followed by the pledge good morning please bow your heads and pray with me heavenly father as we work together today for the common good thank you that you hear and answer our prayers we welcome your presence in this meeting today give each of us clear minds and peaceful hearts and lead us always in the path of your wisdom and i ask this prayer in jesus name amen i pledge allegiance so it looks like we've got a full house today standing room only i'm going to ask you to make sure that your cell phone is off and anytime during the meeting if it does go off i'm going to make you stand over here so we can all make fun of you so make sure you turn it off um yeah yeah so i've got names i believe everybody here on this list is to speak about smoky grove or greenleaf but if you're not here to speak about that now is your opportunity to come address the board so uh i'll open up uh anyone wishing to address the board there goes the first phone who was that okay nobody wants to to talk to us mr chair before we move on just i want to make i would like to make sure that the record is clear regarding my comments from last meeting after the gentleman read the letter our portion letter front relating to the litigation involving north river ranch uh it was not my intent to assert that opposing counsel actually directed the individual to read the letter and they have informed me that they did not direct the individual read the letter it was my intent to form the board that the letter was from opposing counsel and somehow the gentleman had gotten a copy of it and read it to you all which concerned me so i just want to clear that uh for the record all right we're good all right consent agenda move approval second got a motion and second for approval any discussion seeing none all in favor say aye all right those like sign motion carries dd beaver how are you mr chairman how are you commissioners good we asked this morning we come to you to request your to approve and ratify payroll checks number zero two nine one eight through zero two nine four five in the amount of thirty eight thousand one hundred eleven dollars and forty six two thousand seven hundred twenty nine direct deposits in the amount of four million one hundred sixty six thousand seven hundred ninety five dollars and fifty four cent dated june 14th 2024 wire and electronic fund transfers in the amount of 17 million ninety five thousand five hundred nineteen dollars and twenty cent dated june 4th through june 17th 2024 invoice checks numbered four six one three two nine four six two one nine seven totaling thirteen million twenty seven thousand three hundred thirty nine dollars and fifty eight cent dated june 4th through june 17th 2024 approval disbursements second got a motion and second for approval any discussion seeing none all in favor say aye all right those like sign motion carries we also request the approval of the minutes of your regular board meeting held on june 4th 2024 second motion and second for approval any discussion seeing none all in favor say aye all right those like sign anything else thank you that's all we have today okie dokie thanks mr. mink yes mr. chair i just have one island that would normally be on a consent agenda and that has been placed here uh to allow uh commission to recuse them themselves and that is to uh accept the um the proposed fiscal year 2025 budgets for highland meadows highland meadows two highland meadows west lakeside preserve villamar and your borough or yarborough lane community development district sorry about that uh and it's recommended for approval mr chairman and madam clerk i'll be recusing as i have a business relationship with the applicants approval motion second for approval any discussion say none all in favor say aye aye all right those like sign motion carries anything else no mr mr beasley good morning mr chair members of the board members of the viewing audience the manager's office will have four items for board consideration this morning item number h1 is to request the board approve a software as a service agreement with the rapid deploy organization in connection with the next generation 9-1-1 public safety dispatching technology this will be a total expense not to exceed one million five hundred and sixty four thousand dollars to be expended over a proposed six-year contract term polk county's e9-1-1 system requires new and evolving technologies to facilitate timely dispatching of law enforcement and fire rescue and advanced public safety answering point analytics to reduce emergency response times rap the rapid deploy organization has been selected by the polk county emergency 9-1-1 coordinator in consultation with the polk county sheriff's office communication emergency communication center the bartow police department the lakeland police department and the lake alfred police department the rapid deploy system consists of radius mapping and eclipse analytics radius mapping brings together real-time 9-1-1 mapping integration with the polk county's public schools elisa's alert system and provides the ability for future implementation of video to 9-1-1 eclipse analytics will assist in analyzing call processing times call routing call volumes and data reporting to reduce response times the rapid deploy software as a service proposed agreement term is six years and will be a purchase through the an agreement with ak associates who will manage all implementation and training responsibilities the fy 23 24 first year total is ten thousand dollars and years two through six fy 24 25 through fy 28 29 will be invoiced at about three hundred and ten thousand eight hundred dollars annually the total six-year investment will not exceed one million five hundred sixty four thousand dollars first year funding of ten thousand is available within the fy 23 24 current year fund emergency 9-1-1 fund funding for years two through six will be included in those respective fiscal years with all funds coming from the wireless and non-wireless statewide telecommunications fee so mr chair members of the board consistent what i think is the board's priority commitment to public safety initiatives i would request the board approve the proposed software technology agreement with the rapid deploy organization with the six-year term expense not to exceed one million five hundred sixty four thousand dollars move approval got a motion and a second for approval paul would you mind um explaining real quick for the benefit of everyone not necessarily related to this but the fact we now have what do you call it texting 9-1-1 if if you can't talk you can you can still get a hold of the 9-1-1 people correct correct good morning commissioners paul wamble emergency management director and uh chairman you're exactly right we've we've had that capability for a couple of years now uh the state of florida uh you know we've rolled that out so you you can if you cannot call which a dialogue with a with a 911 call taker is certainly the the best way to go in an emergency various questions uh what's going on you know a whole protocol they go through but if you can if you find yourself in a situation where you cannot talk uh then you can simply text 9-1-1 just like you were going to you know enter a manual enter a text in your phone and that will also go to the appropriate call center based on your location so here in polk county that would either be the sheriff's office emergency communication center or if you're inside the city limits of lakeland you'd go to lpd and and that dispatcher will interact with you over text and get the information just like they would on a voice call all right thanks appreciate that so we got a motion in a second any other discussions yeah mr chairman uh there's a lot of things i think that this board does not spend the kind of money on that we would like to spend money on but public safety is not one of those i don't think there's any question the emphasis has been on uh public safety whether it's law enforcement uh whether it's ems or fire for many years now and uh i think the board deserves a lot of credit for that focus i wish there was i wish there were ways to do uh better in other areas but obviously we're limited but uh again public safety is not one of those areas that the county commission is short changed yeah we have spent a fortune on that for sure anything else all in favor say aye aye opposed like sign motion carries thank you paul mr chair members of the board item number h2 is to request the board to approve a construction contract with specialized property services incorporated in connection with exterior window restoration and door repairs at the polk county history center this will be a one-time expense not to exceed one million sixty one thousand forty seven dollars and twenty cents polk county has completed the public solicitation process seeking bids from qualified contractors who were interested in restoring 204 exterior windows and repairing four large exterior oak doors at the polk county history center located in bartow these restorations are necessary to preserve the facility which is a historic landmark and must meet standards of the national trust and historic preservation organization bid number 24-249 was issued and two contractors submitted bids the lowest responsive bid was submitted by specialized property services incorporated out of tampa in the amount of one million ten thousand five hundred twenty one dollars and twenty cents a recommendation of award was issued and no protests were received in accordance with resolution number thirteen zero six six fifty thousand five hundred twenty six dollars is included in the proposed contract award amount to address allowance and contingency work issues the contract time for this project has been set at 210 calendar days and i might add mr chair members of the board that approximately 47 percent of the total construction cost is funded through a grant agreement with the florida division of historical resources services five hundred and sixty one thousand forty seven dollars and twenty cents is available within the general capital improvement fund and 500 000 is available within the specialized rev special revenue grant fund and this is an approved project within the board's adopted community investment program so mr chair again i think in keeping with the board's priority commitment to the county's historical heritage i would request the board approve the proposed construction contract with specialized property services incorporated in an amount not to exceed one million sixty one thousand forty seven dollars and twenty cents all of which is in connection with bid number 24-249 move second got a motion and a second for approval any discussion well i think it uh i think it's worth mentioning the uh there were two bids and the difference between the bids bill just to show about 90 percent yeah second low bid was uh one million nine hundred thirteen thousand wow all right all right all right all right those like sign motion carries mr chair members of the board item number h3 is to request the board approve work authorization number 18 to an existing service agreement number 22-103 with the revere control systems organization all in connection with the southwest regional wastewater treatment facility control systems upgrade project this will be a one-time expense not to exceed 404 thousand and fifteen dollars consistent with the polk county utilities supervisory control and data acquisition master plan and related technology and initiatives the utilities division continues to leverage technology to improve operational efficiencies this proposed work is for the upgrade of obsolete supervisory control and data acquisition systems at the southwest regional wastewater treatment facility which includes the primary and chemical control panels on-site lift station and three remote input output panels and replacing fiber and networking equipment these upgrades will indeed increase system reliability and optimize operations funds for this initiative are budgeted within the utilities adopted community investment program specific to the wastewater treatment facilities scada upgrade project so mr chair members of the board i think again in keeping with the board's commitment to system-wide technology upgrades i would request the board approve work authorization number 18 to consistent with service agreement number 22-103 with the revere control systems incorporated organization all of which is in connection with the southwest regional wastewater treatment facility control systems upgrade project in an amount not to exceed 404 thousand and fifteen dollars second got a motion and second for approval any discussion cnn all in favor say aye all right those likes on motion carries mr. chair members of the board final item from the manager's office this morning is item number h4 item h4 is to request the board approve amendment number six to an existing professional services agreement contract with uh contract number 16-43 with the kircher group in connection with continued asset management technology upgrades within the roads and drainage division these additional time and material services are estimated not to exceed 225 000 the original professional services agreement with the kircher group was established in june of 2016. that agreement established the broad vision to create and implement an asset management system across all spectrums of asset responsibilities within the roads and drainage division since that time various amendments amendments number one through five have been executed to create what are now fully functioning technology asset management tools to include a pavement management system a bridge management system and a division-wide computerized maintenance management system in an effort to have the kircher group continue to provide professional support services to all elements of our roads and drainage asset management technology tools proposed amendment number six will revise the previously established hourly rates for which future support service tasks will be assigned to potentially improve the data entry process that exists today as well as dashboard display clarity and metric considerations funding for this continued initiative is available within the adopted roads and drainage community investment program specific to the pavement management project by way of transportation millage funds assigned so mr chair members of the board again in keeping with the board's commitment to system-wide technology upgrades i would request the board approve amendment number six to agreement number 16-43 with the kircher group at an estimated expense not to exceed 225 000 dollars motion for approval got a motion and second for approval any discussion cnn all in favor say aye all right those like sign motion carries anything else that's it mr chair all right george nothing right martha yes i do um i want to say that last week i went to the avello inaugural flight festivity which was absolutely awesome avello is the um airline that is flying now into lakeland and flying out of lakeland which i think it's a game changer for all of us it actually took me 20 minutes to get to the airport which is a big difference going to orlando and tampa so i'm asking mark if sometimes we have to um be proactive in the good news that we share so i'm asking mark jackson to share with us some of the pictures that took place and talk a little bit about this game changer for polk county good morning everybody thank you madam chair uh i almost said madam chair i'm so used to you being the chair of the tourist development council next next speaker please oh we do have a celebrity in our midst there mr wilson over here of course is being inducted into the polk county sports hall of fame this evening if you haven't got your ticket sorry we've sold out we're 820 people right now so anyway i guess everybody he's got quite the fan club that's that's great a lot of good news today well we're going to be as brief as we possibly can but as commissioner sanio dr santiago uh pointed out this is huge news for polk county and it's a bit it's almost a bit of an understatement we've been working on this for uh actually with a velo now for over two years and it's never easy working with the within the airline industry it's really really a tough industry to be involved in basically had two months to pull all of this together um for the destination new haven connecticut halfway between boston and new york city perfect for us by the way um there should be more coming i can't say anything about it um some destinations that i know some commissioners will love um and some others in this room but that is forthcoming as well so every destination that we have uh or that we will be opening we have to go into that community and create and develop a marketing strategy a sales and marketing strategy um in new haven it was rather interesting this is the channel strategy for new haven connecticut the actually the first slide i should point out justin if you go back to that one you'll see all of our partners partners in flight this took a team uh city of lakeland had their responsibilities primarily infrastructure and then operations with the faa tsa and so on velo of course is the airline polk county uh we couldn't have done this without these commissioners um their support for years now uh has been very influential and uh it wouldn't have been pulled off without the support of county commissioners they are uh forward-looking visionaries um to put it lightly and then of course we had uh uh visit central florida visit central florida sports when we go into a community this is really what it looks like um there is so much more we're using almost almost every tool in our marketing and sales toolbox to penetrate this market to create awareness in new haven connecticut this business model will be activated in every community we go into henceforward so that's uh a bit of a snapshot there here's the channel strat strategy locally uh lal today in the uh the digital and the print media lakeland now and of course the ledger and hall communications two of our big partners for visit central florida this is what it looks like in terms of media snapshot we sent teams up three different times up in a new haven area take a look at the uh the left side of the slide here these are some of the people boots on the ground that our staff worked with and it took a lot of time a lot of relationship building including uh university of connecticut we're big into sports teams collegiate and professional there'll be more coming there um and these literally are some of the locals on the right hand side that's where we look today really within a 60 mile radius uh we're working we're using our partners with hall communications the ledger um and some others lamar billboards and so on what does it look like what does it look like to the consumer on the left hand side you're going to see two vertical um ads if you will and those ads are uh are consumer e-newsletters we send them to our massive data database avello's database our partners database bases and many many others and you can see some of the activities here when you click on these it takes you directly to now we had to work with avello to make this happen takes directly the consumer directly to the airline's booking site okay the booking so far um are over 3 000 um far beyond their expectations there was also a deviation between what they felt the percentage was going to be they felt it was going to be an 80 excuse me 80 percent new haven to florida and 20 percent local it was actually 60 40 shocked them okay and i will tell you that avello said that this traffic that we generated um was beyond their expectations that exceeded every other destination in and out of new haven connecticut where their marketing arm and that was our primary responsibility um here's some of the billboards up in and around new haven connecticut uh with avello of course uh the star of the show uh commissioner santiago here in the uh left side of the that's not why i wanted you to present that i'll take it so what are the results of all of this well i mentioned the tickets that have been sold exceeded their expectations that's why they'll be announcing some uh uh actually start sometime between today and uh july 19th they'll be announcing new routes it has accelerated that fast um here's the media reach if you look to the right hand side um you'll see 186 million globally impressions and we didn't think we'd ever get there the earned media value is 1.7 million dollars free um on the bottom left hand corner you'll see some of the people that jack cormier worked with uh there's nobody better at getting um uh television stations print media into events like this one of them being telemundo and you'll see a video in just a second um if you speak spanish that's great if you don't maybe commissioner santiago can translate for us but it's pretty interesting and then some of the others there's there's a lot more here okay i'm gonna switch it over got a couple of videos we'd like to show you and they're very short i think a minute and a half here we go is finally over the first passengers that just got off this plane here beside me this commercial flight and now we're waiting on another group to board in such a special day calls for a special celebration you can see here the entrance created for the welcoming of the first avello airlines flight which included a water cannon salute these passengers all landing in lakeland from new haven connecticut lakeland mayor bill mutts is here along with other airport leaders and avello airlines officials who are all getting ready to speak you have to grow into the numbers and there's 2200 people a day that fly in or out of full county either out of tampa or orlando now this flight to and from connecticut is available every thursday and sunday from now on then we have just one more video as well as mark mentioned for new haven this is the uh only flight that's going out to new haven connecticut on thursdays and sundays de acuerdo con el portavoz del aeropuerto de lakeland los vuelos de ida y vuelta saldrán todos los jueves y domingos y es que durante años ese aeropuerto ha recibido aviones llenos de mercancía de compañías como amazon pero este jueves se hizo historia esto ha sido una cosa que nosotros hemos estado trabajando por años y llegar a este momento es sumamente bueno para mí es sumamente exitoso marta santiago portavoz de bici central florida añadió que es muy conveniente la ubicación del aeropuerto de lakeland para los residentes de esa zona ya que no tendrán que viajar desde good morning commissioner sorry uh my name is justin la farrier i'm the senior manager of visitor services for visit central florida and just to wrap it up real quick for everybody this morning mark mentioned all of our efforts getting up to this point with the inaugural flight last week on june 13th but we want to reiterate the point that those efforts don't stop there this isn't a one-stop shop for just getting that first flight off the ground pun intended um we don't take our foot off the gas and here's just one example of that on that first flight coming down to lake lakeland was this particular influencer we brought down on that flight from new haven she was in market in lakeland promoting with uh to her followers you can see her follower base there throughout the entire weekend back up to individuals in the northeast new england region as mark mentioned as well these are the direct results of those marketing and advertising efforts as you can see the first flight brought in 135 passengers the plane seat 145 passengers so 135 out of 145 inbound 133 out of 145 outbound and i could tell you on the second flight on sunday there was 125 on the inbound flight and about the same on the outbound flight so as mark mentioned avello is very very pleased with the results thus far and as you can see there 3900 segments booked between uh june 13th and the booking window of early november right now so all great things and then of course uh we do what we can with boots on the ground our new welcome center in the terminal to ensure that we're increasing expend and extending the stay to those visitors coming into central florida and lakeland couldn't do it without our partners so thank you thank you muy bueno mr chairman i gotta work on you definitely thank you so very much i appreciate you uh sharing that with us like i said i think this is a game changer and i wanted to make sure that everybody saw um what took place mark i got a question is parking free yes so what you pay to park in tampa and orlando will probably pay for a ticket on avello yeah plus the the headaches the mileage to and from and selling this one of the things that are we had many influencers out there in the market uh the one from new haven was one of her comments was sure beats flying uh into orlando hands down and so the convenience uh the lakeland advantage quote unquote is one of the tag lines that avello is using um and they were just thrilled you know and and like justin said this team effort you know this board has been supportive can't say enough about mr beasley and mr taylor um they've they've been close to our vest as we've moved forward with this um you can't ask for better support you just don't construct these business deals without your support without the support of the administration and i can't say enough and this is a business deal we're making money you're making money for polk county that's what it's all about hopefully well not hopefully there will be more jobs and money flowing into the county so we're blessed thanks mr chairman your to your question my recent 10-day experience at tampa parking was 220 dollars yeah yeah mr chairman that ain't giving that away kind of a follow-up to commissioner lindsey's comment and your question when does long-term parking become a problem at uh at lakeland is there any number on that where somebody would know that there's no problem they can go for two weeks or come back in their vehicle still going to be there yeah it's uh i don't have the answer to all of those details that's really the city of lakeland the airport's uh area of operation our area of expertise of course is the marketing and sales side of things and that's in their portfolio of responsibilities to have an answer in case somebody wanted to know that's a great question here's our policy if you're gone two weeks and you come back your car will still be here yeah i'm sure they're working on all those details and as they come along i mean i don't think they have them right now but down the road they will yeah and and relative to commissioner lindsey's comment they're happy for you to stay there because what'd you say how much 220 220 so yeah do that for a month and see if you like it pretty tough your turn now oh no i haven't finished i'm sorry thank you thank you very much both of you thank you um i just want to make a comment i noticed that we have a an israel flag and i have a funny feeling that belongs to you mr lindsey am i correct is it that israel flag okay thank you i just want to clarify um and and i know that it's the only flag but i i want to make sure that people understand that i'm supportive of israel also i don't have a flag of a hat one i would put it and i you get me one but we're i'm supportive i can't speak for my colleagues but i'm supportive of of israel also i just wanted to make sure that if you only saw one flag that doesn't mean only lindsey's supportive of israel but there's um some of us that are also so i wanted to make that comment neil nothing neil no he said nothing i don't have anything so we will move on to the um hearings public hearings thank you mr chair before we begin i'll go over the public hearing general procedures we ask that you please turn off your cell phones or other devices that may distract from the public hearings please adjust your microphone and state your full name and address for the record before you begin speaking on topic individuals speaking during public comment section of a matter will be strictly limited three minutes the board is experiencing these matters and is it is able to discern what is legally relevant to an issue and what is not information that is relevant or repetitive only reserves to frustrate and internationally prolong the day's business the commission expects civility out at all times during all public hearings speaking out of turn shouting out from the audience disrespectful sounds or utterances while another speaking is unacceptable and you will be asked to leave the chambers for the remainder of the day if any person decides to appeal any decision made by the board with respect to any matter considered here today you will need a record of the proceedings and that for such purpose you may need to ensure a verbatim record of the proceedings is made which record includes the testament and evidence upon which the appeal is to be based which you must gather at your own expense anyone in the audience who wishes to speak and present testimony today must be sworn in all testimony given during public hearings shall be deemed to be sworn at this time if you're going to address the commission or speak on any case today please stand raise your right hand and answer out loud the following question stand up everybody everyone who's gonna speak today if you think there's a chance you may want to speak stand up raise your hand all right right do you swear or affirm that testimony or evidence you provide to the community of the commission today is the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth all right thank you mr chair the first items are expected expedited hearing procedures i will go over those procedures expedited hearings are held pursuant to resolution number 2022-089 expedited hearings are used when no opposition was present at the planning commission hearing the applicant agrees to the expedited hearings and recommendation of the development development review committee is for approval expedited procedures are the following after staff briefly introduces the case the hearing will be open for public comment if anyone speaks during public comment the applicant will be given the opportunity to respond at the public comment the board will consider the land use case at any time a full presentation from staff can be requested from a commissioner the applicant or a member of the public all documents attached to the agenda item are deemed part of the record of the land use case unless removed from the list of experts by motion of the board all individuals on the list of experts attached to the agenda item are deemed experts for the purpose of the land use case now this time i'll turn over mr sisco for the expedited hearings thank you mr mink good morning ben zisco land development director we have three items on your expedited public hearing agenda today item number 01 is an expedited public hearing for case ldc pas 2023-33 mediterranean drive cpa to consider a future land use map change from pre-development of regional impact to residential low the subject site is approximately eight and a half acres it is located to the east of lake marion the site is within neighborhood 2 west village 7 of point sienna and is currently designated as an open space tract in the point sienna master plan the request is to change that to residential low to facilitate the construction of single-family homes similar to those surrounding the site this item appeared before the planning commission was recommended for approval and following any comments or questions today staff also recommends approval and this is an adoption hearing all righty i'll open a public hearing anyone wishing to speak on this matter please come forward seeing no one to get clarification on one thing the open space designation was not a permanent or condition it was just designated that because it was open space that's correct it was designated in the 1971 original point cna pud that's correct sir anyone wishing to speak on this matter seeing nobody i'll close the public hearing and bring it back to the board approval second got a motion and second for approval any further discussion seeing that all in favor say aye aye those like sign motion carries item number o2 is a companion piece to item o1 this is an expedited public hearing for case ldcd 2024-2 mediterranean drive subdistrict change to consider a subdistrict change from residential low one to residential low four on the subject property previously discussed by default changing the land use to residential low low defaults to a residential low one which has a minimum lot size of one acre this request would change that designation to residential low four which would bring that that size down to approximately a quarter of an acre and again as previously mentioned the intent is to develop single family homes with the same size lots as those surrounding it this also received planning commission recommendation and following any questions or comments staff also recommends approval of this item all right neil i had a question but i see it's answered on there this is uh served by toho yes i'll open a public hearing anyone wishing to speak on this matter please come forward yes ma'am good morning it's actually other things that bring me here this morning but um this is sort of related and i probably should have spoken to the item before this why if point sienna has open space planned why don't keep why don't we keep it open space why do we have to switch it to residential and at that residential four can we get your name and address please sure my name is jean reid 27 lake eloise lane winter haven florida 33884 thank you i stand for questions if anybody we're not really doing questions and answers then i stand for an answer has anybody considered asking point sienna to just leave this open space because there's nothing that says it can't be open space it has to be residential why are we enlarging an overbuilt area already it's already overbuilt and we already struggle to provide waste water services and sewer services fire police schools why are we creating a bigger problem by encouraging their open space to be developed into residential four thank you you're welcome yes sir good morning everyone um my name is alejandro bosch you can pull that mic up closer to you yeah can you hear me now perfect uh my name is alejandro bosch i'm the civil engineer for this project i'm the one who developed the original site plan uh i live at 69 73 southwest 161st place miami florida uh so basically uh the intent here is to build only 20 houses at maximum uh we had some communications with toho already we're gonna be extending the water and sewer infrastructure so you know we're not proposing anything that is high intensity or that will have a negative impact in the neighborhood that's it thank you anyone else all right yeah i've got a question uh before we uh but not not for you there i'll close the public hearing and bring it back to neil well my question is one how much open space is there in the uh point sienna greater point sienna development area and is all of that subject to you know four unit per acre development with an application or is there anything that is anything permanent about any of the open space that currently exists in point sienna shonda bennett with land development division there's nothing permanent about it no it comes from the original plan that was developed in the 60s mr ziskell mentioned about the 71 pud we use that original map from the 60s as the pud map a lot of the open space is drainage patterns some of it is obviously large enough for development we see this more as infill so as long as they deal with the drainage appropriately it can be developed and it when the legislature changed the development of regional impact rules in 2016 they moved the responsibility of adjusting development of point sienna from the state to us thank you mayor anybody else all right motion approval no second all right make sure we're on the right item here so we're on o2 i've got a motion for approval and no second is that correct the companion piece to o1 yeah i'll second the motion okay all right got a motion in a second uh for approval of item o2 all in favor say aye aye opposed like sign uh opposed okay one opposed okay o3 item number o3 is an expedited public hearing for case ldct 2024-7 water star text amendment and this is a text amendment to amend the land development code to implement a water star ordinance this item has been brought before the the board in work sessions in previously meetings the water star ordinance is an effort in working with municipalities the construction industry and the the water management district to continue to promote water conservation and the two big items in the water star ordinance are the use of water sense appliances and reduction on high volume high flow irrigation systems this is the first reading of of this ordinance so no action is required today our building division has met with the polk county builders association and numerous cities across the county have adopted a similar ordinance the planning commission recommended approval with a 7-0 vote and staff is also recommending approval again following any public comments or questions today no action is required and this item will be back before you for adoption in two weeks all right i'll open a public hearing anyone wishing to speak on this matter surprise surprise good morning commissioners i can't tell you how excited i am to finally have this item on the agenda this has been a governing board district priority for some time we have 14 out of the 17 polk municipalities already on board builders are building to these standards in every one of those jurisdictions and we are seeing the benefit of reduced withdrawals where these have been implemented conservation is only one tool in this water situation that we're in in polk county as we chase walk a recovery winds and the central florida water initiative challenges we thank you so much for your partnership informing the polk regional water cooperative and addressing future water supplies that way and this is another tool in our tool chest that is making a difference we are expecting just based on the permits that have been issued so far we're expecting a 2.7 billion gallon a year water savings out of this and we're seeing it in the fastest growing areas that have already adopted this with not necessarily reductions in public supply withdrawals but a steady line where the growth is at 25 26 percent in some cases with no additional withdrawals occurring even during establishment of lawns up there so it's been just a really great program for the district and we are so happy to see polk county hopefully fill out the areas that are not already covered by the municipalities that have taken this step we know who you are but could you tell the audience i certainly can i apologize i was taking my lead from gene cindy rodriguez senior government affairs regional manager for the southwest florida water management district thank you any questions no i'm sorry anyone else wishing to speak on this matter all right seeing none i'll close public hearing and we'll move on and mr chair that concludes the expedited portion of today's agenda all right mr chair p1 p2 staff is requesting the those islands to be continued to july 16th 2024 at 9 15 i request a motion for the approval to continue p1 p2 do we need one motion for both i believe we can carry cover we got a motion that motion was for both what that motion was for both oh oh i thought you said revoke oh no no for both all right so we got a motion to uh push them off to july 16th p1 and p2 uh got a second all in favor say aye aye opposed like sign motion carries we'll hear them on july 16th p3 good morning uh chairman commissioners for the record shonda bennett with the land development division this is a request for the board to consider the transmittal of the conference plan text amendment ldcpal 2024-8 it is a text amendment to section 2.130 e1 of the comprehensive plan which is the section where we have policies on the developments of regional impact like point sienna and others that existed the time the conference plan was adopted in 1991 and specifically 1a or section e1 is specifically related to green leaf this was added or amended in 2008 there's one sentence in the policy you can see here on the screen to add reference to green leaf being an historic area and then replace the phrase or the acronym uea with dri and i'll explain that in the next few slots green leaf is located i'm sure you you know between point sienna and the ridge cities of hane city lake hamilton and dundee in fact you see on the lower right how city pain city city limits are adjacent to the developed portions of green leaf the planning commission did recommend approval but a split vote of four to three and in terms of the advertisement we had a legal ad published in lakeland ledger on june 3rd two emails in opposition were received in one letter of support and certainly we've had many residents here in support and opposition to the request as well just explaining a little bit about what developments of regional impact are it's from the florida statutes in 1973 that were adopted some of the original state mandating mandated planning rules and a dri is defined as a development that because of its character magnitude or location would have a substantial effect upon the health safety or welfare of its citizens of more than one county and the state went ahead and defined what that is in terms of number of units or square foot of retail and this map shows the different dris that we've had in polk county we've had a basically mixed use residential category and phosphate mining the red ones are the mixed use ones to give everyone a relative idea green leaf is the small one in the middle point sienna you just discussed a little bit that's a pre-dri because it's vested against the dri statutes the other red ones which would lakes providence four corners victor posner city center some of the others built in osceola county river ranch and then the imperial lakes and then the other southwest polk county there's the phosphate mining related ones green leaf was originally adopted in 1973 was actually i think one of the one first ones in the state of florida to be adopted and it was originally called the arrowhead dri and the map that you see on the screen is what its original boundaries were at that time it certainly the major developed portion of green leaf is really right in the middle here and this text amendment in the next slide i'll to go over that a little bit of what it really impacts but green the arrowhead dri green leaf was originally approved for 1 935 dwelling units a conference center clubhouse golf courses and other recreational amenities on 1847 acres so the timeline a little bit is the arrowhead dri was in 1973 then a developer was interested in buying the golf course and the convention center in 2008 and they submitted a conference of plan map amendment and text amendment and a land development code text text amendment as well as a plan development and that focused on what you see here in the dri outline you can see the green leaf uea outline in bold and then that uea was divided up into the dri and then the additional property which what we call today is smoky groves uea stands for utility enclave area you i'm sure you remember the phrase transit supportive development area which is our more urban development area and that's how we basically divide up the county in terms of where growth should go based on infrastructure the more rural one is the rural development area utility enclave is just what it sounds like an enclave of utilities now crest and fed haven is another example and poinciana was certainly several when the conference plan was adopted there was a rescission for the dri in 2008 at the same time of this conference plan amendment and then the land development code also established different policies or regulations for development and that's part of the conflict between the code and the comp plan and why the applicant is proposing this modification so the sentence that's being modified on the bottom it's basically all development within the green leaf uea shall be reviewed as part of a plan development so that would be everything in black if the policy is adopted to be modified it would change everything in the dri to be reviewed as a plan development removing the additional property from being required as a plan development approval doesn't remove its requirements from all the other standards in the code for a lot wits and all the other development standards that the board has recently adopted it just removes that requirement of the plan development in 2008 essentially belt out agreement was approved and that established really what was developed in green leaf at that time which included 1 359 units some of them single family a lot of them condominiums on and then the remaining acreage that wasn't developed or that wasn't in that core group is about 876 acres and that's the top portion which some of it has been annexed in the city of haynes city and then the very bottom portion which includes smoky groves some of the considerations that staff included in our analysis for the reason for a recommendation of approval included a lot of material you've already heard about at your retreat in terms of the different transportation improvements that some are funded some are not funded some are development driven uh such as uh power line road of course the um the polk parkway extension and green leaf is somewhat in the middle of all of that and certainly there's two approaches that we think about as staff in terms of growth the macro compatibility and micro compatibility and to some extent green leaf and the macro compatibility is infill it's between point sienna and the ridge cities and those are all growing toward green leaf the micro compatibility is certainly a lot of concern for lots of residents and that's the large lots really to the east of smoky groves in particular and as you go further east but what didn't exist in 2008 which exists today is the requirement of the 25 foot garage setback and the one tree per lot those regulations weren't in place in 2008 and they're in place today and this developer whether the plan development whether this is amended or not the developer is required to adhere to those standards today the conflict that i've mentioned regarding the land development code if you look in the middle the land development code for green leaf says the green leaf uea will be reviewed as a pd unless otherwise indicated in table 4.25 and when you look in table 4.25 in the code it says single family detached is a permitted use not a level 3 review so that's one conflict the other item which is somewhat of a limiting factor is it also says that the maximum limitation for any new development anywhere in green leaf is no more than 1 753 units that spread over the tourist commercial center if they want to add some resort residential units in there if they ever change the land use for the dri which is the golf course that remained dri back in 2008 as well as what the additional property will have in terms of new development so that does limit it to some extent but what staff is also would like to propose in this amendment for your consideration in addition to what the applicant is requesting is the sentence that you see in the middle of the screen in white any development of the additional property that is either in excess of four dwelling units per acre or has lot widths less than 50 feet wide that cannot meet the requirements of section 822b of the land development code shall require plant development and the thought there is that additional item thinking about what board's concerns were over the last few years for the new code regulations have been implemented really allows this property to be equal to other rl development in the unincorporated polk county that have developed over the last 10 to 15 years so with that staff does recommend approval planning commission again was four three and i'll stand for any questions mr chairman yes sir um just could you go back a few slides i'm trying to do the math and uh earlier the total acreage is 1800 and something 1847 what was in yellow yes okay the yellow is 1847 and there's a total of 1035 units currently right yes sir okay and the red box is well let me say the uplands portion of the red boxes i don't have that on the top of my head what's the total total acres in the red box i don't have that total uh somebody knows anybody know yeah the bart would know bart allen the applicant shout it out bart thank you 276 acres 276 half of it so we're looking at 130 acres with a proposed five four hundred and some odd is that correct i'm just doing math i'm not ready to i'm just trying to make notes and uh so go go 130 130 rather than yelling and creating a little uh consternation and randy i could see his brow furrowing i'll just come up here and stand up at the dais and answer these questions um for for the records art allen well let me say this isn't trick questions it's just how much upland it's yes correct it's uh seems like a fair question it's a 267 total in the red and it's about half is about as preservation and half is rl say 140 upland so we'll call it 140 upland you got 425 units on there so you're about three units an acre on the upland i'm just trying to make notes that's all i wanted thank you bart no problem all right and thank you shonda my question is what was the uh original plan what was the max number of units that they could have gotten out of it 17. the dri was approved for 1 935 units back in 73. i had another number a few minutes ago that no matter what come hell or high water you can't exceed 17 i thought but maybe i just went wrong that's the new 1753 yeah that was added in the conference of plan amendment in 2008. okay so which which which number is correct as we sit here today 1753 or the 19 the the 19 just historical reference of what the dri approval was for this which is not long no longer valid anymore that dri was built declared built out this 1753 is still the limitation for any new development anywhere in the green leaf uea i think that's the number that commissioner braswell was looking for isn't it well i was wanting both i want to know what the original one yeah uh any other questions but again that never mind yeah 1753 1753 bart uh good morning again commission for the record bart allen land use attorney peterson meyers law firm my address is 225 east lemon street lakeland florida i am here this morning on behalf of the applicant smoky groves development llc um kind of going through my normal uh little introduction here i just kind of want to introduce a few folks because we we have a number of them with us even though this is this is a text amendment i have brought a number of folks with me this morning um first on behalf of smoky groves i have mr scott house who's the manager of ronan assets which is the manager of smoky groves i also have mr jonathan hall who is with ronan assets and smoky groves in addition i have our transportation engineer mr don skelton from way engineering i have mr danny kovacs professional engineer from tract engineering who's been our provided our civil engineering on this project i also have mr keith burge keith is our utility operator for green leaf utilities he has been in the utility business since 1987 notably he also has a company called bentech llc and provides outside consulting he is also the owner of the gold coast which i may have just said utility that is one of the utility enclave areas that miss bennett just mentioned that's the fed haven area that's that kind of southeast lake wales so he is the owner operator of that utility so he's been in the utility business for many many years and can answer questions regarding utilities i failed to do this at the planning commission hearing but and i apologize to mr miller but i also have mr ethan miller ethan is a rising senior at mckeel academy and has been kind of tagging along with me for a few days here this summer kind of getting to getting a feel for what it's like to be a land use attorney and i've taken him to this planning commission hearing and i got to take him to a little bit of a trial so he's gotten to see quite a few things he's a real nice young man and i just wanted to i just wanted to let this board know that he is here so be nice you should take him you should take him to a hard one bart not an easy one uh you know uh commissioner combi you know right now they all seem hard but we're done with kind of the the intro stuff i don't even have a real formal presentation this morning miss bennett has really given you all the information and all the facts you need this is this is a a fairly straightforward request we are asking to remove a conflict from between the comprehensive plan and the land development code and that and that conflict exists related specifically to the additional property and as miss bennett said the one sentence in the comprehensive plan that we are asking to change if changed would allow us to develop under the land development code and the comprehensive plan provisions that have been applicable to the additional property and this only affects the additional property this has no impact on greenleaf proper it has no impact on the golf course area it has no impact on any of those other areas within the uea it would only allow the additional property to develop under the conference of plan as it exists today in the land development code as it exists today we're not asking for any other deviations or any other modifications we're not asking for more units we're not asking for we're not asking for anything beyond what is already reflected and not only the polk county conference of plan with this table that you see right here and i'll come back to that maybe we'll walk through some of those numbers one more time in the land development code that was adopted in 2009 but also the built out agreement that is between the original owner of greenleaf dri or the uea area polk county and the department of community affairs and a contract purchaser at the time which was feltrum but they're no longer involved these units were all reflected in those documents so you have a built out agreement that reflected the completion of the dri moving it to being regulated under the comp plan and land development code you have specific unit counts identified in your comprehensive plan in your land development code and specific development criteria that are specified in your comprehensive plan in your land development code this is a very unique circumstance within the county this doesn't happen very often where you have literal policies and land development code design criteria for this property not to not to omit any of the other standard stuff that we would have to do that miss bennett referenced so this is this is unique but that is really all we're doing this change allows us to develop under the code as it exists today under the intensities that it exists today going back into a little bit of the history the original dri was for 1935 units that developed and was amended over time i mean that was 50 years ago now call it that development occurred over time and in 2008 when that built out agreement the comp plan was adopted creating the uea they recognized that 1 359 units were existing and permitted at that time so that difference between the 1935 and the 1 359 never happened so it set the bottom it set the base at 1 359 but what it also recognized with the built out agreement and the comp plan is that there would be an additional 1 753 units 120 multi-family workforce housing a 300 bedroom or 300 unit hotel as well as additional convention space and other non-residential uses so this is in addition to the 1 359 so when you look at the total what is allowed in the greenleaf uea the entirety of it is over 3 000 units in total because you have to add the 1359 plus the 1753 boundary within this area and in and now when you look at this the entire uea area that boundary is approximately 1 247 acres that's this black the entire black is 1 247 acres not 18 something we're not 18 the 18 was fine miss bennett's the 1800 acres was inclusive of all this area out here to the east that went all the way out to lake marion this was removed from the dri in 2008 when they created the uea the boundary changed from this yellow the black so they shrunk it and that's how you it's a little complicated and tracking all the and i have a little handy spreadsheet that i created so i could remember these numbers but um but that's how you get to where we are today so what's being proposed is very simply change this text amendment to here we're agreeable to staff's additional language we i worked with ms bennett and ms boss mr mink may have had an input on it too related to this additional language that staff suggesting it is absolutely fine with my developer this locks us into doing very exactly what we intend to do but removing this conflict does nothing more than allow the property to develop under the intensities and the design criteria that it has had in place for decades so that's very simply what we're asking for this morning i know there was at planning commission there was a lot of discussion about utilities there was a lot of discussion about traffic there was a lot of discussion about all of those sorts of things i provided copies of the utility plant permits at the planning commission hearing that was part of your packet this morning we have the ability under the plant today water and sewer now have mr burge if you if you want to ask more specific questions we have the ability to provide the services for these 425 units we just have to connect it to the plant that is literally the which we would have to do anyway this text amendment doesn't change any of that we still have to meet concurrency whether or not this you know this text amendment was ever to occur you have to meet concurrency particularly for sewer and water before we can pull a permit so we have to be able to to prove concurrency we do that through the level two process that is a standard development procedure we're not asking for any deviation from that so again i know i've said this a couple times we're just asking for what rights and what codes and provisions and regulations that have been in effect invested and established on this piece of property for several decades with that we'll stand for any questions i know we have a bunch of folks here to speak i'd obviously request a few minutes of rebuttal at the end i will be as brief as possible but i can't promise i'll be super brief all right we'll start with questions to you george would it be an oversimplification we often have companion actions where the comp plan amendment and the land development code are companions in order that the land development code establishes uh standards and then the comp plan amendment implements those standards and those those companion actions appear on our agenda often in fact it was regularly earlier today earlier today the same thing in two parts in two parts so it appears then that the land development code approval in 2009 established the what you can do or how you can do it but for whatever reason the companion implementing part of it for the comp plan amendment was inadvertently omitted or oversight so it is this what you're asking is the second step of the two steps necessary to move forward in compliance with what the 2009 action authorized i completely agree and i and i certainly think that that year separation between the comp plan and the land development code certainly played a factor into why it wasn't fixed in 2009 i was not here in 2008 and 2009 i cannot say that's why but it certainly seems logical thank you it is a follow-up to commissioner lindsay's question in your comment then i guess that would you would say ideally that would be done at the same time in two parts not that it can't be done correct ideally ideally and yes commissioner company and you've seen you've seen where i've run a text amendment with a map amendment with a sub-district change or a pd all at the same time and that's that's a that's the ideal way and i that's my preference because this board or the reviewing boards whichever you know venue it's in get to see the entire package at one time and and see how it how it works this is you know like i said a little bit of a cleanup to allow to correct that issue but yes question i have mr chairman if i may yep uh what was the reason for the removal of the property which would have been to the southeast and what has become of it and what uh you know is the future of that if you have any i don't represent any of the folks to the southeast i wasn't involved in and you're not the right guy i have no idea and i'm certainly not gonna start coming up with ideas now okay i don't need no use for conjecture or speculation here okay that's anything else uh oh go ahead could you go back to the the chart before that yeah so just for clarification the maximum limitation when you look at the um dwellings 1 700 let me look at my 1 1553 is that for the whole area for the uh greenleaf and for smoky groves that's correct so the 425 that we're talking about today or smoky groves would come out of that 1753 so then you would be looking at 1300 and something mr chairman i do have another question because that's not what i understood i thought and it wasn't clear to me and maybe not to others or maybe you all fully understood but i thought that 1753 somehow another had become the number of the maximum there uh for all times and what bart's saying is no it's what there was existing plus 1753 is that correct bart that's correct i'm looking at it as 1359 which is the current existing and that this was referred to as new development inclusive of um which would be exclusive of the 1359 existing is does anybody know is the hotel still on and convention sitter and multi-family work for housing is all that still in play it's still part of the comprehensive plan and land development code yes what would what would it take for me to go build a hotel there say it would require a plan development approval within likely this tcc area thank you and i'm going to just put something up on the screen do you know how to make this work you know i've been practicing here since 2007 and i think this is the first time i've used that elmo but what i what i want to point out is this is the green leaf uea policies right here and you can see in the initial table this is talking the initial introduction and the initial table is talking about what is existing and i don't know if you can read that maybe we can zoom it out no better you have to slide it back and forth right so so that's the existing development so that's this 1 359 number that's this is right out of your conference plan and that shows the land uses the different unit types and then as you as you move down you can see the extra highlighted yellow highlighted language and this is where it starts talking about additional development and redevelopment within the green leaf uea and that's where this table comes into play this is what was additional so this is the new stuff this is the on top of the 1359 that's how i got to the 3000 that was done in 08 was there something special about a resort residential unit versus a residential unit i think it was just at the time it was when feltrum was doing it they were talking about doing more of a resort style type activity out there short-term rentals we don't have any kind of definition that's on the behind and and i want to refer back to also just kind of see how all these things kind of start playing together that's the comprehensive plan language this is the uh essentially be built out agreement for the arrowhead dri this was the document that i was saying was polk county dca and and everybody from 2008 and the third to last whereas clause feltrum proposes to develop 1749 new residential dwelling units and a new hotel up to 300 rooms with ancillary restaurants and shops in accordance with the polk county conference plan and land development code so it's very clear that this was on top of the 1359 and that's what we're working within all right thanks you guys got any more questions for bart just just yeah go ahead we're looking at some numbers here though so you had the existing 13 something plus 17 something so we're a little over 3 000 that's the complete universe complete uea possible okay and where where will the development where will most of these dwellings take place in that area related to smoky groves it will be within this r01 area right here on this i don't know if this is on the screen or not it is here and within the balance of green leaf you have a bunch of undeveloped tourist commercial center you have the potential to go into the golf course you um the things like that i i will say that you know go talking about the golf course and green leaf is again not relevant to what the text amendment is today but one of the benefits of that is is is you would eventually cap out how much development ever occurs out here as you if you know through that so um for purposes of today this text amendment would allow development within this rl1 portion only all right thanks anybody else yep go ahead um commissioner broswell did and commissioner cumby your questions about what the development was to look like in the past in 2008 2009 there was a pd brought to the board at under de novo and there were multi-story resort residential units in the tourist commercial center there was a lot of discussion in those hearings about that but eventually and that was approved but the pd never got built so it's no longer valid so you talked about where would those resort units be they would have been in that tcc multi-story structure so there would have been a lot of units in that tcc area gotcha all right any other questions all right see you now i'm going to open up a public hearing i know there's a lot of people wanting to speak and um we'll let everyone speak i've got some i'll call on first all i ask is you know we're we're trying to keep this professional applause cheering that's totally unnecessary we don't want to hear it uh and we'll start with janice barber mr chair um can we ask if they live in the um green leaf area or in the smoky uh groves area when they come up when they come up yeah well they got to give their address well i don't know the address i mean i don't know if it's where it's at i just want to i just want to have an idea where the people are speaking from i don't know that's a possibility or not when you come up name address and proximity to the project uh we'll start with janice barbie or jaris jaris hey good morning commission uh my name is jaris barbie i'm an aicp certified professional planner and i'm here to speak on behalf of some of the residents in the area um i'm a principal planner and owner of symbiosis planning consulting at 10117 kingsbridge avenue tampa florida 33626 and uh thank you for your time this morning um i'll try to keep my comments uh directly related to the policy and the uae specifically um generally and as described by miss bennett whenever these dris come out and are rescinded they're adopted through sub area text and policies and maps associated with those items so the question here today is whether or not uh any new development or redevelopment should be planned in the same matter as overall intended um and to be managed as overall intended as a master project with master infrastructure and and things of that nature so some things that i wanted to point out with this amendment is that the map of the uae uh isn't necessarily changing so it's not specifically identifying this historic area of the uae and is not providing that clarity as well as there's no definition within the comprehensive plan to further describe um you know which parts would not be subject to a planned development proof uh uh amendment or approval in the future so it this text while while it is just two minor changes it could be debate debated in several different fashions of of how the outcome moves forward and into the future and um more specifically i just wanted to talk about the 1753 number uh in that policy it it directly states any development or further redevelopment within the uae shall be subject to that 1753 number so i think there may also need to be some clarification on how those numbers are being developed and is there additional numbering being added because generally when acreage is taken away from an overall development the numbers don't exceed what was originally intended and was originally laid out so those are some questions that i would like to raise as far as the policy in general and the overall guiding forward of that um other than that i i think there were some other questions that were raised about utilities and things like that sorry thank you thank you for your time balcic last name yeah don oh don okay yes sir yes you ought to hear it my name is uh don fosick i'm at 116 arrow headline um i would like to just just talk a little bit about our our developer here uh mr house when they they actually bought this place they come to all of us and they said hey we're going to put this thing back together just like it was we're going to put the golf courses back in i'm even going to bring an oven from the other golf course that i bought i'm like all right man we're going to be looking good here well that's why we're here today that's never happened uh the next thing is is he uh he decided to do some pool work and uh to the to the facility over there and the problem was with that is he didn't pull permits so the county shut him down really fast did he do the right thing and go get a pool uh permit nope didn't do it uh and it still sits there vacant uh the next next thing i have is like the government uh the gov kind of gave him the the right to uh clear that property i don't think that rolling assets actually has a horse or a cow i know they got a lot of bull but my problem with all that is is they went and clear cut all this and now they have not done any of their permits with south mud and they expire today um and that's what we're looking at uh spoke to alex i'm going to kill her last name like you did mine uh uh torx off torx door i don't know and that's what she said that i've got the permit numbers and all that and they have not followed back up they've done one of 35 on that and have not followed back up with her also um it has come to our attention to that uh uh posco llc filed suit against mr house uh rolling assets uh january the 2nd um uh for a commercial eviction for his office in lakeland that was settled by judge uh kayla in march the next one is there's an ongoing one where he was served june the third uh man ali ali uh greenleaf llc and there's a judgment and it just has over there over a hundred thousand dollars this is big news um the next thing is is uh the next bit of information we have so i spoke to you mr cumby was the number seven well the number seven well it's not owned by greenleaf it's actually owned by greenleaf country homes in that in this document here we took it over to the property appraiser they actually own this well so in saying that he's probably not going to have the water to do it with he must know something's up he's already trying to get them to pay for the electricity for it um and that's why seagull sold it to him is because seagull knew this from what i understand so when you look at the many facets of this onion when you pull it back you start to cry it's got big problems not counting the sewer problem that we spoke about thank you thank you glenn lawhorn theresa souls you're on deck okay we got kind of twisted around backwards here i was going to introduce everybody first my name is glenn lawhorn 11 000 jim edwards road haynes city can you hear me okay okay um let me introduce everybody that came in opposition to this today if everybody would stand please that's here in opposition can you see them all back there okay um thank y'all one thing we want to touch on is traffic traffic out there is terrible it's not going to get any better in the words of mr lindsay in a newspaper article in the ledger was that the traffic in polk county is as good as it's going to get it's only going to continue to continue to deteriorate over the next 10 to 20 years that's very uh that's very telling the traffic counts i have here for the record came from traffic planning in polk county gives the traffic numbers you've i'm sure you've all seen that in your packets this little bitty piece of smoky groves is not going to put that much traffic out on the road only about 3 500 cars twice a day so 7 000 cars so let's don't let's don't dwell on the on the smallest picture of this the big picture is what's coming down the road if we develop the rest of green leaf into what they're talking about doing but um the schools are way over capacity that's not a big secret um and jeremy's going to talk about the the sewer plant out there and some of the problems that that's wrong with that if you look back at this whole thing the sewer system out there was built in 1973 so that thing's now 51 years old the typical sewer plant like that in a pack plant operates for about 45 to 50 years max so this thing's already over its maximum life expectancy um we've discussed in different meetings with some of you that it's not if this thing's going to fail it's a win and you're going to end up just like the folks down there in in crooked lake with all the frost proof sewage coming right up and running right down the road we don't want that i don't think y'all want that that's a huge problem right now down they're going to cost the taxpayers what 10 20 million dollars to resolve that so if um if you can deny this thing today that kind of goes away that sewer plant's got big problems and i kind of hate to keep harping on that but that's where this thing's going to go is right to that sewer plant going to go right in the crapper no pun intended um i don't know that i have anything else specific that i can tell you so i would like to know if uh if our expert can come back up with other people's time because he has some more items uh let's just keep moving and we'll come back to him at the end and theresa i believe i i said you were going to speak but you actually had the expert speaking for you is that correct theresa souls do you want to speak or not thank you for your time thank you come on up you got three minutes souls 9365 west lake marion road and a couple of you had asked about what was to the east of the smoky groves property between my two five acre tracks there's another 20 acres and another eight acres for about a total of 40 acres between the eastern boundary of this smoky groves property all the way down to lake marion road there's three houses on this approximately 40 40 acres so you consider three houses to 40 acres versus four to five houses per acre there's quite a difference there in the density so um please keep that in mind thank you thank you jeremy knolls jeremy knolls 355 west lake marion road hank city florida 33844 is my understanding today's applicant initiated text amendment would eliminate any and all decision making by the board at a level four review if voted in favor of today it would also silence us the citizens of polk county the local residents of the green leaf area this is a scary thought to me that a 425 single family home development could skip past the proper permitting system with a mere text amendment in 2008 and now with just another text amendment 16 years later no pd to come before level three or level four no input from the public today seems to be the last day last chance to bring realistic issues to the board such as the dilapidated wastewater treatment facility everywhere you research on a package plant wastewater treatment facility life expectancy is only 40 to 50 years guess what greenleaf is 51 years old not only is it past this life expectancy it has a list of failed maintenance and repair repair reports such as items listed in the agenda package from april there's a engineering firm did an inspection of the plant in january and found several items out of compliance but more importantly from that report we learned the plant has a flow of 150 000 gallons per day currently with the added 425 homes of the smoky groves it would add another 118 440 gallons per day this is an increase of 80 percent that is almost doubling the demand of a 51 year old plant that has passed its life expectancy with a terrible record for maintenance and repair this is a classic case of not if but when as the county knows all too well from the issue and frost proof with the same type of package plant catastrophic failure the county once again has to come in and to the rescue and spend millions of taxpayers money to permanently fix the problem there are many other issues at hand such as the drinking water well located on someone else's property that could easily be taken offline then what commissioners how can you approve today's vote knowing you will have no more decision making ability on this development two main resources for development drinking water and wastewater utilities are in great danger of failing before the new development even starts please please do not put the citizens and our tax paying money at risk with a disaster every development please vote against this tax amendment thank you anyone else wishing to speak please come forward if you want you can just make a line up on the wall over here and that will we'll have an order go ahead sir good morning my name is luis frede maybe my english won't be so good but i i hope that i mean marcia santiago could help me in case that some words that i cannot translate in in english but you're doing fine she will i believe she will help him with that okay so uh i know that most of you or all of you know what the area of green leaf looks like it's one of the most beautiful areas in the whole center of florida and maybe in the whole florida people over 50 years live there i could say 80 percent of the people living there are 80 or more years i'm 86 years old right now and i also believe that those people bought their houses there because it was not only a beautiful and green place but a peaceful area we have we're going to have a big problem with these developers building 1900 houses around our area or inside our areas we're going to have more than 6 000 people living there 2 000 families 500 500 500 000 cars or more going through our roads streets we're going to have more traffic we're going to have more accidents we have we're going to have more problems with our water resources in green leaf states we have now our own water plant so i don't know and i believe that that plan won't give enough water to those other houses that are going to be be over there when these developers first went to us i've been been living there for eight years when this group of people went over there they offer what they say in spanish villas castillas how do you say that in english castles yeah the world they were offering the world they were going to build uh new golf courses hotels uh new roads bridges over the roads thank you sir but really they they didn't they didn't not not until now sir okay if you're gonna wrap it up we got a quite a few people to speak thank you okay next morning my name is ed rezek and i have been a resident out of greenleaf for over 40 years or close to four years excuse me since 1987. i've seen it in its glory and i've seen it where it is today a wise man once said he was neither for nor against apathy and that's the way i feel i have two comments number one i have heard the feltrum plan mentioned from 2008 i have a copy of the feltrum plan here the feltrum plan in no way represents this which is what i've got that was passed out from this developer the feltrum plan 32 years ago or so our west course did not have the country homes the country homes we had the country homes but we didn't have an association i've been a realtor for over 60 years i was given the task to do some due diligence and find out exactly what greenleaf was all about i went down to the courthouse and i researched and i found out that in 1973 the united states government more specifically i believe the department of the army sold that property there was a covenant in that property it clearly stated a certain amount of percentage of the land had to be used for recreation the developer came in and he had a grand plan and it was a very good plan he went out and he hired the world-renowned golf architect robert trent jones robert trent jones came in and made the signature west golf course which became as you all know very famous it was ranked in the world as one of the top golf courses the covenant was satisfied by him building that golf course he could not pass on deeds if there was a cloud on the title the deeds by correcting the cloud on the title which was the covenant that a certain percentage of that property must be used for recreational purposes he satisfied that he was then able to go ahead and build spring pines and build the west side he then jumped across kokomo road and went on with his plan now my problem that i have is at the side on i'm sorry keep going keep going i want to hear i want to hear your final thought there can i go on yes okay the problem that i have is that on the west side of kokomo road we have country homes we have condos and we have spring pines all part of the original build out it was said it was built out done finished okay i can buy that the dri if you do that will allow somebody to come in there and put up multi-story do whatever they want with that property now it's my contention that everything west of kokomo road is residential and it should be preserved and taken care of that way we have 60 feet between our homes not 50 that he wants to put a home on but we have 60 feet between our homes if you go over the spring pines it's a wonderful gated community the country homes is a wonderful gated community thank you very much for your time thank you next good morning my name is deborah spalding i live at one robin lane hane city i live inside of greenleaf country homes which is the private community i respectfully request that you deny this text amendment as a dri represents a large-scale development which we don't want in our area we are a rural community a uea the unity enclave area represents a rural area which is what we are we don't want to be changed we want to stay a rural area um that's why i spoke in front of the planning commission before i met with a couple of you and i would uh i would like it if you would consider the residents our area is rural we'd like to keep it that way we don't want to be a dri we don't want to they're they're reserved for hotels and airports and in large developments large-scale developments and that is not what we want in our area so thank you very much for your time thank you next good morning my name is robert grable i live in greenleaf condominiums right smack in the middle next to the conference center it's dilapidated it's ran down it's the cherry car that was at mecham that is now in the forest that's overgrown we want to vote yes it provides long-term benefits to our community it's going to be safer environment and new amenities new safer environment by street lights walking pass i drive my car in the morning to work i'm trying i'm trying to not to hit people walking their dog you know um let's see bringing greenleaf back is the vision uh they use careful consideration the plans were made to make the vision become a reality we were educated through meetings being a part of the board uh this option makes sense for greenleaf and people like me that live there i'm 44 if i make it to 80 i got 36 more years i mean we mean in o2 my dad bought two condos in there he's passed away they've sold one i have one it's where i live that's where i mean it's hard to get stuff out here you know it's really hard scott house has told us he wants to be known for making greenleaf relevant again that's big man i mean this guy's he's big time and he wants to put his name on that and make it big i'm for that that's a good thing uh last thing is we're all wearing green shirts because we want you to vote yes for this because it'd be helpful thank you thank you next morning my name is ed there i live at 511 maple leaf court in greenleaf i've been there for over 21 years now and all i have seen at greenleaf right now is deterioration there's nothing been built out there there's nothing been repaired we finally have somebody that wants to do something and make it better we're talking about smoky grove we're not talking about anything else right now today right so if you're going to build 400 and some homes what does that mean to the tax base nobody has said anything about that that brings more taxes to the county doesn't it it does help they talk about roads okay right now we have to drive six miles to a grocery store get gas or whatever so yes there is traffic but if you build something more business think about coming back out where we are and we have a chance to have so some more businesses growing out there and something better right now we have nothing not a thing we have grass growing on the golf course we lost three golf courses 20 tennis courts we lost the convention center we lost everything that greenleaf had and we're never going to get it back but at least have a little bit of progress something where we could say we live at greenleaf and we're proud of living at greenleaf not just letting it go we live out in the country it's just not going to happen and we got a developer that's willing to do it westgate wasn't willing to do it it's just time to go forward instead of backwards thank you thank you next hi good morning my name is judy torres and i am a realtor in um with remax town center in orlando the address for the office is 701 east washington street orlando 32801 greenleaf as a community is evolving in my opinion and what was once deemed a luxury community serving wealthy business folks and their families is now in a very downtrodden state as you've heard from other people even residents that live there greenleaf is compro is comprised of vacation style condos villas townhomes and single-family residents where those who got the memo on greenleaf came to vacation or even live amenities were every everywhere and amenities are key i wish i could say i was around in those times but from what i hear it sounded like a pretty amazing place to come to live or vacation at but now dressed in a checkered shirt scott house is in the house scott and his team have a vision for greenleaf to revitalize it to reinvigorate it a more modern yet desired place to call home in order to facilitate this he must ensure that he puts in we must ensure that he puts in the critical infrastructure including the desired amenities in a place that at a quite a financial investment to him will be necessary to attract outside investors and contractors who will ultimately build those homes i understand the plan for greenleaf is to bring more workforce housing to the area which is vitally important the intention to offer quality homes for those newcomers to the greenleaf community homes with appropriate lot sizes which can only enhance property values i myself know of buyers who are ready able and are looking for affordable homes homes with a touch of class and by that i mean it might not be disney world but today's buyers want to have the ability to have those amenities in their own community such as the one scott and his team have mapped out for greenleaf scott and his team are continuing on uh are counting on outside investments that are needed to make this revitalization of greenleaf happen and for those current residents of greenleaf the intention is to make a better place to live once again amenities that have gone to ruin or shut down completely will be brought back and then some i know that there are still naysayers who want greenleaf to stay the same i understand that but change is coming we need to embrace it if it isn't going to be scott and his team it'll be somebody else that ends up falling in love with greenleaf and wanting to change it back to what it should be in my opinion if you can't already tell from what these words have spoken today i will tell you that as a businesswoman i fully support the efforts the vision and the hard work thank you thank you next i actually live in haynes city i lived in greenleaf in 2016 but i because of my husband's health we had moved next good morning saira rodriguez torres 15 robin lane country country homes today we're here to talk about smoky groves and nothing else i am excited to see our county become even better than it is bringing enhancements improvements to our community we welcome the investment we are also aware that economic development comes as a surprise this is why we're here today to exchange ideas and concerns to try to make what is coming something that will make our quality of life even better this is why we should welcome these improvements and be respectful to everyone these things are what we want nothing in life is free everything comes at a cost paul county is on the rise we should rise with it we now have an opportunity to improve these zones that have so much to offer if they were to have a little tlc we would like to see paul county flourish and be a part of it there are going to be millions of dollars invested and we on our community and we need to do it responsibly we should welcome growth and be on the lookout for the best interest of not only those who already live here in greenlift but also those who are coming to smoky groves let's make sure that our infrastructure makes life here sustainable at our homes smoky groves makes this possible it will be bringing newcomers that will also be bringing new revenue this is why it's so important not only to welcome more residents concerns but also to encourage residents to bring ideas ideas about what can be done to make this a better place to live we should not oppose just because we don't want it we should not combat resist or withstands i can understand the nostalgia of those who oppose it because i feel it too we however are in desperate need to move forward residents of the surrounding areas should come together and bring ideas let's not complain let's bring something to the table come and let us brainstorm together when resisting plans from a bona fide acquisition such as mr house's entitlement we need to also give something in return i know he is we should not combat receipts or withstands we need to make to move with progress so that process progress does not run over us the new residents of smoky wrong will bring revenue to our beloved county and new opportunity in other words let's work together and not against each other i came here on april to oppose the development and after educating myself i now support it let's let's not drive our mirrors let's look ahead of us and not what's in the past let's diversify our past with the future and let's come together and bring and build something that we will love again so today i do ask you that you do say yes to the text amend them because it will bring beauty to our county thank you thanks next hi i'm marilyn kubow i live at 118 canterbury drive scotthouse is trying to make you believe that the wallet quality and greenleaf is to regulating standards but he is misleading you in my hand there is a stack of boiled water notices high chlorine notices low water pressure notices that i have issued to residents in my community and they they're start dated starting june 12 2022 so not that long ago to today when we do have breaks in the lines the water company does not send out emails does not put up notices on our doors does not put a science to inform us to boil our water they have been there have been breaks that weren't repaired for days i have text messages to and from marlin the guy who repairs the brakes to prove this my attorney has advised me not to disclose too much information but i will tell you that we are constantly have a strong odor of chlorine in our water sometimes it is so strong it smells like you poured a bottle of bleach down the drain freshly washed clothes smell like chlorine you can smell chlorine when you take a shower sometimes the top water from our sinks is so cloudy you can't even see through the glass when we do have for it to boil our water it leaves a thick white residue in our pots we have to clean our toilets every couple of days because we get a ring and an orange film in our toilets the water in our community is making people sick i know of 10 within our community of 96 homes that are experiencing digestive issues there could be more i don't go around asking anyone my neighbor lady and i seem to be suffering the worst she has lost 35 pounds i have lost 38 pounds look at me i am slowly dying from malnutrition from the damage to my stomach and intestinal system track from the high chlorine i'm down to 94 pounds one day the chlorine smell was so strong in my house i had the water company come over and test my water it was four times the legal limit shortly thereafter is when the lady next door and i began to start showing severe stomach and intestinal issues scott house wants us to believe it was a malfunction of equipment but i have proof otherwise it was a sewage spill that they tried to cover up with bags of chlorine so no the water quality in green leaf is not good i want people in my community not to drink the water i would think twice about approving this can't risk getting other people severely ill like us thank you thank you next excuse me no no you're done good morning my name is catherine tidwell my husband charlie and i live at 21 aspen drive on greenleaf in haynes city first i want to say i appreciate and i agree with my neighbors concerns regarding the traffic the habitat the water etc but i do i tell everyone greenleaf is the most beautiful development in polk county i've seen armadillo raccoon fox bobcat panther etc throughout the property but the deal is done and greenleaf is deteriorating and needs upgrades so rather than fighting with mr house it's time we worked together with scott house to preserve the beauty in the habitat of greenleaf to create additional habitats at greenleaf while making the improvements that are needed to improve the property and our property values so i ask the board to vote yes on the text amendment thank you thank you next good morning my name is jose yavona i live in greenleaf state i moved from the state of georgia after 25 years to the greenleaf state because it's a beautiful area it was when i got there and it was still until about two years ago until mr scott got in the picture the first thing he did was he uh break into the swimming pool that was for the people residents living in the apartments area they have a service for the handicaps and everything now we have a hole on the ground that is not working and the reason he did that was because he wanted to make money out of the swimming pool he wanted to start charging people for the use of it but it's not working the other thing he did was as soon as he got there he removed all the sprinklers from the south golf course all of them okay i used to have a beautiful site on my backyard and i spent 220 a month to keep up with my property all right so be neat and beautiful so that in the back would look good at the golf courses but this guy removed all the sprinklers and it's a mess in there ever since he got in there i had this gentleman earlier says that about the if he takes over the place is going to be safe uh safety or it's going to be safety it's not proven fact any place that grows for three thousand people more in the area it don't bring no safetiness to the area it means a lot of programs proven fact uh the lady the realtor she who i respect okay she's my friend miss torres but she don't live there anymore she's a realtor she got her own personal business and interest and it is not the interest of the people that live in green live that's for sure and that's what i have to say thank you next morning everybody pablo lavona 131 larry uh arrowhead lakes that's where i live um one of the things that i keep hearing from everybody is uh we can't live in the past we can't live in the past we can't live in the past yet the ordinance or the guidelines bylaws whatever they're from the past they're from 2008 when green leaf was a resort and convention center and now we're trying to build houses based off of those guidelines restrictions whatever the case may be i see that you guys are what they're trying to do is change the the language to be uh from aue or uae to dri for those for that specific area of smoky groves uh making it residential one uh what is it four to one acre something like that well what it was approved that was you know for a convention center it was for resort living it was for all that stuff so now you guys are proving something that was based or intended to be one thing and now being another if you're trying to go with the the actual area is currently that area all of those houses are half an acre lots or more so now you're putting four houses per acre so a quarter acre lots on this property when you have spring primes everything's half an acre up sequoia ridge everything's half an acre and up country homes half an acre and up arrowhead lakes half an acre up and now we're trying to put four four homes per acre and again i'm not against progress and i know there's progress coming and everything but there's way more progress on 27 on the beginning of kokomo and the rest of the whole hayden city and whole county it doesn't need to happen there too thank you thank you next hi good morning please excuse the way i'm speaking i had major oral surgery so i'm not talking too properly i apologize my name is sebra kelly i live at 10 canterbury drive i've been in greenleaf country home estates for about eight years now i just want to bring up um one very extremely important thing that a lot of people are forgetting it is widely known and verified that the green leaf development has gopher tortoises on many areas of the property this includes the dead golf courses and the smoky groves flat did you know that the gopher tortoises is an endangered species in florida both the tortoises and their dens are protected under florida state law there are massive fines for destroying the dens also known as barriers these fines can also include jail time and it is my understanding that there was a fine uh or several for uh people getting caught pouring concrete into these barrows there are over 350 species that use these dens on the gopher of the gopher tortoises the barrow owl and the florida pines of florida pine snakes are just a few these animal the animal use these ends for protection protection from the predators and the elements if the gopher tortoises became extinct many species would lose their homes and possibly become extinct these dens are vital to the survival of many of these species has mr house applied yet for a survey to be done by the florida fish and wildlife certified biologists a permit must also be secured before any ground can be disturbed because there are endangered species living in the green leaf and smoky grove communities shouldn't it shouldn't it you as our county commissioners be concerned about the ecosystem and the threatened the threatened to the animals i will speak for myself only and say that i feel that it is our county commissioner public responsibility to use to make sure the use of being taken care of by mr house before you grant him any more approvals thank you so much for your time thank you next good morning my name is robert lewis i live at sixth greenwood lane hayne city within the green leaf community i also serve as head of the green leaf planning board which is a large group of green leaf residents who support this redevelopment small portion of our board is here today in the green shirts countless others have fled the florida heat for cooler weather up north but have asked me to convey their support as well like many we had numerous questions and concerns about this overall project but after our four recent community meetings hearing from the experts on the development team and seeing the vision mr house has for green leaf future we are more than ready to move forward with this project we've been asked by mr house to assist him and his team in some of the future planning for green leaf and we are humbled by the trust he's put in us and thankful for the opportunity green leaf as you know was left for dead by the westgate and david siegel and we are reminded daily of the 20 plus years of mr siegel's neglect we understand the state of the american economy has delayed this project for a few years however the light at the end of the tunnel is now in sight we are excited to be a part of the rebirth of green leaf and appreciate the financial investment scott house is putting into our community we understand that we are only here today to talk about smoky groves and not anything else within the green leaf dri we want to talk about the conflict in the comp plan and the need for this text amendment the smoky groves project and the financial infusion it brings will directly benefit every green leaf resident it will help fund new amenities for the community that are badly needed a new golf course pickleball courts playgrounds for our children and grandchildren walking trails pools and all the other wonderful amenities our community deserves we ask for your support on this project your support for green leaf and its residents and a yes vote on this text amendment thank you thank you next gene reed is on deck good morning my name is william gibson i live at 44 nottingham in the country homes this is a private we own the property my home does back up to the old west course which is under planning to be developed however there's no plan to keep our property private we haven't we've not had no plan on how they're going to keep those residents off of our roads and off our property i strongly reject any property management development without those safeguards i moved there in 2008 i bought my property i have a golf cart i bought that property to play golf mr house buys the property the golf courses are gone whether they needed help or whether they're not making money that's the reason i bought there was so i could play golf now if i play golf i gotta drive to almost a winter haven either way to play golf or i gotta go pay the high fees is southern dunes so i reject the planning of everything down there until we can have us a golf course okay that's why i moved there and planning to secure our property in country homes because we own the roads we own the the water you've already heard about that and uh so i i think that we need to really look at this plan is it good or is it not is there any plans that are going to increase 544 no which you're going to have much more traffic there we have a lot of traffic that it is so i would until we get those plans out i would not approve of any development until we know that we can do the roads too and keep the traffic down thank you thank you good morning again for the record my name is gene reed 27 lake eloise lane winter haven florida 33884 um i'll just start with the figures because they're not adding up for me and maybe they're not for you either but when i added 1359 and 394 i got 1753 not 425 so maybe they can only build 394 homes on the 130 property 130 acres which comes out to be just about three per dwelling unit even which would be pretty convenient and so maybe if that's those are the figures you could change that white box that shonda has uh for your approval and the applicant's approval to three per acre anything bigger than three per acre anything more dense than three per acre needs to have a plan uh development approval just a thought secondly i wanted to mention that uh there's a huge difference between tourism and some people have said it quite well people no longer come to greenleaf for a week or two enjoy the golf enjoy the tennis enjoy the green here and restaurant it was fabulous and it didn't require a lot of road traffic but this is going to change things changing it to residential development and i don't know if you can figure it out so that it works or not it's up to you uh one thing i would really like to discuss and and why i'm here mainly here is when i saw the planning commission hearing i saw what's called the east polk growth area and if you could switch the map to the east growth polk area that just really shocked me and i thought wait a minute this is not an east polk growth area this is a northeast polk area of concern there are very few roads and if you look at the roads they're not straight they're not roads that you can peel down at 50 60 miles an hour in fact if you've taken that red one it's last time i was on it was pretty dangerous it was in a rainstorm and barely got through there's a 90 degree curve on marigold road we've been trying to figure out how to widen that and do away with the curve for a long time and with the wetlands in the area you're really limited in even widening the road let let alone taking off all the curves and the worst part is that uh area of east polk growth area goes east of green leaf as it goes east of green leaf you'll see that there are no roads at all going to the east it's like cash the waterway nor are there any roads going south that's all the kassimi river basin and you just can't get out of that corner so i would really caution you to not approve this density at green leaf and if you do approve for easily four per acre then everybody else in this area of critical concern or growth area is going to want equal growth equal density or more and then we have gridlock thank you thank you for listening next good morning commissioners my name is dennis lazinsky current president of green leaf country homes development i think if we listen this morning we'll see two opposing thoughts of this redevelopment the east side which makes sense by the way green leaf is run down over there has been for a long time those are the people in the green shirts they see the benefit of having this rebuilt i don't think we have a problem representing the west side however we have arrowhead development we have our country homes development and we've got some conflicting information in between we were told originally the homes built there would be 400 to 700 000 increasing our property value i would think tough to do on a 60-foot lot to put a 700 000 home up there um maybe possible but there's been promise we were we were graciously told that we would have a 20-foot buffer on a bush separating us from the new development we are a private gated community and have been since 1993. we'd like to keep some of our privacy i don't think a bush is gonna gonna do it for us 20 feet may not do it either at any rate i guess i wanted to disclose the difference between the east and the west side of the road on kokomau road can't disagree with the folks who live on the east side we just want a little more consideration on the west side we have larger lots we're looking at approximately six feet between the planned homes i looked at this plan many times and i'm not sure that i could oil a dog house and shoehorn it into that plan we have no green space by the way you'll see a lot of green space on the east side you'll see golf courses there's no green space allowed on the west course over there none that i can find that would be appreciable so just consideration i know this isn't exactly what we're talking about today but if this passes we're going to be heading that direction near term um and we would like the opportunity to readdress these issues so that we have even a chance for negotiation on some of these issues that would affect us so dramatically appreciate your time thank you anyone else wishing to speak all right seeing no one i'll close the bubble caring and bring it back and uh bart would you like to answer some of the questions thank you mr chair i've got a handful that i'm just going to try and knock out real quickly and then i'm going to ask mr skelton to talk briefly on some transportation because i heard some transportation questions and i'm also going to have mr burge uh speak on the utility and then i will conclude but um as i was making my notes a couple things that really jumped out at me mr barbie initially the aicp planner the additional property is specifically defined earlier in the comprehensive plan related in this section um in section 2.130 e1 just a few sentences earlier so there is a defined term for additional property which is what we refer to as smoky groves because that's the ownership um so it is a specifically defined term in there there is no ambiguity related to that um the you are mark mark so the the definition is exclusively and only for the additional property only covers that that's within the red that's correct so there's no no question about it doesn't additional property doesn't refer to anything outside of that red box that is correct it is it and it specifically the language specifically says the green leaf uea which is the entire boundary will combine the original dri acreages and and existing dri units with 276 acres of capitalized term additional property which is located adjacent to the south which is that piece which is the piece of property in the red so it is it is defined so i i'm i'm not um overly concerned about mr barbie's uh comments related to um there being some ambiguity um um i heard uh well number seven is was a reference that there was a dispute in ownership that is an irrigation well that's her that is permitted in nc real estate which is mr house's uh utility ownership that's an irrigation well and it serves multiple properties out there um so there there is no i'm a little confused as to whether where this ownership the dispute is coming from um that is mr house's well it is not part of and it is an irrigation well only it is not part of the water use permit that is used for providing potable water service and we'll talk about utilities separately but that irrigation well only um there was a question about school capacity we have a binding a binding letter of school capacity from the pole county school board finding that there is adequate capacity to serve the proposed development so we have and i can i can issue that into the record that was issued on april 1st of 2024 there was an interesting reference to a restriction going back to the early 70s related to some sort of restriction for recreation activity on certain portions of the property i have mr man morrison and in the audience with me tonight i conferred with him mr morrison is the legal counsel for ronan and smoky groves development llc was responsible for reviewing the title there are no effective restrictions on any of these properties i myself am not a title attorney but i did ask mr morrison to reconfirm that this morning and he did so there are no restrictions on that my other comments i will bring back oh one more we are well aware of the gopher tortoise relocation rules and permitting we have a environmental scientist on board modican associates have been handling our environmental permitting and that is all squared away for smoky groves and i'm going to ask mr um skelton to speak a little bit on traffic good morning my name is don skelton i'm the traffic consultant my firm is based in tampa florida so i also heard a lot of numbers regarding traffic anywhere from 7 000 to 500 000 based on the traffic study which i did work closely with pulp tpo staff we had agreed upon methodologies we used the it trip generation manual to perform these estimates that is pretty much the gold standard in traffic engineering based on that daily this development smoky groves would only put about 4 200 extra vehicles on the road in the peak hour that's about 481 so we're nowhere close to any thousands of numbers i also heard some things about traffic counts we did collect traffic counts as part of this project everything was collected within the last six months and most of these road segments based on our accounts see less than 200 vehicles per hour directionally based on polk county's own standards most of these roadways have a directional capacity of 790 vehicles so we're not even close to capacity everyone's talking about more traffic yes this development will put more traffic but there won't be more problems the roadway can absolutely it's projected to be able to handle everything we looked at 11 road segments and seven intersections and before and after with or without this development they all operate at about the same level of service mr chairman yeah can i ask mr skelton yeah sure you did mention level of service because at the time my mind was geared and and uh learned this stuff to the extent i learned this stuff uh in levels of service but what would the 480 put you on peak hour level of service the additional 481 or i think that i would have to look at what road weight is i mean that one i i have the traffic study right here i can pass it around we're looking at level of service c for most of these a couple were actually b okay that was what i was interested in nothing at f anyway no nothing at f nothing at e even each intersection it performs most of them were overall level of service a and each approach was above a d i think our lowest one was a c i would have to look at that but thank you all right continue that is all i had for transfer good morning commissioners my name is keith burge bentech llc 2517 elm circle lake wales florida i would just like to dispel the rumor that um... the wastewater treatment plan is a package plant it is uh... permitted for three hundred and forty thousand gallons per day and currently the flows are at a hundred twenty five thousand gallons it is uh... permitted by the florida department of environment protection and we currently meet all rules and regulations and operating within uh... parameters set by the fdp the current train of uh... treatment at the wastewater facility was not built in nineteen seventy three it was built in the early two thousands and i know this because in the early two thousands i tried to buy the utility from david seal and he was operating on the old train and he had plans to construct in build the new train which is currently in use right now and is permitted for three hundred forty thousand gallons per day like i said the flows are at one hundred twenty five thousand currently and with projections for smoky groves that would add about a hundred and nineteen thousand more and we do have plenty of capacity to um serve the uh smoky groves development so do you have a question yes sir could you speak to the comments regarding the water system the water system is operating currently within the parameters i've been the operator there since november first um i can't speak to anything before november first but currently now the chlorine is at acceptable levels because if it was not we would be under consent order by the polk county health unit public health unit and currently we have no issues with the water all right martin you got anybody else no sir um that's uh mr chair i think from my experts we are done just a couple last things that i want to kind of kind of bring it back and and put a bow on this one um you heard a lot of kind of people in opposition but you also heard some people for and you heard you know a lot of i heard a large majority of folks from the country homes property now you know being concerned about development on the west course and things like that this is only affecting smoky groves this only affects the additional property this change this proposed text amendment is limited to this 276 acre parcel of which the northwest half more or less is wetland preservation and undevelopable so there will be a 150 acre buffer between any of the country home folks and this proposed these proposed 425 units so this entire area and if you can see my cursor generally this northwest corner of this triangle will remain undisturbed wetland and preservation um so that really think that that kind of handles compatibility issues related to those folks you just heard from our utility folk uh utility expert and an operator that we have the ability to serve water and sewer for this for the smoky groves project we have transportation capacity we have school capacity all of those things are concurrency issues that are really not necessarily germane to the text amendment but certainly um relevant to the questions and the concerns of of the community out there i believe you have a staff recommendation of support for this text amendment it is we are agreeable to the additional language that miss bennett presented this project um is within the intensities and units that have been in place for the greenleaf uea since 2008 and even really if you want to look at it going all the way back to the original dri where this area was planned for residential development going all the way back to 1973. um we feel like this is an appropriate use for this piece of property this text amendment is absolutely appropriate we would request a recommendation of approval or a vote to transmit this to the department of community affairs or the department of commerce now that they're i believe they're calling it um and we really appreciate your time we appreciate all the participation from the public it's an important part of the process this is only on smoky groves any changes any development within to the north within greenleaf within the golf course it's a whole another set of hearings and a whole another set of processes so um you know that this isn't the last shot at it all right thanks stay there bart neil thank you mr chairman uh i don't i'm not sure how it's spelled but i think i heard it correct uh mr grable read a beautifully prepared statement in support uh essentially saying that this is going to save the uh original parts of greenleaf which are in disrepair uh which have been forsaken and forgotten and they're overgrown and the pool's a hole in the ground and all that stuff so my question is they're not related uh we've heard it say you know this this is smoky grove it doesn't deal with this up here but since that was part of the uh uh the reason we should support this is because it's going to rescue uh everything that's that's now uh either mothballed or falling apart what is required amenity wise for smoky groves specifically and if there's nothing required what is planned as we speak today i'm gonna have to get mr yes mr house the primary amenity center for smoky groves will ultimately be as a result of the redevelopment of smoky groves and the money that it'll be contributing to infrastructure out there and then future development within greenleaf so there'll be additional development and resort amenities or i'm sorry i shouldn't say resort amenities developed around the previous convention center area where the previous tennis courts and some of those those activities are so the answer is there's not going to really be any amenities in smoky grove that we're looking at today we'll have to meet your amenity code open space requirements and things of that nature but the primary amenity will come with redevelopment within greenleaf thank you bart all right so let's do this we'll start go left to right comments uh comments uh well they talk about uh the glory days and obviously i've been on this commission for 20 years but it's been over a 36 year period and it goes back to 1973 i'm not sure the glory days really all that glorious uh one thing for sure they were short-lived and there's a reason for that um probably the location and the uh difficulty to get to greenleaf is why it never was uh what you would call a premier resort and the glory days were short-lived because of that and i if i was living east of kokomo road i would probably be looking for a lifeline to somebody somebody throw me a line try to get us out of this because it it sounds like and this is just a picture in my mind's eye it sounds like it it's not uh necessarily beautiful and pristine right now because when you disturb a piece of property whether it's pasture or whether it's a golf course and you discontinue maintenance on it uh you get every invasive weed known to man and if you don't believe it come to my house i got a great dog fennel patch that i'm trying to figure out how to do something with um you can grow them i can grow weeds anybody can grow weeds it doesn't take a lot of effort so i understand why you're there i also understand why the folks over on the west side of kokomo uh are uh concerned rightfully so because it sounds like it's a it's just a completely different world east to west so i get that but uh you know this goes back to 1973 as somebody said that is it 51 years ago yeah okay 51 years ago that's that's a long time ago i don't know if you would call this slipshod haphazard or both i think either one probably works in this case about how this was planned and how it was dealt with through the dri process and uh dri process no longer exists but i uh i think that people are worried because and especially when it comes to a private uh wastewater plant which uh mr bird said this is not a package plant it's sized well above what i guess would be considered a package plant take his word for that because i don't really know what uh what the situation is there the information that i have is is anecdotal that it's old everything's failing there's parts failing uh he says that's not true but i do know that dep has allowed uh package plants and small plants to operate uh that we're not operating correctly uh whether it's skyview crooked lake uh a lot of others not just in polk county and other places because there's a dilemma that dep has if they shut them down then what the heck do you do so they try to find a way to work with operators to keep them going i hope that's not the case here i hope the plant's working well and uh is capable of serving an additional uh 500 or a thousand whatever this ultimately turns out to be and uh and and i think we need to know i think it's in the county's best interest to know what is the condition of that plant and we need to monitor it and not rely on dep because again if they shut it down somebody's got to do something and in the past we had issues with with specifically i'll tell you skyview it continued for years to operate uh improperly and discharge all kinds of bad stuff but nobody could do anything about it fortunately in the case of skyview we got an appropriation from the state and we were able to work uh with the city of lakeland and connect that system eventually take it offline connect those folks to the studio lakeland crooked lakes similar situation private developer uh wasn't charged enough maybe but wasn't doing enough maintenance maybe putting money in his pocket that should have been going back in the system or maybe the system was never properly uh designed or constructed to support that kind of development there fortunately for the people of polk county uh we had arp the american rescue plan so we had a bunch of money sitting around to try to solve that problem and the board has worked to solve that problem uh but to take that system offline connect it to lake wales and and uh fortunately it's not cost the taxpayers as far as i know uh much money up to this point hopefully it won't cost us much money but uh of all those years here i have and this is a dilemma for me because all the years here i have tried to conduct myself in an honorable way i've tried to be honest tried to be open tried to be forthcoming and i i can't i like fair play i don't want to invite somebody out onto the rug although i didn't do any inviting in fact nobody up here did any inviting in 2008 i think there wasn't any of us on the board at that time but i don't uh i don't want to invite somebody out on a rug and then pull it out from under them so i'm trying to think is there any way uh any reason any valid legitimate reason for us not to do this i've spent some time with uh with county staff and uh to try to understand how all this came about and again i go back to you know haphazard and slipshod so i don't know if i've got the ability to vote against it i don't think it's compatible but then again with today's uh way that we view compatibility it changed a few years ago when i wasn't here uh in the old days we had basically a step system that you had transition you didn't just go from a high rise to you know uh one acre lots next door you had to transition between those things that's gone it's been gone now for a number of years right or wrong i don't agree with it i think that uh you know when you have uh four or five units uh per acre uh for a quarter of a mile backed up to people living on five acres or 20 acres or whatever to me that's not compatible and i've made that clear it's not not surprising anybody by what i'm saying here if you paid any attention at all but it is what it is and i i don't want to uh and i think that's the concern the county staff has that you invite somebody out on the rug you give them approval back in 08 or 09 and then uh then you pull that out from under them i'm not good with that i got a shave tomorrow and you know i want to look myself in the uh in the eye when i'm doing that and think that i did the best i could and this is a you know this is a this is uh it's not an ideal situation it's not where i want to be and it's not where i want anybody in this room to be but uh it's kind of where we find ourselves based on events conditions and circumstance that have developed over 50 plus years so with that i will i will not make a motion at this point but this can uh can discussion continue without a motion okay thank you mr chair i do have one question bart if you don't mind um you said this is only related to smoky groves yes and if that's the case and if it's not approved what happens next well if it's if it's not approved we have some options um we would you know there's there's a number of options there's go forward with a plan development which is what is required today we're still looking at the same unit counts and we're still looking at a similar layout and similar development but now we're just going back into the process you're looking at um doing additional development in other parts of green leaf um which is you know which has been discussed today already does it change do we revisit how all of that looks um if it's denied certainly what isn't going to happen is i don't in my opinion the 1753 units that are out there that are established invested within the comprehensive plan still exist this doesn't this wouldn't affect that so we would still be pursuing those entitlements invested rights and with that comes you know our pursuit of those rights that are inherent in this piece of property and you know continue through the process um mr house has been very engaged i think you can tell by the fact that we actually have some people here in support of the project he's been very engaged with the community he's been trying to incorporate um ideas and concepts into future development plans um i will say that um when i just answered excuse me my throat's getting a little dry when when i did answer about the amenity center there are amenities associated with smoky groves alone there's a pool there's a clubhouse there's a dog park there's some of that stuff incorporated within the site plan i think when we were thinking of the amenity center and i have a screenshot of the actual level two that's in-house today when we were thinking about amenities when i was getting that initial feedback i think we were talking about the bigger picture of broadening and re-establishing some of the historic green leaf amenities not specifically you know that's one of the problems you start talking about different things and so i think it was just a just an air but um there is there are amenities within smoky groves for smoky groves um things like that so it's a it's a really difficult question to answer dr santiago what are the results i mean or what are what's the ultimate outcome of today if denied we will go back and revisit all our options and that's additional map amendments that's text amendments that's pds uh and options other options that may be available to mr house well and the reason i'm asking that question is because we have you say this is related only to smoky groves but we've had people that live in the green leaf area come and talk and uh they talk about the amenities and how it's much needed and things like that so in my mind i'm thinking is is these amenities that they're looking forward to contingent on the fact that smoky groves is or that we approve of smoky rose or or or so in other words will the whole project be abandoned if it's not approved i can't i'm not prepared to answer that say that the whole project would that's just but it certainly will add additional time and um re-evaluation of the options absolutely well those are just thoughts that were running through my mind i do want to address one or two other things um the the gentleman that talked about the tax base for polk county and and for us agreeing to this development i just want to i'm not sure who it was but i just want to say i don't make my decisions based on the tax base for polk county i based my decision on what's best for polk county and for the residents so i just want to make that clear because i know that sometimes that's the thought out there that we're just looking out for the money but that's not necessarily too so i just wanted to make that mention i also want to mention that most of the emails that i receive from uh residents in the northeast area uh complain about the growth that we need to stop the growth that that is out of out of control and so i'm i'm really surprised i guess that's the best word to use it to see residents here approving um of a growth when you're probably in two three years be calling me and well or one of us and complaining about the growth again so that that's really uh uh perplexing to me um so i just wanted to bring that out and like like uh mr uh combi i'm gonna wait until everybody else talks and then i'll say whether i approve or not george thank you i'd like to ask staff uh some clarification can you hear me yes have you heard anything today in all the testimony from all the parties that changes the staff recommendation for approval no sir earlier in the meeting i made the comment that in my simple terms that land development code that was approved several years ago would normally have a companion text amendment and in this case for whatever reason that second step did not occur is that a fair characterization yes um if if that text amendment had followed the normal procedure and been companion to the initial action we wouldn't be here today correct this sentence was actually added that either the transmittal or the adoption hearing of the comp plan amendment and uh could have been amended in 2009 when the ldc tax was adopted yeah we we can second guess how that happened but the current practice is to make those tandem so that there is no disconnect as we have here yes regarding concurrency thank you we know that traffic and schools concurrency is not within the purview of this board that the applicant is only responsible for the concurrency for traffic generated by that development any deficiencies prior to that is not the property owner's responsibility and the same is due for schools unfortunately our legislature doesn't allow schools to be built in anticipation of growth only immediate growth and then we all know as soon as the school a new school is built the next day we start building portables but that's not within the jurisdiction or purview of this board utility regulations we have to rely on those who are in responsible positions for regulation that again is outside of our purview department environmental protection is the agency responsible for managing the proper operation and regulation of wastewater plants the health department has that responsibility for water plants and water distribution systems and when those systems fail as mr combi has given us a a dance down memory lane those are not those shortfalls are not the responsibilities that be made up by the taxpayer or the rate payer of the existing systems when these things have occurred in the last few years those deficiencies become a special assessment on those specific customers not the rest of the customer base we also heard about the wildlife survey those things come much later in the process and again is a regulatory obligation that cannot be overlooked so those are my thoughts and observations and if you if you want a motion in order to continue discussion i would move in favor approve the p3 i got a motion do i have a second all right that motion dies for lack of a second rick if i may remind the board this is for a transmittal motion not an adoption right that's scheduled for august 6th okay so this this again is two parts transmittal adoption one and a month from now will be part two right okay i'll tell you what i have heard a little bit of everything and i get both sides you know commissioner cumby hit the nail on the head uh you know something was done when i don't can't remember that day where i was at back in 2008 that made this uh maybe happen on a text amendment that puts us all in a little situation puts me in a situation i can tell you that i know what's right i know if if the property owner is trying to get something done goes in and and owns a piece of property goes by what's what's there yeah you know that's what's there uh then i know what's people that live there feel like uh being that this is happening uh and you know i'm a poke i've born born and raised right here in poke county been here all my life i haven't been here 10 years eight years 12 years i've been here 71 years and i've seen this place explode i don't like it never have but what's right's right if this was if this if this green leaf was being brought up today for the first time like it was back in 08 i can probably tell you all what would happen but this makes it tough but and i see both sides so i'm going to do like everybody else does i'm going to sit here and just wait we make a vote okay well i got i'll make a comment where do you want to go my only comment is uh green leaf has been a disaster for a long time um and right now without approving this i don't see a lifeline so uh i will be supporting approval because i think it's the only hope for green leaf in that area mr chairman yes they say that those who forget history are doomed to repeat it so i want to apologize for taking uh the board and the folks here down memory lane to remind them about disasters that happened because somebody was more interested in seeing how much money they could make rather than how much they could spend and that's the problem we run into this with uh too many developers and believe me there's some great ones out here and they've done a good job but too many of them are trying to see how much money they can make not how much they can spend and the developer whoever was the developer along the way original or successive uh they didn't quit maintaining that stuff because they were making too much money i figured that out on my own i didn't need anybody to tell me that they they quit because it wasn't working they were losing money losing their hat shirt and glove and they uh they turned and ran and uh it's happened before in other places green leaves not unique in that regard in fact i think that uh there's parts of florida that replete with developments that uh started and and couldn't get going and uh it's kind of funny because there's one in lake on this is another memory lane trip uh but on 92 out by the larson power plant there used to be a development there the country club estates that started back in the 20s i think now for the first time the remaining part of that just in the last couple of years is now getting developed at probably i don't know four or five units per acre or whatever it is uh but nevertheless it had an old clubhouse there for a lot of years actually the clubhouse got built before a lot of other stuff and then then it failed so that you need to remember uh the good and you need to remember the bad because if you don't remember the bad like say you'll be doomed to to repeat it i uh i uh i don't know who the original developers were i and i probably should know but in 73 i was still in fact i mentioned shaving a while ago in 73 i wasn't even shaven and uh so i don't really recall but i know they started off with good intentions and uh it didn't work out but then that takes me back to the meeting we had last week with the residents in opposition that uh you know i'm in a dilemma here because i think that uh this property uh the owner really successful but the previous owners uh were invited out were given the opportunity at this rl4 is that what we're talking about or whatever then yeah and uh and now we're sitting here and how do we deal with that the reason i ask about and i don't know there's anything i'm glad you said bart that there's going to be some amenities a pool and a clubhouse and a dog yard or dog park or whatever you call it um i uh i know it wouldn't make any sense to focus that attention on the other stuff that you you really can't do that although it seems like that would certainly make the green shirt people happy it's like come fix our clubhouse and they can come up here but nevertheless i uh i told the folks on friday that i was having a hard time voting against this not that i like it in fact i i don't like it i've uh said that i just don't think that that this four uh units per acre is anything but substandard if you're not talking about active adult where they've got a golf course where they don't need a yard for kids to play in they don't have to park four cars uh you know in the road and in uh in the front yard or backyard or wherever you can fit them in and one thing that we did do and there's there's no pd here so we can't talk about it but uh in a development just north of here a couple years ago the developer uh i would say acquiesced and created some parking areas in there that would uh accommodate visitors and in overflow traffic where people didn't have to park in the street or park in the front yard but this isn't the pd we can't uh we can't you know put any kind of condition on like that and i think that what i heard bart saying in a roundabout way and i don't want to put words in your mouth but my ears were and and i don't hear well but i think i heard that you know ultimately you could wind up in court over this and uh without saying that i mean i think that's a possibility and if i was in his position then i may be thinking the same way too and uh trying to figure out a way to say it without saying it but uh you know plan development they can do that and as i understand it beyond smoky grove everything would require a plan development period or a plan development if they exceeded this is a question i think it's important the white box only applies to smoky grove correct uh anything outside of that and in the old original area north of there this doesn't apply a plan development is required period correct or anything correct okay that just one makes clear no misunderstanding and also the dri the old golf course that you see that's hatched on the screen that can't develop even with the pd a single family it needs a land use change okay restate that because this is this is important right what you see is cross hatched is the golf course the old golf course that remained dri at the approval in 2008 it's all it's the only allowed for recreation in the land development code to get residential units or anything else other than recreation on that dri designation requires a future land use map amendment that you would see before you but that's not the tcc correct tcc doesn't need a land it's it's it would a pd the tcc would require a pd doesn't need one if you're putting tourist commercial in there is that correct no it would still need a pd you still need no no no but it doesn't need a land use change correct can you have just single family residential in there only if it's resort related only if it's resort related like short-term rentals etc okay yeah yeah uh mr chairman i would offer you a motion to approve the text amendment which is consistent with my opposition that i think that uh they've been invited onto the carpet and randy's got something he wants just to make clear that your motion includes this additional language in the white box regarding um anything above a four dwelling units per acre require um the pd i thought that was understood but i just want to make sure it's clear clear purposes of the record we would we wanted to make sure it was clear all right you got a motion second you got a motion and a second that's to transmit that is correct uh martha i just i just want to say that i'm not willing to sacrifice smoky groves for what would take place in greenleaf i think it's either this seems like it's either or it sounds like it's either an all for it's either all or nothing and that's the way i see it so i'm not going to be approving this amendment all right anybody else all right got a motion and a second for approval all in favor say aye aye aye opposed nay okay four to one approved we will take a five minute no just thank you we'll take a five minute recess to clear the room and resume the meeting thank you msher still uh board of county commissioners uh mine i am eric peterson for the land development division we have two cases that are going before you in tandem one is a transmittal hearing the other is the first reading of the ldc text uh this one uh both of them of course dealing with the green swamp and its density measurement or when you get down to the land development code it's lot measurement and as you shorten it up you know you've never heard the term close enough for government work that's kind of the theme behind this uh amendment when you're measuring property large properties you you don't often get a a real survey the property is so large and expensive that you go out and you know you just describe it as it relates to the size of the section the northeast quarter the southeast quarter this and that quarter and things of that nature if this section is not 640 acres which a good number in the green swamp are not that when you get down to a 10 acre piece of property or a 20 acre piece of property it's it's not going to be 10 or 20 acres it's going to be slightly slightly smaller and our current comp plan and land development code do not afford for anything it's a game of inches on a 20 acre piece of property that is one of the elements of this this request is that we like we do in the rest of the county now measure the size of a 10 acre piece or 20 acre piece based on the relative size of the section so if it's slightly off as the way it was described we're not you know we're not going to say nope you can't develop you have 9.96 acres it's not 10. so that is one of the requests as you know the green swamp goes outside of our counties this is actually an old map this is excellent this is probably the way it was originally envisioned from an environmental standpoint but polk county is approximately 40 percent of the green swamp area and that is one of the reasons why we have one of the most restrictive uh requirements on development of all the other counties and cities is that we occupy so much of it in a very crucial area in the staff report we did an analysis of of the other counties and what their policies were with regards to wetlands and how they measured the density and things of that nature and they were varied uh most uh aside from us in lake county uh it's not that restrictive in the green swamp they the uh current rules on the green swamp development really focus on lake and polk counties so our codes are very similar uh one of those issues that we have in our code is that when the minimum acreage is 10 acres but you have wetlands you you can't count gross density the wetlands only account for one unit per 20 acres transferred out you can't develop in the wetlands anyway but to get credit for that wetland property that you cannot use it's a ratio of one per 20 in a district that's one per 10. now in a district that's one per five it's one per five in a district that's one per one it's one per one and of course in a district that's one per 20 it's one per 20 but in the arrx there's almost a a penalty to the landowner that has some wetlands on the property this presents us a a problem with implementing it as well as i mentioned you don't get surveys necessarily you have property described based on the size of the section usually because it's so large those wetland acreages are unknown at that time and and much of our subdivision in the green swamp because the property is so large it's really just going to be a lot split here or there and as a result we're it's very difficult to implement a 20 acre standard for the wetland and a 10 acre standard for the uplands so either the property owner or staff can't we don't really know how much wetlands is out there until somebody goes out there stakes it and a survey is done and that's a an incredible lot of amount of work for a property that's really large and when when we're talking the in in the in general terms it's really not going to amount to much of a difference in reality how you measure it but it can present quite a problem as you can see how much wetlands here on the this is the blue area is the agro is the arrx agricultural residential rural this is the core you can see there's a lot and this is generalized data this is what based on modeling we think is wet it's it can be a whole different story when you get out to the actual property and have it delineated and things of that nature so you can see that the it's a substantial amount now of all these amendments we did a maximum impact analysis it's what the used to be called dca florida commerce called now florida commerce wants us with any comp plan amendment give us the absolute worst case scenario no matter how impractical that may be so we took all the properties that exist out there that are above 19 acres in in in arr and 39 acres in in the core those those would be properties that you could split at least once based on our our you know flexible measurement and the result of that was 1142 additional properties could could potentially occur in the arr and 153 in the core now that seems like a lot oh my gosh a development of a 1100 or more units in the in the green swamp we don't want that but in reality that assumes that all the government-owned property and the e the conservation easements were were all all of a sudden sold on the market put on the market and then all the properties out there actually had road frontage because that's another component you got to be able to get to the property so as you can see this is this is just a snapshot of some of the government-owned lands and this is just zooming into an area because the property appraiser keeps all the conservation easements but you can't get there unless you zoom in enough just just an area outside of polk city shows you how much is conservation easement so in in the end this amendment is really not going to be have that much impact let me just uh interject here 1700 and 172 000 acres right yes those were all the properties put together that that would give you 17 something if every square inch including government okay yes yeah so so we we had to do worst case scenario and that's what they required us to do and i mean we could extract a lot of those easements and stuff that would take a while but we're never really going to get specific to how many actual properties in in reality it's just going to affect the you know a few property owners mr chairman can i shortcut this or short circuit this okay the reason we're here is because of uh all the hell i've raised with uh john bode on behalf of really a handful of people uh people who uh have owned property for generations in the green swamp uh area of critical state concern because that's all we're talking about here the uh the green swamp is a much bigger area that goes into uh sumter county and into pasco county uh probably when you look at the green swamp wilderness it gets into hernando county uh lake county so it's uh covers multiple counties but the designation is just in polk and lake as eric has already pointed out but uh what happened uh and i was here when we had developed the comprehensive plan and uh we spent a lot of time on it but uh the one thing that uh i think everybody what maybe with the exception of john and mary and they're here and they can speak for themselves or tom uh but we had one unit for 10 acres that was how it was initially adopted now john tells me that when the carp was adopted wetlands did enter into the picture i have no memory of that i don't remember any discussion about it i don't remember uh saying hey you all need to understand this but for about 20 years approximately give or take for 20 years the county handled these uh differently than they have uh from 2011 and beyond when they decided there was a table uh and somebody had discovered that was put in in 2002 so we're talking about 90s 2002 and in 2011 when the uh the policy change occurred where uh staff said well you got a you know one for 10 but that you got to have 10 acres uplands uh and anywhere in polk county that can be a challenge uh if you just put up a wetlands map of polk county somebody put one up the other day i mean i i think it couldn't have been correct because it looked like half the county was red from north to south and east to west but it probably was correct i don't know but uh whoop but that red showing the core area and uh what we're talking about here is not the core area and the core area was designated one for 20 and the reason for that is because there is significant recharge that occurs in the core area you're getting uh over toward the uh the ridge the lake wales ridge or the or the davenport ridge or the clearmont ridge whatever ridge you want to call it uh and there is recharge it takes place when you get uh into really uh where it goes from from uh from the red to the blue which is the core to the ar rx uh recharge falls basically to zero and the u.s geological survey uh put all that out uh probably going back to 1959 or 1960 and i don't think anything's changed they said there is zero recharge on those flatwood soils it runs off it sits in the wetlands if it gets too high it finds a way to work uh work toward the withlacoochee or maybe the hillsborough well probably oklahoma was it what's the one going out north oklahoma and and to a much lesser extent to the hillsborough river but anyway it's not a recharge area but it does create a problem for people who for years relied on this one for ten and created uh different properties for family members only to find out that hey you know you you've got ten acres created here but you only have 9.9 acres of uplands so you are sol you're up the creek without a paddle and it kind of goes back to the earlier discussion that we had or i had uh comments on the previous is the uh the part about fair play and and getting somebody out on the carpet now maybe it's the fault of everybody up there that didn't understand that had they fully known uh that uh at some point whether it was in 95 or 2011 we're going to say you got to have 10 acres of uplands and if that means you got to have a thousand acres then so be it that's the way it's going to be it i think it would have been different but that's the reason we're here there's not some huge fix that huh well i want to offer amendment that maybe somebody people up there might not appreciate but it it just makes me feel better because uh we've got our lowest density in the county outside of the green swamp is arr which is one unit per five is that correct that is correct so my thought and i had this discussion with john and i've been talking uh a couple of times along the way with him about it but it didn't make it here is that uh that you have to have five acres of uplands uh in the arrx and those uplands will be determined by wetlands mapper from the u.s fish and wildlife service which i think is as good as it gets uh you don't need uh to spend you know twenty thousand dollars on on uh hydrologists and geologists and everywhere you can rely on the u.s fish and wildlife service maps so what i would suggest is rather than taking this because right now in the core it's one for twenty but you can go into the core if you got a 19 acre swamp or a 19 and a quarter acre swamp and you have 40 000 square feet of uplands you can get a building permit if you meet all the other uh you know rules and regs that are along the way because there's a lot of long-standing rules and regulations that make developing property in the green swamp nearly impossible uh and i had this james allen who's a friend of mine and i was communicating with him yesterday he was talking about well this would open up for the cities to annex and then you know all hell breaks loose well the truth of the matter is we learned from lake alford when they've annexed not so long ago that they start with a clean slate all our rules and regulations once it gets adopted by the city go out the window you're looking puttin okay now you're agreeing with me because i was told that yeah it's they've got a clean slate they start over so anything we have there is uh null null and void when it gets annexed so then it just starts all over i hope that doesn't happen and i really don't nothing we could do about it if it did and nothing we'd do here or have done in the past would change it if it does but i hope that's not the case because there's a lot of challenges associated with trying to develop there all the all the concurrency requirements with water sewer you you really can't do much and uh but that's the reason we're here and i appreciate eric uh in this presentation but just to kind of cut things short that's uh really uh the long and the short of it you got other questions i got answers definitely wasn't the long or the short of it oh yeah uh you you you mentioned you were going to offer up an amendment well mr chair we have not had public hearing i don't know mr prestands has anything else to finish well i think it's important well mr chairman i think it's important uh for me to state my intentions or have a public hearing where they can react to my intentions if they want to react to anything yes okay all right eric back to you in summation promotes further consistency with the plan the code and and this is transmittal florida commerce who has authority of the green swamp will review this they will have their moment in the sun to vet this fully before it comes back to you so if if the state can't live with this then then you'll know um and then the other thing is is uh 24 13 is uh just a first reading your adoption hearing will be at the end and i'll stand for any more questions anybody else all right i'll open a public hearing anyone wishing to speak on this matter please come forward with your name and address it's still going on tom bomber 1805 26th street northwest uh i guess this is a little bit more helpful today because we actually saw maps and that's been one of the things that's been troubling as they say well it's no big deal but we never sell the maps now we saw the maps it looks a little better but i and i guess neil answer some other questions where's the fire i mean and why why now it's been around for almost as long as i've been in polk county something about the green swamp 2011 yeah well i mean i've been in polk county for 50 years they were talking about it when i got here so um but anyway uh i guess the other question i guess is why is this polk responsibility if someone makes you know bad real estate investment to bail them out i just i don't i don't get that that part out too and um and i guess the other thing is that you mentioned dca i mean as far as we know there's no nobody the person is in charge of reviewing green swamp dca retired and as far as we know there's been no successor and i mean this has been a ever since rick scott you know abolished the department of community affairs in 2011 uh the you know oversight over you know areas of critical state concerns and growth in general has just been almost invisible so i mean you know whatever you guys do is going to probably carry the day because even dca objects you can just tell them to go take a hike and you're free to ignore them and i guess the other part is this idea of that having wetlands is a penalty i mean as the old guy you say if you bought a swamp you must have wanted a swamp so i just i just don't i just don't think this is ready for prime time thanks thank you anyone else i have not been sworn in sorry here's your eye and please you swear affirm that the evidence and the testimony you give today to the commission will be the truth the whole truth of nothing but the truth thank you showing up late is a 30 second penalty no i i didn't feel good okay yeah i need my kids i apologize i'm sue nelson i live at 2920 cruise lake drive in lakeland i am against the green swamp amendment that is before you today this amendment clearly needs to be reviewed in a map of the proposed changes brought forward before transmittal the state has long recognized the significance of the green swamp since the early 1970s protecting the green swamp is vital to protecting the quality and quantity of florida's water supply the green swamp is in florida statutes chapter 380 land and water management florida administrative code chapter 28 land planning and the florida constitution section 7 article 2 under natural resources we can all agree the protection of this area is essential to the health of our state the green swamp is its own entity in the arrx area of the green swamp this amendment would change the wetland transfer density from one dwelling unit per 20 acres to one dwelling unit per 10 acres oops how do i go back eric sorry can we stop oh um the green swamp is in an area of critical state concern it should not have the same regulations as the rest of polk county and again the green swamp is its own separate entity wait this slide the lake county the city of lakeland auburndale and haynes city all within the green swamp still use one dwelling unit per 20 acres why do we need to change the staff report states the reason for the change is to keep the regulations in the green swamp the same as the regulations in the rest of the county again it should not have the same regulations as the rest of the county the green swamp is an area of critical state concern this slide is dated october 23rd 2023 approximately eight months ago this amendment also concerned density based on the relative size of a section which was less than 640 acres but concerned much smaller lots one dwelling unit per five acres as you can see the green swamp area of state concern was excluded and the reason for the exclusion and the 20 2023 staff report was this amendment is not applicable to designations in the green swamp because lot size requirements are much larger and often dependent on wetland calculations fast forward to today the lot size requirements are still large in the green swamp and are still dependent on wetland calculations so eight months ago the green swamp didn't qualify and yet now it suddenly does maximum impact the this proposed amendment will create 1142 additional properties in the green swamp and 143 additional properties in the core however there is no map showing us where these properties would be created we're told the number of properties but not their locations we need to discourage development in the green swamp area not promote it this amendment was publicly advertised a short five months ago in that short amount of time 182 lots were purchased in the green swamp just i'm on it is it is it a coincidence i don't know in closing i understand that there are folks out in the green swamp who have lived there for years and years and have say 60 acres and just want to make 60 10 acre lots i'm sure they would be good stewards of their property the trouble is there are others that are just in land sales for the money we can't discriminate so we have to get it right the first time we can't go back we need a map we need to know exactly what change what changing these requirements will do and where thank you anyone else come forward wade how much per hour do we pay you you get paid whether you're sitting here or somewhere else don't you wait we don't get him going yeah good afternoon i'm marion ryan a 70 year resident of polk county um i live at 2215 avenue a northwest and winter haven i'm a long time green swamp advocate as neil knows i'm here to oppose this amendment the staff report states that the comp plan amendment is a county initiated text amendment that will increase the density and intensity of the rural special protection area and the conservation corps of the green swamp area of critical state concern the county apparently initiated this to please a small number of owners i'm positive that the majority of green swamp property owners would oppose these changes if they had a clue that it was going on the summary states that this move is quote a matter of equity to reduce the 1 per 20 wetland density transfer penalty on arrx properties by reducing it to 10 acres it also improves implementation and increases consistency by measuring density lot size in the green swamp in a manner consistent with the method used in the rest of the county the data and analysis summary states that the comp plans of the counties that have portions of their jurisdiction within the green swamp area of critical state concern have significant disparity between green swamp regulations in polken lake county no kidding that's because the critical area designation only applies to polken lake county and staff should know that the current policies and regulations have been in place for decades they serve a purpose to protect the multiple ecosystem services that this critical area provides including water quality water quantity the potentiometric pressure surface wildlife habitat and wildlife corridors owners and buyers of green swamp property should be aware of the limitations and the rationale behind them location is everything we asked for a map showing where these potential problematic sections are but got nothing until today the state legislature and governor de santis are proponents of the florida wildlife corridor a signature project of the current administration the green swamp with its riverine corridor stretching across the state is a keystone feature of the corridor in central florida as you can see in this map additional densities and intensities of development in the wrong places can significantly impact the future functionality of the corridor the findings of fact make no mention of the huge public investment in conservation lands and easements that deserve protection no mention of the green swamps critical role of the in the florida and off florida and sorry the florida uh wildlife corridor this shows you just how important polk county is to the florida wildlife corridor the county seems to continually try to chip away at green swamp protections when it should be doing all it can to protect this area of critical state concern it makes polk a very special place even on the map one last thing the proposed green swamp large lot amendment only speaks to those sections that are less than 640 acres in size there is no mention of the sections that are larger than 640 acres there are sections in the core that are as large as 679 acres and some in arrx as large as 703 acres how is the county going to address that issue without being accused of a taking thank you thank you anyone else all right see anybody i'll close the public camera bring it back neil mr chairman uh the uh green swamp area of critical state concern uh was created with a political boundary and there's no other way around it if you look to the west and north you've got the green swamp wilderness area which is thousands and thousands of acre which is like kind similar in every way shape or form uh and also impacts the withlacoochee river the hillsborough river though oklahoma river there's thousands and thousands in fact there's probably more public land uh that's owned by the state of florida or some uh some part of the state of florida that uh are part of the green swamp all those a lot of that is outside the political boundary of the area of critical state concern but hyperbole and red herring arguments have always been uh a big part of what pushed this along and that's fine i mean i love it i don't want a whole lot of neighbors up there and uh in fact that's the last thing i want but as i pointed out earlier and eric pointed out this does not affect the core area which is probably a third or more of the uh entire portion that's in polk county that does that seem i i think that's about right but uh why you're go ahead yes that's correct yeah yeah the uh in in reply to tom palmer's you know people made a bad investment this is multi-generational ownership some probably going back over 100 years and when the comp plan was adopted the uh zoning on that property was one unit per one acre uh so we worked out to ten times we'll do ten times that and that's that's the lowest we'll go or the highest we'll go and uh so that was the agreement we had the the wetlands stuff came along later after the plan was adopted uh i guess through the carm but that's not the point the point is for 20 years up until 2011 uh if you had 10 acres uh and you could build and meet all the other rules and regs the long-standing rules and regulation of the county you could give a building permit uh you know but those those other things had to be met and i i hate to drag this out because it really doesn't affect a whole lot of people and that's why you know nobody seems to really care except we'll just protect we want to protect your property from you but uh sue nelson's an extremely bright person and i find little to argue with her about on most occasions but this amendment does nothing to jeopardize the green swamp uh the north half of polk county alberndale lake alford lakeland it all drains it has more impact outside uh of the area critical state concern than any activity will ever have inside and that's uh lakeland it's alberndale i mean i guess there's probably hayne city it all affects it and it has a big impact on it and yet we've got densities that are the highest in the county period and the uh i think one thing that uh sue said was uh we don't need to have regulations the rest of the county have we don't now and we won't if this adopt gets adopted there it still won't be so that's that's a red herring argument there we don't have it because arr is uh one unit for five acre and that is the lowest in the entire county and i don't need to tell you you know that the uh the highest is probably 10 20 units per acre uh outside and they certainly those uh those kind of densities even though they're outside of the critical area they impact the green swamp they impact the rivers whether the rivers are flowing north or south east or west that's all mr chairman my amendment uh was to before you you're going to make a motion or you want to well yeah randy what do i need to do the uh either either way yeah well my motion would be to transmit this but to have a minimum of five acres of uplands uh determined by polk county staff uh via the u.s fish and wildlife wetlands mapper which again i think is the best there is out there and i've found it to be uh very accurate all right let him write it down yeah so we got a motion we have a second look like it motion does for the lack of a second all right george question are there two issues here are there two issues one related to the fractional calculation of 9.97 not being 10 or 4.99 not being five and then the other issue is the density yes yeah we bifurcate those so that we we i'm willing to recognize that 9.97 is 10 acres and so as not to if it is appropriate proportion of that section then the 9.8 or 9.56 should count as as 10 and those two issues be separated we could uh let's see we could yes we could separate them uh i don't know if we can do it in two separate uh ordinances um and i mean this is a transmittal it is something staff could look at we can separate the land development code amendments into two separate ones by this you've consistently denied someone to to divide their property and they can't because it's going to be two tracks less than 10 acres then that seems to be arbitrary or mr chairman i know legal doesn't like to use that word but it seems unfair and i know you've heard me say before the you know fair is where you go to get cotton candy so uh but i would like i would like to accommodate that fractional shortfall from the density issue or conversation if that's possible neil there's a major disparity and i think that tom misunderstood uh what eric was saying about getting penalized for wetlands but as it stands right now you've got two different areas in the area of critical state concern you've got the core and you've got the arrx and we're talking about arrx here in the core as we sit here today our rules are written that you can have 20 even have a 20 acre track that can have 19 acres of wetlands on it and you can get a building permit on it in the arrx which is one per 10 you cannot get a building permit there unless you have 10 acres of uplands and that's not how it was enforced it was not how it was uh adopted because i was here i was voting and i'm the only one that was in this room that was voting on this when it was adopted period nobody else uh and that was how it was actually carried out until 2011. when 2011 a change was made and said we need to have 10 acres of uplands here so now you've got a situation it's not half and half but let's say half and half half over here was designated core because of the soils there and the recharge there and we're going to have this at one per 20. uh we had lawsuits over yana uh sued the state sued the county they had a settlement agreement so there's there's the difference than other folks i'm not sure about the bronson property but now again you've got 20 acres of or 19 acres of wetlands if you've got an acre of uh uplands without 20 acres you can you can get a building permit whereas on the area that is not as sensitive and again everything is impacted by everything else pretty much people come here and say well this is not connected it's its own entity well tomorrow or next week somebody will come and say this is all connected everything's connected and we've got to take so it you can't have it both ways it's either one or the other and i can tell you that everything's connected and everything uh well uh green swamp doesn't impact the lakeland highlands uh but you know what i'm talking about so you've got that problem there and to me it's just a terrible disparity for people who are in what was considered at least not where the recharge is you gotta have 10 acres uplands you can get over in the sensitive area and you can have one acre and you can put a home site with 19 acres of wetlands right there or you can get in the middle of it so how you make sense of that i don't know i don't think you can make sense out of it but that's you know that's just me i've got one question can you take land sale lots and put them together and qualify i mean once they're subdivided up you can't put them together and create something yes you can the key thing is you need to get road frontage we don't issue a permit unless you have physical frontage on a public maintained road so if you assemble land sales there's no real vested interest in assembling more than you need just to get the road frontage i'll correct that there is in the green swamp and i can't remember what it is right now but and it's not not germane maybe to this conversation go ahead okay can i offer you a motion that we continue this and ask the staff to come back uh with a number or at least area of the land sale subdivisions that as we speak right now cannot based on our rules and regulations or this change get a building permit under any circumstances issued by polk county i'm all for that you want a map of the land sale subdivisions with properties that are ineligible for a building permit okay so your motions continue p4 p5 to a date certain um yeah i don't have a date certain but a couple of weeks or is there any merit to transmitting it as it is see what kind of response we get back in tallahassee before we mend it amend it it really goes further commissioner lindsay than i want it to go uh well if it gets back after transmittal then we could amend it change it and get the data that you've asked for in the meantime well the reason i went with the five which was a you know really falling back to the lowest density we have in the rest of the county period you know if you had five acres up ones because there's plenty of five acre pieces that are probably occupied outside the green swamp that have wetlands with it i hate to attack you know and and this goes back to some stuff we've i've dealt with not in the green swamp you're going from ten to five you know try to get certain things done you're still going to ten you're still going but the number is five of uplands you've still got ten acres okay of uplands right yeah but we're still gonna i mean that's a sparse area up there but you're still gonna have a problem what happens when it's 4.98 uh well you got to draw the line somewhere but the line ain't drawn i mean it's drawn but we've been in the same situation on one per five but anyway that's all i got to say i'm not going to talk for 30 minutes but just i'm just saying the line i mean you're just moving the bar still gonna have same problem do we have a motion we have a motion for continuing until a second if you got if you got two can you do that in two weeks july 16th is our have the maps and everything and um yes i i can even bifurcate the the ldc into two separate ordinances okay so do we want to do july 2nd or july 16th 16 16. all right so we got a motion and a second to continue to july 16th at 9 15. and this is for items p4 p5 4 and p5 all right and i got a second all in favor say aye opposed all right thank you mr p6 next items p6 will be uh presented by mr vogel assistant county attorney my understanding is there'll be a quick presentation my understanding is it better thank you um for the record randall vogel with the county attorney's office uh in september of 2023 the county purchased about 600 acres adjacent to uh lake marion and um subsequent to that the water i'm sorry the nature conservancy has agreed to repay or to give us back 1.5 million dollars however as a requirement for that money uh because of the source of the funds they are requiring that we vacate several portions of plats that that are encompassed by that property so the intent of this um and actually i see my thing right here the intent of this um this item is basically to allow us to vacate the portions of the property that are platted and i ask that you um approve the memorandum or the um resolution to that effect and i stand for questions any questions see you no no um i'll open a public hearing anyone wishing to speak on this matter seeing nobody i'll close the public and bring it back approval recommendation second motion and second for approval all in favor say aye aye opposed like sign motion carries p7 thank you good afternoon i think it is okay uh the county has received a petition from uh uh mr morales and mrs torres to vacate a portion of platted unopened unmaintained right away shown on the map and town set up west cross roof pope county florida the subject right away lies in section 2 township 32 and range 27. the plat recorded in 1925 to fix various rights away throughout the plat which are presumed to be dedicated to the public due to the absence of of uh dedication to contrary the petitioner has requested the vacation of a portion of said right away to resolve a code enforcement action due to an encroachment the petitioner has constructed a uh a very nice gazebo in on his property and unfortunately wasn't wasn't aware that the right away was there while reviewing the request county staff discovered that portions of the right away would benefit either side of the current right away basically this portion here and this portion down here and staff contacted adjacent owners and received no objections and we have added those portions to the vacation the vacation the vacation will allow the petitioner to assemble it with the rest of the their properties thus alleviating the encroachment and will also allow the adjacent property owners to lot to utilize their respective properties more fully due to the assemblage and removal of the planet right away alley that's currently bifurcating their parcels the appropriate utilities along with the appropriate county divisions have uh reviewed the petition requests and have no objections staff recommends the board to adopt a resolution to vacate the platted unopened unmaintained right away as shown on the map of township of west frost proof as fully described in the legal description description attached to both the petition and the resolution and i'll stand for any questions you might have yes sir would put go back yeah it appears that some may have been closed in some of those other blocks you are correct we have had some others closed out in this area then why don't we close all of them in that old sub and not do this in the future look at the one to the uh to the east i can't okay yeah now i'm finding about midways somebody's got one built right in it something looks like a mobile home sitting in it or some shed yes sir i i as you know there are tens of thousands of these in folk county not in this subdivision though no sir um at the same point in time um what you can what you're asking for can be done it is a it is a is a staffing aspect there's a lot of time involved in this there's typically a four to six month time frame to do one of these i'll be more than happy to do whatever the county manager directs me to do but at this point yes sir uh what i'm saying is is we don't proactively do these we reactively do these but when they do come in we see how far we can move them to move them along we do try to react to that point to be proactive in in in the look but you do have to draw the line somewhere wait nine or five acres it appears though that some have been partially closed though wade is that yes sir you're correct uh there a lot of these you can see the closures that the property appraiser is showing just north of here both to the east and to the west you can see some closures in some other areas there again these are things that have been going on since the platte were put in place yes thank you all right i'll open a public hearing anyone wishing to speak on this matter please come forward seeing nobody i'll close it and bring them back to the move approval motion second for approval all in favor say aye aye those like sign carries the next item we have is this is a board zone motion uh we are requesting to vacate a portion of platted unopened unmaintained right away shown on the platform camp lester lake wells poe county florida the subject right away lies in section 12 township 29 range 29 the platte of camp lester was filed in 1948 and depicts various rights away throughout the platte the county is requesting to vacate the platte of unnamed right away running east of reese drive and south of the parcel shown as park on the platte vacating the right away will remove the public interest and allow the subject area to be assembled with the park parcel front excuse me the uh appropriate county divisions along with the appropriate uh utilities have been notified and have no objections to the vacation staff recommends the board adopt a resolution to vacate the platte unopened unmaintained right away south of the platte park as shown on the platte of camp lester as fully described in the legal description attached to both the resolution uh excuse me attached to only the resolution as there's no petition as this is a board zone motion and i'll remain standing for any questions you might have questions cnn i'll open a public hearing anyone wanting to speak on this matter please come forward seeing nobody i'll close the public hearing bring him back motion second for approval all in favor say aye aye opposed like some motion carries last but not least okay the county has received a petition from robert excuse me from mr and mrs wimbley to vacate a portion of platte unopened unmaintained right away as shown on the map of wj howie land company recorded in platte book three at pages 50 and 51 in the map of star lake florida recorded in platte book four pages seven and eight all line in section 15 township 29 range 27. the map of wj howie land company in star lake florida filed in 1914 and 15 respectively to speak various uh excuse me depict various rights away which are presumed to be public the petitioner owns property adjacent to the south and east of the aforementioned business circle and have requested a vacation order to fully utilize the properties for a planned residence during the review of the area it was discovered that a portion of lot 108 is shown on the tax mask for having been previously vacated but no evidence of prior vacation has been found the county is adding that portion of the business circle right away lying south of star lake avenue which lies adjacent to lot 108 to the vacation request to clear any potential clouds on title on the adjacent parcels county staff contacted adjacent property and received no objection vacating the right of way will remove the public interest and allow the both the petitioner and the adjacent property owner to fully utilize their properties we've contacted the adjacent utility providers and also the uh appropriate county divisions and have no objection to the vacation staff recommends the board adopt the resolution to vacate the flatted unopened maintained right away unmaintained right away as shown on the map of wj howie land company and the map of star lake florida as fully described in the legal description along with the resolution and i'll remain standing for any questions that you might have questions wj howie cut a wide trail through florida uh i'll open a public hearing anyone wanting to speak on this matter please come forward see you nobody i'll close public hearing bring it back approval motion second for approval all in favor say aye aye opposed like sign motion carries uh what you get somebody have something to say meetings adjourned you want to take a actually we're not adjourning the meeting we're just recess and if you want to take a oh okay this is actually part of the meeting okay all right thanks um we'll take a five minute recess come back and have a uh budget management work session yes they are now part of our agenda yes no it's been a long at least half a day for you um i've got a number of the divisional staff here i've got some senior staff in the well and what i want to do today is give the board kind of a an overview an update on where we are bringing closure to the proposed biennial budget process specifically next year's fy 24 25 recommendations we're not we're not there yet we're awfully close but i wanted to uh to kind of walk the board through about um two dozen slides that that look and feel similar to what you've seen in the past our starting point was the retreat that we had back in the more early march time frame i thought the board provided some very good guidance to us and so i wanted us to go through a handful of discussions this morning more so presentations but there may be a few pauses where you want to comment and or provide direction but the format and the content will look and feel similar to other years specifically today we want to talk about the ad valorem growth specifically we talked about eight and a half percent going into the retreat based on information we knew at the time from the property appraiser and what we now know about 11.3 we want to talk about what those two numbers mean what that delta means we want to talk a little bit about the the budget submitted by the constitutional officers the court agencies and the lamb ted organization we want to talk a little bit about trends and conclusions based on building and building permit issues and so forth and what that what does that say for some workload drivers that may be coming our way we want to talk a little bit about the in the the ending fund balance projections that we do every year and what that means in terms of available one-time monies for the board's capital investments we want to talk a little bit about those those major revenue sources that make up our general fund and some of the projections we're using to to calculate those we want to talk about staffing requests because i think this year is an on and i'll call it an anomaly but i think you're you're going to find that we got a lot of drivers and a lot of demands being placed on the system that are driving us to ask for additional staff we want to talk about some various fees and rates that are reflected in the proposed budget uh specific to the fire fee the utilities division the waste collection fees the transportation impact fees we want to talk a little bit about i think commissioner cumby you brought it up asking a question a good question i thought about just what portion of our budget is made up from state revenue sources and federal revenue sources we'll share some of that information with you and then at the end i wanted to talk a little bit about in light of what we're showing what is that going to mean to the average property owner say someone uh single family residential home that uh that is uh um that is homesteaded and what what might the increases in their taxes look like and feel like so with that i wanted christia johnson the head of our budget and management services office to kind of walk us through that those power points we've got the senior staff here and i've asked them to chime in as appropriate when they get to their sections christia please good afternoon commissioners we want to start off by talking about the ad valorem projections so this first slide this is the exact same slide that you saw back at the board retreat showing our initial estimate of eight and a half percent in growth in total that that brought in about 34.4 million in additional revenue uh ad valorem revenue over and above the current year adopted so you can see the current year adopted is on the left side that february estimates in the middle and then the difference is on the right hand side in the gray so again you saw the slide once before um so now we want to take you into what what we saw with the june 1 estimates so on june 1 we received the new property values and that growth was 11.3 percent so on july 1 we're going to get those final numbers that we're going to build the budget around there's no reason that i would anticipate the july 1 numbers to be materially different than the june 1 numbers it won't be exact but it should be fairly close so this slide walks through the difference between the february estimate of eight and a half percent the june one estimate of eleven point three percent and then what that difference is so during the board retreat the discussion and guidance that we received was to basically live within the eight and a half percent which um at this point we we feel very comfortable and confident that that we've accomplished that let me let me add to that i mean that was a clear direction from the board if we think eight and a half percent is a valid number in terms of where growth is going is that a number we can live with is that a number that was given to all of the divisions and said we need to balance with eight and a half percent anything over eight to a half percent is additional revenue for board discretion so and i we're not there yet and i don't want to say we're balanced at eight to a half percent at the long growth but we're pretty darn close i don't know if you have this christia but it would help for perspective i'm i'm sure people would like to know but the projected eleven point three percent growth do you know what percentage of that is new construction new building new homes versus the increase in assessed values uh on existing property on you know january one whenever so in well we're doing it by fiscal year calendar year i don't know how you're working well um i don't have it as a percentage of the 11.3 but in total the new construction as part of the total um is about 2.7 billion so that's around four percent of the total increase i'm i'm sorry i'm about four percent of the total valuation not the increase um but i i don't know specifically within that delta how much of it would would be attributed to new value have you all ever uh come up with numbers that would answer that question you know where of the 11.3 uh how much of that has come from new construction how much of it comes from increased assessment on existing landowners property owners homeowners i can calculate that and and you're getting at how much is burden on the existing well no no i'm just how much uh of that well you know what's what's the 11.3 how much is it coming from people that have been here for some period of time but not in that last year where we're looking at 11.3 percent increase over that year right uh commissioner come if i if i may christy i just want to make sure that the 2 billion value that that you mentioned was from new construction yeah the 2.7 billion that that's about four percent of the total value 66 billion okay yeah we can get to the calculation i think i know where you're going commissioner and i had talked to sorry i had talked to lee county um based on the conversation we had had in a prior meeting and and they had utilized that to set aside for infrastructure we have some slides coming up where we're doing something similar it's not based on that that number but but that's kind of one of the things we're looking at with this difference is is setting that aside to do that so and the reason they're doing that you all remember at least uh the stated reason they're doing that is to try to uh put some money aside for infrastructure and to try to keep impact fees it's something that's affordable for people uh and whether they you know succeed at that you know get halfway there or 100 of where they want to be i don't know but it's a it's a great goal but it's probably hard to uh live within that that kind of framework i would think yes in in looking at what that would equate to if we took just the new construction and set aside the revenue from that that would be uh countywide about 17 million if we pulled that out of the general fund i would not be able to balance the general fund and maintain the uh the reserve level so that is that is above what the what the budget would be able to uh handle at this point mr company we think todd alluded to it we think we found the sweet spot which is close to a model that lee and or collier is working with but gives the board a fair amount of money and some discretion with commissioner coming just one final um the comment on that when i talked to lee county one of the things they said is is they decide every year whether they can afford to do that or not so it's kind of similar to what we're looking at we're looking at this this difference between they have it's a goal that they try to get to yeah you can't get there they fall back to where they have to be so i think as bill said this might be the sweet spot in that the board gave us the guidance to balance to the eight and a half we're going to eleven three so maybe that's the number we feel comfortable we can pull and do this similar aspect so when you look over on the right hand side in the orange column that shows the difference between the eight and a half and eleven point three percent so when you look at that in total across all of the different funds that's about eleven point three million in total so we can't take revenue out of the mstus and divert it anywhere else we're not allowed to do that that money has to stay put and so then in the general fund i mean in the county-wide component we have the emergency medical transportation and environmental lands millage components that are set aside for specific purposes so the past few years as we have reduced the millage we've left those millage components intact and it's all come from the general fund so staff's recommendation at this point is to take the general fund difference between the eight and a half and eleven percent which is just shy of eight million dollars and divert that as one-time money to be used towards projects you mr chair miserable you'll see that again in another slide as it builds our normal calculation for excess revenues unspent appropriations but the takeaway from that graph is that eight rounded eight million dollars over and above eight and a half and eleven point three within the general fund line item everything else is pretty much locked those mstu numbers uh the emergency medical side the transportation side and the environmental lands are pretty much locked in but we do have some discretion with uh about eight million dollars and you'll see that again go ahead so next we want to look at the constitutional officers and elected officials budgets um each year um all of these officials present their budgets to us and we incorporate those numbers into the um into the budget submission so this walks through our current year adopted budget what was in the second year of our biennial budget this is the plan year budget and then the budget request that we have received from these officials um for fiscal year 24 25 so when we look at the increase between adopted budget and the requests that have been made it's about a seven and a half percent increase um in total for all of the elected officials and constitutional officers including the medical examiner so as we've gone through the process of the um the the divisions presenting their operating budgets that seven and a half percent that that's reasonable in terms of what we've seen internally from our divisions so we feel like that that this is um this is um this is on the same page with with where we are internally within the bocc let me add add live to the tape the big takeaway here look at the sheriff's budget look at his current adopted at about 235 million look at what his second year planned number was about 257 million um we met with the sheriff privately and talked about the struggles with eight and a half percent um i think that had a significant bearing on what his proposed budget is at 251 as opposed to what he thought it was going to be as the second year of the current year biennial budget was 257 and then look at his staffing compliment he's asking for 76 more employees i just believe the sheriff was a willing participant in feeling the pain and understanding some limitations with living within what normal growth we should expect go ahead christian so one of the metrics we look at in terms of growth is um building permits so the next two slides we look at single family residential and total building permits and i'm going to turn that over to john bode and let him speak on on what we're seeing there and i think what you've seen a higher number earlier at the retreat we were around 3 200 it's 2 900 that we might project in the year but what we're doing is returning to the normal pre-covid type numbers uh something that's a little maybe a little more sustainable so to speak um but i think as the board has seen these numbers will always ebb and flow did go back one slide i'm sorry they'll always ebb and flow and these are the single family permits right here um which was the which was the 2900 so we and that's end of the fiscal year so we only project really about a one and a half percent uh over the next year not much i think nationally you may look at like two and a half percent for housing starts so we're being a little conservative but it's difficult to tell because then you may get a hurricane and if you go to the next slide christia then then you see the big jump and all the other permits so this is everything else on this slide other than single family and this is really one that's harder to project um but this is this is what we're we're looking at obviously as it comes down a little bit from some of the spike of the covet covet times outside of interest rates and home sales and so forth it this certainly doesn't suggest that there is a looming recession in our future it certainly suggests that things are leveling out but um we're taking a kind of a cautious approach to how we're managing growth but this doesn't suggest to us at least by those indicators that there's uh a significant slowdown in the economy from what we've seen the last year or two and builders are still you know they're still pulling permits they're still active but they also have programs where they're buying down interest rates interest rates i think i recently saw is around five and a quarter five and a half right now percent so that they're they're helping get people in new homes by buying some of that down initially so next we're going to go into the ending fund balance projections and how that equates into one-time money that's going to be available for projects so if you recall last year um you had 24.8 million that you allocated to one-time projects and left 4.9 million unallocated for projects that might come up during the year so several projects have come up and some of that money's been utilized leaving us about 1.7 in money carried forward from prior years with the completion of the audit we now know what that final ending fund balance for fiscal year 22 23 in the general fund is that's about 42.9 million so when you add all that together that gives you total one-time money available of 44.6 million now based on what we just talked about with the 11.3 versus the eight and a half percent we have the same numbers but then we add in that additional eight million dollars in available general fund ad valorem and so that comes out to about 52.6 million in one-time money that would be available let me pause there christia this is the uh this is significant for us um get based on the audit and based on our carry forwards from what we didn't spend that with the 1.7 and should the board agree to take the difference in that eight and a half and the 11.3 out of that general fund category and add it to our ending fund balance uh exercise now we're talking about coming to the board and we tentatively have that date set for august the second where we will have a one-time capital investment list of recommendations to make to the board but it will center around 52.6 million as opposed to 42.9 million unless the board says otherwise i was going to use the eight million over and above and use it and then you will see a host of projects that you will have to select from i don't mean to press the envelope but if i get a nod i know where i'm going yeah we'll do some picking later yes sir yeah okay next the commissioners if i may um and christian double double check me on this but to commissioner's uh combi's question earlier so when i look at the total value increase it's about 6.7 billion and then you said 2.7 billion seven billion so that's about 40 percent of that total value increases is due to new construction is that helpful most of this um carry over is the obligation to only budget 95 percent of the estimated revenues um that is what's already in there 95 is is how we budget our revenues the availability of these i don't want to call them surplus funds these additional funds the majority the biggest single component of that is the carryover from only budgeting 95 is that correct that is correct sir um in addition to that it's it's money that we've budgeted it not spent as well where maybe costs have come in lower or revenues have come in higher but um we do anticipate a certain percentage of that um carrying forward just because we do budget 95 percent question when exactly we will know uh the ad valorem from the tax from um not tax but percentage from um marshall marsh july 1 when is it july 1st okay and you say there's not going to be much of a difference from what i don't anticipate that it would be vastly different it typically is not typically the june 1 and july 1 values are close um at this point she's honing that number she's finalizing that number i have no reason to believe it would be significantly different so unless there's some surprise that's waiting out there which i genuinely hope there is not um it should be fairly close yes ma'am we commissioner santiago every year we the june 1 number is to me is really the uh the benchmark um march is a is an estimation based upon what we think and what she thinks uh june 1 is starting to now become laser focused and now is 11.3 july 1 it might change a tenth of a percent we don't think anything significant is coming our way no surprises we don't think so so in addition to ad valorem we have a category of other taxes in the general fund that all together make up about 85 percent of the general fund operating revenue budget so on this chart we're showing the ad valorem tax at the eight and a half percent and then that difference uh the eight million that would not be in the general fund it's going to be transferred out to the general capital fund and then we have these four additional um other taxes that that make up our major revenues so these projections are something that i'll be revisiting before we get to the proposed budget um the state has not given any projections yet these are projections that i've made based on actual collections and um long-term growth rates i i look at all of that calculate that in and then budget that at 95 percent so these are estimations at this point they may change a little bit they may be a little higher they may be a little bit lower by the time we get to the proposed budget but i feel like these these are pretty close to where we will be at that time so when you pull out the eight million it's about four hundred um four hundred and thirty two million that will be major revenues to pay for the recurring costs to the general fund again this is around 85 percent of the total operating revenue for the general about two weeks ago mr beasley and todd bond and marcia andresen and myself met with some of the executives from lamb ted to discuss their budget submission for this year and get on the same page with them so in total lamb ted's budget is going up by just shy of four percent in total now the county's contribution uh portion of that went up by about 12.65 percent however they are going to be returning some surplus funds from uh the previous year to us so when you net that out our contribution increase is about 9.85 percent commissioner lindsay and commissioner santiago this budget does reflect what you may have heard at some lamb ted board meetings where we are maxing out their contingency fund so we we we established that last year and some of the funding that they are sending back a small portion of that will go into back into that contingency account and they're on board with that 150 000 cap so we've had we had a pretty good meeting with lamb ted we're on the same page so um it'll be about 103 000 that they will be returning to us after um maxing out that surplus i mean maxing out that reserve i'm sorry so this budget it does include a number of fee adjustments so we want to kind of touch on some of those components that are already being built into the budget at this point um so beginning in fiscal year 21 22 there's been a five percent indexing applied to the fire fee um so the single family residential rate that's increasing in fiscal year 24 25 to about two to uh 281 dollars over 268 dollars current year recently the utilities division commissioned a rate study and presented those findings to you um probably about two months ago at a work session so for this purpose we're just looking high level kind of average customer so um the residential water and residential wastewater components those are um projected or proposed at a six percent indexing for each year this kind of walks through how that base rate changes and how the usage rate changes as well in addition there's also the alternative water supply surcharge that currently is 30 cents per thousand gallons used and the proposed annual increase would be 25 25 cents per year through fiscal year 29 30 in which case it would drop down to 10 cents per year and that is per thousand some other miscellaneous fees and penalties that are also included in in those proposed new rates um customer deposits connection fees installations inspections and then penalties for tampering and theft so what does that look like for the average customer so the average single family residential customer is a residential water and wastewater customer who uses about 6 000 gallons per month so we look at what that looks like on their monthly bill right now in fiscal year 23 24 so their monthly utilities bill is around 103 the implementation of this new fee schedule would equate to about seven dollars and 60 cents per month in additional charges now on the right side of the slide we're looking at the new single family residential connection fees so this is for a new home coming online those initial connections for both water and wastewater those two together are increasing by one thousand and eighty four dollars in total mr jim if i could just add some clarify go back that one slide christia you may recall that the rate consultant came in two months or so ago and gave the board a pretty detailed presentation of the rate study and the outcome of the analysis as a result of that rate study and in the takeaway the area here is that we haven't had a significant rate increase in the utilities division since probably 2013-14 time frame we've had some alternative water supply surcharge adjustments we may have had a connection fee adjustment here there but as a comprehensive overview especially in light now of what it costs to provide the to get the water treat the water provide the water and all the regulatory hoops that we're having to deal with on the wastewater side it was now time to make a significant adjustment and this is the impact to the average customer's six thousand gallon bill so i i think the board again did a heavy lift in making the decision to go ahead and implement these rate adjustments now since we haven't really touched it much in the last six or ten years so are we at a at a point where we're indexing all of these rates water uh garbage fire not all of them but some of them are in we're moving in that direction that seems to be the new norm we are certainly going to be indexing we'll look at garbage at but it about collection might be about a five percent uh fire fee is it needs to be the norm i mean yes sir ain't nothing getting cheaper i i i think that that's where we're headed and uh some of these are starting to see indexing in the on the utility side the the the uh because the what makes up the utility bill several components some of those components are indexed others may not be indexed but uh this looks like where we're headed to and i agree with you mr chairman i think it's probably the thing to do and makes it easier for customers as well and uh but at the same time in the unlikely event that uh there's prices do go down you need to be able to adjust downward as well and and have a commitment to do that but it's it's not likely i get it so it's really mainly trying to to make it uh where people can know what to expect and plan for it so but i can tell you i look i just looked at it on chat gpt and if we index the fire fee five percent in 20 years it's thirteen hundred dollars per house i mean these these numbers sound outrageous but by then it's what it's going to take i mean it's just it's the way it is i think indexing not only gives the customer some predictability it gives the government predictability about what your revenue is going to be well it's like our garbage fee not going up for seven years and now we're trying to explain to people why it's taking this big jump you know it's it's it's a combination of just looking stupid or i don't know what but but you know it's it's it's the way everything else works it's the way we should work speaking of walmart uh target publix uh they they don't keep prices the same seven years just because they yeah speaking of waste collection that's next up and you'll see that um what it goes from and to and then how the out years start to feel indexed christia yeah so you've seen this chart before um and this walks us from the current assessment of 206 50 through the fiscal year 24 25 337 21 rate and on through year two three four and five another component that is a part of this budget is the transportation impact fee increase this was something that you adopted back in march of 2023 and this increases these fees on june 30th of each year year so um that walks us through 23 24 25 and up through 2026 so there's a current um impact fee study that's that's um moving forward um there's nothing from that study that's included in this budget at this point and i'll defer to john uh for any details on on where that is right now i'll just add we got a draft todd and i got a draft report this morning so uh we'll digest that i know we're still working on the parks fee a little bit and then the uh the tractor trailer mr chair i know you might ask about that the tractor trailer study um we are doing a study locally here and that's going to actually we learned yesterday to take about another 90 days so that wasn't my comment i mean yeah that has been the comment but but my comment now is we've got districts has that has it just always been that way i mean how much effort do we go into to come up with a two dollar difference between district a and district b would it not make more sense you know i drive winter haven roads i drive kathleen roads i drive fort mead road why why why do we do that it was certainly based on the last study if you recall we had five districts and we broke it down to four only in transportation and parks do we have districts and in parks i believe the fee is the same it's just the way the funds are collected they're spent just in that district i believe is how we do the parks fee i mean i believe that's true and then if you think back our our transportation fees used to be the same in every district too and and this last study uh adjusted that but but you the idea is you're supposed to supposed to utilize the funds in the area that they're spent the area is pool county i mean that's well if you recall too we had set out to try to adopt a higher fee or a different fee for the northeast where the demand was greater and the deficit was greater needing more lane miles so that's where that's more like an impact fee thing than uh but anyway yeah i don't want to i don't want to drag this out uh randy is there a legal reason yes sir and i think todd kind of explained it about being it has to be in areas in which the impact occurs based on the study and we have to be careful we start co-mingling them those funds they could be subject to challenge so it's based on our study and where the impacts are occurring where the roads are um being impacted on well related to your comment there uh the study that's underway now that you received some information on today will also be in the four zones yes sir the transportation would be now now we're not changing what you see here on this slide no no yes but the study is still keeps this in four separate zones it the the tractor trailer study yes sir it would but every there's no other there's no other zones for the other fees like corrections no no no no no no no on the transportation the impact fee study that you're getting done it will still have four zones the one that's yes sir yes sir yes yes yes yes and commissioner obviously you're saying zones were you saying the years no districts districts district zones there's three yeah i'm sorry three yeah the other one's the average zone that's pole county i just i just wanted to stress so the only thing that's going on in the study that's happening now in regards to the transportation impact fees is the truck study to to verify how many truck trips there are around warehouses and that that's basically what's going on now in this impact fee study the rest of this study is focused on all of our other impact fees parks libraries correctional law enforcement fire and ems got you all right keep going so the next slide takes a look at your average homeowner's trim notice so on the left hand side this is current year 2023 the uh the average just value for a single family residential property was about 272 000 the just value is the value before exemptions are are taken out so we're going to assume that this average homeowner just has homestead exemption we take out that 50 000 and then that's their taxable value so this property located in the unincorporated area subject to the county-wide millage rate as well as the unincorporated mstu millage rates their property taxes for bocc taxing authorities only would be about one thousand six hundred and sixty seven dollars then when you add in the non-ad valorem assessments levied by the bocc in terms of fire and waste collection and disposal that total on this person's trim notice would be about two thousand one hundred and forty one dollars and fifty nine cents to the bocc so we look to the right side of the chart for 2024 the total cpi for the year ended up at three point four percent so we are subject to the three percent cap for homestead save our homes so that means that the just value assuming that this property is not improved in any way and does not change hands the same person has just lived there everything's the same um that would go up by three percent so the new taxable value would be about 232 252. so we apply the millage rates yeah yep yeah this is the the average value okay so with the uh the new uh fire rate and the new waste collection and disposal rates um the trim payment to the bocc would be about 2346.57 so that's about a 205 increase for the year for for this person all right christia let me let me let me set the stage for this one the reason i say that mr chairman of the board is i've been here 18 years and what i'm going to share with you is a staffing increase that i've never seen before the size that i've never seen before um when i got here in the 2006 time frame we did have some staff increases but it seems like with seven eight time frame we started cutting staff and cut staff for four or five consecutive years and then we started growing staff again um there's the complement of staff that i believe every one of those positions there are 104 positions shown here now when you net out the 23 positions from the roar home that are no longer going to be needed the net is about 81 increase in the staffing complement that puts us at about what's a total about 2300 and 339 from the 2258 that we have today we are just now above and with next year's budget assuming the board approves this we will for the first time in 18 years be higher staff than we were in 2007 8 time frame um i have tried to peel this back as many ways as i can i believe the divisions made a pretty solid case in for for the need for these positions the priority continues to be on the right hand side in that public safety public health arena secondary priority seems to come in the infrastructure side and then third priority since becoming the support services side but they all make compelling cases and i can go into every one of these positions the divisions here to go into every one of these positions but i think they make a compelling case so the net increase in our head count our ftes will go up by 81 positions you look at the so he's going up just one division by 76 positions positions i'm dealing with 23 divisions so i i i and and this is i don't want to say this is a status quo budget this is an expansion budget i am reacting to what you're seeing around you there are demands for services all across our service regions and everything from an increased expectations to litter collection cutting the grass our community centers the communities want more services offered everything is driving me around needing more people to perform services especially in the public safety arena and those in the public health arenas the utility um you know we're bringing on next year we'll bring on the septage receiving facility i need staff to to man that uh the state and the feds are throwing some pretty significant regulatory conditions at local governments in terms of their operating their utility system both on the water and the wastewater side so i need additional staff on the utility side so i um the only i'm not ready to finalize 100 positions or a net 81 increase there may be a few positions that i can look at again harder and i'm i'm going to do that whether we bring them all on board in one fiscal year or i pair that back in this the second year of the biennial budgets one or two of these or several of these positions could come into the second year of play but that's an accurate picture of what's driving the needs in polk county and there's a need for net 81 additional increase in staff it's not quite that dire because my my calculation 31 of those 81 are revenue generating self-sustaining could be yes so sports and tourism marketing is funded by the bed tax correct so that's pays for itself but utilities and solid waste are also enterprise funds so they pay for themselves so you're really looking at that a general fund obligation not of 81 but 50. that that you're right i didn't pair it back in terms of the fund source i just looking at the shock and all the head count we're again well you're going to have a head count increases the county increase i mean i think we're all real about that i mean sir i i get i get your your you're you're trying to keep it as low as possible but the reality is it has to go up period the uh when you say shift the uh roller home position to other divisions has that already happened yes it most of it has there's still a couple of positions floating now but those were existing positions are funded in the current 23 24 the head count was yes sir they were all right how many unfilled positions exist in the county as we speak you know i don't on any it changes every day because people come and go but you can assume that about about 10 of our positions are vacant at any one given time that's about 200 positions countywide that's over almost 22 2300 positions 10 some divisions better than others but i don't think i'm way off thinking that maybe more than i would have thought i just saying i'll take it back you keep that up there'll be one more that was a joke all right so looking at the history like mr beasley said we have now exceeded our prior peak of 0708 um if if these positions are all brought forward into the proposed budget and adopted we would be 2.7 percent above where we were in 0708 position wise but if you take a look down at the bottom you can see how the population has changed over that time frame so in 0708 we had a population of less than 600 000 people and employees per thousand of population was 3.84 so when you look now at this proposed budget of 2339 positions with a population of over 818 000 our employees per thousand in population per thousand of population is 2.85 um so just to put things into perspective because i do like to put things into perspective with mathematics um population grew by 38.3 percent over that time period if staffing had grown in tandem with our population we would have 3 144 positions so you can see there's a pretty big difference there um so over that 18 year period um you know clearly this has been measured growth and we're not adding positions that we don't need obviously with this level of growth um there's a lot more demands on the county so um we have to grow mr chairman yep uh in uh full disclosure and all candor uh we're a long ways from the 0708 levels but i assume intuitively think that a lot of the stuff that that 3.84 was doing we do through contracts now more than we did and technology yes sir well contracts and technology yes yeah because i mean otherwise look at where the staffing level then was considerably more than it is and in fact uh it dropped dropped dropped it's dropped every year so technology and contracting yes the technology has to represent some pretty good savings it it doesn't have you seen their budget commissioners if if i could answer quickly the question about the vacancies bill was close um the latest vacancy report that i saw was 279 vacancies but some of those are on hold we have some positions that a division is not hiring because they're positions that are available but they don't see the need right now so they put it on hold um so we're actually if you pull those out because this vacancy report has has positions in multiple levels of vacancy either they just went vacancy they're being hired or they're on hold so if you pull those on hold out it's 2 21 which is very close to the 10 percent validating the boss hello so commissioner cumby had asked about how much we get in state and federal revenue so i've put together a summary of the last five years of actuals as well as the current year budget so i kind of split these out um on the state revenue sources based on how the state categorizes different revenues so there are state imposed fees and taxes that the state collects and then shares with local governments based on some formulary then we have other revenue sources that are just kind of passed through the state the state does the collection of that they take a little admin fee and then they pass it directly to us examples of that would be the indigent um surtax as well as the uh tourism tax so then we have state grants and included in state grants that also includes our federal appropriations i mean our i'm sorry our state appropriations that shows up in that line then um we also have the state portion of hurricane reimbursement for both irma and ian so i split those out because those aren't really grants those are reimbursements but that portion does come from the state so in total the state revenue sources um in the current year budget are about 309 million so when we start looking at federal grants and then other federal sources that we've received um over the past five years that's about another 130 million um that's in the current year budget and that's just new money coming in that doesn't take into account that we've received some of these funds like the arp money we received that money several years ago in the actuals and we're still carrying some of that forward and still spending it now so each year represents just new money only nothing that's that's existing and carrying forward but there's there's nothing for this next budget under federal is there well she's on show 23 24. yeah i'm not there yet oh no but i mean i'm not ready to i guess where i was going with that is how do you know i mean where do you where do you come up with those numbers i mean we don't know we we know for example we're still carrying forward cares funding and or you know those for sure certain sources but there may be some grants and or an appropriation we don't know yet we would just amend the budget at that time so we're not going to account for something we don't know we will just amend the budget later if we if we wind up getting okay all right yes the the things that we build into the budget are things that we feel at least fairly certain constant recurring yes sir okay so anything that comes along that's new um we may come to you and amend the budget for those we don't we don't put in something that's a maybe so when you look in total at these state and federal federal revenue sources um the current year budget of two of 2.5 billion dollars 439 million of that which is about 17 percent came from state and federal sources so that's that's a fairly significant portion of of those road of those revenues that are coming in from both the state and the feds but really skewed by arp yeah did we send a thank you card it was it was skewed it has been skewed since covet with cares money and arp money we don't normally see those kinds of federal monies all right mr chair that i think we're i want to say we're we're if you're good with what you've seen then that's how i'm going to wrap this budget up and we don't need to have a july 2nd work session i'm even better now um and then the next time we will we'll talk is the formal presentation on july the 12th by myself and then the sheriff will formally present his budget august the 2nd we will have that capital projects work session with the board so you can see where 50 million dollars may be going and consider approving that and then we have more formality of the overall county's community investment program work session where you see where all of the capital money is going with all the reoccurring operating or capital expenses um and it all occurs after july 1st yes sir so mr chairman i that that's it we we're ready thank you