Thank you. Mr. Drost? I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. We have a number of presets today. At 9.05, we'll hear from the public. At 1.30, we will hear from the adjustment of utility water and wastewater rates. At 1.45, we'll consider utility systems revenue bonds. At 5.05, or at the conclusion of our meeting, we will once again hear from the public. There are no additional items. There is one request to withdraw from the agenda. That's public hearing quasi-judicial number three, which was a request for certification of an agricultural enclave. There's a request to continue Department 4, which is approval of a sovereignty-submerged land lease modification with the trustees of the Internal Improvement Trust Fund for the docking and loading facility adjacent to the county-owned property in Port Salerno. Madam Chair, I will move approval of the agenda with the request to draw quasi-judicial number three and to continue Departmental number four. Second. There's a motion and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? That motion passes unanimously. We will now begin with proclamations. The first proclamation is a proclamation recognizing domestic violence awareness month in Martin County, Florida. Good morning, Commissioners. Domestic violence is a serious, widespread issue that affects individuals in every community, regardless of age, race, income, or education level, and leaves a lasting impact on survivors, families, and communities. Safe Space is the only certified domestic violence center serving Martin, St. Lucie, and Indian River counties. In recognition of Domestic Violence Awareness Month, the board encourages all residents to join Safe Space in supporting survivors, honoring their courage, and committing to end domestic violence. And here from Safe Space, we have Rachel Pulley. Thank you so much, and good morning. My name is Rachel Pulley, and I work for Safe Space. Safe Space is the only domestic violence center serving Martin County and the rest of the Treasure Coast. We thank you for recognizing October as Domestic Violence Awareness Month. We recognize and are also hearing from professionals like law enforcement, first responders, and medical professionals that as a community, we need to move from awareness about domestic violence to action. The need for our services has been increasing. I have a few numbers for you. Last year, through our shelter and our advocacy programs, we served 1,047 adults and children. This is over 150 more people than the previous year. We average about 250 hot lung calls every month. Last I heard, there have been seven homicides on the Treasure Coast so far in 2026, where the victims were murdered by an intimate or former partner. Each was trying to leave or had recently ended the relationship, which is always the most dangerous time. Behind all of our numbers are people who needed immediate safety and support. When someone is ready to leave, they can't wait. Meetings that help take resources, trained advocates, and community willing to help. It also means working together so that wherever someone needs help in our community, they find it from people who are prepared to respond. Strengthening our response to abuse takes ongoing training and coordination. It also means holding abusers accountable, which helps protect survivors, reduces the risk of future harm, and makes our community safer, which is why this month we have invited the community to get involved. A few weeks ago, on October 13th, Safe Space hosted the first domestic violence summit titled Awareness to Action. This was a collaboration with the Circuit 19 Domestic Violence Task Force and the Gabby Petito Foundation. We had over 115 system professionals come together to learn how to recognize abuse and coordinate support and abuser accountability. The summit also serves as a jumping point for the 2027 relaunch of the Circuit 19 Domestic Violence Task Force, where the goal is to strengthen a coordinated community response across all four counties in Circuit 19. We're grateful to those who have agreed to help come together and to help coordinate our community's response to domestic violence. If anyone is currently seeking safety or answers, you do not have to know if you want to leave or what you need to do. You can call our hotline 24 hours a day, and our advocates can help you understand your options and help create a safety plan for your current situation. If someone discloses an abusive relationship, believe them. Respect their choices and offer resources like Safe Space. If you need immediate assistance, please call our hotline at 772-288-7023. To learn more about the task force and other resources available, please visit our website at safespacefl.org or visit our administration offices. Thank you for helping support survivors of domestic violence. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Everybody that's kind of scoot in a little bit this way. A couple here. One, two, three. All right. One more. Thank you. Thank you. Our next proclamation is a proclamation commending Sophia Obry on the achievement of Eagle Scout. Boy Scouts of America, now known as Scouting America, has a legacy of providing young people with meaningful opportunities to develop leadership skills, strengthen character, build confidence, and become responsible citizens. The rank of the Eagle Scout, the highest rank in scouting, is significant in that it is a reflection of an individual who has endeavored to become the best he or she can be. Sophia Obry of Troop 4832 is hereby congratulated for her achievement in attaining the rank of Eagle Scout. And we have Sophia here along with Emily Dark. If y'all could please come up. Okay. Good morning, commissioners. Thank you. Emily Dark, Senior Environmental Resource and Ecotourism Program Manager. It is my pleasure to introduce Sophia Obry, a member of our local BSA Girls Troop 4832, a historic troop. I've been working with Sophia for just over a year on her Eagle Scout project, which is an informational kiosk at the East Coast Greenway trailhead that supports our county's ecotourism initiatives. Unfortunately, shortly after completing the project, it was destroyed by a vehicle, but Sophia has committed to rebuilding it. I think her willingness to see this project through, despite the setbacks, speaks volumes about her dedication, perseverance, and character. I'm pleased to welcome her today to share her project with you. Good morning, commissioners. My name is Sophia Obry, and I'm here today representing Troop 4832, known as the First Girls BSA Troop in Martin County. I'm honored to share the completion of my Eagle Scout project. My project is located at the north end of Gomez Road in Hope Sound, sitting at the southern entrance of Martin County's completely off-road segment of the East Coast Greenway. This section of the trail is very unique. It acts as a bridge connecting Seabranch Preserve State Park to the north with our beautiful local county preserves to the south, including the Gomez Preserve and Peck Lake Park. Because it connects these natural assets, it is heavily used by everyday local residents, tourists looking to walk, run, bike, and even roller skate. This kiosk serves as an information hub, and it directs visitors on the East Coast Greenway, looking over the Martin County trail systems and promoting local businesses and outdoor recreation opportunities. Sadly, the original kiosk was unfortunately destroyed by a car, but I've agreed to rebuild it for the community. An Eagle project is a massive lesson in leadership and community, and I did not do it alone, so I just want to thank you to the Office of Tourism and Marketing and the Environmental Research Division for their guidance, especially Ms. Emily Dark. My dad and friends who were voluntold to help me, but their support was absolutely invaluable during the process. Thank you for listening. Now you get to do it again. Have you had your court of honor? Oh, I thought you said she was a true king. Our next proclamation is a proclamation declaring Careers in Construction Month in Martin County, Florida. Careers in Construction Month is observed in October to help increase public awareness of the opportunities available in the construction trade professions. The Treasure Coast Builders Association, along with other entities, has established student memberships, mentoring programs, ready-to-work boot camps, job fairs, and scholarships to increase awareness of these career opportunities and to support programs that provide educational pathways to obtain them. The board is pleased to recognize construction trades professionals and the critical role they play in our community, and here to accept from the Treasure Coast Builders Association, we have Jen Williams and Deb Frazier. Good morning, Commissioners. Thank you so much. I'd like to do a shout-out. First of all, I'm Deb Frazier. I am the executive officer for the Treasure Coast Builders Association and also their charitable foundation, which is our workforce development arm. I'd like to give a shout-out to Commissioner Campy for coming over to our Martin County Careers in Construction Week. We really appreciate that, and our young adults also made two benches for a park here in Martin County. So they were very proud of that, and we'll be very excited to present those when the time comes. This is Jen Williams. She is the director of our workforce development. Good morning. Thank you for this, Commissioners. It is important that we bring awareness to the importance of careers in construction. I don't know if you know, but for every approximately two individuals that are leaving the construction workforce due to retirement, there are only about two coming in. So that leaves us with a potential or problematic shortfall in the future. So it's important that we show young adults that careers in construction are valuable careers, that they are our first-choice careers, and we do that through our Careers in Construction Week and through Career in Construction Days and our partnerships with local nonprofits like Boys and Girls Club and South Fork High School, which we visit quite often. So I want to thank you for this awareness. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Our next proclamation is a proclamation declaring Economic and Business Development Awareness Month in Martin County, Florida. Excuse me. 35 years ago, the Martin County Board of County Commissioners created the Business Development Board of Martin County, or the BDB, to execute strategies that benefit existing and expanding businesses with complementary services. The BDB's emphasis on core industries such as marine, aviation, and advanced manufacturing encourages companies to expand operations, invest in capital improvements, and generate commercial property tax and tangible personal property tax. October 2026 is officially recognized as Economic and Business Development Awareness Month. And here to accept, we have Troy McDonald. Thank you, Madam Chair and Commissioners. I'm Troy McDonald. I think we all know each other. This is Christina Hunter. She's part of our team. Unfortunately, Lauren, our other team member, had a little car trouble, so she won't be here this morning. But I want to thank you for this proclamation. It's 35 years of hard work by the Business Development Board working hand-in-hand with Martin County to continue to grow our economic future. But it's more than just a contractual relationship between the county and the Business Development Board. It's about partnerships. It's about relationships. It's about working together to increase our tax base, increase job opportunities, and really help Martin County grow in a positive way that meets our lifestyle and what we in our quality of life here. But we don't do it alone. We do it with partners, partners such as Martin County, the City of Stewart, Village of Indiantown, the Chambers of Converse, South Florida Manufacturing Association, Treasure Coast Manufacturer Association, Marine Industries Association, TCBY, the Treasure Coast Builders Association. So I probably got that wrong there somewhere. But I think that's a yogurt place, TCBY. TCBA. Yeah, TCBA. You know, who knows? I miss the yogurt place. You might serve yogurt. I don't know. But I also want to thank Commissioner Capps. He serves as the liaison for our board. And thank you very much for the proclamation. And we look forward to another 35 years. Thank you. Troy, I just wanted to – Troy, what a nice job recognizing all the nominees and the award winners yesterday at the BDB Luncheon. There are some fantastic companies in Martin County joining us. So congratulations on all that. Thank you. It was a wonderful event. We filled 40 tables at the Hutchinson Shores, our largest attended event yet, close to – I'm not sure the exact numbers, but I'm going to say it's around 360 probably. So thank you. It's a busy week. You really want it? Our next proclamation is a presentation of Martin County Fire Rescue's Heroic Heart Award. Chief Cianciulli is here to present. And, Commissioners, after this proclamation, we would like to have everyone come in the well for a photo. Good morning. Good morning. For the record, Chad Cianciulli, Fire Chief, Martin County Fire Rescue. Thank you. So today we get to share a pretty remarkable story. But before I introduce and share a story, I'm going to define a word because it's a word that I feel is used very, very loosely. And I think there's – it's used a little bit too much when it shouldn't be used. But today it's going to be a different set of circumstances. And the word I want to define is hero. So before I came here and looked up the word hero, and you'll see a lot of different interpretations of what the word hero means. Essentially what it is is an act of courage. But I believe that's a little bit flat for me. What I believe a hero is, it's performing an act of courage when most won't. That's what a hero is. So let me share a little bit of the story. So this is Luna, and I actually – she's three years old. I met her twice, and I have seen her face maybe for one second. And this is Madeline. This is Madeline. Madeline is 20 years old. And Madeline in this story is actually the definition of a hero. So let's share a little bit of the details of the story. So Madeline was in her community pool, and she was just, you know, enjoying her afternoon day. And she had – she left the pool, walked away, and she left a hair clip back where she was sitting. So she went to go find this hair clip to retrieve the hair clip. And when she did, what she noticed was there was a spot in the bottom of the pool. And she thought initially it was just a smudge on her sunglasses, and she looked a little more in detail. And then what she realized, it was a child lying there motionless. So this is where people will see something like this and not quite sure what to actually do. Madeline, without hesitation, she jumped in the pool, and she grabbed Luna from that pool. And what Madeline actually went into is she went into what we would call a work mode. And she immediately initiated CPR. She immediately started dropping directives on the pool deck, somebody to call 911. She called for help while she's performing CPR at the same time. There was an off-duty ICU nurse that was there. The nurse came in and assisted Madeline with CPR. And they collectively together actually resuscitated Luna, who was unconscious, unresponsive, and not breathing. That's a heroic act. And then behind them, 911 was initiated, and our crews came in, and our crews are behind me here. And they came in, and they continued to stabilize Luna and take her to the hospital. But these are the stories that we would like to share more often. And unfortunately, we don't get to. That's why we really want to be here in front of you today to, one, just understand some of the people we have in our community, like Madeline, and the precious life, like Luna. Just putting them together is absolutely remarkable. And a little bit about Madeline, the background, why she was so prepared, is Madeline was brought up in a family that understood you have to have a skill set in life. And you need to be prepared for times that you may have to act, and you have to know what to do, when to do it, and how to do it. So her family is a fire rescue family, and they actually taught her the value of CPR. Madeline has done babysitting. Apparently, that's what she's been doing for many, many years. Very respected. She took this very serious. Well, and there was a time to actually use those skills, and she did. So today, we're together with both Madeline and Luna, can continue to be shy for the next 50, 80, 100 years, whatever it is. And maybe one day I'll get to see her face, but thank you to Madeline. So with that, I have Luna's mom here, and I have Luna's father here as well. And Madeline's parents, I think, are in the audience here. We have her parents over here. And then Madison, sorry. I keep saying Madeline, sorry. And so what I would like to do, if you don't mind, Madison, what I would like you to do is if Madison can share a couple of words. Is that okay? Okay, I suck at this, so bear with me. What's your name? Madison. First, I want to thank the Board of County Commissioners for this recognition. But if I'm being completely honest, when I think about August 23rd, I don't think about being recognized. I think about Luna. I think about a three-year-old little girl who, in a matter of seconds, went from simply enjoying a day at the pool to fighting for her life. And I think about how incredibly grateful I am that she survived. Since that day, Luna and I have developed the sweetest friendship. I've gotten to see her personality, her smile, her strength, and the joy she brings to the people around her. If there's one thing I hope people take away from Luna's story, it's that water safety matters. Drowning can happen quickly and often silently, especially with young children, supervision around water, barriers, and pool safety, knowing basic rescue skills, and learning CPR can make the difference between a terrible tragedy and a second chance at life. But today, I don't want to focus on what happened to Luna. I want to celebrate what didn't happen. I want to focus on the miracle of what followed. Luna survived. She went home. She continued growing, smiling, and bringing joy to everyone around her. Every time I see her, I'm reminded that life can change in an instant, and that every moment with the people we love is a gift. I didn't just get the chance to help Luna that day. I got the privilege of knowing her afterward. So thank you for recognizing me today. But the greatest honor is not standing here. It's knowing that Luna's here, she is alive, and she's thriving. When something goes wrong, you may not have time to wait for someone else to know what to do. Those first moments matter. I know that because I lived one of those moments with Luna. And I hope none of you ever have to experience what her family and I experienced that day. But if you do, I hope you're prepared. I hope you know how to respond. And I hope you have the skills that could give someone the same second chance that Luna received. Take a CPR class, learn water safety, talk to your family about it, make water safety a priority in your home. You never know when knowing what to do can mean the difference between losing someone and getting to watch them grow up. Thank you. Thank you. We appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. I'll do a last check before I take the picture. I'll do a last check before I take the picture. On three, we'll say Luna. One, two, three. Luna. Beautiful. Thank you, everyone. It was nice to meet you. One day I'll fly with you. Yes, of course. I didn't see your coat down. Oh, please. I see our tax collector here, which is always a good sign. Sometimes she brings a big check. Ms. Pietraszewski, would you like to address us? Good morning, Commissioners. I did come to put a big smile on your face. And good morning, Elise and Don Donaldson and the Commissioners. And with me, I have two of my finance team, Melissa and Janice. Commissioners, it is truly remarkable to be able to present a check for $8 million. And we all know how difficult it is to earn and save this amount of money. And what makes it even more amazing, this is the second $8 million check that we've given in this fiscal year. In June, we gave the $8 million check for the tax certificate sale. Now, these funds are from all those extra services that we provide. And what I did, I typed, and Melissa will give them out to you, the different services that we do besides property tax and the agency that we do it for. And this accomplishment is a testament to our incredible staff whose hard work, dedication, and commitment made it possible, as well as the strong partnerships that we've built with other agencies through the team, the teamwork that we've delivered tremendous benefits to the taxpayers. And I am proud to be their boss. The grand total that we made over our budget and after all the services were done and all the bills were paid was $8,179,784.86. The county gets almost the $8 million. And they get $7,850,944.81. And the other taxing authorities will be getting $328,808.55. And as soon as we get back to the office, that money will be wired to you. Excellent. Thank you. Cover the account. Would you like to get a picture? Sure. We will now hear from the public. You will have three minutes to address us. The first request to speak form I have is from Doug Farley, followed by Stephen Adams. While Mr. Farley is on his way up, since we are in an election season, politicking is prohibited, which is defined as advocating the election or defeat of a candidate for public office, either partisan or nonpartisan. This includes the use of words, dates, signs, props, and or wearing apparel that convey a message of support for a person or group of persons. Thank you. Good morning, commissioners. I'm here to talk today about quiet zones at railroad intersections. You probably guessed that because you're probably starting to recognize me. I'd like to share a story with you. It would sort of act as a correlation to help explain why quiet zones make sense. And it includes this picture here I'd like to show you, part of my story that shows up. So this is, that's me. My wife and I went to Scotland for vacation a couple months ago. This is on an island on the northeast coast. And this big giant structure with this big red thing on the top of it, that's a fog horn, a big giant air horn. This structure and another one was built on the island in the late 19th century. And it provided a safety feature for shipping in that area. The fog horn would blow when it was foggy out, providing a safe way for ships to navigate, two of them on the island. By the 1990s, it became obsolete. GPS replaced this horn, global positioning system. That system made it safer than the actual horn. So they turned off the horn. At no point in Scotland did the folks over there say, well, you know, we've got this system that is safer and better for navigation, but we should still keep blowing the horn. They didn't say that. They turned off the horn. It made it quieter for people so they could have a little peace and quiet and a little serenity in their life. Now, the correlation I'm getting at here, of course, is the horn on the train. When you upgrade to safety zones that include the quad gates, that is the GPS. That is the safety feature that is better than the horn. So please silence these horns and enact safety zones at railroad intersections because it's just better for Martin County. And I'll see you all next month when it's on the agenda. You're two for two with your public comments, by the way. You're very good at that. That's ironic because I'm white with fear when it comes to public speaking. You're doing great. Thank you. Thank you. Steven Adams is next, followed by Ms. Yvonne Burns. He hides it well. I'm getting afraid. Good morning. Good morning. So I'm going to kick off with being against the data centers. I learned Thursday about the data center being proposed. It came supposedly underneath its loophole for the agenda that you're going to vote on today, which is the one-year moratorium, and I pray that you do vote for that. I happen to live one mile from this new proposed megacenter, 100 megawatts, and 100 megawatts is, like, unbelievable to power 100,000 homes, and that's going to be a mile from me. Who knows how much water it's going to use, whether it's a well or it's going to be city water. If it's a well, my well will be destroyed. It might as well drop a nuke right around our house here because everything I've worked for is in jeopardy at this point. So I wrote a whole bunch of facts here as far as data centers go, and I pray you – I can't get through them in three minutes. Three minutes to fight for my life is, like, ridiculous. The machines are winning. I pray you vote for humans versus the machines because we can't – we need food and we need water to survive, and these things are taking everything from us, and they're sending back pollution in the form of heavy metals, forever chemicals, PFAS, and these companies seem to just pray for forgiveness after they do something. They're hiding stuff. They're lying to us, and we just need to oppose them, and I pray that you all vote against this and keep it out of our community. I have a bald eagle that comes to my house a lot, and it's a smart bird. Once this thing with the noise comes, if you approve it and the light and everything else, there goes that and whatever else wildlife. I'm conservative by nature, but I also live in a very peaceful home. When there's the new moon, I can't tell you how many stars we see, and now that will be gone with all the light from this place. So I pray with all the facts that I don't have time – I'm just being personal right now – that being a mile from this is devastating to us. So please, please consider that and consider humans over machines, please. Thank you. Yes, good morning, and thank you for this opportunity. I am Yvonne Burns, and I live on Green Ridge Lane in Palm City. And, yes, my son and I are approximately less than a mile from the site that is proposed on that vast amount of ground on the other side of the canal, which we are on the canal. And, naturally, we have a well, and we worry about not only the well, but our electricity, too. And I feel very strongly about AI and what it's going to do to our neighborhood, to our property, and to all the property surrounding us in the farmland where we are. And we just feel we need more information, and we wish, please, to give us more information and let us know exactly what is going on and what it's going to do to all the properties surrounding the farmlands and our property as well. We have a nice house, and being on the canal is very pleasant, but it won't be very pleasant if this construction goes on. I know it's one million square feet. I know exactly how big that is. It's a monster. And we please are asking for more information to all of us, not just myself and my son, but to everyone that is in the vicinity who's going to be affected by this. And thank you again for this opportunity. I appreciate it. Thank you. Ann Vandersteel is next, followed by Casey Darling-Kniffen. Good morning, Commissioners. The decision, obviously, is very serious here, and the residents here are speaking up. But I want to ask you about whether Martin County is going to absorb the local risk of what is really an unprecedented national experiment. America's hyperscalers, I'm going to give you some big-picture context here, plan to spend roughly $700 to $800 billion on AI infrastructure this year. Gartner Research says data center owners would need about $8.5 trillion in revenue through 2030, but attributable AI revenue may only reach $3.5 trillion. That leaves almost a $5 trillion gap. And in the spirit of hearing that we're in an AI race against China, China's taking a different path, believe it or not, spending close to $100 billion while emphasizing cheaper models, efficient inference, robotics, manufacturing, and practical industrial deployment while America is building the maximum computing power first without really knowing how much we're going to need and betting that the money and the revenue catches up later. So, looking at our expenditures, it is significant globally, but really significantly here, since we're being put into this manufactured race against China. What I'd like you to consider, of course, in talking about this Kanner Highway application, which was deemed sufficient on October 12th, one day before the board's first moratorium vote, and that actually may escape it because it falls before the actual moratorium may take effect. This board directed staff to prepare a moratorium on August 25th. That was the day I showed up. I have a question. Why did it take 49 days, seven weeks, to reach a first vote? Who knew that application was coming and when? I also request disclosure of all owners, lenders, consultants, lobbyists, campaign contributions, and any business or financial relationships with any county officials. So, in terms of the spirit of today, what we're asking for, and I think everybody here is probably looking for, is that adoption of the full one-year moratorium, and during that year require independent public studies of water demand, aquifer, wetland, stormwater, contamination impacts, grid capacity, transmission, residential rates, and backup power, diesel emissions, fire and evacuation capacity, cybersecurity, roads, agricultural property values, and insurance, jobs, tax benefits, and public costs, and, of course, something that's not talked about enough, the continuous tonal and low-frequency noise throughout a five-mile radius. The analysis must be cumulative across unincorporated Martin County, Stewart, and Indiantown, and experts must have no financial ties, be independently selected, and applicant-funded. Thank you very much. Please consider passing this moratorium. Good morning. Good morning. My name is Casey Darling-Niffen. I'm the Policy Director with Friends of the Everglades. We are based right here in Martin County. We were founded in 1969 by Marjory Stoneman Douglas, and our mission is to preserve, protect, and restore the only Everglades in the world. I want to start by thanking the board and county staff for bringing the moratorium on data centers to a second public hearing today. After reviewing the available data on the impacts of large-scale data centers in Florida, Friends of the Everglades' position aligns with the counties, we simply do not have enough information on what we may be introducing to this ecologically sensitive region and the world's most extensive restoration effort. We need more study and the evaluation of potential impacts, especially in the 16-county greater Everglades region. Imagine, now, if 100 years ago, decision-makers had the same resolve and paused to study potential impacts of draining wetlands and channelizing the Everglades. I can tell you, we would not be staring down a looming crisis every season and spending billions of dollars to repair foolhardy mistakes of the past. Recently, the South Florida Water Management District presented its water supply plan for our region. It showed that saltwater intrusion and more frequent flooding as well as drought events are expected over the next 30 years. We have enough to contend with without hastily approving energy and water-intensive uses on our lands and near our wetlands. Friends of the Everglades appreciates the data center moratorium being heard today and the support of the Board of County Commissioners. Thank you so much. Thank you. Gil Smart is next, followed by Jeff Endres. Good morning, Commissioners. My name is Gil Smart, and I'm here to represent Vote Water, formerly BullSugar.org. We advocate for clean water and clean politics. We're based right here in Sewell's Point. I, too, want to thank staff and the commissioners themselves for the diligent work needed to get us to a second hearing on the possible data center moratorium. I'm here to encourage approval of a one-year pause on large-scale data centers. As you know and as you're seeing here today, data centers have become one of the most controversial political issues in the entire state, actually the entire country. At least 11 counties and cities have enacted bans in Florida, and at least another 17, including Martin County, are considering at least a temporary pause. Given all the questions surrounding the impact of data centers on water supply and water quality, energy usage, wildlife habitat, and more, and particularly given our proximity to the greater Everglades ecosystem, a moratorium is the prudent move here. And let's keep those two words in mind, prudent governance. That's what needs to guide us in this decision-making. But this isn't the end of the story. A moratorium today is not the end of the story. It's only the beginning. For the purpose of the moratorium is to gauge the potential impact and inform the county's eventual policy decisions on data centers going forward. And the pressure is going to be immense. On one side, are citizens passionate about protecting their homes and communities like these folks here today? On the other side is big money. Data center developers, tech companies, and aligned utility interests have reportedly spent more than $30 million on Florida political campaigns ahead of the 2026 elections. That number will surely be higher once this moratorium, if passed, expires in a year. But let's cross that bridge when we get there. For now, thanks for considering what we believe to be the right move. And please let prudence guide you as you move ahead on this contentious issue. Thank you. Jeff Endres is next, followed by Gregory Stevenson. I think Jeff is on. Is he outside? I'll put that aside. Gregory Stevenson, followed by Susan Stevenson. Stevenson. Good morning. You better pull that mic up. You're a little bit older. Is that better? Yes. Good morning. Two things, two aspects to this issue. I first wanted to ask you to please pass the moratorium on large-scale data centers for the year to give us some time, to give us all some time to determine the impacts of these data centers to our community, to our county, but especially to the people. Because, as some of the previous speakers have mentioned, the people are really one of the aspects that suffer from these data centers. There are plenty of pictures online of these mammoth data centers placed adjacent to residential neighborhoods. The noise from these data centers is overwhelming. Some residents in Lowell, Massachusetts, who have a large, I believe, Amazon data center abutting their property lines, feel missed from the cooling towers on a regular basis. There's also the recent episode in August, another data center that was running emergency generators for 24 hours to the point where the residents couldn't stand the noise or the diesel fumes and had to vacate their houses until regular power was restored. So there are lots of things that affect everyday people's lives when these data centers are built. More generally, I wanted you to also consider, you know, after the year is up, perhaps a permanent moratorium on data centers here in Martin County. They simply do not belong here. This is a relatively sparsely populated community, low-lying, largely agricultural. We have some light, some small industry, but these large types of industries are very much out of place here. And also, in closing, I would like to ask you, regardless of when the application was submitted for the Cantor Highway Project, to please roll that into this year moratorium, as long as that can be done so under the law, because these companies will do whatever they can to make sure that these projects go through. And we need to take our time and put limits on their power. Thank you. Thank you. Susan Stevenson is next, followed by Richard Miller. Good morning. Good morning. My name is Susan Stevenson. I am here to also speak in full support of the moratorium regarding data centers and to advocate that it be applied retroactively to anything that's in the pipeline. Many people spoke. Many people spoke about the environmental impacts. They're obvious, the environmental and public concerns around energy, noise, water consumption. I'll give you a brief little background. I'm an engineer, and I solve problems. I worked for a large industrial gas company, and through that experience, I learned that the best projects solve problems. This data center is not solving a problem. There isn't a demand for data centers. It's being pushed. In fact, many of the younger generation people, my kids, are resistant to data. They're resistant to AI usage. We don't know where it's going to go yet, and by passing a moratorium, we're allowing public to understand what the data center impact will be. This is clearly a push to build the data centers, and it's not in the benefit of the people who are around it in the communities, and even we're not sure where the public's going to go in the future. So I'm asking for your support on this moratorium retroactively as far as forward, and then in the future looking for a band. This is something that is being pushed. They're looking at it to build it, and they will come. This is not a field of dreams. This will destroy our fields. Thank you very much for your time and attention. Thank you. Richard Miller is next, followed by Dustin Mayas. Good morning. I live at the Florida Club, which backs up to Pratt, Whitney, and Cantor. We've been ably represented by Sarah Hurd for many years, and we appreciate it. I spent a year where people I couldn't see most of the time and didn't know were trying to do me great bodily harm. I don't want to spend another year or longer where somebody that I know is trying to do me great bodily harm. Folks, it's in your hands. These things are not to be near people that are trying to conduct their ordinary lives. Thank you. Thank you. Dustin Mayas is next, followed by David Bowden. Good morning, Commissioners. Good morning, everybody. I'm also here to voice my opposition and displeasure with the proposed data center. I have a bunch of notes here, but basically, the first thing that comes to mind is, what is that going to do to my family's health? I got three boys. We live less than a mile from where this proposed location is. That's super close to where Crystal Lake Elementary is. My kids used to go there. It's only a couple miles from South Fork High School. And, you know, what are the long-term health impacts? Not only what it does to the water, the low frequency that people have mentioned, the noise pollution, the light pollution, and then, of course, what's it going to do to our electric bill? What's it going to do to our property value? We were in the process of trying to sell our house last year, moved to Palm City, and we had to put that on pause. My wife had breast cancer. And now that we're, like, looking at trying to move again, what's this going to do if I try to sell my house? I think I echo a lot of people's sentiments that this is being pushed on us. We don't want this here. And whose life has been made better by AI? Yeah, it's a good tool for some things, but I don't need to see another Sasquatch video talking or playing the saxophone or some silly thing like that. I think these AI data centers personally are being used to store information about all of us, like all the cameras, all the flock cameras, the things on your phone, all the stuff on your computer. It's being used to basically put us in a digital prison. Like, why are we building a digital prison around us when we have the power to stop it? We can see what's coming. We don't want it here. We want it out of Martin County. Somebody mentioned earlier quality of life in Martin County. I don't think this is going to improve the quality of life in Martin County at all. Martin County is my home. It's your guys' home. It's everybody's home. So let's please treat it like that. Thank you. David Bowden is next, followed by Karen Hall-Yost-Rudge. Mr. Bowden is... I'll put you aside for the moment. Karen Hall-Yost-Rudge is next, followed by Christine Berge. Good morning. Good morning. Thank you so much for your service. I'm so grateful to live in Martin County and in the greatest country in the world. I want to amen what has been said before. I also agree with a permanent moratorium. My daughter actually is a double major, environmental sciences and earth sciences, and she explained what AI is in a simple way to me, and so I'm totally against it. So, yes, if we could keep them out, we're Martin County. We can do this. We can stay four levels, four stories, and we can keep out the data centers. And then I also want to remind you guys that you're in litigation as a co-defendant with me, and if it's like the city of Stewart, you probably don't even know because sometimes attorneys don't tell everything they know. So I want to remind you of that, okay, that you're involved as a co-defendant in a sham lawsuit started by the city and AZ Properties. And then I want to remind you also that there's a pending SCOTUS, Supreme Court of the United States. There's also something pending there from the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, and your CE guy, magistrate, Mr. Paul Nicoletti, is a respondent. So I want you guys to continue to find out what is going on because sometimes you don't even know what's going on. But I do want to say that Paul Nicoletti is still working as a magistrate, and then I heard he went out to Indiantown, and everybody wants to drain the swamp, but all we do is move the alligators all around, okay? So I want you to know that Paul Nicoletti is a respondent, and Paul Nicoletti has done things that make him unfit for office. Yes, he's a nice man. Paul is nice. They're nice people. But when nice people are in places of power, and we're talking about Nicoletti, Kilbride, and Michael Mortel, they are all respondents. So let's make sure that we, you guys, don't just hide stuff just because they do 80% good and 20% bad. That's not what we want. We want 100% good, and we trust you, okay? And then thank you for your service, and God bless America. And, sir, have you filled out a request to speak for him? Yes. And you are? It's Robert Stankovich, City of Stewart. So, but it's listed as Karen Hall because I wasn't supposed to be here because my mom's in a local hospital. I do want to thank the 911 responders because yesterday my mom was in a local rehab hospital, and the thermometers weren't working, and she had a high fever. She, the thermometer said 96, but she was really almost 102, so I had to call 911, which they were there immediately and brought her to the South Hospital, and she's in good shape right now. So, but a broken thermometer is unacceptable, and, you know, some of these places need to make some changes. So, but the reason why I'm here is actually the reason why I moved to Stewart because the airport went international. I'm sure you all know. Back in 2010, you know, they released information. There's a whole press kit about, you know, the Stewart international, Stewart becoming an international airport. So, I used to live in Jupiter, and flying internationally, you know, you have to go to the custom. You do have to go to the Palm Beach International or Miami, and it's just too far of a drive. You know, you have to drive three hours to Miami and then wait there and then fly. And so now you could actually just fly out of here. It's just much easier. So, in 2010, I heard about that, and then I said, I want to live next to the airport. So, I moved to Stewart right here, close to the downtown Stewart, basically, close to here. And what I do is I'm an expert in AI and data centers, but internationally. So, if you need any information, I could tell you anything about AI or anything you want to know about tech. So, but the first thing I want to say is about Paul Nicoletti, because I warned the city commission about the liability to Trico insurance. You know, Trico is an insurance carrier. And about the rehiring of Mike Mortel, because he's involved in the total lawsuits are 665 lawsuits that his name is on. So, not all of them are open, but there's numerous, numerous lawsuits. You know, there's major ones. Mine is minor compared to Karen Hall's. And if you look at Janine Alexander, she's PTSD from her. It's a terrible story what Janine Alexander went through. So, I'm hoping I could tell you, like, two different things. If you could give me some extra time, because I wasn't really supposed to speak here. You had a whole room full of people that want their time. Okay. All right. So, I warned the city of Stewart about rehiring Mike Mortel. Sir, your time is up. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. This is just about liabilities. Just liability insurance for the carrier. That's all it is. Thank you. If you just read that, that's perfect. So, thanks. Christine Berge is next, followed by Madura Reading. Reading. Good morning, everyone. I'm happy to be here. I'm going to urge you to vote on the moratorium. I agree with the other people here that it should be a permanent one. And there are many eloquent speakers here, much more so than I am. But if anybody doesn't realize, we're all electrical beings. And I think we need a little bit more education on the impact that this is going to have to humans, to the environment. What are the implications financially? We're coming into a new era. Okay. We had the Industrial Revolution. AI is here to stay. I don't think anybody can deny that. But what impact is this data center going to have on humans, on the environment? To help educate you a little bit, there's something called biogeometry. If you go to biogeometry.ca, there was a study done on electrosmog and the miracle of Hemberg, Sweden. That was one tower that phone carriers put in a chapel, okay, or in a church, and the effects, the negative effects, that it had on the surrounding area. That was minimized through biogeometry, okay? Also, more research needs to be done on your part because you represent the residents of Martin County and the environment as well. You are our caretakers. So I urge you to look at ehssciences.org because these data centers, the electromagnetic smog that they are putting on affects you. It affects me. It affects the environment. We were talking about heroes this morning. You have a responsibility to us as people, as human beings, and to your environment. So I urge you to vote for the moratorium and to do the research because more research needs to be done. And it is out there if you look. Thank you. Thank you. Madura Redding is next, followed by Alex Hamilton. Good morning. Good morning to all of you. Good morning. To everybody. So now I'm going to do reiteration on everything that has been said so well, but also another thought. In all honesty and fairness, my opinion, they do not belong in the state of Florida for many valid reasons. To begin with, there are 5,000 hyperscale data centers already in play. China has less than 500. When you think about our environment, they need to be kept cold at all times. They need water. They need power. It is consistently, constantly. We are known for extreme heat. We are also known for hurricanes and other scenarios. And then if there's a problem, and anybody can ask St. Lucie County what happens, it becomes down on the taxpayer to pick up and pay for the problems. We're done with that, especially if it's going to be harming in any way, shape, or form us. A friend of mine who is former mayor of Juneau Beach brought up something I had not thought of. In terms of technology, everything becomes obsolete in about, what, seven years? Everything comes back smaller, needing less, or completely different applications. Look at cassettes, CDs, you know, whatever, it goes. So we're going to go and go through all of this, destroying land, not even in a good environment weather-wise, only to have it replaced seven to ten years from now, and then we're left with the buildings, which happened with Liberty Med and Digital Domain in St. Lucie County. The only ones who will be making out on this are the developers. And once again, they leave. Once it's done, they've got their money, and we are left fixing it. Then, lastly, what everyone has also brought up, data centers report dizziness, nausea, vertigo, sleep disruption from sound they can't hear. The name of this is infrasound from Texas. They have reported livestock having all kinds of problems. These are hyperscale data centers. I would like to see them never come into being in Florida. We have $5,000, put money into them, enhance what we have. Thank you very much. Thank you. Alex Hamilton is next, followed by Byron Woods. Mr. Hamilton is not available. Byron Woods, are you here? Good morning. Good morning, everyone. Just a quick brief about me. I spent 20 years in the military on nuclear submarines, retired. I worked at a data center for a year and a half, so I do have a little bit to say about that. But mostly, I came here to talk about the utility bills going up. Just my quick data centers is, from what I've heard there, coming out in media and everybody here, I think the moratorium is warranted to give a year to separate fact from fiction on actual water usage and all these other things that you may see on the media and bad information coming out. And I think that moratorium would be good to separate those facts from fictions, but ultimately, I would support a data center here. That being said, I think Ernie County has done very well with the 5% growth in the last five years. 2%? 2. So 2% from last year, but 5% from 2020. And in that same statistic, our budget is also, or the budget for us has also increased 50%, which is well above the, for taxes, well above the inflation margin that we're talking about. So I don't understand why we're increasing anything that we have to pay for and not rebudgeting where we can. Thank you. Thank you. Linda Smith is next, followed by Lauren Hollander. Good morning. Good morning. Linda Smith, Sierra Club, Loxahatchee Group, representing members and supporters here in Martin County, although I live in Jupiter. Thank you for exercising your powers to help protect against data centers. You're protecting the residents and the businesses. By adopting this one-year moratorium, you are giving you, your staff, residents, and businesses the most limited resource there is, time. Time to create a comprehensive planning and land development regulation. You have the power to oppose any data centers. Large-scale data centers have historically used substantial water. It's been discussed. By implementing this ordinance, you can protect sensitive coastal ecosystems, freshwater, and saltwater wetlands. Large-scale data centers use an unprecedented amount of electricity. That's been discussed. Supposedly, local rate payers will not be charged more due to the increase in power demands. But there is no way the data centers will offset the costs of the power plants' increases in toxic pollution created by creating the extra electricity. And the power plants' increased need for more water to create that electricity. And let's not even talk about the addition of heat. What we need around here is more heat, right? I applaud you to move quickly on this. Over 20 counties that I know of have passed a moratorium or banned large-scale data centers. Suwannee County is the latest I have heard of. Ohio and Georgia are overrun, and evidently Massachusetts also. So please stop them. Unfortunately, Palm Beach County, where I live, passed their moratorium on the same day they accepted, but did not pass, Project Tango, which a lot of people have probably heard about. Now staff has been forced to accept almost doubling the size of Project Tango. That's tragic. Please don't let that happen here. I encourage you, with your precious vote on this issue, vote it through. I almost did not make the drive because last time it was so unanimous. But this is more important to me and the Sierra Club, and we are working on a statewide moratorium. Thank you for your time. Lauren Hollander is next, followed by Sergey Kelly. Yes, I was a speaker on a specific item, and I don't know if you want me to speak about that. Sure. You want to speak on that? It was just in support of the collaboration for the facility, the operations facility. You can speak now, or you can speak on the item. I'll speak on the item, please. Okay. Thank you. Sergey Kelly is next, followed by Dottie Lancey. All right. Great to see you all again. Sergey, West Palm Beach. And obviously everyone here, as everyone across Florida, does not want AI data centers. They are the next form of reckless development. We had the changing of the Everglades way back in the day. We've had the massive sprawl of housing, of that form of development, which is wreaking havoc as well as now. But AI data centers are this next form. And I did like how someone did mention that pretty much everyone in the younger generations really, really hates AI because it is seemingly forced on us. No one voted for it. None of the commissioners, even most people, jumped up and down and said, hey, this is a great new idea. It's going to solve this problem. It's going to solve this. And yes, there's some side marginal stuff it can help with, but it's not at the extent where we need thousands of these things across Florida or even in rural areas. So I would also suggest, since you're still here and still can technically amend it, to lower it under the state definition of AI data center, hyperscale, to anything below 50 megawatts would be great, 20 megawatts, 10 megawatts. You can essentially what people are wanting are a larger ban, and you can actually do that now, at least temporarily. So that way you don't get one that's being proposed for, you know, under the statewide definition because we'll still have a year, still a lot will be proposed. We just had the whole saga of the one down in Palm Beach, and they're right. It was not just doubled. It was tripled by the administrative approval. They were kind of throwing lawsuits, too, so you'll get that as well. But in short, no one wants them. No one ever wanted to bring these forward. And they will come after you legally. They will come after you every corner. I'm sure they're trying to already wine and dine you. That's how they operate. You just have to tell them, no, you know, leave the door. Furthermore, on the agriculture enclave, I know that might be withdrawn or moving, but please also deny any enclaves that come before the board. And at least this one did not legally meet the definition of the agriculture enclave, so that's good. But that's another, you know, prong in this whole, you know, development of Florida, whether it's AI data centers, overdevelopment, or ag enclaves that are just trying to take away all the land. And again, the next generation is looking at, you know, Florida in the 1980s was one thing, but what's it going to look like in 2080, which is going to be what a lot of the younger generations will live through. And it's going to be a very pale comparison, an ugly comparison if things keep going the way they have been. So please pass the moratorium, strengthen it, extend it, pass the ban, anything like that would be awesome. And again, think about the choices and the consequences that will be here for 10, 20, 200 years down the road, as opposed to just right now and what is being pushed around in terms of money and opportunities that they're falsely attributing to AI data centers. Thank you. Thank you. Dottie Lancey is next, followed by Risa Olcott. Wow. Hi. Hi. Hi, commissioners. Hi, everybody here. Dottie Lancey. I live over in Hutchinson Island. And I am amazed at the turnout here. Thank you. Thank you. I came over here for two reasons. My first reason was, of course, to speak about the moratorium. And I wanted to urge you all to vote for it. I think it was a great idea. I don't know who proposed it or how. Oh, thank you. Thank you, Commissioner Campy. I think it was a great idea because we have to know about it. And I noticed I got an email from the Guardians of Martin County, and they have a paper that they have written, and I suppose it's on their website. But it describes, in simple terms, to people like me that don't know a whole lot about it, what AI is, what the data centers are capable of, and the pros and cons of them. So I think it's a good idea to sit back and educate ourselves before we jump to any conclusions here. And I was unaware that this data center has already been passed. If we can stop it, I think it's a great idea. It seems like it's snuck through by devious means. And so I urge the Commission to vote on this moratorium. I hope you will. You can see the support that you have for the moratorium. And I think we all need to learn more about data centers before we allow any more into our county, any at all. And my second reason for being here was about the gopher tortoises. But I don't want to take away from what you're saying. So I'll come again next time. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you all. Risa Olcott is next, followed by Greg Hewlett. Good morning. Good morning. How are you all? Thank you so much for your time, and I'll let you do. Thank you, everyone, that brought so much education and great talking points today. I am not educated, but I'm just here with a personal story just to say I'm here for my two kids. We live out in River Forest, which is supposed to be this happy, kid-friendly neighborhood. And what, soon we won't have clean drinking water? I can't wash my hands and take a bath and basic needs? I don't even understand why this is a question. I get that it's hard and you make lots of important decisions, and this is one of them. Like the one gentleman said, 500 in the whole country versus 5,000 versus whatever. We don't need any more. We have enough. It's done. I feel like it's watching a bad movie where it's very clear who the bad guy is, and no one's stopping it. We need to stop it. So I don't even understand what the good points of a data center are. I hate AI. I want to refuse it on my phone every time. I hate it all. But that's me. But let's just be done with it. Get them out of here. Not even in the state. Again, pause it for a year if that helps. That's great. But forever. Get it gone. Please. Please, please, please. Thank you. Thank you. Greg Hewlett is next, followed by Adam Hawkinsmith. Good morning. Good morning, Commissioners. My name is Greg. I live in Palm City. I urge you to adopt the moratorium today. And I thank you for writing it so well. Your own findings? Say it plainly. Martin County lacks the policies and regulations large-scale data centers require. Allowing them without standards creates significant risk to our water, our grid, and our planning goals. But that's also the problem with what isn't on today's agenda. Shortly before the first meeting on the moratorium, an application for a data center off Gainer Highway was deemed sufficient. Under Part 4, it's exempt. So the one project already in the door will be judged under the very code this ordinance states is inadequate. So I'm asking for three things today. First, in this ordinance, make clear that a substantial change to an exempt application, such as a bigger footprint, more megawatts, more water, counts as a new application, subject to the moratorium. Second, close the gap. The ordinance won't take effect until it's filed with the Secretary of State. Please file it as soon as it's passed. Third, for the pending application, I ask that staff confirm on record whether it will be processed as a major development with final action by this board in a public hearing, not at a director level. Make what was submitted public, and apply every standard existing code allows on water, power, noise, and environmental impact. You're writing new rules because the old ones weren't built for this. The project trying to outpace those rules deserves the closest look of all. Thank you. Thank you. Adam Hawkinsmith is next, followed by Lorraine Gatti. Good morning, guys. Adam Hawkinsmith, resident of Stewart. Obviously, she lives in River Forest. I live over in River Marina, which is directly across 96th Ave from the general area of this proposed data center. I don't think people have made the certain point here, but why? What is the purpose of a Martin County data center? Why Martin County? Why this particular piece of property? What is the benefit for the resident for this development, I guess we'll call it? What exactly is the resident getting in exchange for risking their clean water, risking their electrical bills going up, risking their livelihoods? Martin County has thrived on the secular family, the family that goes to school in the neighboring area, goes to church in the neighboring area. They've built this entire county off of family security, and we're proposing to build a data center across the street from those families. It makes no sense to me. It makes no sense to anybody in this room. And the other problem that I have is what is the tax benefits for the developer? Why did they pick Martin County specifically to build a million-square-foot data center? What are they getting out of it? The other part is if they can't say unequivocally that the residents' bills, the electrical bills, the water bills, will not be raised, if they can't put up a surety bond to say we'll put a billion-dollar surety bond to ensure that 167,000 residents of Martin County will not see an increase in their electrical bills, if they can't do that, then they're lying to you. They will come through here, and they will destroy the secular family that built Martin County. I want a proposed ban, complete ban, on these data centers in Martin County. They don't belong here, and they shouldn't be even on the table for discussion. Thank you. Thank you. Lorraine Gotti is next, followed by Larry Bonadale. Good morning, folks. Good morning. Excuse me. Good morning, Commissioners. My name is Lorraine Gotti. I moved from Soho, Manhattan, to Stewart, Florida 10 years ago, purposely to Martin County for this pristine environment, and I'm hoping that it stays this way. I live in Harbor State's near Canter Highway and Salerno Road, right behind the Publix at Canter Crossings. I'm here because I'm concerned about the proposed South Florida Gave and how it could affect my neighborhood. Okay. The folks that have put in for this bid, Panorama Holdings, they're out of Charlotte, North Carolina. They're not part of this environment. They're going to build it and move on. I live here. I picked this town for a reason. So I'm asking that, and I understand the development involves many considerations, but I believe residents deserve clear information about the project's distance from our homes, potential nighttime noise, water use, environmental effects, and the protections that will be required. As far as the noise, what independent study demonstrates that continuous cooling equipment and backup generators will not create unacceptable noise at nearby homes, particularly overnight? As far as the environmental effects, what are the projected daily water consumption, water weight impacts, and stormwater management requirements for 83.65 acres, which is equivalent to 63 football fields? And then the buffering. What enforceable requirements will ensure adequate setbacks, mature landscaping, noise reduction, nighttime lighting, and controls to protect the nearby residents? And, of course, the accountability. If the project causes noise and other impacts beyond what the developer predicts, what enforceable measures do we have that will be available to require corrective action? I respectfully ask the Commission to ensure that these issues are thoroughly evaluated and vetted and that supporting studies are available to the public and that enforceable safeguards are considered before any decisions are made. And I appreciate your time, and I appreciate all the work that you do and taking care of all of us here in Martin County. Thank you. Larry Bonadeo is next, followed by Dan Wilson, Sr. Good morning. Good morning. I'm here to speak about PHQ J4, not this amendment. Can it be brought up then? You can speak now or you can speak later? Of course, the Stuart Yacht thing, please. Thank you. You would prefer to speak on the agenda item? Yes. Okay. Thank you. Next is Dan Wilson, Sr., followed by Daniel Wilson, Jr. Good morning, everyone. I'm Dan Wilson, Sr. I'm the president of the HOA of Locks Landing Community. We have a bunch of residents in here from all the communities. Just doing a little research on these data centers, these things should be banned from any community. If you live within a mile of this place, your life's going to be a living hell, okay? Everybody in here, I'm listening to them. I live a mile. I just did a little research about having an elementary school, Crystal Lake, within a mile of a data center. These children are going to be there inhaling diesel fumes, noise from all the generators, got to get tested every month. If there's a power failure in Florida, which we know is going to happen, these things are going to be running. What are these kids doing in school? What are the residents going to do? You live in your backyard, I'm going to have a barbecue. Oh, the diesels guys are running. Our water is going to be depleted, completely depleted. These things use anywhere from 25,000 to 50,000 residents amount of water for a town of 25,000 to 50,000 residents per day. They're never turning off their water. They're going to keep using it. We've got to cool this place. Oh, we live in Florida. Let's cool this place. We don't know how that goes. It's going to be a big strain on everything for us, our electric, our water. There is no benefit for anybody in this room, none. We're going to pay the price while big business walks away when they're done. Okay, this is done. We ruined your property. See you later. This cannot happen here. I came down here seven years ago from New York to this beautiful county, and now I'm going to get this, and it's right outside my door, right outside our door. I don't know how these things even get considered to be put in a community area. I know it supposedly just recently got changed to an industrial site. We have a school within a mile. We have people that live within a mile. How does that happen? Apparently, the people don't matter. The big business matters, and that has to not happen here in Martin County. It's ridiculous. So if this thing somehow goes through, it gets approved it shouldn't. I mean that the day before the moratorium is getting voted on, they slip their application in. If this thing goes through, I can rest assured, tell you now, we will be up there at the site protesting. It's not going to happen. Dan Wilson, Jr. is next, followed by Kimberly Caldwell-Blasey. Good morning. Good morning, all. I want to thank you all for being here. Thank you all for being here as well. It's proven to me that this government is still for the people and by the people. So thank you for coming up. And I really do appreciate all of you commissioners here and listening to everybody today. I think we're in uncharted waters, as this country has been in the past and will be in the future. Otherwise, they can't hear you. Oh, understood, understood. Okay. There are other things that have happened in this country that we can look at and take as an example of how we should approach this. I think everybody recalls fracking. It's still going on. It's happened all throughout the Northeast where I grew up in New York with my father. Thank you again for being here. He didn't explain anything about our background. I went to the University of Miami. I love the state of Florida. They moved down here from New York after coming to visit me year after year. So we love this place. And we want to see it do well and the people here do well. All that being said, I'm a CPA. I've worked in corporate America. I was an auditor for KPMG, auditing the U.S. Army, holding a secret clearance at one point in my life. I then worked for the power company, Excel. I've worked on rate cases, which are the cases that we file in order to increase your residential electric bills. So I have a little bit of background in the situation. I know for a fact that these data centers are going to drive up your electric costs, whether or not they tell you they're going to. In addition, like my father said, their backup power is diesel generators. We had power outages over this summer because of the crazy lightning storms. I'm sure all the residents can attest to this and everybody that's in this room. We lost power at least once a week, some months of the summer. Those diesel generators will fire up every single time that the power is out. Not only that, but they have to do regular testing. Those diesel generators are going to get turned on once a month just so that they are ensuring that they run properly. So regardless of all of the other impacts, you're going to be sucking down some diesel fumes. If you've ever seen a truck do a coal roll, just imagine that times a lot more. This is a 400,000 megawatt facility, to my understanding, that's trying to be built. Sorry, I'm trying to be quick here to save everybody's time. But anyway, what else we got? It's hard to explain what a 400 megawatt facility is with this limited amount of time. So I just want that to be considered for everybody here. In addition, data centers are not being built for the middle and working class Americans. I worked in corporate America. That's why I wanted to state that. I've watched left and right fellow CPAs, fellow people in finance, lose jobs. First, we started off showing business to India, to other countries throughout the world, so that we had cheap labor. Now, the new way that they're doing that is they want to build data centers and have AI take our jobs. So if you guys have kids in school right now, just think about the fact that they might be going to school for a degree for a job that no longer exists. My last thing that I want to say is this isn't being, again, built for the people and by the people. It is being built by corporations, by the rich, for the rich. This data center is not going to serve the community. If you guys want it to serve the community, at least 50% of the revenue is showing up. Sir, your time is up. Thank you. Kimberly Caldwell-Blazy is next, followed by Ray Grogan. Good morning. My name is Kimberly Caldwell-Blazy. I'm not here for the mega center that's being proposed. I have over 1,000 petitions signed against the Rod Lue Development Parcel AO19002, located on Front Avenue in Murray Cove Circle. This site plan is to build 22 single-family homes, two-story, three-bedroom, two-bath, one-car garage, on three acres of land. The developer would like to change the local zoning from R3 to R8. Each lot would be only 35 feet by 70 feet with a five-foot easement. Our current neighborhood easements that abut the property are 13 feet on all four sides of each residence and sit on a third of an acre of land. This development is planned to be built on an extensive brownfield forest. This forest was a dump, a trash site, for well over 100 years for a pineapple farm and moonshine distillery that were located on this land. South Point, an HOA that was the pineapple farm, is now known as Murray Cove Circle, the street where 50 single-family homes are located for 22 years. Inside this development sits a swale with a bubbler system, the size of two football fields that is 10 feet deep. This swale protects the South Point neighborhood from flooding, is the same size and depth as the adjoining forest that collects millions of gallons of water per year on its own. Yet this developer, Anderson Landing, LLC, not from Martin County, in conjunction with Mathers Engineering from Martin County, would like to clear-cut this forest and put 22 single-family houses without any swale or any plan to mitigate the millions of gallons of water this forest absorbs naturally each year. The north side of this forest sits next to the school sidewalk that was built a few years ago. This sidewalk is supposed to bring the children who walk to Murray Middle School there safely. For those of us who live in the neighborhood, the drainage built next to the sidewalk is flooded frequently, and it makes the sidewalk difficult to navigate for the children. Just to the north of this school sidewalk is the last stage of the retention pond built about 15 years ago on three acres of land. For Martin County's Cedar Water and Sewer Department, once the sewer is clean enough to release, this water is diverted to Manatee Creek, Manatee Pocket, and onto the intercoastal waterway, and into the St. Lucie Inlet. This, according to Mathers Engineering in Port Salerno, on the meeting on October 1st, which Mr. Ed Campy attended. There's more. Thank you. Ray Grogan is next, followed by Brianna Thompson. Good morning. Good morning. From this room to the stoplight at Ocean Boulevard is 500 feet. This data center will be built 800 feet from my front door. That's not acceptable. Not acceptable. There are over 500 homes, roughly 500 homes, within about a mile and a half of this data center being supposedly built. Like someone else said, there's an elementary school. And I don't know if everybody here knows, that's a two-lane road. Where's all this construction going to go? Where are all these trucks going to move all this stuff? Who's going to direct traffic? How are these kids going to get on and off of their school buses in the mornings when these trucks are driving around carrying whatever construction waste material, whatever they need to do? Like, who's going to put up with that? I'm not going to put up with that. I've lived here for eight years. And this is the third time I think something's been attempted to be built in that area. I think it's been shot down twice. If this is the third time it's been shot down twice, this is going to get shot down again. The company that filed for this is 112 days old. I don't know these people. They were filed on behalf. It was filed on behalf by Panorama Holdings, like somebody mentioned earlier, out of North Carolina, an investment group. Nah. You want this, build it in North Carolina. Don't build it here. Nobody wants this. Nobody asked for this. And I guess I'll end with, unlike everybody else that's been up here and asking you, please consider the moratorium. Please, you know, consider saying no to this. I'm not asking. I'm telling. This isn't going to happen. And you, all of you are going to make sure it doesn't happen. I live in your district. This is being built in Blake's district. You two are the ones that have the most control over this. And I'm telling you, this is not going to happen. Thank you. Brianna Thompson is next, followed by Christopher Collins. Good morning. Good morning. First of all, I want to say thank you to Vice Chairman. We really appreciate you. We all watched the meeting last time where you brought apart this moratorium to let everybody think about what's happening. We thank you for showing up that day. There's also questions on why some people weren't here that day and how the vote got passed. So we are grateful that that happened. The day before, when we had an AI center say that now they're going to come in here, we're wondering. I have some messages from neighbors, community members. First question is, ask her who is padding her pockets. So I'm not going to say a name. That's the first question. Another question from a neighbor was, I am with the woman who asked for an investigation into the timing of the data center bypassing moratorium and how long it took to bring moratorium to a vote. If this data center is allowed to bypass the moratorium, I hope it triggers a corruption investigation into how it was orchestrated. Perhaps the threat of a criminal accountability would make those involved think twice and ultimately stop the project. My next thing is to stand with Ms. Madora about infrasound. So we know about sound healing. We know that sound healing can help. We know that it can go right to tumors and to dissipate tumors. If this infrasound is harmful, we also know that police and the military uses infrasound to harm citizens to keep them away from protests, things like that. My other thing is to talk on what I personally know, which is animals. Okay? So I know animals and I know labs and I know how scientists use animals to test on them. When they test on rats, they use those studies. When they test on monkeys, they use those studies. Farmers are being silenced across social media, so a lot of people don't know what is being said. I personally know farmers all around the country. I am in the ag industry. People in ag are saying that cows are aborting. Aborting means that they are not able to have these calves. Some of the cows that are aborting, the calves are dying within them, which then makes them have an infection, which makes them die from this. So animals are dying from being by these AI centers. The other thing that's happening is the ones that are able to give birth, which is wonderful, right? They're able to give birth. These animals are being stillborns, right? So they're coming out. So there are farmers that are saying that they are close to these AI centers and they haven't had one live calf at all. We live in Martin County. Martin County is an ag district, right? We have farms. We have cows. We have goats. We have chickens. You guys are fighting to have chickens in your yard. No, they're not going to hatch, right? Because you need certain temperatures. People fight for the turtles. Turtles, it's male, female within 0.5 degrees. If we change the temperatures in Martin County, you're going to be like, I don't know why we don't have any more turtles anymore. It's because the temperatures are going to change and we are not going to have any live animals anymore. So if you guys want to eat lab-grown meat, this is a great way to do it by putting in an AI center into Martin County. Ma'am, your time is up. If you want to have plants or anything else, you're not going to be able to have an AI center if you want. Ma'am, your time is up. If you want to have broccoli, anything else. Thank you. Thank you. Are we back on? Okay. Yeah. Hyperscale AI data centers do not belong in Martin County. One of the absolute best parts of campaigning is going door to door. And when you knock on thousands of doors, it becomes quickly obvious how the average human being feels. That is how they feel. They do not want this in Martin County. Back in the day, not that long ago actually, realtors and even developers, they knew. You sell Port St. Lucie. You develop Palm Beach, but you live in Martin County and you keep this place special and also don't tell anybody about it, right? Because we chose a simple life. We chose more rural space. We chose knowing our neighbor, seeing the same people at the coffee shop. There was a conscious choice from people who have come from New York and many other places uprooting their lives and retiring and settling in Martin County because of the Martin County difference. The painful part of this is today's vote should not be for the moratorium. Today's vote should be for a ban. And it should be for a ban because proactively a year ago we had entered into a moratorium in preparation for that ban. It is difficult to do that when at least one of our commissioners is employed by a construction company set to build the data center in Indiantown and potentially this one. My ask is that that commissioner, who will remain nameless, will recuse herself in the moratorium vote publicly due to conflict of interest out of respect for this commission and for the people who live here. Data centers do not, hyperscale data centers do not belong in Martin County. There are things that are more important than money. You cannot eat money. You cannot grow food once there is a data center there. That land will never be converted back to ag and Martin County will never be the same. So please do now and as much as you can with this application that's coming in to protect us like past commissions have done in the Martin County difference. Thank you. Monica McLaughlin is next, followed by Tony Piñayaro. Don't blame me. Blame your handwriting. Good morning. My name is Monica. I am a local, a mother, and a young professional here in our community. One of my personal favorite documents starts with we the people, not the corporations, not the developers, not the highest bidders. I'm standing here today because I am deeply concerned about the long-term consequences of bringing large-scale data centers into our communities. What's going to happen to our environment? We all have wells. We have homes. We have parks. We have wildlife that's here. What happens to the critical infrastructure? What happens to the costs that are passed down to taxpayers? More importantly, what community are we leaving behind for our children? We hear about economic development, investment, and progress, but at what cost? What will these data centers look like in 20 years? Will they be obsolete due to new technology? And if that happens, who's responsible for what is left behind? The corporations or the taxpayers that never ask for them? These are not unreasonable questions. They deserve real answers backed by independent research before decisions are made that could permanently change our community and our land. Every commissioner sitting here today needs to remember one thing. You were elected to represent us. The families who live here, the homeowners who invest here, the children who inherit this community. Your responsibility is to the people, not the corporations seeking to develop. Not all growth is progress. Only once we have no clean water and no food will we realize we cannot eat or breathe money. The way the people have spoken today. Do the right thing. Tony P is next, followed by Patrick Lepak. I heard that the whole time I was in the service. Pignataro, Tony. I live in Florida Club with my best friend for 52 years. I can see this property from my backyard. My granddaughter lives down the street. She'll be going to South Fork High School right across the street. I'm going to make it simple. Google, why do I not want a data center near me? I did it all night last night. And then Google, why do I want a data center? That will take you two minutes to read. But why I don't, there is plenty of information for you. If the people voted for you, it's time to vote for the people. That's all. Thank you. Patrick Lepak is next. And Mr. Lepak is the last request to speak form that I have. If you would like to address us, please fill out a request to speak form and hand it to the bailiff. Good morning. Good morning. Thanks for allowing me to make a comment. I don't know if everybody knows me. I haven't really been active in the community, but my background is in engineering, development, and construction. You would think that would be in favor of it, but I am actually in support of the moratorium and a ban for any data center in our community, in our county. My real question, I believe, is the fact that the EPA has required certain industrial standards for industry overall. I've been up front and center in a lot of those requirements, and I would like to know exactly what the requirements would be for a data center. We don't know all of the implications of this new technology, and we don't know what needs to be abated. So I would suggest that we ban these until we do figure out what the implications will be, and also remember that there are other planned communities in that area and what the tax base will be after this is put in. So in conclusion, I would say I don't believe we know exactly what needs to be prevented at this time, and I would suggest that until we do, we have a ban on this industry. Thanks for your time. Thank you. Would anyone else like to address us on public comment? I don't see any. Please come forward and then fill out a request to speak form. No. Hello. My name is Racy Francis, and I live in River Marina, which is less than a mile from the proposed site that we are being told of. I only found out about this a few days ago. I have never been to a meeting, although I've lived in Martin County and have been a taxpayer for the last 11 years. I specifically chose Martin County after living in Palm Beach County due to the slow growth of the county and what is different in Martin County. My children are growing up here. They call Martin County home. I hope to someday be a GG and have my grandkids grow up in this county. I pray that each and every one of you would think long and hard about retroactively banning what has been brought in front of you people to vote on and also to move forward with a moratorium and also a complete ban. And the reason I say that is because I do believe strongly that in 30 years or 40 years, we will find out the health benefits, that there is no benefits to being next to these, and it's going to wreak havoc on our health, most importantly. Also, too, we've spent so much money trying to fix our waters, and the St. Lucie Canal runs right next to this. And so if we're polluting that canal and it's going out in the estuaries and ruining our waters, we're not even addressing what we've already been doing before. So I'm asking for, please, for our health, for everyone's health to consider this so that we can continue to live here and survive and be healthy and do well in this county. And let's make a point for everybody else to follow suit. Thank you. Morning. Morning. This is Colin. I am an immigrant from Germany, actually. I moved here about six years ago. I want to spend the majority of my life in Martin County. So seeing this happening in my own backyard is not an option. I want to live here for the rest of my life. I moved here six years ago from Germany, and this is the last thing that I want to see for my kids that I'm going to have eventually, 50 years down the road, 40 years down the road. But a complete ban would be the best option here because I want to live in Martin County forever. Thank you. Thank you. I also live in the Florida Club, which, as everybody knows, is now in my backyard. Sorry. So this will be in my backyard. We've heard some great speakers this morning talk about their opposition to this data center. The only thing I haven't heard is why any of you thought that this was a good idea, why anybody on this board has moved this forward to this point. And I don't know if this is the place, obviously, to discuss that, but I am curious. Nobody in this audience thinks it's a good idea. And I just wonder how the board or the commission thought that it was. So that's all I have to ask. Thank you. I can tell you that no one on this board has advanced to this application. And also, we have to take a closed captioning break. So we're going to take a 10-minute break. And I'm going to move, because of all the interest in the moratorium, I'll move this item up so that we take it up in 10 minutes. We are back, taking up public hearing number one, which is our second public hearing to consider adoption of an ordinance establishing a temporary interim planning period moratorium on the submission and acceptance of applications related to large-scale data centers. Ms. Elder. Commissioner Hetherington has something to say first. Commissioner Hetherington. Yes. As per state statute, Section 286.01, I have the ability to recuse myself. As an employee of an infrastructure energy company, the company constructs and develops energy infrastructure, both nationally and locally, which is used in computer resources, as well as heavy civil construction. As required by law, I have filed my Form 8B and will be abstaining from this item. Do you want to go before Elise or after? No, she can go first. Ms. Elder. Okay. Good morning, Commissioners. This is the second public hearing to consider adoption of an ordinance establishing a temporary interim planning period and a moratorium on the submission and acceptance of applications related to large-scale data centers. The first public hearing was held on October 13, 2026. At that board meeting, we went through the ordinance, but I will briefly go through it again for information. So the first five pages of the ordinance are the legislative findings and just support why we're implementing this moratorium based on recent changes in Florida law, specifically Senate Bill 484. It also talks about the interplay with Senate Bill 180 and discusses that our regulations are insufficient to plan for these large-scale data centers. So the beginning part of the ordinance adopts the legislative findings of fact to support your moratorium. Section C establishes an interim planning period and a suspension of the submission and acceptance of applications related to large-scale data centers. This just basically gives the county an opportunity to take some time and plan and do some investigation to revise our land development regulations. The duration that is being proposed is under Section D, which is 365 calendar days from the implementation of this ordinance, which will give staff the opportunity to come back to the board over that 365-day period to update you on where they are on the planning of the new regulations regarding large-scale data centers. Section E establishes the various types of issues that the county will have to look at and investigate to actually come up with potential regulations. There are 26 different areas listed. This is not inclusive. I'm sure there's other areas that are not listed, but the 26 items support the fact that we need a year to do this. It's a big job, so staff needs a year to investigate and come up with regulations. And in the ordinance, it provides that staff will come back to the board periodically over the year to give you updates and get feedback on the progress. Yes, and then finally, the applicability of the ordinance in Section 4, I believe. Yes, 4. So it's applicable only in the unincorporated areas, which does not include our municipalities, and it also is not applicable to applications relating to large-scale data centers submitted and deemed sufficient prior to the effective date of the ordinance, which would likely be today if the board adopts it today. And then finally, it's not applicable to properties that were actually damaged by Hurricane Debbie, Helene, and Milton to the extent that it's protected by Senate Bill 180. So those are the exclusions from the applicability. And that is a summary of the ordinance, and I'm happy to answer any questions. Mr. Donaldson. I was just going to suggest, Donna, if you could turn to page 299, where I think it's important to see the list of temporary interim planning period evaluation. I know Ms. Elder mentioned it, but it is what staff is doing in the evaluation period. Keep going. It's Section E, if you could continue. It's page 260 and 259. 259, yes. Yeah, there you go. So anyway, that is a list of all of the identifying criteria that within this ordinance is asking staff to look at. It is quite a long list of many of what you heard the citizens ask about during their presentations. And should this pass, I would come back at a future meeting to establish budget for doing some of this evaluation, along with how we may want to conduct public input meetings, et cetera, during this year of evaluation. Thank you. Commissioner Campy, before we get to you, do you mind if we ask about the application that has been deemed sufficient first? That was part of my comments, but absolutely perfect. Okay. Can you please detail this? Tell us the size of the proposal, and if it's going to be a major or a minor. Yes. Who will make decisions on this? So I have limited information, so we might want to have growth management come, but I can tell you what I know. So it's on 86 acres in the South Florida Gateway Industrial Park. I was told it's around 130 megawatts, 100 or 130. I'm not sure if that's accurate or not because I have not seen the application myself. I think we need to bring someone from growth management. So the application is in a platted industrial park, and under our code, data centers are targeted businesses, and this data center would be exempt from coming to the board. It would be approved administratively under our current code because it is a targeted business in our comprehensive plan and in our land development regulations and under our LDRs in Article 10, any size development in a platted industrial park is administratively approved, and that's been the rule for a long time. So that's what I know about it. I see Peter Walden is on his way in here, so he can elaborate further, I think. Mr. Walden, we're talking about the application for a data center that has been deemed complete. Would you please tell us about it and tell us who reviews it, how long it's going to be reviewed, who makes the decision about whether to accept or deny? Yes, thank you. Peter Walden, Deputy Growth Management Director. We did get an application in. I think it was transmitted on October 13th. Currently, it's just been processed. Staff hasn't had a chance to actually do the review yet, but we can tell you that it is 959,000 square feet at this time, housed in four buildings, an 84-acre platted industrial subdivision. It is part of a PUD. The PUD stipulates that any targeted industry, which data centers are at this time, will be reviewed administratively. So staff has all of the criteria of the comprehensive plan and the LDRs to work with to make sure that all of the concerns about the residential areas around it and any environmental issues are mitigated. And right now, we're just at the very preliminary stages of looking at this. It will likely take a year or more to review. So everything will be made public as the staff reports, the applications, everything is available to the public to digest. So like I said, we're just getting started. And it is not required to have an expedited review? It is part of the code right now to have an expedited review. I already spoke to the applicant saying that this first round of review being a new subject, we won't adhere to that because that's just a 15-day calendar review. So we'll do our best to review it in a timely manner. But they understand what takes place here. Okay. Commissioner Campy. Thank you. Really, the meeting splits now into two portions. The first thing that you had mentioned about the application, we heard some public comments this morning about it. We were not aware, as commissioners, I believe my colleagues, I can speak for us, were not aware that that application was about to be filed. I don't think you need to be an expert to realize that it was a little bit of maneuvering, I would assume, on the applicant's part to make sure they got in ahead of time. I mean, if you were the applicant, you'd be probably trying to do that same thing. One of the other questions was in regards to why did it take us so long to go from our original request of staff until bringing it forward. There is a legal process for every application. This is America. There is opportunities for people to, you know, if you were in favor of, let's say it wasn't this, and you were in favor of something, you'd want to have those same protections afforded to you. So that's on the application side. On the moratorium timing side, we meet twice a month, and what we needed to do, if you see this agenda item is quite large, we did have the opportunity to have our legal staff and all other departments that were involved to put into it. If you craft something that is not really solid, legally on a solid footing, you could potentially leave yourselves open to a battery of lawyers that could come and review something and say, well, it's a moratorium, but you did it wrong, so we could slip in that way. So I appreciate, I think it was obviously, and Ms. Elder can tell us, but I believe it was her number one priority for the department and all of the people that work on it. So we did bring it as quickly as possible. Other than the Cantor Highway, I don't, you know, well, especially depending on how it goes this morning, which I could basically tell you how it will go, we can now lock it down for a year. I think that the suggestions that were made this morning, and we've gotten, all of us have received emails, and, you know, yes, we represent you all, and we also live here. So I brought it up because it was percolating around in other communities. We're not the first, but we're certainly not late to the game in terms of doing this to protect our residents. We do expect Martin County is a different place to live. Our residents expect a different kind of process, and what you just heard Mr. Walden said, even with that application, it will be scrutinized by staff. It will be scrutinized by your commissioners, and it will be the opportunity for you to participate, even if it's, you know, we'll see how it shakes out here. A submission of an application does not mean yes. It also doesn't mean that we have ever had an opportunity to, some people had said, well, you already passed it, and I've received emails that said, I don't understand how you would approve this. We didn't. It's an application at this point, and it will go through. All of our process is very strict and stringent, but I think this one will be one of the most strict and stringent. So I would happily make a motion for our one-year moratorium to start effective immediately and give us an opportunity to, as you heard our attorney say, go through this process. What I would ask, and she mentioned it, but I want to reiterate it for the record, that every portion and step of the way be made completely public and open to the public for input and information, not just here at commission meetings. I know a lot of folks can't attend during the day meetings, that there'll be meetings if we meet twice to discuss it during the day for the folks that can do that. There's just as many people that have young children and work and have responsibilities in the evening. I would make a strong suggestion or requirement that we have these sessions day and night to include everyone, and not necessarily only here in this building, if it needs to be in Hobe Sound and Jensen Beach and Palm City, that the public at the very least will have an ample opportunity to input and hear and become informed on the process. I'm not an AI person myself. I'm trying, like many of you, to steer clear of it. My idea of AI, I'm using the expression actual intelligence instead of artificial. But that being said, I think your commissioners are trying to represent you and your staff will be doing a review of this fast-moving kind of issue. A couple of years ago, everybody was, you know, thinking data centers were terrific. As Mr. Walden said, it was a targeted industry for many communities, and we've learned since. And I think we are moving very quickly, not as fast as many of you would like, but for a government to make sure that we check all the boxes. The last point is when people say, well, put the application and put it in retroactively to the moratorium. I'm not a lawyer, but we have one sitting right here. Actually, Commissioner Capps is also a lawyer. We used to say none of us are lawyers, but now we can say Commissioner Capps is also a lawyer. Can you tell us about retroactively including the application? So if we retroactively include the application, the applicant would likely file a BERT-J and a vested rights claim against us. They have certain entitlements at this point, and I don't know how much they expended of their resources in order to create this application and apply, but from what I hear, it could be extensive for data centers, so the county would likely get sued by the developer if we do that. And that's why if you look across the state, almost all of the moratoriums are for the submission of applications and the acceptance and not just an outright – there are some outright bans, but most of them are submission of application like Palm Beach, Indian Towns proposing that, so it's for legal reasons. So that being said, a lot of people have heard us talk about lawsuits and, you know, like, don't be afraid of a lawsuit. I'm not afraid of a lawsuit. I'm afraid of us going into one knowing we would probably lose. You don't have to be a lawyer to realize that people have legal rights. So, yes, we are closing the door with one application that got in through the doorway prior, but back to my original comments, it will be scrutinized like crazy. I would tell you personally, especially if it's not supposed to come to us, I'm 100% opposed to that location. It's everything that it should not be, it happens right there. Schools, too small, too close to neighborhoods, all those things. So it will be scrutinized. But in the meantime, the moratorium is a great step for us as a community in the right direction, and I'm happy to make the motion to accept it. Commissioner Vargas. I attended, actually, last week with Commissioner Capps, the Advanced County Commissioner Training, and we talked about data centers and AI, right? So AI is fine, I guess, if you want to, you know, just get a couple of points, but I would still verify. It just kind of streamlines a bit. Where data centers come in, I don't think any commissioner or anybody here in this building would like a data center at their front door or within their site at all. And I can say that because they don't have to live where you have to live. Having said that, you know, there have been a lot of talk about these companies, and we're talking about the debt on and debt off of the books. We're talking about this data center. If, let's say, a hundred megawatt can power 75 to 100 homes, well, this is even greater than that. We're not told a whole lot about this. It's hurry up and let's get it done. I am not that type of person. If I could put a ban today, I would do it. I would absolutely do it. It reminds me of Digital Domain. I think somebody mentioned that in Liberty Medical, exactly, that was in St. Lucie County. That was 2010, 2012. This was going to be a nirvana, and this was a private company that was putting in digital animation and visual effects studio. Well, what do you know? They laid off everybody. And, yes, the city had to take back that building and had to also take on the economic liabilities. Now, they were granted incentives, tax, city, and state incentives, to move their original business there. It didn't work out. They went bankrupt. And it was sold to a megachurch later on in 2050 for $13 million, a lot less than what was already invested in there. I have the list of all the counties that either have moratoriums, bans, or approvals, a few of those. Some do not even allow them because it's not in their comp plan at all, so it's a non-issue there. I also have a couple of pictures from Loudoun County wherein a mega, mega data center abuts. These homes that look like they are in the above half a million dollars, not too out of the ordinary today, however, they're looking at this mammoth data center, even though there was a wall that's partitioning them, doesn't save them from that. The thing is that a lot of these companies, because of the debt that they're taking on to develop and also invest in chips. Now, the chips are going to be obsolete because it takes a while to build a data center. So what does that mean? That means they have to come back and they have to purchase more, putting them deeper in debt. What happens when it's decommissioned? There's a whole lot here, and this is such new territory. This is like the Wild West, and, you know, we have a wonderful county attorney here, but this is not in the forte. I mean, we're talking about attorneys out of New York and Washington. This is Martin County. You all spoke eloquently. I'm not going to, you know, go on and go over it again. You understand. But I was reading an article recently by Jamie Dimon. He's the CEO of JPMorgan Chase. You've heard of that bank? Maybe you've heard of him? Anybody? Okay, fine. So he hasn't singled out Florida specifically, but he says here, The developers need to concentrate their projects where there is adequate electricity, water, et cetera, the capacity, and active community backing rather than forcing these developments on resistant areas. It sounds like we're a resistant area. The other thing is that go where you're wanted. And I heard today, and if I could just use the words, a lot of electricity, a lot of emotion, a lot of passion in the air, as it should be, for those that come to speak to us because we are the representatives of you. We are. We don't work or shouldn't be working for any special interest. I don't. But anyway, he also said the thing is you need to be a good business partner. You are not going to win in a community whatsoever if you force your way in. Now, this is a man that does international business. So I want to say to you again, if I could put a ban today, I would. This is not Martin County. It's like your girlfriend says, how does this dress look on me? It's not you. And she'll still be your friend. Do you know what I mean? Or the guy that says, I like you, I like you. He said, no, you're not for me. No, delete. That's it. Go somewhere else. Others will gladly welcome data centers. But it's not for Martin County. So thank you for allowing me to be your representative. Mr. Capps. Thanks to all the folks who came out and spoke about this issue today. Your comments are very valuable to us. And believe me, you make an impression. We appreciate you. I will gladly support the moratorium. And I want to thank our county attorney once again. I called her on a Saturday morning one time to ask some question because some of my better ideas come to me on the weekend before the Tuesday meeting. And I asked Ms. Elder how things were going. She said, well, I will be spending my day crafting the moratorium. So I think she and her team worked really hard to put this together. I appreciate it very much. I like to learn about the meaning of terms just for general education purposes. And there were a couple of terms that were thrown out that I'd love to have a little more explanation on. One was targeted industry. Mr. Walden, if you could tell us a little bit more. I understand that term has a local meaning. And then I believe it has a state meaning, too. Like there's like a targeted industry list for the state of Florida that the legislature has put out as well. I believe there is. I'm not as familiar with the state list as what we have in our LDRs regarding targeted industries. This was something put in after the recession to help grow our tax base and to identify areas where we can perform better as a local economy. There's certain targeted industries like the marine industry. There's a pretty long list. Data centers is involved in that. There's L-STAR with this research type industries was also included. So they were basically created to help resolve issues with the recession. Right, right. You know, it's interesting that one of the approved uses in our platted industrial parks and one of the approved uses in limited and general industrial zoning is what was then called a data processing facility. It wasn't called a data center, but that kind of tells you that the terms were kind of different back then. And this was back when nobody was real concerned about it. Nobody really even knew what they were. And somehow that got put in there into our land development regulations. And, Ms. Elder, could we have a little better explanation of the term Burt J. Harris claim? Yeah, that's an interesting thing that was mentioned as well that I think we all need to be aware of. I think this was passed by the legislature in the 1990s under Governor Lawton Childs. I remember that. Right. So a Burt J. Harris claim is basically a property rights claim. It's a statutory claim. And over the years it has expanded in favor of developers. If a local government enacts something that takes away an existing right, you can sue under the Burt J. Harris Act. And you would get the damages are attorney's fees, and you also get the difference of the value before the enactment by the government and after. So they give you the difference in price. So if it was worth $4 million before and it's worth, you know, $2 million now, you would get the difference in that price. But for a data center, I'm guessing it would be a lot more money. So it's a statutory cause of action, basically a takings claim that developers use frequently, and especially in Martin County. So it's... You know, I often think of it in terms of when landowners buy land with expectations. The idea is that somebody buys a large tract of land, and they look in the codes, and they say, well, what do you know? I can have a data center. So they buy with that expectation, and the price, the land is priced based upon certain property rights. Perhaps the person has paid a fortune for the land because they thought, well, I can put a data center on it and make it, you know, tons and tons of money. So that, I just think it's important that we understand what that is and why it's that way. And then, before I end, I wanted to mention what I mentioned in the first reading. I think it's real good for us to have a little bit of context about how data centers could come to fruition in Martin County, what some of the general limitations are. Perhaps some people don't know this, but in Martin County, we have this urban services boundary. It's like a squiggly line right up through the middle of the county, the urban areas to the east and the ag areas to the west. What really makes Martin County different is our ag lands in the western part of the county, where the zoning for, since the comp plan came into being in 1982, was 20-acre zoning. If you want to build a house in most of western, unincorporated western Martin County, you've got to build it on 20 acres. Well, what's comforting is that data centers are not an approved use on agricultural land in Martin County. So, most of western Martin County really can't be a data center. And the only way that it could be one is if the commission formed what is called a freestanding urban services boundary. There are four of those in Martin County currently that have evolved over the years. And just real quickly, I'll let you know what they are. One of them is the Florida Gateway Project, where this one project has been, a data center application has come in for them. They're on Canter Highway. That's one of them. Another one is called 7Js. It's like heavy industrial out by the landfill. And from all accounts that we have, they do not intend to put data centers there. It's like asphalt plants and stuff like that. Heavy industrial is what their vision is for that. And then there are two freestanding urban services boundaries owned by Ashley Capital. One is called Martin Commerce Park, which is on the southeast corner of 714 and 95. And we know what they have in mind. I think they've even submitted a final site plan. It's like places for small businesses, basically. They're also on a large track on the other side of the highway on 714, west of I-95, called Sunrise Grove. They haven't broken ground on it yet. But from all accounts, their intentions are to build facilities for small businesses. Those are the four freestanding urban services boundaries. And the only way a data center could go into the western lands of Martin County would be if this board decided to form another freestanding urban services boundary in Martin County for industrial. And that's highly controversial. That's only happened four times in the whole history of Martin County. They would need comprehensive plan amendments and zoning changes. It would be a really big deal. And I imagine we would hear a lot from you good folks if that were ever attempted. So I think it's really interesting to think about the framework and where a data center potentially could go in Martin County and some of the things that would bring limitations and even prevent data centers in many of the areas of Martin County. Now, there's one other thought, and that would be, are there any pieces of land inside the primary urban services boundary that are large enough to accommodate a big data center? And I think the answer to that would probably be no, but that's something to keep an eye on. Are there parcels inside our boundary that perhaps would have the land use and zoning for a data center? But I think you're going to find that there aren't for many places that one could go. So anyway, hopefully that helps us to understand some of the basics. But I will definitely support the moratorium here today. Thanks, Commissioner Capps. I voted against every one of those freestanding urban service boundaries for obvious reasons. And also, Ms. Elder, I know that I would never vote to approve a data center. So I would be in favor of a ban. Tell me about the ramifications and the vulnerabilities of declaring a ban. So I think that if we declared a ban, it would be at the, we would investigate it over the one-year interim planning period and see if it was feasible to see what our options are. So that's something staff can definitely look into over the year moratorium. I wouldn't do it today. I would give us the year to really investigate it. And that could be an outcome if that's the board's desire, depending on the investigation. Commissioner Vargas. Okay, my question is, my question is, I hear you. My question is, do we have to wait 365 days if, you know, your department is investigating and maybe growth management also, maybe within 60 days we could come back. We could revisit that. So, you know, I don't like foot dragging when it's not necessary as to the detriment because, I'll tell you, government moves really quickly when it wants to have something done. I've seen this. So the one-year moratorium is to give us time if we need it. If staff does research and comes back quicker, we can do that. There's nothing stopping us. But it's just to give us the enough time and make sure that there's no applications submitted during that year. So we can certainly come back quicker if the research is done quicker and all the workshops. Growth management will be working on it mostly in conjunction with legal. Anything else, Commissioner Vargas? Yes, I do want to say, and I guess you got that message, I was none too happy about hearing about this application. I even requested the receipt, which I have here in my hand, and the date. Over $9,100, we should give them back and say, they don't want you here. It's okay. You go elsewhere. The thing is, I didn't bring anybody here. They came on their own. I just want you to know. The thing is that as commissioners, we have this information we're able to study as quickly as we can, plus meetings that we have. But I felt blindsided. We had a meeting the following day. Somebody could have picked up the phone, Mr. Donaldson, Ms. Elder, somebody from growth management, to say, hey, we got this in. Because I think it's important information, everything we have, we're treading into water that we should not be in. So we got the information late on the Monday before the 13th, so I didn't have the information in advance of the 13th. At the meeting on the 13th, I disclosed to everybody that I had just found out about it. So we, I'm sorry, Commissioner, we did alert the commission as soon as we could. I understand, but somebody took the money on this date is what I'm trying to say. So doesn't anybody talk to anybody here? By the way, we have this. This is a big deal. This is not somebody paying a parking fine. I have one request to speak form, and that's from Nicholas Brady. Is Mr. Brady here with us? And if you would like to address us, if you haven't already addressed us during public comment, then please fill out a request to speak form and get it to the bailiff. Thank you. All righty. Good morning, guys. Good morning to everybody that is joining me here today. I'm also on behalf of a lot of my buddies who weren't able to make it, and I believe we do all feel extremely strongly about what could possibly come to Martin County. And I am really glad to see the support that this moratorium is having. And I agree that we should go ahead and impose a ban on anything that has any sort of risk to our health, to our future. I have been here my entire 20 years, and I plan on staying here. I live a mile from the data center. I mean, come on. I went to Crystal Lake right there. I went to Southwark High School right there. There is no reason for this anywhere near us, and I feel like, I mean, why would we ever risk our health for something that's not really benefiting us? There's no reason for it, and there shouldn't even be a question. And I stand strongly to oppose this. I think a lot of us are sick of what AI does. I mean, I know there's some positive benefits, I'm sure, especially in the medicine field and all that, but so much of it is just unnecessary, and we don't need to pay the price for somebody generating some stupid videos online. So that's all there is to it, and I am glad, obviously, for everybody that's here and for the younger crowd here as well. Well, we should really just move forward with getting rid of this and preventing this from ever happening again, and it shouldn't even be a question, in my opinion. And I thank you all for what you're doing, and I'm really glad to see all this. So thank you. Thank you. I don't know if we have a second on the motion. I don't know that we do either. You want to second it? Second. Any further discussion? There's a motion and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? That motion passes 4-0 with Commissioner Heatherington. Thank you. Now we will return to the consent agenda. There are two consent agenda items to take up that have been pulled. Is there by chance time for just a question? Sure. I have a question about the targeted. Thank you. We were talking earlier about targeted industries that term. I just have a question. What benefits do targeted industries get? You mean like incentives, tax incentives? Yeah, because I kept hearing the term targeted industries, how AI is a part of these targeted industries that get certain benefits. I'm not familiar with what those benefits are. We don't give incentives in Martin County. Okay. The only benefit is the review time to try to get him through the review faster, but there are no financial incentives. Okay. Thank you. That answers my question. Thank you so much. You're doing good work. Let's take up consent 10, which is an amendment to retainer agreement dated May 24, 2016 for Paul Nicoletti. Who is taking up this item? I did. I'm just asking about who's the... Hello, commissioners? I can. Sure. We can do those right-of-way ones first. They're fast. I've been waiting afterwards. I see that the staff person on this is Jeff Doherty. Does anyone know who else is taking this up? John Colondo with code enforcement. Okay. Terrific. Then, Commissioner Vargas, would you like to ask questions about this? Yeah. There were some comments made this morning about Mr. Nicoletti, and I haven't investigated them to see the veracity of them. However, he's asking for a 25% increase in his rate pay from 200 to 250, if my math is correct here. We're Martin County. We're pulling back here. We're not increasing our expenses, or we shouldn't be increasing our expenses. As a matter of fact, we're in a rollback period, and I'm not trying to keep up with Palm Beach or Jupiter Island or any of the other counties, and if it's not enough for him, maybe he needs just to work with them or Ocean Breeze or Sewell's Point, wherever he wants to work, and we can find another magistrate. It's an honor to work with Martin County. So this is why I pulled for discussion. I think it's important that we as commissioners be very, very prudent and very frugal with the constituents' money. And by just tossing another amount of $50 over the $200, no, I don't agree with that at all. We have to take a stand. If somebody is not happy, and they're certainly free to work wherever they want, we can select another magistrate. Understood, Commissioner. Just to be on the record, we are the lowest in the area. Mr. Nicoletti has been with us for 10 years, and this is the second time that we've asked for an adjustment in his contract. Yeah, I understand. He's been here 10 years, but, you know, somebody else can take the position if he's not happy with it. Nobody promises anybody a job. Nobody promises anybody an increase in salary. And I don't see the depth of what you're saying. I mean, if he's not happy, then he can work elsewhere, and we can find somebody else who'd like to step into the position, maybe work for another couple of years with Martin County. Commissioner Campy. Thank you. Just so that the folks that are listening will have the benefit of what we have in our agenda packet, the City of Stewart pays $375 an hour. The Town of Jupiter Island pays $375 an hour. The Town of Jupiter pays $300 an hour. The Village of Indiantown pays $300 an hour. The Town of Lake Park pays $300 an hour. St. Lucie County does pay $200 an hour. City of Port St. Lucie pays $200. They only have two meetings per year? They have twice the meetings per month. Twice as many meetings. The last time this was increased, I believe, was in 2016? 2023, Commissioner. 2023. And before that, 2016? That was the original contract, yes. I mean, I'm all in favor of belt tightening, but the folks that come before the magistrate, we had an issue last week where a family was facing a $1.5 million code enforcement fine, and we were looking to have it be just 10% as our standard policy, which would have still left the applicant or the family in this particular case with $150,000 code enforcement fine. And a couple of years ago, those fees and those decisions on those fees were left to the board. And a couple of years ago, we've taken that responsibility and put that also onto the magistrate. I don't need, for most of us, I don't need to read Mr. Nicoletti's resume. I know there was a little bit of public comment this morning, but he is a pillar of our community. He is a legal scholar. He was the lawyer for the city of Stewart, which is where some of this controversy with the speakers this morning has come from. He was also their manager, and when the village of Indiantown originally incorporated, they hired him to come out and sort of make that transition. He is, in my opinion, above reproach. He's one of the smartest and legally attuned representation that we could have. The magistrate is a very serious position, $250, and the legal world is very reasonable, and I would absolutely make a motion to increase it to that requested amount. He is money well spent on behalf of all Martin County residents. And if we want to get into a tit-for-tat on how we can save the taxpayer money, I'm very capable and willing of doing that right now if you would like to. I concur, and I will second your motion. Commissioner Vargas. Yeah, I'm not going to get in tit-for-tat for anything. Good for you. Excuse me? Good for you. Okay. Watch your temper. I have no temper. I'm fine. We are not in a position to be just throwing money because one person says they're above reproach. I'm not so certain about that. There are other magistrates that are more than willing to come and work with Martin County. He's not the only magistrate. And others that definitely have sound judgment. I'm opposed to increasing, because next time it's $300. St. Lucie pays $200. What's wrong with that? I'm not going to compare us with the Joneses. I'm opposed to increasing this. There's a motion and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Opposed. That motion passes 4-1 with Commissioner Vargas dissenting. We'll now take up consent number 12, which is a request for an amendment of a preserved area management plan for the Cove Road development as required by an updated State of Florida wetland determination. I pulled this because I didn't see the amendment. Hi. Good morning, Commissioners. Sean McCarthy. For the record, Planner of Growth Management. The PAMF amendment is attached as an exhibit to the item. Everything that I saw was either from 2007 or 2015, and I didn't see anything in my packet that showed me an amendment to those PAMFs. If you go to page 140, this is the proposed amendment, and attached to this amendment is a conservation easement that was approved by the Water Management District that updated the wetland boundary back in 2015. So, Mr. McCarthy, what is the amendment? Is the PAMF getting smaller? Is it disappearing? Is it getting larger? Yeah, I can explain that. So, if you look, I had this pulled up on the GIS map. So, when the PAMF was originally approved in 2007, it was for this large wetland system here, which at the time in 2007 was one parcel. Since then, this parcel's been split into three smaller parcels. So, you've got two parcels over on the eastern side of this wetland system, and then the PAMF amendment that's before you now is for this western parcel here, which is 16.5 acres. And that, when the district revised the wetland determination, they revised the wetland boundary along the western side of this wetland here. So, in addition to the PAMF that was approved in 2007, we're now proposing a 16-acre addition to the PAMF to preserve this wetland that wasn't delineated in 2007? It was delineated back then. So, the PAMF amendment is just for this parcel to update this specific boundary along the western side. So, it's just for this parcel, the remainder of the preserved areas on the original PAMF on the eastern side, will those remain in place? Okay. That satisfies me. Is there a request or a motion to approve? So moved. Sorry. Second. There's a motion and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? That motion passes unanimously. Commissioners, is there a motion to approve the remainder of the consent agenda? Move approval. Move approval of the consent agenda. There's a motion and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? That motion passes unanimously. Commissioners, I see that there are some people here who would like to take up public hearing quasi-judicial number four. If we can do that quickly. Oh, not number four. I'm sorry. I was thinking about there was two right-of-way issues. One is in Palm City and one is on Kansas because they are quick. I see both of the applicants for those who have been here since this morning, probably not realizing the moratorium issue. One is the Pinkstons and the other is Operation 300. If we could take those, I think we can dispatch of them relatively quickly, if that's okay. Tell me the number. One is public hearing quasi-judicial number one and public hearing quasi-judicial number two, both with jet. Here she is. Thank you very much, Madam Chair. Since this is quasi-judicial, I have my resume and the resolution. We need an ex parte. Do the whole swearing. She's getting there. Oh, let's see. This is a quasi-judicial public hearing. Any ex parte disclosures? Commissioner Vargas. If I have any, the report's been filed. Commissioner Capps. If I have any, they have been filed. I don't have any and that's been filed. Commissioner Campy. I have some and that's been filed. And Commissioner Hetherington. I don't have any and that's been filed. And have you presented a copy of your materials to the clerk? Yes. Anyone who's going to be providing sworn testimony, please stand up, raise your right hand, and be sworn in. Do you swear or affirm the evidence you're about to give will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? So help you, God. Please proceed. Good afternoon, Commissioners. Jett Martell, Acton County Surveyor, for the record. Today we have a request from Christopher and Jordan Pinkston for the board to consider a petition to abandon a six-foot-wide platted utility easement located in Margolo Estates, Palm City, and further described in the attached petition for abandonment. No abandonment of right-of-way or other fee-simple ownership is being requested under this petition. By petition to abandon, Christopher and Jordan Pinkston request that the board consider the abandonment of a utility easement located on lot 10, Margolo Estates, as recorded in Platte Book 7, page 37, Public Records of Martin County, Florida. The petitioner, owners of lot 10, are seeking this abandonment since there is no existing or intended use for the easement. The petition only involves the utility easement. No property owner will be deprived of legal access to adjoining property. The petitioner is the owner of the property on which the easement is located, including the fee-simple interest in the land underlying the easement. As recorded in Official Records Book 2810, page 2065, Public Records of Martin County, Florida. The property abutting the easement to the north and the east is Florida Department of Transportation right-of-way. The petition is limited in scope to the abandonment of the easement. No abandonment of right-of-way or other fee-simple ownership is being requested under this petition. This petition and the requested abandonment will have no impact on the public for use and will not affect the public's right of access to navigable water as the petition only involves a utility easement. No property owner shall be deprived of legal access to their property as a result of this utility easement being abandoned. First section 139.2 of the Martin County Code of Ordinances requires a privilege fee for the abandonment and vacation of county property and roads. However, the board may waive the privilege fee required upon a showing of good cause. The petitioner has requested that the privilege fee be waived as it is not receiving any additional land in conjunction with the proposed abandonment. Staff's recommendation, one, move that the board receive and file the agenda item summary and all of its attachments for the record as Exhibit 1. Two, move that the board agree to waive the privilege fee finding good cause shown by the petitioner since the abandonment involves only a utility easement. Three, move that the board adopt the resolution for the abandonment of the utility easement with the following conditions, a publication one time within 30 days of a notice of adoption of this resolution in a newspaper of general circulation published in Martin County, Florida, alternative recommendations to direct staff accordingly. And with that, I'd be happy to answer any questions. Thank you. Questions. What's the privilege fee? They did not get an appraisal since it's just a utility easement and there's no free, simple land. Why didn't we get one? There's no value. Commissioners, typically a privilege fee is used when the adjacent, you're adding to their property. In other words, when we abandon a right-of-way and half the right-of-way goes to the property and effectively expanding the area of the property. Since this was an easement on top of their own property, we're just abandoning the easement, a privilege fee was not contemplated because it was not adding any additional fee ownership of the individual's property. Commissioner Kapps. That pretty well clears up what I was saying. You know, you always have to be concerned about precedent on things. And, you know, we've had a long history, I believe, of requiring a privilege fee whenever someone gets to add on to the size of their property with these abandonments. But since this one isn't like that, where they're adding on to their property with the abandonment, that makes it distinguishable from many of the other ones that come before the board. So I'm fine with things. Commissioner Kappi. I don't know if we're hearing from the applicant or not. If not, you could come forward. It's up to you, Madam Chair. Okay. It's a public hearing. Thank you, everybody. Chris Pinkston, property owner. I mean, great discussion, actually, that you guys are having right now about this privilege fee. I mean, it's in the application. We met with staff, you know, as we went through this process trying to get this easement abandonment, questioning the application that we filled out and the process that we went through. You know, staff's response was that this is what was done in the past. This is all we have to work with. You know, and staff was just working within the constraints of, you know, the applications that they have. You know, this is not a right-of-way. This is an easement. So, you know, we're working with an application that the county has and, you know, trying to tailor it to what we're going through right now. So I guess I appreciate staff finding what the county does have for us to work through. I mean, I would recommend that, you know, the county put something in place for this process, you know, because platted easements exist all over the place and they've been abandoned once in the past. Now they're, you know, being asked to be abandoned again. So maybe it makes sense. You know, we've done our homework looking at some of the other jurisdictions around our area and there is platted easement abandonments. And one thing that I was going to add that's not probably listed was the fee that we did pay to get this platted easement abandoned. It was a substantial fee, $3,200 or something of that nature, you know, and we have an agenda item going right behind us. You know, most of the time I'm in the business, most of the time these right-of-way abandonments are done. It's for commercial purposes. Very rarely does, you know, a civilian person like myself abandon right-of-ways. It's a substantial process to abandon a right-of-way. I mean, this is a platted easement in my backyard. You know, we paid a substantial fee. We're a small family. You know, we carved into probably some of our vacation fund this year to get this through just because, you know, staff couldn't make the adjustment to the fee. You know, it had to come to you. So I asked here today, in addition to whatever you guys may decide, is if there's any possible way that we could get, you know, that fee adjusted to be more applicable. You know, if you need references, my wife has done her research. We have references to what some of the costs are for some of the other counties around us for platted easement abandonment. So that's just a little bit of extra information for you guys. Thank you. I would make a motion to accept staff's recommendation, eliminating, in this particular case, the privilege fee. And the $3,100 was the application fee, or is that the fee that you're discussing? No, the $3,200 was the application fee. Because it is a quasi-judicial, we follow the same fee schedule as we would for right-of-way abandonment. I think that my motion will stand. But as a commentary, I believe that in this particular case, you know, a family coming forward for this, I think if there was an area of our process that was missing, now that we have addressed it to our staff and to Ms. Elder, that even though we won't be able to do it for the Pinkstons, that they will be the family that pushed it forward for those that come after them. So I would request that staff look into creating a specific category that would have the appropriate fee attached to whatever staff's time was. And so that it's not like, hey, we're trying to make it this because we didn't have a category. Make a category. Thank you. I'll second it. Let me understand the motion. I understood the first part of it. But the second part of it is staff's recommendation. Just a recommendation to staff to create a category so that they don't have to do this as an abandonment of an easement. And they had to bring it in as an abandonment of a right-of-way because we don't have a classification for an abandonment of an easement. And we should. Is that part of your motion or just commentary? I mean, if it needs to be part of my motion to make it happen, I will do that. I'm not going to support the motion in that case because it still requires staff review. There is a cost associated with this. Let me reiterate. I'm not saying it should be free. I'm saying it should be. Let's do two separate motions. The first one is to prove what staff's recommendation was. Second. There's a motion and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? That motion passes unanimously. My next motion is that staff create a category with all appropriate fees that the staff believes is in there. It took much longer. I've been dealing with this family for probably the entire year. It took much longer because there was no category for an abandonment of a easement, not for free, with the appropriate fees, but they had to come in as an abandonment of a right-of-way, but that's not what they were doing. That's all. With the appropriate fees, we're just missing a category that other municipalities obviously have. Is there a second? I just wanted to clarify the motion. So you're proposing a motion to bring back an agenda item to? Does it need to be an agenda item to create a new line? Yeah. Okay. Then I'm making a motion to do that. I think we could do it with our next fee adjustment. If there isn't immediate haste, we could do it with when we revise our fees this next year at that time. Otherwise, we'll bring in a separate item sooner. Okay. Commissioner Vargas. Okay. So what I'm trying to understand, because it's a little convoluted there, was being presented. So we're going to set a separate category then for residential, if it's right-of-way or easement. Is that what I'm understanding here? It's just a separate category for easements. We don't have an ability to just abandon an easement. So engineering went under our process for abandoning right-of-way. So it would be its own category to abandon an easement, because when there's an easement on property, the landowner owns the fee, the property underneath. So it's just to create a new category for everybody. And then it would be the appropriate fees that would pertain to that. We're not discounting fees. Correct. There's a motion and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Opposed? Motion fails, with Commissioners Vargas, Capps, and Hurd dissenting. Thanks. Let's see. Can we quickly move on to public hearing quasi-judicial number two, which is a request for abandonment of a portion of declared 40-foot right-of-way of Southwest Kansas Avenue, as declared by declaration of the county commissioners of Palm Beach County from 1923. This is quasi-judicial. Any ex parte disclosures, Commissioner Vargas? I have none. That report's been filed. And Commissioner Capps? If I have any, they have been filed. I don't have any, and they've been filed. Commissioner Campy? I have some, and that's been filed. And Commissioner Hetherington? If I have any, they've been filed. And has staff conveyed all pertinent materials to the clerk? Yes. Anyone who's going to be providing sworn testimony, please stand up, raise your right hand, and be sworn in. If you swear or affirm the evidence you're about to give will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God. Ms. Martell. Good afternoon again, commissioners. Jett Martell, acting county surveyor for the record. Today we have a request from Operation 300 Incorporated for the board to consider the abandonment of a portion of declared right-of-way. Donna, could we bring up the location map? Thank you. Operation 300 respectfully requests that the board consider the abandonment of approximately 2,720 square feet of unopened declared right-of-way, as shown on Exhibit A, lying within Section 8, Township 39 South, Range 41 East, Platte of Tropical Fruit Farms, Platte Book 3, Page 6, Public Records of Palm Beach, now Martin County, Florida. The parcels abutting the subject right-of-way are owned by DRN Realty Corp. To the west in Camp Valor, LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Operation 300 Incorporated, a Florida not-for-profit corporation to the east. Upon approval, the west half of the subject right-of-way will be deeded to DNR Realty Group to be incorporated into the abutting parcel to the west, and the east half of the subject right-of-way will be deeded to Camp Valor, LLC, to be incorporated onto the abutting parcel to the east, and will be privately owned and maintained in perpetuity. Staff's recommendation, one, move that the board receive and file the agenda item summary and all of its attachment for the record as Exhibit 1. Two, move that the board adopt the resolution abandoning a portion of unopened declared right-of-way lying within Platte Book – Platte of Tropical Fruit Farms, as described in Exhibit A, subject with the following conditions. A, proper publication of a notice of adoption of this resolution, and B, receipt by Martin County of the privilege fee in the amount of $15,300 for the declared right-of-way and $11,500 for the right-of-way easement. And three, move that the board authorize the chair to execute all documents necessary to complete the transaction. Alternative recommendation, direct staff accordingly. And with that, I'd be happy to answer any questions. Thank you. Questions? What's the purpose of the abandonment? Operation 300 has requested the abandonment so that they can fence the property off and utilize it with part of their operation. The High Point subdivision has come in on the south end of it. So we have also retained a utility easement over this property for any future utility expansions that might need to work their way and get back out to Pratt-Whitney Road. And who did the appraisal? The applicant provided one. So it looks like it's somewhere around $30,000 per acre? I haven't done the math in my head, no. I don't know where in Martin County, except in agricultural lands, you can buy an acre of land for $30,000 an acre. I've never heard of that. I wonder why we accepted this appraisal. Do we do our own? No, we do not do our own. Do we just accept any appraisal that's given us when we're requested to abandon our property? They're providing an appraisal from a certified property appraiser. Yes, we typically accept that. But must we? Keep in mind, Commissioners, that a right-of-way is going to be valued differently than a developable property for homes. It isn't going to be a right-of-way for them. It's going to be a developable property that they're going to fence and use. But the appraisal is on the road frontage. The road, it's appraised as the road, as I understand it, when you appraise the right-of-way. And that is sort of typical, what we see in these right-of-way appraisals. But we're choosing to abandon that right-of-way so it no longer is right-of-way. It becomes private property that can be developable. That's correct. I understand that. I hear you. Commissioner Canby. Thank you. Can you put up the site map again, please? I understand the concept of different values on different pieces of property. This is dead-ended. This is sandwiched in between the property that is Camp Valor, which I hope we'll have an opportunity to hear from the Vaughns, or the Baldwins about what Camp Valor is. It's next to, on the other side, on the west side, the back corner of Florida Club, which I understand had no issue with the abandonment. To the south, it is, if this picture doesn't allow you to see it, it's not like it can ever be the road. It's a whole purchased neighborhood there. They've left, as Mr. Grzelka said, they've left the ability for the staff to come in for utility easements, which would be the only potential value. We have these little pocketed parcels of land, if you will, all over the county that the county has owned, whether it was unopened right-of-ways or utility acreage or parcels that the county kept at some point thinking that maybe they'd have to do drainage. So to compare it to something that this could be purchased and utilized, I think that if you have an opportunity to hear from Mr. Vaughn about what the activity they're doing on this property, I think we, hopefully, we would be happy to participate. They're not asking for it for free, but to put a weird kind of value on something that, other than the fact that it is actually land tucked in and no other way to be used except for the folks that are right here. I think we need to hear from the applicant. Good afternoon, Commissioners. Thank you so much for taking your time to hear from us sooner than later. First, to address the question that we have as to the specific amount, we are required as the applicant to give you guys, or the county, an appraisal. That is a part of the checklist. That is what we have to do. Additionally, the particular part of the code that allows for the privilege fee, which is specifically documented in the application as well, allows for a privilege fee on the interest in the piece of property, not on the property itself. So I know it seems a bit like splitting hairs, but the interest is what the county is abandoning. You're abandoning the ability to use that as a right-of-way, and you're abandoning the ability to own it. This is a road that became a road in 1923. It goes nowhere. It will not be, as far as anybody can tell, is going to be connected up to Bridge Road, and it certainly isn't now. So because of that, it is very much valued differently. Now, I would submit that it is not the county's job to be appraisers. I would submit that it is the county's job to look at the application based off of the code and make a decision, which is why you all are here. Now, we do have a privilege fee waiver request as a part of this abandonment. You have the discretion to waive it. You do not need to, but you do have that discretion under your own code, specifically 139.2D, if I'm not mistaken. However, I would love to go into the rest of the presentation if there are no other questions that I can answer right now. I don't see any other questions. Thank you. I'm used to getting a clicker. Are we not using the clicker? Okay. Thank you. Hi. My name is Audra Creech. I am a land use and zoning attorney here in Stewart, Florida for McCarthy Summers. I have the great pleasure today to represent Operation 300 and their wholly owned subsidiary, Camp Valor LLC, who, of course, Camp Valor is the one that owns the property at issue here. They do wonderful work as far as providing an outdoor adventure camp for those individuals, especially children that have lost family members, fathers, mothers in the line of duty, whether it is military or law enforcement. Not only do they provide those services for the children involved, but they provide a lot of services that are specific to fathers that have lost loved ones, mothers that have lost loved ones, you know, wives, spouses. It is really an important endeavor and has been working in Martin County for years at this point. And they were very excited to get this piece of property, I believe within Commissioner Hurd's district, inside of the High Point PUD. So, without further ado, assuming this works, okay, it's not going to. Can I please tell you when to click? So, we are here as to a part of Southwest Kansas Avenue right-of-way. As I stated, it was created initially as a Palm Beach County open road. Now, just to clarify, it was originally stated by staff that it was not an open road. It was as of the time that it was created on September 5th, 2023. That particular decision by the Palm Beach County Commission of the time is in your packet. So, we are asking that not only the right-of-way be released and abandoned, but the actual easement itself that allows open access over that piece of property. It is 40 feet wide. Please go ahead and click. As we talked about, some of this is going to be somewhat repetitive, but Camp Valor LLC is located at 9504 Southwest Kansas Avenue. And before I get too far along, this is a quasi-judicial hearing. And therefore, not only have my witnesses been sworn in, but here is my resume. And publication has already been completed as required by state statute by the Public Works Department of Martin County. So, we're looking at the property at 9504 Southwest Kansas Avenue. As discussed a little, we are within a PUD zoning, the High Point PUD specifically, and land use estate density, one unit per acre. Please, next slide. The part that we are asking to be abandoned is the part kind of in a somewhat low-tech way that is exemplified here. It is a minor collector, and it is just the very tip of it that is unpaved. There are also surveys as a part of the application that we will go over now. So, my mic went off. Can you all hear me? Yes. Okay, perfect. Thank you. So, we're only asking for that portion to be abandoned. The reason for this abandonment is, while it may be fenced in the future, while it may be used in the future, the real reason is that because it was an open road and because it was owned by the county, anybody could run down that road at any time of night, any time of day, with no problems. No law enforcement could stop it. Nothing could be done. This is a camp of children, and there's no way to secure that road. And so, what was happening, and Florida Club can attest to this as well, and, you know, the new owners can also attest to this. They have had multiple trespassers running into the golf course and running into Camp Valor at night with no ability to stop it because it's an open road, and they would like to be able to stop it and secure that road, whether it's by a gate or a gatehouse or whatever is the best way to secure it. That is the main issue here, security and ability to cut that particular issue off. You'll notice, and we'll get a little further along in the process, and I'll be a bit more detailed about it, but you'll notice that there's already an access to the current property, Camp Valor, before that road turns into the part that we're abandoning. So, we're not getting, we're not trying to decrease access for any property owner along this right-of-way. Go ahead. That's more information about the road. Right now, the county is maintaining the blue part, but the maintenance of the rest of it is not being maintained by the county. Go ahead. Keep going. All right. Now we see the site plan. As you can tell, the access is most definitely before that cutoff. Please keep going. Here is the actual sketch and legal of the right-of-way itself. You'll notice that there's a 50-foot easement for highway purposes on that bottom left-hand corner that also shows an already provided 30-foot, and then it gets to the 40-foot that we're actually asking to be released today, the 40-foot that is at the end of the paved road. You'll notice on the mid-to-bottom right end of the paved road, there's no road status as to open and unopened, and then it becomes the open road. So, you'll notice that there's actually a disconnect already. There's actually, Palm Beach County, when they did the opening in 1923, created a little bit of a gap, and that gap's still there according to the surveyor. So, this is not breaking a road that's already there. It's already broken, and it's not going to be used for anything useful, and now it's just a liability. Next, please. Once again, right-of-way survey, just a little bit more in-depth. Keep going. Keep going. All right, relevant state statutes. You all are absolutely allowed, under Florida Statute 336.09, to vacate, abandon, discontinue, and close any existing public or private street, alleyway, road, highway, or other place used for travel or any portion thereof, other than a state or federal highway. Obviously, this is not a state or federal highway. And to renounce and disclaim any right of the county and the public in and to any land in connection therewith. Next slide, please. So, Public Works has made a recommendation of approval for the abandonment of this subject right-of-way. Now, pursuant to statute, in fact, the same chapter that we just came from, 336, when a road is abandoned, half goes to just by operation of law, by the abandonment. Half of the right-of-way gets provided to one side, one property owner, and the other half goes to the other. That's operation of law. Well, that's just what happens, okay? There was a pre-application meeting on this project. We did meet with staff, as required, by the application itself. As I said, publication has occurred. All required landowners and utilities, as of the date of application, have provided no objection letters. The subject right-of-way does not provide access to navigable waters, so we don't have to worry about Florida Section 155.3 because there's no water. No property owner shall be deprived of legal access to his property as a result of the subject right-of-way. They both have access. Florida Club has their access, you know, from, I believe, Canter and some other areas. And then, of course, we have our access further to the north from this abandonment. Next. Relevant Martin County LDR. Privilege fee. So, we do have a request for a privilege fee waiver as a part of this request because we are representing a 501c3. They have to be very careful with their dollars and would prefer their dollars go to the actual mission versus just reimbursing the county for something the county got from Palm Beach County back in 1923. Or, at least, that was created in 1923. So, as you can see, 139.2D, the board may waive the privilege fee required pursuant to paragraph A of this section upon a showing of good cause. I can, of course, I have witnesses here today that can provide further information. However, the good cause is simply this. Right now, there is no way to enforce travel along that road. That's it. There's no way to stop people from going down that road and getting access to all of the vegetation and all the fun things that dirt bikers and four-wheelers and various other all-terrain vehicles love to do. There's no way to stop it right now. We really can't call law enforcement because they have the right to be on that road. And they can simply go back on the road and say, hey, I was here the whole time. It has happened. It is a security risk. There are children involved. And all we wish to do is to stop that travel. There has already been an FP&L easement and an AT&T easement put on this 40-foot right-of-way specifically to allow that if, for whatever reason, FP&L needs to get to Bridge Road, they can. Additionally, with Martin County, there has already been a granting of an easement for Martin County to do water or sewer or whatever they need to do as far as utilities down that right-of-way. So abandoning will not take that away. Next slide, please. So that is the good cause that we are asking for, and we are requesting the privilege fee be waived and that this road be abandoned. And just one last thing, everything that matters takes a team. I have my predecessor, Kristen Spake, in the audience. I invited her here today because we did this together. She started it. I'm here to finish it. I hope you will let me do that. Thank you. Any questions, comments? Thank you for that. I would love to have the board have an opportunity to hear from Mr. Vaughan. Thank you, Madam Chair. I'm sorry this is taking so long. We've been working on this a while. Do you know the property? Do you know it? Ms. Hurd, you've not been there? It's not going to be developed. It's underwater today. There's a wetland on one side on the Florida Club side. The other side won't be developed. Y'all have controlled what we can develop and what we can't. It's simply a corridor between two properties. We have maintained it ever since we've been there. We still maintain it. We maintain it even as the county uses it to get to their property. You know how it lays. Where y'all's plan is, back around the back, they come down that right of way to get down the FPL easement to maintain and mow their property back there. I work well with the county out there. I have told them they will still be able to use our property, if it becomes our property, to get to theirs, even though they haven't access through the plan up there. And yes, your property is being destroyed right now as we speak because everybody knows this. As she said, it's used by everyone when it really gets muddy. That's when people like to use it because that's when your wetlands are full water and people come in at night and they come down the right of way. They go down the FPL easement. High Point would like to see it closed off. Florida Club would like to see it closed off. All the neighbors down the road would like to see it closed off because they come down there in their machines. County deputies have talked to me about getting back in there at night and being able to get back to protect the county's property. There has been twice when people have been apprehended by the Martin County Sheriff in that area, once on our property, once they weren't able to make it on our property through the fence. But the county, they made it on our property one time and the county actually had to cut our chain link fence. The Sheriff's Department did to get in and capture them on our property. All we've asked for today is what you can do. You are the government. You know what you can do. You know who we are. And we just want to be able to keep people off of it. And that is also the desire of everybody up and down that road. Yes, sir. Mr. Vaughn, you said we know who you are. Some people don't. Can you give us the mission of your organization? Yeah, Operation 300. We were founded in November of 2012. We had our first camp in April 2013. We bring in little boys and girls who've lost their dads or their moms in the military at no cost to them. The widows come in and we put them up in a nice hotel and they do things with the other widows while the kids do things in Martin County. We have a lot of people in Martin County, the Sailing Center, and various others who take the kids and do things with them on the weekend that they would have done with their dads if they were still alive. And we do those camps six times a year. We have Gold Star Father Expeditions where we bring in men from all over the country and we take them. They do things, gator hunt, pig hunt, do things with old men like me that old men like to get together and do, you know, clay shoot. And we also have camps for fallen law enforcement officers. We're one of the very few organizations in the United States that takes care of fallen law enforcement officers. And we have volunteers, countless volunteers from Martin County, but from the three or four counties around, Palm Beach County, Okeechobee, and St. Lucie County who work with us. And that's basically who we are. Thank you. I've heard that 90% of the money that's raised for the organization goes directly back into the organization for services. You've heard that correctly. That's public. And only 10% is administrative. I know we're really thinking about two different pieces of this decision. The first one being giving you the opportunity to have the right of way. And then the second is for the waiver request, either for the fee or for the easement that had been appraised. I think with my colleagues, we might need to potentially separate that out and do it in two votes. I don't want one to fail for the other. But there is another thing that was said incorrectly. And Ms. Elder, correct me, Michael, correct me, because we've talked about this before. It was stated that the Florida Club will be getting the West Half. And when this conversation was started, I got a letter from Ms. Karen Barnes, the general manager of Florida Club. They have no interest in the West Half because they have to keep it up and it's mostly wet. Now, what has happened is it has changed hands because this has drug out so long. And so we have had discussion, but not, I'm sorry, I'm getting a phone call and it's coming through my hearing aid. I have no way to control that. But we will, we have had discussion with them, but not back with the general manager. We will have to go back there and have that discussion again, you know, to see that we're still where we were and correct that part. And I would like to say one other thing. And I don't want this to be taken the wrong way, but when things are said publicly that are not true, it can be damaging for what's taking place. And to compare that right of way, which is basically waste land to anyone except Operation 300 as agricultural land and cropland that we could do something great with. I'm sorry that happened. I don't have anything else to say. Thank you, sir. Yes. Commissioner Hetherington. I would like to add on to that, Billy, the first time I ever stepped foot on that property, the first time I ever stepped foot on that property, it was a jungle of nothing but exotics. And you, I know you and your family almost went through and hand cleared that particular, not only your property, but also the invasives that were feeding into Martin County properties. I want to say what a good steward of the land that you have been. I am so pleased that you were able, you and Operation 300, and your mission was able to take that property and do something for the benefit of our community, not just our community, but all Gold Star families throughout the nation. I'm very proud of what you have accomplished. Environmentally, that property is much better today than it ever was because of your efforts. And I will gladly support both the waiver as well as the right-of-way. Thank you. So if we need to separate it out, I'm happy to do so. I'd make a motion to accept staff's recommendation to give, what's the proper wording here, to abandon the right-of-way. I will second it. Mr. Erler, would you like to speak on this item? Please come forward. Gary Erler, Port Salerno. This is one of those 501Cs that I'm personally involved in. You talk about a return on investment. This is it. Let these people protect their place. Thank you. Thank you. There's a motion and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? That motion passes unanimously. Thank you. I'd make a motion that, in this particular case, we do a waiver of the fee and the easement fee, simply because when we factor into our budget, we have other grants and aides that we have assisted, other not-for-profits, 501c3s in Martin County, that do terrific work to support residents. I think in this particular case, this falls in that same vein. It's not necessarily giving away taxpayers' money. I think it gives us an opportunity to support an organization that we should be, sadly, that it even has to exist. I mean, their family took their own loss with their son and brother, Aaron Vaughn, a Navy SEAL, who was shot down with 29 others, so the family has paid an unbelievable cost, but they're also supporting other Gold Star families and first, you know, first responder, law enforcement families. I think this is a great opportunity for us to show our compassion as a local government to waive those fees. Commissioner Hetherington. I am seconding, but for so much as you made great comments about compassion, but I'm seconding it because I thought your attorney did a great job outlining our LDRs or the policy, our own policy, 139.2D, that allows for this kind of decision based on good cause, and you outlined good cause, and that is safety, security, and the environmental degradation that's occurring in that area. So I will second it based on that. Any further discussion? There's a motion and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Opposed? Opposed? That motion fails with Commissioners Vargas, Heard, and Capps dissenting. Can I make one comment? I oppose the waiver of the fee because of concerns with precedent. It seems to me that you could have a rule that calls for privilege fees for people to get right-of-ways, and everyone could have a good and reasonable and rational excuse for claiming that they shouldn't have to pay for the land. I mean, we could have gotten fussy about whether you're paying enough for the land and challenged the appraisal and all that. I didn't want to go that far with it. But if we're going to have any kind of consistency on the issue, that was my concern about it. If there was ever a time when I would get real close to backing off of that concern, it would be in this particular case because of the wonderful work that these folks do. But that was a close one for me, but I feel like I did the right thing. Okay. Let's take up, before we go on our lunch break, unfortunately, let's take up public hearing quasi-judicial number four, which is a public hearing to consider adoption of an amendment to the Martin County Zoning Atlas to change the zoning classification for Stewart Yacht Corporation. Mr. Aguilar. So do we have to do the formality? It's quasi-judicial. This is quasi-judicial. Any ex parte disclosures? Commissioner Vargas. I have none, and that report has been filed. Commissioner Capps. If I have any, they have been filed. If I have any, they've been filed. Commissioner Campy. I have none, and that's been filed. And Commissioner Hetherington. If any, they've been filed. Anyone who's going to be, well, our staff isn't here yet, so let me hold off on that. I'm not sure staff's coming. I think Mr. Waters is going to ask for a continuance. Okay. So Tyson Waters. The process was withdrawn. Yeah, I thought that too. No. I didn't get that. I got that note. Please proceed. Go on. Tyson Waters on behalf of the applicant from the law firm of Fox McCluskey. Yes, we are requesting a continuance to a date certain. We learned some, there were some questions raised immediately before the LPA and at the LPA, so we'd like the opportunity to explore those. Nothing affects the actual application, but some of the maps we drew, we'd like to kind of evaluate to make sure they accurately reflect the ownership interest. But again, the legal description and the heart of it were accurate. But anyways, we'd like a little bit more time to address that. So we are looking to continue this item to a date certain. That date would be November 10th at 9 a.m., or as soon thereafter as can be heard, to be held in these commission chambers, or this administrative building. Is that a motion? I'll move continuing it to November 10th. Second. There's a motion and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? That motion passes unanimously. Thank you. Thank you. So we will break for lunch, and we have a 1.30 preset. We will be back at 2 for our 1.30 preset. And wastewater rates resolution to reestablish and update an annual rate indexing and an update to our capital facility charges schedule. Mr. Amerson. Thank you, Commissioner. Welcome. It's good to be here today with you. We haven't been here in a while on a rate adjustment, and so this is a big day for us in utilities. I did want to start off and go through a couple of pieces of the agenda item. And as you know, Martin County's water and wastewater system is established as an enterprise fund, and that means it operates in a manner similar to a business entity. As such, the system must have minimum revenues equal to the cost of services provided. So we must establish rates sufficient to cover these costs, and that includes operating, maintaining, and financing improvements of the system. This agenda will address three categories of charges. That will be, A, user rates, fees and charges, special service charges, and then capital facility charges. First of all, Martin County has historically used a 10-year automatic price index rate adjustment as a transparent method of adjusting rates to a system and to provide customers with a predictable long-term plan of their utility bills. The most recent rate resolution was approved in 2016, and that sunsetted on June 1 of 2025. No price index for the current fiscal year has been implemented. Rate increases were based on annual indexing factors published by the Public Service Commission. One of the issues with the Public Service Commission index was that over the years, it did not keep up with the inflationary trends that we've experienced in the utility business. Therefore, renewal rates resolution of 2026 includes the Water and Sewerage CPI index for future rate increases. So we're going from the Public Service Commission to the Water and Sewerage Maintenance indexing, and those are published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Our rate consultant, Raftelis, is here. I have Mr. Robert Ory. We also have Matt Ory and Terry Bovary with Raftelis. They've been a county's financial rate and net analyst for 32 years, a long time, so they know us well. I don't want to get into much further detail, but the three categories are the users, rates, fees, and charges. Also, we're going to address special charges and then also the capital facility charges. So without further ado or delay, I'll allow Rob to take over now and make his presentation on the rate adjustments, and then that will be followed by Mr. Bovary on the capital facility charges. So I hit this right here? Yeah. Donna, I may need your help to the presentation. There we go. I'm technically challenged. Again, good afternoon. For the record, my name is Robert Ory. I'm a senior principal with Raftelis, and it's a pleasure to be here with you. As Sam said, I've been working with the county for a long, long time, so it's an honor for me to be here today to talk to you about your rates. What I'd like to do – oops, went the wrong way. Is this right? Well, the next, you know, 15 minutes or so, just kind of talk a bit about some rate objectives, the history of what rates you've adopted over time, talk about some significant issues that are, you know, facing utilities, including the county's utility system, the proposed indexing rate plan, and then show what the effects of the rate increases would be on your typical residential customer, kind of get a feel what those effects would be. The objectives of the utility, obviously we want to promote the long-term sustainability of the utility system and the rates for service, and that means having rates that fully recover the cost of service but are competitive to your customers and to the area. We don't want rates too high. We don't want rates too low. We want rates that meet your overall needs. That promotes sustainability, predictability, and affordability. Obviously, you want to provide quality service. That's, you know, with your regional facilities. You've been promoting this for many years, as long as I've worked with you, with your sewer and water extension programs. You know, having a regional service now promotes economies of scale but also provides the best service to your customers and meeting increased regulations over time. That's very, very critical. We want to maintain your AA plus credit rating. That's a, that's a, if you think about it, that's a reflection on you, on how you stand fiscally with your utility, and you are AA plus. So, but there's, there's some issues with that. One is we need to comply with what's called bond or rate covenants. That could include debt service coverage, your ability to pay debt on the system. There are certain requirements called the flow of funds, where you deposit monies each year and how you use those funds. And, and obviously, they look at liquidity and average reserves, and we want to maintain that credit worthiness. Since 2009, the only rate adjustments that the, the, the utility has implemented and the board has enacted deals with price index adjustments. You've faithfully and consistently have raised rates through the indexing process since then. It's been over 20 years, which has surprised me when I looked at this. There's been no increases above the index. So if an index was 2%, you charge, you raise the rates 2%, you didn't add 3%, 2% on top of that, which I call like a fixed rate adjustment. It's always been through the price index. And you utilize the Florida Public Service Commission index as published, which is a very low index, actually. Your current index is capped at 2.5% annually and has a floor of 0%. And the floor, you say, well, gosh, that's kind of obvious, should be zero. We've had negative inflation a couple times, and it's kind of hard to lower rates when we know we have inflation on utilities. Utilities act a lot different than the consumer in terms of inflation. A lot of costs associated with labor, power, chemicals, sludge removal, things of that nature. The index, inflation, or the cost increase is generally higher. The last index, as Sam mentioned, was adopted in 2016. That index provision has sunsetted. And the reason what the board did back then is they wanted, the board then, wanted to look at the index every 10 years or so, not go on to perpetuity. Like some utilities have done that. And so every 10 years or so, we've come back and discussed it, the index and whatnot. There was no index made for the June 1, 2026. The existing rate resolution sunsetted at 25. So we have not had an index for this fiscal year right now. Kind of give you a feel what the index has looked like for the last 16 years or so. So it's averaged about 1.85%, as you can see in this chart here. But what's really important, if you look at the last three years, it's capped at 2.5%. That was the ceiling, again, on the index in the current resolution that, again, just sunsetted. By way of example, the average PFC index for that time was almost 5%. So if you think about it, we've only indexed half the inflation rate during that time. We all know inflation has been high, very high. But, you know, it just shows you there's a gap there. Plus, we didn't do the June 1, 2026 index. So that's roughly compounded over 10% of difference when you compare the index that was billed or not enacted to what was actually happening from the PFC index. So it's quite a bit. So some of the risks facing the utility, we know these, the continued inflation on the cost of operation and maintenance. It was very interesting. I received an analysis today for a whole different client about the changes in costs, O&M costs, for other utilities. And the last five years, four years, the average cost increase has been almost double digits, you know, 8%, 9%, 10%, 11% in O&M. It was just amazing. You all have controlled costs and try to live within this indexing, which has been amazing. But we have other issues coming. We have an increase in debt service coming. I mean, that's something you'll talk about later on today, to finance the water plant upgrades and expansion. That's scheduled for the tropical farms facility and the north water treatment plant facility as well. It's primary tropical farms. So that's an increased cost coming. We also need what's called pay-as-you-go or pay-go capital. You all have done a good job with that. You fund about $5 million a year right now and pay-as-you-go funding from rates. Why is that important? Well, the system is aging, and you can't bond finance everything. You really need to have a blend of debt and what I call equity or internal funding of your capital. The more structured and balanced that is, that promotes the sustainability of rates because you don't have all this debt and flexibility by having too much debt on the system. You do not have too much debt on the system. Let me tell you that right now. You do not have that. But you've got a lot of investment in your system, over $480 million worth. You've got a big business sitting here. But if you were to replace those assets today, which was what pay-go funding would be, you're over $700 million. And that's the difference. We've got to plan for that over time. And this is something you'll be able to do tomorrow, but this gives you a feel for what that difference is in cost over time. We need to also comply with our rate covenants. The board has adopted what's called a bond resolution. It's like a contract with your bondholders. And you have agreed to certain things. One is you'll maintain a certain debt service coverage ratio. And what that means is you take your total revenues of your system, back out those operating expenses, what's ever left over is how much does that cover your debt service payment. And you're right around three times right now with the bond issue and whatnot. It'll probably be a little over two. All your debt added together is still very, very strong. But we want to make sure we stay in compliance with that and be strong with that. And that's called maintaining the creditworthiness of the utility. We want to make sure we have strong coverage and good operating reserves for those unknown events that will occur, whether it's capital or operating. There's a lot of issues out there. And we want to maintain that AA plus credit rating if we can. We did a 10-year financial forecast of your financial needs for the utility system, also in support of the issuance of bonds. That's a requirement that we have what's called the bond feasibility report in the official statement. And we looked at your historical costs but also your projected costs. The report did identify the need for additional rate adjustments. We need to have them support the bond issue and to meet our rate covenants and whatnot. What the plan does do is avoid large single rate increases or rate shock. I can tell you there's a lot of utilities out there that are adopting rate increases right now that are double-digit. The first digit is not one. You would be amazed what's out in the industry right now. Just down south of the Riverbury Beach, their water rates are probably going to go up about 150 percent. It's a lot. I know another one next door to them. They're looking at water rate adjustments of 8 percent per year right now. Terry just was dealing with one over here in a county on the west coast of Florida. They're looking at 8 to 9 percent as well. We're seeing a lot of this. The primary driver for this is inflation on the cost but also the cost of capital, cost of construction. We all know how much that's gone up. If a facility costs $10 a gallon to build for, say, tropical farms, it's now $20, $30, or $40 a gallon. It's materially different, and that's the major issue. By indexing the rates, that tends to smooth this out, allows not only your customers to plan for rates, but allows utilities to also plan their expenditure needs. Also, excuse me, the credit rating agencies also consider indexing to be very favorable. It guarantees or promotes that the revenues will be there to pay the debt, which is critical and whatnot. If you look at your slide, you can see what Standard & Poor's liberal rating said in 2026 when they affirmed your rating, that you were in a sound overall financial position with extremely strong all-in. That's all your debts added, your SRF loans, your senior loans, et cetera, strong all-in debt service coverage and liquidity cash reserve needs. You were in a very structured, balanced position, which is where you want to stay. And that produces, in my opinion, that produces the lowest rates over time. Their expectation is that would continue based on your plans and with the continuation of the needed rate adjustments. Did I go the right way? Yes, I did. So we're recommending a two-part rate adjustment. The first is to recapture that June 1, 2026 index that did not occur. Your first rate adjustment, your most important, because you have time, value, money on that. And we're recommending that you adopt a rate adjustment of 2.5%, which is equal to the cap that you saw the last three to four years on the index before, effective in January, two months from now. Then start the 10-year index thereafter, based on the Water and Sewer Maintenance Index, as Sam mentioned. That's a much better index in terms of how the costs are being incurred for utilities. Many utilities are moving toward that index as well. We would recommend you adopt the Water and Sewer Maintenance Index, with the rates becoming effective every October 1, not June 1. We'd also recommend you currently have a floor and a ceiling in your index. Your ceiling is 2.5%. We're recommending to go to 5% on the ceiling, that the index could not go higher than that, and the floor be raised from 0% to 2%. We'll always have inflationary costs and the cost of service, and I think having a floor at this range is critical to the success of the utility. So we're recommending that. Again, a fixed rate adjustment of 2.5% to become effective January 1st to recapture the index we didn't do this year, and then adopt the index thereafter for the next 10 years, as you've done in the past. The index would continue to be applied uniformly to Water and Sewer rates. What that means is all your rate for monthly service would be adjusted equally by the index. You wouldn't adjust the base charge by 5% and your flow charge by 0%. It's applied across the board. In a sense, everybody pays the same percentage adjustment based on their bill because the rates are applied uniformly. It would not be applied to your capital facility charges or to your miscellaneous or special charges of deposits. That's done separately, and we would recommend you do not index those but look at those individually on an as-needed basis. Indexing is pretty common in the industry. It's not only allowed by the Florida Public Service Commission for the regulation of private utilities, but many local governments have some sort of indexing provision, whether it's a percentage adjustment like we're recommending here. Some have fixed rate adjustments. Example, West Palm Beach has sewer rates rise 4% every year. It's just a set number. Many utilities do five-year studies and adopt a five-year plan. Which is kind of like an indexing, but every year, every five years, they do that. But these are mostly indexing. You can see here's just a few around the area. This is not all of them. We just picked some. It's kind of giving you a feel that it is a common thing to do. The impact to the customer. The 2.5% index recapture that we're recommending to be implemented in January of 2027, or two months from now, will raise the average customer bill, which is 6,000 gallons per month, from about $2 a month or about $0.07 a day. That's the impact to the customer. You can see it on your slide. And that if they receive both water and wastewater service, roughly $2 a month. To be honest with you, this is, again, I mentioned those increases that are out there. This is probably one of the lowest increases I've seen for utilities in the last two years, is what we're seeing right here, which I find that just very, very good. But it's about $2. In terms of the region, Martin County is at the top of the graph here. The green is water, and the orange color is sewer. And you can see what the average bill is in general on this graph. And the second Martin County line, which is the one right below the top one, is what the rates would be with the index, the 2.5% index added in. And as you can see, we're well below the system average. That's the dotted line. I will tell you, 20 years ago, you were at the bottom of this graph. You were at the higher end of this graph. And over time, controlling costs, indexing rates, doing your plans, staying in the financial plan all these years, you are now becoming one of the more competitive utilities in the region. And I compliment you on that. And it's also complimented by the credit rate agencies. You've got AA+. And this shows it right there as well. So you've got, to me, very affordable rates. All these other utilities, almost everyone on here that I know of, will be increasing their rates. So as time moves on, you're doing 2%, 3% indexing. These utilities will probably have higher rate increases than that. I mean, we can talk about some of them, but they will move as well. But in summary, your rates are very, very competitive with the region, which is a very good thing. So what we would recommend for you to consider is adopt the rate resolution regarding the rates that would have the fixed rate adjustment effect of January 1st, to recapture the index that normally would have been done in June of 2026, and then reinstate the price index beginning 2027 with the first rate adjustment, but that index effective next fiscal year, October 1st, 2027, based on the water and sewer maintenance index with a minimum of 2% and a maximum, of course, ceiling of 5%. Again, this doesn't preclude you from adjusting rates thereafter higher down, but this is the recommendation, I think, that would meet your needs. It will help. It will definitely support the bond issue, the payment of debt on the bond issue, and I think, to me, it eliminates potential rate shock of large rate adjustments, single rate adjustments, which I don't think we want to do. And with that, I will turn it over to you all for questions, or unless you... No, go ahead. Okay. Questions for Mr. Ory. Mr. Hetherington. Can you explain what the justification on the index cap? You have recommended raising it from 2.5% to 5%, the index cap. What is the justification to raise the cap from 2.5% to 5%? What we've been seeing is, first of all, the PSC index is a very low index. It doesn't include all costs, like electricity is not in that index. Regulatory costs is not in that index. And it's historically been very low compared to the consumer price index, even. That's number one. If you look at the makeup of utilities, forget Martin County, just look at the utilities in general. There's, say, four or five primary expense categories, labor, utilities, chemicals. I think I said power, and then sludge. That's 70% of your cost, probably right there, 60% of your cost. And those costs have generally been rising much faster than the FPSC index, much faster. We have many utilities saying they have done one time 10% rate adjustments to all their labor, for example. The PSC index doesn't account for any of that. Are you saying the PSC index is a recommendation? No, we're recommending going to the Water and Sewer Maintenance Index, which is geared toward utilities. Huh? Yes, geared more toward utilities. It's geared toward utilities. It's actually more of municipal utilities, to be honest with you, which you are a public utility, I'll call it. And so in recognizing also where it's been the last four years, what's going on in the marketplace right now in terms of inflation, that we recommended that a cap of 5% would be more in line with where we are. It provides more flexibility to the utility. If you don't need the cap, you can always say, this year we're doing four, if you want to do that. But we felt that it was a better match to the cost you're incurring today and what other utilities are experiencing. The floor, it's like I haven't seen a utility not have cost increases ever. So even if the maintenance index came in at zero, it's very doubtful your cost would go up at zero. How many utilities around the state use this formula, this consumer index? Most of the utilities use three. They use either the PSC index, which is the least amount. They use the consumer price index, or they use the one-and-seared maintenance index. Why do they like the last two? Because they can pick the calculation period for the index, number one. For example, I want to look at the index change from June to June. The PSC index does not do that. They publish in February, and it's usually a year lag on that. Here with these indexes, you are current, which I think is also a better position to be in. I don't like lagging indexes. I have a 7% index. Well, that was two years ago. That's a problem we have. This corrects all that. Some have caps. Some say what it is, whatever it is. If it's 6%, it's 6%. And that's based off the 6%, so that is based off the CPI? How do you come up with what the indexed is, actual costs? The Water and Sewer Maintenance Index is published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics every year, every month. So that's federally? Yes. Is that a federal agency? I think it is. That would be federal. And it's right there. You can see it. And so we know exactly what the index is, but it's published. We don't calculate it based on our O&M. We rely on the index to do it. Okay. Thank you. Commissioner Capps. Yes. I'm looking at page 264, which is the agenda item summary, two-thirds down, background-related strategic goal. Martin County Utilities Water and Wastewater System is established as an enterprise fund, and it operates in a manner similar to a business entity. As such, the system must have, at minimum, revenues equal to the cost of the services provided, and the county must establish rates sufficient to cover the cost of operating, maintaining, and financing improvements for the system. So what would happen if you just had a very neglectful county commission that just wanted to be in denial for, like, 25 years straight and just said, we're never going to raise rates? What happens to local governments that do that? Well, we have a couple of those, and that's why the rates are double-digit with another one. To be honest with you, if you did nothing, and you can imagine, this is not sustainable, number one. Utilities, first of all, utilities are very forgiving. They will go and go and go, but once they start breaking, they start breaking. You get a line break here. You put a patch around it. There's a line break right there, right there. So what I've seen those that have deferred, first you defer maintenance, and then you defer capital, and your system ages and ages, and soon enough you're forced to adjust and raise rates. That's the problem down in our communities down south. They're having that problem. They delayed water plant implementation, and now it costs five times more than it did when they could have done it. And that's the result of delay and delay. The key is, you know, as an enterprise fund, the primary source of revenues for this utility is rates. I'd say at least 90% of your revenue, somewhere in that range, it's from rate revenue. Why not 100? You've got interest income. You've got customer service, you know, late fees or whatever. That makes up the difference. But really it's rates, and you want to make sure that you cover all these costs. And it's not just the expenditure today, but the capital reinvestment. As I mentioned, you've got $480 million of assets sitting there. That's a lot. And if you had to start replacing pipes, which I can tell you, I looked at West Palm Beach's pipes just two days ago, last week, excuse me. They've got 30% of their pipe is over 60 years old, 70 years old. Some is over 100. I think that pipe probably needs to be replaced. And that's the scary part. What's below ground is the part that really will get you, and that's the part that breaks. We can see the tropical farms plant, but there's a lot of need there. And if you don't stay within the plan funding this, you may go like this, but you guys, since I've been here for 30 years, you've always tried to meet these goals and stay in this position, and you've done well. You were the highest in the region when I first started. Now, this isn't all me. This is you guys. It's not me. And that's what would happen if you don't do something, and that's the reason why you want to do something. Can we pull up that one graph again that had the orange lines on it? Oh, the gray comparison? Right, right. Let's see. I'll get there. This one? Yeah. There we go. So it looks like we're $80-some-dollars currently. Yes, sir. And it would be how much more? $2. Two more dollars? $2 a month. If you have water and sewer service, that's 6,000 gallons. That's a typical average customer. Yeah, back to that chart again with the orange lines on. And we're like the most conservative of all of the other local governments in the area. I mean, we're like ours is the cheapest, right? No, you're not the cheapest. Oh, okay. Jupiter is cheaper than you. And one of the reasons why I think Jupiter and Tequesta are cheaper than you is they have a lot more water use for customer, a lot more units to spread a cost over. I can tell you, your average is 6,000 gallons per customer. Their average is closer to 11. A little different. And people don't realize that. That affects unit cost, you know, the cost per water per gallon, so to speak. Those that are to the left of the top line are cheaper than you, and those that are on to the right of that line is higher than you. For example, South Martin Regional Utility, they are higher than you. They're the third line down, for example. All the utilities in Martin County are higher than you is a way of example. Okay. It looks like we're kind of in the middle or maybe a little on the conservative side. Yeah. But I will also tell you, you know, several of these utilities, Riviera Beach is a big one. Fort Lowerdale has been having 25% rate adjustments. They're not done. You can see if you look at the blue, they're replacing their ash plant over there. So that is significant. Boynton, I've heard, is looking at 13% increases, for example. So that is coming. And some I just don't know about. Palm Beach County, Terry, I think they just use some form of indexing, if I remember right. Water and suit. They use the water and suit. It makes it right. But the point is, I would say 80% of the utilities rates will probably continue to rise and probably easily be 100. But I'm going to go conservative and say 80%. It will probably increase over time as well. Okay. So on the rate charges, we're going up $2, right? For the average customer. That's right. For the average customer. Water and sewer combined. And then what are we recommending here for capital facility charges? Like, can you summarize that briefly again? We're going to do a presentation on that. Mr. Terry here. You're going to do that now? He's going to do a brief presentation on the CFCs. Oh, okay. If you don't mind. Sure. And then we'll answer those questions with that. Great. Commissioner Vargas? Yeah. The Consumer Price Index, September. It was released in October. We won't get the October until November. It's 3.7%. Okay. Why do we have to go up to 5%? That's just the cap. I mean, I know you explained a lot, but this is an enterprise fund, and you don't have to look out for people's pocketbooks. That's a big issue today. You say it's only $2, but $2, $10. Right. Now bonds being floated, you know, paying. This will cover the bonds, just so you know. The cap, the ceiling is you don't want to go over it. If it was 3.7%, let's say that was the index. It was 3.7. We wouldn't go to 5. It would be 3.7. That's what we would pick. But the 5 is some of the protection that if the index, we have inflation like we did two years ago, and it's 7, 8, 9%, it's not going to, you're not going to do that. You're going to do 5%. Yeah. It's just the cap. I think we need to be really conservative, you know, and you say that the floor is 2%. It was 0 to 1. I mean, you know. Zero to 2.5 is what it was before. I get that. Right. But can't we lower the floor? Because we want to give the opportunity. I mean, our recommendation is to have a minimum adjustment. Excuse me? Our recommendation is to have a minimum index every year. Well, that may be. That's what I would recommend. But, you know, we want to be able to give the opportunity to go below, you know, the 2, over 2%. That's something, if that's what you wanted to do. Yeah. It's all about managing the money. I'm sorry, say again? It's all about managing the money. Oh, I'm with you. Okay. Thinking what? You can look at it every year. That's another thing you can do is, as part of the budget process, if we're doing really, really well, you could delay the index if you wanted to. I personally would keep the index going consistently, like you did in the past. Some year you may be good. The next year something may happen. And the index smooths all that out. And that's what you want. That's the sustainability. And I know we're talking affordability here. But I'm also looking at knowing what utilities are faced and the amount of capital reinvestment and capital investment that's required of these utilities. Having a rate increase every year will smooth that and soften those adjustments. We may save $2 this year. But if I need $6 the next year, then you actually, to me, have damaged. Possibly. I mean, we're just guessing here. Oh, I know. We don't know. We could plant any scenario. You know what I mean? Yeah. I mean, the CIP, you've got $207 million in the next six years of capital need. And that's a very manageable CIP from what I'm seeing in other utilities right now, especially county utilities. Let me tell you, you go over to the West Coast from Hillsboro down to Collier, we're talking billions of dollars in CIPs. Hillsboro alone is almost $4 billion. They're much larger than we are, those counties. I totally get that. And their rates are much higher than you. And they adopted 8% per year. I understand. Next six, seven years. They compare us with Indian River County and some of the other counties. We're a small county. Yeah. You are. I'm not arguing with you at all. I don't disagree with you at all. But you're also, to me, you're very well managed what you have done. And that's a compliment. You may be small, but you're good. So, I think. I wouldn't tell you that I didn't believe it. Sure. I wouldn't believe it. Okay. Next presentation. Sure. Okay. You want my spot? No, I'll move. Okay. Good afternoon. For the record, my name is Terry Bovary with Reptalis. We have a brief presentation as it relates to the CFC charges. I think it was mentioned that the utilities is an enterprise fund, established as an enterprise fund. And probably the second largest revenue stream outside of the user fees is going to be your capital facility charges or, you know, your growth-related charges for service. And so, we're going to be talking about recommendations to adjust those to right size to what the identified cost is for the infrastructure. You know, the purpose of CFCs are to ensure that new development pays for their proportion and share that infrastructure when they connect to a system. And so, this particular study was designed to identify what is the cost that the utility has made into that infrastructure, and how do we ensure that we can identify what's an appropriate amount based upon the required amount of capacity that it takes to provide service to new growth. And this presentation is going to step you through how we calculate the fees, what costs went into them, and how do your fees generally compare with other jurisdictions with our overall recommendation at the end. The water and wastewater capacity fees were last updated in 2004, about 21 years ago, so it's been some time. The capital costs have increased significantly, as my colleague, Mr. Ory, mentioned just a moment ago. In addition to that, the utilities has initiated several capital improvements that are expansions to the system, which necessitate reviewing the CFC charges for those reasons. There are criteria in how you design these fees. There's existing case law out there that has identified what's referred to in the industry as a dual rational nexus. And what all that legal terminology really means is that we have to meet two prongs of a test, basically that the cost that we build into the fees must be applicable, meaning that they serve that new growth, and that, too, those costs need to be proportionate to the service that those customers receive. And we ensure that we're meeting that two-pronged test, you know, a few different ways. One is by ensuring that the costs that we're building in are applicable to the growth, so the treatment plant costs, the backbone transmission infrastructure. And then the second way is to ensure that we're apportioning it correctly, and we do that through the fees that we charge and the level of service we assume in design of the fee, which I'll talk about momentarily. There are some other requirements, like accounting for the funds separately, but mainly the focus for today is just how we calculate those fees. I do want to mention that, you know, we've worked with legal counsel in review of the fees and the recommendations. There is the Florida Impact Fee Act, Florida Statutes 163-31-801, and they have prescribed a number of different things. What I'll say here is that the statute exempts water and wastewater connection fees. Excuse the typo on the slide. And so, you know, we've basically followed the case law on the dual rational nexus and design of the fees. This graphic here figure illustrates in simple terms the methodology we go through in design of the fee. On the left-hand side, you'll notice the capital investment, and then that's divided by the capacity, which gives us a unit cost. So if you were to imagine, you know, the water treatment side or the water fee, you know, we might identify what are all the water treatment infrastructure assets we have, what's the capacity of that treatment, and then we get to a unit cost. And then that unit cost is applied to the level of service that we define for an equivalent residential connection, or ERC, as I'll refer to throughout the presentation, and then that's applied to the new development. You know, typical residential developments may have multiple single-family homes, so multiple ERCs when they're developing, or you could have a commercial property, and a commercial property may also represent several ERCs based on the size of the meter that they have and the demand that they have. Generally, if you're reserving more capacity, you're going to pay more proportionally to that reservation of capacity. But this is, in simple terms, how we calculate the fees. The cost methodology, I touched on it earlier. I'll go into a little bit more detail here for you, but we're recovering not all of the capital costs of the utility infrastructure. Again, it's going to be the supply costs, the treatment costs, and backbone transmission. What does that really mean? Well, if we were to take all of the infrastructure costs, the linear assets that Mr. Ory talked about underground, just those underground assets, let's say, roughly about 30 percent of that is included in the design of the fee. The smaller distribution lines are not included because we're really trying to look at just the infrastructure that serves all the customers in the system, you know, for the most part. And also, typically, the smaller pipes are oftentimes developed or contributed, et cetera. So we try not to build that into the design of the fee. It's just the backbone transmission and the treatment infrastructure. The last thing I'll point out is just that we also exclude any grant-funded infrastructure, and it is based on your fixed asset records as well as your capital improvement plan. So what that means is that the cost that you paid for your infrastructure, that original cost value is what's used when we calculate these fees. We don't use a replacement cost. It's your original cost for the utility paid for all the infrastructure plus what's been identified in the near term over the next five years or so through the capital improvement plan, and it's the sum of all those assets that are the applicable assets, the treatment, the backbone transmission, the supply that we build as costs into the design of the fee. So it's not all the infrastructure costs, as you can imagine. And if it's funded, again, from grants or surtaxes, we wouldn't build that into the fee either since that was grant-funded. Lastly, in the apportionment side of the fence, when we design the fees, there is a level of service assumption for each equivalent residential connection, and I just want to state for the record that for the water system, that's 250 gallons per day per ERC, average daily flow, and for the wastewater, it's 195 gallons. So the unit cost that we calculate through that formula from earlier, we apply that to these levels of service to come up with the design fees. These are some of the numbers associated with the fixed assets and the capital plan that are included in design of the fee. This is just the water system. So you see the first row there identifies the water treatment and supply. The total amount of assets that we identified were $103 million. And you can see that we excluded from the footnote there about $86 million in grant-funded or contributions from those particular assets as you look through the calculations as they move to the right-hand side. So the capital plan is about $104 million, and you'll notice only the first two lines, not the bottom two lines, are included in the design of the fee. And so the rightmost column, that represents the total dollar amounts that went into design of the fee and excluded a little over $100 million in total fees in design of the fee, because those were either grant-funding or were considered the distribution infrastructure. And then similarly, the wastewater system, same approach, just different figures. If we take those dollar amounts, as I mentioned before, we can get to a unit cost here on the water system of $11.63. You know, that's much lower than what it would cost you for just a new capacity, build brand-new capacity, but that's because we're recognizing that there is an average cost of both of the infrastructure that you've already invested in plus a new infrastructure from the CIP. It's a blended cost, if you will, and that's what we're utilizing when we multiply it by the 250 gallons per day to arrive at a fee of roughly $2,900 for the water system. On the sewer system, same calculations, about $3,000. So I mentioned earlier that, you know, the fees hadn't been looked at since 2004. The existing fees that we charge for both water and sewer amount to around $3,800. And based on the design of the fee today, we're looking to raise that to around $6,000. That's about a 57.5% increase per equivalent residential connection. And as I mentioned before, the unit cost per gallon of that capacity is $1,163 on the water side being proposed and $1,586 on the sewer side based on our evaluation. Can you put that back just for another minute? Yes, of course. Is this the keyboard? Okay. I think I got it. Thank you. So we're going to show you a comparison here. But before we do, just want to touch on that, you know, there are a number of reasons why fees can differ among utilities. The level of treatment, you know, if we have – if we look at utilities in Florida that are more central Florida region, you know, they don't have – they don't have maybe the need for a reverse osmosis treatment facility, like you have most utilities, you know, bordering the Atlantic Ocean or the Gulf Coast. It could be the age of the infrastructure. It could be a variety of different reasons. But here is that comparison. And you can see the survey where we're going – we're below the average of those surveyed. And with the fee recommendation, we'd be slightly above average but still pretty close. What I want to mention here is that, you know, a number of these utilities may not have a whole lot of growth. are occurring or they haven't looked at their fee design. Many of the municipalities that we work with have asked us to use these similar types of studies. We're finding that the fees can range anywhere from $6,000 on the lower end, I'd say here, upwards of $10,000, $12,000 easily. And it really depends upon how much existing capacity and infrastructure that you invested in years ago you have remaining versus how much the infrastructure that you have to build to serve growth. And the newer cost of capital is much, much higher on a per-gallon basis today if you were to have to build all brand-new capacity. So I think that even though, you know, you might be slightly above average or it seems like a large increase, you just have to remember that, you know, we've really not looked at these fees in a very, very long time. And it's still much lower than many other municipalities that have had to build brand-new capacity to serve growth in other parts of the state. And I think this chart sort of demonstrates that because this is one where we compare those that have more recently adopted increases to their fees. And I think that comparison shows favorably for the county, but, you know, again, in design of the fees, it was based on your localized costs. I mean, you know, the fees that we design are your costs, you know, to connect and continue to serve customers in the system. So at this point, we'd like to open up for any questions you may have at this time. The wastewater calculations, were they based upon gravity or vacuum? Well, they're based upon gravity, I think, primarily because we're looking at the backbone assets. I think the vacuum systems are more the smaller diameter localized infrastructure that gets to the customers. But I'd defer to Sam possibly to... Could you repeat that, Commissioner? I'm sorry. Yeah, the wastewater calculations, were they based upon gravity systems? As far as the capital facility charges? Yeah, their backbone transmission. Yeah, their transmission, their plant, treatment plant facility, the larger items that either produce water, in this case, treat wastewater, and then the larger mains, not necessarily the neighborhood collection system. Yeah, and I think the question was, are the vacuum systems included? And I don't believe the vacuum systems were because I think those are smaller diameter pipes that were excluded from the calculation. I'm asking because we are, it looks to me like transitioning from one to another because of expense. And I consider one far superior to the other, so I'm thinking that we're moving from a superior system to an inferior system, and yet our costs are doubling. Well, the doubling of the fee is, you know, since 2004, since it's not been looked at in a very long period of time. And also, I think that the issue of your investment in different types of conveyance infrastructure for the wastewater system is a little bit separate from the capital facility charges. Because the capital facility charges are predominantly just to recover the cost of the treatment plants, plus the major large diameter pipes about 10 inches or larger for the most part. So if you have that smaller diameter infrastructure, the county recovers those costs through some different means. So it could be an assessment program for the line extension that the county does. It could be some grant funding. It could be other types of funding programs. And so they all work hand in hand. The user fees, you know, the assessment programs, the CFCs, and the CFCs are more focused just on. So whereas the user fees are focused on your operating costs, your debt service, things like that, the CFCs are to recover from, you know, that growth, the proportionate infrastructure for the treatment and the backbone infrastructure. And then the assessments and some of these other things are for maybe LPSS or other types of infrastructure, if that's helpful. Thank you. Any further questions? I have some requests to speak from the public. Is David Bowden here? Would you like to address us? And John Lee Hips, you'll have three minutes to address us, sir. No problem. Thank you very much. I'm David Bowden. Thank you for allowing me to address you. You know, originally when I came up here, I was thinking that this isn't such a good idea. I'm not a real fan of indexing. I'm more a fan of leaders making decisions on budgets on an annual basis, including long-term budgeting as well. To include capital improvements, you have to have funds for the future. You can't always depend on a bond issue for that or a jump in rates like that. So I kind of understand the indexing that the gentleman had presented. So I'm a little softer on my feeling about it now than I was originally. But the one thing I want to make sure that as leaders in our county, as elected leaders in our county, that there's a principle involved, and that's it. You must maintain control of this, even if it's an enterprise outfit, okay? It wouldn't matter if they were a company that were producing it or, in this case, a semi-public enterprise, as is this or the airport. You must continue to have control over those rates every year. Now, we can quibble about the cap on that. I still think that the lower cap is fine because you still have the ability for them to come up and say, hey, we definitely need 4% this year, and you can say, I can see the justification for that, and then you can defend it. But if it's just an index, you're shirking your responsibility to defend an increase that you say, well, hey, that's just what they recommended, and it's on the index, so that's the way it goes. You have to be in control of the budget. Thank you very much. Thank you. John Lee Hipps is next, followed by Denise White. Good afternoon. Afternoon. Everyone, thank you, commissioners, for giving me the opportunity to speak. I did have a handout at some point to give to everyone. So I fully support the best possible drinking water and sewerage services and environmental protections as all related to that. So, Mike, I do have a few questions that I wanted to bring up. One of them was why this particular index? This index is not really a direct audit of Martin County's electricity, chemical, and or labor expenses. So can we identify the exact series and explain how well it actually matches and maps to those costs? Because the index is an index, but how does that map to it? And I didn't hear a clear explanation about that. The other thing is, will there be two tax increases or two increases in 2027? We mentioned one in January at 2.5%, but then also what happens in October? Does this adjustment only cover nine months? The other one was, how are the costs divided between existing customers and growth? So, the agenda, you know, we talk about capital facility charges. And beyond that, what are these charges going to recover, you know, as a cost of capacity for the new connections? And what will the share of the expansion be for the existing customers, and what would that fund? So, you know, I want to know that you have all this new development coming in, and we have existing customers. And some of the customers are relatively poor in relationship to multimillion-dollar projects going in. So how will those costs be fairly allocated? And what protections and accountability would accompany this indexing? If the county publishes these annual results for spending, reserves, leaks, sewage, spills, and completed projects, can we publish those? Or maybe you already do. I don't know. But what assistance is available to households that are struggling to afford essential water use? So here we have the affordability issue coming up where, yes, there will be increases. We all need that. We all understand that. But how will we be able to address those poorer customers that are struggling with affordability? The other thing I wanted to ask was – Sir, your time is up. Thank you. Well, then that's it. Thank you. All right. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak. And Denise White is the last request to speak form I have. Afternoon. Hi. I'm Denise White. Pull the mic down closer for you. Because I'm short. No, you're just not that tall. I put on my high heels to come here. I have a comment, and then I need some clarification from y'all. My comment is my thoughts are with you on Amendment 3. I'm against it. I know what that does to county government, to local government. I worked in government in Texas for 25 years. And that the holdout of people wanting to vote yes because they think you're wasting their money, that there's all kinds of fraud and abuse in county government. Well, I'm sorry, that stems back to Ronald Reagan. The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, I'm from the government and I'm here to help. Well, I don't feel that way. And I hope a lot of the citizens of Florida don't feel that way. Because I don't want you to be put in the position of having to decide what to cut, where to raise fees. We just need to keep paying our property taxes. And I'm on a fixed income. I live on my Social Security and my pension. But I pay my taxes. The other issue is the data center in Arundel. And I need some clarification. I'm sorry I missed earlier what happened on that. We voted to approve a moratorium for 365 days. Okay, so because that data center was not covered on the previous moratorium. Okay, so you passed a moratorium on that particular data center too, no? No. We're going to be reviewing that in depth. Okay. That takes time, a lot of time. That application was filed before the effective date of this. It was the day before, late. Clever. Okay, I live in the Arundel neighborhood. They need you to speak into the microphone. Nobody at home can hear you. We're hearing. I'm used to having such a loud voice. I live in the Arundel neighborhood. I live in River Marina townhouses. There are four neighborhoods there. One is a 55-plus community. There's also an elementary school, Crystal Lake Elementary, on Southwest 96th Street. And I would say that a massive data center like the one planned is not conducive to the neighborhood. Thank you. Would anyone else from the public like to address us? Commissioner Kapps. Can we pull up, a picture paints a thousand words, the comparison between the cities and the counties on the capital infrastructure. Earlier I asked for that comparison sheet on the rates. And now we're looking at a comparison of capacity fees. The capital facility charges. Were you requesting us to roll this back to the user fees comparison? And this is like what you charge for a new construction. You had it. That was the one that he wanted to see was the capital facilities charges. Oh, it was. Okay. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I misunderstood. Here we go. There were actually two comparisons. One is more regional and one is for those that have recently reviewed their fees. So this one is for those that recently reviewed or changed their fees. And then the one here is more of a regional comparison. Right. But in both of those cases, we're really on the lean side, the conservative side. Yeah, you're comparable. I mean, if you look at these graphs, I mean, it all seems reasonable and conservative to me. So I'm going to move approval. Commissioner Cetherington. I just had a question that Mr. Bowden's comments made me think of regarding the indexing. What kind of public notification, public disclosure, if that index is being exercised, is required? We actually notified per statute, everyone 90 days in advance of this public hearing, that they could come and attend the public hearing to voice their concerns or views. If the index, if the rate is indexed per the consumer index? The water and surge maintenance index? Yes. You know, every year thereafter, you know, as part of your budgetary process, you're bringing forward the assumptions around what those increases are. So every year the rates are publicly noticed? No. We haven't done that in the past 10 years. We adopted a 10-year indexing in 2016, which sunsetted last June of 2025. This public hearing announces, if the board's approval, a 10-year indexing period going forward. Now, if the board wishes, we can come back each year that we plan to implement that index and notify you of what that actual index rate is. I think the public will wish that. Well, we'd like to do a 10-year index, not to exceed 5%. In our view, that gives the public some transparency in going forward and what they can expect increases in that utility bill going forward for planning purposes. But when you have the index of the year, when you raise it? So we do notify them, excuse me, we do notify them in the utility bill. Okay. So there is public notification of any rate change. Thank you. Mr. Donaldson. I just wanted to say that, you know, the questions about what are the actual costs to the utility on an annual basis is something that we do look at, and you all have the opportunity in the budget process, but also in the notice to the public. So when all of our departments, including our utilities, prepare their budget, we start with the base, what it costs to actually implement the budget. So that is, if there is any cost to salary increases, it is noted as a material change. If there's any changes to the electrical line item, that's also explained in the proposed budget or draft budget when you review that in July. So all of those component items are not only identified, but there's a brief summary in the budgetary document for the commissioners to review, but also for the public. So that is the, and then also in the capital improvement side, we also see any changes if there were in recent bids on what it's actually costing you to do the implementation of any construction projects, that sort of thing. So the budget that the increase in the budget has to be justified based upon either increases or due to a change, whether it's up or down, on what caused that change, and then if there was anything new. For instance, if Sam needed to add more staff because our utility had more customers for some reason, that's also shown in the budgetary process. And so that is all made public. We also include in our CIP a public, you know, we think it's all very well documented. Obviously, we have lots of pages, I guess, if you will, in our website. So if you have any further questions, we can probably point you to that afterwards. But I just want to let the public know that there is, first of all, how do you come up with the material changes that are justified based upon the cost of doing business? That's the term of art we use. That's Stephanie drills into all of our department heads. What's the cost of doing business next year as it was? And then why are you changing it? And then when Sam is looking at the utility rate adjustment, we do try to match within that range, and we don't always match exactly what the index calls for. Oftentimes it could be less if our utility, which it often is, is operating more efficiently than the index might otherwise show. Thank you. Mr. Campy. Thank you very much. There was a lot to unpack there. Both presentations very well done. I appreciate it. Trying to take, you know, I know to you all, very, very exciting topic. But for the general public, it's just sort of like wade through. I'd like to break it down into two parts. The first one with the indexing, I remember before Mr. Amerson was here, being a new commissioner, almost brand new commissioner, and sitting with staff, I can remember the personal shock that we had not had any increases in quite a long time, which you think would be like, hey, you could slap each other on the back saying, hey, look at that. We've kept the numbers down for such a long period of time. But what ended up happening is a very large brick fell down on our rate payers. Instead of having little tiny rocks fall on them each year, by wading, thinking we were doing them a favor, when it was like some of the original gentlemen said, when it did come time that we had no choice but to do it, it was tremendously large. And then for the commissioners at the time, we were forced to just with a straight face say, hey, oh, by the way, we're looking for, and I think that was 2008, 2009, you guys might know better than I recollect, what that number was. But it was a big number. And I remember thinking, well, why didn't you at the time put it out like a little, you know, you know what they say about eating an elephant? So that being said, we also talked about the percentage that would be allowed in the fluctuation. And at the time, it wasn't Mr. Emerson. He was still over in the minor leagues. True story. Until he got called up, which we appreciate. And I have the utmost confidence not just in him and his leadership but in the team that he's put together. Most of the commissioners have spent a lot of time with that team talking about the conversions of septic to sewer. So I've had the opportunity to sit in meetings with a lot of his staff, and I have the utmost respect for them. That being said, I think the residents might look to us and say, instead of just going from zero floor to a higher floor, which I think most people don't even comprehend what the concept of the floor is, but the ceiling, most people will understand, you know, where you will max out. So 2.5% might not be the magic number anymore, but I do have some concern about doubling it to five. Now, while you're holding the steering wheel, I get it, but we're also talking about a decade-long commitment. I don't know who the future folks will be, so I think if we were able to put some guardrails on those numbers, that might be more helpful. I'm not opposed, and there is already a motion, but I would share my feelings. I'm not opposed to the 2% floor, but I'm thinking maybe a 4% ceiling coming off of 2.5. I think it does give you the flexibility for the next decade to maybe meet some unforeseen circumstances, but not let it be too big. It shows, like as my colleagues had said, first off, the public comments, all three, especially the first two, really well done, you know, really food for thought. So that would be my hope for, so a 2% floor and a 4% ceiling. On to the other issue, and I did when we had a chance to speak about this with Mr. Emerson about the new fees. There's three categories that I think we need to address. The first one is my ultimate goal is to convert everyone in District 5 from septic to sewer. And I know that Commissioner Hurd and I were here with some of our former colleagues when we really tasked our staff to get as many people converted as quickly as possible. Not as many, all of them converted as quickly as possible for the environmental reasons and for just the quality of life reasons and the financial reasons. That being said, we created the list and certain projects based on a multitude of rationales, you know, fluctuated up and down the priority list. And the folks that have already been done have had the advantage of having this new service with some of them for five or six years now. But the communities that have been waiting patiently shouldn't be penalized by the fact that during that patient wait, there was a big increase, a 57.5% increase. So I think you would have to grandfather in anybody that already owns an existing home that is in the window of the ability to convert. That number, they're going to have to pay a number to convert anyway. I think it's ridiculous if we were to say, hey, you know, we used to think, I've been at those NAC, Palm City NAC meetings in the Port Salerno NAC meetings where people are trying to, and in Palm City I'm one of those people, trying to figure out how do you budget that connection costs. So the first group of folks that should be able to at least maintain that existing number would be someone that already has a house that's looking to connect. The second group would be, and this is a little more difficult to tie into, if there's an application within the building department of a project that's 10 houses, 20 houses, 30 houses, whatever it is, they've already factored in how that project, the cost of creating those homes already is versus someone that's going to file an application that can factor in your increase and say, okay, look, I'm trying to figure out how do the numbers work out. If I already have an application, although the homes are not built yet, and I have an application in at the county, and all of a sudden I found out that I just went from $3,800 to $6,000, I don't know if that's necessarily fair. And then the final one would be for projects that would be certified affordable housing or workforce housing. You know, we can't continue to move the goalpost further down the field. If the goal here is to try to create some workforce housing, some essential housing where people can live here, I don't know if doubling one of these charges makes that goal of affordable homeownership easier. So if there are projects that were to come in to the county, and look, it's not going to be a number that's going to tip the scale of the enterprise, but I wouldn't want to participate in making a house for those that want one more expensive than it currently is. Maybe that's 100 houses we're talking about in the next couple of years. You know, I wish it would be a higher number. I'm not sure what it will be. But those three categories, in my mind, should be protected from some of these. And if I had to put them in order, I would say the conversions would be first, the essential housing would be second, and the applications that are in the system currently would be third. So that would be my recommendations. I'm going to need a little assistance on this one, Rob. I'm going to need Terry's help on the CFC, your comments on the CFC. But I don't know if we can quickly address that as far as a 4% cap versus the 5%. Obviously, we put a little bit more rate risk on the utility, but really it's a policy decision. Most recently, the inflation has been 5% the past three years using the PSC index, and that's kind of why we picked that, that we can go above that. But it is a policy decision. And we're thinking, personally, our forecast for the bond report is more in the 3%, 3.5% range, not 5%. We don't assume that you've reached the cap. So it's really – Understood. As long as you have the floor, I think that's very helpful. And I said 4%. The floor. Oh, the floor. Well, I left the floor. Yeah, you did. Because I think that's a little bit more ambiguous for most people to calculate. And I'm not saying that you would immediately go to 4%. I know Sam won't constantly bang against the ceiling. But that being said, I think it's our responsibility to craft a little tighter kind of things, not so much for the faces I'm looking at right this minute. But this is not a one – you're not asking for a one-year index. You're asking for a 10-year window. Ten-year. That's correct. All right, so 10-year window. I mean, I like the point that the public speaker said that, look, come forward each year and say – and Sam does come forward and say, look, this is what we're doing. But I think if you understood, like the rest of us have to, that you have to live within a certain parameter, hey, I'm on a fixed income, you know, so are you. Yeah. Well, the other thing, too, Commissioner, and you have a good memory about the large rate increase. If I remember right, it was either 11% to 13%, I think, that one time shot way back then. I remember that. You brought back a lot of memories. I appreciate that, but the index doesn't preclude you from raising rates further if you need to. If something happens that none of us are aware of right now, you can't adjust rates. Correct. So that's not coming off the table. We'd still have that opportunity. I'm just saying that if we're setting this thing to autopilot, not exactly, but, you know, if we're giving you a parameter for 10 years, you're going – it's not like I'm saying, look, I'm keeping you at 2 1⁄2. As you were making your presentation, I'm thinking, okay, maybe I'll do 3. I'm thinking 3 1⁄2. But I understand that it's very difficult to look into the future and guess. So I think, you know, giving you everything that you wanted – and I get it. I was almost going to say, was there any hedge in there? But so I just figured 4 was still reasonable on our behalf. And I don't know. My colleagues could tell me I'm crazy. I just wanted to share my opinion that it gives you the increase, but it also gives our residents a little kind of confidence that it's not going to be 5%. And as you mentioned just a moment ago, if it needed to be 6% for some reason, then our staff would have to come forward to this board or whoever's sitting up here at the time and explain why. But in the meantime, if we're just going on a regular year-after-year kind of basis, I think 4% still gives you – and I understand the bond perspective, but we were AA plus at 2 1⁄2. I'm pretty sure we could be AA plus at 4. Right. You'll meet your confidence. Someone's shaking their head no. Is that not going to be a possibility? That's okay. You know, I value your opinion. It's on. It should be. Can you hear me? Maybe it's – If I could just say that I think that the 5% comes from the average increase to utilities that we're seeing, and the idea was to pick 5% because you want to set that as a cap if that's been sort of the average increase. And, you know, back when the index was done 10 years ago, you know, we were at a point where inflation was very, very low. And so the 2 1⁄2 made a lot of sense because we were in a lower inflationary period. The current time that we're in over the last five years or so, we've seen pretty substantial inflation. And so that was, you know, the thought process that went into the formulation of the 5%. It was to set it more at, like, what was the average increase? You know, the operating costs for Martin County for the utilities that went back and looked at the bond report, and I think it averaged closer to 7%. And part of the reason why you've been able to mitigate that is you've had growth in the number of accounts served. So that's the thinking behind the 5. It's a policy choice, frankly. You know, what you want to do in terms of setting a cap or a floor, for that matter, or how you, you know, set your rates. We're just trying to come up with a recommendation that's generally consistent with how, you know, the board and utilities has done it for years now and that has, as Mr. already mentioned, like, served itself well. And 4 is not probably unreasonable, but that was a thought process behind the 5 and the recommendation. Understood. I didn't think you were trying to game the system. No, I was not. But the other good news is, is that as we continue to convert, we will be adding. It's not like we're hoping for rate payers. We know we're going to have new rate payers. That is correct. So, I mean, that hand in hand with our conversions can maybe soften the blow. It's just my opinion. There's four other folks sitting up here. Well, you make a good point, Commissioner. And as long as we're going to meet coverage as primary, we're going to always have the opportunity to come back to you if things change significantly. If we need to make some adjustment in future years, we can always come back to the board. That's true. But we also always need to be mindful that we don't put ourselves in the position that we found when you became a new commissioner, which is in order to please our rate payers, we hadn't changed their rates for a very long time, and therefore we were falling behind with deferred maintenance and building new plant capacity and all those essential things in order to please our rate payers. But then we fell into a deficit, and we had to raise our rates 11 or 12 percent in one year in order to make up for the kindnesses of the previous 10 years. So we don't need to fall into that pit. And also, another thing that you bring up, and it's absolutely true, there are communities, existing communities, that are old communities, and the comprehensive plan says that we serve those first. And we don't do that. We never do that, even though the comprehensive plan requires it. Instead, we defer, we give the new development the capacity. And meanwhile, I couldn't live more inside the urban service boundary. My neighborhood is a well-established one. Commissioner Campes is the same way. I don't have sewer. I don't have sewer. And I don't think I'm going to get sewer for a long time either, even though it's been promised me for a decade. And me. Because new development has gotten my sewer connections. Well, to be fair to our staff. And now it's three times as expensive as it would have been 10 years ago. I don't know. I think the reason that Commissioner Hurd and I, and my house was built, I believe, in 1970. It's wood, when they're still building wooden houses. But that being said, I think it's a separate issue of the new development. It didn't steal away. It's not like we maxed out in capacity. There's a lot of reasons the older neighborhoods don't have it yet. It's not based on the fact that there was a new neighborhood built, so we didn't get it. It's just a lot, especially in those smaller neighborhoods. The infrastructure has been very challenging. But I think we're right there. Commissioner Hetherington. My thought was regarding the rate rather than adjust it up or down the floor or ceiling, why the 10-year look versus, say, a 5-year look? So then you could adjust accordingly in 5 years versus setting the rate for 10 years. Well, as you said, it's going to follow the index. It's going to match with the index, the water and sewerage maintenance index. We can come back and, I mean, we have the ability to come back each year. So if it goes beyond that in year 6, then you're locked into that for 10 years. So would it not be more prudent to look at it more frequently versus less frequently? One of the principal issues that we're trying to do is, since we have some large capital expenditures, is to project to get the lowest rates possible from the marketplace and having a longer period of time where the index will be in place lowers our borrowing costs, ultimately. So that's the principle. I'm satisfied with that answer. Yeah, we have a 10-year CIP. And also, just, I'm a supporter of indexing. I think it's the proper way to go. I think it's smooth things out. I think it makes our future way more predictable. Well, had you had it in this other category in the capital improvements, you wouldn't have a 57.7% increase. So, yeah, we're looking at both sides of that. So that 4% ceiling was probably the easier discussion. You had three other questions, or you had three other categories of potential customers, existing homes that didn't have water or sewer, future homes that may be considered affordable, or workforce housing, regarding the capital facilities charges, and then those that were applications in the pipeline. That's a little more difficult. I'll take the applications in the pipeline out. I was just trying to think from a business mindset if I already submitted an application based on what I thought I could do. But there's so many market fluctuations that are happening in real estate that home builders and home sellers have to calculate in. The first one, the most important one for me, would be the folks that are already waiting in line for the conversion shouldn't now, because there was a new hurdle put in front of them. I think you have to at least grandfather those folks in, because does that mean if I didn't yell and scream louder for the folks in Old Palm City, now they're going to get another slap, almost double? That one is a sticking point for me. The affordable housing for us, you know, we're not churning out of, you know, tons of affordable housing. I don't think it would be a tremendous amount of houses in that. I don't know if it would. It might be a rounding error for a multi-millions, hundreds of millions of dollars department. But it sends a message to folks that we're trying to think about creating housing that people can actually afford to purchase. Ms. Patrick. Thank you. Just one thing, Commissioner Hetherington, in the, there's two resolutions. You have one resolution for your rates. You have another resolution for your capital facilities. So there's two actual motions that staff is asking for. There is language on here for the rates. It says the rate shall remain in effect for the next 2036, unless repealed or amended by the board. So if there is an issue on the rates, you can call it back for an agenda item. Utilities can come back, and this can actually be amended, changed, repealed, however you want to do it. Okay. So that's the way to do it. On your. Simplified. Commissioner. Mr. Donaldson. Just for clarification, just as a reminder, the capital facilities charge only go to an undeveloped property that's seeking a building permit. So any existing properties, no matter what, they don't get a capital facility charge, correct? Is that, I just want to make sure that that was clear, that if you have connection fees, but you don't have a capital facility charge, if we're doing septic to sewer in a neighborhood and they're existing homes, they're not getting CFC charges. Is that correct, or are they getting CFC charges? Yes, they do. Okay. In any undeveloped, any unconnected homes. Unconnected. Okay. I just want to make sure that we clarify that. It's just with the larger vacuum system, we include that in the assessment. We've been including them. Which helps. Yes. So we have been including that in all of our grant costs. Right. And we do, a number of our customers that are connecting, they have the ability, most of them, to utilize the solar and energy loan fund arrangement that the county has for financing their connections, their actual connections to the house, and those capital facility charges. So there are opportunities for financing available. But as far as your two grandfathered-in existing homes and projects considered affordable, I think the project is considered affordable as a very easy one. I don't see a proliferation of those homes in the near future. And then grandfathering in existing homes in the service area, I think we're okay with that. I've seen people do that. It would have to be. It would have to be, because otherwise you're punishing people for being patient. If my neighborhood was done two years ago, as Commissioner Hurd said, I wouldn't have to pay that. And if I waited, how do I go back to Palm City and tell those folks? And you know how many houses it is, right? Mr. Emerson, you know how many houses we're talking. It's a finite number. I mean, it's a large number, but it's finite. It's not like it could grow. Yeah, I was just going to say, what you say makes a lot of sense, and there are communities that do do this. I do want to point out, though, that there is a cost to carry that capacity over time that's not being paid for. So the folks that have existing infrastructure that paid their fees before have also been paying the monthly base charges that cover some of those other costs. And so there's sometimes this counterpoint to consider relative to that. But absent that, you know, completely understand the point. Just wanted to throw that out there for your consideration. Do you want to address me? I have a motion. The original one, I don't know if what we said. Oh, clarification. Commissioner, I've got a clarification on the grandfathering thing for you to think about. For those developed properties that have lines in front of their house, not part of the extension program, it's not going to Old Palm City or whatever, I probably would not grandfather those in, the general infill development type stuff. You're talking about where extension programs are in place and you've told them the wastewater capacity fee is $1,900, whatever it is. That stays. But if it's normal development, I'm on my house and the line's already there. I'm not paying an assessment or anything. I'm just not an unconnected customer. They should probably pay the facility fee as is in effect. I don't know. I don't specifically understand the differentiation between the two customers you're speaking of. Yeah. So you're saying someone that could have connected that didn't? A structure that's been built or not. Right. Or it could be a vacant parcel even. And it's in a vacant parcel. Like I'm using in my head the numbered streets around Cornell. If it's a vacant lot, that's not an existing house. If someone's been waiting for three, four, five years in New Monrovia, Port Salerno. That's an extension program. That's what I'm talking about. Okay, yeah. If I live next door to a vacant lot, that vacant lot is on its own. I know many utilities that there's service available and those folks haven't connected. Yeah, there's no house there. No, no, no. A lot of times there's a house there. Well, I don't know how many of those we have. I don't know how many you have. I don't know the answer to that. I was just trying to clarify what it is. Well, I appreciate your point. If someone has a house that for whatever reason didn't connect, they would have to be part of that because they might be waiting for the system to come. If there's a vacant lot, I get it. They're going to pay the new number. If there's an existing house, whether they connect it or not, they're in their home already. They're waiting patiently for the water to come. We just did a – Leo Repetti just gave us a three- or a four-part schedule for Palm City, A, B, C, and D. All of that A, B, C, and D would have to be considered at the old rate. And then pick the other neighborhoods. You know those neighborhoods. If they're on that list, if their home exists and they're on that list of conversion, then that's – they've got to be – it's only fair to give them the other rate because they would have connected three years ago if they could have, but they weren't able to. I'm way okay with that. I think we're all on the same page for the most part. My exception is a little different. If I'm an existing home and service is available and I have neglected to connect, I have not connected, I don't want to connect, I don't want your service, and then I have to connect if my septic tank fails, you have to connect if your septic tank fails, they should pay the fee. The current fee is in place. This is not an extension program. This is just the outliers. How many houses would you consider? I don't know how many that is. No, I'm talking to my guy. It's negligible, right? It's negligible. It's no big deal. Yeah. I think it's a negligible number. I don't know how many people in my zones, in my district, have been like, nah, I don't want it. I know there are some. Commissioners, I think – obviously, I think if there's a desire to provide a grant for other and exemption, I think we can work on that. I don't know if we can craft it exactly the way you want it today, but perhaps what we can do – I don't need that language. I just need the idea. We have our septic to sewer program, right? And we've identified all the neighborhoods that are in that. And so one simple thing would be every project that's already in our capital improvement plan that has proposed to be a septic to sewer program, you could grandfather in. But perhaps we could, you know, approve the increase today but have us bring back the policy on the exemption so we could have it crafted so that it is done in a way that is both meets your all's objective but also is legally defensible. Sold. You have a motion out on the floor for the original one? Yeah. Commissioner Vargas. Yeah, there was a lot of talk, talk, talk, talk, talk. Where are we with this based on what you've come to ask us? I mean, I mentioned about coming below 5, and it wasn't a good idea about a half an hour ago. Now it's palatable. So I'm a little confused as to what we're doing right now. Well, the only motion that's on the floor is the one for a cap of 5. Okay, but can we bring it below 5? Yes, that's what the discussion was earlier, that we can do it at a cap of 4%. Okay, well, that's what I proposed over a half an hour ago, and it wasn't like we can't do it. So I just want to be efficient here. I mean, you know, what is the floor? 2%. Can it go below that? I mean, go below it. Then you just revisit it, and you look and see what the – It's a policy decision. Our recommendation is not to go below 2 for the bond issuance that we're going to do. Our recommendation is between 2 and 5, but staff has agreed that if you want to amend it to 4, preference still being 5, but the range is between 2 and 4. As I understand it, it's an option. The recommendation was between 2 and 5. And so that's – I think, you know, it's up to the board. That is a policy decision on which two of those options that you would want to go with. We would still recommend 2 to 5, but it's up to the pleasure of the board. Mr. Campy. Since the original motion doesn't have a second, I'd make a substitute motion that the – for the first agenda item, that the ceiling – that the floor be 2% and the ceiling be 4. Mr. Vargas. Can we revisit this in the future? Let's say next year, three years from now? Yes, we can. Okay. So it's flexible. Absolutely. Okay. Well, that's important because we don't want to be hemmed in. Either way – If we have an issue where the rate index we've chosen is not matching our needs, we're going to come back to the board. If there are circumstances that we've got some additional expenditures, we need to revisit those rates. We'll do that on an annual basis. We do that consistently each year, but we can come back to the board and let you know exactly what that rate adjustment is. Okay. Well, with new development, you may have more than what you're anticipating at this point, so you may be able to move it down also. Think about that. Mr. Campy. I will second Commissioner Campy's motion. There's a motion and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? That motion passes unanimously. That's for – and then the second one is for the capital charge. Madam Chair, I would make a motion that we accept the staff's recommendation of the increases as presented with the caveat that any residents that is within the conversion – Sepulch to sewer conversion program be grandfathered in at the original rate. Second. There's a motion and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? That motion passes unanimously. Now we will move on to – Gentlemen, thank you for your work. Thank you. Thank you. And ladies. It's the next one. Oh, there we are. It's been an hour and 40 minutes. Department 5, okay. Oh, no, the revenue – Yeah, that's right. Department 5. Yeah, 5, that's right. I'm sorry. You're right. Department 5 is adoption of a resolution for issuance of utilities system revenue bonds series 2026A and for refunding revenue bonds series 2026B to refund revenue bonds series 2026A. Ms. Murley. Good afternoon, Commissioner. Stephanie Murley, the Director of Office of Management and Budget, here today with Jay Glover of PFM, our municipal advisor. We also have Chris Rowe with our bond council today. This is also part of the utilities discussion, and Jeremy Covey and Sam Amberson will talk to the project later, but I'm going to give a little brief overview, and then I'm going to hand it off to the utilities experts. I'm just the money person. So today's item requests authorization to issue a not-to-exceed amount of $60 million in utility system revenue bonds to fund necessary capital improvements and capacity expansions at our water treatment plants, specifically for our north water treatment plant and our tropical farms water treatment plan for concurrency needs in accordance with our comprehensive plan. From a budget perspective, financing these improvements allows us to spread the cost over the useful life of the infrastructure rather than placing the full financial burden on current taxpayers. It also provides more predictable annual debt service for budgeting and long-term fiscal planning needs. The resolution that is included in this item also authorizes refinancing of up to $20 million in existing utility debt, but that's only if market conditions allow us to achieve at least 3% in net present value savings. The county currently maintains strong AA-plus credit ratings from both S&P and Fitch, reflecting the financial strength in the management of our utility system, as was mentioned in the previous item. If approved today, the bonds are scheduled for competitive sale on November 10th, with closing anticipated on December 4th or thereabouts. And ultimately, this financing provides a structured approach to funding necessary infrastructure while maintaining the long-term financial obligations of the utility system. And I'll also mention that this is in line with our fiscal policy that is award-winning. And so with that, I'm going to turn it over to Jay Glover to talk a little bit about the actual utility system revenue bonds. Thanks, Stephanie. Madam Chair, Commission members, Jay Glover from PFM Financial Advisors. We are the county's municipal advisor. So when it comes to financing capital projects, we work with your staff to determine the most cost-effective way to do that to maintain the strong credit ratings and everything you all just talked about in terms of the rates. So I just want to revisit why we would potentially finance capital projects like this. Obviously, they're large in nature. We've talked about inflation. The cost of project continues to go up. And you really can't build that amount of funding into an annual budget to build a $55 million expansion to your plant. Again, inflation, as you do try to, you know, build up money to potentially pay-go projects like this, the cost just keeps increasing, and you never really catch up with that. And perhaps most importantly is the ratepayer equity concept that Stephanie just mentioned. This asset is going to have a useful life in excess of 30 years. We're talking about financing over a very conservative 20-year period. So the ratepayers over the next 20 years are going to help pay for the cost of that. If you tried to pay for it up front, you would obviously be looking at much more than the 2% to 4% annual rate increases you all just talked about. So it's very common for local governments to fund large capital projects like this with debt. And many of your county and city colleagues around the state are doing financings very similar to this. And quite frankly, most of them are much larger than what you are doing right here. In terms of a brief overview, as was mentioned, is my microphone coming in and out? Is it just me or is it the microphone? You. Am I not kidding? I mean, I guess you've got to really bear into it, right? And you're absolutely perfect. Okay, perfect. Is it getting dimmer and brighter in here as well? Yeah. Sorry, Jay. Sorry. Again, I think Stephanie mentioned this, but we're looking to finance around $55 million worth of capital projects really related to the water system. Those are increases in capacity of your north water treatment plan of about 0.5 MGD as well as 4.6 MGD, the tropical farms water treatment plan. And again, these are all consistent with your comprehensive growth management plan. It was also mentioned that we have built in the flexibility within this bond resolution to do a refinancing of existing debt, your outstanding 2016 A bonds, which are actually the only debt outstanding you have on a senior lien basis on the system. You have other subordinate lien, SRF debt and things, but that's the only other senior lien debt that you all have outstanding. There's a parameter within the bond resolution that requires 3% net present value savings when compared to the refunded bonds par amount. We can only move forward if that's the case. I will tell you that as we sit here today, we are slightly less than that savings parameter. We're at about 2% savings right now. So at this point, we're not planning on including the refunding transaction. But having said that, if rates do improve over the next 2, 3, 4, 6 months, we maintain the ability to do that as long as we can meet the 3% savings parameter in the future. And so that will remain on the plate, and we can move forward once we can meet that savings parameter via a separate transaction if that's the desire to do so. We talked a lot about credit ratings as part of the rate-making process, and I will agree wholeheartedly that doing indexing and annual rate increases are very important from a financing perspective, the capital markets and the rating agencies want to know that there will be rates in place to not only support your ongoing operations, but also cover the debt service on the bonds that are being issued. So as part of this process, we actually are seeking updates to your underlying credit ratings from S&P and Fitch. We've already had calls with each of those, which included your staff, staff from the clerk's office and utility system, where we addressed a bunch of questions. We actually will be getting the actual ratings back at the end of this week or early next week, but we fully expect to maintain the AA-plus stable outlook from both S&P and Fitch. And again, here, you can see the reason why you have those strong ratings, very strong debt service coverage. And again, these are not my thoughts. These are things that were in the S&P report most recently done in February of this year. Combined rates that are very manageable from a rate-payer perspective. Even with the increases we're talking about approving today. And you also have good operational and fiscal policies in place. So very complementary in terms of a third-party rating agency coming and looking at your utility system and its financial sufficiency. Again, just to revisit, resolutions before you have certain parameters within that must be met before we move forward. Most importantly, a not-to-exceed-par amount of $60 million for the new money portion. We're planning to finance this over a 20-year period with level debt service. Again, very conservative. Many local governments will fund assets like this over a 30-year period, which would lower the annual cost, but does generate much more interest cost over time and higher cost over time. So that's very conservative. The true interest cost parameter within the resolution is 5.25%. When we put this presentation together, we were about 4.75%. Today, we're looking at about 4.5%. So just in terms of the market, we did see a run-up in interest rates over the last, say, 30 to 60 days. But over the last two weeks, we've actually seen some substantial improvement and kind of clawed back some of that. So again, we're hoping to lock in a cost on a fixed rate basis for 20 years of 4.5%. The bonds will also be callable after 10 years, which is pretty standard. So if we're in a lower interest rate environment at the 10-year mark, we could potentially refinance these just like we're potentially doing with your 2016-A bonds because we're now at that 10-year call period. In terms of the refunding, I think I mentioned this, $20 million not-to-exceed amount. That term would only be a nine-year financing because it matches the term of the bonds we're refunding. We're not extending the maturity. You would just lower the debt service on a match maturity basis. And again, we have to meet at least 3% net present value debt service savings, which is what GFOA recommends in terms of moving forward with the refunding. And then the final slide here just talks about the schedule moving forward. We're obviously here today for you all to consider approval of the bond resolution. If approved, we'll be receiving the ratings from S&P and Fitch. As I mentioned, we will do a competitive bond sale on November 10th. And with a competitive bond sale, we advertise to the marketplace that the county is accepting bids to buy the bonds. Any investment banking financial institution can submit a bid. And it's awarded to the firm that is offering the lowest true interest cost. So it's the best way to lock in the lowest cost possible for the county on the day of the bids. And then if all goes as planned, we would be closing on December the 4th. And that's when you all would have money in hand to start spending on the capital project. And that concludes my presentation. And I'm happy to address any questions you all might have about the financing process. Questions for Mr. Glover. I don't see any. Next. So this is as I'm going to invite Jeremy Covey up just to talk a little bit about the improvements that are going to be done with this project. But these were projects that have been contained within your 10-year capital improvement plan with the anticipation of debt issuance in order to complete them. But I'm going to let Jeremy talk about the expansions. For the record, Jeremy Covey, Deputy Director, Utilities and Solid Waste. The two plant expansions this bond is going to pay for, one at Tropical Farms and one at Jensen Beach. At Tropical Farms, our current rating there is 10.7 MGD. We plan an additional 4.6 million gallons a day. At Jensen Beach, we're currently rated at 8.8 million gallons with an additional 0.5 MGD uprating planned. The main driver between both these projects is our comp plan. Our comp plan in Section 11, the design of these improvements need to start at 80% capacity. The actual construction is required to start at 90% capacity. And then additional reservations will be made after 100% capacity. Currently, we are at 85% capacity. And our best estimate is we'll be at 90% within two years and 100% within four years. So meaning after four years, we will no longer be able to reserve any capacity for future developments. In this project, construction, the Tropical Farms is roughly a three-year construction period. And at the North Plant, it's roughly a two-year construction period. Questions? Commissioner Camps. So when you expand capacity at a water plant, what are you building? So at Tropical Farms is an easy one. Basically, we are taking one side of the building out, blowing it out, and putting two treatment trains. We currently have four treatment trains there. So we're adding an additional one. They're each rated at 2.3 million gallons. And then additional storage on site and additional pumping and chemicals. Are those those big round things? The big round things are the storage tanks. Is that what you're building? We're building a 5 million gallon storage tank. You're building like one new big one at each place? At Tropical, we are putting a 5 million gallon tank, yes, correct. At the North Plant, it is more utilizing existing assets and operating pumps and chemical systems. Thank you. Any further questions? Is there a motion to approve staff's recommendation? Yes, there is. I would make a motion to approve staff's recommendation. Thank you. There's a motion and a second to all those in favor. Aye. Aye. Opposed? That motion passes unanimously. Thank you. Now, do we need to sign papers? No. Do that one. Just for the bond. No. No? Not today. We don't need to? No. Never mind. Okay. Good. Not today. Thank you. Thank you. We will now move on to, let me see, DPQJ1, which is a request for a major final site plan approval for Martin County Operations Facility. Mr. Elam. I like who the owner is. This is quasi-judicial. Commissioner Vargas, any ex parte disclosures? I have none and that report's been filed. Mr. Kapps. If I have any, they have been filed. If I have any, they've been filed. Commissioner Campy. Don Donaldson tried to speak to me, but I refused. Yeah, I do. I have none and that's been filed. And Commissioner Hetherington. If any, they've been filed. Mr. Elam, have you provided all of your essential materials to the clerk? It's a copy of my work history in the agenda item for Exhibit 1. Anyone who's going to be providing sworn testimony, please stand, raise your right hand, and be sworn in. Do you swear or affirm the evidence you're about to give will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so I'll help you God. Mr. Elam. Thank you, Madam Chair. Good afternoon, Commissioners. For the record, Brian Elam, Principal Planner with the Growth Management Department. This is a request by Schmidt-Nichols on behalf of Martin County for major site plan approval to construct a new Martin County Operations Facility. Proposed construction includes a one-story principal building of approximately 111,650 square feet, accessory structures, and related infrastructure on an approximate 29.8-acre undeveloped lot. The subject site is located west of Southwest Canter Highway and north of Southwest Waterside Way at 2251 Southwest Canter Highway in Stewart. The site has an industrial future land use in the Zone GI General Industrial District. The property is within a freestanding urban services district serviced by Martin County Utilities. Pursuant to Section 255.065 of the Florida Statutes, the county entered into a comprehensive development agreement with Building Tomorrow's Infrastructure, Incorporated, for a project generally described as a public-private partnership to build the new Martin County Operations Facility. Resolution 26-4.14 approved the comprehensive development agreement on April 21, 2026. The comprehensive development agreement delivers a turnkey facility. Structural design of the building shell consists of tilt-up concrete panels rated for 180 miles per hour wind, resistance and hurricane-rated exterior openings including windows, pedestrian doors, awnings, covered areas, and overhead doors with rated hardware and seals, as well as a 20-year bonded roofing system. The project includes all utility mechanical, electrical, and plumbing systems, fire sprinklers, access management, surveillance, chillers, backup generators, and associated fuel dispensing and monitoring systems. All interior furniture, fixtures, and equipment are provided. A bi-directional amplifier and distributed antenna system is included in the design to guarantee first responders can maintain two-way radio communication. Primary access to the site is proposed through median openings on Southwest Waterside Way. Staff and visitor parking will be provided off the main entry points. The Martin County Operations Facility supports the co-location of Martin County Environmental Resources, Mosquito Control, Field Operations, Parks and Recreation Operations, General Services, and Vehicular Maintenance Departments. So here's sheet one of the final site plan. The first entrance to the facility is the easternmost, which allows vehicles to enter in here to a gated access, which gives them access to the rear of the facility. Vehicles may enter through this and exit out the westernmost access, gated access over here. There is another access relatively centered on the main building entrance for employee parking. There's a ten-foot landscape buffer around the west, north, and east sides with a six-foot wall. And along the frontage for Southwest Waterside Way, there's also a six-foot wall on top of a three-foot earthen berm. Landscape plantings include 98% of native trees and 94% of shrubs and ground covers. Just the next couple slides are just some renderings to give you a little bit of a look and feel for the color and palette for this building. That's an aerial view of it. So development review staff have found the Martin County final site plan application to comply with all applicable regulations in the Comprehensive Growth Management Plan as detailed in the staff report. And staff recommends approval of the request by Schmidt-Nichols on behalf of Martin County Board of County Commissioners for major site plan approval to construct a new Martin County operations facility. We move that the board receive and file the agenda item and all its attachments, including the staff report, as Exhibit 1. We move that the board adopt the resolution approving the final site plan for Martin County operations facility project. That concludes my presentation. We have to answer any questions. Questions for Mr. Elam. Commissioner Capps. Can you go back to the picture of the site plan, like that had the building on it and everything? Yeah, that. So maybe show us where the big building is and then show us where the accessory buildings are. So here's the main building here, like that. There's a mosquito building and pesticide building. This is just the chiller. I think there's some covered areas also. I don't know that the covered areas are actually shown here. Canopy with loading. So in addition to accessory buildings, what would be some of the other big tickets that go into this final site plan as far as cost that go beyond the price of a building? Like you mentioned a wall. Show us where the wall is again. Here comes the future building. So the wall is represented, I wish this were clear, but by this dashed, this line here, so this outer one. So that goes all the way around basically the entire property, except for, of course, where the entrances are. It goes all the way around. So all along the frontage here is a three-foot high wall. I'm sorry, six-foot high wall on top of a three-foot earthen berm. Give you a landscaping buffer. And all around, continuing around the rest of the property on all the other sides, that wall continues. Okay. So we talked about a wall, a berm, accessory buildings. How about asphalt? Like how much asphalt goes into this site, and where would that be, parking? So Sean Donahue, General Services Director. I can provide a little bit more clarity to the site design and some of the improvements. So on the western side, we have about a five-acre lake, and then there's a lot of dry detention area all the way around the perimeter of the site. Parking lot is up front. I think there's a couple acres of parking, roughly 200, 250 parking spots. The main building, this side over here, is the vehicle maintenance area, general services, general services work areas. This is kind of a collaborative area of conference rooms, the break room, the restrooms, the locker rooms, all centered on the building. Up here in this corner, or this quadrant, is the public works, mosquito control, field ops, signage, traffic. And then over on this left-hand side, the western side, is all parks and rec, parks and rec field ops. Over here, we have the fuel depot, basically, the fuel service stations, with gas and diesel. We have the central energy plant, or the chiller plant, which also has the emergency backup generators. That's about 3,000 square feet. The center building is the pesticide storage area for mosquito control, so we isolated that far away from the building. We have some other uses. This is all vehicle or field ops work area, where we have soil storage bins, where they store the utility poles, culverts, bases, or base, sands, soils, things like that, vegetation, is all in this area. So the entire site is basically 25 acres of work area, with some up-front parking. We do meet, you know, all the code requirements. In fact, we tried to exceed a lot of the code requirements in landscaping and vegetation to try to make a model site. So I'll stop there if there's any more questions on details. There's a lot more here than a building. Correct. You know. Yeah. It's a large workspace, essentially. Thank you. You're welcome. Mr. Keepe. Did you leave yourselves enough space for future expansion of the building and or the site? You're basically shoehorned into the site. You have nothing extra. You have neighbors on all sides, correct? Correct. Because the next time you'll have an opportunity to do this will be America's tricentennial. Right. So I see it looks like you're maximizing the whole project. Is there a little buffer? We can more efficiently use spaces. We could always add on to the building down the road if needed. There is room. These are large work areas that the building could be expanded in several places. We didn't want to go too far with it. Administration can go up even, right? Yeah. It could go vertical if needed. It was designed for expansion in the near future, too. Thank you. Are you looking for activity? I would make a motion to accept staff's recommendation. I know this has been a project that's been in the works for probably 30 years. It's long overdue. I know it's been a bit controversial in the beginning of its life cycle, but I think the residents will hopefully see an impact in efficiency and cost savings across when we take all of our departments that are far flung all over the county in all sorts of different older buildings. When we get off the airport property, this will solve a lot of ongoing issues and be something. And I like the fact that you said it was sort of designed to be sort of a model project. I think if we are the county, we should be setting the example of what we would expect of our private sector developers. So I'm happy that it's being done at that high level. Commissioner Vargas. You know, talk about expenses not being audited. We should always get three bids. We only have one bid. You know, there were no plans to say this is what this project should cost by talking with other companies in this county. This developer is in Palm Beach County. You know, there should be no debt issued now obligating the taxpayers for paying bond debt. There should be none. And we don't have the money now. We didn't have it then. And all these years, the commission, those who were on here before, and management knew about a desire for a new facility and didn't have enough business sense to begin putting monies in a sinking fund or reserve fund for a future facility. This is a bad deal for Martin County. This is a bad deal. There is no transparency. I asked the question, who is getting paid on this deal? And I never got an answer on that. And I'm going to leave that out there so people can hear my voice again. I cannot and will not support this project. We should instead be taking out a long-term lease to meet the needs for the operations facility and see as we move further down. But this is not the time to be putting money out. And, you know, you talk about those that talk about a few dollars and they step over a million dollars. Makes no sense whatsoever. I will not vote for this at all. There is one request to speak form I have, and that's from Lauren Hollander. Thank you for sticking with us all day. Good evening. Well, no, afternoon. Commissioners, city manager, employees, staff, support. We've been collaboratively working with your team now for the last six months. And they've done a phenomenal job in advancing exactly what the initiatives and the objectives were, as well as being very scrupulous as it relates to trying to make certain that they were as concise as possible and had opportunities to save and collaborate with the other departments in any opportunities that were presented. So I just want to let you know it's been a phenomenal experience and just want to let you know we appreciate the opportunity to work with you. Thank you. Thank you. Would anyone else from the public like to address us? I think this is a terrific project. It's going to make our county safer. It's going to make our employees safer. This building is hardened. It's where the public works people, the people who respond to emergencies will be housed and their accommodations for them in case of some emergency, which is just terrific. I think that staff has done a wonderful job. I think that the contract that we've signed with the contractor is a very beneficial one to Martin County. Our budget department did a terrific job of pulling this together. So I think it's a terrific project. I'm just, I'm nosy. There's a chicken coop on the project. Tell me about that. You can take that one. What? Please. I could answer that one, but I'll let Jim do it. Jim Gorton, public works director. So, yeah, we have a sentinel chicken program where we put chickens in coops throughout the county to track mosquito-borne illnesses. So we need to have a coop on site with chickens that can't be exposed to disease. So that's what we do is we rear them and keep them there, and then we deploy them to different coops throughout the county so we can monitor. Where's our chicken coop now? Right now it's at the field operations complex on the airport. Another reason that we can't get away from that airport fast enough. Well, chickens, some of them are aviation-related. I do have wings. Any further questions or comments? Commissioner Capps. Move approval. You already did that. Oh, you did. I'm sorry. Second. There's a motion. I'm hoping for a unanimous on this one. There's a motion and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Opposed? Opposed. That motion passes four to one with Commissioner Vargas dissenting. Very exciting day. Thank you very much. Ellie's back. I'm back. We will take up Department 1, Office of Management and Budget items, which require board approval. Good afternoon, Commissioner. Stephanie Murley, Director of OMB, here to present to you four items on OMB, even though I can't beat chicken deployments. So, item number one is permission to accept the State of Florida Department of Transportation or FDOT Public Transportation Grant Agreement for rural areas for fiscal year 27. This is permission to accept for our Transit Department an award of $126,215 to provide operating assistance to Martin County for the rural area that serves the village of Indiantown. There is a local grant match that is budgeted in the transit budget of approximately $126,215. Item number two is a permission to accept the Florida Power and Light FPL Fiscal Year 27-28 Radiological Emergency Preparedness or the REP Agreement. This is funding that we get annually from FPL in the amount of $811,699 for the salaries, planning, equipment, and training to enhance Martin County's Radiological Emergency Management Program to effectively respond to and recover from any radiological emergencies. There is no cash match required for this. Item number three is a permission to accept the Fiscal Year 26-27 Children's Services Council Grant Program for the After-School Out-of-School Program Grant. This is an annual grant that our Parks and Recreation Department receives from our Children's Services Council, which is a local partner. We are being awarded $427,715 for funding that pays for the staff, maintenance, supplies, and programming at various after-school and out-of-school facilities in the Parks and Recreation Department. These programs are essential to the growth and development of the Martin County youth. The after-school, out-of-school programs have been serving our youth since 1994 from the Children's Services Council. There is a grant match of approximately $581,699, which is budgeted within our Parks and Recreation Operating Budget and adopted with FY27. And last but not least is Mosquito Control is requesting execution of the annual certified budget for arthropod control. On July 20th, the Board of County Commissioners approved the tentative annual detailed work plan budget at the budget workshop. And this is just a request to certify those annual budgets for arthropod control and the detailed work plan budget to the state in order to receive those grant funds. And that's all I have today. Questions from Ms. Murley. Commissioner Capps. On number three, about the Children's Services Council? Yes. I don't know about other commissioners, but I would love to hear more about what we're investing in with Children's Services. I haven't heard a whole lot about that because I don't serve on that particular board, but I don't know if we could ever have. Is there a time at which we hear from them like every year or something or to get more familiar with all the good things that they do? Yes. So we can ask them to come in and make a brief presentation. Like if they do it on a regular basis, don't make them come in just for something special, but I'd be interested in learning more. Everyone would be interested. And Commissioner Capps, they are another considered a local taxing authority for Martin County here. And so we are a local partner. All of their funding is derived through ad valorem property taxes. So with Amendment 3 passing, there may be a change in the level of service regarding these youth programs going forward. Yeah. They're set to lose, if Amendment 3 is successful, I think $1.2 million in the first year and double that in the second year. And bets are all off in the third year. Most of them. Is there a motion to approve Department 1? Move approval of Departmental No. 1. Second. There's a motion and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? That motion passes unanimously. I see Mr. Gordon. This is out of order. How's flooding today? He had a full head of hair. So today's is slightly better than yesterday, but still what we're dealing with is it's actually raining today. So yesterday was blue sky flooding. Today is a combination of rain, which hasn't been that intense yet, but we will get some rain this evening. But both of them are king tide. It's our highest king tide of the year. But on top of that king tide, we also have a northeast wind that's blowing a lot of water in. So we have an extra six inches of water on top of that king tide right now. So it's by far the highest levels we've seen that aren't related to a hurricane. And it's the highest king tide that we've seen as well. So the combination of the two has flooding on a number of county roads. And so we're out monitoring that, documenting the high water marks so we can start designing solutions to some of them. A lot of the projects, we already have solutions in the works. So we're at 90% design in the Dire Point Lighthouse Point neighborhood, which is one of the most impacted. So we're really close on that one to be able to implement a solution. But on the other ones that aren't as far along, we are documenting so that we can use those high water marks as a design tool to make sure we implement a good solution. How's MacArthur Boulevard? MacArthur Boulevard. So we're having waves. So on top of the exceptionally high king tides, we also have waves that are over 10 foot today. So the waves are actually running up over the dunes and going across MacArthur Boulevard. So starting on Sunday, we started cleaning the road twice a day because there's seaweed and sand and debris in the road. So the road is sound. It's not being undercut or anything. The two low areas already have walls. The walls that we built at Bathtub Beach are doing great, holding it up fine. Sand is moving around all over on Hutchinson Island and Jupiter Island right now. So very erosive. With the combination of king tides and big waves, we have a lot of sand moving around right now. So some of them, some of the beaches are actually getting sand and some of the beaches are losing sand right now. And it looks like Sewell's Point is, I don't know which is worse, the northern portion of the peninsula or the southern portion? Yeah, North Sewell's Point Road and South Sewell's Point Road, both flooded. We've been in discussions with the town. It's difficult because you can't pump tidal flooding. If it's a rainwater, you can pump that off. But with tidal flooding, if we pump it into the river, it's just staying at the same level. Commissioner Capps. Yes. Yesterday, I went to the luncheon for the Business Development Board on Hutchinson Island, Hutchinson Shores. And as I was proceeding over the two bridges, I looked to the South Sewell's Point Road. And I couldn't believe it. It was like a lake in front of Town Hall and stuff. But then after the luncheon on the way home, I took a look at the same area, and the water was all gone. So I guess that's the effect of a king tide, right? The water is actually receding back into the river. Yeah, yesterday, the high tide in Sewell's Point was around 1030-ish. So you would have seen it almost at its worst as you were going. And when you came back, it would have had a couple hours to recede. And then during the day when we have king tides, those are the highest high tides of the day. And then at night, it was running about four to six inches lower. Yeah, I'm not speaking of – I didn't go down South Sewell's Point Road. I would just – I just took a gander, like, on East Ocean Boulevard, looking down and in the area of Town Hall. The water was there when I went by the first time. And when I went by the second time, it seemed to have been pretty much gone. Tidal, yeah. How's erosion with the winds? So erosion – Indian River Drive north, north of the causeway, we've got some pretty significant erosion. We had some crews out working on that this morning. And then erosion on the beach is pretty significant. So we're documenting those. We've got some drone survey that's going on once the winds die down. Probably Friday is the first day that we think the wind might be low enough. Yeah, it looks like the winds will die down a bit by the weekend, on the weekend. Yep. Thank you. You're welcome. Take up. A request – Department 3, request for approval of voluntary early separation incentive program. Ms. Diane. Good afternoon, Commissioners. Heather Diane, Director of HR Risk Management. The item that we have before you this afternoon is a request for board approval for a voluntary early separation incentive program. Or what we call V-SIP, which is designed to provide eligible employees with the opportunity to voluntarily separate from county employment. Under the proposed program, eligible employees who voluntarily elect to participate will receive two weeks of their base pay for every year of full-time service, up to a maximum of 20 weeks. And continuation of the county health insurance for up to 20 weeks. While we understand there will be initial costs associated with this incentive, the objective is to achieve long-term financial efficiencies. As the employees voluntarily separate, the county has the opportunity to evaluate the vacated position to determine if we want to eliminate it, if we want to leave it vacant, or we can restructure it to better meet our operational needs. Staff is also requesting that the board delegate authority to the county administrator to offer V-SIP at his discretion when operationally necessary. In closing, staff is requesting the board approve a voluntary early separation incentive program to offer to all eligible county employees. And two, move that the board delegate authority to the county administrator to offer a voluntary early separation program as operational circumstances arise without the need to obtain separate board approval to each individual offering, provided that any such offering shall not exceed two weeks of pay at the employee's current base rate of pay, not to exceed a maximum of pay, not to exceed a maximum of 20 weeks, consistent with Florida statute, and up to 20 weeks of health insurance benefits. And that concludes my presentation. I'm happy to answer any questions you may have. Questions for Ms. Diane. Commissioner Canty. No, not yet. Commissioner Vargas. So, this is 20 weeks. Up to 20 weeks. Up to 20, depending on how many years. Correct. Which is five months, which is very generous. And then two weeks for every year, up to 20 weeks. Up to 20 weeks, correct. That's what I'm understanding. So, when you say that the county administrator would be the sole decision maker on this, wouldn't it be a grouping of people that have a certain period of time to make a decision? What is the period of time? So, we would advertise to all county employees. And we don't have any parameters in place for this, for a visa at this point, meaning how many years of service they would be eligible to participate. But we would advertise out to all employees. And we are required to put it out there at least 45 days. So, we would, that would tie it to the timeline to offer it to all employees. They would have a specific amount of time to apply for the program. And then they would have a certain deadline in which they have to terminate their employment. Okay. So, back to what you said about 45 days. So, you put the plan out there. The employee has 45 days to make a decision? Correct. Is that what I'm understanding? Mm-hmm. At least 45 days. Okay. All right. That's quite a long time also to make a decision. Okay. And then how many years minimum for somebody to make application working with the county? So, we don't have any of that determined at this time. Okay. Because I think that's really important also to put that in place. Mr. Campy. Thank you. I agree with my colleague, Commissioner Vargas, that minimum years of service would be appropriate. Otherwise, someone could be here two years and get, you know, a paid vacation and depart. Mm-hmm. That would be first. And secondly, I think that there – I was here when we did it in 2009. We did it in a couple of different phases, but I think there needs to be a start date and an end date. I think where we are in the year, I think if people had to make the determination to depart before the end of the year, it might – I know we're not a calendar year fiscal, but everything else is a calendar year. So, maybe if you created a plan that they had to be gone before – they'd have to finalize their employment before the end of the year, it might make for a cleaner break. I think maybe five years of service before you're eligible. I remember it was 10 last time? We've done as many as six, as little as three. Three years? Mm-hmm. So. And then the 20 weeks, I think that was – that's more than we did last time. I think we stopped – do you – did you look back at the records from back then? Yeah, so we ran the program in 2020 and as well as in 2021, and it was up to the 20 weeks. No, I'm talking about like in 2009 when we did it during the Great Recession. I don't know if we did up to the 20 weeks at that point, but I can find out for you. Yeah, I just – I – the concept of sort of pruning the branches of the organizational tree, I get. Last time I think it was a very effective program for us. It allowed the folks to leave that were interested in leaving but just needed to push, whether it was, you know, they were at the end of their careers or they were frustrated being here. I like a voluntary separation versus a layoff program because sometimes you're laying off the people that would have, you know, stayed and done a remarkably great job, continued to for their whole careers versus, you know, trying to have management pick and choose who should go and who should stay. I think the program in itself is fair and generous. 20 weeks, 20 weeks, potentially, is a lot. I would hear from my colleagues if we could – I don't know, like, if I was interested in departing, if I'm an employee in the building for 8, 9, 10 years and I was interested in trying something else or moving to be closer to family somewhere else and I just sort of, like, got into the routine of working and this came up. I don't know if I was giving someone 15 weeks versus 20 if someone would be like, well, I'm not going to go if it's 15 versus I would at 20. So maybe I would make a suggestion that we shave it. I'm more interested in the five years, too. I mean, I'm fine with the 15, but I'm – five years of service I think should be the minimum. Mr. Vargas. Okay, I have another question, Ms. Diane. Is this mandated by the state 20 weeks and two weeks for up to 20 weeks? Yes, it's statute. It is mandated by the state. Okay, and we will not – It's not mandated. Not the program. It's not mandated. It's up to 20 weeks. It's voluntary. It's not mandated. But you cannot go higher than 20 weeks. Sure, sure, sure. But the state didn't say, well – because corporations don't give you 20 weeks. They just don't – and they usually make a cut at the end of the year, by December 31st. It's a cleaner cut. So my question is, where did the 20 weeks come from, two weeks for up to 20 weeks? Where did that come from? So it's per Florida statute, if we were to offer an incentive program, that there is a maximum of up to 20 weeks? Okay, is there a minimum? That's my question. No. Because this is extremely generous, and we're in, you know, cost-cutting phase right now. I don't know if the message has gotten out there. Two weeks for every year, and I understand up to 20 weeks, and up to 20 weeks. But corporations aren't going to give you five months, you know, to stay on the health plan, nor for salary. They just don't do that. We have to be running more lean and more like a corporation. You don't produce anything. We don't give – you know what I'm saying? We are not – we just go to the taxpayer and ask for more money, and I said that before. So, you know, a minimum – I'm okay with the five years of service, 45 days to make a decision, either you're going to do it or not. Now, this is – if you want to take this offer now and later on, this offer is off the table. The 45 days is required by law. That's fine. So the 45 days – that's fine, but it doesn't go on forever. Okay. And then we talked about the five years, so I'm okay with that. But this other here, about 20 weeks, that's five months. And the other one is up to 20 weeks, you know, two weeks for – I mean, this is extremely – we need to look at this very carefully, very carefully. And the other thing is, if Mr. Donaldson accumulates a list of those that want to go, this should come before the board. This is not just your final say, just one person's say. And this is what I see here. It is one person's say, you hire me to manage all the staff, and that is the requirement. I – I – you're – I'm responsible to you all, as Ms. Elder is, and so in terms of the hiring of folks or the disposition or disciplinary actions that are required, that is under – that is under my purview and is part of the statutory requirements by which a county administrator operates. So bringing a list of people for the board to approve or not approve is – it's unnecessary because it is – it is – that is what you ask your administrator to do, is to manage the folks. Keep in mind that this – the purpose of this is that, you know, the county – we're not in a recession or – but we do know that there's a potential for a change in the structure of how government is going to be funded. And the purpose of this is so that for the next budget year, we are fully funded for this year as we try to transition and restructure – potentially restructure the county staffing throughout the organization to meet the new funding issues is to do it in a – in the most responsible way we can. So we're – we're dealing with vacancies, certainly under – as we look at what services that the board wants to provide and at what level, the – the answer to those results in the – in the restructuring of your organization. Those that are no longer where we have – if we have to reduce services, positions will be eliminated. The visa provides an opportunity for positions that do become vacant to either be reassigned to the area where they're needed or – and others to be eliminated. You know, so that's – the purpose of this is not because we are having less needs of providing the services we do. It's just that we are going to be restructuring the services that we do provide, and there will be a requirement potentially to reduce the number of FTEs that we have. And so that's the purpose of the voluntary separation agreement. Folks will be looking to potentially go work somewhere else or – and then health insurance is probably one of the bigger components of what most people need in terms of – as they're transitioning from one place to another. So – so the health insurance is an important piece and an opportunity for them to seek employment elsewhere. And so it is voluntary. The non-voluntary portion is – comes at the end of the year. So obviously this would all need to be done prior to our ability to make decisions in July when you have your budget hearings, and then ultimately for a year from now when the next budget cycle starts. So how will we see what – what people have decided to take – take this program? I mean, it seems kind of hidden here, you know, because if you're going to make the decision, how do we know? If we ask. Maybe some of us aren't interested in asking. I'm interested in asking. Well, you've got to remember that this is a fair and equitable process to everybody. Once it's offered, I can't deny people that – it's not an arbitrary decision. So it becomes a more – it's more process-oriented. And the fact that those that are established, there may be people that take this that we don't want to lose, and often is the case. And so the point is, is that it is simply a program to provide additional vacancies so that we can move them around to restructure it based upon the levels – the services that we're going to provide and what level of service we're going to provide in those areas. And so that's the whole purpose of it, is to provide folks a way to transition out to provide us opportunities. And the incentive is, is that it gives them enough time to seek employment elsewhere in the private sector or wherever else they want to go or out of state, if that's what they're doing, while we readjust our government. Okay. But that's not answering the question. If you have three people living from one department, how are we supposed to know what's happening here in the organizational chart? We're not told, or you keep it quiet, or how does this work? So certainly, if the board wants a monthly update on who actually is left, we can provide that list, just like we would be producing a quarterly list of staff members that are on the payroll. In terms of the organizational structure, that is what you would be discussing next July during the budget process in terms of what FTEs are going to be full-time equivalent positions. You approve that each year with your budget, how many positions are in each department, and then what division they're in. Those total number FTEs is all that I have to work with in terms of fulfilling the obligations. That's your opportunity to say that, you know, how many FTEs are we going to approve through the process. In terms of transparency on who takes these and what's happening, I can provide many updates to the board in this session if you want, or answer them individually as I meet with you, you know, during the week, however you all want to do it. But in terms of the management of the staff, that is my responsibility. What positions get refilled and which ones don't would be based upon my communication with you all on the services we're providing. There are some services that are essential, you know, that in that conversation with you all, whether or not we're going to keep them in the future. Okay. Well, I would like more up-to-date reports than in July. I would. Commissioner Capps. I think we have to realize that we have to give a decent incentive or nobody's going to use it. You know, if you shave this thing down real thin, nobody's going to take advantage of it. And at a time when perhaps you need to reduce staff, you're not going to have anybody voluntarily separating because the benefit for doing so is small. And I think you can either get focused on the cost of the program or you can also look at what the county government would be saving by reducing staff from some of the more expensive staff members. You know, like when we talk about 20 weeks, we're talking about somebody who has 10 years or more, right? So those people are going to be higher paid workers, and they would be the ones leaving. And potentially you could bring in some people behind them that perhaps would not cost you as much, younger employees or whatever, or with less experience. So perhaps in some of those cases, replacement people would be less expensive than the people who are leaving. So you're saving there. So you've got to look at that kind of savings as well as what you might be able to shave off of the incentive program. Does that make sense? Mr. Campy. Thank you very much. A couple of things. One, I think as we get closer to Election Day, a lot of people are focusing a tremendous amount of attention on Amendment 3. I think there's really, if you follow the polls, it's really difficult to understand whether it will pass or not. Remember, it's got to meet a 60 percent threshold to pass. But I think whether it passes or not, the message was that governments need to tighten their belts and rein it in. And I think we've been careful to say we're not just going to find substitution ways to make up the financial difference. I think if it were to not pass, I still believe our residents, countywide and statewide, expect us to tighten it up. So let's use the looming gray cloud, potentially, of Amendment 3. If it doesn't pass, it's not happy days are here again. It's a matter of, okay, we've heard what the voters, I think it'll be close, one way or the other. So obviously a large percentage of the residents were looking at us saying, hey, we're giving you our money, what are you doing with it? So this voluntary separation plan is smart, whether Amendment 3 was on the ballot or not. Last time when we did it was the Great Recession, and it was really very much warranted. It was one of our big tools on lowering the budget dramatically, and I think over 100 people took advantage of it in two waves. There was an original wave that people didn't think it was real, and they took it, and then people said, wait a second, I would have taken it. I didn't know, I thought it was a trick, and then we did it again, and then another tranche of people took advantage. And as Mr. Donaldson said, what we said, not we, but collectively, management said, hey, listen, you might want to take this second one, because the third one's going to be mandatory. It's not going to be voluntary. To make sure that we right-sided our organization, to Commissioner Kapp's point, sometimes, yes, if someone vacates, a senior member vacates a position that becomes open, we'd have to understand then that whoever would come to fill that position, there's a pay structure. There's a pay rate structure that they don't automatically just say, I have the position. The last guy made 90, I get 90, so that's an HR kind of thing with administration, which I trust you all to do. I think it also, Mr. Donaldson and I spoke during the budget time, the easiest way to really show dramatic decrease in budget is if there are vacant positions that are being maintained, can't they be eliminated? And if there are positions where a whole bunch of people came out of one department, if there was another department where some of those people were not necessary, you could say, look, these positions are available. Your current position might disappear. But if you're willing to train into another position that we need to keep, you can maintain your employment with the county if you're willing to be a little more adaptable versus we send you on your way. To make a motion and bring this conversation in, I would make a motion that we do for eligible employees have to have at least a minimum of five years with the county and that we could do 16 weeks of, up to 16 weeks of severance, but maintaining, are you, can you do health? Can you do medical insurance if it's not coordinated? Do they have to be hand in hand? No, you could do 16 weeks of... 16 and 20? 20, yes. I would do 16 and 20. Are you okay with that, Mr. Graham? I see you standing up. 16 and 20? Good afternoon, Commissioners. Matt Graham, Assistant County Administrator. So just to clarify, so if we're doing up to 16 weeks, we started with five years of experience, and for every year of experience, I get two years. So would that still remain with the two weeks of pay for each year of service? So if you were the first eligible person, at five years, you'd get 10 weeks. Right. And so to get to 16, it would only mean people that were with the county eight years. Now, if you were with the county for 10 years, you still might want 16 weeks of pay and move on versus no weeks of pay. So that would be the first round. And if Commissioner Kapp's point, if no one seems to take it, then we can visit this again. I would leave the 20 weeks of insurance because a lot of companies have a transitional period. So even if you were to leave here and go somewhere else, quite often there's a 90-day window before you'd be eligible for benefits at another company a lot, as well as the fact that by the time you transitioned into a new job, that could be four to five months to do that. And I think a lot of people, you know, the cash is a potential double dip, you know, like a windfall to depart. That's the advantage of this, but I think more people would be leery to leave, especially considering Martin County has a good health insurance plan. I think if you maintain that, it's less expensive than writing checks to insure someone. So I would do a five-year minimum, 16 weeks of pay with 20 weeks of benefits, as a suggestion to my colleagues, as a motion. The health insurance is, can we change that figure? That's five months. No company gives five months. Well, yeah, it is, especially today. Yeah, I've been in corporate and so has my husband. Not five months. Well, they can go on COBRA. I mean, you know, that's something different. So is that movable? Because that's very expensive to us. I got, I have the figures as to what the broker, the insurance broker, gets paid for every employee as they're covered. And it's substantial. It's up to the board on health insurance and how many weeks of pay. You just can't exceed 20 weeks. I understand that. Okay, we need to look at this again. I would urge the board. I mean, if somebody decides not to take this plan, then it's a second round. I mean, if they have 45 days, it goes until the end of the year. I'll second your motion. Any further discussion? There's a motion and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Opposed. That motion passes 4-1 with Commissioner Vargas dissenting. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. We have reached the end of our agenda. I have one request to speak from the public. Mr. Erler and Dr. Hips, would you like to address us? Okay. Gary Erler, Port Salerno. I promise I'll keep this quick. First thing, the dumps are still in the yard at Manatee Park. The explanation was that due to the construction, they can't move it around. It's been about three months. There's no construction. Dumps are still in the yard. They can move it and get it back. Whatever happened to the $47,000 for the, I guess it's a Dixie Road. It's a Trudge Coast Regional Planning Council study that was done approximately six months ago. Nothing's come back to the, it was supposed to be some outreach and some other things. We haven't heard anything at the Port Salerno NAC. Thank you, Commissioner Campy. I was hearing voices in my head for the sewer assessment from some of the residents. I could hear them already. So thank you for that. And as always, thank you all for your time. Thank you. Have a great day. Thank you. Commissioner Comments. Commissioner Vargas. No, I'm set for today. Commissioner Camps. All set. I'm set. Commissioner Campy. I'd like to just announce that this week on October 30th, which is a Friday evening, not a Saturday evening, we are having music in the park in Palm City on Map Road at the patio at Palm City Place from 6 to 8. We have food trucks and ice cream trucks. It's open, it's a free event open to all ages. I would tell you that the last one that we had, we had over 1,000 people attend. It was absolutely packed. The weather was gorgeous. There were kids and seniors. It was exactly what we would hope it to be. We're hoping to have that same turnout this time. We're having farm funk, which we've had a couple of times. They get tremendous. It's like a five- or six-piece band. They play all sorts of music. You can bring dinner. You can buy food from our food trucks. Or you can purchase food takeout from, like, now Map Road is really Restaurant Road these days. I'd like to welcome Papi Chulo's that opened this week to tremendous success. and all of our other beautiful, fantastic restaurants in Palm City. So I'd welcome everyone to come out this Friday night, not Saturday, from 6 p.m. to 8. Thank you. Thank you. Commissioner Featherington. I would just like to remind residents that you don't have to wait until election day to vote. You can vote now early. Early voting is open until October 31st, 8 to 5 p.m. And there are several locations throughout the county, and you can look those up on martinvotes.org, martinvotes.org. And do we have them on our website as well? Yes. Okay. Martin County Supervisor of Elections. Mr. Donaldson. Just one quick announcement. We do have a contract for our transit operations. It just got executed. And that they will start Paratran operations on Friday, and based upon their bus inspections, it hopefully will start next week with the regular routes again. Fantastic news. Martinvotes.com. Ms. Elder. I have never said. Anyone else? We are adjourned. Good job. Mrs. CIS.com. Thank you.