morning um i'm calling the meeting to order please join me for a moment of silence followed by a pledge of allegiance which will be led by john sparks baraga thank you i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all sir tell us a little bit about yeah i've been known to be too brief i guess um i served from 2010 to 2014 in the air force uh currently i work martin county bocc as a veteran service officer and we help veterans and their family members obtain va benefits that they might be entitled to as well as any state benefits it's a very rewarding career um it's probably my my favorite job that i've had since getting out of the military is being able to give back to the veterans in martin county so uh appreciate you guys giving us the opportunity to do that and we salute you there are a number of presets today it's 9 30 we will have our legislative update at 9 05 we'll have public comment at 1 30 we will have consideration of an unsolicited proposal for a public private partnership at 135 we'll have another evaluation of an unsolicited proposal for a public private partnership at 505 we will have a discussion on accessory dwelling units text amendment at 505 we will conclude with public comment now we will take up public comment the first request to speak i form i have is from jackie thurlow lippish would you like to speak now okay excellent followed by greg braun sure oh honorable commissioners and uh staff jackie thurlow lippish uh nice to be here again i guess um i am a long-term resident of martin county in fact a lifetime resident my family's been here since 1952 and my mother is the local historian for martin county i am heavily invested in martin county i have run for county commission in the past i um served on the south florida water management district for four and a half years with my whole heart and um i have grown up surrounded by the waters of the saint lucie river which brought me so much closer to god and to um the beauty of this place my whole life i am very um excited to have joined the guardians board uh just recently and i'm back and um i feel that that is a good place for me in my older age and um i i'd like to just you know sometimes the most powerful thing you can do is use the same words that were said by you and so i'm just going to say a few of the words to you that were written in a letter on april 7th by mr donaldson to drew bartlett who was my executive director um when i was at the south florida water management district about chauncey bay ranch a slaughterhouse that is um proposed on the edge of lake okeechobee um the reality is we all eat meat and it is a kosher um site which is better than most of course um however that fdacs would preempt this county from having any input into that is unacceptable unacceptable and we are living in an age where from the top down people are telling us us what we cannot do in our local governments and we've always had that right it's a constitutional right within our state so i'm just going to use a few words which i think for the public will be powerful if they haven't heard them and these were from mr donaldson according to the epa an environmental integrity project the meat and poultry project industry is among the largest sources of industrial nutrient pollution in the united states u.s risk from this slaughter from a slaughterhouse include water contamination meat processing wastewater contains blood feces oil grease ammonia and antibiotic residues which contribute to the euthification and harmful algae blooms including toxic cyanobacteria cyanotoxins cannot be removed via standard wastewater treatment goes on and on and on we know this please speak up on the behalf of martin county residents for our good nature thank you thank you greg braun is next greg would you like to speak now or at the okay sam hay is next followed by barbara birdsey would you like to speak now ms birdsey i'm sam hay i have the privilege of living in port salerno i am feeling alarmed at the reported prospect of a slaughterhouse being constructed on a ranch in the northwestern corner of our county while i have no particular objection to the processing of meat the location of such a facility in martin county does pose the potential for significant environmental and health risk my main concerns have to do with our water always a critical issue in our county it has been reported that the south south florida water management district has permitted the proposed facility to withdraw 6.6.7 million gallons from the underlying aquifer over a span of 20 years this in spite of the increasing threat of salt water intrusion in our porous geologic geological structure a related concern is of course the potential for the operations of an abattoir to generate further contamination of our water both above and below ground the proposed abattoir would be located very near lake okeechobee already the source of water woes our community has suffered for years on end it is my understanding that the florida department of agriculture has determined that our county is preempted from reviewing the slaughterhouse facility for compliance with our comprehensive plan and environmental regulations under state right to farm legislation to me this seems illogical as such a facility appears not so much a farming project as an industrial enterprise i am not conversant with the complex network of laws and regulations involved with this issue many of which have no doubt been adopted for the benefit of well-placed property owners to the disadvantage of the broader public good i do believe however that the county government has a duty to exert its authority of oversight to ensure that the proposed abattoir if constructed operates in such a way as not to contribute to the further degradation of our water resources particularly considering how lax state level environmental protection has been in recent years i believe all mountain county residents will be grateful to the commission for your serious attention and oversight to this matter thank you thank you barbara birdsey is next followed by vera castlebury good morning i'm barbara birdsey from hope sound i've been around here for quite a while so uh lovely to see you all this morning i'm here to speak on a course about the proposed slaughterhouse i have many concerns about it you'll hear from many other people i'm sure what all of the pollutant and uh water issues are i have uh another concern regarding such a huge project and that is oversight um about the animal welfare part of this there will be thousands of thousands of animals involved uh and i question where the oversight for not only cruelty to the animals will be but also for the workers it's a very um tough job many people get injured in this kind of work and there's lots of opportunity for cruelty to happen i'm further concerned this morning i got a uh a memo from the center for biological diversity uh quoting a law that's in the works that would uh mandate that florida state parks be open for cattle ranching and i would love to have further input from this body um how that would uh affect martin county uh it's a house bill 1421 and senate bill 1658 so thank you very much thank you vera castlebury is next followed by jim moyer good morning commissioners my name is vera castlebury i'm a full-time resident of hobe sound for 23 years and i would just like to read a brief comment regarding chansey bay i'm here to speak about my serious concerns regarding the chansey bay slaughterhouse it's a 26 acre slaughterhouse which is indeed an industrial complex as you know in november of 24 63.93 of your constituents passed the referendum for the half-cent sales tax to fund martin county forever you know martin county is deeply deeply caring about our precious environment the lack of transparency of this development has raised serious and numerous red flags one is the effect on water quality like others have been expressing to you like you clean water is critical for our very existence clean water is a life or death issue for our treasured flora and fauna chansey bay slaughterhouse according to position papers and investigative reporting states that this facility would cause the degradation of our water quality for several reasons but especially because it is situated in the lake okeechobee watershed which is already designated impaired as reported this project has zero water quality monitoring in place zero i believe you know what actions need to take place to prevent this type of situation from happening in the future and uh... ask you to please move forward with whatever with is in your purview and let's not allow anything like an industrial complex to be built and affect so many different areas of our community but especially water quality thank you thank you and moyer is next followed by anthony zunino i always see you sitting down i didn't know you are he didn't know i was impaired um good good morning commissioners my name is jim moyer i'm a resident of martin county rocky point i'm also the indian river keeper the water keepers alliance has almost 200 water keepers in the country uh... slaughterhouses uh packing houses and cafe lots have been identified as primary sources of nutrient pollution across the country and around the world this is an industrial site that we do not have the capacity for wastewater treatment for nobody in the region has the capacity for the wastewater treatment that this facility would require it's it's important that when we start to think about you know allowing job creation in western martin county that we take into consideration what the capacity of western martin county is to handle the industrial waste that this kind of facility would provide clearly the comp plan has some stipulations that require that industrial processes on agricultural lands be cared for and that's the county's responsibility to do that we are in an era of preemption across the the the federal levels as well as state levels it's important for martin county to take a bold stand here and designate those processes which are industrial not be allowed on agricultural lands if that is the case then we need to make sure that we have the capacity to handle the waste and the water withdrawals that that these facilities would require it's our it's our prerogative it's also our our imperative and i urge you to take that into consideration and if it requires a revision of the comp plan then that's what it requires but take a bold stand here because this is this is not going to be okay for the future of martin county it's fact it's going to be very devastating for the health of lake of keechobee and the water that we all share it is not just the water that's underneath one landowner's property it is our water and we need to demand healthy and clean water for everybody in the county thank you very much for your time this morning anthony zunino is next followed by mark perry good morning good morning commissioners my name is tony zunino i'm president of the guardians of martin county i know you're all familiar with the chauncey bay ranch situation but what i'd like to talk about is what exactly this exemption actually means if the fda cs lawyer's opinion stands a multi-million dollar commercial processing facility will be constructed and operated in martin county with no or very little development oversight whatsoever no building permit no site plan approval no driveway permit no mechanical permit for refrigeration no electrical no plumbing permit no fire safety or sprinkler review no wind lord certification and this is florida where we design structures to survive hurricanes no stormwater drainage permit from the county no traffic impact analysis no environmental review no public hearing no opportunity for a single resident of this county to ask a question or raise a concern before development begins this is what a blanket agricultural exemption means when it's applied to a commercial facility of this scale every one of these requirements exists for a reason and that reason is the health safety and welfare of the people of martin county however the guardians support the florida's right to farm act we support its purpose completely but the law was designed to shield for small farmers it was not designated as a sword for well-funded corporate operations to bypass the local regulations that every other resident of this business in this community must follow if the standard being set here is that a commercial operation of this scale can claim an agricultural exemption and bypass the entire local development review process then this board needs to think about what that means for everyone else should the county go back and refund every small farmer nursery operator who paid for development review building permits and code compliance should the county revise the fines that they are leveling on small agricultural operators who did not secure the required permits what the guardians are asking respectfully for is that the board seek independent legal review of the fdacs's agricultural exemption claims before relinquishing any regulatory authority we ask the board to proceed with this established development review process until these legal questions are resolved and we ask the board to consider the fairness of the situation not just for the neighbors of this particular project but for every resident and business in martin county that follows the rules the guardians support agriculture we support businesses we're not opposed to this facility but we believe that everyone needs to be a good neighbor everyone needs to demonstrate that their operations will not harm public health or water quality and everyone needs to pay their fair share we all have to live together in this community and the rules that apply to some should apply to all thank you for your time mark perry is next followed by john nelson good morning commissioners mark perry director of florida ocean graphic but also resident martin county since 1957 uh this this project that you're becoming aware of or has been apparently going on for a while there's a proposal for the slaughterhouse in that western part of the county up near the lake on chauncey ranch area that it just i i think it's just a terrible terrible thing to happen in our community in our county particularly because of the potential for pollution to our waterways lake okeechobee and also our groundwater and other water systems that are all around lakeside ranch we spend a lot to try to have clean up the waters through the lakeside ranch stas and working hard to do that for many many years and many of the county has been effortless efforts in doing that you know the letters that uh are in your packet from don donaldson in the county particularly the one to uh to the applicant describing the fact that this is not an agricultural use this is basically an industrial use of this property and that's shouldn't be allowed and without proper permitting for sure which is apparently being preempted by the florida department of agriculture and consumer services so the county needs to stand up with that and then also that letter that don put together for the district water management district and dep describing that this this again is not an ag this is really an industrial use that needs to be reviewed and permitted by those agencies but also by the county and not preempted the fact the county has no say in this matter and they can just go ahead and get this facility done the pollution that'll come from this is is incredibly massive to our waterways the water wastewater treatment facility it should be permitted just like a water wastewater plant they need to demonstrate that they can they can handle all that for this industrial use and they need to get the land use change from martin county not from fdax not permitted by the other agencies they need to work with all the agencies to get a proper facility permitted if this is something to go forward but i'm proud of martin county to stand up and and fight the state on this and say look you can't just come into our county and tell us we're going to go ahead and permit this uh property use on this property in spite of your you know comprehensive plan or your regulations and i'm proud that martin county can stand up and i hope we all do and if you need more voices we'll get them because this is not a property use for this particular property thank you thank you john nelson is next followed by frank mccrystal morning commissioners this is kind of a weird situation for me because i actually grew up in a farming community my family heritage since the late 1800s has been cattle ranching and potato farming in southwestern oregon or southeastern oregon rather and i know intimately you know what goes on in the cattle industry because of my family family heritage that said i've been a florida resident since 1990 and i've been the president of audubon and martin county for the last 10 years i'm also the voice of the audubon moment on public radio i have to close my eyes just to listen to your voice sorry about that it's fantastic thank you and uh i'm also on the board of directors of audubon florida one of the things that you know you've heard several comments about you know the the wastewater and the environmental damage and that and everything everything that has been said is absolutely true what you haven't heard is the cost to our wildlife to our avian species here in in martin county you may not fully appreciate it but environmental tourism is a big and growing industry throughout florida and here in martin county as well for the last 13 years audubon and martin county has led public tours to the lakeside ranch stormwater treatment area which is immediately north of this proposed slaughterhouse and i can tell you with absolute certainty that the proposed slaughterhouse in that area would absolutely devastate the wildlife in that area the lakeside ranch stormwater treatment area is a critical migratory path for many bird species that come through or live in uh in our uh in our florida habitat and to have that type of an environmental impact would absolutely devastate such critical species such as the the uh the florida um snail kite which is going through an incredible stressful time right now and many of these species again are species that environmental tourists love to come down and see but regardless of the economic impact just the fact that something like this could happen to our environment is just beyond my comprehension so i do you know again strongly recommend that you take any actions possible to negate this development thank you very much thank you frank mccrystal is next followed by jeff whitman mr whitman is the last request to speak form i have if you'd like to address us please fill out one of these forms and hand it to the bailiff good morning thank you lord for this day and thank you for those who have served our country that allows me to have this freedom of speech i'm gonna cut into my normal time i plan because it's such a great opportunity to greet the finest of river greenies in our county and remind them that the noise mitigation plan after the illegal extension of runway 1230 a big part of the noise mitigation plan was to reroute all jet traffic out over our rivers as soon as possible so in reference to to the 23 acres of native habitat mature trees that border the airport and the ymca and neighborhood to the north the 2023 approved airport layout plan designates this parcel for future improvement however the potential improvement options for this parcel are not addressed explicitly in the alternatives analysis of the 2023 airport master plan update the county participated in unsolicited meetings with various aeronautical developers over the past six months to discuss improvement plans for this parcel some of whom have indicated their ability to improve this area without financial support from the county shifting the capital improvements required to this parcel from the county to future tenants would significantly expedite the county's ability to make this parcel available for bid without tenant investment the county anticipates the required infrastructure improvements and capital financing slash planning could take five years the county's goal is to make this parcel available for bidding following the proposed selection criteria for break for vacant properties the county will initially solicit respondents that are willing to invest in the required capital improvements this feels like the swamp and i'll say it right now i'm not comfortable with an assistant county administrator who lives and breathes who is an aviation enthusiast fanboy in that position okay and this parcel previous commissions have always protected so doing what i do i talked to some people on 10th street we're going to be directly affected by this very troubling what i learned because i live just outside of the jet fumes the jet fumes plume okay the students at saint joe's suck down jet fumes on a regular basis i cannot believe that this is the will of this commission to expedite the development of this property thank you thank you jeff whitman is next and mr whitman is the last request to speak for him i have good morning good morning commissioners jeff whitman hope sound um i oppose the slaughterhouse but uh i'm here uh today to remember and honor two environmentalists one everybody knows and one not so much um four years ago almost to the day we lost maggie herchella she was a martin county commissioner for 20 years and helped craft the blueprint which would become the martin county difference martin county would not be what it is today without maggie she was my mentor and my inspiration and i miss her greatly 60 years ago max whitman brought me and my brother to hope sound it was wild country back then bales were washing up on the beach and panthers roamed the island eating nat reed's ducks directly across from our house 88 north beach road commissioner caps knows it well was one of the most prolific prolific turtle nesting beaches on the east coast of the united states bonaire beach my father always thought it should be preserved and work to that end the consensus at that time in the town was that it was never going to happen the coast guard who owned the 14 acres had plans to develop it and it would have taken an act of congress to facilitate the transfer and get it preserved my father was friends with senator bob graham their fraternity brothers and flying back from washington he asked senator graham to help him with the preservation senator graham came through and got my father all the information that he needed architectural plans deed and the deed restrictions the coast guard had plans to build 10 houses for the coast guard brass this was in violation of the deed restrictions when my father could not continue he was in his late 80s he turned all of his material over to the town who picked up the baton congressman and tim foley slid the transfer to the town in the 800 page appropriations bill which was passed by the house and the senate thank you tim mahoney wherever you are thank you to the town of jupiter island thank you to the mayor and the town manager joe connelly uh thank you to sarah hurd who was involved in this you remember you think you're at the tangerine theater that meeting and and thank you to my dad uh and thank you to well max whitman for his part in preserving the bonaire beach preserve not many people know about that thank you so much thank you commissioners is there a motion to approve the agenda and we can approve the consent agenda at the same time i'll move approval of the agenda the consent agenda also move for approval second there's a motion and a second any objections that motion passes unanimously now we'll present proclamations the first proclamation is a proclamation declaring charles chapman school of seamanship week in martin county florida good morning commissioners martin county has always had a close relationship with the sea both in terms of cultural influence and in terms of commerce maritime discovery exploration development conservation and recreation have at various times all had an influence on martin county the chapman school of seamanship a maritime center of excellence offers va approved programs career training programs recreational voting programs and summer youth voting programs the school has been recognized as the maritime school of florida by the house of representatives and the senate of the state of florida since 1983 and february 22nd through 28th is recognized as chapman school of seamanship week in martin county and here to accept we have jim allen who's the executive director of chapman school of seamanship good morning i'm jim allen the executive director at chapman school of seamanship so good morning commissioners on behalf of the board of trustees and our staff students and alumni i'd like to sincerely thank martin county for this proclamation recognizing chapman school of seamanship we especially are especially grateful for the opportunity we've had over this past year to welcome many of you to our campus during those visits we shared our vision for the future of the maritime workforce training voting safety right here in martin county those conversations were meaningful and reinforced that we are building what we are building aligns with the country's long-term priorities or with the county's long-term priorities nationally there is a renewed focus on maritime strength through the maritime action plan an initiative that emphasizes domestic workforce developments credentialed mariners marine technicians and the resilient maritime industry the maritime industries association of the treasurer's coast and chapman school of seamanship are proud to proud to play a local role supporting the national strategy and strengthening our regional maritime economy for more than five decades and four decades being in martin county chapman school of seamanship has worked to make our waterways safer while changing lives through education today that mission is more relevant than ever we are training the next generation of professional mariners marine technicians surveyors and safe boaters individuals who will serve and protect our waterways for years to come martin county is a boating community and is part of our identity and chapman is proud to serve as a resource not only for workforce training but boating safety and education and our youth development so thank you for your continued support our next proclamation is a proclamation commending national engineers week in martin county engineers design construct and maintain the infrastructure and facilities that contribute to a high quality of life for all martin county residents and our community relies upon these engineers to execute innovative creative and high quality solutions to technical problems martin county engineers and members of the florida engineering society are making strides to interact with the engineering education sector to prepare future engineers to maintain our economic leadership and quality of life in recognition of engineers week february 22nd through the 28th the board expresses appreciation to all members of this important industry for their contributions and here to accept we have county engineer mike grizelka along with a crew of his folks good morning commissioners um michael grizelka the county engineer uh i'd like to thank you on behalf of engineers everywhere for this proclamation recognize the contributions of the engineering profession here in martin county our engineers across public works utilities and throughout the organization play a vital role in shaping our community from providing our water and sewer service reviewing development plans and issuing permits to inspecting and maintaining our infrastructure and protecting our roadways their work ensures that our community is safe compliant and resilient engineering is often behind the scenes but its impact is everywhere in the water we drink the roads we travel the stormwater systems that protect our homes and the infrastructure that supports our daily lives all of your and martin county engineers are proud to serve our residents each day and remain committed to building a stronger safer martin county for generations to come thank you for this recognition and happy engineers this week so bossy hard to prop out the tv's right there it's a smart it's time for commissioner comments commissioner vargas okay i'll make it as brief as possible if any other commissioner wants to talk at length i'm more than happy to do that you can make the appointment with my aid uh but for the public to know uh senator bob graham i'm from miami-dade county and he definitely was a strong advocate for what we're looking what we were looking for at that time unfortunately he passed just a couple of years ago i also participated in the chapman school of seamanship as a safe boater back in miami-dade my family was a boater and sailboater so my father said you will go to the school and i did um i remember red right returning as you know the buoy is coming by see jackie's laughing okay so uh just returned late last evening from washington dc i was at a naco conference and oh my goodness some of the issues we talked about there are just so many i took some notes right here um but very important we talked about that this morning preemption of our strength here at the local level for our martin county citizens that is definitely a crucial issue um affordable housing we spoke about that of course we brought that up and we'll be speaking about that later on this afternoon the ad valorem tax debate too and the ins and outs of that uh saving our rural lands we spoke about that this morning uh we of course have the program of buying development rights or outright buying the property uh with our half cent sales tax program which you approved and also maintaining integrity and strength at our voting centers um you know the news you know what's going on workforce development i had the pleasure of um participating in the ribbon cutting of it's called reach which stands for reimagining reimagining reimagining education and career help uh this is over at the airport property that was last week so a lot of folks will be coming through to develop skills or hone their skills further for their benefit and the benefit of all of us at large data centers that was discussed at length pros and cons and we can't just give half-baked answers on things we have to be where the information givers are and those that we speak with that have other opinions also there are people across the country small medium and large counties and this is predominantly for those that are large and medium these are the growing pains and the struggles we all have so i was able to speak with a lot of other county commissioners and county managers and city managers also um they also mentioned about doge 2 um support personnel a lot of them brought their support personnel uh chief of staffs um i also had a number of speakers that i was able to glean more information from and to give you an idea uh this is the u.s congress u.s representative chairman honorable sam graves uh i also heard uh bruce westerman he's from arkansas he's the chairman house committee of natural resources um u.s representative andrea salinas uh she's from oregon honorable tom perez he's former u.s secretary of labor and the honorable shigeo yamada the ambassador of japan to the united states of america uh these are big names and they certainly have a lot on their shoulders and they want to give us the information um i also had the opportunity to tour our pentagon and that was a bit insightful it took more time in order just to get the permission way ahead of time weeks ahead of time and then to pass through security which is very tight of course we saw the memorial and actually the room the rooms the area that side of the building where the planes hit 9 11 and also toward our secret service headquarters that was impressionable they have a museum there and i heartily recommend if you know somebody and that was a getting to know somebody to get in there definitely take that up um so having said that um i think that i think that if you are not going to be involved on this commission making the best decisions you don't have the advantage if you don't attend both the florida association of counties and the national association of counties programs and conferences they are beyond a master's program but again these are real live people and i gained tremendous amount of information contacts and know where to go to get the information i have brains on tap this is invaluable so that's what i did on my weekend thank you mr caps i'll save my comments for later yeah um last week we had at our joint meeting there was a suggestion that uh maggie's hammock park which is in rocky point was in need of refreshing and i i'm a visitor there nearly every day of the week and it's true that the um open area the cleared area in the center of the park it's by the way it's a 28 acre park and there's about maybe a two acre parcel in the interior that's cleared and bikes and e-bikes and scooters have absolutely torn up the interior it's not salvageable it needs to be irrigated and it needs to be sodded and those both of those things need to be done in the summertime because this is this is the wrong time of year to be planting sod so i would put that on your list of things to inquire about um also commissioners we've had um a visitor speaking at public comment here a number of times derrick powell he lives on cove road and is really dissatisfied with um an encroaching development that was approved by the county and i visited his uh property yesterday and certainly understand his dissatisfaction with what's happening in his immediate area he has a beautiful site a big site eight acres it's in the heart of urban urbanized uh stewart and pepper pepperwood is surrounding him on two sides and he's concerned about drainage and concerned about the lack of privacy and concerned about and i'm completely completely sympathetic he has valid complaints and we met there yesterday with michael griselka who is our county engineer and jim gordon who's our director of public works and i couldn't be more proud of the professionalism that mr griselka and mr gordon exhibited you know mr powell had was very critical of martin county very critical of those two gentlemen and we're doing everything that we can within the regulations in order to make his project more his property more and this project more tolerable so just rest assured that we have really really marvelous uh and and sympathetic and helpful professional staff here and lastly we just lost a very dear member of our community and that's bob matheson uh just died and we're very sorry to lose him i am all set okay i'm just going to yield my time but just on derrick powell i too got an opportunity to visit his site and was concerned particularly when he expressed the safety of his young children as that sidewalk transverses just directly along his driveway and i always feel like if there's something that we can do to have some screening or privacy had i looked at that on the screen and realized what kind of impact that that would have on his property as far as that mobile path then that to me is the most concerning as well as some of the drainage and the the tree line behind them but i look forward to and i know jim and and michael will work as hard as they can to resolve some of those things mr donaldson ms elder and we will take up our 9 30 preset which is our legislative session update good morning miss powers and sarah powers legislative coordinator here to give a mid session update we're just actually past the midway point um so today we'll go over um some bill statistics and um the budget that has been released um some highlights um and then we'll go into property tax and um some bills that we're tracking and working on and then if there's any questions on any additional bills or any of the bills we discussed we can talk about it at the end um so the 2026 uh session we are in week seven um two weeks after this left uh we're on day 43 of 60 um 17 days to go um this session 1800 bills have been filed about 900 in each chamber and just for context um last session there was about 1900 bills filed only 269 bills passed and 11 were vetoed so it's about 13 percent um actually pass of these of these 18 1900 bills historically um the house and senate released their um budget totals um at 113 billion in the half 0.6 billion in the house 115 billion in the senate um included excuse me in both of those um is our prism project with the sheriff's office um we have seven and a half million in the house and 350 000 in the senate which tees us up for um conference that number can can change will change we hope um but it's a good start for sure to budget conferencing um next so some exciting things that have happened so far um all commissioners came up at some point during week two to attend um important meetings total coast days florida association of county days um our fire rescue team was up last week um meeting with our dealt with various agencies across the state um and that was cool we met with our delegation as well uh having a strong martin county representation in tallahassee really um ensures that our priorities are heard and advocated for um and i appreciate it when i have visitors because it it uh makes tallahassee feel a little more like home and now for the fun stuff um so as as you probably know the house passed some property tax legislation um last week um 203 which is a um full elimination of non-school homestead property taxes instead of phase out um this proposal is going to will head to the senate however um the senate has expressed no interest especially in this form of taking up um this initiative in its current form uh analysis from the florida association of counties estimated that a full elimination of non-school property taxes will roughly um eliminate nine billion dollars in local revenues statewide and um stephanie is over here i know um we might have some if you wanted to have some questions while we're on this topic um about property tax sure commissioner caps good morning good morning so my first question for ms murley as our obm director is what what were our ad valorem taxes last year our total ad valorem taxes for fy 26 adopted was 342 million dollars 342 and if we eliminated homestead property taxes in martin county how much of that would we lose so when we're talking about elimination of property taxes it's important to keep in mind what our tax base makeup is made out of um for martin county we are 75 percent residential um of our tax base and about approximately 60 percent of those residential properties are homesteaded um so when we're talking about fy 26 adopted and the 342 million it would remove approximately 215 million from our um budget at valorem so we go from 342 we we take out 215 and that leaves 127 approximately yes and then how much did uh well first of all the bill says that we we we can't reduce uh sheriff and fire rescue down below 24 25 uh allocations okay and so how much did the sheriff cost us last year so um the fy 26 sheriff budget was 119 million so we have 127 million dollars to work with minus 119 million that's mathematically correct by my math that leaves eight million dollars in and the kitty and for fire rescue and for fire rescue so how much did fire rescue uh cost us last year so fire rescues ad valorem was approximately 78 million 78 million so we were short 70 million dollars just to pay for sheriff and fire rescue and uh so that's a mathematical impossibility we can't even pay for those first two things and then let's think about all of the things that there would be no money for um first of all fire rescue would be 70 million dollars short as we just talked about how much was the parks budget last year well the parks budget it's relatively small in the grand scheme of things but their budget is about 10 million dollars and about 50 percent are revenue generated so about five million dollars of that would be ad valorem okay so um and then uh the uh the other there are four mst use as they're called um in our budget the first one is fire rescue we've already talked about that and then there's parks which would lose how much about five million dollars five million and then roads um how much is that budget roads and stormwater considered their own they're the same taxing authority and if i recall those are also generally small funds but the impact on those would be about 63 of those budgets which i need to know the number off the top of my head but the um roads and stormwater mst is about 15 million dollars combined so we would lose 63 of those funds as well but in my way of thinking we would lose i mean there's no money left right after sheriff and partially paying for the fire department there's no money left right so uh in reality those just get shut down and then let's talk about the constitutional officers there's the tax collector the property appraiser the supervisor for elections there's no money for them uh and then the administration of the county government everybody who works in this brick building here uh and elsewhere in county departments they're all out of a job uh there's no money for anything uh we may as well shutter the building and put a big banner out front that says martin county government shutdown because that's what it would be this is really a ridiculous notion and hopefully our florida state senate will apply some common sense um i don't know if this is just political theater on the power on the part of our house of representatives but it's totally irresponsible i think i'll i'll stop it there on on this issue any other any other yeah you've covered it that was how you really feel good for you okay so moving on to some some legislation that we're following so what he's telling you miss powers is you need to stop that yes we're trying we're trying we've been oh me yes okay i'll try my best i am um so and we'll get into some legislation that i know we don't we're not going to like very much but i just wanted to make a note too with 17 days left anything can happen um good bad worse better all of that so um moving on to a bill um hb 691 agricultural enclaves um this bill has passed its third house committee stop in state affairs and continues to move the senate companion has also cleared two committees this bill creates a new public hearing and certification process allowing owners of qualifying agricultural agricultural enclaves to seek designation and move forward with single family residential development consistent with adjacent land uses once certified local governments may not impose regulations more burdensome than those applied to comparable uses or densities this bill applies to counties with a only applies to counties the population of 1.75 million or less which it does include martin county and the agriculture enclave provisions are set to expire january 1st 2028 at which time statute would revert to current law in place as of june 30th 2026 and i have brought along clyde to explain what this uh what the implications are of this um this bill good morning members of the board you're on am i good uh this bill has two portions of it one deals with process one deals with defining what is an ag enclave uh first to start with process uh it requires an applicant who submits an application who would require the board of county commissioners to then determine if it meets the definition of an ag enclave and uh if it does then the applicant has a process to go through where it's somewhat negotiated how it would then be processed it wouldn't go through our normal development review process if it takes longer than 180 days it's automatically deemed an ag enclave um the process does not require a board of review or approval afterwards uh if it's deemed to be an ag enclave by the board the local government may not require the owner to agree to a process that is longer than 180 days in duration or that requires further review of the plans in a quasi-judicial process or public hearing clive that that is also it's a quasi-judicial so you're not measuring discretion you can only follow the law regarding rural enclave so that that process just make clear that it's it's not that you have if it meets the criteria it's your job to approve it it says a quasi-judicial process not a legislative decision substantial competent evidence commissioner hetherington you maybe you are getting to this but what is the criteria that's currently in the bill that would have a property meet um an agricultural enclave there are a number of different paragraphs that could be applied in a number of different circumstances uh i think this has been crafted to to fit different places in the state of florida one criteria says 700 acres or less and surrounded on 50 percent by urban development another one says 75 percent has to be made up of urban development that could be commercial residential or industrial and an interstate uh and then there are other paragraphs that have other criteria that different properties could fit into so it's a it's rather difficult at this point to say with certainty uh exactly which properties are going to fit and which are not but it's safe to say that this could if one of these is applicable or more than one are applicable it pops some pretty big holes in our urban service district mr caps um i was wondering if you could uh show us a map of martin county um and if you could let us know if there are any potential enclaves as as you see it that could could come up um do we have any places in mind that uh where this could be an issue let me get our urban service districts on first so this hatching that you see this is the primary urban service district and this is the secondary urban service district this is a freestanding urban service district so any properties that are bordering the urban service districts that comply with one of the criteria that's described in the bill could effectively apply for this this uh to meet this criteria anywhere along the urban service district if there's a property that is boarding multiple urban service districts it might be more likely to uh to fit uh but you would have to examine that property and and make sure it complies with each of the requirements in the bill which is a moving target i mean there's a house bill there's a senate bill they are not exactly the same and they have been changing almost day to day uh with little changes and adjustments so anywhere along our urban service districts you could have somebody uh who makes application and seeks to uh to fit the criteria so in my way of thinking when i think of the about the martin county comprehensive plan the most important thing about the comp plan is the primary urban services boundary that's the cornerstone of it all that you know basically we have a comp plan that says that over in the the eastern part of the county county that is the urban area where we're going to have more population more density and we're going to preserve our western area by putting it outside the primary urban services boundary where people do not get urban services it's agricultural land primarily and that is the defining difference when you think about the coastline eastern part of florida the the defining difference is what happens in the western part of those coastal counties i understand in broward county it's fully developed all the way over to the western border there's nothing left they've scraped it clean and it all got developed and we know the story in palm beach county and st lucie county they've had a lot more western development than we have and so it it seems that this unclave bill is kind of slipping in on us under cover of darkness here and i'm rather amazed at how our environmental community statewide and even locally they don't realize how big a threat this particular bill is to the martin county difference and to the comprehensive plan um i i think we all really need to take note there's three weeks left in the legislative session and this enclave bill has got some serious steam and it may it may be thrust upon us here um and it seems to me like it's it's the beginning of the end of the martin county difference and the comprehensive plan and the primary urban services boundary so let us all take note um are there are there other uh particular pieces of land that would jump out at us as um places where an enclave might exist um as i said anything along the urban urban service district uh the um the language would permit anything where there where you currently have an urban service district and where you have multiple portions of urban service district that kind of encompass a property so that it meets that 50 or 75 depending upon the particular text uh it could conceivably fit uh the the definition another feature of it that i think uh is is not well understood is that um the density that an applicant can apply for if they if they are determined to be an agricultural enclave the density they could apply for could be any density that's adjacent to them so if if something's determined to be an agro agricultural enclave and it has two units to the acre or ten units the acre or five units the acre in the urban area well they could apply for one of those densities and in their agricultural enclave and it doesn't have to follow our comp plan in fact it has to be considered conforming regardless of what our comp plan and our zoning districts say okay um well i would i would encourage all of our residents to to really take note of this um there are uh surprising potential outcomes that could come from the enclave bill and i i think that we all need to get really engaged and and to think about the consequences commissioner vargas yes okay commissioner caps i really respect what you're saying about that other counties may not be aware they are totally aware i will invite anybody personally to come with me to naco or floaters florida association of counties and you will see how well positioned they are now we may have a few of our lobbying team maybe two people there we have 40 and more everybody is on trepidation about this we are not the only ones they love their cities and their counties i mean this is explanatory it's alarming it's alarming i've been to hell has seen numerous times you know that correct um sat in conference spoke with our representatives our senator they're the ones that we put in office those are the ones that you need to pick up the phone and call or go visit them in their offices here they have offices here or they can zoom with you i guess but there is a lot of information out there and people are not asleep they are not asleep whatsoever if we don't if we don't voice our opinion loud and that means us too those that are up here but you gotta you gotta go to where they are you can't just sit here and you know make a statement it doesn't work face to face is far superior in any situation in life so when there's a lot of complaints about doing this or that well those are the ones not doing it so let's all join together commissioners uh i was very impressed at this last conference that i just arrived from about numerous commissioners going up there together with their support team also to have meetings with those that are representatives at that level federal and also their senators because that's where the money comes from there isn't any right now you know how much we're in debt was it 38 trillion or is it 39 trillion and we're printing money to pay our interest on that to our bondholders so there's a lot out there but we have to get out of this little little bubble that we're living here and we have to see that they know more than we do and they know what they're doing with this particular bill miss elder i'm all set mr doolin covered it thank you mr doolin are there any current applications that are under development review in martin county that might be eligible for the ag enclave yes thank you can let's continue on a bit of a kind of a promise from last session um sb 840 land use regulations for local governments is the promised glitch bill for 180 um it has passed the senate unanimous unanimously and is now awaiting its companion consideration in the house this bill amends um sb 180 from 2025 which restricted certain counties and municipalities from adopting land use moratoriums or more restrictive development regulations for one year following a hurricane this bill allows local government to impose more terms when necessary to address storm water or flood water management potable water supply and sanitary water systems and importantly for jurisdictions included in federal disasters for hurricanes debbie helene or milton and the bill shortens the restriction period to june 30th 2026 versus 2028 um so those are some some positive changes that we've seen to 180 um that i think i think makes the bill much much better for at least for us here in martin county how does it look in the house uh it is moving it has two stops uh it has been heard twice so okay um and that's not to say they'll probably i mean since it was a senate bill they'll either they'll probably take up the senate bill just as as is um like they did last year with okay what's the number of the house bill um 840 oh no that's the house bill i'll get it to you and um last bill i'm just gonna turn this one over to peter walden he's been um doing some research on this local land planning and development bill um that's going to have some pretty pretty serious implications here um in in martin county good morning commissioners peter walden deputy growth management director um yes there's two bills companion bills going through the legislature right now the hb 927 and the senate bill 1138 both of them are worded a little bit differently but are both trying to uh make it mandatory that we create a qualified contractor uh program for the review of development applications so the developer comes in and uh they would rather use a contractor rather than go through the development review process with our development team uh they could do so and we have to have that program in place by january of next year and we have to have at least six qualified contractors in this program it's kind of like our continuing services program that we have with some contractors now um the difference is is that we no longer really follow article 10 in our code they would do the review they would prevent uh present a affidavit along with an application basically saying that they've reviewed it and it complies with our comp plan or ldrs and everything else staff would only be allowed to do an administrative review of that basically stating that they have all the components of the application from our checklist they have an environmental assessment a stormwater report but we wouldn't necessarily have the ability to review any of that before it goes to the final decision maker so that if that sounds problematic it is because very rarely does anybody bring an application forward in martin county and get it right the first time let alone the fourth or fifth time so um there's really nothing in the bills that talk about what would happen down the road if these applications got it wrong um and also uh the public hearing process and the approval process is kind of usurped as well because we're basically given an application and told to approve it and the language has been changing daily just like the enclave language uh in fact house bill was revised yesterday at 1 30. um so it's kind of hard to keep up with it i know elise has been working on it as well and uh it's very problematic to the development review process and it seems in the end very litigious but we it's it's hard to say at this point the senate bill seems a little bit uh less arduous because it does have an out it seems like we can deny applications after uh as they get presented to the board um where the house bill really doesn't leave that option out so um we're following this as much as we can and uh it'll be interesting to see as these two bills get merged together for approval if if the what language you know is adopted so we're doing our best to keep an eye on it so in the house bill the applicant can initially decide to forego county development review in favor of choosing the developer a qualified contractor yes so from the beginning yes and the the qualifications with the county are not set very high they have to have five years experience in a uh state license they don't necessarily have to have any history with the county or be local uh they can be anywhere in the state and uh and if we don't get this program instituted properly as it says in the thing then somebody can just hire any any contractor they want to review the project and we have to accept that and are there deadlines for review uh once we get the application that they received from the applicant we have five days to review it for completeness and that's after the developers chosen reviewers have said this complies correct then we get five days yep and then within that five days it gets turned over to the decision maker if it's deemed complete is that business or weekends included it says five days and who's the house sponsor and who's the senate sponsor i don't know that offhand i don't know it offhand all right commissioner hetherington oh if i understand that correctly the developer then would be responsible to understand our comp plan and ldrs and they would be the one making the determination if the um project that was proposed complying to those things correct i mean they they would produce an application and then a third party another subcontractor would uh review those plans and then so it wouldn't be the developers own agents i believe bringing it forward they would have this other subcontractor to review it and it would come to the board and they would yeah they would bring it to the board so you would have this independent reviewer bring it to the board for approval not staff because we're not allowed to review it or even you know approve it we can just say it's complete and are those quasi-judicial also yes it would follow the same process that if it's minor then it would go to the growth management director but if it's major mr campy thank you very much um lots of good news today i appreciate it on this particular one the subcontractor would he get the fee he or she the firm would they get the fee that has to be negotiated the county uh would give most of what we normally get for an application fee to the contractor and um it's kind of gray and how much more they can garner from the applicant there is a provision for an hourly wage after that um but it seems like they would have to do it with a percentage of what we charge which would yeah so it's like a split then yeah and um so the applicant would pay directly to the subcontractor no it actually we have to be the third party in that the so then there's a lot of finance and bookkeeping that has to go along with that that's a new arm of that and so you'll only have five days to review it so you'll give up a percentage of the money uh to them and then still have basically the same we would require you the citizens will require you to have the same oversight and review you'll just have a couple of days to do it we're not allowed it says we can only review it for completeness we can i mean you still have to do that but we can't review the substance of the application understood but it's not like you're just passing it through it's still going to have to require it's online with our completeness review that we do in the beginning of an application where we just call the boxes you check the boxes you've provided all the individual criteria but we don't look at that criteria to see for for example if you're required to have a preserve area management plan they'll check to see that a preserve area management plan is included but we can't determine whether or not the preserve area management plan meets all of our criteria because it's certified to do so so all we can see is that that particular element is included there's a report for stormwater if it's absent we can reject it but we can't determine whether or not the water quality treatment provided we don't know if it's good or bad all we can just say it's there or not and they can hire anybody from anywhere in the state so if they hire a subcontractor out of pensacola the chances of us the five of us getting to meet with them is slim um and then let's say it comes to us it's been reviewed by an outside subcontractor comes to us and we you said in the house version we don't even really have the authority to deny it the senate version we'd at least have some say but let's say we denied it which goes back to the subcontractor to be reviewed again i'd assume so it gets really vague at that point of the program it doesn't say about post completion or the process going forward as much as it does just to get the qualified contractors involved okay miss powers i you were smart to bring um co-stars with you for each of these options so you didn't have to give us the bad news all by yourself very clever good for you commissioner vargas yeah i those were some of the questions that i wanted to ask you answered them no sense in going over that this is something that is going to be detrimental to martin county there are other counties that are smaller and more fiscally constrained as commissioner caps was talking about numbers today and i get all the numbers there but we'll see miss powers um a public speaker this morning brought up house bill 1421 and senate bill 1658 would you please track that for us please this this is okay um tell us about that bill too yep so in the house um the house bill 1421 is i haven't had i just heard it at the same time so i haven't had time to review it but it is um placed it's passed fully the house has not moved in the senate okay and tell me what the bill entails so just according to the quick summary requires land managers to identify grazable areas on state-owned lands for cattle grazing and includes cattle grazing among methods used to control invasive plants mandates identification of existing grazable lands and consideration of appropriateness for leasing to private entities based on ecological wildlife and recreational goals specifies requirements such as maximum stocking rate possible grazing term and acceptable animal containment methods without converting native wildlife habit requires inclusion of cattle grazing provisions and land management plans and an explanation for excluding such leases and adds cattle grazing as a potential strategy in the fish and wildlife conservation commission's invasive plant control program with an effective date of july 1 2026 all right keep me posted yep i will add that um any other questions commissioners yes so two more weeks two yep two and a half i've had it up after this and uh hopefully we have some some meetings um the one the bill um about ag enclaves is going to be heard on thursday um in its amended form as um where in the senate in tallahassee uh i thought the the senate bill was going to be heard today is it today i think okay this afternoon i better hurry up so yeah keep us close yeah yeah so um they're entering you know after a day 50 committee stop meeting so we'll kind of have a better idea any bills that haven't had at least one committee stop by now probably will not move but as we know in this world anything can happen um so we'll continue to monitor these in addition to um you know a list of other bills uh i had i did struggle to find any great news um but i know um you know i do i do i know with with everything negative today i do want to thank our legislators as well um they have taken the time over the last seven weeks to meet with anybody that has come up um including you know fire rescue um i've got a couple meetings set up um our emergency management director sally is coming up today um for her day tomorrow and they've all committed to meet with her tomorrow afternoon so i do want to thank them we do have a very accessible um delegation whether you know they do everything we ask them to probably not but they are very accessible and they do hear us we were on a call with rep snyder yesterday um so just wanted to give them a shout out at the end of this seemingly doom and gloom presentation but i brought good show stars and what is what do we know for certain about special sessions uh we know that there's for certain going to be one on congressional redistricting okay um that is set in that there hasn't been a set i don't haven't seen any set date yet um but that's already kind of been predetermined with the with the lawsuits and everything that have been going on that's just it's going to be pretty open and closed um rumors are that there's going to be a special session on property tax uh has not been confirmed yet um but there has you know the house and the and the governor both said that there will be something on the 2026 ballot um we just don't know what it will be yet and of course the senate will need to at some point comply so if that takes special session and or extending hopefully not but past the 60 days as happened last year but budget-wise all things are on track for a 60-day finish and then special session after that okay how many days on your countdown is that oh uh let's see 46. thank you guys thank you thank you sarah uh shall we take a 10 minute break sure thank you let's take up board appointments the first one is health facilities authority appointments donna gordon from administration you're asked to appoint two individuals mr lewis mark kokorola received five votes mrs geraldine jenco received three votes is there a motion to approve mr lewis mark korolu and geraldine jenco i'll move approval second there's a motion and a second any objection that motion passes unanimously i'll go on to the the animal care and control oversight board appointment you're asked to appoint one person and mrs rita c nelson received four votes okay i'll move approval of mrs rita nelson second there's a motion and a second any objections that motion passes unanimously and industrial development authority appointments you're asked to appoint one person and mrs jamie elfert received four votes i'll move approval of mrs jamie elfert second there's a motion and a second any opposition that motion passes unanimously we will now move on to public hearing number one which is a public hearing to consider adoption of an ordinance amending chapter 111 article 5 false alarm reduction yes good morning commissioners this is a ordinance that is going to amend the false alarm reduction order ordinance this was requested by the sheriff and the code enforcement um division of martin county they have been working together to come up with a way for individuals who are cited under this ordinance to appeal so these are just some minor changes to the ordinance to reflect the process that they worked out most of the changes are in section 111.126 it just provides for the written notice that'll be provided to the property owners it also allows the board to set an administrative fee for the foreign appeal by resolution and then it provides that the penalties and fees that are assessed under this ordinance would not be subject to reduction like our code enforcement liens um also included is a resolution establishing a fee of fifty dollars the sheriff and code enforcement division thought that that was a fair um fee because it covers the cost of the magistrate staff time it actually doesn't cover it but it offsets it so they're recommending an administrative fee of fifty dollars and that kind of summarizes the changes i'm happy to answer any questions questions from zelder commissioner vargas so um if i have perpetually have a lot of false alarms what happens now they come out they respond so that's that's kind of the goal of this ordinance is to prevent that so if you look the fees for false alarms are already established and it's under section 111.124 so your first and second false alarm would be a 25 penalty and then as they increase the the fee increases so it goes to 100 it goes to 50 75 100 150 um so that's the the goal is to prevent the sheriff from unnecessarily going to businesses um and they haven't had an appeal process so they haven't been assessing the fee so that that's we're finalizing all this so they can start assessing these fees to save you know their unnecessary time okay thank you yep any further questions for miss alder i see we have the sheriff sheriff would you like to address us i don't know that he knew this was happening tonight i'm just here to check on our people we had some we thought we may have some issues so we're just here for you today so we're here to keep you safe i was not here for the ordinance but i do support it we have one establishment in any town that we've had over 2 000 false alarms to and we want alarms to be serious when our deputies respond out there and that's the goal and most businesses they work with us we work with them they keep themselves in check so this will be beneficial to all of us keep our deputies in play and make sure we're responding the ones that we need to respond to sheriff while you're here i will tell you that we are very well protected by deputy pine right there he is handled where i feel very safe and comfortable with his uh his watchful eye thank you definitely thank you yes and sheriff as long as you're here you need to apprise us of anything that's going on in the county e-bikes well i'm hoping you can you fix the e-bike problem commissioner but we are actually tracking with legislation for tallahassee so i think it's smart doing what we're doing kind of waiting we have a workshop that we're working on kind of waiting on florida legislators to see what they propose before we try to bolster our our ordinances with that uh some positive news out of tallahassee we've got through the first hurdle on our um some funding for our mental health pot in the jail so that's big right now we have hopefully on the table around seven million dollars we're obviously hoping for more than that but i know our state representative snyder has worked hard on that so we're looking forward to to that coming in i know that's a big ass and it's a big tax lift down the road so we appreciate him kind of spearheading that you need to work on the senate sheriff we have because you don't have that much money in this in the senate yes and i don't understand their processes and i know there's 350 000 in the senate but it's my understanding the way that they the way that they structure money up there that just having money in the senate is good for us so i've asked that question i understand what you're saying but it's looking good we'll help you in any way that we can we know that yeah thank you we're happy you're the sheriff thank you commissioner thank you is that it that's it thank you we just need to have public comment and a vote would anyone from the public like to address us on the matter of false alarms seeing none i'll close the public hearing portion and is there a motion to uh move staff's recommendation i make a motion second there's a motion in a second all those in favor aye opposed that motion passes unanimously thank you we will now move on to public hearing number two which is a public hearing to consider adoption of an ordinance amending division six site development standards article 11 planned mixed-use village land development regulations regarding excavation standards mr sinnott thank you madam chair good morning commissioners i'm john senate principal planner with growth management this is a request by gunster yokely and steward on behalf of madame palm beach for approval of an amendment to division six site development standards article 11 planned mixed-use village land development regulations martin county code to add excavation standards for projects within the planned mixed-use village zoning district article 11 was approved in 2018 through the adoption of ordinance 1083 article 11 regulates the new field project formerly known as pineland prairie new field encompasses approximately 3 411 acres in western palm city just south of the c23 canal this proposed amendment would add excavation standards to division 6 site development standards article 11 the proposed maximum excavation depth would be 40 feet provided at the bottom of excavations must be at least 30 feet above the confining unit of the upper florid and aquifer hawthorne group material excavated below 15 feet would be restricted to sand proposed amendment establishes setbacks of excavations from rights of way property lines as well as wells and septic systems excavations in the vicinity of wetlands would continue to be subject to divisions 1 and 2 of article 4 ldr the proposed amendment contains sampling reporting and monitoring requirements which are consistent with the existing excavation and fill standards found in division 8 excavating filling and mining article 4 ldr this matter was heard before the lpa this past thursday february 19th the lpa voted 3 to 0 recommending approval with two members being absent staff recommendation is to move the board receive and file the agenda item and its attachments including the staff report as exhibit 1 and move the board adopt the proposed ordinance amending article 11 planned mixed use village land development regulations martin county code that concludes my presentation questions for mr sinnott seeing none does the applicant have a presentation yes ma'am good morning commissioners and thank you to staff for the thoughtful presentation and for the recommendation of approval i'm kristen spake of the gunster law firm here on behalf of madame brought members of the development team along with us to speak with you but before they come up i just want to reinforce briefly a couple points that were already made which are one as you know new field is governed by article 11 of the land development regulations and that's the article that we're asking to amend specifically and so if this request is granted the change to the code will apply only to new the new field project as the only project that's subject to that article 11 planned mixed use village so that's important to note that with this change it doesn't mean that landholders outside of this new field development can come and try to make use of the amendment that we're asking for it's just for new field solely within new field and the other point that i want to reinforce was simply that this language that we're requesting was adapted from language that you all have already heard and considered and vetted and elected to approve in your division i think it's division eight article four so that the language that we're asking you to approve today specifically for new field is derived from language that has already been considered and deemed worthy of a approval by you all and so with that if i can have you hear from a couple of our team you'll hear from james fitzgerald of anatomy homes also bob higgins our engineering expert and sean mckenzie will talk about traffic so james will speak with you first about why newfield's asking for this change good morning commissioners my name is james fitzgerald i work with anatomy homes i'm the vice president of development i'm responsible for the new field project which is why i'm here before you this morning uh first and foremost i wanted to thank you for your time and attention to our request and also thank staff for their thoroughness and professionalism that they've demonstrated as they always do throughout the review process so fundamentally what we're seeking is our request is the nature of it is really flexibility and helping us use strategic and thoughtful development techniques by allowing us to obtain fill closer to the neighborhood footprints where it's needed so what this will directly do is reduce construction traffic in the future and that would be impacting the newly completed newfield parkway roadway widening project this is a county thoroughfare road that bifurcates the property and as a part of our developers agreement that was assigned to us we had to widen that roadway we've just completed that roadway along with the landscaping enhancements hardscaping enhancements so it's i think it's in our best interest to try to protect that as time goes on and minimize the wear and tear to that roadway as well as others because uh the decision that we would be facing is you know we either would have to uh probably truck infill from a different lake location using newfield parkway inevitably or import fill from elsewhere using not only newfield parkway but certainly other public roads as well so the uh the limitation on wear and tear in our opinion uh really helps and benefits multiple constituencies but beyond the practical and the cost reduction benefits of this request we've also considered the potential environmental effects and sought to mitigate those to the greatest extent possible newfield was designed with sustainability and land stewardship in the forefront so when we were thinking about making this request we wanted to make sure that that this request and this application was uh that upholds to the newfield goals and values as it relates to sustainability so what we've done as a part of the due diligence effort is we've undertaken all the geotechnical testing and all the water quality monitoring that would be required of us just to make sure that if we did bring this request forward that we've done our homework and we know that we're not coming up here for no reason we're coming up here for a reason that we think is really a benefit to everybody around the area including folks that are taxpayers including newfield residents as it relates to minimizing that wear and tear so with that said um as as kristen mentioned we've got some subject matter experts with us on our team that are here and so i'm going to invite uh bob higgins to come and uh make a few remarks as well thank you good morning bob higgins with higgins engineering excuse me i've got a lengthy background in dealing with lake depths and including palm beach county help them with their mining ordinance and i did help martin county with coming up with criteria to allow excavation depths going greater than 20 feet uh the primary objective is to protect drinking water aquifers and one of the primary focuses on protection is is their conate water conate water is trapped sea water at lower depths because of the density it sits at the bottom of the aquifer you don't want to excavate into conate water it'll contaminate the superficial aquifer where most of our drinking water supplies come from the second factor is you don't want to tap into the florida aquifer which in martin county is easily over 100 feet down so none of none of these lakes are going to penetrate into the florida but the reason why is the florida beneath martin county is um salt water it's got a lot of salt water from salt water intrusion so you don't want to again contaminate your aquifer so part of the testing that was done to allow a 40 foot depth is to go down to 40 feet look at geologic structure and also test it for chlorides to make sure that it's not into conate water and it passed those those tests and so based on uh my recommendation is that's an allowable that for uh the excavations within new field uh with that being said i'll be happy to answer any questions questions for mr higgins i don't see any thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you the experts wear beige jackets i got the memo good morning sean mckenzie i'm a professional engineer with mckenzie engineering and planning uh i have over 25 years of experience in transportation engineering and uh 20 of those at least 20 of those are working in martin county uh and i do have experience on multiple mine projects uh in the area uh and and have transportation experience within uh new field itself uh we i really see a huge benefit of this on terms of reducing the number of trucks uh that would either be utilizing or crossing new field parkway estimate that somewhere in the range of 200 000 trucks that would no longer need to cross the road so from that that'd be a huge reduction in the impact of to the roadway structure itself um there'd be a significantly reduced delay to the traveling public because all those trucks entering the roadway need maintenance of traffic so we're not going to be slowing down all those residents who are already utilizing the roadway and then in terms of air quality those trucks are going a much shorter distance so we see significantly improved air quality from the particular matter that gets ejected by those diesel vehicles so overall just see a huge benefit by reducing those trip lengths of the trucks from where they are mining and and where they need to go thank you questions mr campy not so much questions um just prepared to make a motion for staff's recommendation i did watch the lpa meeting um we have had other lakes uh other requests to dig down to 40 feet and we have accepted them i think the comment in regards to utilizing the resources of their property on their property um is an advantage as well as the fact that all those trucks driving up and down citrus and newfield parkway would have to drive right past citrus grove elementary school which we're already hearing is uh is a interesting school zone crosswalk area and the fact that they have brought this i believe a beautiful project uh to martin county that we have given uh many approvals in the past several years as well as the fact that they've come here and asked they brought their experts to say they're not having an environmental uh detrimental environmental impact so i would make a motion to accept the staff's recommendation and their request because they've been good partners and uh martin county taxpayers thank you commissioner vargas yes i had my meeting with the young lady from gunster and also with you two representing um there were some questions that i had about the roadway would you please address those uh because of that in perpetuity i mean there was a little bit while you were going to find out about it and this is the moment to do it yeah so the questions uh commissioner that you were asking were regarding uh perpetual maintenance and the obligations which again uh are pursuant to the development agreement uh from i believe it was 2020 when it was recorded and um how it reads is that the master developer is responsible in perpetuity for maintenance of street lights street trees landscape tree wells and grates open stormwater management retention or detention areas bioswales and swales on all roadways upon completion of construction by master developer and acceptance by county engineer of a street within a public right-of-way the county will maintain the traffic control devices such as stop and speed limit signs traffic signals roundabouts sidewalks travel lanes curbs gutters and stormwater management inlets manholes culverts and exfiltration trenches for all streets not construct constructed within a public right-of-way master developer shall be responsible for the maintenance and perpetuity of all components as identified on each applicable final site plan okay so within your property you're saying the developer will take care of everything on the other that's a split it's it's based on the final site plan process uh so we there's been circumstances where there have been streets um within the property that are kind of these main thoroughfares that we've discussed whether or not it would be a county obligation or a developer and cdd obligation so far we've taken maintenance of all those streets thus far um but i don't know if you know if if the county wants to accept those for one reason or another then we'll certainly be open to the discussion thus far they they've been district streets okay so that's within your district with cdd yes yeah everything there yeah that's imposed and then uh again newfield parkway in this portion's a county thoroughfare mr hetherington yep i am i'm going to accept the testimony of the witnesses or the experts and i'll second commissioner campby's motion i have a request to speak form from jackie thurlow lippish good morning good morning jackie thurlow lippish 18 riverview drive in the town of souls point just a free a few houses down from mr knight kiplinger um and uh i think that much of this project is um involving others than just him at that time at this time i'm just essential we're getting ready to accept this perhaps could you please show on a map where these lakes are and that's a major bird area i mean i'm just curious and uh perhaps all this has been done somewhere else but it seems like for public purposes it would be good to know where these are and uh or are they dead lakes does the applicant have a so the um regulating plan i think shows where many of these are and we have got like a piece of paper we can show you today but i don't know that there's anything that's not already showing up on what's in the you know article 11 plan mixed use village um there's a graphic in there and appreciate the question chairwoman johnny this applies to all the newly constructed lakes they weren't uh priorly existing this was all part of the master plan development for new field where they had identified lakes in the original master plan and it just allows them to go to a deeper depth than originally um uh in the in the in the land development regulations sure i'm sorry but so it appeared that you were speaking to all of us so these are man-made lakes okay none of the natural lakes thanks so much i really appreciate that mr campy i was going to follow similarly these are lakes that they could build and dig to 20 feet they're just asking to be able to dig them deeper and just to reiterate the fact that this project probably more so than any other project has set aside to mr lollipish's point about bird habitat they set aside the kiplinger conservancy they have put as night requested uh thousands of acres into conservation land that will be preserved forever so these are more like the residential lakes that are being or the you know on the side the portion of the project that they are allowed to be digging 20 feet and now they're just going to dig 40 so that they can have enough product to utilize on the continued construction and development of this site itself so but good point as usual commissioner gargus yeah i i was just going to request if it was necessary because we had a member of the audience wanted to know about the map and how it was laid out if we could have one of those come up to be able to show uh those that might have a question about this i understand that they are man-made they are not natural but if they could be pointed out that would be super john senate martin county growth manager for the record i'm going to pull up the martin county ldr the the regulating plan shown in article 11. i don't recall if the late configurations are shown on that regulating plan but i will pull that up right now and i would also like to clarify that this proposed ordinance does not grant any relief from the typical uh littoral planting requirements all of these lakes are still going to be subject to that planting requirements along the littoral shelves um which will provide you know habitat for birds in the future this is the regulating plan from article 11 um does not you know from a regulatory aspect have lake locations delineated unfortunately our doc cam is not working so you'll have to rely on your verbal descriptions yes hey a picture right in front of us with it but so we did bring um james would bring a printout and we can show you but i apologize for not preparing something better for you since we're just asking for a text amendment here we didn't bring any you know site plans or graphics because this amendment will give us the potential ability to dig deeper into man-made lakes it's not guaranteed we still have to be able to pass all the safeguards and thresholds that mr higgins helped martin county put into place when they originally passed the the article 8 i think it was um text amendment and so this is just the option to potentially dig deeper in these man-made lakes that we have on this piece of paper to show you today um so james will be better at this picture painting than me uh so again uh we've got the regulations that are already in place in martin county ldrs those prescribe setbacks from wetlands and features like that and then we have a conceptual stormwater plan that outlined different types of drainage basins the water quality requirements and stage storage requirements for those so based on a setback criteria for these wetlands that are i think we have almost 400 acres of wetlands on the site um and then the locations of where we need stormwater ponds for water quality and attenuation that's how the lakes had been uh located and so those locations have not have not changed uh thus far we've only dug one of them on the far north end of the property and then there's been a second lake uh that was needed as part of the new field parkway widening project for water quality and that was constructed and the right-of-way was conveyed to the county because it's a separate stormwater system subject to a separate south florida water management erp mr kentz yes all of you did a great job uh presenting and speaking about the matter i i was most persuaded by what mr higgins had to say yeah and it was very interesting learning about the what could be the concern with going too deep from what i heard was that there's a column of water called conate water that's like salty and then if you get too deep you run the risk of contaminating uh the good water and then if you go down even further you can get into the florida floridan which has a similar situation salty water getting into the the good water and i thought it was interesting that this is like a specialty of his and that he's worked with palm beach county on the matter and i was quite persuaded by what he had to say so i'm comfortable with the notion of doing this we've done it in a couple of other places as i remember so i will be in support yeah i'm not going to be supporting this um excavation rapidly becomes mining uh until very recently in martin county the uh maximum excavation depth was 15 feet until very very very recently and it was 15 feet for a very good reason um you'll probably remember if you've been around here long long enough you'll remember that about 15 years ago we had a statewide moratorium on mining because of the damage that uh mining was was having in in in fort lauderdale in broward county it was so degrading that the uh aquifer there and you also if you've been around for a while remember the debates over florida aggregates and the benefits that it was supposed to bring and it didn't bring any of those because it had been mined and it was full of chlorides there is mining uh it deeper endangers aquifers there is no doubt there's environmental damage that needs and we need to do all that we can to protect uh water quality in martin county this project was supposed to be the poster child for good stewardship of land and i don't believe that asking to mine 20 feet deeper is being a good steward of the land so there's a motion and a second all those in favor aye opposed opposed that motion passes four to one with commissioner hurd dissenting thank you commissioners p3 ph3 is 505 right take up department one office of management and budget items that require board approval i've got a ph4 before department one i'm two in a row okay thank you yeah ph4 in that case many business oh yes this is exciting yes super exciting good morning um chair and commissioners this is stephanie murley i'm the director of the office of management and budget i'm presenting to you ph4 which are our fund balance adjustments for fiscal year 2026 this public hearing is our annual fund balance adjustment for fy 2026 each year once we close out the prior fiscal year we update the budget to reflect the actual fund balance rather than the estimates we use during the budget adoption process the majority of fund balance adjustments are carry forward funding for projects that were approved in fiscal year 25 but weren't completed by september 30th 2025 this adjustment allows those projects to continue without disruption and any remaining unassigned funds are placed into reserves for fy26 we saw stronger than anticipated non-advalorem revenues including state revenue sharing sales taxes interest earning and fee-based services several parks and recreation facilities generated positive net revenues allowing reinvestment into those facilities through fixed asset replacement funding or farbs we are also replenishing and strengthening the disaster recovery fund to ensure we're prepared for future disasters or catastrophic events these adjustments are a normal and sound fiscal practice authorized under florida statutes and were advertised in the stewart news on friday february 20th um and with that um staff recommends that the board adopt the fy26 budget resolutions to allocate the available fund balance as presented for the continuation of business and this is a public hearing questions for miss murley would anyone from the public like to address us commissioner vargas yeah i'm sorry miss burley uh very concise you always are and i really appreciate it you do know your craft what is the amount am i missing which page might that be on um it's a cumulative amount through um all of the general um the budget resolutions there's 26 budget resolutions i could um name them all for you but i see them so they cumulatively it's millions of dollars based on previous year's um reallocation of all those projects and operations all right so it would just be adding all these pages together yes where there's a total yes and you don't have a you're not going to make it easy for me i'll i can add it up i can get with you later the advertisement total on it that would be great so this will be carried forth yes but forward so it's not an increase in taxes it's just taking last year's leftover money and reallocating it to this this year's um budget which is basically just a general accounting adjustment into this fiscal year i understand it's also important to note that we rely on that rollover amount in predicting your overall budget so we um uh um next year's budget and this this budget actually anticipated these rollover funds um in order to accomplish all the tasks that were that that were included in our overall budget that's correct mr caps move approval second there's a motion and a second all those in favor aye opposed that motion passes unanimously excuse me yeah we'll pick up department one all right um for department one today um our first item is a permission to apply for the american associations of retired persons or the aarp community challenge grant our human services department is requesting um a grant application of fifteen thousand dollars to provide access to housing with increased safety accommodations for martin county residents and there is no cash match required item number two is a permission to apply for the fy26 small county outreach program or the scop grant through fdot for the southwest 84th avenue and southwest bush street resurfacing and reconstruction project our public works department is requesting a grant in the amount of one million three hundred and thirty seven thousand five hundred and thirty eight dollars for the resurfacing and reconstruction of southwest 84th avenue and southwest bush street there is a match required of four hundred and forty five thousand eight hundred and forty six dollars which will be funded with fy32 roads capital improvement funds what's what's the newfield connector jim gordon public works director the road that newfield is going to build is 84th street so they're going to build the piece that's north of bush street up to newfield parkway this grant is for the piece that's south of bush street down to 714. was there ever a requirement that they resurface that also no so just to recruit to construct the northern they're going to construct the the northern section which will take some of the um traffic pressure off of newfield parkway and citrus boulevard okay thanks item number three is a permission to apply for the fy26 scop grant through fdot for southwest sunset trail resurfacing and reconstruction project our public works department is requesting a grant award of four million nine hundred and sixty four thousand nine hundred and forty seven dollars for the resurfacing and reconstruction of segments of southwest sunset trail and widening of the bridge with a culvert there is a grant match required of one million six hundred and fifty four thousand nine hundred and eighty two dollars which will be programmed with the fy32 roads capital improvement funds item number four is a permission to apply for the fiscal year 2026 florida fish and wildlife conservation commission state wildlife grant for the mc2 shoreline stabilization project our public works department is requesting to apply for sixty five thousand dollars to design permit and engineer a breakwater to stabilize the shoreline add sediments and plant mangroves that will improve the quality of nesting on bird island critical wildlife area there is a grant match of thirty five thousand dollars which is currently budgeted in fy26 mc2 shoreline stable stabilization project cip sheet item number five is a permission to accept the florida department of environmental protection or fdep grant for the s1 canal channel enhancement project our public works department is requesting the acceptance of one million dollars to support the design and construction of regional water quality treatment improvements along the portion of the s1 canal adjacent to agricultural lands in martin county there is a commitment from the county of 250 000 and of county funds and we will also be addition applying for an additional 1.7 million dollars through future funding opportunities and the current funding is programmed within the s1 canal channel capital improvement plan sheet miss murley can you stop for a minute yes can someone please describe this wonderful project it's a pilot project it's a terrific project it's unprecedented and we hope that there will be many that follow my name is john mail environmental resource administrator so this is the first uh project that of a group of projects that was identified in our 2020 water quality needs assessment where an innovative um engineering firm identified an opportunity for us to look at our conveyance systems in the county um what we commonly call ditches um that the county owns about 50 miles of of conveyance system that is wide enough and has the right basin loading to provide water quality treatment within the conveyance system so essentially it's um they'll design some kind of of um benching meandering vegetation implementation and dredging to make those canal systems provide water quality treatment while they move the water through and hopefully also one of our objectives would be to increase level of service for flood protection and where is this this is uh just west of it's at the end of markle street um in uh west end of palm city farms um it's on it'd be the west side of hawk's hammock and on the west side of that there's an agricultural operator that really goes from uh martin highway all the way down to the c44 and that whole basin drains to the c44 and hawk's hammock is a county owned property with public access that's correct and our last item is a permission to accept the fy26 department of children and families or the dcf water safety campaign rip current simulator for ocean rescue our ocean rescue division of fire rescue department is requesting the acceptance of thirteen thousand nine hundred dollars for the reimbursement of funds for the purchase of a riptide training simulator this program is used to support training efforts aimed at preventing drownings caused by rip currents um and there is no cash match required from the county mr campy yes i had a couple of questions about that i expected those and a suggestion sure if there's anyone here from ocean rescue good morning sir appreciate you um i happen to be on a beach in palm beach county this weekend and they had just recently installed a sort of a matting system that came up over the dune and then sort of found its way to the shoreline and right at the beginning of it it said that it was it was provided by a grant by fpl and i know that i think all of us have received emails uh asking for some type of an ada ramp that would allow folks that are either in wheelchairs or have other some other type of um handicaps that would be able to access the ocean and so i figured this was a good time to segue if if you and miss murley could look into that fpl grant for specifically for the beaches um it was probably four feet wide had like where the sand could even pass through it and it went came from basically the parking lot right on the sandy portion up over the dune all the way down to the water's edge and i know that we have had requests for something similar and since it's a grant option and it it had like a four foot by four foot sign like tacked right into the sand saying that it was provided by a grant from fpl so i was hoping that that's something that you could look into if even if it was just one or the ideally if it could be at a couple of beaches would be terrific but even if we could just try it as a prototype test to see if it works because i know that you know our parking lots and our and our snack bar areas are ada but once you get to the sand you're out of luck yeah i'd be happy to work with the park department on that would be coordinate with the fpl for that grant thank you and then this with the rip current um where will these items be like is this just where you train and everyone trains at the same spot or is it going to be one in hope sound is it going to be one in stewart there's going to be one in jensen and for the record ian mojula ocean rescue chief so we would have these portable uh machines they're essentially just swim machines so if you've ever seen you put them in put them in a pool you swim against them uh they'll they'll work great as to simulate a rip current so we plan to partner with the parks department at sailfish splash to implement these machines in their pool and simulate what a rip current might feel like to the general public but in a controlled setting obviously we don't want to throw people in the ocean into a rip current hey good luck so see you on the other side right so if we can do it in a controlled environment have some of our staff available to teach the public how to get out of a rip current what to do how to stay calm how to call for help kind of give them the the tools that they need to prevent a tragedy at the beach well sadly i think we had a tragedy not that long ago so i think this is the level of training not just for our personnel but for uh beach goers is a great idea thank you very much for doing it commissioner vargas yes um i think it's important at this moment because we are planning the jensen beach cafe right laying it out we talked about ada and that's all fine but is there something more that we need to do and maybe in consultation with our parks director we might be able to implement something like this for those that may not have the facility you know to walk on the sand once they come off the boardwalk from the cafe and also stewart beach too and bathtub and i don't know if this pertains to any of the other um auxiliary beaches that are up and down a1a on hutchison island yeah i certainly think it's important that we do have that ada access um at our at our beaches and and our lifeguards we do have the beach wheelchairs available uh so if if individuals need to get access to the beach we do have those wheelchairs available so that they can enjoy the beach uh and get access where where they need to yeah i'm really familiar with that they they house them at bathtub beach mr mail may i ask you a question what we were talking about a moment ago about this this new feature to enable folks you know to to get over the dune easier besides wheelchairs because everybody's not there all the time from your department i mean is there something that we could use for hutchison island beaches from this particular for the record john mail environmental resource administrator i can put on one of my older hats from state park days where we we had to think what was mentioned we would call it mobi mat and you can roll this out and it is very effective it requires some maintenance it's doesn't you don't set it and forget it but they are very effective i think we would just have to look at the individual sites and look at the reach and the pitch and determine where where it's appropriate and and and what the most appropriate vehicle is for getting folks to the beach it would be site by site probably right so this is a mobile mat you said we call it mobi mat i think that's that's a vendor name for the product that's probably most ubiquitous for this but it's it's so so if i can jump in we do have the moe mat we've used it extensively um at bathtub beach it obviously gets deployed and retrieved you know as the beach comes and goes uh and uh our dune walkover structures have generally been all designed so they could have switchbacks for wheelchairs to get to the beach and the accessible wheelchairs on the beach um i think some of the evolution is to have more at grade crossings where it's easier to um using the combination either moe maps or other stabilized ground to uh have the grade easier to get to the beach but um all of those uh elements uh we've we've employed in and continue to evolve uh um less costly and easier to maintain tools to get our disabled to the beach yes i understand that so is there something we need to do to look at because right in the planning stages as i say for jensen beach that we're we're required by law to provide these facilities and so we uh are constantly uh working on um with our parks department on on those accessible routes um to to the beach to provide the same experience for those that are um mobile challenged as those that are are not so um you don't we the direction we appreciate the the board's uh pointing that out um i think we will continue to encourage our parks department to see where else i think the grant um if there are some fp and l brands to get us some more of these mats i think that's great we will follow up on that thank you that would be great mr campy just the two quick points these mats that it was ocean reef beach on uh they were a couple of weeks old they were just installed so it's a new thing and they're permanent they don't put them out and you know yes i'm sure if you were mobility impaired but also for senior citizens i know you know folks my parents are in there almost 90 years old but still just to be able to walking in the sand is tough so this gave them sort of like environmental sidewalk if you will right down onto the onto the beach versus some seniors that come with the family and they were leery of walking in the sand for a multitude of reasons end up staying out by the parking lot and not being able to go so just a suggestion when i saw you in the back of the room in your class a's i figured it's a perfect opportunity to ask thank you any further questions is there a motion to approve department one so moved second there's a motion and a second all those in favor aye opposed that motion passes unanimously thank you department four is art and public places program manual and budget review for approval oh okay good morning good morning commissioners susan kora's office of community development my uh community development coordinator elise rafa is handing out some goodies to you i am sorry that it's right before lunch and there are no snacks in there right so that i i overlooked take it back i apologize it's a pad um i will explain as we go along and of course we did not forget donna and layla as well most important exactly correct when you're sitting here for sure okay so we're here to update you on the martin county art and public places program this is a county-wide program and along with historic preservation is managed and operated um out of the office of community development i'm going to start with reviewing the manual the program manual and if you had a chance to take a look at the old versus the new in your packet it does become obvious the difference between the creative touch which is sitting here to my right and the not so much uh which would be me so the new manual has a much more artistic vibe it's simpler it's cleaner it's shorter and i think it really gets the job done so let's dive in our mission is to enhance martin county's visual landscape by integrating public art into both natural and built environments thereby enriching the community's cultural experience and unique identity and i read that because it is important to what we do our program goals cultural enrichment artistic variety quality and relevance professional excellence and broad accessibility when you look at the new manual and i'm going to do a little bit of a summary for you the relevant information has been reorganized with more of a values framework and we used these program goals and that helps steer our art selection and some of the investment decisions that we bring to you um the manual tries to follow the life cycle of a public art project so we've rewritten a lot of the narrative and put it into concise bullet format with headings we worked uh very diligently with legal to present more consistency in our selection methods our evaluation our criteria our timelines to make sure that everything um matches everything makes sense and it's compliant and that all of our regulations are easily understood clearly defined for the public and for us so those are pretty much a summary of the changes of the manual and i'm happy to go through a page by page but i'm not sure you really want to do that moving on moving on okay we're good with that all right so next just a quick program summary for those watching at home um the program was established in 1997 we are governed by chapter 13 martin county ordinances we are funded through a set aside of one percent on eligible county projects and we have an annual allocation approved by the board of county commissioners in 2018 i believe of fifty thousand dollars per year if no set aside is available we distribute those funds roughly 70 towards the acquisition of new art and 30 to administration of the program and to maintenance of our inventory the program is overseen by the public art advisory committee which we call the pack kind of like ocd maybe better i don't know um they they are comprised of the seven members of the cra board and they identify locations for new art they look at the scope for artist calls and things that we put out to the community and they approve those and they select artists and artworks to to recommend for your final approval of those artists and the locations of those artworks this is a list of our inventory you can see the artwork name the artist and the location where it is in the county um in 2017 when i first started with the program we had 15 we now have 26 according to this list when i sent it through the approval process and since that we now have 28 and we'll get into that in future slides so each one of our artworks has a maintenance program and it has which is a plan and a budgetary projection i do have budget pages to show you later on in the presentation our inventory is evaluated by our staff on a regular basis and we generally use professional restorers that we know here in martin county on the treasure coast or the artist themselves is is often contracted to perform maintenance on their artwork and i will point out this particular one for several reasons uh one is because it was maintained by the artist her name is jessica liddell and she came years ago you can see in 2021 to restore this um wild we call it florida wildlife mosaics and i pointed out especially because on each one of the bags that you were given is a florida wildlife mosaic we used this this past arts fest i know um several of you were there and uh we use this as our art project to do with the community so we gave out bags with their choice of uh the wildlife mosaic so we wanted to share that with all of you as well just to give you a quick look at our newest acquisitions this is serenity she's a mosaic that hangs over at the blake library acquired in 2023 in 2024 we have port salerno pelicans three beautiful pelicans in different positions and some interesting facts about port salerno and uh pelicans acquired in 2024 eight mosaic benches and artistic bike racks for rio all of these by the way have been done by local artists right here in martin county in again in rio in 23 and 24 and one of the newer manatee pocket mooring field facility is has received this gorgeous glass mosaic it actually goes on the building in that big square in the middle um and it's a gorgeous glass mosaic done by jim and test dirks they had a store down in stewart a glass store for many many years um they've relocated i think up on us one and that was acquired just last year in 2025 looks good yeah it's beautiful um and this one recently acquired as well um is aptly named because yesterday on a very windy day it was a windy day they would never forget was installed at the patio in palm city yeah it was uh it was something i will do a quick shout out to uh the field operations division they're i don't know they just work their magic and and you think that they're just field ops and what does that really mean but actually they're fine art installation people we watched it yesterday there there is video so you will be seeing some of that it's it's really it was really amazing um the other thing i'd like to say when will we be unveiling it we will be unveiling saturday this saturday the 28th at about 6 p.m right before the patio has its music series so if anyone's interested come on down um we've already had lots of folks commenting it is covered right now we've had lots of folks commenting on it um especially during the installation and i we don't have a camera here and unfortunately this was not included because it was taken yesterday by other art aficionados in martin county who stopped to take a look and give us their approval that could be a sculpture it could so our acquisition strategies are calls to artists open project proposals direct purchase which we have done a little bit of partnership with local schools which we've done and donation or loan and we do have those as well we do a lot of community engagement um it's one way of course to get the message out and let people know and the ways that we do that is artwork dedication ceremonies celebrating our new installations we will have a few of those coming up i'll keep you apprised sponsorship of arts fest each year and community presentations to raise public awareness so just to give you a quick recap of arts fest this was 2025 and we did a centennial theme we had some local artists come out and paint murals of what they thought martin county would look like in 100 years that was kind of an interesting day um arts fest 2024 we had our middle school friends all come out and show off their chalk painting skills 2023 we did uh local orders came and painted some picnic tables and these picnic tables were made by project lift so we got a a local non-profit involved and then we did an auction um at martin arts at the cultural courthouse and the proceeds of these went back to martin arts and to project lift i think you guys should do that again that was a great that was fun yeah that was fun so how does the public feel about public art in 2023 americans for the arts did a public opinion study on the power of public art and we've put up some of the positive impacts that they discovered and some of the uh statistics that they learned and and really it's very focused on how art increases social cohesion quality of life community unification cultural identity and understanding and that's really what this says so we decided we would do our own and last year we did how does martin county feel about public art so this is the survey that we did it ran most of the year and you found it all kinds of different places at community meetings social media our website uh in the lobby of this building we pretty much annoyed everybody that we possibly could to answer we had about 300 folks take the survey and this is what they said that they believe it's very important to have in the community they said we were 46 percent good for art in public places overall impact so i'm hoping in a year or two i'm going to bring you that where the blue part is much bigger than all the others they told us what they'd like to see um the top three were sculptures functional art and murals and i'm going to show you what i mean by functional art in a moment and where they have the most impact uh parks and recreational spaces and downtown and commercial areas all make perfect sense and that's what we've trying we're trying to focus on those spaces so the community feedback that we got as well um were these prioritize durable vandal resistant materials which was an interesting take i think it was an interesting answer most people don't really think about that unless they're actually maintaining uh these pieces engage local schools and community members um which we do on a regular basis and one of our community members recently is a local company called printera they do 3d printing and i'm going to show you some of their work as artwork in a minute uh showcase local cultural history and identity and i just like to say that i think all of the county really is doing a great job on that hope sound for example has i think over 30 local murals that they've done with local artists um the new street lights love them they're the old ones that were renovated if you will reused um on dixie highway they're the street lights that when zeus park was first built um the movie company from i guess hollywood came and said we're going to use this place uh and they put up those street lights and and the community came together and actually got those redone and they look fabulous uh they have an electrical box a new electrical box there with train station and of course they're doing the train station um depot uh part of one of our projects but also the community is renovating that train station itself we're doing it in port salerno where we have the glass mosaic and that really highlights uh parts of port salerno that are real important to them um showcases water fishing and a wildlife theme so broad support i think we're seeing that we do have some uh good support out there and hopefully um that will continue i know that we feel we have it here in this building as well and we do provide opportunities for local artists i think we have 19 local artists that have participated in the program uh so far and that doesn't include just artists from the treasure coast that's just martin county so just a quick peek uh this was the project that i said um was 28 was 27 and 28 so the mural is number 27 and this is at the hovesound library they built a new gazebo outside their uh i guess it's the side of the library and this is a 88 foot mural um being done uh by a muralist called nathan delanois and it really showcases exactly what the library wanted which was to have it match the preserve where it is and showcase that wildlife and that scrub preserve uh and those types of flora and fauna if you will of the area and there on the bottom we have two book benches and these were made by printera those book benches we sourced they were very expensive even more expensive to ship here they were from a company i don't even remember where i don't know if it's in europe even i don't even know and that was the only place we could find them and we had made a connection with printera for other uh things and they decided well we can make them and they sure did and they're sitting out there now each one on each spine there is engraved the name of a book that is important to library members um so you'll get to see that they look really fantastic so 3d 3d printed yeah so it was a great connection between a local small business uh art in public places martin county hope sound library just really kind of checked all the boxes so you can go out and see those um the mural i believe is done and we'll be doing a dedication sometime soon some upcoming projects real quick we will have more mosaic benches and bike racks it's a rio thing they love it a few others we will have some art going to golden gate to be on el camino so we're going to be moving our gresco pieces or some of them out of the gazebo park and onto the trail which will be fantastic we're hoping to do a temporary sculpture exhibit in gazebo park and hoke library is looking for an eco art project that we're uh hoping to work with them on that is all i have for the powerpoint but i'd love to do budget with you as well if you've got a few more minutes sure okay thank you donna because that would have taken me about a half an hour okay so we're going to start with our maintenance budget and you can see we've got everything on here except for our newest pieces and you can see how each of those when they come up for maintenance we when each one comes up for their maintenance time we then put out um a request for quotes from the artist and others that might be able to assist we do try to make um some deals with the artists where they maintain their own and a lot of them like to do that so that works out occasionally as well right now we are busy doing selfish splash we're refreshing the murals that are there we will not be doing so in case you go and you see that the lazy river does not have murals anymore there's a good reason for that they were beautiful and we love them but uh the cement is not and between the cement the sun and the water it you just have to redo them so often it doesn't make any more sense to do that so we're going to retire those they've been retired and we're going we are going to look into something new for that area in the meantime the others that have been in the sun for years are getting a refresh so that was as you can see scheduled for this year so we're doing that we are also um going to be refreshing the grescos before they go to camino and we are also doing some maintenance on serenity because she fell off the wall uh due to water damage so we'll be probably hanging her in a different place but those are our maintenance projects right now um can i just go to the next yes this is our capital budget here it is so here you can see that we've been very busy in the past few years um outlay of dollars for lots of new art and we have put on here as well our uh possibilities in the future trying to give that a budget to see what that looks like i think that the program has done a great job in utilizing the dollars that we have um and spreading that out along around the county um so that's been we've been busy doing that any questions you can see exactly what we've spent on everything and the things that we um put aside money for so for example uh arts fest allocation each year we we sponsor so that's a done deal the mural program we put aside money for the mural program each year it doesn't mean that it's spent on that each year but we just put it in there as a placeholder and if it's not spent we spend it on something else as we go along and then the last piece of our budget it's a there's three pieces to it is our operating budget um and that is where you'll see some staff time we have a membership in the florida association for public art professionals um we do some mctv during our board meetings and then some administration which would be things like events brochures giveaways those types of things is all included there any questions on anything any questions excellent presentation okay um i'm just going to end by giving you a a quote by pablo picasso art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life and i tell you this because public art is really important and i just wanted to say thank you to all of you for your support i think it makes all of us feel a little bit special it makes our place special i think it's obvious that it makes our residents feel special and um just as a personal aside i just wanted to thank you for giving me the program because it makes the day feel a lot less like work mr caps i think you need a motion right i do move that the board approve the aipp program manual update and the fy 2026 budget second any further discussion there's a motion and a second all those in favor aye opposed that motion passes unanimously thank you all thanks i'm going to put it down to your baby hungry i don't know well i don't know do you want to take up chancey bay oh before lunch i have a 130 preset what's the 130 percent 130 and 135 why don't we take up chancey bay then okay so no so we'll we'll break for lunch ed has a speaking engagement so let's come back at 130 for the presets we'll take up the two p3s followed by chancey bay so hopefully that'll be maybe 2 30 ish i'll i mean how long is the chancey bay i don't want to be the one that uh friends have to wait that long well we're going to have to come back at 130 correct that's what i'm saying so that's why i did it because i figured if we would have to break for lunch because you have a 130 preset so we can't push it into the afternoon i agree so i think we need to take a lunch break now right yeah come back at five correct no we're going to come back at 1 30 for a preset instead of the five o'clock afternoon and welcome back to our board of county commissioners meeting this is we are taking up department 5 which is a public meeting for consideration of an unsolicited proposal for a public private partnership which we call p3 to build the martin county operations facility good afternoon good afternoon commissioners macram assistant county administrator uh joining me today is sean donahue our general services director stephanie murley our omb director and frank morley from our county attorney's office so this is an agenda item for the board to consider evaluating our second unsolicited proposal for the operations facility we received this about two weeks ago and as you may recall we received one last year from building tomorrow's schools so in order to comply with the statute the board would have to accept this we would go through the expedited process evaluate it and then we also would have to accept public comment today so i'd be happy to answer any questions you may have but that concludes my presentation on this agenda item okay ms elder just for clarification purposes so since we already have a p3 that we are evaluating under the expedited process if the board accepts a second one through the expedited process that conflict complicates it and it's not really expedited anymore then you have two competing proposals so it would prolong the review of the one that's currently been approved by the board while we do the other so it would complicate the process and prolong it a little bit so i just want to make sure the board is clear on that um and it would might change it from the expedited to a longer tract because you have two competing proposals then so we accepted the first one on december 2nd correct and staff has had those intervening two months to review that proposal for building tomorrow's schools project and then we would have to if we choose we would also elect to further evaluate the proposal that we received a week ago or however long ago that was right yes that's for development solutions so one of the other nuances is with building tomorrow's schools they had their proposal valid up until june 15th if i recall so one of the things that puts us up against a time timeline is we do if we did move forward with the evaluation today that's the next board item uh we still need time to negotiate that comprehensive agreement should we and the board decide to enter into an agreement with them so we're up against a number of time timelines here madam sheriff i may speak um i think the the p3 process is is new to us but i think there's a nuance here that um um we weren't as familiar with in terms of the choices that you make in terms of the um review process and we chose the expedited review um as i understand it um it it's not an easy way to switch between expedited review and the competitive review process and that would kind of like start over so my my my thought here on on the fly is that if the board wants to before they make a decision consider the competitive process um we may want to take no action today and let us explore what that means in terms of time frames and other things how long would it take to for for us to explore those i think we would come back next meeting or the choice is to say looking at the you know the submittal which is roughly the or you stick to the original plan original proposal which was to follow the expedited review uh and um and not accept this proposal and move forward with the second one i think as i understand it that's really our our only choice um for today based upon um our more detailed understanding of the statute in the in in this process so i think so for this item it it is as i understand it we we can't simply accept this one and take it on as the expedited process because we already have started the expedited process so we either have to um um start over with a um advertised process with both with both of them or before you make that decision give staff um a couple of weeks to determine so that when you make that decision you'll be fully informed on what is the best what you feel is the best interest in the county we've certainly prepared to um give our analysis of the original proposal um and we were have prepared you know a recommendation for that um but i don't want that to um undermine your decision unless you're comfortable uh with that okay well for starters i think that there is there's been some urgency to pursue this for the last 10 years and there's real urgency now so mr vargas as a personal practice i never go with one bid i never do no i just don't i usually go with three bids i think it was mentioned uh in the meeting where we discussed this over a month ago well this is like a roof the roofer will go away no no the roofer is not going away this is a 75 or 80 million dollar project no nobody's going away it doesn't come along every day um i had had conversations with mr donaldson about this and um i understand about the traditional route you need to get bids we need to have people bidding against each other for this i i'm all for the traditional route 10 years in the making another month or a couple of weeks is not going to make a difference but we need to be responsible with this money that's being spent this is a huge project it's a big ticket item and we don't need to have some glamorous building it really just needs to be a square building you need to pare this down i was told by some staff well this is the going rate no it's not the going rate it's negotiable it's all negotiable and that is my feeling i'm very strong about this can't fault me for it you need to know what's out there and if they choose to walk then that wasn't the right candidate for us who's your caps i think this is really time sensitive uh the faa has told us to get our public works facility off of the airport and we have a contractor with building better schools who can meet the time demands and get the job done and produce this building for us in 18 months which is really what needs to happen and you know when you're looking at timelines you have to be prepared for unexpected things that could happen in the process as well and i think time is of the essence so i'm gonna move that we deny department five um and stick with the expedited process and stick with uh the first proposal commissioner hetherington i i just want to see a time frame that we could get consider both proposals the other one was very good they submitted it timely if we were to do this what kind of time frame are we looking at if we would um essentially we would do an advertisement so it would be more than six months so you can't just accept this one into the expedited process have them put up the 25 000 study that within i mean it took them how long to study this one a month so uh apparently by accepting the funds that's that's the kind of the nuances as i understand it of of the law uh i think the um we would not be able to accept their funds and um and do a full analysis and under the expedited process we would essentially be competing them and we'd have to start over i think the only thing we could explore is to say that um uh that that that i understand it you know if if if we're so any proposal if they're competing you can't use the expedited process is that what i'm hearing you say that's that's what i'm understanding that's correct because the last meeting we were anticipating that we could on multiple submissions use the expedited process that was certainly that was my understanding and my recommendation is that we would take this proposal and do a um take all of the methods by which the first one was in that done the analysis on do the same to this one and then bring them both back to you with a recommendation to enter a contract with one of the or begin negotiations for a contract because that's really the step process is is that um you have the analysis then you decide if you want to move forward then you then all it is all closed out and we simply begin um determining if we can develop a a contract that will be in in both that both parties can accept and then that contract would come back to you so any decision today is still not the final decision but it is um potentially the final decision on on the process of by whether you're still continuing to review one company or if we want to review two you know i think you know exploration of how under the expedited process to deal with the second proposer um is is a challenge at to for today for us to come up with any other option other than to postpone all action on both of them to give us time or to take action on the as as the motion suggests and if we would do that then we would lose the surety of both bids commissioner progress uh again uh i'll say this is um it's four years it's not like we have to move out tomorrow we don't have to move out tomorrow but the long-term effects of overspending and not knowing what else is out there is permanent and i think the responsible thing to do is to seek another bid which we have one in and possibly a third but just to say well we have one bid and that's it it's all good i i can't go along with that at all not at all not at all i would uh like to uh pass the gavel and second commissioner caps uh motion but the vice chair isn't here so so give me a little guidance here i think the chair has the choice then who you pass it to that would be my answer okay i know commissioner camp is on his way but um it but yeah that would my you you choose who you would like to pass the gap there you go all right well commissioner caps is the motion maker so he can't yeah okay how about you sure i'll practice okay can you clarify so your your motion commissioner caps is to deny the acceptance of the d5 d5 so which means we're we're not approving the first proposal but we are determining that we are not accepting any more proposals that's correct so then when that item comes up we have an opportunity to approve or deny that proposal based on its merit correct that's correct and and we also have the opportunity if we don't if we if we don't um want to accept that proposal then when we start this process all over again that's correct you can also in the if even if you let's say on this and the second item you accepted a proposal there you don't have to accept it uh until you sign a contract so you just keep the process going so that's the the issue is that the the the uh accepting um um the or directing staff to go negotiate a contract does not guarantee a contract will be executed is what i'm saying is uh and so you have the options uh up until you decide to actually sign a contract to um to start over at any time okay so the board if approved today has the authority once you present this contract to reject the contract and solicit more proposals that's correct and and i just wanted to say for the public's perspective the the p3 offers timing and savings that a traditional design bid build process does not and i think it's um in this highly abbreviated conversation which we presented to you before it's the um the time value of money and the the the method of procurement design bid build all in one entity is ultimately what's proven why the state adopted this to save government significant funds because of the the there is a certain inefficiency in and and in the design bid build process that this new method of procurement or newer to us anyway the states had it for about 10 15 years i think um it has proven itself over that time to be an effective tool for for um government entities to um both speed up the um cop and reduce the cost of construction okay so we're ready to take a vote all right your motion yes i made the motion and we have a second we have a second okay all those in favor aye aye all those opposed opposed and that would be commissioner hetherington uh chairwoman hurd and commissioner caps in favor commissioner vargas opposed thank you let's move on to department six all right good afternoon commissioners uh for department six the county received an unsolicited proposal on october 31st 2025 and was brought to the board on december 2nd for approval to accept public comment and to evaluate the proposal from bts today we're here to discuss that evaluation we do have um mr joe barry who's sitting right behind me who is our architect from cpz as well as jay glover from our financial advisor pfm financial advisors and the purpose of this meeting is to address this uh required statutory factors uh which there's five so one the benefits to the public the financial structure and economic efficiencies the qualifications and experience of the private entity the compatibility with regional infrastructure and county plans and receive public comment and provide comment on why the proposal should proceed so i'm going to turn it over to mr donahue our general services director starting off with the benefits to the public the project proposed does meet the cip needs in the capital improvement plan it does provide a hardened facility a large facility that we can bring all the departments that are not centralized now into a more centralized location it'll be hardened it'll be newer and get us out of the dilapidated older facilities that we're in now that will reduce our capital needs for repairs in the near future as we need to fix those buildings up if we do decide to stay so it puts us in a centralized hardened facility it allows for better storm post-storm response for all the departments it does meet the cip like i said it also meets the faa approved voluntary corrective action plan and it gets us off of the airport property the financial terms so this slide outlines the financial structure of the proposal and the efficiencies it's designed to achieve the proposed delivery method reduces the overall project timeline which helps limit cost escalation and accelerates delivery it is also expected to generate construction cost savings compared to traditional delivery methods through improved coordination and reduced change orders by integrating design construction and delivery the project incorporates life cycle efficiencies from the outset supporting long-term performance and cost control the consolidation component further reduces ongoing operational and maintenance expenses in addition the negotiated p3 structure can enhance budget predictability and allocates risk in a manner that protects the county's interests so overall this approach is intended to maximize the value to for the taxpayers on a 74 million dollar public investment while promoting both short-term efficiencies and long-term financial sustainability additionally pfm as the county's municipal advisor has reviewed the proposal and has identified an option that is beneficial to the county for the financing of the facility next item is the the the qualifications and experience of the private entity that submitted the proposal building tomorrow schools has performed other projects across the state most notably nearby is the indiantown high school this is the same design team same construction team that designed and built that that facility for the college that was a very expedited pathway to it was a p3 project for the college similarly there's a k-8 school in polk county a very similar project that was expedited as a p3 pbk is a former harvard jolly architects they've done some very good work across the state i've got some some experience with them in my other in my other jobs their design team is very strong ryan inc is a very large land development firm this is a small site for them they do large golf courses and much larger facilities than this so they're fully prepared to do this work greg fagan is the engineer he's been around for 35 40 years i think i've worked with him in the past as well he's very very good so their team is strong they do provide a good service as as their references uh as their references provided mr donelson is this an old light for you so to briefly summarize commissioner campy i was watching on my phone okay so you know you can pass the gavel to me in the car i apologize would you like me to continue yeah all right okay all right i'm going to talk about the project compatibility with the regional infrastructure and county plans first this has been included in the cip for quite some time past five or ten years if i recall um it's also been part of the voluntary corrective action plan to leave the airport property the vcap and this project advances the county's long-term facilities strategy by consolidating multiple dispersed departments into a centrally located operations facility reducing fragmentation and improving coordination the centralization creates efficiencies in site management security and life cycle maintenance planning and then further the cola co-location strengthens our emergency response capabilities as sean has already mentioned and operational readiness by reducing response time and improving unified command functions so as i mentioned before in the public comment section at the december 2nd meeting the board received initial public comment and directed staff to proceed with a detailed evaluation of the unsolicited proposal today's meeting serves as a second required public meeting under section 2550653c of florida statutes and all comments received will be incorporated into the county's evaluation and addressed as part of the forthcoming comprehensive agreement should the board decide to enter into those negotiations um and with that i'll now turn it over to mr joe barry okay good afternoon everybody uh like matt said joe barry cpz architects we were brought on to help the county with this project a few years ago where we began a programming and conceptual design effort and in that effort we met with the various departments that were going to be part of this consolidation we uh toward their existing facilities we uh took measurements we took inventory of their equipment and their vehicles and we put together a draft programming summary and uh developed a conceptual design of what the building could look like next slide so when we looked at this uh this proposal we looked at it in in a in a few different ways um once we we we we feel that it's a thorough uh proposal and generally supports the project intent it's a viable development concept the preliminary floor plan that was provided as part of this incorporated some efficiencies that we didn't consider at the time and the due diligence that was done for the review of the site plan was evident where they demonstrated an understanding of the site conditions and the site constraints uh generally aligning the site plan with the design intent they looked at utility connection points and infrastructure so that was all considered as part of this proposal we looked at the proposed cost of the project and with the help of a firm that specializes in preparing construction cost estimates cms cms is construction management services and they use detailed quality uh quantity takeoffs and historical data to put put together a estimate that combines cost of material labor and equipment and comparing the developer proposal at 63 million dollars for construction costs the cms proposal came in at 76 million we looked at the design fees and feel that they align with the expedited schedule we looked at the allowance for furniture fixtures and equipment and feel that they that would require further evaluation during the contract negotiation we also looked at the timeline and realized that 18-month uh timeline for this project is um is aggressive they plan to accomplish this by running phases concurrent different tasks overlapping design permitting and construction when we compare it to a traditional project delivery delivery method we assumed a typical project would look at nine months for design nine months for permitting and for a project this size roughly 24 months for construction so it is a significant savings in in time the developer also proved that they have a track record of completing similar scale projects in similar time frames and in that the time savings is financially motivated there's a few bullet points here i'll just read through uh reducing general conditions the longer the project goes on the more costs there are for general conditions the shorter the schedule the lower exposure to escalating costs in material and labor and it minimizes financial financing costs so at the end we look at this proposal and we feel the risk is on the developer and as part of the county's effort to develop a comprehensive agreement they'll look at setting schedule and cost limit expectations they'll realize that the contractor is responsible for delivering the project within the contract price and also within the project deadlines that are set part of this would establish design standards for the project and that would all become part of that comprehensive agreement right um so the board of county commissioners requested public comment at the december 2nd 2025 public meeting um we're asking that the board he'll hear all public comments today for the second publicly notice meeting which will be considered as part of the county's evaluation since the board and the public will have further opportunities to review consider and comment upon the comprehensive agreement the county believes the comments made will be sufficiently addressed in the forthcoming agreement that concludes our presentation for the day um but staff is recommending that the board move excuse me move that the board receive the statutory evaluation findings consider public comments adopt the resolution affirming the public interest determination pursuant to section 2550653c of the Florida statutes and direct staff to proceed with the remaining required steps including scheduling the third public meeting and entering into negotiations for a comprehensive agreement thank you any uh questions of our staff and i'll go on to public comment uh lauren hollander is followed by john fumero and you'll have three minutes to address us great thank you very much uh commissioners um staff thank you very much for this comprehensive review we've we are thrilled to be a part of this initiative recognized um through extensive due diligence the critical need that's present we commend everybody for taking these expeditious steps in order to achieve the goal um we do get asked regularly about our competitiveness and the ability to save um in the arena of the expense of the development and so part of what you saw staff present is the most important thing is we do hit the ground running as soon as we all get to a place in that comprehensive agreement that ignores to the benefit of the county you know absolutely within that process we evaluate all of the costs associated as well as the time and any type of liquidated damages to be sure that we deliver that right on time in this team that we've presented there's over 40 years of experience working here in martin county with multiple developments and so there is a familiarity as it relates to your needs and they've worked in the capacity of working together with bringing infrastructure together developing communities dedicating certain spaces so there's a familiarity and an understanding of what that is this local team that was very effective out in indian town felt compelled when there was this need that continued to arise is it possible for us to help you bring this project to fruition and that was the impetus of us presenting to you that unsolicited proposal so we appreciate the opportunity and commend everybody on this process to try and get to the fastest place of delivery and giving us the opportunity to work together with you so we support this in any way that your needs are thank you very much thanks john fumaro is next followed by debbie shots good afternoon good afternoon madam chair good to see you again commissioners my name is john fumaro i represent uh building tomorrow's schools and i'm here to do two things number one to support the staff recommendation and the entry of the resolution prepared by staff and number two to complement the staff uh i have handled dozens of p3 projects throughout florida i authored florida's p3 statute in 2010 which passed in 2013. most public infrastructure in europe south america and australia is done through this means the u.s has been a little bit slow to catch up but if you look at 595 that was a p3 project undertaken by a spanish company because there still weren't enough american companies doing p3 projects but uh you are you've put yourself as a leader in the p3 and your staff has followed the law perfectly and i just want to also uh your county attorney's council is exactly what i would have told you with my experience in p3 uh the other proposal uh would have caused you to get off track and start a whole new process and commissioner vargas your points are very well taken and the under traditional procurement you're right you want to look at is this really the best price and best project but that's been done here by your staff by competent peer review and also if you look at the alternative proposal if there was a difference in price of billions of dollars it would cause me to pause but there's not the price differential is less than one percent and there's a reason for it which we don't need to get into but i think what you've heard here is you've got a project that will make it work on time on budget in an expedited fashion and i would again ask you just to support the staff recommendation thank you thanks debbie shots is next followed by greg fagan hi there i just wanted to say i'm in support of the staff resolution thank you thanks greg fagan is next followed by brandon smith good afternoon everyone nice to see you again feels like it's been uh decades of coming up here over the um years uh i just want to um level my support for this team that i've worked with on numerous projects over the last 20 plus years and um have 100 confidence in them and of course we've done some major developments here in martin county and uh it's good to be back and look very much forward to participating on this project and seeing it to fruition sorry about my voice thank you thanks brandon smith is next followed by jonathan atz good afternoon i wanted to say that i'm in full support of the staff's recommendation i personally was out in indiantown at the indiantown high school project on a day in day out basis uh worked with their team and i'm looking forward to working with your team to bring this to fruition in the same timeline thanks jonathan atz is the last request to speak form i have if you would like to address us please fill out one of these forms and hand it to the bailiff yes ma'am i would just say that i'm in support of the recommendation as well thank you word what are you looking for discussion emotive emotion i'm new here i'm not sure there's a staff recommendation dr campy i will say that the the 3p the p3 process is new obviously we've heard that it's not something that a lot of us are familiar with so i have been trying to spend some time researching it speaking to folks it feels a little bit out of reach because most of the decisions we make we have life experiences and sort of it's been the way that it's been this one i i was listening to the comments of the last agenda item and and i do not disagree with commissioner vargas when you you want to make sure that take in as much information and and proposals as possible this is a lot of money but when i've done the homework on how these things work in other countries and in other areas it it is a although something that's a little unfamiliar to me it is something that has worked out for a lot of uh owners whether it's governments or whatever very successfully i did have the opportunity to participate in the very early stages of the indiantown high school with the gentleman that was their largest donor and one of the things he said was right at the first meeting with irsc that and some of the school board members that he was an older gentleman and wanted to see the project be built before he passed away and remarkably what felt like a very short time later i was out there standing in a gorgeous facility beautifully done and when i asked around to the irsc foundation and their board and the president and others that were involved in the process nobody had a bad word to say they thought it really went very very well so with that in mind that's sort of where i have to like put the the pebbles on the scale uh that's that's where it is i don't have a tremendous amount of personal experience but the folks that do that i reached out to felt very comfortable that i could um sort of sign on to that and i will i'll make a motion to accept staff's recommendation mr ketherington i've had the opportunity to work on some p3 projects before and i think they offer martin county um not only increased efficiency but economies of scale and i think that this group has demonstrated just how they can perform based on how indiantown high school went so i'll gladly second the motion mr camps i was just gonna second i'm comfortable with this proposal and i will support it as well commissioner vargas i'm not opposed to p3 projects i might be involved in one shortly however we do not have enough information and for folks to say on this commission that everything's fine we're just going to go with the same company not what i've heard from people they said what how much is this going to cost are you kidding you know i don't know what the hesitation is to solicit other bids it's really quite simple you do that and we're talking about not next month as i said moving out it will comply with the agreement with the faa but we need to have the education to see what else is possibly in our benefit and our benefit i mean martin county residents and citizens and taxpayers and this is where i stand for that reason i cannot i oppose this any further comments there's a motion and a second all those in favor aye opposed aye that motion passes four to one with commissioner vargas dissenting thank you thanks mr walden we will now take up item number department seven which is an update on the chansey bay animal processing facility thank you madam chair good afternoon commissioners peter walden deputy growth management director uh the board requested that a discussion item come back regarding a animal processing facility in western martin county uh that is located on the chansey bay range so i'll go through a quick uh dissertation of the project scope the timeline of the application and where the project stands at this time so it came in as a major final site plan because this the project was 56 000 square feet so it met the threshold for that in article 10. it was planned on 26 acres of the 2 000 acre cattle ranch it's located as i said in western martin county at 8401 southwest connor's highway which is a road that goes along the rim ditch along mako keechobee the land use is agricultural and the zoning district is a2 agricultural district which is a category c district this is a map excerpt of the area the area in red is the chansey bay ranch the proposed facility was on the northern edge of the ranch lake okeechobee to the west fpl just to the southeast and beyond that the village of indiantown's urban service district this is an excerpt of the site plan that was proposed this is connor's highway where it would enter an improved driveway would lead down to the facility um there was planned water detention and septic systems and of course the 56 000 acre facility itself so the timeline uh it goes back a few years we first uh were introduced to the project in 2020 when it came in for a pre-application meeting at that time they were it was a brief discussion with no site plan provided it was just talking about processing animals that were grown and raised on the uh branch itself a couple years later the project came in as a major final site plan and we went through two rounds of review the discussions began to stall it became apparent that the applicant was pretty adamant about it being a bona fide agricultural process and that uh our development review may not be required so um after a while we did not hear from them and then several years later we did get a uh about a year after we had uh stopped talking we got a letter from the general council of florida department of agriculture and consumer services or fdax basically outlining the fact that uh the local um minister the county would not be required to review the project that it was considered bona fide ag that the facility itself was considered a farm building and within the right to farm act that that would be considered bona fide agricultural use and that um the and over the years the actual description of bona fide agriculture has grown and it's become more ambiguous and allowed more uses to be implemented into that so we accepted that letter as uh general council intended and shortly after that the application was withdrawn from our development review process and that's pretty much where we stand now we don't know what has been taking place since then out on the property and um be glad to try and answer any questions we have regarding the subject any questions for stan mr vargas so this morning we had quite a few people out here i've had people call me also i've had people stop me about this so our hands are tied is that what i'm understanding that that's correct so no matter what we would want to represent here which i talked about this morning which i learned washington tallahassee this is the movement that's you know that's happening right now underfoot correct as you heard our other legislative things going on with the state this is another example of a preemption commissioners um i am going to allow a presentation of information from the guardians greg braun is going to make a very brief powerpoint presentation it is thank you madam chair sure and thanks for giving me the opportunity to talk about this project um indeed as you saw this morning there are uh quite a variety of martin county people who are concerned about this and while i don't disagree with what mr walden has presented to you i'm afraid that the interpretation of withdrawn has been misinterpreted by by everybody indeed the application to martin county may have been withdrawn but as far as we know the project is moving forward and unfortunately that means it's moving forward without any environmental controls and so indeed i do have a powerpoint that i'd like to go through in a minute but i'd like to start off just saying i am a professional ecologist greg braun here representing the guardians of martin county i'm the executive director and certainly we thank you for having this public opportunity for for public comment because you're not required to do so fdacs and water management district and dep all took the easy way out and shielded the general public from providing any kind of input whatsoever so i i thank you for at least giving our residents your constituents the opportunity to speak when the guardians first heard about this over a year ago we started looking into it because we indeed had concerns about environmental kinds of things and so a couple months ago i provided to you the position paper that the guardians put together with input from a variety of our conservation colleagues several of whom spoke this morning you know mark perry one of the esteemed people on water quality provided us some input into that because of our concerns about potential impacts on the lake okeechobee watershed which as you know has been designated as impaired so you've had some time to look through that we met with staff last week to just kind of talk about things including kind of an interesting nuance of the legal interpretation of how we got to your preemption so i'll speak about that in a minute but i will say that the reason that preemptions happen is because indeed martin county has a reputation everywhere for having some of the most stringent protection standards in the state that makes it a great place for all of us to live and work and recreate but that also puts a target right on our back for people who want to get around those kinds of protections and i see that that's the guardians feel that that's exactly what has happened here the state went through the same analysis that that you did when they got an application they went through their process of determining what was going to be needed to allow them to process the application and when the applicant got that package of information saying please give us this this and this they did the same thing to the state dep that they did to you they turned around and walked away pulled their application and said we're not providing it to you and they tried to do an end to run and run around so as far as we can tell there has been an exemption from dep that has been issued saying that dep finds that the millions of gallons of water that are going to be used for this project and put on the landscape does not require a permit we think that's wrong in our and while we've got concerns from the environmental standpoint i'm not naive enough to think that environmental things are going to carry a day on this i think it's going to be legal things and so we have identified in our position paper a variety of legal kinds of avenues that we would ask that you pursue on this and probably the the strongest one is that you don't even need to look to case law to determine this you just look at the florida statute so i'm going to read to you um the applicable section here which is out of section 193 461 that states agricultural purposes do not include the wholesaling retailing or processing of farm products such as by a canning factory same kind of thing we believe that if chancey bay ranch were raising their own cattle for slaughter on their own property that would be covered under the right to farm act the fact is though that they're bringing in cattle from all over not just martin county but throughout the state maybe out of the entire southeastern u.s that will be slaughtered in this meat processing facility that takes it out of the agricultural realm and into the industrial realm and that's where we think you have the legal opportunity to push back on um on fdax's determination so peter if you would go through my slides here if you can all see them here i've just got a couple short slides first our location maps that you already know where this is at up in northwestern martin county on this one i'm going to point to point out to to you and everybody else watching martin county's boundary goes right out there into the middle of lake okeechobee so that's indeed part of why we're so interested in this we know that there are algae blooms in lake okeechobee and the problems are nutrient related and this project can do nothing but exacerbate those water quality problems next slide please again just a location map you know where it is east of connor's highway although the applicant's property does extend on the west side the only part of the property that would be used for this is that east of connor's highway next one we do know that you went through a development review activity a year or so ago for some houses on that property and completely unrelated to this but they hired a public relations consultant for that project and we've talked with them about this particular project and the public relations consultant says they don't have any client that we can talk with about this project if they can spend the resources to hire a public relations consultant to deal with nine homes we think that you ought to be able to reach out to them and get some information on a 2 000 acre ranch and a 26 000 acre meat processing facility next slide please peter did put up the site plan and indeed this is a matter of public record it's to the south florida water management district they have gone through an extensive permit processing permit process with south florida water management district and although there might have been the opportunity for public comment on this it was not high enough profile that as far as i know there was any public input on it at all they have gotten permits to withdraw millions of gallons of water from the surficial aquifer which as you know in our area this is considered a water cautionary area we've already got problems with salt water intrusion in the surficial aquifer we'd like to know how is that water going to be treated there's no information anywhere about how it's going to be treated to what standards or if there is any water quality monitoring that is to take place traffic we understand that from this plan that they're going to put they have asked to put a turn lane onto 98 that suggests to us that they know that they're going to be bringing in lots of cattle from other areas we think that the county should be able to look at that project and make sure that those transportation proposals are something that meets the county's comp plan and land development regulations we'll talk about wetlands on the next slide i'm wearing my bald eagle tie today because we know that there are bald eagle nests on the 2000 acre ranch and we know that if the county was going through the review process you would require a preserve area management plan on a portion of the property which without your review that's not going to take place threatened and endangered species also we suspect that there are some on that property they've identified caracaras on the property one of the protected bird species if you were if you were requiring a preserve area management plan there would also be a requirement for removal of invasive pest plants that's otherwise not going to happen the county has spent millions of dollars in trying to go through the process for the b map to clean up water in lake okeechobee the lakeside ranch property which is right immediately to the north of this has taken millions of dollars of tax monies to create that facility we think it is inappropriate that this adjoining ranch could produce millions of gallons of water and we can't learn what's going to happen with the fertilizers that are brought onto the property and where that water is going to go in our FOIA request for fdap fdax the florida department of agriculture and consumer services we did get a stack of papers included in that was several cover letters stating that the property owner was not in compliance with their bmp's what we got was the cover letter that says you're not in compliance as shown on the attached sheet and the attachment isn't there we made the request how do we know how far out of compliance they are when we asked for volumes of fertilizers that have been applied onto the ranch we got data sheets back that showed redacted so we don't know how many millions of gallons of pounds of fertilizers are going on and if we don't know that now when they start bringing in cattle from elsewhere we can only assume that there's going to be additional fertilizers that are brought on and that's going to be completely unregulated next line we do know that there are historic wetlands on the property you see in the picture on the left there are open water areas whether they're currently wetlands or what they call other surface waters we don't know but you can tell from the algae bloom on that pond something isn't right there's an abundance of fertilizers nutrients that have caused that algae bloom the picture in the middle is one that i took of the canal that is leaving from the chancy bay ranch going straight out to the rim canal there's no kind of water treatment swales or anything like that and so our concern is that out of the millions of gallons of water that they're going to be withdrawing onto this from the surficial aquifer used for their processing there is no point of discharge so we can only assume that that's going to be land applied and the nutrients will help the water or help the the grazing of the cattle but where's that water going to go when it rains it's going to go right out this canal that you see is already laden with a variety of invasive species that like the elevated nutrients and it's going going to go into the rim canal next slide we know that lake okachobee is vulnerable to intermittent algae blooms and that unfortunately through the st lucy canal the c44 often that toxic algae gets swept down into the st lucy estuary we don't want that to be happening and we've spent millions of dollars trying to get the nutrients out of the lake okachobee system obviously the political will isn't there to prevent additional nutrients in but you can take a step here to at least make sure that the water quality coming off of this ranch is not going to exacerbate water quality in the rim canal we did research this through a variety of other conservation colleagues and i've got in an appendix to our report the paper over on the right from the center for biological diversity i didn't know anything about slaughterhouses before this project came up so it's been a learning experience for me but we were using the information from that group that has experience throughout the country and what we did was analyze each of their areas of concern as to how they apply or don't apply here in martin county so with that let me just close by saying uh fdacs and fdep in tallahassee and the water management district in west palm beach they don't care as much about martin county as all of you do and those people who were in the room this morning so please consider engaging outside council with experience in the florida right to farm act to help prevent further degradation of the environment in martin county sometimes you just have to stand up to bullies and we think it's time to do that in this case i'll answer any questions if you have them but thank you for the opportunity to speak commissioner caps i want to thank the guardians uh first of all all for championing uh championing championing championing uh this effort and doing such a deep dive on on on the matter and thank you for your excellent presentation mr braun and um this is in my district and can we go back to the map oh the very first slide i think it was it just had a picture of the lake and a little circle yeah of all the places to have something like this uh right on the edge of lake okeechobee um seems like a very inappropriate place um i want to refer to one of the public comments early this morning tony zanino is the president of the guardians and he called for an independent legal review and i think that's what you're asking for here as well mr braun and that seems very reasonable you know just because the state is claiming a preemption doesn't mean that it legally exists and it seems to me that there there are very good arguments to that that this is an industrial use on agricultural land i mean you can't just claim that something's agricultural when it's clearly industrial and perhaps those lines get blurred and the ultimate remedy is a legal route and a court determination as to whether it's agricultural or industrial and i think this is worth uh the fight so i would make a motion that we have that independent legal review another part of my motion would be that i think it's really important for the people who took the deep dive on this subject to be confident and who the attorney is um and perhaps to be a part of that process uh in selecting the right attorney so that you all are comfortable with the process uh and the the legal pursuit and and that you have confidence in the in the people doing it so um so i would make the motion that we we authorize independent legal review and that the guardians be consulted as to who the attorney would be that would conduct that review miss elder just for some background clarification um so over the years the right to farm act has evolved and been expanded um expanded dramatically and the statute that mr brawn discussed which was florida statutes 193 461 is really the statutory criteria that the property appraiser needs to review to determine whether or not a piece of property has an ag exemption and what she does is she looks at that statute and that's where the definitions that mr brawn had read to the board they are completely different than the right to farm act so under the right to farm act non-residential farm buildings are exempt from permitting from building under the building code and under that right to farm act the statutory definitions for farm farm product and farm operation are extremely broad so based on that and the change over the years that the legislature has continually expanded the um definition of farm product and farm operation that is part of the basis for not challenging the fdax letter is general counsel binding on us no but it might not be a fight that the county would win based on the legislature based on the definition of farm product a farm product and i'll read it to the board is any plant or animal or any product derived there from and then if you have an existing farm a non-residential farm building is completely exempt from permitting under the building code and a farm operation means any activity and i'm picking the points that are applicable which occur on a farm in connection with the production of farm products so that's pretty broad and that's been expanded since 2022 so the criteria in 193 461 is used so if you have an existing farm and you have a non-residential farm building and there's many statutes that come into play because you also have agritourism involved so say you have a non-residential farm building on the farm the property appraisal will go there and look at what is being done in that building to determine whether or not that building gets the ag exemption so sometimes you'll see a property where the whole property has an exact ag exemption but there's a little building carved out because what's being done in that building is not ag it's it could be agritourism it could be a meat processing plant so that's what the context of 193 461 comes into play for the property appraiser to review the property look at the criteria and determine whether or not what is being done on the farm and every aspect on the farm gets an ag exemption it's not applicable to the right to farm act which is where you get your exemption from the building code so it's two separate statutory provisions that are somewhat related but not really it's really what guides the property appraiser to determine whether your property gets a complete ag exemption or a partial ag exemption so i just wanted to clarify that for the board and indeed our attorney has looked into this and thank you for that interpretation uh he uh mike durham former county attorney uh looked into this and he tells us that there is a very refined nuance here under the right to farm act and uh certainly no disparagement to the county attorney's office whatsoever it is such an area of specialty we think that it warrants that outside legal counsel with experience in that the interpretation of that right to farm act we think this is a high stakes kind of issue maybe not as big as those preemptions that we were hearing about being brewed in tallahassee right now but for martin county a slaughterhouse house on a property that is twice the size of central park without any environmental review that's just not what should happen in martin county mr campy certainly not interested in weighing in on this situation but i get that you're here and i appreciate your efforts we've had the chance to meet and have a conversation as as well as that i have had with the staff my concern is twofold one if you've already begun the process and the guardians of martin county have a long history illustrious history of doing exactly that guarding martin county you've had your attorney take a look and there's a possibility that you know as commissioner caps was saying that you might have some recommendations of attorneys that would be the right person now i don't think he told us my colleague didn't say about us beginning legal procedure procedures against the state or fdax with this it was more just to look into it but you've already looked into it so is this something and i'm just speaking to you as a friend is this something that the guardians should be doing with your extensive fundraising abilities or abilities to raise money ability to call have a battle cry a call for action what's the what's the rationale or the advantage to have us do it and here's my thinking the the concept the the the initials fdax has come up quite a bit recently and you as a a big like early um founder of the loxalusi and when we were just doing the barbie ranch project purchase that was fdax so if mr mail if you could come forward see that seat that hot seat next to walden and i'm not saying i disagree i just want to bring these concerns to the surface so that we're all looking at this wide-eyed fdax partnered now we just heard them called and i get it i get why you're here but you called them a bully that we should stand up to a bully but recently we were just calling them partner so tell me about the barbie ranch deal and any other deals that are pending that fdax we would classify as a partner uh for the record john mail environmental resource administrator um barbie was actually florida forever um but whole thing yeah but that it's um it's a good example that was one that was being considered by fdax um at some point they were working with the rural and family lands folks to to bring that one forward but a better example is probably bull hammock i apologize for confusing the two yeah west carlton's uh six and a half thousand acres was put under a rural and family lands conservation ag easement last year or a little over a year ago 52 million dollars uh where'd the money come from all from fdax and um you know they get it from the legislature and they continue to get it from them um this year the house has proposed 500 million for uh rural and family lands and zero for florida forever the senate is a little bit more balanced we have four more fdax easements that we are working through as we speak um that would partner with martin county forever as funding partners between 30 and 50 percent of funding from the county and the rest from fdax another way that we partner with them recently is they have a new funding uh allotment from the legislature that allows them to do grants for uh regional water quality projects um we actually kind of helped them draft the language for that grant program and the s1 canal is one of the um one of the early ideas for using that regional water quality product uh funding program as a partner with local governments in cases where you've got agricultural runoff as well as non-agricultural runoff working together um we we would anticipate applying for additional funds from that program as well the four projects that you mentioned are in the pipeline not to hold you to an exact number give us a ballpark of what we're talking about in dollars um that's it's tough i would if i had to just ballpark it um probably 15 to 20 million but there's some additional ones that that you know could be significantly higher you know there's one we're looking at that could be another bull hammock um you know in the near future so my concern is this we have days where we're partnering with them and then um we have days where we'll disagree i heard your whole presentation i didn't disagree with most of what you said it was pretty logical and very well laid out you and i had shared it ahead of time my concern representing the the entire scope of the county and and the future of these types of projects which we are finally in the in the front seat with them now because we have the the sales tech referendum with florida forever we finally can partner with them and take we were just cheering about how we could use one martin county dollar and turn it into two or three or four dollars for this my concern has got to been a conversation you guys must have had back at headquarters on because you're trying to do the same thing the loxalusia initiative we're trying to do those same partnerships with them take a dollar turn it into more uh do you have any concern that if we poked at something that they've painted pretty much a picture that it's in their backyard or and within their scope of of approvals are we hurting ourselves more to try to prove a point here that we don't like how this is going down or or not is this something that a statewide recognized organization such as the guardians should be taking the charge to give us a little kind of you know you're still working on the behalf of martin county residents but is it should it be the government of martin county pushing back so hard because if one more question for mr mail any applications or grant applications in the in the recent past not gone our way yes during this time frame uh yes uh we had we had one on the s1 canal that uh was 1.9 million and uh we were fully anticipating receiving that and and at the last minute we got a call from staff that the um secretary's office suggested that we not get that grant whose staff fdax okay that's where i am what you're asking for makes perfect sense in in a vacuum but in the bigger picture i'm leery of supporting my friend makes a makes a strong motion i'm just i'm that's where i am do i want drainage and you know just as soon as you hear the word slaughterhouse it doesn't it's not that you know most people can sort of understand what we're talking about and in martin county i thought mr walden did a pretty good presentation about how we were originally engaging with them until they realized they didn't need to and then they switched over to engage with the florida department the dep and realized they didn't need to so now they went to fdax and basically worked out and and our legal representative the person who's working for us said look this is going to be a challenge so i don't mind a fight uh or a skirmish even if it's not a fight but what are we gambling to just find out that fdax says you are not in a position to be making uh approvals up or down on something even though it's in your county and so i you know i didn't mean to put our staff on the spot but i get to hear these things and i want everyone else to hear them that it's not like of course we should do this it makes perfect sense that we back you in something that looks really environmentally questionable but if they paint if they the final solution is that it's not environmentally questionable or it's not within your purview did we damage something else that we are so desperately trying to do is the bigger environmental benefit continuing to partner with a tallahassee entity or is or is the fight to see who should be in charge of making these determinations even if it means setting a precedent into the future to protect us from other things that's where i am thank you i thank you for the opportunity to carry on this dialogue because indeed this is unusual typically there's a three minute presentation and that's it uh but but i appreciate that that offer and the guardians do not like winners and losers we'd like to collaborate so that a project if it does move forward is good for the environment good for the economy good for the farmers mr mail has described the collaborative relationship with fdax and i would suggest a way out of this is if he can coordinate with fdax and we can get rural and family lands money for chancy bay ranch that's the kind of a win-win that we would be assured that environmental damage is not going to happen they could continue their ranching at the existing levels not bringing in thousands of cattle from all over the south the southeastern u.s and that through that process we might be able to hold the property owner to compliance with the bmp's which currently they have not consistently done i have one request to speak from the public and that's carol ann leonard if anybody else would like to address us please fill out a request to speak form hand it to the bailiff and the bailiff will hand it to me do you prefer a microphone over there miss leonard and leonard from stewart can you hear me please our florida state legislature is too authoritarian in the way they are taking away the ability of local government and the corporate for making laws for their own counties better to permit the fdep letter to the south court of water management and so on the agricultural and consumer services seems to women still do that so i think enough comments your mic is not on one second ma'am your mic is not on no okay i hope you heard what i said i think you probably did um still enough comments from the commissioners and the people could have an influence on decisions what we must do is we must do what is needed to take back our rights um when one is considering a slaughterhouse we need to consider the facts and the owner needs to tell us what the plans are for the facility and their production any legal requirements that can be made should be i think the letter states possible problems things that need to be monitored the end of the letter suggests several ways to do this i'm not an expert but it seemed good let's see greg braun made lots of good points with proper environmental oversight of water soil and air quality the prevention of any leaching into nearby waters in laco and the rim canal i think a slaughterhouse may possibly be built regulations and oversight before and anything uh before and after is still needed what about reducing the size of the facility um farm our farmers need to be able to continue farming and not be enticed to sell out to developers local ranchers could continue to raise their cattle not have the added expenses to get them to market in distant areas with a local slaughter house for too long developers have been getting owners of orange grows decimated by diseases to sell their property to continue the overdevelopment in martin county there are some online sources for treating the soil of grows for further agriculture production but the owners choose instead to sell dazzled by supposedly high incomes uh stormwater runoff is an issue um we do need regulation and to set a precedent let's be fair and precise when considering the impacts on any development thank you ms thurlow lippish i'm sorry but we only allow people to speak once a day i'm just going to be reading some statistics from the uh the guardians white paper and that includes u.s slaughter facilities produce millions of pounds of pollution annually slaughterhouses are a top producer of phosphorus generating 14 percent of the phosphorus discarded into waterways environmental integrity project study of 98 large slaughterhouse facilities found that the median slaughterhouse produced an average of 331 pounds of nitrogen a day which is equivalent to the nitrogen pollutants in the untreated sewage of 14 000 people a day no records have been found that the chancey bay ranch has been issued a permit although npdes permits have been issued for 328 other sites in martin county lake okeechobee in september 2025 lake okeechobee has just been named the dirtiest lake in america a pork processing plant owned by jbs in illinois spilled 29 million gallons of hog waste in 2015 killing nearly 65 000 fish i don't know how many cattle are proposed to be brought to the chancey bay ranch there is a question about general counsel opinions preempting local government authority fdax issued its opinion supporting cbr's exemption claims while simultaneously pursuing enforcement action against cbr for best management practice violations this conflict is particularly problematic because cbr operates within the lake okeechobee basin management action plan where bmp compliance is legally mandatory and we're also reliant we have our own bmps and they're going to be enforced they're going to be we don't know you know what the enforcement is going to be we don't know what the consequences are going to be because we haven't hit that deadline yet but if our upstream neighbors are polluting that we're never going to be able to comply with our own bmp regulations i don't know i don't know what to do but man no no one is responsible for monitoring measuring water quality um that's going off that's going to be going off of i believe this 2 000 acre ranch and 26 acre uh slaughterhouse the the the i i i'm speechless i i i believe that the i i believe that the uh general afdak's legal counsel's opinion here is wrong i don't i i certainly hope that our regulatory abilities our regulatory authorities are not extinguished by this opinion somebody has to protect our water quality i can't imagine anybody would would would hold that against martin county for wanting to make sure that our water quality isn't diminished i think that's one of one of the obligations of local government commissioner canby i'm not disagreeing with anything that you said or that the guardian said i just want all of us to look at the big picture and understand exactly what's on the table here um if if the board agrees that this is what we should do we should just know that we're going in a certain direction and we need to have our eyes wide open so that in the future when we're potentially and i'm hoping that it's not the case but when we're potentially frustrated on not having the level of success that we've had um because the fdx 500 million that you were talking about not exclusively fdx but the money out of tallahassee that can go everywhere in the state and we're forced now in a situation where someone has decided to put this issue in our laps and i don't want to hamstring our ability to partner and and maximize our hard-earned tax dollars that the voter said yes to and then go from a very successful bright future program to wow now we don't have it so i'm not i'm not trying to disagree with mr braun or you commissioner heard i just think that you got to see this whole thing but i'm not i'm not trying to shut down the slaughterhouse what i'm trying to do is to make it safe to make it safe for everybody i want it to be bonafide ag you know i want ag to continue to be successful in florida it's a hugely important part of of uh good stewardship stewardship of the land but man this is not the way to get there how about a crazy suggestion if we were to reach out to them i don't know them i genuinely have no idea who the folks are i'm not saying that they won't do it perfectly great but maybe with john mail and some of our people they'd give us an opportunity to just go over there unofficially and have a tour not an official kind of like we're trying to review your application but maybe they can you know we can put a small group to go over and sit down with them as neighbors and friends and partners and say listen we have legitimate concerns you might be getting ready to do the most fabulous slaughterhouse that anyone has ever seen they live there they asked as mr braun said i think the houses that we approved a year or so ago whenever that was across the street i think that was them if i remember correctly they were talking about building homes that they were going to live in so maybe they are remarkable stewards of the land agriculture look every person i spoke to about this in the last week or so you know all meat eaters have said i'm not opposed to a slaughterhouse i understand that there's a process that allows us to eat that happens before we eat this meat maybe they're going to build the a remarkable facility and maybe they'd be willing to have john mail is very friendly he could go out with a couple other people and not try to say that we're looking to approve or um deny their application just looking for some level of comfort that we can come back and say our people have you know went out there and met with them because they were willing to do it just they didn't have to they just were willing to i'm sure some of us can make a call i know that the person that was uh their government liaison or whatever their public relations person for the houses i know him he's got to know somebody so as a suggestion i like that suggestion mr donaldson just uh just a couple things that hopefully will help um i think the uh the option of having staff um try to engage both fdax and the owners uh on both the uh technologies on how they deal with the disposal of the material you know we've got your our contract with sedron i think that has an opportunity to deal with it we have partnered with fdax in the past on hybrid wet and treatment technologies that they continue to invest in so i think that is a a positive route i would say that i i i am concerned also about our regulatory approval and process on it but i would be fearful that um our engagement in that avenue would only result in a more well-defined preemption in the legislature either this year or early next year before any litigation was completed and all other opportunities to work with them will have vanished so i think i would rather try to at least work with the property owners to start with i think some of the speakers earlier talked about that if there was a way to develop or work with the legislature in the future about maybe giving back us some of these tools so that there won't be any more than this one is also a good direction so that would be my staff recommendation is to direct staff to work with both the property owner and fdax and avail them to all of the current technologies that both fdax has used and and what we have to offer and also to work continue to work with our legislative prior property or legislators on future actions that would give us some review back on projects like this mr vargas yes um oh this is my first year yep i had that i did not approve those homes just putting it out there again no i did not i i did do a field trip out there i i felt that uh there wasn't something there was something disgenuous about that but i couldn't quite put my finger on until i saw the letter that was sent after the fact that we the others approved it see um i i did have the opportunity during my first year to meet with the deputy director of florida department of environmental division very friendly folks very willing to help us and that's what we want i think the representative and i believe she was part owner but i can't put my finger on she was colombian i'm colombian then she wants to speak portuguese to me and i spoke portuguese because i speak falo português tambem uh having lived there but the thing is that um she was also from miami i would be willing absolutely to sit down with them and really define how they are going to protect the environment different different procedures don't have to be followed elsewhere but again we're martin county and we have already defined how we want to see our county and we have the guardians we have other groups that have been fighting the fight a long fight an arduous fight and many people behind them that's the way i want to support these groups um i would really make the proposal as mr donaldson said let's sit down let's talk with them if they're willing to and let's see what they have in mind uh because if we just do not oversee anything anymore we talked all about this this morning then where is martin county we kind of bleed into palm beach and st lucie county and miami dade county and broward county and we're just one big puddle i guess so um that's what i would recommend and very happy to do that if that's the gal i really want to speak to her again really do have a good i'll have another language and i'll i'll translate for you mr caps you know i don't know these people and but i my feeling is that they've intentionally kept us from a lot of information that's one signal uh the and the idea that they're going to invite us onto their property and they and and feel the need to explain all of their processes just to satisfy our curiosity when they feel like they already have fdacs behind them i think they would say no thanks uh we're we're good uh we already got this um um and i'm not sure it would be a workable solution um i wanted to see if we could ask mr braun what he and the guardians might think about the path that we should take given recent comments up here today um i would like to be supportive of you and the guardians because i have so much respect for what you all do and what you have done on this issue um and should my motion be worded a little differently uh in light of comments that have been made here today which i think are very enlightening commission thank you commissioner i think so no no there we go no it's top it's a can you hear me now on on yes it's on okay down sorry hold it up close thank you for that um we believe that the guardians taking on the legal side of it is really david and goliath we would prefer to be in partnership with martin county so i think your initial motion commissioner caps what was was good in that we could collaborate with you um and certainly with the county attorney's office to find someone who is well experienced with the florida right to farm act that might be able to ferret out these nuances you're also right that i'm not sure that the property owner would meet with us i have reached out personally to ask for a meeting to get details because as you saw in my presentation there are a lot of question marks because we don't know details because they are indeed intentionally hiding them because this is a very volatile kind of a project which the growth management folks will know of as lulu's locally unpopular land use we're sure that that's why they don't want to share details about their project because indeed it's apt to raise the wrath of lots of people who might not be as diplomatic as the guardians are so i think that's an excellent strategy let's start with that sort of diplomatic approach we would like to hear that they have environmental safeguards in place and maybe our opposition won't even say opposition maybe our concerns will go away we haven't seen that there are any nutrient what they call effluent nutrient guidelines anywhere there's no requirement for any kind of water quality monitoring and so unless those and those questions are answered uh we are going to be going from right now we're not necessarily opposed to it we just want to find out more about it so maybe we start with that diplomatic approach and your your motion if it were to be seconded and would carry through would be a two-phase we start with reaching out diplomatically and we see where that leads us and if indeed that outreach comes to the conclusion that our concerns are substantiated then you've already approved going to that next step and we're doing some sort of a collaboration great uh i think you stated it well i'll modify my motion to reflect what was just stated mr vargas okay so uh mr braun what would be the second step can you clearly state that i think we're trying to work it out together here it would be certainly mr mail has an excellent reputation from all sides and if his outreach to the property owner would be successful and we can get these answers or these questions answered to his satisfaction i think that would satisfy our concerns if we don't get answers that's where i'm going that's what i want to know then we proceed with what i understood the initial motion to be and that is that the county retain outside counsel with experience in the right to farm act to not necessarily file a suit or a challenge or anything like that but to do a more extensive research into the case law that would either substantiate that the uh fdax attorney general has some backing to it or as we suspect that attorney general general's opinion is based upon being essentially ghost written by the applicant's uh attorney wow this is really this is like a good movie yeah exactly but but i i get i get the picture and how this this could end it has to be very carefully done because my question was not what the next step is to do i got that you said then we go to the next step are we guaranteeing a loss for us no what we would be doing is asking that legal counsel to do that more in-depth review understand and then if they say uh as the county attorney's office has uh opined here that the attorney general's opinion is intact that's where it would end i understand that however what about the guardians we could possibly look uh to an attorney that our our county attorney feels would would be an expert at this but that you the guardians or other organizations would then hire them to give an opinion that would be on you i would certainly need to take that back to our board okay take it back to your board of directors i think that's very viable though mr hetherington yeah i i thought we were getting ahead of ourselves but it sounds like we're maybe reeling it back in a little bit there's i think if you want to have a conversation with the property owner and the applicant having approved the next step to be um a legal endeavor is probably not going to inspire a lot of conversation so i support the idea of actually reaching out and getting there's some fact versus fishing fishing uh myths i've heard a lot of things thrown out there today that i don't know if are accurate or not i'm not an expert in slaughterhouses there's got to be some standard best management practices that fdax requires of these facility i would like to hear from fdax and people that are um that monitor and have these facilities they're all over the state there's got to be some standard practices and it sounds like if this property owner is adhering to those then we don't have an issue but if they're not is where we're going to be concerned so i think there's a lot more fact-finding involved for the first step for this particular project i think we can start with fdax and we certainly can reach out to the property owner and you provided a lot of valuable information that i think that requires answers agreed mr camp if we are going to follow the strategy that commissioner caps was talking about in his motion we need to figure out what level of a budget we're going to put together for that i also wonder if you're not talking you said you felt like it was a david and goliath well that was a battle but then you also said that you're just looking to hire an expert in the field of of specifically what we're talking about we have a great legal department that can do tremendous research there's several of them maybe they're not agricultural experts but instead of us and they already work for us they're already on the payroll so short of putting up what do you figure it would have to be 100 grand 50 000 100 000 i'd rather hang on to 100 grand have our staff if it's just doing that level of research and figuring it out that's why we have them i also agree with commissioner hetherington that if if it's a two-pronged approach that says look we're going to knock on your door and try to reach out to you and and with our neighborly and ask you like what's the original plan here but if we don't like it we will sue you i i'm not interested in that conversation either so i think my suggestion would be that we ask our staff to do what you're asking to do a deeper dive into what's the you know the legality or the does that their legal opinion what did you say it was the attorney general for fdax um let's do some research let our our people do it first versus putting a hundred thousand dollars into something to find out that oh my god they were right all along we have no standing in this fight i agree plus maybe they're going to run the most uh state-of-the-art environmentally sensitive slaughterhouse that ever existed maybe they won't but we don't know they're not from out of town they're locals they live there uh as far as i'm sure no no no they're not from here the chancy bay folks that came when we approved i approved i didn't i didn't terrific uh that being said some of those folks that were sitting here in the audience were locals yeah i also agree that if you know you know how we feel when we're when an applicant comes to us and they're all wired up and we know that as soon as we say no they're going to sue us there's so little motive to negotiate and i don't i don't want to be in this this aggressive posture either i think that proceeding first of all with information gathering uh fence mending you know let's let's do let's do these things first before we say yeah if this doesn't work out we're going to sue you commissioner vargas so um no we're not in a position to spend fifty a hundred thousand dollars we pay handsomely our legal department i propose that they do research i mean case law is case law i think we have other slaughterhouses in okeechobee is that correct yes okeechobee and what other county nearby maybe they're in polk county i mean they're all over florida i know because i've met folks who are ranchers but they're also commissioners in the state of florida so we have 66 other counties to look at and see how how do they do it um i i think that we definitely can give a legal opinion but if you want to go further i don't think we ought to entertain that today we could just do some research does that sound feasible miss elder yes okay more than what we've already done all right so these folks may not be totally local that are proposing these homes and also this slaughterhouse and whatever else may come up agriculturally but i think this would be the first step rather than you know going on and on with conversation about this today so i make a motion that that we uh do our in-house thorough research on this matter and get back with you and then take up the ball there speak with your board of directors in the meanwhile mr caps um i think expertise uh in legal research is really really important uh i have great confidence in our legal staff and i'm sure they would be very enlightening but there there are probably attorneys out there who really deal in this wheelhouse and having the confidence that we're dealing with the very best of attorneys in that particular field is very important and i don't see the big deal here we're not filing a we're not agreeing to file a lawsuit we're agreeing to have a really well written position paper by an independent legal counsel that's not going to cost a fortune and we would all feel a whole lot better uh if we had that and we knew how we could use it in the next steps and then we that's where this issue with fdax and our relationship with with them comes into play it it really doesn't come into play with doing the study and preparing a great position paper it has to do with what we do with it after that and um i don't know that fdax would even know that we've we're doing a study is there any big harm to uh they're listening they're watching you i don't think so they're very busy people i don't just because a local government authorizes a study and we're not and we don't actually use it in a legal proceeding uh i don't i don't think there's any great harm done there um mr mail what do you think about that you solve this i'll answer that one i think i think we need another flag commissioner i will say that um our legislators and multiple ones watch meetings and anytime you all talk about this it's already being it's already discussed so i think um there are no secrets in this town and there are no secrets in tallahassee that's what we that's a point so um uh the fact that we're discussing about it is already going to be a conversation in tallahassee and any actions you take will be noted i i see the point mr vargas okay i go back to my other point let's try and have a friendly meeting they don't want to do that and then why don't we have our legal counsel just thoroughly research they know how to present a position paper and that's it then we'll know where we are and then you will decide how you want to go forward do you understand i might i do and i feel pretty confident that um the guardians board would allocate the funds for our legal counsel to work with staff on that they know one another they've worked together perfect that that could work okay so miss elder has help all right just on your your other point we did look at other meat processing facilities and there are dozens around the state um indeed getting details on many of those is difficult um certainly none of them are in none of them that we found are within a watershed that is designated as impaired and for which millions of dollars are being spent to try to bring them into compliance and also those that we did identify are relatively small operations nothing of the scale of a meat processing facility that is the size of what's proposed here which is about the average size for a public's shopping center a public's grocery store not the shopping center but the store itself yes understand very well thank you so maybe i should clarify my motion based on what has been said here so we start with outreach that's number one right and then number two would be to instruct our legal staff to to prepare some type of position paper on the subject matter is that is that what we're angling toward um we would prefer to do some research on it as opposed to preparing a whole position paper which could if we end up in litigation um we wouldn't want to get out but we can research it we've researched it and i know the guardians have researched it extensively and hasn't come up with anything new but we will research it again if the at the board's direction of course and um we can update the board on it after that and then we could take i'd rather take the approach figure out what the next step would be after we do the research commissioner kapp's going to give you some motion suggestions um make the motion the first thing that you just said that we have a little group reach out to the folks out here and see what we come up with and then report back to us and see where we stand maybe you know all the planets align and we have a good meeting i think that's just send our staff out there with all due respect without the guardians because there's already been you've made efforts to try to reach out and stuff like that i think if we sent a couple of our key people growth management environmental engineering and sent them out that they're watching they're listening if they're not now they will hear this tape and go out and see what the story is maybe let's try that first i think it it creates an opportunity that as you said mr braun they don't owe us they don't have to do it they don't have to report anything back to us but maybe they will and um and then let's try that and then if that also would give us some face saving in tallahassee with fdax that we heard this we gave you an opportunity to come and present which officially commissioner heard as chair did not need to do that you said you could have three minutes of public comment but we had a 45 minutes an hour we started at 222 it's 327 so with that in mind i think let's just start with that and take it from there versus having the steps in place i'll make i'll make that a motion that we send out just to clarify we send out environmental growth management and whoever else our administrator feels is appropriate to see if they can have a sit down and discuss this knowing that they didn't need to but we asked them to and also to have that oh yeah of course but at least we'll know what the project is that sounds that sounds reasonable i would second that any further discussion there's a motion and a second all those in favor aye opposed that motion passes unanimously okay let's take up our last second last item which is department eight good afternoon commissioners mac graham assistant county administrator uh so this is a board item to seek approval for a feasibility study to acquire the south martin regional utility about a month or two ago jupiter island staff approached martin county staff on the possibility of us acquiring their utility they are currently at 60 capacity for their wastewater treatment plant they are in need of some significant upgrades so they reached out to see if we are interested before we move forward with that process we're asking to do a feasibility study to see if it makes sense on connected connecting our tropical farms wastewater plant to service the smru customers so with your approval um we would conduct a study and we're not uh we're anticipating it not to exceed fifty thousand dollars so that concludes my presentation and i'll be happy to answer any questions mr caps yes uh the uh history of public utilities in the southern part of the county is quite interesting um from the 1970s to the mid 1990s water and sewer were provided to this area of the county by a private company called hydratech which the town of jupiter island later purchased and renamed smru south martin regional utilities um the reason the town of jupiter island purchased hydratech was to resolve some problems with saltwater intrusion into the water supply on the island these problems were resolved with the development of a reverse osmosis ro plant which has serviced the water needs of the island and the mainland of hope sound very well over the years as to the sewer component of smru this was mainly to service the sewer needs of the mainland part of hope sound not the island as the island's homes are on septic tanks and the only part of the island that uses smru sewer is the jupiter island club so over the years the aged sewer plant on dixie highway has serviced the sewer needs of mainland hope sound satisfactorily but the fdep has adopted new standards that require expensive upgrades to the plant and the town has been evaluating what to do with the sewer plan and their options they have three options that were presented at the meeting when we had this discussion at town hall on jupiter island the one the first option is to spend the money to upgrade the sewer plant which would be a large sum of money and remember now jupiter island really doesn't need the sewer plant for much you know all they'd use it for is the jupiter island club they just kind of inherited it when they bought hydratech in order really to just solve their water problems on the island the option two is to sell the sewer plant to the florida governmental utility authority the fgua which is a private company that would have the right to upgrade the plant and pass on these huge infrastructure costs to consumers in the form of high utility rates which is not a very desirable option for hope sound residents the the third option is to sell the sewer plant to martin county that might have the ability to decommission the old smru sewer plan on dixie highway and northern hope sound and to incorporate the hope sound sewer system into martin county utilities at a much more reasonable cost and we think that would really give be a good way to go for hope sound residents um and the reason i think option three is particularly good is that the sewer rates for hope sound residents are likely to be in line with what the other residents of martin county pay with their service from martin county utilities that's really important if this thing goes to the fgua they can really jack the rates for hope sound residents which would really be pretty unfair and then number two hopes on residents would be able to have their sewer service provided by the governmental entity to which they pay taxes um right now um you know when martin county residents in the northern part of the county have a problem with their sewer service they can come in here and and talk to this commission about what's on their mind um you know with uh the situation in hope sound a municipality uh that really doesn't even hardly use the the service themselves is the entity that they would have to go complain to um so for those reasons i think it would really be worth the effort to make this study and the uh the recommend the uh the motion would be that the board approved staff's request to conduct a feasibility study evaluating the potential acquisition of south martin regional utility wastewater plant operations including consideration of utilizing the county's tropical farms wastewater treatment plant as a service alternative so with that in mind i would make that motion that uh we do that mr campi thank you for that district three commissioner caps um i have an option four that when i had the opportunity to speak to mr graham and mr emerson i think that we should use the feasibility study to look at taking over acquiring both portions of smru also the water i don't know if we would want to take on only the the waste water portion of it which is their dilapidated portion i would also say that whatever the study if mr graham said it cost 50 000 i think that would have to like you would do something else come out of whatever we eventually purchase because we don't need it as a county we don't need to have their wastewater treatment plant which is 60 capacity it's older technology it's failing we did similar to this um several years ago i'm not even sure if commissioner hetherington was here uh on hutchinson island with the marriott hutchinson utility they kept it and ran it independently until it literally was on its last leg and then the county stepped in and took it over we also did it once in palm city with piper's landing believe it or not that community had its own little small utility plant and they liked being independent from us to control whatever they wanted until it absolutely failed and then contacted us to say hey we need to hand it over to you and it seems like that's what we're hearing now that they're pretty close to either as commissioner caps did a terrific recap that said they're going to have to either invest a tremendous amount of their own money to just get it back to standards uh or that outside of the area company would come in and i completely agree that they would then remember most people think it's just jupiter island it's not it's a huge portion of just the working class folks that live in in hobe sound uh east of us-1 for the most part and i guess up the us-1 corridor all the way to heritage ridge uh i know that um point sienna gardens as north as far north as point sienna gardens is also smru customers and so i would have like to see you look at taking over the whole thing now i know the concern is is that jupiter island has certain water uh expectations levels you know supply expectations i think that could be negotiated into a conversation that their water supply could be guaranteed for x number of years decades whatever so that they are not going to fight us on it but just to take over the the crippled uh waste water portion i remember my final comment i remember that in palm city the reason we didn't switch people over to purely septic to sewer without the water is that we don't have a mechanism to to bill customers exclusively for sewer service so that if they stopped paying you couldn't shut off their sewer that when you have the water am i correct you're right yes that you bundle the water service and the sewer service together so that if for some reason people don't pay you have the the mechanism of shutting off their water i don't know if that's an everyday occurrence i just when we had the conversation i feel that it would be appropriate that we take over the entire smru uh the rationale that they had it for all those decades has probably outlived its life it's similar to what we were going to do in indiantown before they decided to try what they're trying which is going to be very difficult because they're only about 80 million dollars away from their goal um i think if the motion maker would be interested in asking for at least us to study the ability of taking over both portions and i would if that's the case i would second his motion mr vargas yeah um i i've had a lot of conversation about this with staff with you with mr emerson with mr donaldson about this and um i understand that you want to do the study i understand the condition of the of the plant that is out there now and it's it's limping along pretty soon too um since we are going to be looking at in this particular case a motion was made both water and sewer then when will this study be complete i would anticipate we'll have something back within 60 days or so okay i i think that's reasonable reasonable amount of time i don't i think we're putting the cart before the horse you know i think that we need to have a feasibility study and then determine what course of action we should take i know that when we when we uh examined the indian town facility we discovered that it was antiquated and it was held together with band-aids right so i i don't want to make to prejudge to conclude anything before we've done the feasibility study no i'm only talking about the feasibility study okay so yeah that's what we're going to do the feasibility okay nothing else at this time but we'll look at both the water and the sewer well commissioner caps you're the motion maker do you agree with that mr donaldson you were there with us uh at town hall that day and uh based on what you remember uh are you comfortable with what's being stated here you know initially it appears that the island is is not interested in selling the water portion but it perhaps perhaps that could be talked about more uh yes if uh the the um we did talk about the water system and they were open to um they would want to own the water plant uh sufficient for the island but we could own all the water infrastructure on the mainland as an idea so i think absolutely the feasibility would would include us um i think the issue is we want to look at what is the most advantageous to martin county utilities in its operation and the customers of hope sound look at the financial arrangements how that work it's just the preliminary work we would bring that back to you um i would imagine this will probably be as as you all recognize utility transactions are complicated and that one analysis probably isn't going to do it if you if it if it continues on or it might show that um it's not in our interest at all in what case it would it would stop with this one one analysis so we're very comfortable with including the water in there i think the town is open to that a portion of the water uh how that would work um and talking to um uh with them at the meeting we discussed that as a concept uh and um in my recent conversation with uh bob garlow we briefly talked about it and uh and that was a concept that they were at least open to great great so i think what you're saying is consistent with the staff recommendation and the uh in the board item here with which i just read yes with the clarification that uh with commissioner camp is that it does include water as well yes okay well i'll just keep that motion on the floor then and i will second it understanding that hope sound smru customers are still martin county residents they're still our constituency it's not like we're talking about juno or jupiter that that's about 2 000 homes isn't it or over that in hope zone in that area more like 8 000 is it that many water customers and sewer customers that's quite a bit okay great there's a motion in a second all those in favor aye opposed that motion passes unanimously we will now take a break until 505 and where we will resume for our final agenda item that's on my agenda too soon guarding accessory dwelling units please proceed so hello my name is amy i don't know i don't think your mic's on can you hear me now yeah yeah okay for the record my name is amy offenbach planner with the martin county growth management department this is ldr 25-03 proposed text amendments to the land development regulations for accessory dwelling units otherwise known as adus this was initiated by the board of county commissioners and the affidavit of advertisement has been turned into the clerk so this request is to amend the text of article 3 divisions 1 2 3 4 and 7 of the land development regulations and this is just a brief overview of the proposed amendments and staff would be happy to go into further detail after the presentation so section 3.3 the glossary of terms the term accessory dwelling units will replace the term guest house and this represents additional living additional living quarters on single family lots and the new term employee dwelling units will be added for living quarters on non-residential properties in section 3.11 the permitted use tables will be updated to allow accessory dwelling units in all zoning districts that allow single-family dwellings excluding the mobile home districts and the term employee dwelling units will be added to the tables to permit living quarters on non-residential properties in section 3.51 the standards for specific uses will include the criteria for adus on residential properties and edus on non-residential properties in section 3.201c the the the term the text permitting guest houses will be stricken and the text permitting accessory dwelling units will be replacing that in section 3.403 the terms defined for 1967 zoning districts the term accessory dwelling units will be added and the term guest house will be stricken the term employee dwelling units will be added and the number of unrelated persons included in the definition of family will be updated from four to five persons for consistency with section 3.3 and so this was considered at the local planning agency on december 4th 2025 which unanimously recommended approval this board considered this on january 27th 2026 and today is the final approval for this amendment and so staff recommends approval of ldr 25-03 accessory dwelling units on the basis that the proposed amendments are consistent with the comprehensive plan and state statutes more restrictive or burdensome requirements are not imposed and the affordable housing advisory committee as well as the local land planning a local planning agency uh supports staff's recommendation and this concludes the presentation staffs available for any questions any questions for staff i have one request to speak form from the public and that's rob renery i think yours is on either there we go all right how's that better all right for the record rob renery house of hope um so a couple things i just want to talk about uh the last uh discussion you had at your prior meeting on this topic there was some concern i think from the commission about that this could potentially change neighborhoods um i've had the opportunity to talk to staff i'm sure you guys have as well um you know there's enough guard rails in the process and policies that i don't think that's a realistic concern um if someone wants to add an accessory dwelling unit they still have to abide by setbacks parking requirements well and septic not to mention the cost of actually adding an accessory dwelling unit so um it's not expected that this is going to be a mass uh line up at the permit department to be able to do this but i think it will be meaningful for uh for people that uh that have the opportunity to build one to get additional income into their household and certainly for people that are struggling right now trying to find affordable spaces to live in our community um housing has moved really kind of to the top of the list of needs especially amongst the people that we serve at house of hope we do not have much of a realistic inventory for affordable housing these types of units would be wonderful for transitional pieces ladies coming out of safe space or out of compassion house at salvation army young kids starting off seniors on fixed incomes there's there's whole populations that this could be extremely meaningful for and certainly for um several of the uh fixed income seniors who own homes that have had the chance to speak to um the opportunity for them to gain income will keep them in their home longer will help them keep their home safe and um you know properly maintained um and deal with some of the other rises in insurance and other costs that they're contending with on a fixed income so um you know i think this is a winning opportunity puts a great tool in the toolkit for uh affordable housing and um and i think it will be certainly something that uh members of the community will be uh excited to be able to take advantage of so thank you for consideration thank you mr campi uh first off thank you mr raneri uh for that assistance i think part of the reason rob is passionate about this is he has to deal face to face with the folks that are struggling to do this now we all understand that having a place to live for yourself a couple or a family is your first and foremost responsibility it's also your largest expense so once if that's a struggle to do that it makes everything else more difficult it makes you decide if you're going to fill that prescription or not it makes it difficult for you to to do the things that the kids might need uh or that you would need if you can give someone the opportunity to find reasonable housing it allows the rest of their life to be a little bit easier um i'll give you some personal experience i have a family member that rented and then was looking to save money to purchase a home but the rent was so expensive that they were using a majority well beyond what you're supposed to use to live in that apartment there was no way to save any money to have to buy the house magically they were able to do it and they bought a house that that a couple of years ago before the big boom should have been you know 150 to 200 000 and paid in the mid threes and had to strip it to the cinder blocks it's a 1970 home that went for 350 and it needs every single thing but when you spend every penny that you saved to get the house there's no money left to fix it up so for these people these adu strategy where you could get into something that's real even realistic apartments are still going for over 2000 2500 a month so an aud not that it's going to flood i agree with mr ranieri it's not going to flood the market we are not doing the the silver bullet today to fix our housing issue it's really only the first step it was what we were hopeful is the easiest step to allow it's not a flood of strangers moving here and destroying neighborhoods the other example i will use is i have a family member who has is a widow and she has a three bedroom two bathroom house that she doesn't need it's way bigger than she needs but there's nowhere for her to go she's healthy god bless her so she's not going to a nursing home which would cost six eight ten thousand dollars a month anyway but she literally is stuck in her house because there isn't a smaller version for her to go somewhere if there was she could put her house back into the market pool and have somewhere else to live and then the final thing is is that if you are the owner of a piece of property and had the ability to put an aud which last time commissioner caps very smartly said it's not a cheap proposition it would still be expensive i think that will dictate how many you'll see even if you build something small it's still going to be expensive to do but if you're able to now you have the ability to put either a family member in it young or old or rent it to someone where that little extra money might make the difference of having someone as well as the fact from a from a health and safety point of view a lot of people are lonely live in a house by themselves having somebody else on the property that was potentially over the garage or in your backyard or attached to your home that would be there to look out for you versus just completely living on your own and hoping that a neighbor would notice if something was wrong so i would hope that my colleagues uh at least two others will see this as an advantage and i wanted to thank staff not only was there a group of people that worked did a lot of heavy lifting outside in the community but our staff has really embraced this and i'm very thankful that they see the mission and hopefully that we'll have a favorable response today mr caps i was planning to make a motion to postpone this ada discussion adu discussion until after the legislative discussion uh session because of my concerns with what may be forced upon us with some of the bills that are in the legislature right now that regard uh regarding growth management and land use decisions the the things that we discussed this morning and i would like to remind us of the the bills to watch out for one of them is house bill 691 agricultural enclaves a very dangerous proposition for the martin county comprehensive plan uh people will would be quite surprised if we went into all the details of what this could mean for weakening the martin county comprehensive plan another one is senate bill 840 land use regulations for a local government which has to do with the possibility of modifying senate bill 180 which would be a good thing but we don't know if that's really going to happen uh and then the other one is house bill 927 local land planning and development which basically would shut down our planning department here in the county county and farm it out to private contractors from around the state who don't know anything about how we do things around here uh really bad idea uh but and there are other bills in the legislature that have really bizarre notions attached to them that are very very concerning and so we don't really know know what's coming down the pike and we'll we'll not know a lot more in a few weeks and i was thinking maybe we ought to postpone this decision and why should we give up anything when we have a legislature that seems kind of out of control uh on this matter um but then it kind of hit me um that we have two classes of people in our community that are very very vulnerable and are basically being steamrolled by our economy and the way things are going and that is one is the young adults um i have three young adults who live in hope sound and they all live in apartments and they're really worried that they'll never be able to own a home a starter home and martin county's in the fours you know you're going to spend over four hundred thousand dollars for for a little junky house that needs a lot of work and um and then the parents have to do the work right right you know and when you think a good way of thinking about the affordability crisis is uh imagine a starter home at 450 and then imagine a job at 45 000 that's 10 the cost of the house is 10 years of wages and then ask yourself when when you were their age um how much was a house at that time and how much was my salary i guarantee you that the situation was way better for you than it is for our young people today uh you probably could have paid for a house with three or four years of wages maybe two years of wages maybe five but it sure wouldn't be 10 you know 10 years of wages uh if you just look at an average job for a young person today and how much a house costs that's a great way of measuring the the problem that they are in today and and then i thought about elderly people i have a stepfather um who is in currently he is in the palm city uh rehabilitative place over here on uh 714 um he's been in and out of there from time to time um he's 87 years old and he's not very mobile and he he gets down physically and sort of loses his strength and mobility and he has to check in to a rehab place for a while and try to get stronger again so he can get out of bed and um uh and i've i thought about how an adu might help a few families with their elderly uh people in the family you know who need help um and what a beautiful thing that is i'd love to have a guest house in my backyard or an adu as we would change the name to um but uh i don't think my backyard is quite big enough and i i i'm concerned that if i build it it'll it'll shade the house too much and i won't get enough sunlight in the house so i'm not sure it's a good fit for my house but it might be for somebody else's house and that might be the way uh a few older folks are not have you know they don't have to be sent to a home and maybe a family somewhere out there could afford to uh or manage to to take care of uh some seniors uh in an adu house so in light of those thoughts and concerns uh we'll second the motion i don't i'll mine is a motion and commissioner caps is seconding it thank you is there any further discussion i certainly recognize the problem of affordability in martin county but this is not the solution this is way too broad i recognize that there are threats from from tallahassee but but taking action on our own is there there are consequences and the consequences are grave first of all uh the employee dwelling units are on non-residential land uses which doesn't make a bit of sense you can't assess or calculate densities on the parcels even though you're allowed to put three employee dwelling units on a non-residential lot three not one three uh there are no additional setbacks no additional open space requirements no additional parking requirements no you don't have to prove that you have sufficient septic capacity you're adding and you can add the parent unit i don't know that there's any limit on how many people can live in that but they're five five unrelated people can live in the accessory dwelling unit um greedy people will profit from these changes they will exploit these changes they will warehouse families i nearly every day go by a a warehouse in in uh long commerce avenue and i look in the yard it's a yard and they're uh toys for children and an attempt at gardening and i know what's going on inside that that warehouse and that is no place for a family to live so i i'm not going to be be uh supporting this there's a motion and a second all those in favor opposed opposed that motion passes three to two with commissioners vargas and heard dissenting we've now reached the end of our meeting uh would anyone from the public like to address us please come forward sir and mr ranieri thank you for all the wonderful things that you do for the house of hope good afternoon state your name for the record please good afternoon my name is uh charles chasen um i'm more here about the uh cheney and uh cheney bay i understand that they're going to be getting uh no permits on any of their buildings it's a it's an issue that that i've had personally um i purchased a property in indiantown florida um in order to grow hemp in microgreens when i went ahead to build a metal building on the property i spoke with the building department they told me that i wouldn't be able to build it with permits on the property with no uh primary structure um so what they instructed me to do was use state statute 604.5 which would allow me to build without permits um without permits and uh sort of avoid that issue so after i had built the structure um very shortly after i began receiving harassment from a martin county code enforcement officer named christopher counselor he told me i still needed permits for the structure even after i explained to him that was frag i then submitted a permit for the building but shortly after i had submitted it i received a call from christopher once again and he told me that the building could not be permitted for the same reason the building department gave me my only option was to tear the building down was his statement um after speaking with him i got in contact with another martin county code enforcement officer john colondo who told me he didn't know what to do and that i shouldn't continue to move forward on my building until he figured out what to do um judging by what you guys are doing with cheney bay that's a lie um he took all year he took all of 2023 in order to determine what to do and got back to me in november stating that i needed an ag exemption from the uh property appraiser's office again a lie because 604 or 604.5 does not state that at all um once i uh once i went ahead and started working on getting the ag exemption um i did not hear anything from christopher counselor or john colondale again um i had assumed that they had realized the error of their ways and were going to leave me alone what i did not realize is that they had come out and attached another notice to my fence using a elastic piece of string from the looks of the picture um the kind you'd probably pull from your sock i didn't receive this notice which i believe was the intention um when i i didn't realize that i had had gotten the notice until i had put in a permit for a house on the property about a year later so when i put in the permit for the house they notified me that i was being fined and i had been being fined um since finding out i have been fighting to have the fines removed i sent them receipts of sales that i made i sent them my licensing um i've also gotten an ag exemption and as of now i still do not have an affidavit saying that i'm in compliance even though i was never out of compliance my question is why am i being held to a different standard than cheney bay it seems that this is discriminatory and arbitrary your time is up thank you mr mr donaldson any suggestions um i'll look in with staff to see the facts of this situation and uh we'll we'll make sure that we have your contact information so that we can get in touch with you yes yes ma'am does it have your phone number and everything where are you in indiantown are you in obviously unincorporated martin county not in the village of indiantown yes sir i'm off of arrow road which is just before um what is it uh i remember the name of the other one there but in the county yes thank you thank you that guy's name is don donaldson he'll be the one looking into it yes sir all right what do you guys usually do about this uh when the yeah so we'll we'll discuss this afterwards yeah thank you thanks for coming all right thank you commissioner comments commissioner vargas i'm set mr caps i'm good i'm set mr campy this saturday evening 6 30 to 8 30 at the patio we're having tony solomon he's a well-known entertainer he is sponsoring and performing and we'll have food trucks all sorts of funds free and bring a chair or a blanket and enjoy some music in the park are you unveiling the art oh and we're also at six thank you very much at 6 p.m we'll be unveiling our piece that miss chorus was talking about today a beautiful sculpture that we've been working on to be the first of hopefully many pieces of art in the in that area so come out it's on map road right next to the palm city fire station mr hetherington i'm all set mr donaldson all set thank you miss elder we are adjourned