Good evening. We're going to call this meeting to order, and I'll now do the roll call. Dan Brady, Tom Campenny, Vicki Davis, David Hafner, Beth Kavinsky, John Keller, Merrick Matheson, Scott Turnbull, and Jim Snedeker. Do I have a motion to approve the minutes from the April 16th meeting? So moved. Second. All in favor? All opposed? Okay, they're passed. Do I have a motion to approve the agenda for today's meeting that was sent up previously by Mike Houston? Move approval. Any opposed? Okay. Okay, staff will now update us on the parcels presented during our previous meetings. Mike and staff, could you please do that? Since last meeting was an introductory meeting, we didn't present on any parcels, but we're prepared to bring two parcels for tonight. And I apologize. This is Michael Houston, Senior Project Manager in the Martin County Environmental Resource Division. And, Mike, do you have an estimate as to the tax revenue that's been generated since January 1? We, John, you going to answer that? Yeah. My name's John Mayle, Environmental Resource Administrator. Update today, I think it just updated this morning, actually, so this is fairly new, is $6.6 million collected, and that is through April. There's about a three-month lag in the reporting on that. So it's kind of on course with the projection that the Department of Revenue gave us. Great. Have there been any problems with the computer interface for various stores, et cetera, inputting that data? I mean, is there any glitches? None that I'm aware of, but it's an ongoing thing they do with other optional taxes, so it probably was a simple programming update for them. Yeah. I wouldn't think they had to roll out any new software or anything. Okay. Thank you. So, staff, if you could address those properties that were voted. Actually, you know, we've done that already. That's covered. Next item. The staff and I have drafted the process that I've passed out to the members of the committee. As I've mentioned, this is not cut in stone. It's a working document. So I maintain no pride of authorship. As I've often said to those that I've worked with in the past, I make mistakes. And so if there's anything on these that you feel should be addressed in terms of fine-tuning them, I welcome that feedback. Anything that's sent to me should, if it's ever sent to me, preferably be sent to Mike, who would then send it on. But it should be made very clear that in no way at any time is there any reference to a particular parcel. We want to be sure that we stick to both the spirit and intent of the Sunshine Laws. And I'm going to certainly do that. I know that John and Mike and staff are as firm on that as I am. So that's it on the draft of this format. Staff is now going to review each parcel per the 10 criteria noted in the ELOC project ranking form. Immediately following their presentation, I'll ask the public for comment on that particular parcel. Any comments from the public are to be limited to three minutes. Following this, the ELOC members will discuss and then rank the parcel on a provisional basis. And the reason I say provisional is after we go through all the parcels, especially at the next meeting we're going to have quite a few, you may want to adjust your provisional ranking. Following this, staff will present the next parcel, that is from following the first parcel, and the above process will be repeated. The members will retain each form until after the final presentation is made, and the members have discussed all parcels presented during that meeting, whereupon the members may wish to re-rank their provisional notes. So, staff, could you please present the first parcel? And before I get into the presentation, I did want to mention any feedback in terms of how this process plays out would be appreciated, since this was actually meant to be a dry run. A little bit, you know, even though we are ranking some properties, we want to make sure, you know, that there's no tweaks we can make to the process that would make it more efficient, make it better. If there's any information that you feel you want more of in order to make a more informed decision, that will be helpful. And just, you know, please let us know, and we can have a discussion with that at the end of the meeting today. Thank you, Mike. Do you? Sure. Mike, do you want to give us the score sheets now, so we have them in our hand before the, like, if we want to make, you know, little notes for the presentation? Each of you will get two score sheets. And I'll actually, as part of this presentation, before we get into the actual proposals, I'm going to discuss how they are going to work, so you can kind of see how this will play out and how everything will be scored and tabulated by us. Thank you, Mike. So this is the Environmental Lands Oversight Committee presentation. Today, as I said, we're going to be reviewing two properties for potential acquisition. And this is just a reminder of what our acquisition process is. So it starts with the receipt of a nomination form. Those nomination forms can be filled out by anybody, but they get submitted to our division. We actually have an email address set up, and it's written on the nomination form. It's just landacquisition at martin.fl.us. And once we get that nomination form in, it will be reviewed by staff to make sure it's concurrent with the purpose of the original ordinance that was used for the sales tax, number 1221. And in essence, the things that we're looking at is, one, is it something that has conservation value? And two, is it within one of our acquisition zones that was developed for the ordinance? And as you'll recall, those areas are Palmar, Glock Salusi, Indian River Lagoon South, and Blue Ways. So if we have enough information, we will then present that proposal and support information to the Oversight Committee, to you, for review and ranking. I am planning on, for each property, we want to have an environmental assessment so you actually have some information to go by and help to put together your form. That's another area where if you feel that there's something that's missing from those assessments, please feel free to speak up so that we can make sure to get it incorporated going forward for when we have a larger-scale ranking process. Once the committee ranks those properties, we then bring it in front of the Board of County Commissioners for review and vote on whether to proceed with acquisition. So this isn't to acquire the property. This is the next step that would be needed to be able to use sales tax funds to attempt to acquire the property. And at that point, we do due diligence and negotiations before bringing, and if a deal can be reached, then we bring the acquisition before the Board of County Commissioners for final approval. So the purpose of this meeting is to review the information on our nominated parcels, to fill in the project ranking forms, and then to make recommendations to the Board of County Commissioners on whether to move forward with acquisition. And here is the scoring sheet that's been handed out to each of you. So you'll see that there are 10 different categories. You'll notice that there's a weighting unit that's on there in that second line. What you guys are going to worry about is just that top line, that project score. So you're going to rank between 1 and 100, with 100 being the highest. And what will happen is the weighting unit is really a percentage. So if it says the weighting unit is 15, that means it will take whatever score you put in. So if you put in a 90, we'll multiply that times 0.15, and then the score, the weighted score, will be 13.5. And we'll do that for each of the categories on that sheet. But what is essentially going to happen is you'll hand in the score sheets. One thing I didn't write on these is which property and your name. So please include your name on the form when you write it in and what property we're doing that evaluation for. We'll make sure to tweak the form for the next go-round so that's actually included on there. But we'll take that information, and then we're going to use it to tabulate results just like these. So you'll see for each category, there's each of the committee members, and we'll use that to come up with a total, a weighted score, and a total project score. Now, one thing we're going to have to be mindful of as we go through this is some meetings we might have six people, some we might have nine. So we're going to have to modify the score to account for the fact that there's less people on there. So it will be evened out and averaged before it's overall ranked. Does that make sense to everyone? Mm-hmm. Okay. And then what we'll do is based on that, per category for each of the two, so here we have the Palmar Settlement and the Barbie Ranch property. So we'll fill in and get total scores for all of those different metrics for each property and then a total score for each. And whichever project has the higher total score will get the higher rank. The next one down will be the next lowest rank. And for this, it's pretty easy. But if we're reviewing 15, 20 properties, that form is going to look a lot different, I guess. But it doesn't mean that if it – in theory, all of the properties that are approved could go forward. Correct. This is merely a so-called ranking. Correct. So – Just to be sure everybody understands that. Yeah. So you might have 1 to 20. Yeah. So even if something could be a zero that we approve of being sent to the Board of County Commissioners, that would still go forward to them as a parcel that we recommend they purchase. Is that clear? Everybody got – okay. And as we go through this process, I think a lot of this will become clear because this ranking is a little – could be confusing. It can be. But I will say by setting up these acquisition zones, we've really limited what can be reviewed here. There's not going to be any bad proposals. Everything will have at least some conservation value. And none of it will be, you know, parcels just in the middle of nowhere that don't have any value other than being a few trees, I guess. And it will all be in all the four areas that have been designated in the referendum and ordinance. Correct. Yep. So that's an important consideration that everything's going to be good and it's just going to be trying to pick, honestly, what the highest value properties will be. Yep. So at any rate, I'm now going to start talking about the first property that we're reviewing tonight. And this is the Palmar Settlement Acquisition. So if you see on this map, the blue – and part of this isn't updated. The northern parts that are up in the chimney will actually not be in government hands. But everything on the southern part of the map that is blue is in government ownership at this point in time. Anything that's orange is what's being proposed for acquisition through this program. How many parcels is it? That's 421 parcels and 387 acres. And we have that all to score here. Correct. You're scoring the combination of all the orange parcels together. And the non-orange parcels, the darker colored ones, those are just privately held? The blue parcels are government ownership as we speak. But the – The areas that aren't colored in are private still at this time. Now, I will say that we will be bringing forward another item for the next ranking meeting that will be kind of a blanket to buy more lots within that area. So this isn't meant to be the end. There is a potential, you know, if it ranks and scored and the commission desires it, that we'll continue to acquire more properties in that area. Is that because title searches may not have been completed in all of those properties, or is there another reason? No, they're just privately owned. So they're not – you know, this is a deal with one owner. Got it. Yeah, no, I understand that. Yeah. But the way – it's my understanding that these parcels may have been purchased 100, you know, 50 years, 100 years ago. And that currently individuals are doing title searches to see what the current generation that owns them. And that's a pretty laborious process, so. Yeah, and there's a multitude of reasons. There's some – you know, we only operate by willing seller. Yep. So if we don't have a willing seller, then, you know, we can't move forward with an acquisition. Got it. There's no – you know, it's all voluntary. So, Mike, so I'm clear – I'm sorry, Jim. Yeah. So I'm clear, these orange parcels, then, are those that are subject to the settlement agreement? Is that – okay. Yeah. Okay. And I'll go into a little more detail in terms of what the settlement looks like on one of the upcoming slides. Very good. Thank you. Mr. Chair, one more question. You may plan to address this, but did you say this is as it stands now, and is there a trade in this agreement? Is that where you're getting – you said all the blue parcels in the chimney are going to – they're currently government-owned. I have a slide that actually details what the actual trade is. Okay. Thank you. But first, so this is within the Palmar Acquisition Zone. It makes sense. But this shows its location on the map. The area in green is what is considered to be Palmar. And so this is on the west side of Palmar in the area known as Palm Beach Heights, which is kind of the ownership checkerboard. Why is Palmar important? Well, it's a connecting link between Hungryland and Corbett Wildlife Management Area. And the county and really the state have made a significant investment in the past to acquiring and protecting these areas. And the reason we do that is because it contains some of the highest quality wetland systems in all of Martin County. And it's the headwaters to the federally designated wild and scenic northwest fork of the Loxhatchee River. So some other details, and these are items that speak specifically to your forms. This is part of a state acquisition program, a state-recognized acquisition program, the Florida Forever Program. And it's listed as an essential acquisition. And the red circle on that map represents where it is within the Florida Forever Program. And it's also within the Florida Wildlife Corridor. It's a little hard to see there, but you'll see that red line, the red circle on there, showing the wildlife corridor. So, and the Florida Wildlife Corridor is a state program focused on creating habitat corridors for wildlife. So, this kind of will detail a little more what I was talking about. And this is a partnership deal. The South Florida Water Management District is also involved. They're acquiring 600 acres of land at a cost of $11.5 million. That's $19,000 an acre. While Martin County is acquiring roughly 380 acres for $7.3 million. Also at, and there's a typo there, also at $19,000 an acre. In addition to that, the settlement agreement includes a deal to swap properties. So, we're working with Be a Man by Land. And they are giving up 1,119 acres in the area of Palmar for government lots in the area known as the Chimney. So, and if I go back up, the Chimney, you can't see it all, but it's the top of the map, those blue parcels. This is the Jupiter Indian Tongray. Can you guys see my pointer? Does that show up? Yep. Okay. Anything to the north of that is considered the Chimney. So, as part of this agreement, Be a Man by Land gets the properties up there. And then we get all the parcels through the rest of the acquisition area. Is there any restriction on what Be a Man by Land is going to do with that? I understand it was going to be used for a ranch initially, but. I can't answer that question, but there's still the same property, private property issue that we have in the other areas. So, it's wetlands areas primarily? There's wetlands, there's uplands, and there's also a lot of other private owners that are in the area. Got it. Thank you. So, continuing on, as I said before, so in total, we're actually gaining 2,107 acres while trading away 559 acres in the chimney area. So, our net increase is 1,548 acres. Mr. Chair, another question? So, when you say we're swapping and it's $19,000 an acre, we're giving acreage plus $19,000 an acre for what we're buying? So, actually, we're actually paying a lot more than $19,000 per person. No, the opposite, if you think about it. So, I'll try and explain this more differently. So, there's two parts of this agreement. The first part is we have a land swap, and that means for every two acres that be a man by land gives us, we give them one acre of ours. So, that's the origin of the settlement agreement, but we don't have enough land to have the whole thing just be a land swap. So, we're swapping out of two to one, and that leaves the 608, I don't think I have it totaled up, and the 380 acres. So, that would be 988 acres of unacquired land through the swap. So, the settlement agreement includes for us to buy at $19,000 an acre the remaining parcels that be a man. So, we're not paying anything on the swap land. We're just paying on the other land. And we have a right of first refusal. So, any of the properties that be a man has sold because they're financed, some of those properties come back. And if that's the case, then we have the first right to acquire whatever those properties are. At the $19,000. At the $19,000 an acre, yeah. Okay. Thank you. So, and this is some of the information that was provided in the FNA environmental assessment. There is a significant area of what we're gaining, what we're acquiring, that is what they consider to be disturbed habitat. So, that could be just old pasture lands. It could involve exotic plants. In some way, the area has been destroyed. So, it doesn't have kind of some of the original conservation value. However, 68% of the area is relatively unaltered natural areas and includes big pine, flatwoods, and marsh systems. So, and the picture that you're seeing right there is an accurate representation of what these areas that we're acquiring look like. So, there's actually little evidence that there are ditches or other drainage features. That's a pretty important component. So, you don't have to worry about the hydrology of the area. It's relatively intact. The wetlands tend to be in good condition and function fairly well. There is evidence of off-road vehicle use in the area. However, it was noted in the FNA report that there's no visual evidence of conglomerations of off-road vehicles. So, you're not seeing areas with big amounts of tracks circling around and destroying wetland soils. You're just seeing pathways that go through the area. And, overall, according to the FNA assessment, it appears to be in good condition. Mr. Chair, another question? Mm-hmm. Even though it's not going back, it's considered a disturbed habitat. Once we acquire it, at some point, won't it reacquire its characteristics, its native characteristics? Not necessarily on its own. Like, once areas get significantly impacted, they require help. So, it might require prescribed fire. It might require removing exotic vegetation. If the hydrology is impacted, it might include backfilling ditches. So, it would take some effort in order to restore some of the conservation values. But, certainly, even areas like that, when you have large areas of habitat, even if it's not great habitat, that doesn't mean it still has value in terms of the overall health of the larger system. And a percentage of the proceeds from the sales tax goes to a land maintenance, correct? Correct. 5% of the money that's generated by this referendum can be used to basically improve conservation values. We can't use it to provide public access, but we can, like, you know, do any type of habitat restoration that's needed on the project. And that's a minimum of 5%. It could be more, too, if the commission wanted it to be that we had extra money, correct? That's not my understanding of the ordinance. In the referendum and ordinance, it's pretty clear. Sure. We'd have to get legal opinion on that, but I think it's 5% would be firm. But I will say that that doesn't preclude us from then spending our own money to help to restore the area. Oh, yeah. We have a budget. This is merely in the context of the referendum and ordinance. Yes. Okay. Yeah, so there's maximum 5% can be used for restoring the habitat values of the area. Yep. It's certainly, the more area that we can lock up, the easier it will be to maintain and protect these areas from off-road vehicle use. I will say that the areas where off-road vehicles at this point are the most problems are in the east areas of Palmar. I'll go back up. So this is where most of the activity has been and where we've had kind of the biggest fight. This area is less impacted. That doesn't mean that it will always stay that way, but at this point, it's less impacted. We do also now have a relationship with the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission where they're doing enforcement out there. So certainly if we're having problems, we can try and plug them in to help alleviate the problems. They have not fully shut roads off, but they are just, their presence out there does tend to change behavior and helps to deal with some of the larger problems that have been happening out there. So, Mike, for the disturbed areas, the 22%, from what I read in the report, most of that is the result of exotic vegetation or some exotic vegetation and previously being farmed in some way or another. What I'm happy to see is I don't see torpedo grass on the list, which is a really difficult thing to control in these situations. So that's good, and most of the species look like we have good methods of control for treating those. So we should be good there. And so I have one on management considerations, and once again, you know, you're talking about small parcels, and you're talking about how there's a checkerboard of government versus private ownership, and this is something to think about, that it's difficult to manage properties. If you're just dealing with one-acre parcels spread out all over the place, even just being able to tell that you're on the government parcel is difficult. So in order to really be able to effectively manage these areas, we need to form more blocks and be able to put together larger conservation pieces that then could be managed. I will say that with this settlement agreement, there's areas that are going to be 75% to 80% government ownership after this agreement. So you're much closer to getting to a point where you can, you know, start to carry out some management activities, and you can fence off areas and make it more difficult for the off-road vehicles to get back in there. You can put up no trespassing signs, you know, or no vehicular access signs. So it does get us to a point where we're closer to being able to carry out enforcement actions. And that's kind of what I said. Until we have a lot of land put together, it would be difficult to manage some of these individual lots. So FNA did a listed species analysis, and they found what would be typical of these kinds of areas. It's not, there's not any what I would call rare habitats in the footprints in any of these project areas. It tends to be this deep marsh system with pine forests interspersed in between, and you would get the kind of species that you would associate with those communities. It does list eastern indigo snakes, sand elk cranes, wood storks, and snail kites in this area. In terms of the development potential, it would be pretty hard to develop these areas, obviously. But the impact of off-road vehicles and really the construction of illegal structures is a constant threat in some of these areas. So that's just a factor to consider in when you're coming up with your score. As far as recreational opportunities, and I apologize, this isn't the best map, but if you look closely, you'll see this orange line that runs all the way up through here. That is called the Jupiter-Indiantown grade. It was actually constructed in the early 1900s, and it was the first way that people would use to get between Jupiter and Indiantown way back then. Apparently, it took two days to take that road to get between one and the other. But that feature is still there. We've opened up all the way from Indiantown Road out to Palmar. It's now actually open to the public, so it's about six miles. But the county, for about 30 years now, has been wanting to extend that trail and have it go all the way out to Cantor Highway. If we're ever able to do that, it would help. And there are parcels on this that intersect with the grade. So it does help us achieve that goal of eventually opening up that trail. Does anyone have questions about the first property before I jump on to the second one? Can we pass? Go ahead. Would you guys prefer to – should I just go ahead and do this one, and then we can do discussion? Well, at this point, what we do is we ask for a public comment on the first one, right? Yes. Okay. So is there any public comment as it relates to what Mike has just gone over, staff has just gone over? Zach, anybody? Okay. Then at that point, in terms of members of the committee, any comments, or do you want to wait until the end to discuss the details? Wait until the end? Is that okay? You bet. Scott? Okay. So, Mike, why don't you proceed to the next parcel, please? Okay. Well, the second property is the Barbie Ranch property. This is a 1,941-acre property that includes a mosaic of pine flatwoods and large marsh communities. It's in the IRL South project area. And it's important to note that what is being put in front of us right now is a conservation easement instead of a fee simple acquisition. And if anyone has any questions about that before I proceed, does everyone understand what a conservation easement is and how it will work, or I'll make sure that that's understood? Well, it's important to note that they're in perpetuity and irrevocable. Correct. As per the referendum and ordinance, which is wording that we worked very hard to get incorporated. So, that's all good. But the land stays with the private landowner who can continue to use it for agricultural interests. Yeah. He or she, or they can sell it, but it's got to stay in the same. Correct. The conservation easement is not revocable. It will not be developed. And in perpetuity also. And in perpetuity. And I will say that there's a possibility that there will be a right of first refusal. So, if the owner ever decides to sell the property, we would have the ability to then go and acquire it in full fee simple. So, just because it's under conservation easement doesn't mean that we have to move on and forget about the property. And I might note that there are two different types of fee simple. At a future meeting, we'll drill into that a little more fully. One limits the options of the county. One does not. But it's getting a little bit off course right now to go into it. But we'll delve into that in a future meeting. Go ahead, Mike. Yeah. So, you can see where the property is. And the property is within the boundaries of the Indian River Lagoon South Program. So, this is a project that's included in the comprehensive Everglades restoration plan. And it's needed as a part of providing the natural lands component of SERP and providing shallow storage to protect the St. Lucie River waterway. And it will help to capture stormwater runoff that is severely impacting the St. Lucie estuary. It was approved as an acquisition priority by the federal government in the 2007 WERDA bill. And state funds are, and this is an important part of this as well. So, the SERP program is, it's a federal and state partnership. And the state and the federal government are supposed to share the cost of this and pay an equal amount. And this project has a potential to count for the state's contribution to the SERP program. So, they'll be able to take credit and it will help to have federal government complete projects that help to, help reach the goals and objectives of SERP. Did I miss anything there, Beth? Nope, you got it. Okay, thanks. But you can also see, just from this map, I like to look at it. So, directly to the west and the south, you have the C44 STA. And further to the west of that, you have the C44 Reservoir. And if you go to the northwest, you have Allapata Flats Wildlife Management Area. So, a pretty big conservation piece that this could be a part of and really can just help protect a big area of Martin County. It is a section of it, not all of it, but the northern half of it is within the Florida Wildlife Corridor. And it's listed by the Florida Ecological Greenway Network as a priority two. And it was added to the Florida Forever Program in 2021 or 22. So, this is just their map showing it as being a Florida Forever project. So, as I mentioned before, this is a conservation easement acquisition. And the number that is being thrown around is $17 million for the 1,910 acres at a cost of $8,900 per acre. Once again, this is for a conservation easement. So, you're going to pay less than you would if you're paying fee simple for the property. And Florida Forever is willing to pay. So, basically, what has happened is Florida Forever has been in negotiations with this landowner for the last few years. And they've reached an agreement. And they've asked Martin County to support that acquisition. So, in total, it's $17 million. Florida Forever would be paying $12 million. And they're asking for $5 million from Martin County in matching funds. In terms of the habitat quality, I will say that a significant portion of this property is what I would call pasture or it's disturbed habitat. So, 59% of the area is pasture. And those pasture areas, it's interesting, a lot of them are in wetland areas. So, what they actually did is they took these wetland areas and they put lots of ditches and drainage to carry that water away to turn it into farmable, arable land. And in those areas, it has bahiagrass as the primary ground cover species, which is an exotic plant. That's pretty typical of a lot of improved pasture areas. However, there is about 40% of the property is pine flatwoods. And they do tend to be in pretty good condition. The landowner has used prescribed fire as a tool. They've removed invasive plant vegetation. So, they've done a pretty good job of trying to maintain the conservation values on the property. And there are some smaller wetland systems that also have been well-maintained. The picture on the left actually shows one of those little wetland areas. So, in terms of the... Can I have a question? Sure. So, since it's an easement, can they take the pines, cut them down, and make more pasture out of it? I would say no. They can't take habitat and convert it to agricultural lands. And you confer on that, Sebastian? Well, my name is Sebastian Fox. I'm an assistant county attorney. I think the easement document would have to be reviewed before you would be able to confirm, you know, what rights the landowner would retain. I have not seen that draft easement that has yet to be negotiated, as far as I understand. So, that's something that we would want to look at. So, would we be aware of any problems, tripwires in that? Certainly. And it is important to note there's two different state agencies right now that are doing conservation easements. There's the Florida Forever Program, and then there's the Rural and Family Lands Program. The purpose of the Rural and Family Lands Program is more to maintain areas as active ranches. Florida Forever is more about conserving habitat values. You know, we do need to look at the language, but it's certainly likely that if it's a Florida Forever easement, that they're not going to be happy with conversion of habitat, which is the whole purpose of them being involved to improve pasture lands. I think it's safe to say the intent of this committee would be that it be as restrictive as possible. So, we would ask counsel to be sure that that happens. If there is any issue, so that we know going forward, we wish to know that in advance. This does raise one question, that in Palm Beach County, there were certain conservation easements that were overturned because of certain stipulations. And I know that John Mayles conversant on that situation because it came up, John, roughly six months ago, nine months ago. Would you feel comfortable just differentiating between what we're doing in Martin County and what they did in Palm Beach County, just so the members of the committee are aware? Yeah, without belaboring the point too much, I believe the instance that you're describing was the ag reserve release. And an ag reserve is a totally different thing than a purchased conservation easement, particularly when it's purchased with funds from a ballot measure that had ordinance language that calls for it to be irrevocable and permanent. So, totally different tools. I know sometimes the easement language is somewhat generic, and at times it's used as a regulatory function, as an imposition on an environmental permit for development. Those are negotiable and aren't necessarily permanent acquisitions of development rights. In this case, it's a cut and dry, totally different tool. And I was just going to add, too, that, well, to Sebastian's point, we don't have a conservation easement to review on this that would be negotiated between FDEP and state lands and the owner of the property before we would, you know, agree to the contract. We would have the opportunity to review it. But I can say that Florida Forever Conservation Easements, not only do they impose restrictions on disturbing existing habitat, they would often and usually include provisions to do some restoration work on impacted habitats and probably put some limitations on herd size for grazing and things of that nature. Thank you, John. Jim, if I might. Yes, ma'am. Another question, John, would be related to how it would affect the recreational opportunity for the form and how we would score that. So I know a lot of times landowners don't want the public on their properties if it's just a conservation easement. It's a great point, Beth. Thank you for bringing that up. It's really rare when a private landowner would want to allow public recreation on their property because of the liability that it would create and, you know, how it might impact their usage with cows or recreation of their own. And I think the only thing that we could point to as a potential win for that would be if we're successful with Florida Forever negotiating to include a first-party refusal, which they seem favorable to, I expect that that will be included. And so that helps that at some point if the family chooses to sell it, that we would be at the table alone for that negotiation. And it would also be negotiating without development rights. And so any subsequent appraisal for outright purchase, fee simple purchase, would be subject to that imposition of the easement that has no development rights. So in theory, you're buying the 25% remaining value if the easement is 75% of the appraised value. But, of course, that continues to grow with time. And, counsel, you've made a note of that, correct, in terms of those provisions, those quid pro quos that John just outlined as it relates to what would be embedded in the agreement. Right, that would be in the easement agreement itself. Got it. I just want to be sure we're all on the same page. Okay. I think you've got a record of that. Okay. And I'd just add that in the conversations with Florida Forever, they have an interest in having that same provision. Yes. They don't like to limit themselves from being to acquire it fee simple eventually, too. So they want to be part of that first-party refusal. Yep. And I think the history of this is that we originally approached it as a fee simple acquisition, but the owner wasn't ready to relinquish, you know, control of the property. They still wanted to be able to hunt it and use it exclusively. And so that's when we, that's when Florida Forever kind of switched gears and decided to approach it as a conservation easement just to get, you know, it's most important to get the job done. And then in the future, we can always go back and try and provide, you know, look at public access if we ever do full acquisition. And just a thought, since the press is here, thoughts are, if you have any questions, especially in that conservation easement discussion, just be sure that don't hesitate to reach out, I would think, to John or Mike and be sure there's absolute clarity because there has been some confusion on that. Thank you. Mr. Chair, one more question. Since it was in the application, it's two separate parcel IDs. Do you know if Florida Forever or the county has proposed purchasing some of it fee simple and some conservation easement with the owner? I'll answer the question generally. I think everything has been considered and kicked around. This is a property we've been looking at and working with the owner, either through us or the Water Management District, Florida Forever, or even FDACs have had conversations. And I think every tool and toolbox has been laid on the table and discussed. And I believe that what Florida Forever is circling around, finally, it was probably the path forward. The option, the only moving forward option. Thank you. So, Mike, please proceed. Sure. In terms of management considerations, there is quite a bit of public property adjacent to the parcel. So, to the south, the east, and to the northwest, you have publicly owned lands that include the C44, STA, and Allapatta. There are cattle on the property that can help keep invasive and exotics under control. And since it's under the conservation easement, it's going to be up to the landowner to do any of that work going forward, even if we can provide funding to help facilitate some of that work. The pastures would be difficult to restore without restoring the getting rid of some of the ditches and blocking and plugging the ditches. So... Well, we're not talking about restoring anything. We're buying a conservation easement, so... Well, you can include... They're called ecosystem services. You can include things to help to restore conservation values on properties that are under a conservation easement. But if they're still actively ranching, they're not going to want us or anyone to touch the way they ranch. No, but you could include money to do prescribed fire on the property or remove invasive plant vegetation or potentially, you know, if there are areas that they don't use as much for cattle, they could instead agree to plug ditches because they might find that they get more money from whatever the acquisition of those ecosystem services would entail. I'm not saying that that's going to happen, but it is a possibility. Chair, I would... I guess, you know, there's a lot of hyperbole in a conversation where we don't have a document, but they're highly customizable. It's safe to say you can include anything and everything in those conversations. And sometimes when you have ranching, the ranching itself is not the ultimate purpose, that it may be for tax abatement and that the owner is actually just leasing the ranch. So every single project is going to have a different recipe for how to get it across. We don't have very many facts for this property, and yet we're supposedly giving money to purchase something. But at this point, we don't know what we're actually purchasing. Well, we're purchasing a conservation easement on the particular property. That which we don't know are the legal document that will be involved in this. So if I said to you, Jim, I want to buy your house, what's the first question you'd ask? How much am I going to pay because you're selling it to be fee simple? If I said to you, Jim, I want to rent that bedroom for three weeks, it's a different conversation. This is a different conversation in my mind. So a question I have for John and Mike. When do you think that we would have a handle on the contract and would that contract terms? And if we wait until that point, does that create a problem in terms of logistics of closing the deal? So I guess I think the best answer to that question is to clarify roles. The Environmental Lands Oversight Committee's assignment is to rank these based on the parameters, you know, described in the manual. Ultimately, the permission to move forward with an agreement will be the Board of County Commissioners to decide, you know, did we negotiate a fair rate? Does it provide the elements that we need in the agreement? And did we get the right partners and funding level? So it's kind of, I mean, to use the metaphor that you brought up, Tom, I'm starting with Jim, but ultimately I need to talk to his wife before we ink the deal. Brilliant idea as well. Go ahead, Mayor. Just generally speaking, it would be wise to talk to the wife on that one. But I do have a comment in a little more serious note that when I look at the ranking form and regarding roles of the LOC versus the BOCC and all this is going down, the toughest thing for me is the cost per acre as far as our role, especially when we're trying to deal with so many unknowns with this conservation easement. The cost per acre is going to be negotiated further down this process, a lot more by staff and the BOCC and Florida Forever. Our role is, as I've seen it intended, is one, to see if any of these lands fit the criteria of the ordinance. And two, we're ranking, all these others are very pertinent, shoreline protection, management opportunities, habitat quality. The hardest one that I, frankly, don't necessarily think should fall under our purview for ranking is that cost per acre because that goes back. That cost per acre is going to fluctuate on the fine print on, you know, whether it's actually the settlement agreement with Palmar or, you know, what's the language in this conservation easement. And those are two big unknowns. I mean, we do know a lot more on the settlement agreement. But if we remove the question of ranking by cost per acre, it would allow us to be a little more nimble in our decision-making and move forward with a project like this because that's going to be decided a little more in the negotiations by the BOCC and Florida Forever. But we don't know that language. We're just deciding. Well, you have a better, in this case, you have a pretty good idea of both these properties. We have an actual cost per acre. Certainly there are going to be some that we don't. But I would say that if you're looking at properties on Hutchinson Island and Blue Way properties or things closest to the urban services boundary, you would expect you're going to pay a higher cost per acre. But ultimately that decision is going to be made by the Board of County Commissioners, it would seem to me. So maybe we're getting a little too granular that, you know, if you look at this as a filtering process, we're sort of the initial filter. And maybe in talking about the legal requirements or the various provisions of the legal document, it's inappropriate, not inappropriate, but it's beyond the scope of our charge or perhaps I'm missing something. What's been the history in this, John, if you could fill us in? We're making history tonight. And actually, as I was answering Tom's question, you know, some of Merritt's thoughts were in my head. And I'd really be curious to committees, you know, if you guys want to deliberate on that, I'd love to have your feedback. Well, I mean, there's a big difference in cost per acre when we're talking conservation easements. If the property owner is required to eliminate some of, over time, on his dime, the cow pastures and do its best to turn them into natural ecosystems again. Whereas if it's taxpayer dollars, that cost per acre, you know, changes dramatically. You know, so, I mean, who's paying for the prescribed burns? Who's paying for invasive species? If it's a conservation easement, I don't think by any stretch 5% of the revenue generated should be going towards management. That should be on the property owner. They get the luxury of owning the property. But that's what I'm talking about, cost per acre. We have no idea on that right now. And that's important stuff that needs to be negotiated. But I don't think that would be negotiated now because we don't have the information for that. But once the language of the conservation easement comes about, that can be figured out. We should be deciding on whether it's, you know, benefiting our water quality and benefiting Martin County overall and falls into the ordinance for all these other categories. But I don't think we have the information for the cost per acre. But I'm saying we don't need that right now. Well, I would say, you know, if there's a discussion on this, it's something that we could be. I think, I mean, we know at this point what the, I don't think this is an appraised cost per acre, but this is what's being asked. But I think really our more important consideration is how the Martin County tax dollars are leveraged with other dollars from the state. And in both of these cases, I think we have leverage from Florida Forever and on the Palmar, I've forgotten, but there's leverage there from the Water Management District, I believe, as well. So I think that may be a more important consideration because I don't think that we, like you said, I don't think we can consider exactly how much this is going to cost in the long run. And I went ahead and I pulled back the project ranking form, and out of the cost per acre and recreational opportunities are only 5% each of the project score. Yeah, but I think what Merit's saying is perhaps it's not even within our province to determine to go with the cost per acre because we don't know the terms of the deal. And so I'm starting to think that maybe we just delete line, that's seven in column. Merit, is that where you were headed with that one? Yes, I mean, hypothetically, we're talking about $5 million right now, but that, I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but that can certainly change in the negotiations up or down with what's in the language with Florida Forever and the BOCC, right? Backing up, though, I would say what you're asking, if you're asking to delete an item from the project ranking form, that's not something that a staff we can do in this context here right now that would have to actually go in front of the board and be removed by the Board of County Commissioners from the manual. Well, is this in any way locking in that cost per acre of, I mean, or that potential purchase of the $5 million in that deal right now? There's some that are more objectives, and there's some that are more subjective. The cost per acre is a bit more of a subjective item. It doesn't have to be perfect. It's just meant to be a metric because there certainly is. If I'm looking at a property on Hutchinson Island, and there's one we're considering right now, it's $2.2 million for an acre. If we're looking out here in the middle of nowhere, this conservation easement or whatever might be $10,000 an acre. So there's a big difference depending on where you're looking, and that's why that metric specifically was incorporated. But it's not only cost per acre, which is, you're right, it's very immaterial to what we do. But if we already know that everything you're bringing us is within the criteria established, then if we don't discuss these things, then why are we here? Just go right to the county commission. You don't need this committee. I would push back on that, Brother Campini. But I'd like to go around the horn. And what are your thoughts on this issue of the estimated cost per acre? Is that material at this point, or do we put – so maybe we just leave that blank, and then you factor that in. Vicki, what are your thoughts? I'd like to leverage. And not focus on the estimated cost per acre, is that correct? Okay. And, Beth, how about you? Yeah, I think what Vicki said, I would like to look at how that cost is leveraged. And, you know, because I think comparatively, we're not even going to be able to compare cost per acre for where we are throughout the county. Scott, how about you? I agree with Beth. It's an estimate. They're giving us the best available information. So it's just one consideration of many. It is subjective. We're not going to be able to – we're not involved in negotiations. So, you know, it's up to the county and staff to make that, you know, effort to negotiate the best price. Okay. So, John, you know, for your purposes, I think for the committee's purpose, when it comes to estimated cost per acre, we leave that blank for now? What's – what – I would just put this – just put the same score. If you wanted to zero it out and put zero and everybody put zero, then that's – then that's – that's reasonable. And then when it's presented to the Board of County Commissioners, our, you know, our feelings are expressed at that time. John, what do you think? Yeah, and then we can also take this to the county attorney's office and, you know, look at how do we update this. You know, we knew when we crafted this manual and process that there would be probably needs to update it as we develop experience in the process. So we can, you know, we can certainly bring this forward to our – to the county attorney and to the Board for – to update it. And if the committee thinks that it's better off not there, certainly. Okay. And if you – Closing the loop on this, Tom, are you good with that? Well, it's not only cost per acre. The whole reason we're here is to give balance to the taxpayer and the residents of Martin County. If all we're doing is confirming what these – what staff says is good, then we don't need to be here. I don't necessarily agree with that. Well, you may not agree, but you asked me a question, and I'm giving you an answer. Got it. Okay. Thank you. I think proceed, Mike, through the – And I'll just say then, since this is your committee and you're the one doing these evaluations, we'll have 5% of our ranking criteria would then be available. So just give thought to – if there's anything that's missing that you think should be under consideration or if you think something that's just 10% should be 15%. You know, if you want to make modifications, then present them to us, and then we can make those modifications. Yep. Sounds good. So, John, did you want to say anything? At risk of belaboring this topic anymore, I do think that there's a value beyond just approving something for the ordinance and that as you evaluate these other parameters, it's going to give staff some direction on what is important to the people that you represent. Exactly. So that we can apply our focus. You know, there's not enough money to do everything. And so your input on all of these other areas will dictate to us where we focus our efforts and negotiations and partnerships that also have limited funding. Yes. And I would offer that we have a fiduciary duty to the taxpayers to do this. So, Mike, could you – any other slides there or is that – Were we on management considerations? Yes. Okay. I think I've gone through this, but we're – our property is bordered on the west side and the northwest and the south side by other protected lands. You do have to factor in that there are cow pastures in these areas, and those are harder to maintain. It's harder to restore conservation values once you've disturbed the soil and introduced cows. So – but they also, on the other side, can help to control invasive vegetation. And since it's under conservation easement, this falls to the landowner instead of the county to do the maintenance that would be necessary. Just another slide in terms of wildlife benefits. Its close proximity to the C-44 provides canopy cover. I know when we were driving out there to do a site inspection, we saw hundreds of snail kites driving up the levee, deer, all different kinds of wildlife. So, it is actually a pretty heavily used property for wildlife. And this is just a list of some of the species that are found here, so nothing too crazy. But, in addition, there were no rare habitats found within the project area, and these are just some of the listed species that are predicted to occur using FNA's model. In terms of development potential, it is located outside the urban services area and has an agricultural designation, one house per 20 acres, future land use. So, that would mean that there's a potential for 95 residential units on the property. It is adjacent on the northeast side to a development, a 20-acre lot development, and there is extensive uplands on the property, so there would be plenty of developable area if somebody tried to develop it. In terms of recreational opportunities, the big factor is that it's a conservation easement. So, in the near term, there's no potential, really, to provide public access, but with the right of first refusal, it does have the potential to eventually provide public access if government were ever able to get fee simple ownership. And it will be managed as part of the larger IRL complex, south complex. And that is it. So, now, for the members of the committee, what I would like to do is let's discuss each parcel, and then we'll rank them. We'll then turn our sheets. Sorry, Chair. Public comment? Excuse me. That's right. Public comment on this particular parcel? Okay. So, we'll then rank them. We'll give our sheets to staff, who will then report the results, and then we'll discuss those results amongst ourselves. Is everybody okay with that? Beth? You want us to rank individually or to discuss and rank? I would say let's discuss, let's go through the first parcel and rank that, and then we discuss the second parcel. And I'm thinking that, Beth, would you like to lead that off in terms of your thoughts on it? Well, if we want to go through one by one. Yeah. Well, there are two that we've discussed. No, I mean the ranking criteria. Yeah. So, if we can just start with the relation to the CERP project for the Palmar components. It is not within the CERP project, but it is certainly adjacent to and provides a great connectivity to the CERP project and benefit to the Loxahatchee River, not the IRL project, but the Loxahatchee River project. So, I think it deserves a relatively high score for relation to the CERP project, but certainly not 100. So, if we're going on the basis, we were originally looking at 1 to 10. Oh, okay. When we were looking at it originally, it's been modified to 1 to 100. So, I guess if each of us could then rank that accordingly between 1 and 100 in column number 1 relation to CERP project. And, Beth, so your counsel is that it were highly related? Highly related, but, I mean, I would go, mine would be about a 70 to 75 percent. So, yeah. Maybe going around the horn, Tom. That's fine. Scott? Agreed. And what are your thoughts on the ranking of that particular parcel? This is the Palmar. And this is from the perspective of the relation to the CERP project. Okay. Merrick? I had already put 80 percent. Just the relationship, the area, the headwaters of Loxahatchee, aquifer recharge. Okay. Then if we look at Greenway Corridor, I'm going to, again, refer to Beth. Okay. Mike, can you put up the map that shows the chimney and, you know, the proposed tradeoff and all of that? Mike? Do you want that one? What's the other one? One, it had a lot of the blue and yellow. All the individual lots. There you go. Now, can you point out on there where the chimney actually is? Just, okay. Yeah, and it doesn't cover the whole thing. It just starts here. Right. Okay. So, those are the lots that are currently in public ownership that are going to be traded for these lots to give us a larger conglomeration of public property within the lower portion. So, I think that warrants a pretty high score. My biggest concern is getting rid of the connectivity between the chimney and the C-44 and to the north in the wildlife corridor. So, again, I'd rank it pretty highly and above 75 percent, but take that into account that we're losing a little bit of connectivity there. Okay. Scott? I had that a little bit lower, like around 60, 65 percent. Okay. And what's your thinking on that one, Scott? Just the lack of connectivity, the checkerboard issues. Yep. Yep. Mr. Campini? 80 percent is fine. Okay. Dan? Yep. I had 70 as well. Same answer. It's a little hard to manage, but, I mean, it certainly, if the end game is to get it all, we've got to start. I mean, we've already started, and we're going down the right path. So, what about, I'm sort of going to Beth first. Are you folks okay with that, or would you prefer some other process? Is she okay? Okay. Yeah, that's kind of what I'm thinking. Yeah. Okay. Okay. You're good. Okay. Scott. Okay, Beth. Let's go to talk about potential funding partners, please. Okay. So, on this Florida Forever and Water Management District? This is straight water management. This is straight water management district. Okay. And the water, yeah. So, if you're going to look at it from that metric, the Water Management District is acquiring 600 acres at a cost of $11.5 million, while the county is acquiring 380 acres at $7.3 million. Now, I will say, and I don't show this, but the Water Management District is acquiring properties in different areas of Palmar. It's still Palmar. It's just a different portion of Palmar. Right. And the Water Management District has been pursuing this property for a long time. As long as I was involved in SERP, they were pursuing these parcels. And, as anybody in real estate knows, they're difficult to acquire because there's a lot of little individual lots. So, I think this agreement is a great agreement with the settlement agreement and the Water Management Districts. Where would your ranking be, Beth? Again, I think I would do about an 80% on this as well. I had 70%. Okay. I had 60% because they're acquiring 60% of the properties, and we're acquiring the other 40%, roughly. 85%. I mean, the way I look at this, there's going to be different properties coming up. It's a significant win if we have a potential funding partner. That's always going to be the goal. You know, 100% might be multiple funding partners, state and federal. And then 70%, 65% might be no funding partners. But, in a sense, though, that's still also the taxpayers, and we're funding it. You know, every property is even coming to us. I mean, well, I do have some rankings that are going to be zero, like, for example, recreational opportunities. But if we have a funding partner that's at the state or federal level, that's a great goal. I also see this settlement agreement as, in a sense, two-to-one acres. Of course, they're helping fund it, Zach Gaza, as it would be a man by land, to get this agreement passed in a way. Okay. Thank you. How about habitat quality, Beth? It doesn't get much better than this in Martin County. This is, Palmar is beautiful property. It has excessive wetland character. There is a little bit of disturbed land, as was noted in the proposals and in the FNI report. But I'm going to do an 85 in habitat quality. Okay. Got it. 80% just because of some of the disturbed lands. Tom? Having been out there, I think it's not as pretty as you may think from those photos. And I think there's been a lot of degradation. And so I only gave it a 60. 80%. Okay. Thank you. Moving on to management considerations. Beth, you're on. Access is difficult. Individual lots. Not a lot of ease of getting to the parcels. I need 55. Okay. Okay. 20% because I think it's unmanageable for the most part with all the other private landowners out there. Yep. Tom? Well, with the purchase of this property, we will have, with Florida Water Management District, a significant amount of the parcels in that particular area. So I gave it a 70. Well made. Okay. 65%. 65%. Okay. Moving on to rare or listed species or habitats. Yeah. Mike, do you have that information? I forget. I think we said not a lot of rare habitat. But, again, some of the higher quality wetlands in Martin County are located in Palmar. Yeah. I'd say 70% here. They're not rare. But, you know, as development continues, may become more rare. Okay. So you're talking 70, Beth? Mm-hmm. It has the potential to be much better. So I'd agree with that. Okay. Tom? I gave it a 50 because it is, it has chased away a lot of wildlife in the last few years. So they would have to come back in. Yep. Point well made. Okay. Okay. And 75%. Okay. And then for purposes of estimated cost per acre, we're going to take a pass on that. Is everybody just going around the horn? Are you okay? Zero. Okay. Zero. Okay. Vicki? Mary? I'm just sitting here thinking. Well, we can always address it then. I mean, really, this is a, I use the term, plastic medium. I mean, it's a, we don't always have to have the exact same format for every parcel, I wouldn't think, because we could provide, we could present this to the Board of County Commissioners with a caveat that in these cases, we didn't feel comfortable putting a price tag on it, but in others, we might. Are you okay? Yes. Yes, exactly. Okay. So, do we have a consensus? We'll just put a zero for that? I mean, it's a negotiated price to the agreement. Yeah. Until, but we're not going to be looking at the terms of the deal ourselves, so it seems to me that if we just, we just zero it out, and when it's presented to the Board of County Commissioners, that's made clear? John, we good? Yep. Okay. Mr. Campini? I'll zero it out, but there's only X amount of dollars for this entire thing. So, when you say it doesn't matter what it costs, it's not up to us, well, we are going to run out of money really quickly if we don't have a price consideration, because there's only so much money out there. Yeah. Well, exactly. There's nothing, nothing says we have to do this today. Mr. Chair, the way I look at it, I give more weight to the potential funding partners. I am not saying that relative cost per acre is not something that needs to be discussed. It's just, as Dan just mentioned, right now, almost with both properties, we don't have the knowledge to dive deeper into the relative cost per acre. So, I shift it the way I'm looking at this form to more benefit or less on the funding partners. That's how I'm equating it in my mind. Yep. That makes sense. It's certainly a relevant topic. We just don't have the information. And if we demand that information, this entire process might be hindered by the timeliness for us to get that information. My personal feeling is, let's not get bogged down in those details at this point. Let's give the Board of County Commissioners our input on the nine criteria that we're talking about, at least as it relates to these properties. That's just my humble opinion. Anybody? Yes. But it's... Yep. Good point. It's also going to be relative to the properties that we have before us. Yep. We have a 10-year window here. We're only going to have X number of properties at any one given time. So, it's not like we can just wait until we have them all and then do evaluation. You know, it's just that practically won't work. So, we just have to work with what is being presented to us at the time. Exactly. Okay. Okay. Is everybody okay with that? Okay. So, let's proceed to recreational opportunities. Can Beth kind of defer to you on this one? Sure. I was just looking at how we're supposed to score this. And essentially, it comes right out and says wetland properties have less opportunity for public use or for recreational opportunities because you can't build facilities on wetland properties. I'm inclined to give this a relatively high score for hiking and access in that way, but less for facilities. So, I want to say 60 percent. Yeah. And the form of recreation is, if I understand you correctly. The form of recreation and, I mean, the Florida Trail goes through here, the Indiantown grade, old Indiantown grade. So, that's good for hiking and that kind of access. But, again, if you want to build parking lots and that sort of thing, it's less so. I agree with that. Tom? Same. Okay. Dan? I agree. 50. Thank you. I think, Beth, you said 60 or 50? I said 60. 60. Yeah. I'll go with 60. I'll go with 60. I had originally written 80 just because of connecting those trails. Yeah, but that's such a narrow strip. Yeah, I've been rated pretty high, too, for that reason. But I tend to be a trail guy. Yeah, you can't really see it that well on here, but this is the Jupiter Indiantown trail that goes right through here. So, you can see some of the parcels. Now, does that go through part of Bumain by lands? Yeah. Jimny? Oh, well, no. We will not be giving up any parcels. That would affect our ability to move people down there. It goes through the middle of the Palmar, though, right, and into Culpeper? That's correct? Eventually. And then all the way to the Cypress Creek natural area that's managed by Palm Beach County, and that's at Indiantown Road. Just to be sure, we're on the same page. So, that trail would not go through the chimney that Bumain by land intends to have for his or her family. It looks like it's the divide on the southern end. It's a little easier to see it on here, and I think there's one. All right. It's a little hard to see, but this orange line is the desired trail. Almost looks like it's the dividing line between the two. It's below Bumain by a land property. And so, that area in particular is right here. John, is that correct? The settlement actually divides parcels on the grade so that the county ends up with the grade. So, the line actually of the division in the settlement actually starts on the north side of the grade. Okay. Okay. And, Mike, you've got to lean into your microphone a little bit. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Moving on to development potential. Can I let someone else take the lead on this one? How do you feel comfortable doing that? I think it's very low. Yeah. Very low. Maybe 10 percent. Is that because of the wetlands? Yeah. Scott, how do you feel? Mr. Campini. I put 60 because you've got houses out there now. Mm-hmm. Not legally, but you've got houses out there. Yeah. Well, yeah. But we're talking development. We're talking about development potential. If we don't buy it, those illegal structures would remain. So, to me, we are buying up, whether it's legal or illegal, all the illegal development that has occurred there, including the roads, the paths, digging for wells, all of that. So, to me, we're buying development potential. Yes. So, that, personally, I would rank it very high on that basis. But going around the horn, do you want to have a number? I put 60 percent. So, we're ranking higher if the development potential, if we consider the development potential high. But should there be permitted development potential, not illegal? It just says threat of conversion. That is an important factor. Location of the property, configuration, existing natural resources, properties in or adjacent to urban services areas. Yeah, you don't all have to agree. So, yeah. 60? 60? I put fairly high. I agree with Tom on this one. The development potential, the development's happening. And this, acquiring is the only way to remove it. You know, if we look at it as only legal development potential, the habitat's still getting destroyed. And that's what's happening now. That's what's happening now. Scott? I'm going to go a little higher. I guess I just thought of it in a different way. The probability of it being legally developed in a significant way was lower. But maybe I misunderstood. It depends on how you look at it. Right. Yeah, and Palmar's its own unique animal. Yeah. Yeah, it is subjective, right? Regularly. But I, yeah. A unique critter. Going around the horn? I still think it's low. Okay. 70. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Waterways or shoreline protection? Beth, again? Wetland protection, not shoreline. I'm going to look at the criteria again. Does that category, Mr. Chair, does that category? Emanuate stormwater flow and product? Yes. I would rank it high. Okay. So it includes wetlands, not just flowing water through the property. Opportunities to attenuate damaging stormwater flow and protect county estuary environments. Again, headwaters to the Loxahatchee. Water access is not water access, not shoreline. So it depends on how high we want to rank shoreline versus wetland. Yeah. Or we consider them independently. So, Beth, where are you coming in ranking? I'm coming in fairly high. It's a valuable property at about 80. 70. I put 60 because it does not have a lot of access to waterway, but it does have a lot of access to important wetlands, and that's important. But because these rankings are not only for this particular, they are for this particular property, but I'm looking at it because of all the properties we have to do. And so at some point, again, no one may agree with me, but there's a finite amount of money. So if tomorrow something came in that would be on the Coloosahatchee or on the St. Lucie, would we say, oh, boy, maybe Palmar could take a lower ranking because it's much more important to have a shoreline on St. Lucie? If I might, too, I'm going to revise my assessment here because now I'm reading what this says, and it is specifically related to shorelines and coastal waterways and not necessarily wetlands. It says outstanding Florida waters, rivers, and lakes. So I would change my assessment here and go lower on this. And what would that be? 25. Yeah, and the reason for doing that, I probably should have spoke up sooner, is because a lot of these are going to be geared towards, like, CERT projects and Palmar and these big open wetland expansions. But we do have a Blue Ways area that does have value and uniqueness on its own. And so we wanted to provide something to have it an area where it could get a higher score to make sure that that program doesn't get left out. Got it. Scott? I originally was thinking of it in terms of being the headwaters to the Loxahatchee, and, you know, that was significant. But if the definition is restricted to, you know, waterways and shorelines, then I guess we have to rank it lower because it doesn't have that direct connection. 10. 15. Excuse me. 20. Got it. And Merritt? I was at 60 percent still. I mean, the FSU report defines it as the Alpata Basin, kind of helping to reconnect the historic flow from St. John's down south to the northern Everglades. That's true. Aquifer recharge, it listed that multiple times. And then, again, the headwaters of the Loxahatchee. You know, without areas like this, you're just getting more runoff into the St. Lucie and Loxahatchee. So, I mean, that's the purpose of all this, is to keep these large tracts of wetlands there so that the water goes into the aquifer rather than hitting cement and going into the river directly. So, I mean, I understand where we're going to see some blue-waves properties, but this acquiring and keeping this undeveloped certainly helps our waterways. It's a permeable surface. Yeah. Exactly. So, we've now finished the ranking for this particular property. If you could please put your name on the sheet and then call mark, and then let's proceed to the next one. And as you do that, can you please hand them in to Jeannie over here so she can start to tabulate the results? Right. Do the numbers need to be in pen or does it matter? Because I brought my pencil. No worries. It's okay. Okay, so let's move ahead to the next one, please. And this is the Barbie Ranch Project. And I think I'm going to, again, lead off with – is everybody okay with me leading off with Beth first? Yes. Everyone but Beth. Beth, let her rip. It's in the CERT project. You can't get any higher than that. I'd give it 100. Okay. Agree. Tom? I gave it a 7. Okay. 100. Nikki? 100. Merit? 100. 100. Okay. Greenway Corridor. Also provides great connectivity being surrounded by C44, STA, and Allapata. So it provides great connectivity. Some other parcels I'd like to see added. But – so I'd say 90. Okay. I had a high score, too, but it was more like an 80. What are you thinking? It's private land. It's an easement. Yep. Yep. Okay. Tom? I mean, most of my rankings are going to be lower than yours because it is a private – it is private land. I love you anymore. Well, and when you have cattle tramping on it, I mean, it is going to affect what it does. So I put 60. Got it. 60. 80. 65. Okay. Okay. Potential funding partners. Beth, please. Florida Forever, correct. And – I'm sorry, Mike. And that's not a potential funding partner. They are – they are the funding partner, yes. So, again, I'm going to rank it fairly high at about 85. Okay. Pretty high. 90. Mr. King. 90. 90. 85. A hundred because of the fact that it's within SERP as well. So the other potential credit is given to the federal government as well. So – Thank you, Merritt. Okay. Beth, next, Habitat Quality. Habitat Quality. There's some beautiful areas on this property, and it does provide good habitat, but there's also a lot of disturbed area with cattle and all of that. So I'd go about 60 percent. I'd bet at 50 percent just because of private ownership, it's a conservation easement. We don't know what the restrictions will be. There is a lot of disturbed property. It's used for ranching. Here, Penny. 50. Got it. 50. 65. 65. 65. Got it. Management considerations. How come you never tell us about your score? Oh. Okay. It's 70. No. You haven't done it yet. We're both from New York. So pardon me if I give this guy a little bit of flack. He once accused me because I used to have on my team some NYPD cops. He said, Snedeker, you sound like an NYPD cop. So please pardon the banter between the two of us if I push back on Brother Campenny. And again, it's not that I don't love him. It's just that sometimes it's appropriate. Right? I'm not saying a word. Okay. Except that you should tell us your scores also. I will do that, sir. Okay. Management considerations, please, Beth. Again, there's a big if here because of it being a conservation easement. Yep. And we don't know really how that will work and whether or not the landowner is going to take responsibility or the state will step in and take some responsibility for management. So I'm going to go with 50%. Got it. I have a higher thinking on Florida Forever and their conservative approach to their conservation easements and putting restrictions in place. Yep. And I think this landowner wants to keep this property in ag use and not have it develop. So I think they've got good intentions to protect the land. So what would your number be? I said 80. Okay. 50. Got it. 50. I gave it a 75. I agree with Scott that I think the property owners are going to continue to maintain the property. Yeah. And they're very, yeah. They already have a cow calf operation. I went back and forth and just settled on 60%. And I got 65. Okay. Rare or listed. Yes. It's about time. Rare or listed species or habitats. So there are a lot of rare species either directly adjacent to or that use the property. One that was missing from the report is Audubon's Caracara because there are definitely Caracara on that property. Um, and, uh, the snail kite, uh, and then a lot of wading birds and, um, you know, um, white-tailed deer, which obviously are not endangered. Um, so 75 to 80. Got it. Yeah. And I, I will speak to, um, this was done a little differently. We didn't, this was the previous report that was done for Florida Forever, uh, because we just didn't, simply didn't have time to have our own particular report. So that's something we need to have conversations with about, because I would, I would almost guarantee that there's gopher tortoises out there and that did not show up in that report. Okay. Thank you. Um, going around the horn. We good. I had a 70%. Okay. 75. 75. 80. Uh, 90. I'm going 85. And we're going to put a zero for the next. Yes. Okay. Recreational opportunities. Again, dependent upon the nature of the conservation easement and whether or not, um, the public is allowed. Um, I'm, um, from what I know and from what Mike said, I think this is a pretty low score. Um, the, the recreational opportunities are adjacent. Um, so there's birdwatching availability from, from the adjacent C44. Um, but so I'm say 45, 45. Okay. I had 20. Zero. Got it. 15. I gave it 10. I was at zero as well. Um, private property. Exactly. Now, a lot of this, I think will establish a baseline and that may be where in the future we might be able to look back on today or, or what happened with this property and get an idea going forward of on cost per acre per conservation easements. And maybe the same with recreational opportunities. But right now with no one, we know it's a zero. Zero. We can bring stuff for me. We can have, do like just rank conservation easements, you know, and try and keep them separate from, from the fee simple acquisitions. And there's some, there's one big one that at this point we don't know if it's going to be a conservation easement. Yeah. Let's, let's keep it simple for now. Um, let's, when, when you present it to the board of county commissioners, if you can caveat it appropriately, John. Okay. Um, so I'm going to put it at 10. Um, development potential. I'm thinking that maybe Dan, are you comfortable taking, you know, doing the sort of macro overview as to how you assess this? It's private property. I don't, once, once we have the environmental easement through there, it's zero. Yep. But there's development potential now. I think the current, like it could be developed. This would be. 20 acre ranch. Well, it's not easily. If, if we weren't to acquire it, could it be developed? That's my read on the, is that the correct? Yeah. Okay. So the question is, if you're a real estate broker and you're trying to sell this property, could you sell it for a commercial, I mean, for development? In Martin County? Yes. No. What about for something like trail side with 20 acre ranchettes? Well, that, that's a possibility. Yes. Yeah. So then, so then it, there is development potential. Well, I'll change it to 50 then. Okay. No, I'm sorry if I'm. That's fine. That's fine. But yeah. So, okay. Well, this being the first time going through here, a lot of the, a lot of the, is the interpretation of the way you read it. Yep. Exactly. And we welcome feedback in terms of how to tweak that language. So, you know, this was written by a biologist writing about development potential. So. You should have gave it to a lawyer. We had him, we had lawyers involved, but you know, like. I know, I know. Yeah. I'll go 50 on that. I'm thinking if you wouldn't mind just looking at it to see if we could tweak it a little bit and then giving feedback to John and Mike, that would. I'll talk to Mike. I'll talk to Mike about it, but I will. Yeah. I view it as if, if this property were not acquired or given an easement, it, it has a high probability for development. I give it an 80. Got it. Merritt? I gave it a 95. Same as, you know, right along the lines of what Vicki was talking about. I mean, you can rank it as what could occur now. In this instance, you could rank it as what a lobbyist might be able to do with unlimited funding with a developer in the future. And you could also rank it as we did in Palmar with what just might happen, you know, of property owners just building their own thing, not obeying the law. And we're going to have to adjust that for each property. But right now, 20 acre ranchettes are there. That doesn't even factor in a lobbyist in the future. The development potential is significant. Aye. Yes. Okay. I put it at 50 because even though there are 20, 20 acre ranchettes and while Merritt may be correct, the possibility of coming to almost any Martin County commission and trying to get much more density. Exactly. Would be very difficult. And 20 acre ranchettes today would be extraordinarily expensive, the land, once they developed it. So I put it at 50. Yeah, I think I would say 60 to 65 because I think, I mean, there's a lot of money out there and people really like to live on 20 acres. And it's close to I-95. So that, I think, elevates the possibility as well. I agree with that. I mean, I'd give it like an 80 because I think there's a good opportunity to develop. It could be another discovery project. Yeah. Yep. I did 80. So let's go ahead with waterways or shoreline protection. I think Beth, back to you. Yeah, I'm going to go low on that again. Even though it's in the CERP project and it does impact the Indian River Lagoon, I think the way that the ranking is written, that's more appropriate to Blue Ways and properties that are right on the coast. Right. So 25. Okay. I'd agree with that. Tom? I had put zero, but I think you're more in line with it, so I'll change mine to 25. 25. I would agree. I may be ranking these all slightly, but I went 50%. It's adjacent and still within the CERP plan, and it's adjacent to the C-44, keeping it the way it is, that are waterways. Yep. So I'm going to go with 30, and at this point, we will turn our ranking sheets in. We're going to take, how long do you think it'll take to pull this together? Five minutes? Ten minutes? Okay. So let's take a five-minute break, and then we'll be back. Great. Thank you, folks. Thank you, Kim. Send it to me. Okay. Michael, please present. So we're going to have two votes, folks. We're going to be two votes on each property. One is going to be whether or not we present it to the Board of County Commissioners, and number two is going to be the ranking. So let's go through that. Mike? So this is the, can everyone see this? I don't know which property is that, Mike. This one is going to be Palmar. So you can see all the criteria up here at the top, the one through 10. You can see the one that was zeroed out. And then you can see all the scores were added up to get a total per category. Then we used the weighted score, which was you took this number and you multiplied it times that .15 or .1 or .05 to come up with your weighted score, and then that was used to develop a total project score. And so we did that for each of those properties, as you can see, and then used it to come up. Mike, let's just do the first property, and then we're going to vote. First of all, I'd like to have a motion that we recommend this property to the Board of County Commissioners. Second? Second. Second. Okay. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay. So unanimous decision. Let's go ahead as it relates to approving the averages or consensus. All those in favor, in terms of what we're looking at? Yeah, I understand what we're looking at. But why do we have to approve that if we're approving the property? So you're saying it's redundant? Yeah. Yeah. Good point. Mike, do you agree? John, you okay with that? I don't have a bone to pick. John, what's your read on that? I think maybe it's redundant. It's up to you. Well, I'm just saying, you know, the point's well made. Dan, what are your thoughts on this? It seems like it could be redundant. I would say, from my perspective, like vote on the total project score for each. We've really already done that. I'm recommending it to go. Yeah. So it seems to me, it's the first time we've gone through this process. So it seems to me that if we've already ranked it and we've agreed to it and that's been calculated, the only vote that we really need to do is do we recommend it to the Board of County Commissioners? They can look at all this themselves. So we'll just do one vote. Everybody okay? Beth, are you okay? Yeah, that's fine. I will question. Do you want, so, you know, next time we could be dealing with 20 of these, right? Right. We could be looking at 20 projects ranked. And we do have a thing that shows the ranked number. You know, so if there were 20, I'd go one all the way through 20. Do you want to show the commission and show those ranked scores to say that this is, you know, I don't know if I'd say it's the priority or... I'm not so sure I'd want to, let's just discuss that. I'm not so sure that the ranking number is going to be material because in some cases we may have a cost, an estimated cost per acre, and that will throw these numbers off. So that is, if we're consistent, we have zero cost per acre for every one of these, then that's not going to throw it off. But if we have an estimated cost per acre for some of them and not for others, that's going to mess up your ranking in the far right column. Are you following me on that one? Well, also, Jim, if you have only six people here, it's going to also throw off the rankings. Right. Because it'll be a difference. You won't have 432 and 458 because you won't have that sixth person. So that's a great point, Tom. What we're going to do is we're going to average that and then weight it so that if you have seven people present versus nine people, you'll end up with a similar weighting, if you will. So, John, let's talk about that rank number, though, because that is going to cause some problems if the Board of County Commissioners doesn't see that we've estimated cost per acre for zero in some cases and then 20 in others. Staff recommendation on that would be to eliminate the cost per acre factor. Totally. It's never a factor. Absolutely. Okay. One thing about ranking, Mr. Chair, if we send this to them and then in two months we send 20 properties to them, the ranking here is between these two properties. The ranking on the 20 would be on the 20th property. So if you're ranked number one here and you're ranked number one with 20 properties, it's different. There will only ever be one number one. And so we'll keep adding to this as we score more properties. So this would become a working document. And so then the next time you see this, perhaps there's 22 rows rather than two rows. And so there will always only ever be one. It might not be the same one after you've scored new properties, but there will always only ever be one. And that does help the commission organize where we're at. So otherwise you could have a property that scores, has a total score of 200 that gets moved out on by one that has, you know, 458. So to me, it helps to keep a ranked list because of those, you know, those top ones are the ones that you're then prioritizing for acquisition more than something that would be lower down on the list. Got it. So I think, well, I think the key is that we're going to delete that column for cost per acre, number one. And, Mr. Chair, may I speak to that? I'm sorry. May I speak to that point? Yep. To the extent this scoring criteria was included in the committee manual, this committee's ability to strike or in any way revise this table is going to be limited to what I would recommend directing staff to make a recommendation perhaps to the Board of County Commissioners to reconsider this criteria. You all do not have the ability to just strike it because it has been adopted by the commission. And maybe I should say to the public or do any of you in the public wish to comment on us doing that? Okay. So just for the record, we've asked the public further comment. Tag your staff on taking care of that. Okay. One of the challenges though, if I could speak to the ranking issue, is that inevitably you're going to compare properties that are before you in this particular meeting. And then in the next meeting if we have, you know, 10 or 20 properties, based on reviewing those properties, we may have the desire but not the possibility to go back and say, gee, I would have ranked the properties at the last meeting differently. Yes. So, I mean, I'm a little bit reluctant to commit and maybe I don't have a choice, but it's like, okay, I like these two properties now, but in the future I may not like them as much or I may like them more. Well, here's the thing. Some of these may be time sensitive as it relates to doing the deal. So my strong preference would be that we make our recommendation to the Board of County Commissioners. At some future date, if we find that the deal hasn't been done and staff says, hey, look, we haven't closed this deal, do you want to reevaluate it? So I would, if it's okay, I'd defer to the staff to bring that to our attention because otherwise it's going to delay it. Is that okay? I understand that, yeah. And I think the sooner we can close these, because apparently the county commissioners have asked that we speed up the process, if I understood conversation today correctly. So are you okay with that, Scott? Yeah. Okay. I'm just pointing out an observation. Okay. Most of what you, most of what we're going to do is going to be all at one time, you know, all in the next few months. And then I think it's just going to be odd straggler party properties that come through over time because of, you know, we've made such a big emphasis and effort to get the willing sellers now that there might not be many to do for a while after this. So if I could jump ahead, do a vote on Barbie moving it forward to the Board of County Commissioners. So moved. Second. Second. Great. All those in favor? Any opposed? Okay. So we go ahead and do that. Um, really at this point. I, I, I also have right now in my mind, Palmar is more important to purchase. Absolutely. More important than the Barbie ranch. And even though, according to this ranking, Palmar is number two and the Barbie is number one. And knowing everything I know, I would say to anybody, we should move heaven and earth to, to effectuate the Palmar settlement more so than the Barbie ranch. So I, I, again, I'm going to, I just, I think you're right, Scott, this is really hard when you have such a subject, this is subjective ranking. This is all very subjective. This is the way you feel today. Yeah. You may feel completely different tomorrow. So, I'm, I'm just going to say for the record, and it's being recorded, I, I hope that the Palmar settlement is the one that goes first. Absolutely. We, if we have no more money and the county commission doesn't want to borrow or bond or whatever they have to do, this is what we need to do. Got it. We've got. Very, very important. We've got, we've got the money. So, bottom line is the charge to staff is to expedite both of these, in my humble opinion. Well, that's your charge. That's not my charge. Yeah. Yeah, no, but I think, I think the point and the, what you're hearing from the county commissioners, we want to get things moving. Well, that's great. I'm just saying for, for the record, for the press, for whomever it happens to be, Palmar, in my mind, is very important to close on as soon as possible. Okay. Absolutely. Thank you. But, John, are you further along in the negotiation with Barbie than we are with Palmar? So, the Palmar negotiation is complete. There's nothing left to do on that. But that's number one then. And staff will be recommending both of these. Good. And the schedule that Barbie ranch is on is really at the discretion of Florida forever. Florida forever. Part and parcel, and this is as much for the public who might be listening as it is the board, because I think maybe Mike talked to each of you about why we brought Barbie in at the last minute. Our understanding is that last week when the budget was finalized by the legislature, Florida forever was nearly zeroed out. And Florida forever is always working on years and years of these projects. So, you know, they have an entire cadre and corpus, if you will, of potential projects that they're constantly negotiating, working through. And when the budget got zeroed out, there was this last minute rush to, we need to figure out how we're going to use what we have. And a lot of the landowners who were in negotiations called up and said, I want to go now, because they realized that it might be limited. And so the potential to acquire this became this. And Florida forever reached out to us and said, we're thinking of a September governor and cabinet meeting for the remaining funds that Florida forever has. And we're looking to leverage these and get the best deals done that we can. Are you guys in? And so we needed to accelerate this process on our end to make sure that the Barbee Ranch got into the cut for the governor and cabinet meeting that's in September. And it's important to note that this is an IRL South project. And the protection of the St. Lucie River estuary and the Indian River Lagoon are top priorities of the citizenry of Martin County that have entrusted us to. So if I could jump in so we wrap it up. In our next meeting, we expect to have 10 to 20 parcels. Mr. Chair, the ranking system has been hard for me. But I equate this and I don't know if any of the board members know, but I'm sure the staff is familiar with how the MPO has a priorities list. And, you know, it's a revolving list working with FDOT of roughly 10 to 13 parcels. Once they're on that list, they're green lighted to move forward. And, you know, the county and FDOT might be working on number five that could bump up or down in that rank depending on what other projects come up. And negotiations can be taking place on multiple priorities at any given time. So just being there, I mean, it's a fluid rank, but you don't have to be necessarily number one or two to be moving forward on that. And that's the way I've kind of swallowed this ranking list. It's important for us to document what we're doing and open, have our open discussions. And the best way to do that is to rank the properties. But it's also important to put on the record comments that Mr. Campenny made or that, you know, ideally the money is to be spent on purchasing these parcels. And we expect the commission to be moving forward on both what we discussed today. As long as they're not rejected at the outcome of the final vote where we say we don't approve to send this forward with our blessing, in theory, they're going to have made that and be ranked somewhere in there. But negotiations can be ongoing at any given time with multiple properties. So I think that's important to put down for the record. And I think the BOCC knows that. They're all, many of them are familiar with the MPO priorities list, which is a similar ranking system. Yep. Thinking about our next meeting, it could be a long one, depending upon the number of parcels. I think it's been mentioned 10 to 20. So I'm going to get together with staff next week, ideally, to see if we can streamline this process. But, you know, if in the meantime, if any of you have ideas as to how we can streamline it, then I think the best thing to do would be if you could send a note to Mike and John in terms of your thoughts on how we can streamline it, because it is going to be a long meeting. That said, we won't have many other meetings like that. I expect that the next meeting will be a long one, maybe the next two, but then beyond that, it will probably be similar to this one or smaller. Maybe we could start earlier in the day, too. Yeah. Great point. Yeah. I mean, so let's talk about that. If we were to start earlier, what would be a good time for you? 10 o'clock in the morning. Yeah, but then we're going through lunch. Well, then we'll have lunch brought in. Okay. Okay. I'm flexible. I can be. Tuesdays and Wednesdays are really hard for me to start earlier, but Thursdays or Mondays or Fridays. Thursdays are good. Thursday and Mondays are good. Thursday, Mondays, and Fridays. Yep. Okay. Tom, how about you? Whatever. Sorry. Sorry. Beth? I'm flexible, except for Wednesdays, daytime. Wednesday evenings are fine. Thursdays and Fridays would be okay? Thursdays and Fridays are okay. Fridays would be the best if we're going to start earlier in the day. Okay. The rest of the week, I'm pretty booked far out, so. Okay. For members of the public, if we do it on Fridays, is that okay? Okay? Are you out of your mind? Why? What's the matter, Camp Penny? Alan, this is going to be hard enough to start adding the public. Okay. So we start off, you know, but I think we've got members of the public who have a vested interest in this going smoothly. In any case, so let's talk about Fridays. If staff could determine what Fridays in August, because we may have to have two meetings in August and September. So if you could please check. If you want to pay attention. So the main thing, the biggest thing, well, one is having staff availability, but the second on the right is BOCC commission chamber availability, which is important. Right. That's what I'm thinking. So August 28th and 29th are available at this point in time. So the Friday would be the 29th? Correct. Yes. Right. So the 29th of August at 10 a.m. Dan, does that work for you? It works for me. It works for me. It works for me. I won't be here. That's Labor Day weekend. Oh, yeah. That's not good. Not good. How about the 22nd, but you're on vacation, Mike? Yeah, I have a training. If you go to, I mean, it's not that far off, the 5th? Are you talking about September 5th? Are we talking about August? No, no. We're talking about September. No, we're talking about September. No, I'm sorry. We're talking about August. No. No. We jumped to the 5th. He went full. I need to make sure I have plenty of time for FNAE to complete these assessments. Right, but when we talked earlier, okay. September 5th would be fine. September 5th, is that okay for? Me too. It's good for my calendar. Yeah. Okay. And how long should we do this from 10 to 2? Well, it's going to be, I would say 10 to 2, 10 to. And I'm just going to put this tentative for now. Okay. So this would be September 5th, Friday. Beth, are you okay with that? I am okay with that. I am planning to be out of the country sometime in September, but I don't think that early. So. Yeah, I can make it work. That's okay? Yeah, sorry about that work day thing. Mr. Campini? Yes. I think I would make the hours longer than 2 o'clock. To get done. Because of sunshine advertising, just to get through the day. If there are 20 properties. Are you thinking 10 to 3? I think 10 to 5. We'll take staff's recommendation on that one depending how many properties they have. 10 to 5. We're done early, we're done early. Yeah. I'm looking at, it looks like between 15 and 20 properties and varying. Now what I'm going to try to do, I don't know if I'm going to be able to do this, but I feel like if you had 20 properties you're doing on one day, that's going to be overwhelming. Not from the amount of time, but from the number of different properties that you're trying to look at and evaluate and score. So I'm going to, if that's the case and you want to do it all in one day, I'm going to try and get you the environmental assessments a few weeks in advance so that you can at least read, review them. I'll give you blank scoring sheets. I'll probably, if anyone prefers it digitally, that's fine, or I can just figure out a way to get you paper copies. Well, let's, actually that's the next item on our agenda. If we do, first of all, let's just confirm. Friday the 5th from 10 to 5, everybody okay with that? Okay. Because next item is this whole issue of the documentation. So I'm just going to go around the horn in terms of who would like a hard copy and who would like electronic copy. Dan? I can print it out if you can send it to me as an attachment. If you'd rather print it out yourself, that's fine. We're going to print it out ourselves. But I have to get my email working between now and then. And you might also be receiving something like 50 documents. Like it's, you know, if we have 20 properties and each you have a nomination form, you have an environmental assessment, you might have maps. It's going to be a lot of files. That's going to be a whole cartridge. I can try and do it. I can try and combine it all together and just have one thing. But, yeah, you could be theoretically printing out 400 paper pages. I don't know at this point, you know, but that's a lot. My counsel would be that I'm personally going to ask for a hard copy so I can mark it up. And so, because I'm Dutch and I'm Scotty. I'd rather have a hard copy. Okay. Thank you. Hard copy. It's got to be digital for me with my eyes. So, are you going to try and do this all in one email, though, or as attachments? I'm going to have to do a share file for you. Yeah. And then you'll just have to go on the share file. Yeah. I mean, I'm fine with it. It's electronic. I'd like a hard copy, please. And, Jeannie, please make sure this gets in the minutes so I know who wants what. I'd like it both ways. Of course you would. Both ways. So we've got two both ways, Scott? All electronic. But I would ask that if you like, can you just create folders for each property so that it's one folder? That's a little more organized. Yeah. Yes. Yes. I'll do my best to come up with something. Yeah. And no Word docs or excels, please convert them to PDFs if you do that. PDFs. Yeah. I got Jeannie getting all this down because I'm going to totally forget it. No, because they get corrupted if they, you know. That's fine. Like I said, that's why Jeannie's taking these notes. Okay. In terms of getting the material in advance, I think we need them at least one week prior to September 5th. Do you want them two weeks in advance? Two weeks. Two weeks. Okay. As long as possible. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And so, I mean, there's going to be a process with FNA. I have to send them, I have to create shape files for each property and send them the nomination form. You know, it's going to take some time for them. That's why I didn't want to, like, ramp things up too soon. They're going to be the main limiting factor in all this. Well, would it help to split it, say, ten properties per meeting and maybe have another meeting in October? That's up to your discretion. Well, here's the only thing. My personal preference is, to the extent that we can expedite the process and get these deals done, my personal preference is that we go, we just do as many as we can. Maybe I'm, you know, we're going to be a little brain dead at the end of that day. But I'd hate to lose the opportunity to close a deal because we didn't get to it. Right. Are you okay with that? Yeah. We're at three, and that way we would be sure to get done. That's true. We'll also have a large urn of coffee. Okay. So my counsel would be, let's stay the course, ten to five on that day. Mike, we'll do as many as we can. If you don't, if you're not able to get to all of them, let's say that you've got one or two that you haven't completed all the paperwork and we're getting within a week. Let's cross our bridge when we get to it. Let's see how we stand and then we can, okay. And in terms of the two properties that were just reviewed today, we're probably looking at that second Board of County Commissioner meeting in July to get those. We'll leave that up to you guys. So. Do we have to be present for that? Nope. Nope. If you want to be, you're welcome to, but. You can watch it. Okay. So just be sure we're in the same page. We're going to get the material. The goal is to get it at least two weeks in advance. Will it be mailed? What if we pick up the hard copies? Is that okay? Pick them up here. Why don't you let them handle it? They'll tell us what to do. They'll call us. They're just so good at it, Jim. Thank you. Okay. Penny. Okay. That's really it. May I have any other comments from members of the team or John? I wasn't able to attend your first meeting. So I did want the opportunity on behalf of the board to thank each of you for your service. We know that this is a volunteer assignment. And this is a long hour sitting in the chair inside. And I know you all have busy lives and your time is very important. Your service on this was central, I believe, to this passing in November. And your roles here individually are absolutely critical. And I believe you're each here for a reason. And I just personally and on behalf of the board, I want to thank you for giving your time for this purpose. Thank you, John. I would like to reiterate that. We clearly have a fiduciary duty to the taxpayers, to the folks that voted in favor of this. And we made it very clear that we were going to oversee this. And so we're fulfilling that commitment. So any comments? I realize it's out of order to ask the public for any comments. But do you folks have anything you want to add in? Okay. So may I have a motion to adjourn the meeting? I move. You want another motion? Yeah. So moved. We don't need any motion. Second. Second it. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Thank you very much, folks. And thank you. We don't need a motion to adjourn.