treatment plants. Critical community and emergency facilities, buildings, schools, health care services. It's not just about our county assets, but the community assets as well. And fourth, natural, cultural, and historical resources, such as our shorelines, our parks. And I have to look at two different projections. I don't have a magic ball. I can't predict what the future is going to be. But we look at two different projections, because what kind of risk does the county want to take on making these assets more resilient? So we look at the NOAA intermediate low projection or the NOAA intermediate high projection. We also look at tidal flooding, storm surge, and rainfall. And God forbid all those happen at once. How many times have we seen a hurricane occur? And it's a high tide, and we get an extreme rainfall event. So we have to look at a combination of those things as well. So first, tidal exposure. We have to look at the mean high, high water. What is that? There's two high tides that occur during the day. There's the high tide and the higher high tide. So to be more conservative, we'll look at the mean high, high water. We also have to add two feet to that, because we get king tides. Those are typically about two feet. Then we look at projections, so present day, 2040, 2070, 2100, because a lot of our infrastructure has a lifespan that varies. For instance, roadways have a lifespan of 20 years. Buildings may be 100 years. So we want to make sure that we are accounting for that projection in the lifespan as we are trying to make these systems more resilient. So today, if I was to see a road at elevation 1.6, and we do have roads in Martin County that are that low, I can reasonably expect that road would flood 10 times today during the high tide or even regular tide. If I was to project that and look at the projections from 2040, 2070, 2100, depending on what projection I'm looking at, I could expect that road to flood 15 times, 50 times, 100 times, maybe even over 150 times. Well, I mentioned that there's a gauge that we look at, and it's the Virginia Key gauge, and that's way, way south. The only reason we do that is because it has a long period of record, so we can actually see what the projections are when it comes to sea level rise. But I also look at the gauges locally. So here's the gauge at the A1A bridge, and this is mean high, high water. And if I took that same elevation, 1.6, you can see how the blue dots go above that black line. So those are today where that elevation could be flooding. You can see the red line, and that actually shows today with this gauge that you're actually seeing that sea level is rising from 2001 to present day. I also looked at the Roosevelt Bridge. This is like the mean high water, and you can see how many times that water goes over that elevation. And depending on whether you're looking at the mean water sea level rise or the high water or the high, high water, you can see about 0.35 inches per year of sea level rise right now. Or if you're looking at one of those other projections, it could be almost an inch. So just imagine in 12 years we might see a foot of sea level rise. So here's the county-wide tidal flooding map. This is present day. This is 2040, 2070, 2100. You might think we're okay. It doesn't look too bad, right? But if I was to look at a local scale, and I actually divided the county into three zones. So if this is the north zone, so this is present day, 2040, 2070, 2100. And then if I was to look at the middle of the county, this is present day, 2040, 2070, 2100. And then if I was to go further south, present day, 2040, 2070, and 2100. That's why it's important to really look at the smaller scale to see what it's actually doing to our infrastructure because when we look at it county-wide, you might say, eh, we're okay. The second climate threat that we look at is storm surge. And we actually basically take the FEMA floodplain elevations at the 100-year storm surge, and we project that over. So today, we're at elevation 5 when it comes to the FEMA floodplain elevation. But if I was to project that to 2100, we could actually see that expand to elevation 11. So this is present day FEMA maps. This would be 2040, 2070, and then 2100. The third one is rainfall. So the kind of analysis that we do for rainfall, it's very high level. We take the rain. It falls on the county. It kind of moves around. If there's soil storage, it gets soaked up. If it's impervious areas, it kind of runs off. Very high level. It doesn't take into consideration our pipes, our ditches, our canal systems. But it gives us an idea of where to look in the county and start focusing on that localized analysis. We also look at the 10-year, one-day storm, because our level of service for our roadways is for a 10-year, one-day storm, so 7 1⁄2 inches. We look at the 25-year storm, which is our stormwater system. And then we look at the 100-year storm, because that's where we set our finished floors. You can see in the bottom graph that rainfall has changed throughout the years. And there is a slight trend for increased rainfall over the years. When we design for infrastructure to last its lifespan, we'll look at the return periods, and we'll apply that rainfall coefficient to that so that we can better plan and make sure that infrastructure is resilient. So if I was to look at rainfall, this is present day, 2040, 2070, and then 2100. You see not much of a change, but you see how the tide impacts that rainfall on these maps. And lastly, combination flooding. God forbid we get all that happening at once. This would help us with the really high critical infrastructure to make sure that we had planned for that. So if we were to look at present day sea level rise at 100-year storm surge and a 25-year scenario, we can reasonably expect an elevation of 7 1⁄2. But if I was to take the worst of the worst, 100-year storm surge with 100-year rainfall, we could be at 14.5. I only showed one map here. It could just become overwhelming as we look at different maps here. But you can see here, if this was present day sea level rise with 100-year storm surge and 25-year rainfall, if all that was just a plop on the county, which we know that doesn't happen. It happens in pockets, right? This will actually show us where we could actually look at different other types of infrastructure. So we take all this information and we look at the assets, where they're aggregated. We look at exposure, sensitivity, whether they're in a vulnerable area. And then we came up with these 25 hotspots so that we can really focus our resources on these more vulnerable areas. And we also take those assets and we see how much they're exposed. So, for instance, if it was raining and we had a half a foot of water on the road, maybe I'd give it a green. We're not in danger yet. We can probably still drive on that road. But we'll start planning for that pretty soon. And then from the highest would be red in three feet. So, for example, this is a list of roadways. And I would take this list, see where the color coding is, and then I can say, okay, if I'm doing improvements as part of my neighborhood improvement projects, I might focus on, you know, green as trying to do something today. And then as that lifespan comes, I'll start focusing on more of the yellows, oranges, and such. So, again, helping us prioritize our projects, prioritizing where we should put our funding. As I mentioned, the prioritization mapping is basically off of horizon, sensitivity, and social factors. We aggregate all those assets and we give it an assigned priority of one if it's in the top 5% of those values and then five if it's in the 25 to 50%. And those are color-coded, red meaning one, blue meaning five. So, if I was to take the Hope Sound, for instance, and I was looking at a localized area, I would look at those assets and determine which ones I should prioritize first. And these are a very, a whole bunch of different types of assets here. They could be lift stations. They could be roads. It could be a number of things. But if I was to take that on a countywide stand and look at all of our assets, you could actually see a lot of the reds, the oranges, are within the coast. Which makes sense because you have sea level rise that's impacting some of these areas. Not only did we look at flooding per the Florida statute, we actually added urban heat analysis. This data is from the 2020-2023 Trust for Public Lands Severe Heat Analysis. And we looked at all four years. And this actually helps us plan to see where we should put more trees, where should we put more green infrastructure so that we can reduce the heat. So this is Stewart, and this is 2020, 2021, 2022, and then 2023. You start to see the patches get bigger. In some areas, it doesn't get that big. But you can actually tell where the red is and where the orange is. That's highly impervious areas. Those are areas that just have a lot of heat. And it makes sense. So maybe we should plan for more trees. We also looked at, this is very high tech, but it's called a sea level affecting marshes model. It actually looks at land use over time and how land use is being impacted. So if I was to look at present day, you can see a lot of reds here. They're developed land, dry land, undeveloped dry land. And over time, this is present day, you'll start to see it kind of convert into a more flooded, developed land, flooded area. And this is 2070. You start to see it convert from fresh water to salt water. And then here again, you start to see more flooded, dry land. So we know from this analysis that we can expect that there's going to be a decline in swamps and cypress swamp areas. There's going to be a transition from fresh water to salt water and a decrease in mangroves. And we also can see that there's going to be a lot more regularly flooded marsh and more estuarine open water. All right. So I presented to you the first phase of this project. We're actually going to go through a countywide adaptation planning effort. But I wanted to leave you with the thoughts of adaptation strategies. There's four ways we can adapt our infrastructure. We can protect it. So maybe we just build a berm around everything. That's protecting it. Number two, we can accommodate it. So we could probably raise roads, raise houses, add more infrastructure, more upstream infrastructure so the water can go somewhere. We might want to retreat. So that hospital that's in downtown Stewart, maybe it needs to be relocated somewhere. Maybe we need to retreat that asset. And then avoidance. Maybe we shouldn't build in those areas to begin with. Well, we do know that from a building level, so if I, as a resident, was doing a personalized building adaptation, that I can reasonably expect a four-to-one benefit, cost-benefit analysis. If I was doing something community-wide, and that's just because the costs are a little bit higher, you could see a two-to-one return on investment. And it just depends on which area you live in. But we do know that it does give you a benefit. So the vulnerability assessment came up with eight recommendations. The first one was targeted resiliency planning. So focusing on those hotspot areas and also doing that more detailed analysis. So with our integrated watershed management plan, which we're starting to kick off, we're going to look at not just flood control and water quality, but we're also going to look at adaptation because often the solutions to solve those problems are the same. So more green infrastructure, more storage, more accommodation. The second is enhanced shoreline protection. We do know that living shorelines actually helps protect infrastructure. It actually, when you put the vegetation in, more mangroves, more oyster beds, that takes the energy that's coming in. It may not prevent the sea level rise, but it helps with that storm surge that comes in. Infrastructure fortification, that's raising roads, raising buildings, improving our drainage systems. Land use planning, as I mentioned, maybe we look at policies where we are saying that the minimum building should be at X elevation. Or maybe we don't build in certain areas. Fifth is community engagement and preparedness. Thank you very much. You're number 12 of my 14 meeting roadshow. Yay. Thank you very much. What's interesting is I've reached out to now over 300 people. It may not seem a lot, but when it comes to this world of vulnerability assessments and presenting, it actually is. I went to St. Lucie County's just to see what kind of turnout they had, and they had like five people. So just want to make sure the message gets out there, and especially when you start to do adaptation, some people in the community may not like the strategies that you're proposing. So you want to get that public input. Six is long-term monitoring. I mentioned the Virginia CAGE. It's good to have localized monitoring, not only just to see what those projections may be, but an adaptation plan or even these localized watershed plans, there's tipping points. So if we're actively gauging that water elevation over time, we can actually plan projects in the future. So, or we may see maybe it's rising a little too quick. We need to do that project sooner. Number seven, modeling, maybe concentrating on that more in-tune modeling effort, and then regional coordination. We actually are working with South Florida Water Management District on their flood protection level of service plan that they currently are working on, and that includes Martin County and St. Lucie County really looking at all the South Florida's assets, but I've actually asked them to look at everything downstream, so us, make sure that we're included. So we received a lot of grants in the past, starting in 2018 when this program was kicked off. And just from planning grants, we've received $625,000 from Resilient Florida that was no-match money, so money from the state. And then we've received about $10.3 million in infrastructure grant money from Resilient Florida. Often, as you know, these projects have a 50-50 match, and we try our best to make sure that the match is from other sources, federal funds, for the most part. Some of them are HMGP grants. Some of them we got water quality grants for. So we try to make sure we have that match in other funds. So overall, and this is just Resilient Florida, doesn't count for HMGP and all those other grant monies. We've received almost $11 million from this program. And I mentioned how important it was to have this plan. The Florida statute actually says that you can't have infrastructure projects. You can't build them unless they're mentioned in the vulnerability assessment. So I've taken the CIP, went through it, combed through it, see which ones are vulnerable, and made sure it's an appendix in this plan. You all know Resilience in Action. This is Batta Beach, Tropical Storm Sandy, where we received water from the Atlantic side and also the Indian River. The bottom left-hand corner is a picture I actually personally took last February, and the water was coming from the Indian River Lagoon, not from the beach side. And the picture to the right is the after picture of where we've raised the road 2 1⁄2 feet. That project consisted of a seawall along with our beach nourishment, our dune restoration, and raising MacArthur Boulevard 2 1⁄2 feet. So our next steps, we're going to turn all this information into DEP. The grant deadline is September 30th, so we've got to start the process of delivering all of our deliverables to them, getting the feedback from them. I will continue giving public outreach. I have got two more meetings next week and the week after. And as we start to do our adaptation planning efforts, you'll see me again. Would really like a lot of feedback from you guys. We will also be doing another public outreach when it comes to adaptation measures because it's so important to get the public's input on what they feel most comfortable with. And then I mentioned the more refined modeling through the stormwater master plan, the watershed management plan. And hopefully next time I see you, I'll ask you how you're adapting, not that you're exposed. Maybe you're adapting this time. And I want to thank you very much for letting me present. And I want to thank our consultants, Aaron Dede and Clearview Geographic, for also helping prepare the report. So I will entertain any questions you may have. Questions from Ms. Eason. Commissioner Vargas. I think it was very informative and it followed along with what we learned at Panama City Beach Conference earlier this year. So we bring that information back to us. Well worth time spent up there or away from Martin County. Thank you. You're welcome. You're welcome. Excellent report, full of really valuable information. And I think it's interesting that the DEP is requiring counties to prepare these assessments. And then it will be interesting to see whether the legislature will allow us to implement them. Do you think you are as excited and as motivated on this topic, which is obviously something you're passionate about today, as I saw it probably a couple of months ago? So your level of enthusiasm has not waned. So good for you. Thank you. Thank you. Nice job. Lots of good stuff. Thanks. Well, I appreciate it. Thank you very much. And you'll be seeing me again. Excellent. Now let's take up Barbie Ranch, Mr. Huston and Mr. Fox. Preston, your favorite outfit. Yeah. Got my shark tie on. So I feel like I need a lamb one though now since, you know, doing a land acquisition. So there you go. I don't know if they have mangrove ties. So they should. Go for tortoises. There you go. So, or a panther. That could be fun. So we'll work on it. Good morning, everyone. I am Michael Huston, Senior Project Manager in the Martin County Environmental Resource Division. And we're really excited today to be talking about conservation easement on the Barbie Ranch property. So in 2024, as you all are aware, there was a referendum passed that authorized a half-cent sales tax and the proceeds of which would be used to buy environmentally sensitive lands. There were several things that were a requirement of that referendum, one of which was the formation of a citizen oversight committee called the Environmental Lands Oversight Committee. And our ELOC group has been busy meeting, and we met on June 25th to take up and look at a couple different potential acquisitions. So this effort, the reason why we're up here today, is to seek approval of the county commission to make the Barbie Ranch Project one of the projects eligible for use of sales tax funds. So I just wanted to lay out the process by which we evaluate and get these projects approved for sales tax funds. It starts with the submission of a nomination form, which can be done by us. It can be done by a landowner. Anyone is allowed to submit a nomination form. The forms come in, and then they're reviewed by staff to see if they're concurrent with the ordinance that was passed associated with the referendum. In addition, we look to see if there's a willing seller letter. So we don't want to go through all this process and get a project approved and then meet with the landowner, and they say, well, I don't ever want to sell this land. Why did you even do this? So we get that willing seller letter, and if we have that and we find that it meets with the intent of the referendum, then we bring it forward to our ELOC group, and we do a proposal. We have an environmental assessment that's completed so that our committee members have some ways to evaluate these properties. And if it is approved by the ELOC and ranked, we then bring it before you to vote on whether or not we should proceed with trying to acquire that property. And it's important to note that we can either acquire a property and be simple, or we can acquire a conservation easement, which essentially takes away the development rights from the property. So the step we're at right now is that step and bringing it in front of you. If you vote for us to move forward, then we go into due diligence and negotiations, and then we bring it back to you as a final step for final approval of the project to sign contracts or whatever else is necessary to get the project approved. So the Environmental Lands Oversight Committee, the purpose of that ranking committee is we want them to review information for these nominated parcels. We have a project ranking form that they fill out, which basically is how they evaluate and how they score these projects. And then they make recommendations to you, the Board of County Commissioners, on whether to move forward with acquisition. This is just the evaluation sheet. I'm not going to go too far into that, but there's a series of criteria, 10 criteria, that they look at, and we provide information to them to help them and evaluate those different characteristics. One thing I will mention at this point, some of the things that are important in this evaluation process are, is it part of a CERT project, is it part of a state Greenway corridor, and is there a potential for funding partners? Those are three pretty important components of this. So the reason for that is because we want to make sure that we have matching fund partners to make our dollars go further. We want to support state efforts to conserve their areas and to support CERT projects as well are all very important for this evaluation process. Which brings us to our current proposal, which is Barbie Ranch. Barbie Ranch is a roughly 1,941-acre property. It's composed of pine flatwoods, some really nice high-quality pine forests, large marsh areas, and open pastures. And in terms of our acquisition footprints, it's within our IRL south boundary. I mentioned before, one of the things that we really look at is whether or not the project is within a comprehensive Everglades restoration plan, CERT footprint. And in fact, this one is within the CERT natural lands boundary of their Indian River Lagoon south project. The project will help to capture stormwater that is negatively impacting our St. Lucie River and estuary and our Indian River Lagoon. The project was, this area was approved as a part of the 2007 WERDA bill by the federal government, which basically authorized the expenditure of CERT funds for this particular area, in addition to the C-44 areas, the reservoir, and the STA, and Allapattah. And also very important is that this acquisition can support the state ledger for their CERT cost share. So this can actually result in the completion of other CERT projects that are important to the county. It's also a part of a couple other important state programs. It is in the Florida Forever program, listed as an essential acquisition. And that map on the left shows the property in relation to the C-44 project and why it was a priority for them. And on the right is the Florida Wildlife Corridor, which is a very important tool that the state is using to evaluate and prioritize land for acquisition. And that falls right within a priority two zone of the Florida Wildlife Corridor. So what are some of the wildlife benefits? It's very close to, it's basically right next to the C-44 STA. The thing about the C-44 STA is it's all open marsh. So there's not a lot of good bird roosting opportunities that are out there. So there's plenty of tree cover in this area. And in fact, when we went out there to look at the property at one point, we saw hundreds of federally threatened snail kites using some of these areas alongside of the C-44 STA for habitat. It has excellent connectivity to other conservation areas. Once again, it has that significant snail kite population. And if we were to, if there were hydrologic restoration, it would provide bird foraging opportunities. In terms of the development potential, it is outside the urban services district. And the current zoning would allow for one house for 20 acres. It has a potential for 95 residential units based on the existing property footprint. And it is adjacent to other properties that have 20-acre lot development. However, the property has extensive uplands, so there would be plenty of developable area on the property. It is important to note that this is a conservation easement acquisition, so it's not fee simple. But we have a state partner, the Florida Forever program, is actually driving this process. And they're looking at a, as far as I know, I'm not 100% sure on this, but about a $17 million conservation easement acquisition on 1,910 acres of the property. And that cost would be about $8,900 per acre. And I don't have an exact figure at this point, but Florida Forever will pay the majority of the acquisition costs. So that's an example of our tax dollars going further. So when we met, we basically ranked two project proposals, the Barbie Ranch project and the Palmar settlement. Barbie Ranch actually received the highest score with a total of 458 points. So it is important to note that Palmar will be handled at a separate time and as a separate board item. So we're not prepared to discuss that project at this time. And that is the end of my presentation. Questions for Mr. Houston. Mr. Camps. Yes. When I think of Florida Forever, I think of acquisitions. And then when I think of Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, Rural and Family Lands Protection Program, I think of conservation easements. So why are we not dealing with the FDACs people? The FDACs actually has some significant differences. Florida Forever does allow for acquisition of conservation easements. And that is a tool that they can use. The Rural and Family Lands Program by FDACs is actually more agricultural easements. And in this case, there is legitimate agriculture on the property. But they wouldn't support a conservation easement on a piece of land that didn't have, like, cow pastures or some other type of actual agricultural use. I believe that the conservation easements by Florida Forever offers are a little more restrictive, and they're more geared to ensuring conservation values in the property, whereas Rural and Family Lands is, although it does include environmental characteristics, the primary function of that is to preserve lands in agriculture. Interesting. Thank you. Mr. Vargas. Okay. Thank you very much. It was a very, very thoughtful presentation. Okay. From a dollars and cents, because we're trying to be as effective and responsible with the tax dollars that have been trusted to us, and we certainly want to procure partners to be able to preserve these areas, because is it more beneficial for fee simple or a conservation easement? In other words, will the dollars go further, fee simple or conservation easement? In your expertise, knowledge, and certainly you can offer some opinion, too. In two ways, it makes our dollars go further. One is the cost of fee simple acquisition is always going to be higher. You know, I don't know what the appraised value of this property was, but you would essentially be paying whatever the appraised value is straight up if you were buying fee simple acquisition, whereas a conservation easement is going to be a percentage of that amount. The other factor is the ongoing management and maintenance. So if we buy fee simple acquisition and the county takes over management responsibilities, that means that we have to pay for restoring and managing the habitat in perpetuity. We might be responsible for providing public access facilities. So there's a lot of ongoing costs to the county that are incurred for a fee simple acquisition that are not there for acquiring a conservation easement. Commissioner Hetherington. So the landowner has to maintain the property and the conservation easement is in perpetuity? Correct. I think I had an opportunity to tour this a couple years ago, and I think it's, especially growing up in this area, it's one of the most beautiful parcels of land that depicts old Florida that I've ever seen. So I would gladly support staff's recommendation of approval of this item. Second. Would anyone from the public like to address us? I noticed that we've attracted some visitors. Commissioner Campy. There is somebody coming up. Please come forward. It's a collaboration. First of all, would you identify yourself for the record? My name is Brendan Troop. This is my father, Lance Troop, and we're the owners. The owners, yeah. Of the Barbee Ranch, yeah. So I'd like to thank you guys for having us, and thank you, Chair, Head, and Commissioners, for the opportunity to speak briefly and express my family's gratitude. Martin County's vision and support of conservation easement on Barbee Ranch, in partnership with Florida Department of Environmental Protection, Florida Fever Program, will ensure historical cattle and natural property within the Indian River Lagoon. and South remains that just natural, natural green lands. My daughters, as the next generation, are so very appreciative of being able to continue our family's heritage without development and pressure under the conservation easement of the Barbee Ranch. Thank you once again for the opportunity. Thank you. We've been pursuing this property for some years now. It's wonderful to actually be tying a bow on it. It's a beautiful, beautiful parcel. Thank you for looking into the opportunity to speak today. It means lots to us. Thank you. Commissioner Campy. I was just going to say thank you, because there is a lot of opportunity for big money grabs all over, not just Martin County, but everywhere in the United States. It's the pressure of national home builders and developers to search out families such as yours and offer pie-in-the-sky numbers, because they can obviously exponentially increase their profits. So for you all to be willing to do that, and I like the concept of an easement, so that, you know, obviously I can see it's emotional for you. It would be way worse if you had to give up your property. So I think this is literally the best of both worlds. One, for us, as a county that's trying as hard as we can to continue to preserve these areas, it makes our lives easier, too, so that, you know, when people come to me and they say, well, you know, why are you approving this project or this project? Well, someone owned that property. It was their legal right to do what they wanted with it. They felt that selling it to a developer was in their best interest, and then it comes to us, versus what you've done makes our lives easier, because now this is 1,900 acres, which is a very, very large piece of property. I always use the example. I believe the city of Stewart is 1,300 acres? The city of Stewart is 1,300 acres, and yours is 1,900 acres. And so to do that and to allow us to do it as whenever, as Mr. Houston was doing his presentation, he's like, it's beautiful, and it can do this, and it can do that. I'm like, shh, don't say that. It's going to make it harder to do these deals, which is just natural negotiations. But knowing that you guys took the time to come out here to meet with us, I could tell as you were coming in, you looked all sort of, like, energized and amped up. So we were figuring it must be you. So to have sort of a hand-in-hand negotiation is exactly the way we would want to do it. And I think it's a perfect way for us to kick off this whole concept. So thank you very much. Something that makes the troops distinctive also is that they are not absentee owners. They are neighbors. They are residents of Martin County. So that makes it doubly important and impressive. Thank you. Mr. Donaldson. Sorry to interject, but I just wanted to, you know, I also had the opportunity to go out on the property, and it's very rare that we have one of our western property owners come in to see us. And I just wanted to say thank you for your stewardship of the land. It is a beautiful property, and you've done such an excellent job with it. It's in good hands. Thank you. Would anyone else like to address us? Seeing none. Can I wait as a hand up? Sure. Come forward, please. Morning. I'm still waiting and hoping to get a motion and get a vote going here on these evening meetings. This can't go on, you know, the way it's going on. And it's been going on off and on for years. And I've just kept going at it, and I just really would like to come back and find out if we can get this going. Let's finish this item first. Oh, okay. I thought that's what you had already done. I'm sorry. Let's see. The staff's recommendation is to approve the ELOC's recommendation to use funds from the sales tax referendum to acquire a conservation easement on a portion of the Barbie Ranch property. Okay. There's a motion and a second. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? That motion passes unanimously. Thank you. And now we'll move on to Commissioner Vargas. Yeah, I was going to address what the lady, the last person, had come up to talk about the evening. I have requested this several times at least to have one evening meeting once a month. And if you wrote, I get a lot of e-mails about this. And if you wrote in, my aide does respond right away. So hopefully she will have responded to you in timely manner. I think we really need to bring this up again and put a motion towards this, put an agenda item on this, and make a motion for this. We're here to serve the people. It's not for our convenience. So I definitely feel very strongly about this, and we have to make it possible for them. And just as much as during the day, if there's not a lot of activity, but at least we give the option for folks to come in the evening as well as the daytime. Commissioner Campy. What our public speaker might not be aware of, we had this conversation at the end of our last meeting quite extensively. We did have a brief discussion amongst the commissioners. I did mention to staff to do. We have had this conversation. This topic has popped up historically every several years. And I did ask our staff to look into the circumstances. We did have an update probably six or eight months ago where we did a review of some of these issues. But obviously there's new commissioners now. Was that with this board? No, that was with new commissioners. Okay. Well, obviously it's still not a resolved issue. It's not as simple as making one of the meetings in the evening. We only have two, so that's 50% of the meetings. Most of, and Mr. Graham is here, he can give us a recap. Majority of the counties do not meet in the evening. A majority of the municipalities do not meet in the evening. Some do. I'm not personally opposed to it. I'm much more of a night person, so I have no problem with that. But it's not just as simple as saying we'll do one in the day and one in the evening. There's a lot of, and I'm not saying that they can't be overcome, but it's not like, hey, the five of us just said we don't want to. There's a lot more that needs to be taken into consideration financially, pay time off. How do you compensate people at work all day and then work until midnight at a commission meeting? Some people might say, I don't want my item heard at night. I want my item heard during the day. And if Mr. Graham wants to expound on his research, it's not a matter of we're not trying to pay attention, at least in my mind, not trying to pay attention. It's more everything has more ramifications than just, yes, we can do it or no, we can't. Commissioner Capps. I would move that we not have evening meetings and that we keep them during the day. I'd like to hear from Mr. Graham and then I'll participate. Okay, Mr. Graham. Good afternoon, Commissioners. Mack Graham, Assistant County Administrator. So just a reminder, George and I met with all of you, I think it was probably in January, February. We surveyed all 67 counties and 29 of those counties hold meetings only in the morning. That was the majority, which was 43%. The next largest group, which was 33%, 22 counties hold a meeting in the morning and then one in the evening. And then there were six counties that hold meetings only in the afternoon, which was after 1 p.m. is what our time frame was. And then 10 counties only hold meetings in the evening. So we looked at all those counties. There was really no formula why they selected it. We looked at it, and many of them complete their meetings in two or three hours. Most of our meetings, as you know, go much longer than that. So we thought it was best that we keep it at, you know, the two morning meetings that we have now. Commissioner Hetherington. I'll just weigh in. I personally find whether we meet during the morning or the day, I am not a fan of splitting meetings during the mornings and the evenings because I think that becomes challenging for residents to keep track of the schedule as well as those who may want to be on the morning versus an evening agenda. It could be legally problematic. So with whatever the will of the board is, I'm fine with either all morning meetings or all evening meetings. Commissioner Vargas. Okay. So what I'm understanding is that we will not look for a solution to this. And I do speak with people from the Florida Association of Counties also, and I'm going to make it a point the next time I see them or call them. You know, it's not just a matter as problematic or legal. I don't quite understand. I mean, we can certainly look at a viable solution, and that's the administrator, to guide us through that. We don't have a lot of people here in the morning. You may say, well, we don't have a lot of people in the evening, but at least we make the effort to make a change. It's not always the way it's always been. We did have meetings. When we used to have meetings every week, we, at the same request from the public, people asked for night meetings. And so we began having one night meeting, and we went to all the different districts, and they were sparsely attended at first, and then they were not attended at all. And so it was extremely expensive and disruptive for everyone, so we discontinued those meetings simply because it was an experiment that failed, and that was within my tenure on the board. So I can certainly understand that I don't have – we've done this, and they were unsuccessful. So I'm not interested in returning to there. So if necessary, I will pass the gavel and second the motion. Commissioner Campy. Okay. So I should just – I just can't win. Well, if the request was to have a vote yes or no on evening meetings, you are about to have a vote on yes or no for evening meetings. You might disagree with the outcome of the vote, but your request of a vote was heard. As you mentioned with the Brightline example, Brightline came up and we voted. People liked the decision. People didn't. But we are listening to your multiple requests, and I appreciate that you've come several times. You're passionate about it. I have – you know, this is one of those gray area votes for me. It's not definitely a yes or definitely a no. But having had an opportunity to speak to our staff, I have spoken to many other commissioners in other counties and asked some that have the evening meetings if they see benefit that the – there's obviously benefits. There's no one up here saying there's no benefit to an evening meeting. It's a matter of do those benefits outweigh the requirements that's put upon the staff and everyone else to do it? Are you appeasing certain groups but then taking it away from others? And to Commissioner Kapp's point from the last time we discussed this, majority of all business conducted in the United States, if not everywhere, is conducted during the day. And that's how the system works. We do have evening meetings. We have town hall meetings. We have commissioner meetings. The meetings are available online. They're available on our Channel 20. They're available on demand from our website, even to the point where if you look at the agenda item and you say, well, I don't want to have to watch the whole meeting to see my item, you can look at the written agenda to the left of the screen and pick an item and click on it, and it brings you in the video directly to the point of the meeting where you might be interested in. Our emails and the administrator's emails are put on the county's website daily, if not every couple of days, in a lag, which very, very few counties in the state of Florida or probably anywhere do. I see your point, but in a situation where I must make a decision one way or the other, I am prepared to do that today because you asked us to. We have a motion for no evening meetings by Commissioner Kapp, seconded by our chair. Commissioner Hurd, all those in favor? Aye. All those opposed? Opposed. That motion carries four to one with Commissioner Vargas dissenting. Thank you. That brings us to the end of our meeting. Commissioner comments. Commissioner Hetherington. I'm all set today. Thank you. Commissioner Campy. All set. Commissioner Kapps. All set. And Commissioner Vargas. Yes. At our last meeting, Commissioner Campy suggested we review a third of our non-profits at a time. Didn't designate what time. So my question is, how many non-profits are we contributing taxpayer money to, whether we only receive a dollar a month or a year for rent from them on county property, owned property, or that we write a check to them? I would like to know that. I think that's important. It's in the budget. That's fine. Yeah, that's fine. But we have to be fair to both parties, and many want to support these groups, but I think we need to do this in a prudent way. The reason that we need to, and the other thing is we are entitled to review the financials annually of these groups to verify that taxpayer funds are being used wisely and so that we can make proper decisions. We're making decisions here that affect people's lives. As Martin County Commissioners, this is our responsibility. So it's kind of left up there in the air. We had a big discussion last time, and I think that we really need to come to a decision as to receiving the records, the reports, everything we're entitled to with our agreements with the non-profits. I would hope this commission would concur also. It's not our money. It's hardworking taxpayer funds. Commissioner, since our last discussion, just to interject, is that we do have a series of documents we received. I know the comments I made last time were highly abbreviated, and my issue was is that technically we don't always do a full audit in terms of meeting what it means to have an audit. We do do reviews, and I ask staff to go ahead and prepare a report for you all on just a summary of all the information we do receive on an annual basis and on a regular basis from our non-profit entities. And so you all are receiving that report when that's complete, which should be done shortly. So, you know, we have two areas that we work with them on. One is actual, you know, grants for those that receive it through our grants and aids, and then those partners that we have leases with in terms of property management and the type of documents received there. So we're just going to give you a summary of what we have and what we do receive on a regular basis, in addition to what you provided in your specific motion regarding the House of Refuge. So you'll be receiving all of that. Thank you. Anything else, any further comments, Mr. Donaldson, Ms. Elder, anyone from the public like to address us? We are adjourned. Thank you very much.