My name is Michael Huston. I'm a senior project manager in the Martin County Environmental Resource Division here for our first meeting of the Environmental Lands Oversight Committee. So I thought we would start by just going around and having everyone introduce yourself and say what organization that you represent. And I'd like to call the meeting to order as well. Good afternoon. I'm Vicki Davis, Supervisor of Elections, and I'm representing Florida Farm Bureau. I'm John Keller with the Everglades Foundation organization, committed a mission to restore water going back into the Everglades. They have 50 full-time employees headquartered in Miami, and I'm a board member and have been for 15 years. Good afternoon, everyone. I'm Merit Matheson, and I'm here on behalf of a board member of Rivers Coalition. Hello. I'm Beth Kavinsky. I'm retired, but I spent about 20 years managing CERP projects for the Water Management District, and I am here representing Audubon. Kim Snedeker, Martin County Forever. Tom Campenny, Martin County Taxpayers Association. Scott Turnbull on behalf of the Economic Council of Martin County. Okay, so our first order of business today is actually going to be to elect a board chair. So do we have any nominations for anyone who would like to chair the committee? I move that we elect Jim Snedeker. I second the motion. Second the motion. Any other nominations? I wanted to move it, but it was too fast for me. I've been doing this a while. All right. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. All right. Jim, the floor is now yours. Thank you. With that, I'm honored to be in this position. I look forward to working with all of you, and with that, I'll turn it back to Mike. Well, you need to elect the vice chair. Okay. I move that we elect Merritt Matheson as vice chair. Second. Second the motion. All in favor? All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. Great. Welcome, Merritt. Merritt and I have worked together for the past three years, along with John Keller, very closely, so very much look forward to taking this forward. Great. Thank you. Well, I would, just as an introduction, like to thank everyone for coming down here today and participating on this committee. We have a huge task ahead of us. The sales tax that was passed in 2024, we're estimating that it's going to generate $220 million over a 10-year period. So we have a chance to be a real difference maker here in Martin County, not only for our environment, but for our community that has put us in this place to help move more lands into conservation in Martin County. So next up, we are going to have some trainings that we have to do, so I'm going to turn this over to Sarah Woods, who is going to talk about ethics. I don't know how to turn this. Oh, it should be on, right? Is it on? Okay. And over there, sorry, you have to turn yours on manually. Oh, okay. Okay. I'll just introduce myself. My name is Sarah Woods. I'm the Martin County attorney. I am just thrilled about this. I worked with many of you for this, and just on a personal note, this is just a really big win. And I love Martin County, but particularly, this is a long time coming. We've tried several times before, and so I'm excited for you all and all you're going to contribute. So I'm going to start out with Florida's Government in the Sunshine training, and I'm looking around, and I'm thinking a lot of you have had this training, so I'm not going to be too long-winded about it, but you all know that this is one of the pole stars of the state of Florida. We've had this requirement of government in the sunshine, no making laws and decisions in the so-called smoke-filled rooms. So it's not only required by our Florida Constitution, but also is incorporated in Florida statute. And there's still three basic elements that Sunshine requires. Meetings of public boards and commissions have to be held open to the public in an ADA-accessible facility, no going through gates or anything. It's got to be in a public building. There has to be reasonable notice, and minutes of the meetings must be taken and recorded. You all don't have to worry about that. That's county staff's job to make sure that the meetings are held in accordance with those requirements. However, that covers all of the discussions amongst you all. Anything that might foreseeably come before the board. It has to be done in a public meeting that meets all of the previous requirements. And when I say that, when I first started practicing over 40 years ago, it was pretty easy. It was no talking back and forth, no using the phone, using an intermediator to communicate what one of your fellow members would are thinking about a matter that might come before you. Nowadays, it includes of why I'm going to have to use my notes for this, email, no email discussions. It covers telephone conversation, internet, text messages, and I'm going to say that also means during the meeting. It also means during a recess. It also means while the meeting's going on. It's all of those things. It also includes not communicating through social media. So if you're making a Facebook post or an Instagram post or something else that I don't use that, if it's a communication between two board members or more and it's about a matter that might come before you, that's a violation of sunshine law. After all these years of my doing this, my recommendation is don't use social media for anything that has to do with this. That's my conservative approach. It's how you don't get sideways. It's not a good idea because you, it's the communication with each other. Now, does that mean that you can't attend a social gathering or a public gathering or a public meeting? No, you're just not going to cross talk. You're not going to discuss about a matter that could come before you. So if there's a Rivers Coalition meeting and the members of this board want to come, and listen to each other or even make a public statement, what I would recommend, and I passed you all my card as well as the deputy county attorney, Elise Elder, reach out. If you've got any questions, you just want to make sure you're not cross talking about something that you'd have to make a decision on. So that's just my recommendation. In Martin County, as you all well know, we take public records, sunshine, and ethics really seriously. And sunshine's, in my opinion, the beginning of it where you're complying with that. And, again, have any questions, have any issues, there's also part of sunshine, just so you know, is the right of the public to participate. That doesn't mean they get to hold up the meeting. You just have to provide them with an opportunity to be heard, for them to make comments at some point during the meeting. They don't get to interrupt you, they don't get to choose when. We have public comment for this meeting, I believe, at the close of the meeting, so that complies. And, again, as to that aspect of it, your staff will make sure that we comply with that, and we keep you in accordance with the sunshine. I'm trying to think if I'm missing anything else. The next issue, which I think is really common sense, is the Florida Code of Ethics. It's governed by the Florida Commission on Ethics, and there's a couple of prongs to the ethics code. First of all is standard of conduct. And, again, I think for most of us, this is just common sense and what we do, but I'll go over it just for the sake of it. Florida law prohibits soliciting or accepting compensation or anything of value that is predicated on getting a particular vote from the official. That includes to members of your family, which is spouse, child, you know, your business. It's pretty broad, and it's pretty simple, and I, unless anybody's got any questions, I think we all understand it. There also is a prohibition for board members from doing business with the county in a private capacity. Occasionally, that happens here. Again, that's what we're here for. We'll be happy to talk it through beforehand. There are some exceptions to this, but I don't know that it's helpful for me to go over it with you. But, again, if you happen to have a business or employed by a business that might put a bid in under the county procurement system, my recommendation, and it's worked so far, is to give us a call. You've got my cell phone. I believe Ms. Elder's cell phone's on there. We'll answer the phone whenever it's an issue. That's what we're here for, and I want you to know that. You know, those of you who have served on other committees know that. The county attorney's office is there to address your questions whenever you have them, truly. Don't lose nights of sleep on a weekend because you're wrestling with an issue. We'll be there to give you an answer to your question. The next major issue with ethics is a voting conflict of interest. And, broadly, the statute prohibits voting on a measure which would inure to your special benefit or loss. It goes both ways. Or to the special benefit or loss of your family member or your employer or a business for which you have an interest. It's very, very broad. And, again, I'm kind of giving this a broad sweep because it really turns on the facts. And, again, I recommend once you've identified having a conflict of interest, then there's certain statutory things that must, not may, but must follow, which is hopefully as soon as you see something on the agenda, I think in this case my example would be it's a family member's property. For the sake of it, you would, and, again, in the category of voting conflict of interest, it's not just wife or spouse, excuse me. It's not just spouse or child. It's also, it goes pretty far down, aunt, uncle, parents. And, again, driven by the facts. And so if you see something like that on the agenda, please, ahead of time, reach out. I see that as being the most you're really just dealing with ranking real property, but that's what you'd want to look for or an employer or invite someone. It doesn't mean somebody you know, but it has to be, again, for that, for their financial gain or loss. We're happy to go through it. If we've identified a conflict of interest, you have to file a statutory form. I recommend, again, conservative approach. You do it ahead of time. There's a way to do it after the meeting, but, really, that's why I urge people to read the agenda and identify any conflicts of interest. And then you get in touch with us. We'll make sure that the form is filed ahead of time. Once the meeting occurs, if you've got a conflict of interest, and you'll get a script for this, but you would announce your conflict of interest when the matter comes before. You announce that you filed your form. We'll guide you through that. And then you abstain from voting. And while there's a little gray area about participation, I'm going to tell you consistently my office and my predecessor's advice has been, I wouldn't participate at all. You know, Florida law requires you to vote unless you've got a conflict of interest, but I'm telling you don't participate in the discussion because the line over advocating and not is very fine. And I don't really anticipate that occurring, but, again, it's based on a fact-to-fact basis, and the county attorney's office will walk you through, should you have a conflict of interest, every bit of that. I think I went through solicitation and gifts and the conflict of interest. And, again, I'm just going to say, again, if you have any doubt, there are no incorrect questions or dumb questions. They're all good questions. And those of you who have served on other county boards or maybe municipal boards know that it's far better to ask the question because I've even had elected veteran, veteran county commissioners suddenly look at something and think, oh, and, you know, we walk it through. Sometimes we have to do it on the fly because it's hard, but usually it's ahead of time and we're able to walk you through. I know I went really fast. Does anybody have questions? No. Yeah, I have a question. I'm probably newer than most people with these rules. For example, I think it would be a good idea for this group to meet with Brian Mast, our U.S. representative. He's very interested in clean water. It would be okay with me if a subgroup of this instead of a whole group, but two or three met with him in order to sort of introduce ourselves and say we're working on the same issue. Maybe there are some available federal funds. Maybe there are some available federal funds. Is that allowed? That's what I thought. You can meet, and I'll explain this in real terms. When the Board of County Commissioners goes to Tallahassee to meet as a delegation, they meet individually. You don't have two members of the Board of County Commissioners going in to meet with our state representatives or committees. You have to go one-on-one. When we go to Washington, we had a very thorny issue over a beach nourishment project years ago with the Army Corps, and we had several commissioners who wanted to discuss it with them. They had to cycle in. The Army Corps did not like it, I will tell you, but I had to explain to them we have sunshine in Florida. And, again, that's a really good question because sunshine isn't just in Martin County or there's always this urban myth that when you go to Tallahassee, you can meet all together. That is not true. It's never been true, and there's not a sunshine-free zone in Washington, D.C. either. Wherever you all are, not more than one of you can meet one-on-one. So we could ask Representative Mass to come here, or you could meet individually with him. And, again, but the only way you can as a group is to have a public meeting. If you want it, I wouldn't advise this, but if you wanted to form a subcommittee, I don't think it's provided for under your rules of procedure, you could. But, again, you'd have to meet in a setting like this, with notice, with public to make comment, with folks to ask questions. So it really kind of defeats the purpose. I know that probably in your realm you can do that, but you can't with a public body. All right. So our chairman, Jim Snedeker, could meet with Brian Mass. Absolutely. And then invite Brian Mass to attend one of our meetings or appear before all of us. Absolutely. I would think we should do that. Ms. Woods, do you have a lot of, when we delve into some of these properties, it's going to be worthwhile for some of us to go and visit them in person? Individually. Is there any way that it could be done as a field trip with recorded staff being there recording, make sure we're not communicating at all? Or is it going to have to be? There's an exemption for fact-finding missions. But in this case, it's not to make, not to lead to a decision. So I will tell you, there is that provision in the Sunshine Manual. In Martin County, there was a time when another elected board were on a fact-finding mission and a lawsuit ensued and it was found not to be fact-finding. So I'm going to say no. I would not recommend that you could go on individual inspection tours with staff, one-on-one, but not the group of you. And also, just so you understand, a field trip, even with inviting people to come along, doesn't meet the requirements of the Sunshine. It does, you have to be in a building where there's minutes taken, where people can know where it is and don't, so we're not, I don't perceive this group ever going on a bus trip. So having that in mind, we might want to have some onus on staff to kind of give us proper review, maybe video of each property, you know, trying to help us. I mean, it's either that or property owner is going to know that they might have every board member going at individual times with or without staff, or there might be a way for staff to give us an environmental breakdown of each property. Yeah, so one of the things that's included, and I go over it in the presentation, is that we're partnering with Florida Natural Areas Inventory there with Florida State University. They work with the state on Florida Forever Program and do all their assessments that inform their efforts and ranking and where funding goes for properties in the Florida Forever Program. So they'll be conducting environmental assessments of all properties that are nominated for acquisition as a part of your function. So you will have that, you'll have that environmental assessment, you'll have nomination forms, anything, any other kind of supporting documentation that we come up with for individual projects will be presented to you. As well, we'll do a presentation on each of the proposals during one of our ranking meetings. So you'll have a lot of information to chew on as a part of the process. Mr. Chair, I think we're making too much of it at this point. I think, of course, our county attorney is 100% correct, as far as I know, and I think staff knows what they're doing. So I would put all the problems that everyone is seeing to the side for right now, and let's continue and let staff do their job. And I'm sure we're going to have questions, and maybe we'll want to see a property individually, but I think we should do so when it comes up, not try to anticipate every problem that can occur and how we can get around it at this first meeting before we even have a property to look at. And I'll say, along those notes, you're welcome to talk with county employees and staff as much as you want. The only thing we have to be careful of is that we then don't talk to another board member about an issue that could come, that's called daisy chaining. So that's one thing, you know, we can't then talk to other board members and become a go-between. So I would just note that I think the input from Attorney Woods is extremely helpful. And I would just ask, you know, Sarah, are there any other items that are on your radar screen as it relates to this? I will say, I think, as Mr. Campani said, staff has anticipated a lot of your questions, but I think that falls into the latter portion of the agenda after we complete our public records training by county staff, which is next after me, and with the chair's permission, I'd like to let her begin her training. Yeah, please proceed. Afternoon. My name is Sangeeta Maraj. I'm the public records, well, the records administrator for the county, and I'll be doing public records training with you this afternoon. Sandy, pardon me. Could you spell your last name, please? It's M-A-R-A-G-H. Got it. Thank you. So we wanted to do this training. Some of you have probably seen me before. If you have, I apologize for that. I think I've seen Mr. Campani twice now. You can just take this. This is our third time together. So we wanted to do this training with everyone, just so you can be aware. There has been an uptake of public records requests for board and committee members' records as it relates to your duties and responsibilities. And what I've heard often is, you know, I didn't know that I would have public records. I didn't know that I was supposed to, you know, keep records or turn them over. I don't know what the procedure is. So we decided to give training so that you know that the public records law does apply to you as a, you know, appointed board or committee member and how we want you to turn your records over, you know, if you do create them. So what is the public records law? The public records law is any record made in connection with a transaction of official county business regardless of physical form, characteristic, or means of transmission. So this includes but is not limited to papers, letters, maps, books, tapes, photographs, videos, recordings, voicemails, text messages, emails, and social media posts. It is the content of the record that matters and not where it's kept. So this includes anything that you might have on your personal cell phones and your personal computers, if someone's sending you an email to your personal email address. As long as it has to do with board business, that means that it is a public record that would need to be turned over to us. Is the public records law applicable to appointed board and committee members? And the answer is yes. It's your custodian of public records that are received or created in connection with board-related duties. This includes electronic or written communication from constituents related to matters coming before the board. So this means that you are legally responsible for the preservation and transfer of those records to the county in compliance with Chapter 119. This legal obligation to transfer public records, extend to records that exist on personal devices or in personal accounts. All records should be preserved and maintained until they're transferred to the county. Upon resignation or expiration of your term, you're required to transfer all public records to the county before exiting or within 10 days after leaving office pursuant to Section 119.021, paren 4, paren B of the Florida statutes. Upon appointment, you'll receive notification from your county contact, which includes whether or not you'll be issued a county email and the accompanying information. I think you guys did get a county-issued email. They did, but they don't know it yet. Oh, sorry. And I don't need another one. I have one from the county. Fair enough, yeah. Okay. We discussed providing it. Sorry. I thought they did. They did. I just, nobody sent it to them. Oh, okay. So they haven't received it yet. Yes. You'll be required to take sunshine training and public records training, which you are now. You'll be given a copy of the policy and procedure number 246. I have copies here to distribute to everyone. And after training is completed, you'll be provided an acknowledgement receipt form to complete and return to your county contact. I think that will be Mike. Excuse me. We did receive, I think, from the county attorney some webinar information, and we signed a form. Is this in addition to that? This is in addition. Okay. This is just to confirm that you're getting public records training specific to Martin County. Okay. I think you've done the general training. This form confirms that you've completed the county's public records class and are in receipt of the applicable public records policy and procedure. That is the one that I'm going to distribute today. Please note that refusing to sign the acknowledgement form does not relieve you of your obligations pertaining to the public records process. If you are issued a county-issued email, communication, all county or board communication must be conducted using that county email. If an email or text message or other electronic communication, example, social media posts or comments, et cetera, is received on a personal account, the following response shall be sent to the sender with a copy sent to your county liaison. As a board or committee member, I am subject to the Florida public records law and do not conduct any county business using this private account or number. Therefore, if your message concerns board or committee business, you should redirect or resend it to my Martin County email address ad and put whatever that email address is that you got from the county. Transfer of records to the county. So records may be submitted to the county via mail, in person, or via email. So if you are getting records, a matter is coming before the board, and someone submits paperwork to you and you have them and you're reviewing them before the meeting, those are records that are related to what is coming before the board, and so it is a public record that you would need to turn over to us. If you possess records in paper format, you can either put them on a CD, on a thumb drive, or you can actually just take the paper records into us and submit it to your county contact in person, or you can mail those records into us. If it's an email, please forward that email to your county contact, yeah, to his email address, and he'll be able to save that. Once you forwarded that email, you should be deleting it from your personal account. We don't want you keeping any county emails in your personal accounts. If it is a text message, take a screenshot of the conversation, forward it to your county contact via email, and delete the conversation, the screenshot, and the sent email from your device. Videos, you can download the video, forward it to your county contact via email, then delete the video after it's been sent to us. You can also place it on a thumb drive or a CD and turn it over to the county. Social media posts, same thing, take a screenshot or a screen capture of the post along with all the comments, etc., and forward it to your county contact. Delete the post once it's been forwarded. Email should be forwarded to your county contact and deleted from your account. If you choose to keep these records after they are forwarded, you will still be in possession of county records, which will need to be produced when asked for. The one thing I wanted to touch on related to texting or the social media post, just to show you the prevalence of the public records law, is there are two cases that I'd like to talk about. The first one is Behr v. Escambia County. So this involved a county commissioner who was making posts on his social media pages about a constituent, and he was making allegations of undue political influence, and just a range of things. And this guy made a public records request for those things that he was posting about that constituent, and he replied that it was not a public record. And Behr sued, and the courts actually ruled that the stuff that he posted about that constituent is a public record, and he needed to turn over, I think, over 2,000 pages of records to this guy. And the county was dropped from that lawsuit. However, they were still trying to decide whether or not they wanted to go forward and pay for his legal representation at that time. The other case is Gatto v. the city of Sunny Isle. And basically, there was a commissioner that was seen texting during a meeting. And the constituent did not know the content of the text message that was being sent, but they made a public records request for the text. And they were told by the commissioner that it was not a public record. And a lawsuit was filed subsequent. And it turned out that the courts did rule that she sent two text messages. She sent one to her husband and one to a constituent. And they were similar in nature, in subject matter. They were disparaging. She was making disparaging remarks about another member on the dais. And the court did rule that that was a public record that she had to turn over, at least the one that she sent to the constituent. So that just shows you the far-reaching hands of the public records law. So we want to be careful, you know, what we're texting or posting on social media. Are there records that are related to county business that are not considered a public record? And the answer is yes, notes and rough drafts. So notes taken to jog your memory are not a public record and do not need to be turned over. They can be destroyed when no longer needed. However, if you share those notes, they become a public record and should be submitted to the county. Personal notes should be kept where they're not accessible to anyone. So an example of this is, let's say you get a copy of an agenda that's sent to you for the meeting coming up, and you're just jotting down notes to remember what you want to talk about at the meeting. That is not considered a public record. It's just little rough notes to jog your memory about things you want to mention. That, you know, after you come and you, you know, you use it to jog your memory, you can toss those notes. No need to keep it. However, let's say you make notes and you write a whole paragraph and you come to the meeting and you read from that paragraph, then that is actually a public record that you would need to turn over. That is no longer a personal note. So it's just little things that are jotted down to jog your memory. That's not considered a public record. The other thing is rough drafts. If you're making a draft of a document and you just make, you know, again, rough notes just to create a draft, and those rough notes are not considered a public record. Are there public records that do not need to be forwarded and preserved? And the answer is yes, and these are transitory messages. And those messages are created primarily to communicate information of short-term value and is not intended to formalize or perpetuate knowledge, set policy, establish guidelines or procedures, certify a transaction, or become a receipt. So examples of these are like meeting reminder emails. If you get a meeting reminder email, you don't need to transfer that over to the county. You can delete that once you've attended the meeting. Announcement of office events like holiday lunches, messages sent as an FYI. You don't need to keep those. Transitory messages should be retained until their obsolete, superseded, or administrative value is lost, and they should be deleted once the event they're referring to has passed. They do not need to be forwarded to us once again. However, if you don't forward them and you don't delete those transitory messages, they are still considered public records. So if they are requested and they're responsive, they do need to be turned over if they were not disposed of. Public records requests. So a public records request can be made in numerous ways. They can be made in person. Someone can come up and ask for a copy of a record. They can be made via phone, via a phone call. They can send a letter in asking for records. Any request for a record is considered a public record if it's not made pursuant to another law. So once a public records request, if someone comes to you and submits a public records request, please direct them to your county contact so that they can send that request through to us. Once a public records request is received, your county contact will reach out to you via email with a PEC form attached if we have to check with you for records. So the PEC form is actually a personal electronic communication form, and they will direct you to search your files, including your electronic devices and accounts, gather any responsive records that have not yet been turned over to the county, complete the PEC form, and return it along with whatever records you have found. If you have no records, you've been turning them over, then you can just complete the form confirming that this and just, you know, return it to your county contact. Upon resignation or expiration of your term, you'll receive an email from your county contact with the exit public records form attached with instructions to check your files, devices, and accounts, gather any records not yet submitted to the county, complete the applicable sections of the form, and return it along with any records found that have not yet been turned over. All public records should be turned over to the county within 10 days of leaving office. This is pursuant to section 119.021, paren 4, paren B, and their criminal consequences can result from failure to turn over your records to the county. What are those criminal consequences, or what can happen if you fail to turn your records over purposefully, knowingly, or maliciously? Failure to comply with the public records law may result in the county having a judgment entered against it for violating public records law in a civil action in order to pay attorney's fees of the petitioner, and there is no cap on attorney's fees. Your arrest for a misdemeanor charge, punishable by up to a year in prison, a $1,000 fine, or both. Issuance of a citation to you for a non-criminal infraction and made to pay $500 if you're found guilty. You could be removed from the board or committee, and you could also be held individually liable in civil court. That completes public records training, unless you have any questions. Do you have your phone number? Is it listed somewhere? It's not listed on this, but I can certainly give it to you now if you'd like. I have a card. I didn't bring any of my cards down. I will say that we work closely with St. Giedem's, and so you could call the county attorney's office as well, and we'll coordinate. We're all on the same team. Thank you. Okay. Just to hand these out, if you guys can sign them whenever you get a chance and just return them to Houston? Yes. I got them. No, that's okay. It's the one I got assigned. Houston. You can get with me. I'll do that email address on the business. Now, with the committee chair's permission, I'd like to give a presentation on the manual and the board program. Please proceed, Mike. Okay. So I put together this presentation to just give you a little introduction to this committee, the process that we're going to be using to evaluate lands, and then at the end answer any questions that you might have relative to the manual that has been provided to you. So, and I said this earlier, that in 2024, a sales tax was passed by the citizens of Martin County that's expected to generate $2,200 million over 10 years. And the referendum was specific to acquiring environmentally sensitive lands within the county. And you are this oversight committee that has been appointed to evaluate and make recommendations that will go in front of the board for approval in terms of what lands that we want to acquire. So one of the big parts of this ordinance and the referendum was we limited the acquisitions to certain areas of the county. And what we essentially did is we kind of looked back at the history of the program, and we looked at lands that have been acquired in the past and other lands moving forward that would be important to acquire and protect. So, and based on that, we came up with four acquisition zones. And I will say that these maps, and you have copies of those maps, aren't meant to be all-inclusive. So if there's something that's not located within one of these polygons, but is important to that program, it can be considered by that group. But it has to have, in some way, a connection to either the Indian River Lagoon South, Palmar, the area known as Loxalusi, or our Blue Ways program. They're based on areas of highest conservation value due to a series of metrics. Sometimes these could be something that another agency ranks in value. So it could be something that the state of Florida is high on their priority list for acquisition. It could be in a Florida Forever program, a Florida wildlife corridor. It could be important to a CERP project. So there's some value to the project that could either be for Martin County itself or from another agency that might partner with us. And through the history of this program, we've actually acquired close to 71,000 acres of land in these four different acquisition footprints. But we identified about 45,000 acres that could be acquired in those zones to help to complete those projects. And we estimated that, you know, and this is probably not that accurate, you know, that it would be over half a billion dollars to acquire all the lands that we thought would be important to our conservation efforts here in the county. So now I'm just going to talk through each of the individual zones and why they're significant in particular. And the first would be IRL South. And one thing to mention about IRL South is there are areas in the IRL South is specific to the Southwater Water Management District and the Army Corps of Engineers and the comprehensive Everglades restoration plan and the parts of it that are specific to Martin County. But there could be areas that are in IRL South that are in other program footprints. But this was just an area that was just specifically for Indian River Lagoon South, protecting the St. Lucie Waterway, so on and so forth. And out of the four zones that we put together, this has by far the largest acquisition footprint. Through past acquisitions, we've included acquiring the C44 Canal or C44 Project, the Reservoir and SDA, and the Allapattah Complex. And there's potentially close to 27,000 acres of lands that have been identified that could help provide shallow storage to protect the St. Lucie River. So within this acquisition footprint, the majority of the lands are being currently used for agriculture, but they do include some areas that haven't been impacted and that are just basically unimproved lands. This area is important because there's a high probability of securing funding due to its being a part of a CERP project. And the cost of the land actually tends to be relatively low when you compare it against other areas, like that might be coastal, where you would have a much higher cost per acre. The second area was the Palmar area, and this is an area near the county line. It extends actually into Palm Beach County and into Martin County. And it goes between I-95 and the Turnpike on the east and Indian Town and Canter Highway on the west. And the reason why it's being considered is because it has some of the highest quality wetland systems in all of Martin County. It's part of a very, very important greenway corridor that extends all the way really from the Atlantic Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico. So it has value for, like, a cross-Florida greenway system. Parts of it are also in the headwaters to the federally designated wild and scenic northwest fork of the Loxatchee River. And it has a lot of recreational value in terms of providing trail systems that could be used by the public. Everything from equestrians, bicycles, to hiking. There's a lot of different ways that this area could be used by the public. So most of the area that we're referring to of Palmar, and not all, is this area known as Palm Beach Heights. And actually, in the total Palmar footprint, we've acquired roughly 2,400 acres of land. And actually, the number is higher than this. There's 8,500 remaining in private ownership within these areas where you see this checkerboard pattern. So a good portion of these are composed of small lot-sized, a quarter to an acre in size. And there's imminent threats from off-road vehicles, poaching, and other uses that are incompatible with conservation values. The third area is the Loxalusi area. And the significance of this is that it really extends between the Loxahatchee River and the South Fork of the St. Lucie River. So we're talking south of Cove Road, north of the county line, east of I-95, and west of U.S. 1. And its conservation and protection are important both to the Loxahatchee River and the St. Lucie River. It has a potential to provide some trail connections between the city of Stewart and Tequesta. And it has a mosaic of high-quality pine forests and wetland plant communities. So this shows the acquisition boundary and through past acquisition efforts. And I should have mentioned this before. All the areas in green are areas that have already been acquired. And what's in yellow is potential acquisitions. So we've acquired about 6,500 acres of land, but there's still about 10,000 acres that could be acquired within that footprint. Can I interrupt you for a minute? Yes. When you say acquired, that means Martin County has acquired it, correct? Yeah, Martin County, sometimes it doesn't necessarily have to be the county. It could be the state. It is in some sort of protective state right now. Correct. Is that what you mean? Yes. So it has, and really what's interesting about this area is it has some of the largest tracts of privately owned, undeveloped land near the East Coast. So you're right next to, you know, you're right, it goes right up to almost U.S. 1, right in this area of Hope Sound, north to the city of Stewart, near the East Coast of lands that could be protected and acquired to create a greenway system. And it has close proximity to the urban services area. So really, this area is a prime target for future developments. And it has wildlife and recreational quarter value, and the ultimate goal could be to create a super park that extends between Jonathan Dickinson State Park and Atlantic Ridge State Park. And our final area is our Blue Ways program, and these are areas that are going to be right along one of our river systems. So it could be the Indian River Lagoon, it could be the St. Lucie River, it could even be the Loxahatchee River. So it basically abuts one of the river systems that's found within Martin County, and as such, it provides natural buffers. It also can provide access, you know, whether to waterways, beaches, or other shoreline areas. And just as a whole, the plant communities that are found near the coast tend to have higher levels of rare and endangered species habitat. It's also the smallest of our acquisition footprints. And this number that you see in front of you doesn't include all the areas like Hope Sound National Wildlife Refuge. It's just areas that are being targeted as a part of these acquisition programs. But in the past, through these efforts, we've acquired 1,900 acres of lands, but there's probably about 400 acres still out there. And they do tend to have a high cost per acre being located close to the coast and also providing waterway access. So the few areas that we have could provide additional access to waterways. Many of them tend to be in flood zones, so acquisition can help with coastal resiliency. And also, these areas would have a high probability of being developed in the near future. So the next thing I'm going to do is... Hey, Mike, could you talk about conservation easements? Are you going to be doing that later? We don't really discuss conservation easements that much, but it is important to note that we are able to acquire conservation easements as a part of this program. So... I might interject. So what we negotiated with the commissioners was all of the funds. I mean, this is not likely, but could be used for conservation easements whereby we would acquire farms from the farmers. And they would be preserved in perpetuity, and the farmer, she or he, could continue to farm it. And that was done in perpetuity and irrevocable. So those are highly material provisions that we built into the referendum and ordinance with Attorney Woods' input. And I apologize, but I thought I'd break in that, as you all know, all of these lands will be acquired with the local option sales tax. And by such, they are legally restricted. So they're only acquired if you've lived in Martin County for a long time. You know we've done this in the past. We've had environmental land acquisition projects. They are limited by law. They stay in the, as conservation lands, in perpetuity. They can't be undone. And the same would be true, excuse me, with conservation easements, or sometimes we call it an agricultural easement, where the land is restricted to conservation, or we let them continue to farm, but it cannot be developed. And I hesitate to wade in here, but this is not the same situation as you read about in Palm Beach County, where they had, I think they called it the agricultural reserve, and they swapped development rights. That's not what this is. This is legally restricted for the purposes that were in the referendum and are in the ordinance. And that's why we built up the term irrevocable and in perpetuity. And for the intent and purpose of this board, we will certainly say if somebody is approached and wants to submit a property for conservation easement, instead of acquisition, you know, that will be brought forward, and you'll at least be made aware that this is considered for a conservation easement, or there are some properties where it could actually be both. Like, we won't even know at the time. We could just say that this could be a conservation easement or this could be an acquisition. Yep. Good. Thank you, Mark. Jim, but we are not going to take and give a conservation easement unless it falls within the scope of the referendum, correct? Yeah, it has to match the criteria that's been established by the manual, the ordinance, the referendum, all of the above, in order for it to be considered. So, Mr. Smith, who has a farm, if it doesn't fall within our categories and he just wants to unload it, we won't be buying it, correct? Correct. Okay. And it does have to have, you know, but it does have to have some conservation value. And, you know, it could be that an area that's being ranched would be considered. One of the things we're talking about is there is a canal and levee that goes between Hungryland and what's known as the Nine Gems property, which is a critical component of the restoration of the Northwest Fork of the Locksatty River, a CERP project. So, one of the areas we'd like to have evaluated is this particular berm and canal that are critical to that project. So, it's not necessarily all going to be, you know, beaches or preserves. It could be something more like that. And as long as it has conservation value, then it can be evaluated. And then it's up to you as a committee to decide how important that is or not. Thank you. Mr. Chair, one more question from Ms. Woods or Mike. Will the County Commission be changing the future land use to conservation if it's acquired fee simple for each parcel? Do you want to answer that? Or will we have to be recommending that on a case-by-case basis? Say it's ag land that we acquire. Should this board come up with a recommendation if it's fee simple acquisition for the commission to change the future land use to conservation land? Or does the ordinance already require that? My sense is, so if we acquire in the – let me put it from this – I don't believe you all have to make a recommendation for that. You're going to make a recommendation for acquisition, how the future land use or the zoning is up to the Board of County Commissioners and the LPA, if that's where it had to go. But I think it would be based on what the property was – we usually put it in – Yeah, I wouldn't think, like, an agricultural land, like an active ranch, would want to rezone for conservation. If it was a conservation easement – And we don't – that's only for institutional purposes. Yeah, so it would be on the case-to-case basis, Mr. Matheson. It wouldn't be – but, again, the county regularly, I can tell you, when we acquire, for example, our utilities department as part of our septic-to-sewer program, we acquire a piece of property in a neighborhood for a vacuum station, we rezone it to institutional, which is the government use. So I think, yes, if we just acquired a piece of conservation land fee simple, would we then designate it as conservation? Probably, if that was what the use was going to be. That's our – our board policy is anything that's managed as a conservation land within Martin County gets rezoned for institutional conservation. I mean, anything acquired with this – these funds, the intent of the ordinance is that it's for conservation. Correct. So if we were to acquire agricultural land – Correct. But if we acquire an easement – No, no, I'm talking fee simple acquisition, but it would be expected by the voters, having read the ordinance, that the BOCC would change the future land use to conservation. They would have to. I mean, wouldn't they – They would have to marry that. Okay. I mean, if you read the ordinance – The way the comp plan works, it – I mean, you – depending on what the use is, you've got to have it consistent. So if the county were to own it, and it was acquired with conservation, then consistency would require that it have that designation. I don't disagree with you. Okay. There will be other limitations. If Florida Communities Trust is our partner, they have a management plan. They have – it's called a deed of restrictive covenants, which has a lengthy list of all the things that you have to do in order to get grant funding through Florida Communities Trust. And you have to write a management plan, and you have specific actions in terms of restoration of the property's conservation values and what type of recreational facilities you can build. So, you know, a lot of these other agencies that we would partner with would also have things that would restrict how the property can be used. I do want to add the ordinance does require – does highly encourage partnerships with other nonprofits and governmental entities. And I think if you look at your review process, that's something that staff would bring to you. I can tell you back in the mid-2000s when the last time the county had these, we had a hugely successful acquisition program using the South Florida Water Management District as our partner and leveraged lots, and I don't want to say millions if that's wrong, but I know that we acquired way more land using those sales tax monies than we would have without using our funding partners. And county staff did a great job tapping into all kinds of federal, state funds as well as nonprofits. I mean, it's not to say that an environmental group couldn't also acquire with – Now, you know, that thought did bring up one point, and there are two areas. One is Palmar and one is Point Siena Gardens, where we're looking at these small individual lots where we would be acquiring quarter, half-acre, one-acre lots. We would not be able by law to, like, take those little individual lots and put conservation designations on it because it would be affecting the other property owners in the area and their ability to do anything with their properties. So I do want to throw that out, that that is a limitation where we would not be able to rezone unless we were able to get big chunks. You know, if we get 50 acres, then we can bound it, border it, manage it, change, you know, the land use and zoning, but we can't do that just for individual lots. So, Mike, that's a heads-up to potential landmines. So as these come along, you'll give us – Yes. Okay. Mr. Chairman, I have a question. On the lands where the – like, recently, when the county purchased the developmental rights for the ranch, how is that classified and how is it held? The county bought development rights to a ranch, like, which – And it's a working ranch. They continue to own it. You're talking about Bull Ranch? Yes. Okay. Bull Hammock. I'm not familiar enough – like, I'd have to familiarize myself with that actual acquisition to know what the limitations are. The county was not involved, so it would fall under whatever the rural and family lands program, which is the ones that acquired whatever restrictions they had. I would say that, one, it would prevent development of the property. Right. Two, for additional funds, they can purchase, like – I can't remember what the word is – like environmental services. So that could mean, you know, for an extra – just a million dollars, we're going to go remove ditches from your property so that we can restore wetland hydrology and function. So there is a possibility to then acquire additional environmental services on those properties. Okay. Is that – are those lands reflected on the map that you just showed us? That – no, because that map was created in 2021, and that is a pretty recent change. Change. Yeah, it is. But certainly I can go back if you want to see that. There's an area called Bull Hammock. Yeah, and while he's pulling that up, my name is Jim Gorton. I'm the public works director. The Bull Hammock acquisition or conservation easement was done through the state, so the county didn't have involvement with that acquisition. We're happy that they acquired it. It is one that didn't really fit into any of our – is it on the very north end of the IRL? Oh, it would have been – it actually came as a surprise. We didn't even know until it happened that it was happening, but it was actually listed as being a potential acquisition. It's this area and beige up in the northwest corner of the IRL self-footprint. There is a long history on that property. It was originally in the IRL, and we were asked to remove it, and then the landowner determined that it might be beneficial. You're talking about South Florida water management. Yes, yes, sorry about that. But it wasn't – it was bought by the state through their – Matching funds. Through funds that were specific to buying conservation easements on lands that would remain in ranching, you know. And there are other potential acquisitions that will – in these footprints that will involve the rural family lands program. And we'll certainly be communicating with them in the future about partnering with them on some of their efforts. But that is an excellent example of a conservation easement on ag land and exactly how you would want it to look because it's the properties managed impeccably by the folks that ranch it, and that's the kind of partner we'd be hoping to deal with in the future. That was brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. Thank you. And we'll have a question and answer session at the end of this presentation as well. So I had just prepared this flow chart, which just kind of shows the basic process. So I'm just going to review it really briefly. Everything starts when a nomination form is submitted to our division. And these nomination forms can be submitted by anyone. So you're welcome to submit if there are properties that you would like to see for consideration. You're welcome to submit them to county staff for review. And what we'll then do is we'll look at the different submissions. We'll make sure that it, one, follows the intent of Ordinance 1221, which is basically that it's land that is important for conservation within the county and that it's within one of the footprints or could be considered something for one of the footprints that we had developed. And we'll basically then remove nonconforming proposals from consideration. Then we will come before you and provide you with a copy of the nomination form, environmental assessments, and any other pertinent information so that you can then rank them. And what we'll have is we'll have ranking committee meetings where you'll actually have all the properties listed down and you'll write your different scores on them. And I'll talk about that form here in a little bit. And based on that, you'll come up with recommendations in terms of what the board should consider moving forward for acquisition. We'll then take those recommendations before the BOCC for them to review and vote on whether to proceed with the acquisition. If that happens, we'll do our due diligence and work with the landowner and do our appraisals. And hopefully then we bring it before the Board of Kind of Commissioners for final approval. And after the fact, we'll then come back to you and say, you know, at future dates, this is one of the lands that was acquired, you know, that you reviewed. So we'll provide updates in terms of the status on some of those lands that get acquired. It's a little blurry on here, so you can't see, but this is the nomination form. It does, at the bottom, it says that these forms should be submitted to landacquisition at martin.fl.us. And it lists my contact information on there. And anyone can submit a project, as I said, but in order for us to bring it in front of you, we have to have a willingness to sell. We have to have a letter from whoever the landowner is saying, I am willing to potentially sell this property or grant a conservation easement for your property. So we can't, we won't bring it for your review unless we have that specific piece of information from the landowner. So, you know, once these nominations start coming in, staff will have to do some outreach and try and track down who the people are that we need to talk to so we can get that information so that you can then review the project. And once again, we'll review it to ensure it falls within the acquisition zone and has conservation value, and then it's brought in front of you for consideration. So the next step, once we have the nomination form, once we determine that it meets with the intent of the ordinance, we will then have an environmental assessment completed. As I said, it will be completed by Florida Natural Areas Inventory, EFNA. They'll review the properties and they'll provide information that's specific to the project ranking forms, such as rare and listed species habitats, importance of greenway corridors, how easy the properties will be to manage, et cetera. And I will say that when I was working on the scoring matrix, I was actually communicating with EFNA. So they actually, we were working together to come up with that information. So they're going to tailor their responses specific to the information we want to have to provide to you for these environmental assessments. So they should answer some of those questions that are specifically on your form. And we will provide those to you in advance of the ranking and evaluation process. So probably what I'll do is I'll just email them to you with all the support information so that you can look at them beforehand. And then when you come to the meeting, I'll give presentations on each of the proposals, and then we'll facilitate the ranking process. And this is just to mention a couple of the programs that are here in Martin County. We have the Florida Forever Program, which really touches, actually it touches on all four now, Palmar, Loxalusi, Blue Ways, and Indian River Lagoon South. There are properties in each of those that are a part of the Florida Forever Program and are eligible through that program for state funding. I will also say that there is a possibility that if a parcel gets nominated, it can get added by Florida Forever to their acquisition list. So there was a recent one, Barbie Ranch, which is one that will come in front of you for consideration, that's in the IRL South footprint. And that has now become a Florida Forever project and is eligible for Florida Forever funding if we can get the owner to agree on a price. And Florida Wildlife Quarter, this is a big buzzword in the state of Florida right now. A lot of their focus on land acquisition are to support this Florida Wildlife Quarter that extends all the way throughout the state. The map is a little crazy and it's kind of hard to read, but basically it shows that there's parts of Palmar, Loxalusi, and Indian River Lagoon South are within that corridor. So the Barbie Ranch property I mentioned is right down in this area right here. So once again, it has a high potential of unlocking state acquisition funding. Probably a little hard to read on there, but this is the project ranking form that we developed. So in essence, what you guys are going to do is you're going to fill out the project score and you're going to rank each of these from 1 to 100. And then you're going to provide them to us and then we'll take the weighting unit and we'll multiply that. So if the weighting unit is 15, then we'll multiply that 100 by 0.15 to come up with our weighted score. And so all properties will be ranked from 0 to 100. And then the highest, obviously, will be the ones that would then get recommended to the board for funding approval. Does that make sense to everyone? A question, though, so this form is expected to be filled out by the committee on an individual basis or we won't have discussion? Well, you will have an opportunity to discuss. Okay. So what will happen is I will give the presentations and we'll have to work out this process a little bit. Like, so I'm not, you know, we're not 100% sure on how this will all play out, but you'll have a chance to, you know, say your piece about each one and what you think and then you can write up your scores. And you could write up your scores, not hand them in, and then have the discussion if you think that that's a better way for you to do the process. So that's something we still need to work out. Yeah, so there's going to be a question about timing, Mike. So let's say a property becomes available, we want to be sure that we don't lose that opportunity because the process is taking too long. So we can work that out, just be sure we do it fairly quickly, right? That is correct. And we can schedule, you know, the meeting schedule, and we're going to talk about the schedule. It lists once a quarter. But either staff or the committee chair can basically ask for another meeting in the meantime. So we can make it so that we can move a little quickly. And I will say that if it's one that we think is going to be approved by the commission, we can start to do appraisals. We can start the process before it's even been reviewed of doing what we need to do in order to be able to acquire the property. So we can fast track this bottom line. Yes. Okay. Yes. We just don't want to lose the opportunity to buy a property because we get tied up. Okay. And does Martin County have specific processes in place relative to Phase I and Phase II environmental assessments for toxic chemicals and that sort of thing on the properties? That would have to be part of the due diligence process. She's shaking her head. She's nodding her head. Sarah Woods, for the record, we do have a real property division, and they'll be following all of our regular procedures for how we acquire real estate. Thank you. And then, Mike, you'll be keeping track of, be sure we check all those boxes, right? Correct. Okay. So it will stay in your department once, or does it move into the property management department at some point? It will move into property management, which is in, actually, they're in our department. It's a separate division. After the board recommends moving forward with it as a potential acquisition. Jim Gorton's public works department has all of those divisions in one place. He'll, he'll, and they work with legal, they'll work with, you know, the title issues and all of those things. And there'll be an assistant county attorney who's devoted to just that. It's, rest assured, this is a very important priority for the county to move it along. Jim, you want to say something? Yeah, the process will be that as a project, a property is recommended for acquisition. Mike's team works directly with the real property division, which happens to be located exactly right next to him in our, in our office. And they work together to acquire those properties. They're, they're co-located next to each other. And the intent will be they'll work together to acquire the properties. Now, I will say that in some instances, so in, in particular, uh, SERP acquisitions, uh, with the water management district, there will be a, like a partnership agreement between the county and the water management district. And in all likelihood, they will be the partner that will be pursuing the acquisition and then we'll be reimbursing them through whatever percentage, uh, that the county, uh, contributes to that acquisition. Got it. Yep. So, so partners are good, but partners come with rules and we'll have to abide by those rules. And we'll certainly communicate that to this, uh, committee so that you're aware of, you know, if we have a partner with a project and it's going to affect the way it's purchased or, or any other things that are tied to it, we'll, we'll communicate that to you. Thank you. Um, any other questions specific to the project ranking form? Yeah. Well, not the ranking form. Okay. Well, you just go ahead. So are you going to go out and look for properties yourself or you're just going to wait for them to come to you? No. Well, we'll, we'll, we will, uh, advocate and, and, and look for, uh, specific acquisitions. Ones that we, uh, and we've already actually started, you know, uh, to do some outreach, uh, to, uh, get some nominations to come in. And, uh, more of a money question, but have you, the quarter's over. Right. Did we find out how much we put into this fund from the first quarter? Uh, our, we, we have, uh, accounting office that could provide that. I, uh, she did let us know that we were up to two or three million at one point. Um, but, um, so I, I don't know what we actually have in the bank right now, but I will say that one of the decisions that the board will have to make, because of obviously there'll be more recommendations for acquisition in the, this first cycle. Then, then money is, is how much they want to bond at a time. And the ordinance has specific language that allows for up to 80% of the estimated revenue generated from the program, uh, to be, uh, bonded upfront. So, Mike, I'd like to see a schedule for the bonding in terms of, uh, and maybe, Sarah, if you could help us with this. In terms of the steps and the timing, I'd like to see a calendar as to target dates for getting that bonding money available. Well, yeah. Because that's a pretty low, that's a pretty long, drawn-out process. And the sooner we get going on that, the better. Well, we, first we need board direction. Okay. That they want to bond. So, um, so at this point in time, I couldn't provide a calendar until the board actually. But didn't we build into the, uh, yeah, Sarah. So, I, I would suggest that what we'll put on the permanent agenda is to have an update from our budget department to provide you. Um, and we can also provide it if you want it more often. We can provide you if we're not, we're, we don't have an eminent meeting. Maybe we can provide, um, an update as soon as things change. I, I cannot remember how the DOR remits the money. I don't think it's monthly. It's not monthly. It's quarterly, I would imagine. I think they do it by about the 10th of the following month. But we can commit to giving you that update either through e-mails or through at your meeting. The other. Well, I'm just thinking, Sarah, would be helpful is just, I like to work with, you know, targets. So, in terms of the bonding, there are, there are definitive steps that need to go through to get into, to get into the bond market. Well, we, let me just say, in order to initiate a bonding situation, we would have to have board direction to start that. There is a. Could you, could you tee that up with them? Well, I don't know that we're at that point that we know if we've got the acquisition. But, yes, as soon as we do, I can tell you how long it takes to, to do the, the bonding. But we don't have that authorization at this point. I think the board was trying to look at, see what comes, what they have before it. Well, the bonding would be, unless I'm missing something, you would, you have the capability to bond for the full 144 million or whatever the number ends up being. It's only 80 percent. Eighty percent. So, 80, okay. So, but over the 10-year period. So, it's 220, the present value of that. But bottom line is, do you, are you saying you bond for each individual acquisition, or are you, okay. So, all I'm saying is it would be helpful to have a feel for a timeline. First of all, to tee it up with the county commissioners to get them, to put the gears in motion. I could just explain. We're not going to bond unless we know we have a place to place it, because you don't borrow. We're not going to pay, we're not going to borrow the money unless. So, I guess the example, which we may or may not have before us, would be if a very large, very expensive, $100 million, $80 million parcel was available, then at that point, and they weren't going to wait, then at that point, you go forward and you do the bonding because you're going to expend the money right away. You're not going to just bond it and have it sit there. Got it. The point that I'm making is that this all takes time. And so, just, we don't want to find ourselves in a position where we say, oh, shucks, we've got a bond for $50 million. But there's other ways, temporarily, if the county commission wants, decides this is a good piece of property for them to buy it, besides bonding until the bond is set. Correct, Sarah? I would, I don't think. I'm just saying there are other ways to do it in the short term. Perhaps, but I'm not going to go on a limb. I will tell you, though, Mr. Snedeker, that, or Chairman Snedeker, that I will tell you that the county has bond council that we've had for decades. They are well known throughout the state of Florida. We'll be able to bond in a, not in a slow pace. We'll be able to do that. But I don't, I don't want to speculate on how we would move money around because. All I'm thinking is this. I just don't want to get tied up in the process whereby a property becomes available. And we say, oh, shucks, it's going to take two months to float the bond and get it, you know, rated and all that. Yeah. Mr. Chair, it sounds like what you're concerned is that you don't want us, Mr. Houston, and is to be looking for properties right now knowing that we have $2 million from one quarter. He's looking for any property that meets the criteria currently, even if that property is $50 million, knowing that the county, if we can move forward on that $50 million parcel, is prepared to bond and we can move forward. Well, we're prepared to bring to the county commission that we have $50 million in acquisition. Exactly. And then they make the decision as to whether or not that they think those properties are worth bonding for. So, yeah, you're not limiting your potential acquisitions that you're bringing up right now to what we have this court. We're going to, anything in those zones, we're going to bring forward. Perfect. Thank you. And we will get you a bonding update at the next meeting. Yeah, that'd be helpful, just so we understand what the time frame is. And great. Thank you. Anything else in terms of the project ranking form? Because I, sorry. Just for a little more clarity on the project ranking form, I would just suggest that we're going to give you the information about each property in advance of the meeting. It might be appropriate for you to do a preliminary ranking on what you see. And then when you meet with the rest of the committee and you hear everyone else's things, you may decide that, oh, I didn't think about that, or there is more value in this property because of things you heard. So then your final ranking could be done at the meeting so that we could have a composite score of all of the board members. That's kind of the intent, the process that we talked about and that we've used on other committees is to have that preliminary work done up front so that at the meeting we can move quickly and get a ranking so that we can either decide to recommend the property or not for acquisition. Otherwise, we have to have two meetings, and that's kind of what I think, Chair, that you're speaking of, is it might work too slow. Well, you know, yes, you got it. You're looking to have one ranking form from this board given? Or are you looking to add all our individual scores? And then we composite them into one. Yes. So we do a preliminary on our own, and then once we get together, we then pull it together. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, and you're spot on. I mean, I'm always aware of timelines, and so, great. Thank you. And we are, too. We're very cool. Thank you very much. And you can, you know, based on the scores, I mean, you, I saw another county, they did, like, tiers. Like, they said, this is a high priority, this is mid, this is low. So that's something you could figure out how you want to organize your recommendations. Well, let's work with this for now, Mike, and then we can fine-tune it, because I'm sure we're going to be fine-tuning stuff as we go along. Absolutely. So let's go with this. One of the questions I had is, you know, ranking these properties, you know, it seems to be helpful to evaluate them relative to other properties that may be available for consideration. I don't want to rank a property in a vacuum. Right. There may be certain properties that have a higher, you know, priority, like you suggested, than other ones. Yeah. You know, buying a quarter acre in Palmar may not be as important as buying some other, you know, piece of property that may have more value relative to these criteria. So I would assume that we're going to be ranking these properties individually as we rank all of them that are being presented in one meeting. Correct. Okay. So to be sure I understand, so basically we would see comparables. Yeah. So to be sure we're paying the right amount of money for a particular parcel, correct? Right. Well, one of the items on the list is cost per acre. Yeah. But, you know, and that's one where, and I kind of explain it a little bit, but we're not going to have appraisals, you know, when we come in front of you, but you just would have to use your judgment in terms of where the property is located. Is it in the urban services boundary? Is there development all around it, you know? But I think, Mike, unless I'm missing something, it would be helpful to have a quasi-appraisal in terms of what I'm talking about, comparable properties. Just so, it would seem to me that we have a fiduciary duty to the voters to be sure that we're paying the proper price for a particular parcel. And a lot of that is going to be subjective, I realize that. But at least if we have some basis to say, hey, this parcel is worth X number of dollars per acre, you know, can you guys come up with something roughly ballpark? What's the reality check? Yeah, it doesn't really ask for that asking price. So that's what I was asking, is if on the form it said, here's what we want for the property, that's an easy math problem. But we can, when you bring a property, you could say, this property, three doors over, sold for this price, and this property, four doors over, sold for that price. And that's what my friend over there would say is a CMA, a very basic one. But we know what property sold for. And we can certainly work with our real property division to just do that kind of evaluation. Yeah, I think, Mike, if you, you know, I think for us doing our due diligence, just to have a few comparables, otherwise we're just shooting in the dark. Okay. Is that unreasonable? Or, you know, Sarah pushed back on me on that one. It's not, well. No, it's not unreasonable. I don't think it's unreasonable. It is going to be an estimate, not a formal appraisal, because we have to get through this process to even get to our due diligence. Absolutely. Absolutely. But it just gives us some idea what two other or three other people paid for similar properties. The other thing I would just say is some of the properties that I suspect are going to be on our list are unique, and it's going to be hard to find a true comp for it because of the special nature of them from a conservation value. And the value of a property from a conservation standpoint might, you know. Understand. Yeah, it's not the same value as something for a developer, perhaps. Understand. It could be rare and area-sensitive species of some critter. Yeah. No, I understand. But I just think having a rough feel for that would be helpful. Sure. Correct. To the extent that you can provide it. Talk to our real property management division and figure out, you know, what they could provide. It's no more detail what you're asking than the environmental assessment. Yes. You know, and the information that's provided on that. Yeah, there's a whole other side of this, which is there are some individuals that were very much opposed to what we were doing over the past three years, and they were determined that we wouldn't be successful in 10 years being able to say to our families that we're proud of what we accomplished. And I just want to be sure that everything we do, we don't find ourselves in a position where someone says, hey, you should have done this or you should have done that. And to the extent we can foreseeably anticipate those types of issues is a good thing. Okay. The last statement I would have is that the conservation easements would be the hardest for us to quantify value. So we'll give you some information on them, how much, what sales would be, but because it's a conservation. That's a great point. And the percentage of the market value, I understand. But I think just having, to the extent that we can do our due diligence, we want to be able to do that. And just a sidebar is it's still in the back of a lot of people's minds what happened with Sailfish Splash. As we know, that was clearly permitted in the referendum and ordinance. It's clearly not permitted in what we're talking about and why it took us two and a half years to negotiate this deal. But I just don't want to have those folks who are almost looking for us to fail to have any ammunition to do so. And that's the importance of having the acquisition zones. Yep. Those acquisition zones are very limiting in terms of the properties that we can look at. Yep. Pretty much anything out of those zones that comes forward is going to have value. Yep. I'm sorry. Go ahead. Yeah. Proceed with your presentation, Mike. Thank you. Is there anything else? I did just want to say, too, that the basis of your question, then, is if we get four or five or six different properties that are presented to us at the same time, you're thinking rather than have an individual ranking form for each property that we might want to rank those also in order of what we think are most important? Well, great question. That wasn't even on my thinking that way. If you want, we could do a scoring form like this, which is kind of easy to digest, and then have a spreadsheet with all the properties on there and then all your scores for each category. Would that help make it more relative, or I'm not sure? I don't know that we want to necessarily rank them. If we get where we are at year one in this is we might be looking for them to pass a threshold of criteria. All four properties might be worth pursuing negotiations. They might all be equally valuable for conservation. We don't necessarily need to rank them in order. They need to pass the threshold. Okay. So I misunderstood where you were coming from with your questions. I see our recommendation possibly being move forward with four or three pass the threshold and one does not, and it may not be a ranking. That's, I guess, where this, a little bit of taking each one individually might have to come up. So just as a point of order, the Board of County Commissioners blessed all of these documents. They are all in accordance with the ordinance. The idea was the Board wanted a ranking of everything that was submitted or an evaluation of everything that was submitted. So I want to make that clear. They talked about it when they approved this manual. That's the idea here was that, you know, that now, again, you could have a submission of something that clearly has very little environmental value, but that evaluation would be you all's, and that would be transmitted to the Board, and I'm sure they would take that seriously. But there's not a provision for kicking stuff out. It's for you all to provide your expertise in giving an evaluation of each parcel, and then it goes to the Board to decide. Understood. Thank you. And, you know, it does bring up the, you know, it's very important to us, you know, the public aspect of this. You know, which I don't really talk about in this presentation, but, you know, we want to be as transparent as possible. And so by having those rankings, it shows the public specifically how, you know, how you guys came up with these different scores and what your different scores were. So I think that's a very important aspect of this is to make sure that there's as much information as we can provide to the public. Mr. Chair, I think we just have to go through the process a few times, and then it could be changed a little bit if we see that it's not working. But you're right. The county commission has already blessed the documents, and if you start to try to change the documents. No, we're not doing that, Mike. No. Yes. So let's just not get all excited about it. Okay. Proceed, Michael. So this just talks about the ranking meeting, so we'll give you presentations on all the properties to be ranked. You'll have beforehand you'll be provided copies of the nomination forms, environmental assessments, and other available information. The members of the public will be allowed to come and comment on all the proposals as a part of the process. And at the end, you can discuss the proposals and do your scoring matrix using the project ranking form. And then they'll be submitted, collated, coalesced, and county staff will then bring it. You'll make your recommendations, and then county staff will move forward to the Board of County Commissioners for approval and direction on moving forward with acquisitions. And that's actually it. Thank you, Michael. Yes. Anything else? Back to the scoring. Yes. Yeah. Is it going to be permissible for us as a dais to speak openly? Obviously, in the public forum, I think this component should get a ranking of X. Yeah, you just can't talk. Somebody else could say, I disagree. I think it should be higher or lower. Yes. So we can collectively, you know, and then we can make our own individual decision. Right. But, you know, in the process, we'll be able to exchange information. Yes. Okay. But just done in the sunshine. And all these meetings are going to be televised on MCTV. So, and they'll be available on YouTube and Facebook. So any member of the public can go out after the fact and watch the meeting and see how and why you evaluated the different properties. And so all that will be provided for public consumption. It's almost like a public auction. Right. We get bids and asks. Mike, I got an administrative question. Could we be included under the county's insurance policy as named insureds? We cannot. We cannot. So, so that, for example. No, no. So in the case that we get sued, should I keep Martin County Forever LLC in effect, for example? I'm not sure. You're an advisory. You're an advisory committee. Okay. You'd be covered under sovereign immunity as a arm of the state of Florida. But I am trying to understand how you as a body could be sued. You're not. Okay. So as long as, as long as you counsel don't see that as being possible, possible. Well, I mean, anything's possible. I will say, anybody can sue about anything. I'm not, I'm not, but I don't see liability here with you all if you're just ranking things and you're, it's a judgment thing and that's the point of the referendum and. Okay. Yeah. So the final decision is with the board. And the, you know, the board would bear the consequences of any decisions that were made. Point well made. Okay. And provided we abide by the sunshine laws, we're good. Okay. So we're not bulletproof unless we, if we stick with the sunshine laws, we are in theory bulletproof. But we've got to be sure that we really follow the letter of the law. Complex of interest. Yeah, exactly. Okay. Yep. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. That's what we're here for. Promise. And, and so if I understand the board process, then the board will look at the rankings and determine whether or not staff should move forward with the acquisition. And then once they do that, they have to come back to the board for the. I, I do want to make this clear that all of this, even though this is a little different with the, with you all's advice, we still have to follow all the Florida statutes on the acquisition of real property. So we would, Jim's division, the real property division in concert with the county attorney's office would do all of the, the real estate contracts and the negotiations. And, but then once the, typically with the county, because we would execute a real estate contract subject to the BOCC approving that, that's how we do all of our acquisitions. And at that point, it's brought back to the board of county commission, meaning in the sunshine, just like this, anybody and everybody can come and comment on it and then they will vote it up or down. So it's truly, our intent is to keep it transparent from submission to the closing on the property so that the taxpayers can see exactly where the sales tax money is flowing. Got it. Thank you. I was just going to speak on the ranking, but it seems like everyone's good. I think we're good. We didn't, you know, it's, it's, it's an advisory committee, you know, you're making recommendations for the board. It's really a guide. You know, there's, I serve on some other committees and there, there are priority lists, but it doesn't necessarily mean that projects are implemented in that particular order. Sometimes, just for instance, I serve on an LMS committee and the number one project doesn't necessarily get awarded because it might be, it's a, it's a really costly project where you have another project further down the list, that's what we call a shovel ready, quick, quick project. It's a filler project and it's immediately awarded. So you might have some projects like a Palmar property that might not necessarily rank high, but it's ready. It's in our zone. We know it's a property we want and we just, you know, it's recommended to take action even though it might be ranked nine on the list. Does that make sense? Yes. Thank you. Thank you, George. Will you be giving us our email? Yeah. I'm not sure. I was told to provide it at the meeting, but I'm not sure how to. Um, so I guess I could just email the private email address with the, with your, uh, county email address and I'll do that, uh, tomorrow. And, and so then all communication would ask with staff be through that, uh, county email address. Perfect. I'll turn it back over to the chair. You have the agenda in front of you. Uh, so we're, we just finished with, uh, we've covered the comments to public, uh, committee. No. Oh, okay. Sorry. Oh, pardon me. Okay. So the public, any comments? Yes, sir. Thank you. Did you skip over the schedule? My name is John Nelson. Come back to that. Yeah. My name is John Nelson. I'm with Audubon and Martin County. Beth, thank you for, for being here. And I hope your trip to New Zealand was, was a fruitful for you. Morocco. But yes, it was. Um, my question is, uh, you know, Beth represents, uh, Audubon and Martin County. What is she going to be allowed to report to our board of directors? Because she is actually a board of board of director, uh, for our, our organization. Uh, and in, in, in regards to sunshine laws, you know, what kind of communications can she have with us as a full board? Sunshine. Sunshine is, she's an individual. She can communicate whatever she wants. Sunshine is too. Um, and again, we would welcome that because the goal of this committee is transparency and public involvement. Okay. I just wanted to make sure of that. Sure. Sure. And also, by the way, I don't have any of your, your contact information. Oh. So before we leave tonight, if I can get that, please. Okay. Just wanted to make sure of that. Thank you very much. Do we have cards? Do you want cards filled out? Uh, maybe at the next meeting we could do that, but I think we can get the, the heat identified himself. Thank you. Any more public comment? So Mike, what we should do is, uh, took up the schedule for the ELOC. Correct. Uh, what are your thoughts on that? You mentioned quarterly. That doesn't seem like it's very frequently. What are, well, there can be more frequent meetings. Okay. Just in, in the, I guess it was the rules of procedure it mentioned quarterly. There'll be some periods where there's not a lot of nominations, you know, so meeting less frequently is probably fine. The reason behind that is so that you're not forced to meet so often and not have anything. We don't really have a way of anticipating. So there's a provision, as Mike said before, for you to meet more often as time needs, but we wouldn't, so quarterly is just the minimum. So let's do this. If we could, once you feel there's enough for us to cover, could you then reach out to all the members, identify a common date? Now, we had previously talked about some of the problems with Zoom. Uh, they've changed the software and it's, it's kind of messed things up. You cannot meet by Zoom. Okay. Violation. Perfect. Okay. Uh, because that software has really been messed up. Um, so we'll do a conference call. Everything will be in person. Okay. So, but let's say somebody can't, let's say that John Keller, for example, is in Chicago. Um, no Zoom meeting. He can watch. Okay. Watch. But he can't participate and can't vote. Okay. Well, I can watch. Yes. You can watch versus via MCTV. Okay. Um, so I did want to, with the board's permission, uh, we had mentioned, like, what day of the month. It would be good to set up a particular, like, the third Wednesday, the fourth Wednesday. So, I wanted to cue you guys and find out what day tends to work best. I have a problem with the third Wednesday. I'm a chair of a non-profit that they're meeting without me now. So, I don't think it's good for them. And I also have a problem with the third Wednesday, because my, my first board meeting is at 730 in the morning. Okay. With, with Mr. Gauzer there on the, Stuart Martin County Chamber. So, this is a long day. So, I think you had it the right idea, my, uh, excuse me, Mr. Chair. Let's set it up, do a, do a poll through, you know, one of the polling things, and we'll find out the next meeting date, instead of trying to do nine of us doing it at the same time. Is that okay? Um, Sarah, can we do a doodle poll to? No, you can't do a doodle poll. Yeah, that's, uh. No, but, Mike, why can't you, as soon as you've got enough items to discuss, why can't you say that? The county has methodology to individually contact folks to set it up. My, my recommendation just is maybe to set the first next meeting. Uh, we had talked as staff about the end of, in June. The fourth Wednesday work for anyone? We, we, we were looking at a couple different things. Um, so there's a, uh, particular, um, acquisition that's a part of a settlement agreement in the Palmar area. Uh, and the county is actually legally required to acquire those properties as a part of that settlement. Let me know if I say anything that's incorrect. Uh, but, um, it also involves the Southwater Water Management District. They've already paid, uh, $12 million to acquire a certain number of properties. So we thought about, uh, as a dry run, having a, having a first meeting where we just go through that property. We'll have the environmental assessment. You can go through the, uh, you know, you can go through the scoring matrix, score the property, and then we can take it in front of the Board of County Commissioners. Okay, so, Mike, let's jump ahead. Just looking at dates, are you looking at, say, you know, Tuesday, May 20th? Or are you looking at a date in June in order to? Well, I'm looking at, and, uh, go ahead. I was just going to say, why do we need to meet at 530 in the afternoon? Why can't we meet at 10 o'clock in the morning as long as the chamber is free? Correct? I think that idea is that some, some of you might have day jobs. And do you look, are you looking at us? Well, I, I have a day job. Yeah. Yeah. And other responsibilities. So I'm fine with an evening meeting from 530 to whatever. Okay. And is 530 a good time? I mean, we could do 430, we could do 5. Is 430 okay with you? Yeah, 430 is fine. About, okay. But it depends on the, on what day, which one. Okay, so, Mike, let's look at, let's look at 430. What's the timing on this Palmar deal? Do we need to do that in May or is that a June deal? I would say June. We're still working with FNA because it's two public entities trying to come up with a contract. It takes time. So I would say. How about Wednesday, June 18th? Does that work for everybody? It doesn't work for me. Okay. How about Thursday doesn't work? How about, how about Tuesday, the 17th of June? Tuesdays we tend to stay away from because those are board meeting dates. Got it. The 25th? The 25th. Does the 25th work for you folks? Okay. Merit, is that okay? Yes. Beth, is that okay? Yes, that's good. So let's do it the 25th and time-wise 430 and we meet here. So, and Mike, you'll reserve this and all that good stuff. Correct. Okay. And then, and then after that, so we could potentially be looking at 20 properties. We could be looking at 10. We could be looking at 20. We could be looking at 30. We don't have a sense of how many properties we're going to be able to review in this first cycle. So, you know, what we were talking about as staff was having a meeting in July, which would be three months from now, focused on that. But we could push that back a little bit if the board, if you as a committee thought that that was appropriate. You know, we're really deferring to you in terms of when the information will be available and the timeline as it relates to doing the deal. So, if, in your opinion, June 25th at 430 is good, let's do it. Well, this is just for that one property and not reviewing 20 properties. Well, also, I think us understanding the ropes as, you know. Yes. It's very helpful to go through a dry run. I'd much prefer to do a dry run with one so we understand how it, you better understand how it's all going to flow than doing 20. So, and then going forward, our staff will reach out to you individually to schedule the next meeting. So, we'll know availability in advance. Perfect. So, we can pick out when the next meeting is and just communicate that thing at the time at the next meeting. Well, actually, if we meet in the 25th, that's our next meeting. We can talk about it. Well, let's do it that way so we're not trying to figure it out in advance. That way you can look at your schedules, figure out what you have, and make sure it's not a conflict for anyone in advance. And we just need a quorum. So, if there are times everyone has outside lives and things going on, people go to New Zealand. And when things like that happen, we will just have to work, you know, around that absence. So, to be sure I understand, a quorum in some, you know, situations can be someone participating remotely. No. What we're saying is that does not work. Okay. Got it. And once this meeting occurs, you know, you're welcome to, as I said, start to submit nominations. So, if you have any properties in mind, you don't, you know, it'll be up to us to then try and track down the property owner. If you don't know that property owner, to get willing seller letters or a willingness to enter into a conservation easement. So, as soon as this meeting is over, we can start a nomination cycle. Got it. Great. Thank you. Just a little personal request. If you're going to have a June meeting and then sort of a July meeting, then I would like to see the next meeting in November as opposed to October. So, I can certainly attend November, January, April kind of schedule. Yeah, John, if we can do that, we will. But if we do have a property, we've got to jump on it. So, you'll still be able to participate. You'll have an additional meeting. That's fine. Yeah. Pardon me. Yeah, go ahead. Our intent will be to schedule the quarterly meetings in advance. We'll have those scheduled, and then if we need to add meetings in between, we'd work with the chair to develop those dates and then reach out individually to the members of the committee. Great. Thank you. So, looking at the agenda, we've got the public comment, committee members, staff. Anything else, Mike? Any members? Any comments? Anything? Great. Well, thank you. Very much look forward to working with all of you. And, as I mentioned, for those of us in Martin County forever, we represented, too, the citizens that, when we finished with this in 10 years, that we could say to our families that we're proud of what we've accomplished. And to the naysayers, we proved them wrong. So, very much look forward to working with all of you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Kim.