Board of County Commissioners on 2024-08-20 9:00 AM

Invocation followed by the Pledge of Allegiance. Good morning. Please bow your heads and pray with me. Heavenly Father, thank you for your great love and blessing over our lives. As we gather here today to do the work of the people, we ask that you would bring to fulfillment all that you have given us to do. We pray that out of your goodness and love, you would make our way purposeful. Give us a heart of wisdom and strengthen us by your favor and grace. And I ask this prayer in Jesus' name. Amen. I pledge allegiance to the flag, dear God. Good morning, Commissioners. I'm Jeff Foley, Public and Media Relations Officer for Communications. Today we are recognizing four employees for their service to Polk County. I'd like to invite the employees to come to the front as their names are called, and then if the honorees will remain standing at the front while the commissioners return to the dais behind them, we will take a group photo. First, Loy Locke. Loy has worked for Polk County for a total of 35 years, including the last 30 years consecutively. Currently a roadway maintenance area manager in the county's roads and drainage division. Loy also has worked as a survey tech, a drainage inspector, and a drainage foreman. In his free time, Loy enjoys fishing, hunting, and camping. He serves on the board of directors for the Wounded Warrior Sportsman Fund and for Keep Polk County Beautiful. Regarding the future, Loy said he simply plans to keep on keeping on. Next, Bill Cooper. Bill works as a Parks Caretaker 2 in Polk County's Parks and Natural Resources Division. He began working for the county 25 years ago, and he also has worked as a service worker and a Parks Caretaker 1. Bill enjoys hunting, fishing, and camping, and he's expecting to become a grandfather for the first time at the end of this month. Bill plans to work for several more years and then spend more time at his family's home in the mountains of North Georgia. Andy Edmond. Andy has spent the past 25 years as a Polk County employee. An electronic monitoring officer in the court services division, he is a graduate of Polk Community College. Andy enjoys spending time with his family and friends, as well as saltwater fishing, working in his yard, and cleaning his truck. He is a member of AA, and he has been sober for 31 years. Andy plans to retire on September 30, 2025. He has a couple of trips planned, and he's looking forward to doing whatever he wants, whenever he wants. Last, Gia Leslie. Gia began working for Polk County 20 years ago, in 2004. She is currently a Fire Inspector 3 in Fire Rescue's Community Risk Reduction Unit, and she has worked as a secretary to the fire marshal and a fiscal specialist. Gia earned her bachelor's degree in China at the age of 22, and she enjoys crocheting and gardening in her free time. Gia says it's a great pleasure to work for Fire Marshal Kevin Shireman. She said he inspires us and creates the best working environment for us to fully show our potential. She added that she really enjoys working with a group of dedicated professionals, and she is proud her work helps reduce community fire risk. Mr. Chairman, what I'd say is you've got over 100 years of experience sitting right here. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you. Well, they've tried. They've worked. Katie? Katie's going to give us an update on Keep Polk County Beautiful. You ready? Yeah. Go right ahead. Good morning, Commissioners. I'm Katie Hayes, the director of Keep Polk County Beautiful, and I'm here for our annual update on the Clean It Up to Green It Up program for this past year, the 2023-2024 season. So these first couple slides are always a little long. I'm sorry. Bear with me. I'll be fast. This program was created in 2011 to give residents in a predefined area the opportunity to dispose of non-conforming garbage that otherwise would not be picked up by our waste haulers and would cause code and safety violations. Through our partnership with Polk County Government and the generous donation of services from our waste haulers, we are able to provide a one-day clean sweep of the community. Items that we pick up during this program include construction and remodeling debris, excessive bulk waste, excessive furniture waste, move-outs, tree trimmings, logs. And with this program, we are also able to clean up vacant lots and right-aways. We choose these areas based off of community need and county requests. Many of these communities are low-income, and they have a high tenant turnover. So there's a lot of trash in these areas. This program is needed in those areas specifically. In addition to these cleanup efforts, we also try to provide the public with a free tire recycling event in these areas as well. So this next slide is just basic information on the communication and how we deliver the information to our residents. We try our best to notify all the residents within these communities that we are serving. We speak at community meetings. We distribute double-sided flyers, both in English and in Spanish, to local community centers, elementary schools, churches, businesses. And with the help of code enforcement, we're also able to canvass the communities and distribute them to the residents. We mail them to all the residents in these predefined areas with an open code violation. We partner with the Polk County Sheriff's Office and use the Alert Polk system to also notify these areas as well. We send out press releases through our local media and radio, and we also post it on our social media and website. So these are some pictures from this year's cleanup events. See a familiar face? Look, there's one on this one, too. So our first cleanup on October 21st was in the Janfield Village and the Lake Thomas area and included Sun Acres. And we did this in partnership with the Household Hazardous Waste in Bartow, and we did the Bartow Tire Collection. We collected 50,040 pounds of trash and 1,810 tires. In case you guys can't see very well, that is Commissioner Wilson slinging a tire. This is a map of those cleanup areas. Our next event was December 2nd, and that was in the Eloise and Juanita communities. This we tried to partner when the county does their Household Hazardous Waste event in the city of Winter Haven, so we tried to do a tire recycling event close to that area as well. We collected 809 tires and 54,500 pounds of trash out of that community. Our next event was February 3rd in the Skyview, Eaton Park, Crystal Lake, and South Cumby communities, and this was held with the Lakeland Tire event and in partnership with the Lakeland Household Hazardous Waste event, where we collected 1,407 tires and 62,560 pounds of trash curbside in these areas. And there's a map. So this event was unique for all of us that participated, and I do want to take a moment to thank all that came out to help us with this event. I want to thank county staff that volunteer their time, commissioners that volunteer their time, Polk County Sheriff's Office that comes to our rescue from time to time, and definitely the Week in Work Release program. I've been doing this for 20 years with Keep Polk County Beautiful. I love what I do. I have never experienced a tire event like this magnitude in my life. This was a new area for us to do a tire recycling event. We haven't been to the Eagle Ridge Mall in years. It's probably been 10 years since we had an event there. With this, we did the Waverly and Lake Pierce Ranchettes communities. We collected 4,548 tires. The events run from 8 a.m. until noon, and we accept tires until noon. We won't turn you away if you come through at noon. You may have to wait a little bit, but we will take your tires as long as you're in that line by noon. Myself, my volunteers, my wonderful friends at the Sheriff's Office, we were there until after 9 p.m. picking up tires. So there's some pictures of the amount of tires. Unfortunately, our waste haulers are amazing. They donate their services. They come out here, but there was no way to expect this quantity of tires. So unfortunately, we had to call in several other waste haulers to assist us with this magnitude of tires. But as you can see, we were out there. The parking lot lights turned off, and we were out there by vehicle lights loading tires. It was insane. What percentage come with wheels? A lot of them. It all depends on the area. Some areas, it's probably 10%. This area was probably about 30% to 40%. So that is the communities that we served with that cleanup. I know. I can't get over it either. It hurt my feelings. So our next community that we visited on March 23rd was the North Cumby community, which we included Tenorock and Fussell's Corner in there. We did not host a tire event with that one. No pun intended, but we were tired. 47,320 pounds of garbage, and that's the area. So our next cleanup was April 6th in the Boggy Bottom, Florence Villa, and Carefree Cove communities, and we hosted a tire event at the Lake Blue in Inwood. We collected 1,078 tires at that event and collected 27,460 pounds of trash from these communities, which those are very small communities. In addition to this, we also had some youth volunteers that came out and cleaned up Lake Blue for us during that day. So our final cleanup of the season this year was in the original Medela community, and it included Willow Oak and Fuller Heights. We extended it over to them, and we collected 86,820 pounds of garbage. So what we consider the original, and I always call it the old Medela, but I'm not trying to offend. It's just the original Medela community. It's South Florida to Lund and West Pipkin to South Yule. So these are the totals for this year's cleanup events, and these totals are just for the Clean It Up to Green It Up program. They do not include our Adopt-A-Road program, our Great American Cleanups, our community-based programs where we provide dumpsters. This is just for the Clean It Up to Green It Up program where we collected 386,160 pounds of garbage and 9,652 tires. We had planned on hosting a couple extra tire events. However, the one at Eagle Ridge Mall, it really knocked us back a little bit. So these are the additional community cleanup areas that we do with our Great American Cleanup program and our community-based cleanup requests. And this is our proposed Clean It Up to Green It Up cleanup areas for the 24-25 year. And we are so thankful that we have been able to meet with all of our local waste haulers, FCC, Waste Management, Scrap It, Republic Services, our city municipal programs, and including our new waste hauler, GFL. And they have all agreed to, once again, continue to support this program, donate the services for the tire recycling and the curbside program. So we're really thankful that we have that partnership, even with our new waste hauler that's coming in. In addition to our Clean It Up to Green It Up cleanup program and the schedule that we have listed, we are going to be partnering with the Eloise CRA and doing a specific curbside cleanup in Eloise as well. So this year, I'm super thankful for our partnership with PGTV and Polk County Communications Department. And we were able to produce a series of short films that seem to be really popular on social media right now, targeting some areas that we felt needed to be noticed in Polk County. We wanted to talk about, you know, the furniture and appliances, what you can put out to the curb, what's too much, what's too little, as well as yard waste collection with the new changes. And we wanted to talk about littering and especially illegal dumping. So I need 30 seconds of your time. And this is the wonderful PSA that they were able to produce for us. So we produced several PSAs, but this one I'm very proud of. And I'm so thankful, again, to our friends at PGTV, Waldo, who's one of our actors, and Steve. Nobody was harmed while filming this. But we had a great time doing it, and I'm so thankful for our partnership. They're always so graceful and wonderful in partnering with us and making sure that our message comes to life. And finally, a super huge thank you to everybody that makes this program possible. Our Board of County Commissioners for supporting this program, making sure it comes to life every year. Our partnership with Roads and Drainage, Code Enforcement, Waste and Recycling. Our partnerships with Polk County Sheriff's Office Environmental Crimes, their Communications Department, their Weekend Work Release Program, the School Board, City of Bartow Solid Waste, City of Lakeland Solid Waste, Republic Services, Scrap It and Mulberry. A super huge thank you to Waste Management and FCC for this past year and everything that they've done in years prior. And we're super excited for GFL to come on. And, of course, a thank you to our advertising media sponsors, partners, local law enforcement, our amazing volunteers, and a super huge thank you to our wonderful Board of Directors that I have some of them back there for everything that you guys do behind the scenes. I can't do it alone, so thank you. Thank you. Any questions, comments, Rick? Yeah, I just want to say this. You know, this is a big county, and this lady right over here with her staff and all the volunteers, you know, all our partners, they work hard to keep this county clean. And it's a big undertaking because that one video, we have a lot of that, you know, illegal dumping and stuff. But, I mean, I'm very proud of what she does and her staff and her people. I mean, when she said a while ago that she loved what she does, she does. And she's got a lot of people around her that do also. It's hard work, and getting those volunteers out to do that is, you know, we appreciate every one of them. But I just want to thank you and your staff for what you do. Thank you. I'm looking forward to this year. I'll be there. Katie, I just want to say thank you to you and to your whole staff, all the volunteers that work on this. This is a lot of work. Every year that you present, I'm always amazed at the number of trash that we pick up. But the tires, that blows my mind, over 4,000 in just one area. So, and I know that's a lot of work to do that. So, thank you for everything that you do. And I will continue to support your work and you and everything that you do. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The 4,000 tires, especially those without wheels, are great places to raise mosquitoes. And, but for your program there, they'd all be there for who knows how long. They've been there probably a good long while and will continue to be. So, thank you for what you do. My one question, though, is the video, the short video. Was that an actual dump site or did y'all dump all that stuff out? No, that was an actual dump site. So, we found a dump site and we were able to partner with the county to get it cleaned up, too. But it worked out great. It was an actual dump site. We just had to load some fresh trash in my husband's truck and have these guys pretend to throw it out and make it look really heavy. Thanks. Thanks for what y'all are doing. Congratulations. Keep it up. Good job. Great job, Katie. We appreciate you. Thank you. Dave Carter. Good morning, Mr. Chairman. County Commissioner is Dave Carter, professional engineer, Carter K. Engineering. I'm here this morning to give you our annual report from the Polk Stormwater Technical Advisory Committee. We're going to do a little different today, a little more high-level report and some background over the last 10 years. I hope we'd be a little more informative for you, give a little perspective on the staff and the work the county has been doing over the last 10 years. I'm sure you're aware of the county established our committee about 10 years ago, and the primary duty was to help with the county staff's compliance with the NPDES permitting. It's a mouthful national pollutant discharge elimination system. That's the state permit through the federal government that we have to comply with in our stormwater discharge. As you recall, the county implemented a stormwater municipal service taxing unit to help fund the operation and the work in that effort. Just to let you know, the county is in compliance with its NPDES permit. We're in year 8 of the current permit. A draft of our new permit has been submitted to the county, and we expect it to be issued within the next several months. So we're in compliance and continue to be in compliance with that permit requirement. You know, the fair question is, how are we doing over the last 10 years? And these systems are very complex. There's not one constituent that you can look at in the water body and make a judgment. But aggregating a number of parameters, there's about 100 lakes in the county that we have data on going back 10 years. And when you look at the parameters in those 100 lakes, about twice as many, 159 parameters are improving. About 300, there's no significant trends up or down. And unfortunately, 79 parameters are still declining. But about twice as many parameters are showing signs of improvement versus decline. So that's a very positive look on the county's water body systems. Just to give you some background, back in 2013, funding was relatively limited. The county was doing outfall inventory. I mean, we had so many outfalls, didn't even know where they were, the sizes, what bodies they were going into. Significant effort just to inventory your outfalls, looking at education, preparing the water atlas. And at that time, we had 40 unfunded CIP projects. 2015, the MSTU was started, continuing the same programs we've been working on. But we started to look at water quality management plans for our water bodies to try to see what we needed to do to try to start cleaning some of those up. 2019, you'll recall the Lake Gwynn project, the Saddle Creek and Crystal Lake studies were started. And we started building the first phases of the Lake Gwynn project. Moving on to 21, again, continuing NPDES requirements, but looking at a significant increase in design and construction of projects. And now we're in 2024, again, continuing NPDES, but besides the design and construction of a number of large projects, we've had to address the new Florida statutes, which covers septic tanks, BMAP, build resiliency, and vulnerability assessment, which has to do with actually flooding and keeping critical facilities from flood and damage. This slide, trying to synthesize a fairly complex process down into one slide, but the permits go through cycles. And so we're in cycle four now. We started in cycle one. And I think the best way just to give you a feel for this is the description at the bottom of the page. Cycle one was very basic requirements. And as the years went by and we got into different cycles, you had to keep doing what you were doing, do it competently, do it well, but then add new tasks and new requirements. And so we're in cycle four right now. And so the work and effort that your staff has to do is much more complex and difficult now than what it was in cycle one. The permit that will be issued in a couple months will put us in cycle five of our permit. To give you just a look at funding, over the last 10 years, the funding has significantly increased. I believe we're about $2.5 million a year that your MSTU contributes to the fund. Some of that money gets carried over, and the county staff does a great job of getting matching grants. So we take a dollar and we add on to that with other agencies. You'll see on the left side of the picture, we largely were cooperative funding with SwiftMUD, and now we've got four or five or six other agencies that we're cooperative funding with. The graph, the bar charts at the bottom shows the individual funding sources, and then the jagged line is the aggregate of all those. And you'll note that we went from a couple of million dollars back 10 years ago. We're up to $47 million this year, which is a huge number. The county is a relatively small contributor to that. I'll show you in a minute. The funding sources, the county's about, and this graph is over the next five years. It's not just this year, but the county funds about a fourth, about 25% of the overall expenditures. ARP funding is about 30%, state and federal, nine, and then other sources, 37%. I'm sure you're aware of the county does cooperative projects with a variety of cities, Lakeland, Winter Haven, Haines City, Polk City, Bartow. We also do projects with the Lake Region, Lakes Management District, the Water Management Districts, FDEP, and FWC. And so, again, trying to leverage those scarce county taxes, resources with other agencies' funding. I'm going to show you a little bit of one of the less glamorous parts of the program. Street sweeping program is a requirement of the NPDES permit. Back about 10 years ago, we were sweeping about 2,000 miles annually. We're up to about 9,000 miles now. We look at particular basins that the street sweeping can have an impact on and try to focus on those. Back 10 years ago, we were doing six basins. Now we're up to 30 basins that we're doing sweeping around. So significant increase in that effort. You know, when you look at pollution getting into the lakes, it makes sense. It's easier to keep the pollutants from getting in the lake than it is to let them get in the lake and then try to pull them back out. And just to give you an idea of what this does, they're able to calculate in a pound of material that's pulled off the streets how much of that material is nutrients, nitrogen, and phosphorus. And over annually, they're averaging now over 500 pounds of material are removed. Again, it's based on a calculation of the total. Every year, about 500 pounds. In the last 10 years, they've swept over right about 60,000 miles of streets have been swept. I know you're familiar with Lake Gwynn. We've talked about it every year. We have some results this year we'd like to share with you. You'll see the picture of Lake Gwynn. Lake Lulu's on the top, incoming water from the north, exiting the bottom of the Peace Creek Canal system. The left or the west side of this picture was the first phase of Lake Gwynn. The right side or the east side is the latter phase. I want to point out under the block where it says from Lake Lulu, there's a body of water there like a little isolated area. I just wanted to show you something on that in a moment. But the flow through that starts from the north and then exits to the south, they can calculate how much of a particular nutrient is removed in that natural process. And annually, annually, about 1,500 pounds of nitrogen is pulled out of that water stream a year. And that's about a 10% reduction of what's flowing through the process. So you have a large, you know, very significant capital improvement project up front, but then you've got a relatively low maintenance project. Mother Nature is doing the work for you once the system is improved. That water body, that little pond I was showing you on the north, that's a sediment sump. So as water comes in, it's allowed to settle and the solids settle out. Of course, those build up over time. And if we're doing the right maintenance, that has to be removed. So in 2023, what you see in front of you is some of the sediments that was pulled out of that sump. Once again, they can calculate the pollutants that are contained in a pound of dirt. And they've calculated about, you know, 2,000 pounds of nitrogen and about 1,200 pounds of phosphorus that was pulled out of just a sediment sump. And that's in addition to what's removed in the flow through. Those are aggregate. You're adding those two together. It was pulled out of the system. From that project. Just to give you some ideas, some of the future projects. And your staff is involved with like 20 to 25 projects in a year. Some small, some large. These are some of the bigger, more notable projects. Some of which you may be familiar with. But Lake Lulu, there's a south shoreline acquisition. There's currently some trails planned for that area. The biggest thing here is taking out the invasive species and replanting with native species. That helps the environment. It also helps the runoff. This area, if you're familiar with it, was a very intense industrial area. And so there's some remnants of those operations that are still there that we hope to tackle as the years go by. But that area takes a lot of work, and we're going to continue working on that. Kissimmee Watershed Project area. This is a very large area that's being looked at. It's part of the Lake Okeechobee Basin Management Plan. Some of the projects looking for there, septic to sewer conversion, where you take septic tanks that are currently in close proximity to water bodies, potentially discharging pollution and converting those over to county sewer, central sewer system. And also looking at shoreline resiliency, which means keeping those shorelines in a natural state. You'll notice Lake Marion, if you're familiar with that area, Lake Marion, in the upper part of that picture. This is the Bellini Preserve purchase. It was done about a year ago on Lake Marion. It's about three miles of shoreline on the east side that's being protected, about 630 acres. There is some trails and things out there for folks currently in some parking areas. And the purchase of this area will allow some water treatment facilities to be built on this site. A lot of the developed areas to the east are built, are older subdivisions, with probably very little in the way of stormwater protection. The Peace Creek Canal, this is a concept I'm sure you're familiar with the Kissimmee River that worked the Army Corps, and South Mud has done to allow that river that was straightened, you know, 100 years ago. So they basically block it off, allow water to flow very slowly around some of the wetland areas that were cut off when the Kissimmee River was built. This is a similar project, of course, not on the scale of that much smaller scale, but similar ideas, in that it allows the current water that's flowing through directly to peel off and go into some of the low-lying areas around it, create some wet marsh areas, again, very similar to the Kissimmee project. But this is kind of an interesting project that they're looking at. So the committee looks at the projects that the county's involved with. You'll notice at the top is Lake Gwynn because there's still some effort working on the Lake Gwynn project, and then as you look at the bottom of the chart, some of the more recent projects. So we review those annually, and I just want to let you know that our committee voted unanimously to recommend approval to this board for the project list, and I understand you'll be looking at that with your CIP reviews later today. So I won't go into detail with this, but I just want to let you know that we have reviewed those projects for you. So, Mr. Chairman, I'm happy to answer any questions you have. That's the end of my report. Neil. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Dave, for what you're doing. We might raise your pay. Double it. Doing such a good job. The street sweep, and you may not know, I'm assuming this is done by the county and maybe be a contractor, but do we suspend that when you have periods of heavy rainfall where you would expect that there's not much to sweep, or do we just seven or five days a week just do all we can do? I'm not familiar. And I know that's not a question for you. Good morning, Commissioners. This is Tabitha Beale, Land and Water Natural Areas Manager. We do. So there's parameters that the street sweepers are supposed to follow. We avoid school times. There's different time frames and different weather conditions to optimize those. Good, good. The other one is Lake Gwynn. Dave, this one probably is maybe a question you can answer. It sounds like what's coming in, or at least what's going out, is 10% less nitrogen than what's coming in. Is that what I understood? Yes, sir. How do we get that number? What's limiting us to 10? And why can't we get to 20 or 30, or what would it take to get up to, you know, something, a greater number than 10%? You create a natural system, a natural water body, and it has a certain ability to assimilate those pollutants as it comes through. If you had a larger system, if you had more lag time in the system, more of those pollutants would be absorbed. But that's a pretty large project as it is, and 10% is a pretty good number based on the fact that you have very little maintenance on it now. There's some park areas you're doing. But I think the answer would be it'd have to be a bigger project. Well, Tabitha and Gay are working on that, too. Thank you, Dave. George? Dave, thank you. You are one of the first appointees of that committee back 10 years ago when we first did this. Yes, sir. And it's a small population of those who have the technical expertise that you have and your team members have. Is there an opportunity to expand this to recruit or even nominally pay interns at the local colleges or even high schools to participate in some of the data gathering and just expose them to the process? Exactly. I mean, those who have been to college, it's great, book learning and all that. But until you get out and get your hands dirty and get involved with things, you really don't really learn what goes on. But, yeah, I would recommend a young person that's interested in it just come to the public meetings. But I don't know if the county has intern possibilities with it, but excellent idea. I think that's how you learn, how you get excited about things. Good morning, Commissioner Lindsay. Yes, we do volunteer internships through our program. So we have students that have participated in the field sampling and implementing some of our innovative technology. We encourage them to come out. I think it's a great idea to suggest that they participate in the stack meetings as well. That would be a great additional to their learning experience. I would even encourage, during summer, that we pay them a nominal amount for that, expose them to the process and expand that base of those who may be willing to serve as Dave and his colleagues rotate off. Yes, sir. I agree. Great idea. Anybody else? Thanks, Dave. Great job. With me is Ricky Newman from the Lakeland Fraternal Order of Police. This Saturday, they're going to be hosting an event to recognize the six Gold Star families in Polk County. Each of these families lost a son either in Afghanistan or Iraq, and I thought this proclamation would be appropriate. The glasses are more appropriate here. Let's see. Whereas Gold Star families have lost a loved one in military service, paying the ultimate price for our freedoms, and whereas these families exemplify strength and resilience, enduring the heavy burden of grief and loss, and whereas it's our duty to honor the fallen and express our deepest gratitude to their families, and whereas Gold Star families remind us of the cost of liberty and the enduring spirit of our military community, and whereas we recognize the importance of supporting Gold Star families, ensuring their sacrifices are remembered, therefore August 24, 2024, is proclaimed as Gold Star Families Day in Polk County. As a military veteran, retired law enforcement officer, and president of the Polk County Fraternal Order of Police, on behalf of all the law enforcement corrections community, we thank the board for your involvement, and we hope to see each and every one of you at this event. You're all invited. And this will be proudly hung on the wall in the boardroom at the FOP. Thank you so much. Thank you. At this time, I'll open it up for public comment, and I've got Jessica Post. No? Anyone care to address the board? Please come forward. Okay. Oh, yeah. Come on down. We just need your name, address, for the record. My name is Kelly Kalap, and I'm from Orange County. I live at 3809 Needles Drive, Orlando, 32810. I'm here this morning to bring to your attention the horrid conditions at the Polk County Animal Control. I'm going to read so I don't get off track. There's animals in the animal control that are dying in their metal cages inside of a metal building with no AC. Emails to you have been sent to the Sheriff's Department. They run it, and they're not our solution at this point. It appears that the money that's been allocated to them have been used elsewhere. Plus, if these animals die in their cages, they don't have to expense the money to euthanize them. I have seen videos, and I have spoken with individuals who have seen this firsthand. There is a group of animal lovers that are trying to rally right now for these animals just to get them AC, just to get them the medical care that they need, just to get them adopted. If you leave an animal in a hot car or you are a person who hoards animals in your home, you can be arrested for animal cruelty. Florida Statute 828.12 is there to protect the animals. These animals are dying. It has been said that Polk County is the number one kill shelter in the state of Florida and the fourth in our nation. I personally am not proud of that. Have you ever sat in your hot car in August with the windows up for an hour? These animals endure that 24 hours a day in the hot summer in Florida. What I'm asking of you is to take a moment, one of you, and just go and see the conditions there. Don't announce your arrival because there are new policies in place over the last month that you're not allowed to bring a cell phone in. The media is not allowed to come into that building because they don't want you to know the conditions inside. Please look at what the other counties around you are doing. Orange County, Seminole County, Osceola County. They have TNR programs. We want to reduce the number of cats and dogs that are being born so they don't end up in this location. There are programs for rescues to come in and take the animals and help get them adopted. There are programs that's called the wait till 8 when a kitten is born until they're old enough to be fixed. Thank you for your time. Mr. Chairman. Yes, sir. I appreciate what you're doing and the folks who are with you. I don't think any of us want to see animals mistreated. I know I don't. I'm a dog lover. It seems like I live out in the woods and it seems like I spend half my time trying to find mine when they run off and get lost. So I understand. I do not believe, and I don't know because I've been there, but it's been a while and I haven't spent much time there, but I do not believe that comparing the conditions there, and it may be, but comparing the conditions there to a car where the windows rolled up in the summertime is what they are experiencing there. It may be that we need to, and the sheriff's in charge of that, and the sheriff can, I can't speak for the sheriff, won't attempt to, but I don't think that, you know, having air conditioned facilities is something that's necessary either. But proper ventilation, shade, those sorts of things, they are important, but I just can't imagine that it's, that they would survive long if it was, you know, similar to the conditions that you described with a vehicle, the windows rolled up and not running. But I'd like to, I'd like to have the sheriff talk to you because I can't, and not really, there's nobody up here that can talk about current conditions because we aren't there. We're not running that facility. The sheriff has shut us down when we showed up to just stand outside the building just to make our actions known that we're there to help and we want to see change. We were locked out. They closed down the facility for that day, so they're not willing to listen to us. There's a lot more going on there. You all help with the budgeting and who oversees it, and that's why I'm here today. That's why I drove from Orange County and took time off from work because these animals don't have a voice unless we step in. Well, I will speak for the people sitting up here. Nobody up here wants to see animals mistreated. I can tell you that. Beyond that, I'm not sure what we can do, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, ma'am. Anyone else care to speak? All right, we'll move on to the consent agenda. Move approval. Got a motion and a second for approval. Any discussion? Seeing none. All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed, like sign. Motion carries. We will now adjourn. Recess. Recess. That's the word I'm looking for. Recess as the BOCC and become the Eloise Community Redevelopment Agency. I need approval. Move approval of the Eloise CRA Consent Agenda. Second. Okay, got a motion and a second. All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed, like sign. Motion carries. We will adjourn that and reconvene as the Hardin Parkway Community Redevelopment Agency. Move approval of the Hardin Parkway CRA Consent Agenda. Second. Got a motion and a second for approval. Any discussion? Seeing none. All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed, like sign. All right, motion carries. We will adjourn and reconvene as the BOCC. Ms. Butterfield. Good morning. Today we have for you to approve and ratify payroll checks number 03031 through 03062 in the amount of $34,570.23. We have 2,771 direct deposits in the amount of $3,992,098.96. Those are dated August the 9th of 2024. We have wire and electronic fund transfers of $9,689,785.75. Those are dated August 6th through August 19th of 2024. We also have invoice checks number 464-961 through 465-689, totaling $9,982,637.87. Those are dated August 6th through August 19th of 2024 for you to approve and ratify, please. Move approval of disbursements. Second. Got a motion and a second. Any discussion? Seeing none. All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed, like sign. Motion carries. We also request the approval of your minutes of your regular board meeting that was held on August the 6th of 2024. So moved. Motion and a second for approval. Any discussion? Seeing none. All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed, like sign. Motion carries. Anything else? Yes. I just have one good news item. In a previous board meeting, you all approved a resolution to issue some utility bonds. So we will be issuing those bonds and doing some additional refunding, hopefully as early as next week. And in that process, the rating agencies have reviewed the bonds to be issued. And Fitch has affirmed a very good rating, a strong rating, AA plus a stable rating as we move into the market for those bonds. A couple of things I wanted to note in Fitch's review, good news items. They said that the county had a very strong financial profile and they also said in it that the monthly rates were affordable for the majority of the population. And they also noted a low operating cost, relatively low operating cost moving forward and a strong customer growth as we move forward. All those entered into their ratings and they included in that, it also reflected the county had a moderate investment needs. So all good items as we move into the market to sell those bonds. And we did all that to save tax dollars in the long run, correct? Absolutely, because we have a refinancing of previous bonds that will produce the savings and then there's also new money moving forward for capital projects. It would be rate dollars, not tax dollars. Yes, it is. It's secure. Oh, yeah. Well, yeah. Thank you for that clarification. Yes, the bonds will be secured by the rates, which include the connection fees. Thank you. Randy. Yes, sir. I have a couple of items that normally would be on consent agenda item, but placed here to allow a commissioner to recuse himself. The first item is G1. It is for the board to acknowledge the receipt of the proposed fiscal year 2025 budget for Estonia Community Development District, and it's recommended for approval. Move approval. Second. Mr. Chair and Madam Clerk, I'll be recusing on item G1, 2, and 3 as I have a business relationship with the applicant. All right, I got all that recusals, motion, second, and any discussion? All in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed, like, sign, motion carries. Thank you, Mr. Chair. G2 is to acknowledge the receipt of the proposed fiscal year 2025 budget for Town Park Community Development District, and it's recommended for approval. Move approval. Second. Motion and second for approval. Any discussion? Seeing none, all in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed, like, sign, motion carries. Thank you, G3 is to acknowledge the receipt of the proposed fiscal year 2025 budget for Wind Meadows South Community Development District, and it's recommended for approval. Move approval. Was there a second? Second. They both did move approval. Any discussion? All in favor, say aye. Aye. Opposed, like, sign, motion carries. Anything else? No, Mr. Chair, thank you. Mr. Beazel. Good morning, Mr. Chair, members of the board, members of the viewing audience. Mr. Chairman of the board, as a result of the pending retirement of Mr. Todd Bond, I am moving to solidify several senior management position assignments that I believe will serve the county's best interest for years to come. With Mr. Ryan Taylor having volunteered to be reassigned from his deputy county manager responsibilities over the infrastructure division to the deputy county manager's role overseeing the support services group, an opportunity now exists to address internal promotion considerations. Having reviewed all available internal talent amongst several well-qualified employees, I am asking or seeking the board's confirmation today for two staff appointments to senior positions. Can I ask Mr. John Bodie to come to the podium, please? Mr. Chair, members of the board, item number H1 is to request the board to confirm the appointment of Mr. John Bodie to serve as deputy county manager over the Polk County Infrastructure Divisions. Polk County Charter specifies that the county manager's appointment of executive service employees is subject to confirmation by the board of county commissioners. I have appointed Mr. John Bodie to the position of deputy county manager over the infrastructure group effective September 30th, 2024. John has over 25 years of local government and private sector experience in professional planning, including management and leadership responsibilities. John has most recently served as the office of planning and development director for over two years, where he guided the efforts of those three divisions, the building division, the land development division, and the transportation planning organization. He ensured the proper integration of staff resources and the efforts in the implementation of the Polk County Comprehensive Plan, land development code, and the transportation planning organization's long-range transportation plan. Prior to leading the office of planning and development, John was the Polk County Land Development Division director. As such, John oversaw a staff of about 40 employees and an average annual budget of about $4.5 million. His responsibilities included implementation of the Polk County Land Development Code and the comprehensive plan, technical reviews of engineering and construction plans for private development. And he had an integral role in the establishment of the land use hearing officer process, and he has maintained a professional working relationship with our local stakeholders. John earned a bachelor of science degree in political science from Florida Southern College and a master's in public administration from the University of South Florida. He is a member of the American Institute of Certified Planners and received his certified public manager designation in 2018. The infrastructure deputy county manager is an authorized position in the adopted FY23-24 budget. The existing appropriations are sufficient to cover the negotiated base salary of approximately $178,550 and employment benefits at approximately $80,000. So, Mr. Chair, members of the board, in order to solidify what I believe is our senior management and leadership base, I would request the board to confirm my appointment of Mr. John Bodie to serve as a deputy county manager over the infrastructure group, effective September 30th, 2024. Move approval. We've got a motion and a second for approval. Any discussion? Seeing none, all in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed, like sign. John. John, congratulations. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, board and Mr. Beasley for the trust and confidence. You know, if I look back, 23 of my 25 years in local government have been right here with Polk County, that's not by mistake, that's on purpose. These are some of the best folks to work with and for that I've ever encountered, and I continue, want to continue to work here. I'm just, you know, amazed at all the things that we do, and the board has been so gracious to me and Mr. Beasley. So, I'm thankful for this opportunity. And, you know, the last two people that were in this position still work here. So, if there's a mistake, I can call Mr. Taylor or Mr. Beasley, so, but thanks again. I would also not be standing here if it was not for my amazing wife, Denise, who, if she can maybe just raise her hand, she's here. But then also, my dad, I think the board's aware, my father passed away on Saturday, and he would have been here. We did not expect for him and for that to happen. So, my brothers are here in his stand. Otherwise, they probably wouldn't be here, but my brother Greg is there in the middle, and then my other brother Bill, he's the oldest, I'm the youngest, the middle's Greg, and then Bill's wife Kelly is on the end. So, I'm very glad that they're here today to support me in this. And so, I'm humbled and honored, and thank you again for the opportunity. And, John, you know our thoughts and prayers are with your family. Yes, sir. Thank you for that. Appreciate it. John, your father would be proud. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. If I could ask Mr. Benjamin Dunn to come to the microphone, please. Item number H2, Mr. Chair, is to request the board. I have confirmed the appointment of Mr. Benjamin Dunn to serve as the director of the Polk County Office of Planning and Development. Again, the Polk County Charter specifies that my appointments to executive service employees is subject to confirmation from the board. I have appointed Mr. Ben Dunn to the position of the Office of Planning and Development Director, effective September 30, 2024. Ben has 24 years of local government and agency experience in a building permit and inspection administration, economic development, land use planning, transportation planning, zoning, development review, code enforcement, housing, and tourism. Nearly 18 of his 24 years' experience are with the Polk County Board of County Commissioners, having started his career as an entry-level planner and advanced to his current position as the director of the building division. For the past four years, Ben has served as the building division director, where he managed a $14-plus million annual budget and the daily operations of the building division that consists of customer service, building inspections, permitting, and plan review. He has advanced additional innovative technology efforts to serve Polk customers by implementing auto assignment of inspections, scheduling of inspections via text messaging, customer inspection tracker tools, and an open counter technology tool that citizens, developers, and new businesses can use to identify time frames and costs associated with conducting businesses in Polk County. Prior to his return to the Polk County Board of County Commissioners, Ben served as the Development Services Department Director for the Highlands County Board of County Commissioners, where he oversaw seven divisions consisting of the building division, code enforcement, economic development, housing, planning, tourism, and zoning. Ben earned a bachelor's degree from the Florida State University and a master's of public administration from Troy University. He is a certified public manager and is a graduate of Leadership Parto Class No. 15 and Leadership Polk Class No. 8. The Office of Planning and Development Director is an authorized position within the adopted FY23-24 budget. The existing appropriations are sufficient to cover a negotiated base salary of approximately $154,000 and employment benefits estimated at $68,000. So, Mr. Chair, members of the board, again, in an effort to solidify our management and leadership base, I would request the board confirm my appointment of Mr. Benjamin Dunn to oversee the Office of Planning and Development Director position effective September 30th, 2024. Move approval. Second. Got a motion and a second for approval. Any discussion? Seeing none, all in favor say aye. Aye. Post-like sign. Ben. Congratulations. Appreciate it. Thank you very much. It's kind of a cool day, too, because John and I, for people that don't know, we started our careers together here in Polk County. He was one year before me, so we get to share this day together. You know, so I think that's pretty special. But I want to first start by saying, you know, I'm grateful for the opportunity to serve as the Office of Planning and Development Director. And I want to thank this board and the county manager for your trust and confidence in me to serve in this role. I think I'm excited to work with everyone in the Office of Planning and Development as we kind of navigate through the tremendous growth that's occurring within this county. And all that really runs through that OPD department there, whether it's through land development, funneling down to the building division. I think we have a great group of people, and we're up for the challenge. I also want to acknowledge all the hardworking employees of the OPD department. You had the building and land development division. You have the TPO staff, OPD admin, and also the planner and call customer service folks. As we know, over the last few years, there's been so much work going through that department with all that tremendous growth, so I'd like to give a kudos to them as well. And I know they're up for the task, and we're going to be doing a lot of good things. Leading this great team is going to be something that I'm very excited about because we're going to build upon and expand the successes that we had as we move into the future. But I'm also excited about serving the citizens of Hull County, and that's one of the most important things. Our folks here are experiencing things that they have not experienced with this growth, and it's our job to make sure we do growth in a manageable and professional way and something that's going to hopefully benefit everyone. So that's very important to me, and it's going to be very important to our department. And once again, thank you for this opportunity, and I'd also like to acknowledge my wife, Erica, who's in the crowd. Raise your hand. She's always supported me in my career, and she puts up with me as well. I'm not always the easiest person to deal with at home, but thank you again for this opportunity. I appreciate it. Congratulations again. Yeah, Neil. Don't go anywhere. Hold on. You can't go until we get through talking, can you? Just let me say that actually you said it, but I will say you are correct that speaking for myself, and I think I speak for everybody up here, we have the utmost trust and confidence in you and in John and the work that you all have been doing under extreme pressure with the development that's taking place here. You all have done a great job. Innovation, hard work. I mean, when I look at either one of you, that's what I think about is, you know, get it done, whatever it takes. So, congratulations, both of you. I look forward to seeing you guys here for a long time. Thank you. All right. Thank you very much. Now let's get down to spending some money. Yeah. Ironically, Mr. Chairman of the Board, Item Number H3 is the heavy lift of the day. Item Number H3 is to request the Board approve an agreement for sale and purchase between Buckman Ranch, LLC, BDG Lands, LLC, and Polk County. In conjunction with the Upper Peace Creek Man Ranch project in an amount not to exceed $20,055,000. Today's Board action will include the requisite budget transfer and community investment program amendment. Based upon a previously completed watershed management study of the Peace Creek Canal, the county has identified several project areas intended to enhance water quality, water storage, and aquifer recharge associated with the Peace Creek Canal and the lakes to which it outfalls. One such area is located along the east and west sides of U.S. Highway 27, lying just north of Cypress Gardens Boulevard, State Road 540, located just west of Lake Annie, and includes approximately 1.3 linear miles of the Peace Creek Canal corridor. This collective area would allow for future projects to enhance water quality as well as additional water storage and enhanced habitats. The county has identified several large tracts of land in the project area owned by Buckman Ranch and BDG Lands, which contain approximately 1,272 acres, of which approximately 700 acres are categorized as uplands. Additionally, the properties adjacent to and would complement properties previously acquired by Polk County in connection with the overall project area. During discussions with the property representatives, the owners acknowledged that they indeed would be interested in pursuing a voluntary acquisition of the properties by the county. The county hired two independent appraisers to establish a value of the tracts, which resulted in two very similar values. Negotiations with the owners have resulted in a proposed property purchase price totaling $20 million, and the owners have executed and delivered an agreement for sale and purchase. This project was recently approved by the Stormwater Technical Advisory Committee, and the board had previously allocated federal American Rescue Plan funds for this project initiative, which will be utilized for a significant portion of the purchase of the property. The county attorney's office and the real estate services administrator have reviewed the agreement for sale and purchase and recommend approval. Upon approval of the budget transfer and community investment program amendment in the amount of $4,500,000 from the American Federal American Rescue Plan fund reserves, funding for this acquisition will be as follows, $11,294,860 will be from the Federal American Rescue Plan program, $7,050,000 will come from a federal Florida Department of Environmental Protection grant, $500,000 will come from the Heartland Resiliency Funding State Appropriation Program, and $1,210,140 will come from the Polk County's Stormwater MSTU Fund. In total, 56% of this total will come from the federal government, 38% of this total will come from state government, and 6% will come from county government. So, Mr. Chair, members of the board, consistent with what I think is the board's continued commitment towards environmental preservation, water quality, water storage, and Apple for Recharge initiatives, I would request the board approve the proposed agreement for the sale and purchase and authorize the issuance of funds in the amount of $20 million for the property purchase and to approve the hiring of American Government Services Corporation to close the transaction to include the paying of closing costs estimated at $55,000, inclusive of the required budget transfer and community investment program amendment. Today's board action will reflect a total property acquisition cost not to exceed $20,055,000. Questions? Yeah, Mr. Chairman, this is a big acquisition, and obviously a lot of this is going to be a lot of the money is federal money that we have to spend. And obviously, when we're spending it in something that's going to benefit the whole county, I think that's a good plan. My interest, or my question here is, I know that the family wants to continue for 10 years, I think is what they said, and I don't really have a problem with that. But what I would like to know, and I saw this with Old Florida Plantation, and it didn't work out exactly as I guess we'd expected, because there was a commitment back then about how that would be dealt with down the road. But the 750 acres is a lot of uplands, if that's the case. I would like a commitment from, one, that's going to be held by the BOCC in perpetuity, but two, that we would do something with that 750 acres that would benefit the people of this county. You can have a lot of recreation on 750 acres when that time comes, but I think that we ought to make a commitment that we will use that to benefit the public, and we will begin a planning process for that eventual use of the property when the time comes. So, Wade, we're locking into a 10-year commitment with the owner? I understand there's multiple owners here. One of the owners that currently do the cattle operations, we are working, you would basically be approving a 10-year lease with them for their continued operation from that standpoint. After that 10 years, it goes away. There's no extension. And it may not take 10 years, but it allows them that opportunity. As for the uplands, the Natural Resources Division is working hard to put together a plan for that time period after that 10 years, which does have a component of recreation. I mean, that's what I want as a plan. Yes, sir. The plan now is obviously what they've looked at. The plan now is the plan. The plan now is the plan, but the key to it is that the plan in the after does have a component of recreational use to it. So, besides just the stormwater, besides just stormwater and retention and benefits to the enhancement to the wildlife and everything like that, there is a component. Well, I'm wondering if Dave can get up to 20 or 30 percent of nitrogen removal with, you know, some of this property here is what I was thinking earlier, but anyway. The challenge is on, George. The plan, such as? Yes, sir. Fill in the blank. So, this property is a new acquisition. So, the 10-year cattle lease, we're still going to have access to the property to do our design, to do our engineering stuff, those kind of things. So, I will be working towards a master plan for stormwater treatment to maximize the site to improve some of the floodwater retentions off the Peace Creek Canal. So, we'll be looking at a variety of things to maximize the use for the site. I think the question, though, is the 750 acres that are not in the flood area is to make? The whole site will be a part of it. So, it may be we end up needing some of that 750 acres for different kinds of things to optimize for the purposes for the county in the future. So, they'll all be included in it. Tabitha, maybe the board's question is built around concepts of passive recreation on the uplands, some portion of the uplands. Yes, that'll be integrated into the plan. That's it, Commissioner. Were it not for the federal dollars, this would not be happening. I agree with that. We wouldn't have the $20 million. Yes, sir. With that being said, I'd like to make a motion that we approve this. We've got a motion to second for approval. Any further discussion? Seeing none, all in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed, aye. Motion carries. Thank you, Tabitha. Mr. Chair, members of the board, item number H4 is to request the board approve a right-of-way agreement between McElnaney Land Holdings Incorporated and Polk County in conjunction with Polk County's County Road 557 roadway project to include parcels number 138. Number 723A and number 723B, as well as number 800. This will be a one-time acquisition expense not to exceed $2,730,000. Polk County has a community investment transportation project to improve County Road 557 to a four-lane corridor from north of U.S. Highway 1792 in Lake Alfred to just south of the County Road 557 interchange with I-4. To allow construction of the new roadway, the County will need to acquire additional right-of-way for the corridor from potentially impacted property owners. The Board had previously adopted a resolution authorizing negotiations and written offers to be made on this project. Parcel number 138 is an irregular-shaped fee parcel needed for mainline right-of-way for the project. The parent parcel property consists of three contiguous parcels containing a total of approximately 4.25 acres located along the west side of County Road 557, which are utilized by the owner for a commercial roofing operation. The project will necessitate the reconstruction of the commercial driveway connection to County Road 557, and parcel number 723A is a temporary construction easement parcel needed for the driveway reconstruction. The right-of-way needed for the project is in close proximity to the main office and causes a loss of parking, making the site reconfiguration necessary. Additionally, the project is impacting an existing drainage area located on the site. Parcel number 723B is a temporary construction easement parcel needed for construction of a stormwater drainage structure and swale adjacent to the right-of-way, and parcel number 800 is a perpetual drainage easement parcel needed for operation and future maintenance of the proposed drainage structure. The County hired an independent appraiser to establish full compensation for the taking of these parcels as noted. Negotiations with the property owners have resulted in the proposed settlement amount of $2,300,000 for the purchase of the parcels, which is inclusive of business damages, and with attorney's fees at expert costs in the amount of $430,000 for a total settlement proposed amount of $2,730,000. The County Attorney's Office and the Real Estate Services Administrator have reviewed the agreement and recommend approval. The alternative to acquiring these parcels and obtaining a release of the business interest through condemnation litigation would result in substantially additional costs to the county. Funds for the purchase of the mainline parcel and the easement parcels, inclusive of all applicable fees and costs, are budgeted and available within Northeast Impact Fee Fund. So, Mr. Chair, members of the Board, consistent with the Board's commitment to needed roadway improvement projects, I would request the Board approve the proposed right-of-way agreement for parcels number 138, number 723-A, number 723-B, and number 800, and authorize the issuance of funds in the amount of $2,730,000 for the purchase, attorney's fees, and costs as noted, made payable to Gaylord, Merlin, Ludovici, and Diaz, PA, trust accounts for the disbursement. Move approval of recommendation. Okay. Got a motion and a second. Any discussion? Seeing none, all in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed, like signed, motion carries. Mr. Chair, members of the Board, final item from the Manager's Office, item number H5 is to request the Board approve a sub-agreement number SA-5 to the existing Water Wheeling Infrastructure Master Cost-Sharing Agreement with the Water Cooperative of Central Florida, all in connection with the Cypress Lake Wellfield Alternative Water Supply Project. This would be a one-time Polk County Utilities expense not to exceed $2,733,910. In October of 2021, the Polk County Board of County Commissioners approved the initial Water Wheeling Infrastructure Master Cost-Sharing Agreement with the Water Cooperative of Central Florida, relating specifically to the Cypress Lake Wellfield Alternative Water Supply Project. The Water Wheeling Agreement provides a mechanism for the sharing of costs between member governments for existing and future water transmission infrastructure necessary to deliver finished water from the Alternative Water Supply Project to each member. The Water Wheeling Agreement includes an infrastructure plan which identifies specific segments of pipeline and corresponding financial obligations for each member government based on their respective percentage of flow for each pipeline. Cost-Sharing Project Sub-Agreements are utilized to commit each member government to pay its cost-share amount for the design, permitting, construction, installation, and subsequent long-term maintenance for each applicable pipeline segment. Project Sub-Agreements are the sole mechanism for establishing the final cost-sharing obligations of each member for each pipeline segment. Project Sub-Agreement number SA-5 identifies the cost-share for each member for two Cypress Lake transmission segments located within the South Poinciana Boulevard corridor area. Sub-Agreement number SA-5 reflect the project parameters to design, permit, construct, and maintain approximately 30,000 lineal feet, or about five and a half miles, of 30-inch diameter water main piping to be installed. Sub-Agreement SA-5 does not become effective unless and until approved by all participating member governments. Sufficient funding for Polk County's continued participation in the Cypress Lake Alternative Water Supply Initiative continues to be available within the Utilities Five-Year Community Investment Program in the Alternative Water Supply Surcharge Fund designated for the Cypress Lake project. So, Mr. Chair and members of the Board, consistent with the Board's continued commitment to alternative water supply initiatives, I would request the Board approve Sub-Agreement number SA-5 to the Water Wheeling Infrastructure Cost-Sharing Agreement with the Water Cooperative of Central Florida regarding and relating to the Cypress Lake Wellfield Alternative Water Supply Project at a Polk County utility cost not to exceed $2,733,910. Questions? Second. Second. Got a motion and a second for approval of any discussion? Seeing none, all in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed, like sign, motion carries. That's it, Mr. Chair. George? Yes, sir. I'd like to make a motion to appoint Kevin M. Updike as an alternate member of the Planning Commission for a three-year term commencing September 19, 2024 through September 18, 2027. Second. Got a motion and a second for the appointment. All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed, like sign, he's appointed. Very good. Any other comment, just a few hours left to vote. Those who have not, please do. Rick. Thank you. He needs to talk in his mic. I'll start over again. Make an appointment to William T. Weinkauf as a member of the Conservation Land Acquisition Selectory Advisory Committee, which thank God it's called classic, for the reminder of a four-year term ending April 30, 2027. Second. Got a motion and a second for the appointment. All in favor say aye. Aye. Those like sign, he's appointed. Anything else? Nope. I'm good. Martha? Nothing. Thank you. Neil? Yes, sir. And Ryan Taylor has stepped out. But I want to thank Mr. Beasley, Ryan Taylor, and the Polk County Utility Staff. There comes Ryan in. Let me thank Ryan first for moving laterally to get better experience, to make room for other folks and get them some experience. So thank you and congratulations on your lateral move. The thing that I want to thank Ryan for and Mr. Beasley and Utilities is our fire protection well that was put in in the early 90s up on 33, close to the Lake County line. It was put in, I think, with DEP funding, but it belonged to the county, and it was there for the fire protection. When Abner Alst had his mountain of tires up there until those tires were shredded, it was a standby well for, in case that caught on fire, it kind of got forgotten about and overgrown. And some folks up there, there were a couple of fires that destroyed some properties, and it's a long ways to get any water. And they said, hey, you got this great asset sitting over here in the bushes. And so they cleaned it up. They got it all working. It's perfect now, and the people up there are happy. They know now that if we go up there and we need extra water, we can get it in about 30 seconds. I think it'll put out about 2,000 gallons a minute. So great job. They said thank you also. I'm doing it. Thank you. Anything else? All right. Can you make an appointment for me? Yes, I'm going to make an appointment for Mr. Braswell. Appoint Mr. Michael B. Furr as a member of seat 8 of the Polk County Historical Commission for a three-year term October 1, 2024 through September 30, 2027. Second. Got a motion and a second for the appointment. All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed, I'll sign. He's appointed. Next. And also reappoint Franklin Ed Shoemaker as a member of the Housing and Finance Authority for a four-year term, December 1, 2024 through November 30, 2028. Second. Got a motion and a second for the appointment. All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed, I'll sign. Motion carries. My only other comment is it's, as George pointed out, Election Day. I look back at the last three primary elections, and the turnout has been less than 24% each time. So I'm hoping we can turn the tide on that. Public hearings. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Before we start public hearings, 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 the microphone and state your full name and address for the record before you begin speaking on a topic. Individuals speaking during the public comment section of a matter will be strictly limited three minutes. Perhaps the board is experiencing these matters and is able to discern what is legally relevant to an issue and what is not. Information that is relevant or repetitive only serves to frustrate and unnecessarily prolong the day's business. The commission expects civility at all times during all public hearings. Speaking in our turn, shouting out from the audience, disrespectful sounds or utterances, while another is speaking, are 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, consider today you will need a record of the proceedings and that for such purposes you may need to ensure a verbatim record of the proceedings is made, which record includes the testimony, 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 to their 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 to the following question. Do you swear or affirm that the testimony or evidence that you provide to the commission today is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? Thank you. Mr. Chair, the first item of the expedited hearings, and I'll go over with 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 through the expedited hearing and recommendation of the 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 in public comment, the applicant will be given the opportunity to respond. After 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. At this time, I'll turn it over to Mr. Siscoe for the expedited hearings. Thank you, Mr. Mink. Good morning, Mr. Chairman, members of the board. There is one item on your expedited public hearing agenda today, and that is case 01, which is a public hearing for LDCT 2024-11, LDC Chapter 9 Text Amendment. This is a change to the Land Development Code to incorporate statutory time requirements for land use reviews. The amendment also provides language codifying the board's decision to move legal ads to a web-based advertisement rather than a printed newspaper, and also establishes attendance requirements for the Planning Commission and clarifies that a tie vote during a public hearing by this board will result in a denial without prejudice. Again, these are statutory or board-directed items. This ordinance is on its first reading today, and no action is required, and it will be back before you for official action in two weeks. Any questions? Mr. Chair, I'd just like to point out, actually, the publication online is in addition to the printed. So it's not in lieu of, but it is actually an additional notice. We need a public hearing for this, right? Yeah. Yes, sir. All right. No questions. I'll open a public hearing. Anyone wishing to speak on this matter, please come forward. See nobody, I'll close the public hearing and move on to the next item. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and I think the last two items are actually public hearings in regarding speed humps, and Ms. Amy Gregory will present those to the board. I get it. Jay, I need to talk to you after the meeting. Uh-oh. It's all good. Good morning. Tamara, I'd like to see you after the meeting. Y'all don't get away. It's all good. Wade, I'd like to see you after the meeting. I didn't like the quiet time. I'm sorry. Good morning. For the record, I'm Amy Gregory, traffic manager for the Roads and Drainage Division, and before you this morning is a public hearing to consider adoption of a resolution to allow the placement of seven traffic-calming devices or speed humps on Old Kissimmee Road in Loughman. Old Kissimmee Road is classified as a local residential road, 18 feet wide, 5,638 feet long, with a posted speed limit of 35 miles an hour. Upon receiving a request for traffic-calming, staff collected speed and volume data and reviewed the crash history, and with an 85th percentile speed of 52 miles an hour and an average daily traffic of 900 vehicles, Old Kissimmee Road met the Board's traffic-calming policy criteria for speed and volume. Staff subsequently distributed ballots to the homeowners with property fronting Old Kissimmee Road and received the required 80% favorable response from yes votes and from non-votes per the Board's policy. Staff also distributed ballots to the homeowners whose access is through Old Kissimmee Road and received the required 50% favorable responses from yes votes and from non-votes for the Board's policy. On July 16th, 2024, a hearing date of August 20th, 2024, was set by Consent Agenda, and staff posted on-site notices as well. Inasmuch as the Board's criteria for the installation of traffic-calming devices have been met, staff recommends adoption of a resolution to install seven speed humps along Old Kissimmee Road. And I'll stand for any questions. Questions? Seeing none, I'll open a public hearing. Anyone wishing to speak on this matter, please come forward. Seeing none, I'll close the public hearing. I'll bring it back. Make a motion to approve. Second. Motion and second for approval. Any further discussion? Seeing none, all in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed, like signed, motion carries. The next item before you this morning is a public hearing to consider adoption of a resolution to allow the placement of four traffic-calming devices on Willis Road in the Willow Oak area. The portion of Willis Road lying east of Bailey Road is classified as a local residential road, 20 feet wide, 2,240 feet long, with a posted speed limit of 30 miles an hour. Upon receiving a request for traffic-calming, staff collected speed and volume data and reviewed the crash history. And with an 85th percentile speed of 38 miles an hour and an average daily traffic of 633 vehicles, Willis Road met the Board's traffic-calming policy criteria for speed and volume. Staff subsequently distributed ballots to the homeowners with property fronting Willis Road and received the required 80% favorable response from yes votes and from non-votes for the Board's policy. Staff also distributed ballots to the homeowners whose access is through Willis Road, and we received the required 50% favorable response from yes votes and from non-votes per the Board's policy. On July 16th, 2024, a hearing date of August 20th, 2024, was set by consent agenda, and staff posted on-site notices as well. And as much as the Board's criteria for the installation of traffic-calming devices have been met, staff recommends adoption of a resolution to install four speed humps along Willis Road. Questions? Somewhat related. Are these all asphalt? Yes. We did one, like, trial installation of rubber ones, but everything since then has been asphalt. I was on, I don't know if it's Glendale from Lakeland Highlands back on the north side of the wastewater, Edgewood wastewater treatment plant. George, is that Glendale? That sounds right. Maybe. And the city of Lakeland's installed some rubber ones in there, and they seem to be pretty effective. I don't know if they're more expensive or less expensive. I don't know about the durability of them, but they actually have weep holes in them, you know, where they want to affect drainage as well. And water doesn't have to go, it can get away and off the road multiple ways because there's openings in them. I just didn't know if it was something we should look at because that is relatively new. It might be something that we can look into. I think the ones, you know, and there may be different technology. The ones we used I think were actually more expensive, and we installed them with in-house labor, which was very labor intensive. There might be an option to use a contractor. We'd have to do a little more research. We don't have enough experience with them. Got you. Anybody else? I'll open a public hearing. Anyone wishing to speak on this matter, please come forward. Give us your name and address for the record, please. My name is Sam Rudd. I live at 3410 Willis Road, and I appreciate all the effort that's been gone into in getting this to where it's at. I have two grandchildren now living right next to me, and my son also lived there, and he's already had one dog killed and one dog injured to where his rear leg and hip had to be taken off. And we have them fenced in, but sometimes they get out. And I'm just, it hurts me about the animals, but I'm more hurt if one of my children, my grandchildren, got run over and killed. And from Bailey Road to the back end of the trailer park that is now open back there, it's a raceway. I've stood out there and tried to stare people down, and they just keep going. And so thank you for your consideration of this, and may I add, it is awfully good to see the way you men and women are dressed, and I wish that more people would respect things like this and come like that. Thank you, sir. You in support of the speed humps? Yes, he is. Anybody else? Come on up. Yes, sir. My name is Mike Howell. I live at 3411 Wells Road, which is just north of Willis Road. And if the traffic humps are installed on Willis Road, the racing that this gentleman was talking about is going to continue on Wells Road. And I would like to see some humps on that road if possible. Stick around. I've talked to several neighbors, and they're willing to accept it, too. Stick around and speak to this lady right here after the meeting. Thank you. In the green. Thank you. Anybody else? CNN, I'll close public care and bring it back to the board. Move. Approval. Got a motion and a motion and a second for the approval. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Those like, sign, motion carries. We will take a five-minute reset. Yes, sir, so we can get situated for the work session. Come back as a community investment program. All right, let's get going. Yes, sir. Mr. Chair, let me put today's discussions in some context. We do this every year, and the community investment program is a five-year rolling program. Of which, the first year is built into the proposed budget for next year, and the other four years are kind of out there, but they roll forward on an annual basis. What's significant about today's event is that while we'll discuss a number, at high level, a number of projects, today, this book, the book that you have in front of you, really reflects two things. One, in next year's proposed budget, it reflects a $700 million commitment on the board's part to make investments in capital. It further reflects a five-year rolling fund of about $1.8 billion. That's significant in that I don't know that we've ever seen capital projects of that size in the recent past, but a single year of a $700 million capital investment is significant, and it just says a lot about us as an organization, the county as a whole, and the board's commitment to make those kinds of capital investments. With that, I'd like to let Ryan Taylor kind of take it away. He's been instrumental in kind of leading this charge and working with the divisions, and so take it away, Ryan. Thank you, Mr. Beasley. As we go through the FY24-25 CIP, we want to keep in mind that this is going to be a high-level presentation, a very high-level presentation. We'll be a little bit expedited just to get us where we need to be today. We will go over five different divisions, but they'll cover multiple divisions, for example, like facilities, covers, fleet, and fire rescue and the like. What we do want to make mention of, the one-time money that you did approve last Friday is incorporated in your books. Those projects may not be specifically identified in the presentations you'll see today, but they have been incorporated in your books, so keep that in mind. As you may say, well, what about this project? It's in the book. It just may not be on the screen. What we have introduced again this year, and we've kind of expanded, is that instead of relying on spreadsheets and slides, we have incorporated more videos and pictures to actually show you some of these projects, where they are through the process, and to give you a ... We know your schedules are busy, you may not be able to get out there to see these projects, so we wanted to bring the projects to you and show you what these divisions are doing with what the funds that you've appropriated for them. So let's get kicked off with utilities first, and Ms. Tamara Richardson, take it away. Good morning, Tamara Richardson Utilities. Yeah, our CIP this year, we develop our CIP based on several different kind of outside pressures. Capacity, of course, renewal and replacement, making sure our infrastructure is up to date, reliability and redundancy, providing reliable service and uninterrupted service to our customers, and efficiency to make sure that any changes we make, we do it as infrequently as possible. Also, public health and safety, number one in utilities, but also regulations. Regulations is always a big driver in what we do, but this year in particular, it's been just the ... I would say that the state legislature has been very focused on us. I won't go through all of these, but a big driver was the blue-green algae bloom prevention. There was the large blooms that had happened maybe 10 years ago, 8, 10 years ago, required that the governor form the blue-green algae task force. They identified sanitary sewer overflows, septic tanks, and the land application of biosolids as some of the contributors to these blue-green algae blooms. So, there's a lot of new regulations and programs related to prevention and elimination of these inputs. One of them, as you see, is the asset management, almost at the bottom. This is a board-supported initiative. We put it in our asset management program, and a lot of the other divisions have followed suit, and we're all seeing the benefits of these asset management programs. Other regulatory-driven initiatives, the Clean Water Drinking Act hasn't been updated since, hasn't been modified for about 20 years, and now they're looking at the per- and polyfluoral alkyl substances, the PFAS remediation. Those are the forever chemicals you've heard a lot about in the news. Also, our contaminants of emerging concerns. EPA looks at new contaminants. Maybe it's something that's been just showing up, some new chemical, something that they recently have started to discover that it may have adverse health impacts. So, this is their fifth unregulated contaminated monitoring rule. They have required utilities to monitor for about 30 chemical contaminants that are not currently regulated, and also that includes, in addition to, 29 PFAS and PFAS compounds. So, that's 59 different chemicals we're monitoring for now, and they're going to take that data and look and see what type of rules, if any, regulations need to be made to address those. Lead and copper rule revisions, we're well into that program of, you know, addressing those new rules. We will have a program resulting from that. How big it is, we're still not exactly sure, but we're definitely going to have a program resulting from that. And then the Central Florida Water Initiative. Of course, we know that we are limited to projected water withdrawals from 2025, and that used to sound like a very long time in the future, but that's next year. So, any water that we need beyond 2025 must come from alternative water supplies. So, some of the projects we are looking at, of course, are direct potable reuse, and also the extended use of reclaimed water. And on all of those, that has prompted our One Water Polk Initiative, which is the source of the water doesn't matter anymore. They are all equally valuable resources. Our CIP budget, CIP projects, just as with most of the infrastructure group, our projects are very large and are multi-year projects. So, some of the projects that were finished up last year, the Gibson Oaks Water Processing Facility, that's a 3MGD plant. That completes the regionalization in the northwest service area. It improves water quality, fire flows, reliability, and redundancy. It's, and then another one is our lift station improvement. It's the Providence lift station. It's a very large, one of our large regional projects. It is, we upgraded it from a duplex to a triplex to accommodate additional flows that are going to be going in there based on growth. We updated the SCADLE and electrical systems to match our new, to meet our new standards. And then, we did backup pumping and power, and this is the first time we've done the backup pumping. We always have the backup power with generators. This time we actually have, we put in backup pumps that are diesel driven pumps that if we do have, if we do have a failure, because of the flows going into this, it's very difficult to provide bypass pumping. So, we put pumps in there that actually could continue to work. This is a belt and suspenders on our large regional lift stations, and we're going to continue that. Ernie Caldwell Boulevard, the 20-inch water main extension, this is over 7,000 feet of water main, and that's part of putting the utilities in that new corridor. We still have to finish the wastewater system, wastewater collection system, and that's going to be a cooperative project with the developers. You'll see that agreement coming later this year. And then, the county road 540A booster pump station, which boosted the pressure in some area that we were having some low pressure concerns. Alternative water supplies, we're involved in several projects. Of course, the Polk Regional Water Cooperative, the Southeast Wellfield, we're going to get about 1.5 million gallons a day out of the first phase. The West Polk, Lower Florida, and Aquifer Project, we postponed that one. That one doesn't have quite the urgency as the other ones. The Water Cooperative Central Florida, the Cypress Lake Project, that one we're going to get about 1.7 million gallons out of the first phase of 17 million gallons per day on that project. And then, also, the AWS receiving stations, we need to build those to actually receive this alternative water supply to be able to introduce it into our system. Also, part of our alternative water supply is also the maximization of reuse water, what we can do with it. Reuse water used to be a disposal issue, but it's no longer a disposal issue. It's a very valuable resource. So I just wanted to kind of show a little presentation here about some of the ways that we've used reclaimed water in the past and how we're going to use it in the future. Many uses of reuse. Reuse is no longer a disposal issue. We used to just put it onto spray fields just to let it soak into the ground just to get rid of it. It was a disposal problem. Then we started expanding our reuse system. We go to water for lawn irrigation. That was a one-to-one replacement for ground water. For every gallon you put on the ground with reuse, you don't have to pump that out of the ground. We use it to mitigate impacts. We have a rapid infiltration basin that recharges a wetland. That is, the district has identified it as being an impaired wetland, so we can recharge that. We can use a wellhead for recharging the aquifer as well with additional water when we have it. Then we have a cooperative project here with Tampa Electric. They take our reclaimed water, trade it further to remove calcium, and they use it for cooling water. Then, of course, here's our DPR potable reuse pilot plant that you're very familiar with. That's looking at taking highly treated reclaimed water and treating it even further to potable water standards. That project has become very well-known not only across the state but also across the country. We get a lot of inquiries about that project. Okay. System expansion. Part of the system expansion. We're always expanding. But before you get off that, just one question, and I don't know if public utility people have looked at this. Is there any impact to public utilities from the Chevron decision? I know you were mentioning PFAS, and is that something you've heard anything about? No. No. The Chevron decision is not impacting it. It's not impacting it. No, not at all. Thank you. But, Commissioner, there is PFAS litigation and settlements that we would likely participate in and benefit from that's coming our way. Randy may know more about that. We are currently participating in a couple settlements and litigation involving PFAS. It will be a little bit before we actually see funds from that because there's testing that has to go on and so forth. But we are actively involved in those. I'm not sure my question was clear, though. I'm just worried about it. The Chevron, I know what you're talking about. The Chevron decision did not. No, did not affect this. No. Okay. Utility expansion. We continuously expand our system not only to provide additional capacity but also just for redundancy and reliability. The east side service area, that's part of the directive from the board retreat this spring. We're going to be building a new water processing facility and a new wastewater treatment plant to handle the new flows that will be in the newly developing east side system. Also, the collection and distribution system will be very much a cooperative project with developers to get that in in a timely manner to meet their schedules, but also in a cost-effective manner for the county. The northeast regional wastewater treatment facility, you're very aware of that project. It's a very complex and multi-phase project, very expensive, going from 6 to 9 million gallons a day. You'll be seeing more and more board items coming before you, agenda items coming before you in your future on that project. The septage receiving facility, that project is well underway. It's a cooperative project including leachate treatment. This project started out as just something that we just needed to fulfill a gap for the septage haulers, and it's turned into a really awesome project as far as taking the leachate and also treating that. And who knew that taking leachate, which is an unpleasant product, and septage, which is an unpleasant product, when you put them together, it actually makes a product that is easier to treat, and we're actually going to be able to treat this water to reclaimed water standards to where the landfill can actually use it on their site. So it's actually turned into an awesome project. Jordan's Grove is a groundwater tank and high-service pump station to augment reclaimed water. In our northeast, that's where our highest demand is for reclaimed water because we did a very good job of expanding that system. So in the spring, when it's hot and dry, it's very challenging to meet those demands. Everybody's irrigating, and it's not raining yet. So we do have to supplement during the spring, which is not uncommon for utilities. Transportation projects. Whenever you see a transportation project, quite frequently, utilities is involved in those as well. Anytime Roads and Drainage does a project with a new road construction, a roadway widening, the multiple signalization projects that they do, a lot of times we have to either get in there before they come in and move our utilities or with the project. So we're often involved in their projects. The Polk Parkway project, that's one that involved a lot of utility relocations. And the I-4 Beyond Ultimate project, that one, it is our understanding that that project will include funding for the utilities, but we have to fund them up front and we'll be reimbursed. So that project still has to be funded. And then also, of course, other FDOT roadway projects. Renewal and replacement. We have a relatively young system, and we need to keep it that way. So we are constantly renewing and replacing, using our asset management system to identify those facilities that may need to be replaced or may be getting close to their lifespan where they need to be, where they could fail in the future. So we've increased our R&R budget from $7.5 to $22 million a year over the past five years. This includes, we have almost 400 lift stations. Each lift station has about a 20-year lifespan. So if we want to keep those functioning well and so that they don't fail, we need to continue to renew and replace those lift stations. Other ones include pipe replacement. That improves water quality, fire flow, and hydraulics. Then there's our vertical acid, all of our plants, booster stations, et cetera. I&I, infiltration and inflow, it's I&I. It takes up valuable treatment capacity at the wastewater plants, and you've seen how expensive that treatment capacity has gotten to be. So we certainly don't want to be treating stormwater in them. Lift station rehabilitation. As I mentioned, we have nearly 400 lift stations, and they all need to be maintained and upgraded and occasionally replaced. And then, again, our annual R&R budget this year is $22.4 million. Funding support. All of these projects, of course, come with high dollar figures, so we're always looking for funding opportunities. There's the third-party funding opportunities, such as the American Rescue Plan Act, which I believe we have $19 million left in our pot to spend. Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act. That's a WIFI loan. That's a very advantageous borrower. It's a very advantageous loan for the borrower in that it has low interest rates and a very easy repayment plan. It's very advantageous to the borrower. The Florida Department of Environmental Protection, the FDEP grant, the state revolving funds. We use all those whenever we have an opportunity. State appropriations, including the Heartland money and the Southwest Florida Water Management District Cooperative Funding, where we always would partner with them quite frequently, especially on the alternative water supply, anything to do with conservation, and sometimes on the reclaimed water expansion projects. Then, as you know, we just recently completed our rate study, which looked at our wastewater and reclaimed rates, our monthly base fees, connection fees, and the AWS surcharge to make sure that we have enough money coming in to be able to fund these projects and continue operations. And then, of course, the future bond issue, which Stacey Butterfield mentioned earlier. So our CIP budget, as you see, this budget here, this is our five-year budget. It includes the CIP expansion. You see that that gets in the next couple years. You see it's getting – it definitely ramps up, and that's paying for some of these expensive projects like the AWS, the alternative water supply, the southeast well field, Cypress Lakes, and also the northeast expansion. It's paying for those. The R&R budget, as you can see, that's a nice, healthy budget for the next five years. Our utility technology initiatives, we've recently completed a couple of big programs. The next one we're working on is a data warehouse, and that data warehouse is very – it will be instrumental in future technology initiatives versus some things like AI and also just data sharing. And then also we're planning to expand our customer notification system. My goal is to tell our customers things so they – before they even have to call us, if there's a service interruption in their area or something that is going to affect them, I'd like – I don't want them to have to call. I'd like to be able to let them know so they get a text telling them, yes, we know there's a water main break in your area. We know your service is out. We expect it to be back on at 8 o'clock. So they understand, they know what's going on, and they don't have to call us. So that's the end of my budget presentation, so I'm ready for questions or comments. I just have one question with the meter replacement. This is the one we started a couple of years ago. Am I correct? Yes. So looking at this chart, we have 20 – we'll finish this in 2025. Yes. And that's because of all the growth that we have had. So you think by 2025, we'll catch up with everybody? We have – we've replaced all the meters, but the last pieces are putting some of the towers. Right now, we're working in the southwest area. So I believe we have the southwest area, and I think next will be the east side, and then we'll have all the towers in. So it's just the putting the towers to relay the data back to the administration building. Okay. Thank you. So all of the new meters that get installed with the new construction are ready to read? Already calculated? This is just finalizing. We've got the old meters replaced, and we're just getting the technology to make the communication. Connect them to make them work. Now, yeah, if it's not – we don't have the towers, and we still do by radio read, but once the towers are in, it won't even need to be radio read anymore. It'll automatically send updates hourly back to the administration building. So I remember when we voted on this project. How is it going – what are the results that you've had about with these meters? I haven't looked at them this year, but we have seen the people that have that information, they are able to identify if there's a leak or if they see – the biggest – the main reason for people using more water than they anticipated was when the battery goes out on their irrigation timer because it defaults to watering every day. That's how those timers are set up. People are – when people have that information, they can see their usage. They can see that that's happened. So if they look at it, they can see that that's happened. And we can use that same information and let them know that's happened, and that's been the value of it is helping people not get surprise huge bills. Again, it's part of our customer service. It's part of just helping our customers to just use the water that they want and not waste it. You recently made the comment that you see a trend that the historical 360 gallons per day residential use is coming down significantly. Yes. That 360 is an old number for decades as we've locked on to, and trending down to 250. That is a huge savings reduction with conservation, the kind of things that you're involved in, and also the new efficient fixtures and reuse and all those things combined for that reduction, which extends the life of the assets you have over time. Are you seeing similar reductions in some of the other utility systems that follow this trend, our local partners, the cities in Polk County? I can't imagine that they would not be seeing the same thing. I mean, when we do talk, I talk to them about it. It is, and the reason we talk about it isn't so much the water savings as much as it is the change in wastewater treatment, because when you reduce the flow, you actually get a more concentrated stream, so it's changing the wastewater treatment. So that's where the topic comes up a lot is everybody is seeing that more concentrated wastewater flow, so it's changing how we treat wastewater. No good deed goes unpunished. Exactly. It's everything has a—everything is related. I just want to say I've been affiliated with the utility system in my public and private life for decades, and I've watched Polk County Utilities go from a hodgepodge collection of isolated packaged plants, a well in the ground and little or no treatment scattered all over the county, to a really sophisticated state-of-the-art system. And you and your team and your predecessors are to be commended for that, bringing that to a state-of-the-art system, particularly you mentioned the reuse associated with the landfill. Those are the kind of thinkings outside the box that I think sets your team and this board ahead of many others that so few people know. But it's not our job to blow the horn. It's our job to—your job to take advantage of those science and those technologies and always being looking on the cutting edge. So kudos to your team and your predecessors for that. Well, thank you for recognizing our efforts. And Dale Henderson from the Waste and Recycling, I mean, he's been a great partner to work with, too, on this. We're both ridiculously excited about it. Yeah, we're utility geeks. We think it's great. All right. Thank you. Mr. Chair, if we'll call up Dale Henderson with Solid Waste, we'll go through their CIP and some of the large projects that the commission has. He doesn't look ridiculously excited to me, though. I was looking at him. He's focused. He's focused. He's focused. Commissioners, good morning. I will—this time, I will share some of Tamara's enthusiasm, right, because I have some fantastic projects that we're going to cover today. Maria Romero is joining me to run the controls. Maria is from our engineering department, so I thought she could come up and give a bit of a hand. Today, during my CIP, I will discuss and update on our constructed wetlands leachee treatment system. We'll talk about our renewable natural gas plant. We'll introduce, to a larger degree, our transfer station site improvements project, and then finally, our extremely exciting phase four engineering and construction project. Starting with our constructed wetlands leachate treatment facility. This, as you know, is our partnership with University of Florida. This asset is designed to reduce or eliminate the county's dependency on leachate hauling and treatment services. Potential savings are expected to be in the range of $2 million per year, and that would be with treatment of 30,000 gallons per day of leachate. The long-lasting relationship with University of Florida and their participation in other innovative projects at the landfill, such as the Phase II Bioreactor Project, made them a perfect partner to find alternative solutions to hauling the leachate and design a leachate treatment facility. Construction of the constructed leachate treatment system. Anticipated start of system dye testing is in September. Under the oversight of Dr. Tim Townsend, the University of Florida, UF, will provide operational startup, testing, and ramp-up assistance to the North Central Landfill in order to bring the facility into production. UF students will contribute to that effort in collaboration with county personnel. The facility is scheduled to begin treating leachate in fall of 2024, anticipating leachate treatment of 30,000 gallons per day when in steady state full production. Continuous testing of treatment processes will occur at numerous points throughout the system that will allow UF to make adjustments to leachate flow and retention to ensure planned leachate treatment goals are achieved. Following final treatment, the system discharges into the Zero Discharge Industrial Wastewater Pond. The division will be working with communications to plan and schedule press releases and a ribbon-cutting event as appropriate. This technology puts us at the forefront of natural leachate treatment, so Polk County can be very proud. The next project I'd like to discuss is our renewable natural gas plant. This technology will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by converting landfill gas into renewable natural gas for use in CNG vehicles, homes, and businesses. As an added benefit, the plant will allow us to co-mingle yard trash with MSW in the landfill as soon as production begins. Our partnership with Opal Fuels will generate gas sale revenues for the county, expected to be about $500,000 per year. Opal Fuels has invested over $60 million in the construction of the RNG plant and well-fueled expansion. The county will contribute to maintain landfill gas collection and control systems to maximize the quantity and quality of gas delivered and recovered. Construction of the renewable natural gas plant by Opal Fuels is entering final stages. Anticipated delivery of renewable natural gas, beginning with a virtual tube trailer pipeline, will commence in fall 2024. Project team is working to complete an easement with People's Gas System, Inc. to allow for the underground pipeline construction and transmission of gas beginning in 2025. The underground pipeline will exit landfill property directly to the east, which avoids residential developments. The division will be working with communications to plan and schedule press releases and a ribbon-cutting event as appropriate. Will we ever flare off gas again after this is operational? Only if necessary, and that could include times when the plant will go down for planned maintenance. So there are provisions for proper flaring when those occurrences are scheduled. But generally, no. Generally, no. No. Every bit of gas we burn is... Seems like a huge waste. Yeah, exactly. Absolutely. I'd like to speak about our Transfer Station Site Improvements Project. The Transfer Station is one of the most popular assets at the landfill. Residents use it in what I would term as dramatic numbers. So our Transfer Station Improvement Site Project will promote safety efficiency and provide an absolute better customer service experience for our county residents. Transactions at this facility can exceed 350 per day, and that is growing. Current CIP provides only for modest improvements in the facility scale house. The CIP increase proposes a redesign and the construction of a new resident convenience center that features multiple bays to handle more vehicles per hour in a safe and efficient manner. Waste materials are unloaded by the user from their vehicle directly into a transfer trailer with no transloading required. That design you saw is commonly called the sawtooth design, a raised platform that can be scaled for demand and for future expansion. Multiple residents, generally three per transfer trailer, can offload at one time. There's no generation of leachate because the material is dumped right from the resident's vehicle into the transfer trailer. It's fast, efficient, it's clean, and it's cutting edge, and that's what we're looking to design for Polk County. And the time frame on that? We're working currently right. In fact, Maria is heavily involved working on the design engineering right now. It's going to take, you know, a year really to get all that permitting and design done and get towards construction. So we will work diligently because we need it. It's a great, great project. And then finally, Phase 4 engineering and construction. Our current disposal cell, Phase 6, is expected to reach capacity in 2029. The Phase 4 landfill expansion will provide the necessary disposal capacity to serve county growth for many years to come. Phase 4 engineering and construction. This increase to the current CIP will allow for the design, permitting, and construction of a landfill expansion totaling approximately 90 acres. The actual cell construction will be designed to occur in phases of approximately 20 acres each. The first cell will be scheduled for completion in 2028 to provide disposal capacity following the completion of Phase 6. Phase 4 total capacity will be approximately 16.5 million bank cubic yards, providing approximately 16 years of disposal capacity. The total budget for this phase is estimated at 113 million or 1.25 million per acre. It's an extremely exciting landfill expansion. That capacity is extremely valuable and will serve our needs for many years in the future. Thank you. Any questions? Any questions? No. You guys, as you know, are always welcome to come on out, give me a call, and I'll take you around and show you exactly what we're doing. It is incredibly exciting. So thank you very much for the opportunity to serve. It smells out there. We are starting the installation of many more gas extraction wells as we build our landfill. So that's more just the smell of money. We will be extracting more and more gas in the very near future. Thanks, Dale. Who's next? Mr. Chair, we have Jay Jarvis with Roads and Drainage. Just a side note while he prepares, we have pared down his slideshow from 90 slides down to 23. So we're hitting the high points of Roads and Drainage. And Jay's really going to cover a lot of the projects. It's really business as usual for Roads and Drainage with a couple of big projects that we're focused on. But we'll have Jay hit the highlights for us. Jay? Good morning, Commissioners. Mr. County Manager. Mr. County Attorney. As Ryan kind of said, this is more of a status quo type budget. We were involved in a lot of different projects at different phases that we're working our way through. But because of the time frame it takes, once again, I think somebody else had mentioned the time it takes us to do these projects. It's reoccurring from year to year in several cases until we wrap those up and get ready to move into other projects moving forward. If you look at our five-year budget, what you can see as far as what was adopted, what's proposed in the next five years, and then kind of what that increase is. A lot of this has to do with not only some funding that we've gotten relative to ARP funds and state and federal funds, but also cost increases we've seen that we've had to account for in budgeting. One of the big things, and you hear this a lot, is about our asset management. You know, what have we got? What have we got to maintain? And that's a big part of what we do is basically tracking those things, allowing us to be able to schedule, to be able to coordinate efforts to go out and address things when we get complaints from the citizens. And this is a very valuable tool that we utilize daily. The reoccurring programs, this is really the nuts and bolts of what we do relative to our existing infrastructure. You know, there's the big items, pavement management. One of the things we have done, and I've mentioned this before, is culvert failure. We have an older drainage system around the county, and it continues to fail in instances. And so we've actually increased that from $2.5 million to $5 million moving forward. Mr. Chairman, are we moving to corrugated poly rather than corrugated galvanized? We have, we still use corrugated metal with aluminum, and then we also have used poly, polypropylene as an alternative. We still do not put that underneath the roadway. We still have stayed solid with concrete pipe underneath the roadway, especially collector roads. Some of the land development, we worked with them. We have allowed it in some subdivisions as an alternative to see kind of how it holds up. Well, it seems to me like that the poly should be, the life expectancy should be better than the galvanized, or maybe not aluminum, but the corrugated steel. So that's where most of the failures seem to take place, but I don't know in cost. In a lot of cases, the galvanized and corrugated metal gives you the ability to be elliptical, like concrete, where the polypropylene doesn't allow that. It's all round. So it gives you a little bit more flexibility relative to clearance and what we're seeing with the ditches and stuff. So it's a hidden. I wonder why they don't develop an elliptical somehow, some way, or maybe they. It's the structural integrity of the poly. Well, RCP is the most expensive, right? Yes, sir. Far and away. Far and away, but also lasts the longest and is typically more durable long term. Also, it'll, believe it or not, one of the big things is resistance to directional drills from utilities as well. They seem to notice when they hit a concrete pipe, the poly and the corrugated, they go right through that stuff. And it'll be, something will happen, and we'll find out that basically it's got a utility line running through the middle of it. All candy. Yeah. So it's one of those processes. We continue to look at it. So really, the biggest change was really relative to our culvert failure and increasing that and taking some one-time funds that we had left over and putting in there as well, because that's what we see as we move forward. Of course, one of the big ones is our payment management, nationally recognized. As we talk about, you know, blowing our horn a little bit, you know, saying, you know, this is something that has been very innovative, what we're considered to be a leader, get a lot of calls relative to our process and what we do in our payment management and the different techniques that we use. So you look at this year and what was expended out of the $18 million. This is just kind of a snapshot as of the last kind of processing of invoices that we had, and then moving forward, we expect to expend by the end of the year and the lane miles. We have seen kind of a couple of things with reduction relative to scheduling, but also relative to cost increases and stuff like that that we're seeing. And that's relative to everything pretty much that we do. The cost increases are really starting to impact the productivity of a lot of our processes. So once again, looking at it, similar type of thing with regards to the proposed CIP for the payment management, $18 million, majority of that going to the rehabilitation, which is really our standard basic process of milling and replacing the asphalt. And then the basic trying to extend the life of the pavement as much as we can. And then once again, you still have those areas that have continued to deteriorate that we haven't got to, that we have to basically go in and do something that's a lot more expensive as far as almost rebuilding by basically milling up the entire road base subgrade and basically putting it back down or doing what we call full-depth reclamation, which is basically the entire pavement section. Jay, you want to share with the board your philosophy of where you think we're going to go with pavement management in the coming years in light of age, and we don't go as far as we used to. So we're going to start walking backwards if we're not careful without making some additional investments in pavement management. Right. As I stated, costs are going up. And so what we're seeing is our production, as far as the number of lane miles we touch, is reducing. I think also some of the things are is at this time when there's so much work going on, sometimes the scheduling part of things may get in the way as well, but there may be delays. So I think we're going to be looking at some different maybe even procurement type of activities for doing pavement management as a potential. But also, once again, the issue becomes the amount of funding for that that we, you know, we foresee. I think I've expressed before that, you know, we've done some calculations using our pavement management system, and we're looking we would need about $35 million just to maintain what we currently have as far as the status of our roadways. That's not improving or anything like that, but basically to keep it the status quo. So when you're when you're talking, you know, $18 million, although that, trust me, that is very significant relative to others around the state that we've had conversations with as far as what their budgets are for pavement and resurfacing. Those things are continuing to those roads are continuing to deteriorate. And that's part of our asset management looks at deterioration rates to determine which ones are deteriorating faster. Of course, priorities, collector roads versus local residential roads, which I know you all have seen, you know, we get complaints about the subdivision roads and those types of things and the condition of them and those priorities. So I think it's going to be definitely a conversation we're going to have to have moving forward, looking at our funding and what we have to allocate. Yeah, Mr. Chairman, I'm thinking back to our goal setting or retreat we had earlier in the year, and I was looking at I think the first slide you put up had power line road days one, two, and three, or A, B, and C. And I don't know when we were there, the project that's unfunded was $200 million. I don't know why I was thinking. Maybe I was thinking $300 when everything was combined. I think total with everything. Yeah, so the community investment program is based on some estimates and some expectation of revenue? Yes, sir. I mean, our revenue sources are impact fees, which can only be used for capacity, the mill, 1.2 mill for roads, and then the gas tax. So it's estimates, some estimates, some just expectations. It's projections is what we think it's going to be. Gas tax, of course, is pretty steady over the years. There's very minimal. Well, what I'm trying to get at is I was thinking that we were thinking that we didn't have anything programmed or wouldn't be. And what makes me think about that is the need to maintain and step up our management program, as Bill's pointing out to us here. So, Drew, as it stands right now, are we looking at funding that $200 million in this CIP? For Powerline? The other phase? No, no, sir. Oh, okay. No. That's what I was – so it's in there, but there's – We're going to discuss it in a little bit more detail later on. Okay. We'll get into capacity projects. Okay. Yeah, I think what we're – one of the things we're – I think Mr. Beasley's pointing out and we're trying to say is there's really going to be – there's going to have to be a discussion about projects versus the maintenance of what we already have and kind of how those priorities – Well, I brought it up. Huh? Well, I was bringing it up. Yes. Sure. Yeah. And once again, the only funding sources for maintenance are really the gas tax and the millage. We can't use impact fees for maintaining. So that's another part of it. Well, if you don't get caught. I'll let you refer to the county attorney on that one. So moving on, sidewalk advisory committee, the sidewalk projects for the upcoming year. The process is we basically present multiple projects to them throughout the year, and then they take that list plus lists from up to two years prior and basically come up with their recommendation on what they would want to move forward with, and that's presented to you all today. And this is the list trying to distribute those around the county as well as costs, trying to not use all the funds for one large project, but try to utilize it for multiple projects as best we can. And so this is the list that they've come up with that we're presenting to you for the estimates, of course, are 2.4. The assumption is we have 2.25. Come in higher, lower. That will be what we end up trying to project and move forward with. Hey, let me hold that slide. This is a great example of in the prior years we were getting 12 to 15 sidewalk locations a year for 2.5 million thereabouts. We're getting half of that now. The dollar just doesn't go as far, so we've got to come to some reconciliation in the near future about how much additional money should we assign to the sidewalk advisory committee to get more production out of that. I also want to mention we don't see anything from Poinciana, but it's because Congressman Soto was able to give us, what, $800,000 for sidewalks in Poinciana. So I wanted to make that clear. That's why Poinciana is not on that list. Yes. Keep rolling. So multiple intersection projects all across the county. These are really the projects that continue to come into play. This is pretty much the list that's been on there for the last year or so. As we move forward with these, trying to get these installed, once again, they range all the way from some of y'all's favorites of roundabouts to signalizations to just turn lanes. But we continue to move forward with these, and as they come off the list, same thing, more projects. The one that was added was State Road 37 or South Florida Avenue at Fitzgerald. This is a location where there's been some development in that corner, seen a lot of traffic coming through there. It's very limited. In cooperation with utilities, they bought the corner lot for a lift station that was kind of sitting in the right-of-way or right adjacent to the right-of-way, and they're moving that so we can go in and do the improvements. So that's what this project really addresses. So I wanted to bring that one because that is a new one. The bridge projects, as we move forward, you've seen the Rady Boulevard. We continue to deal with some environmental issues, trying to get those addressed because we are impacting a mitigation site as part of one of the bridge projects. So we continue to try to work through that. In addition, we did find some issues relative to the Avon Park cutoff road bridge, and so we put that in there to start designing the replacement of that bridge as well. The ARP projects, we continue to work on these. There's been some that have dropped off the list either due to or mostly due to unwilling property owners to work with us on acquiring property for either a pond or a pipe system and those types of things, so those are done. But as everybody's kind of talked about, the prices have gone up as well for these projects, so we're continuing to adjust, but we are moving forward. A lot of these are currently either under construction or going out to bid, so we'll be ready to meet the deadline of having obligated funds by the end of this year and then with the intent to have them all completed by the end of 2026. Palmer Road. You want to ask me that one? You know, it's over there. Get up on the map. Never mind. Never mind. Okay. Imperial Lakes Phase 1 implies a Phase 2. What's Phase 2? Phase 2 was the – I'm trying to think of what that subdivision was off to the north or west. There was some drainage and flooding in that area as well, but we think with what we're doing, we're actually going to address a lot of that because that was this water staging up, so that's when this was initially implemented. There were two phases to address flooding. One was the Imperial Lakes Boulevard flooding and one was the subdivision flooding. When would you expect completion of the 10 acres we acquired next to the boulevard and the clubhouse? By the end of next year. Good. Thank you. That is my hope and prayer. I think those bids are in procurement now. Yes. They're currently putting the bid package together to go out to bid, and so we're hoping we'll go to construction sometime early next year and be off and running. All right. And then miscellaneous projects, these are projects that kind of run the gamut of kind of not specific. One I want to mention, because I know it's near and dear to Commissioner Lindsay, is the Fort Frazier Trail Extension. It's currently under construction right now. They're out there working on that, so it is moving forward. Then the capacity projects. Lake Wilson is complete and open, and we have a video of that coming up. West Pipkin, I know the county manager is probably not going to be too happy with me, but I did get an e-mail. You lost the bet. I did. I did. I did get an e-mail late Friday from my staff saying that this project is probably going to, well, will require some type of extension due to weather and utility conflicts. They're currently working on an updated schedule, but it appears we're sometime in the early March range now to complete that project. And then we talk about 557, the different – we've now broken it into phase one and phase two again, the old Lake Alfred Road, which is about, I guess, about two-thirds of the way down from I-4. That's kind of the initial phase that we're working to try to get finalized and all the right-of-way acquired so we can move forward with that project to go to construction. And then phase two would be all the way down from old Lake Alfred down to 1792 in Lake Alfred. We've had some conversations with the DOT. They're picking up again with the 1792 through Lake Alfred project, looking at different alternatives, which may impact our connections. But that will be a decision as we move forward and finalize those plans, what we're going to do as far as what we're going to construct or may construct south of old Lake Alfred Road to what limits or whether we're going to go all the way to 1792. And then Marigold Avenue currently, we pretty much have the design. We're doing some updates due to some utility discussions with Duke Energy. So we're working through on that one as well. So Lake Wilson Road is completed. I think this is a video of what it looks like. This is not an animation. This is live – or not live, but I know. How about that? It must have been taken, like, in the middle of the day. No, sir. We're going south, actually. Once again, another good project. Y'all have heard the comments about being the most expensive mile of roadway in Bolt County. Forty-plus million dollars. So, once again, another completed project. So much of that was driven by land value, right? Yes. About – the construction cost was somewhere around $20 million, and then all the design, utility coordination, utility relocations, and right away was the other $20 million. So, West Pipkin going back towards the west, towards County Line Road. The portion back to the east, back to South Florida Avenue, is pretty much complete. We've got one pond site and some cleanup stuff we're still going to do. But this is what it looks like. As of, I believe it was last week, this video was taken, where you can see they've done some switching over to the new road in portions as they continue to build. I just noticed it says – no, it sped up. We split up the video. Try to keep it short. So, some of the other projects that we're working on currently, Kathleen Road, we did get some funding from the federal government, and also some impact feed funds for that district were allocated to Kathleen Road. So, we're getting ready to move forward with that project as far as starting the alignment study and hopefully the design of that to extend it, widen it, and extend it up to Highway 98. Wabash is a project we've done with the city of Lakeland that's wrapping up and being completed. The Northridge Trail project from Dean Still to Sand Mine. We ran – the environmental core stuff basically hurt us and put us on hold. We're hoping something's going to happen quickly, but we do have funding to move forward with that project once we have all the permits in place. Then, of course, Thompson Nursery Road, the various phases. Segment three, the part that we had the agreement with the developer, is completed. If you look at that – so, segment one's the one that we're currently really concentrating on to try to get moving and go to construction. We have some more right-of-way acquisition that we're working through, and then DOT working with them to get a permit. They're trying to make some requirements relative to the intersection with 17 that we're trying to work through with them because what they've requested would result in additional right-of-way acquisition and additional costs, so we're – staff is currently – and our consultant's currently working on something to present to them to try to get them to pull back from that so we can move forward with the project. And segments two and then phase two of that project are currently – we've done an alignment study for phase two. That was presented to the public. We got comments. We've responded to those comments, so that will be shortly moving to design. And then segment two of phase one, the part through Juanita, we have a draft alignment study. We're going to do a public meeting hopefully sometime here before the end of the year in the Juanita area, and then we'll present that to the board for approval to move forward with the design. Mr. Chairman, was the Wabash, was it a 50-50 split with the city? No, sir. What that was was the county handled the cost of the improvements to Wabash Avenue south of 10th Street, and then the Lakeland took everything from 10th Street all the way up to where they tied up into Kirkland. Villa Vista. Well, it goes to Kathleen Road ultimately, but there's another road that went back there to the – Villa Vista, it was already a connection there, but that was probably pretty expensive, that part of it. It certainly helps get around up there. Yeah, once again, it's another connection, an alternative route around the area. So then one of the ones – Hold on. Oh, sorry. Okay. Could you give me a brief update of what's going on in Poinciana with the Cypress Parkway and the Southport Connector, if you have any updates? I haven't heard anything, so – Well, the Southport Connector, the biggest thing was they did get a letter that appears that the lawsuit that was filed was, I guess, deferred, I think is what the – I've been told the language is, is basically they can move forward when they get to final recommendations and what they're going to do with an alignment, that group has the right to file another suit, is what I've been told by others. But they are moving forward. They're now looking, based upon their traffic analysis, a six-laning of Cypress Parkway along with six-laning of the toll facility, the toll road Southport Connector, and its alignment through – along Cypress Parkway is what they're moving forward with. They are hoping, now that they're back on track to sometime here by the end of this year or first part of next year, to present to the CFX board their kind of recommendation so they can determine if they're going to move forward or not. For now, Cypress Parkway has been removed from our CIP, and those funds have been allocated to other projects. Well, I'm sure I hope we can move forward with this project. It's been, what, three years now since – Oh, it's been longer than that. Longer than that? Yeah. Yeah. So I'm trying to be optimistic about it. I understand. So other projects that we've got, the FDC Grove Road Northridge flyover, that's another flyover, I-4, on the west side of the I-4-27 interchange. And then Grandview is a flyover on the east side that we've either allocated funds for and or gotten some federal funding for to move those forward. And then Powerline, we've talked about that, the various phases. Phase 1 is currently under construction, but then Phase 2 is the existing Powerline, and then 3A and 3B is the potential for an extension to the south. There you go, $307 million is the estimated total cost. So if you look at Phase 1, that's currently under construction. You can kind of see where they've started clearing to make those connections. Phase 2 is currently under alignment study slash design and a developer's agreement. Then 3A from Henson down to Lake Hatchnahaw, we're working to get that allocated as a state funding only to try to keep it from being federalized. And then from Hatchnahaw all the way down to Scenic Highway and south of Dundee is really we're trying to – that's the federal project, part of the project that currently there's been really nothing done relative to that. So those are the multiple phases and kind of where those are as we move forward. And then I think the intent is to move forward with requesting state funding for potentially right-of-way and then ultimately construction for Phase 2 and a similar thing for Phase 3A with the state and then asking the federal – asking a federal request for Phase 3B as we move forward and get everything lined up and expend the funds that we currently have allocated. And then summarizing really looking at the reoccurring, the capacity, the various intersection, bridges, sidewalks, drainage, the miscellaneous stuff, there's really a summary of our five-year CIP with the total of, you know, a little over 800 – almost $875 million in five years to go towards these projects and the reoccurring. So I stand for any questions. Any questions? Thanks, Jay. Mr. Chair, the next grouping will be Parks and Natural Resources, and it will be a cooperative effort between Gaye Sharp, Mike Callender, and Tabitha Beal to go over their several sections that they cover. But, again, another video – or another presentation with some good slides and good videos to show the projects that have been completed and being worked on right now. All right. Gaye? Good morning. Good morning. My name is Gaye Sharp, Director of Parks and Natural Resources. We have an exciting Parks and Natural Resources Division presentation for you and look forward to discussing what we have for our division over the fiscal year 2425 for our CIP. The total is a little over $118 million, just less of $119 million for this next year, and I would like to go through the pie chart that you're seeing in front of you to just give you a broad view of how our funding is being expended for this next year. Two percent is part of our general fund projects. We move over to parks, new amenities at 24 percent, park replacement at 15 percent, our boat ramps at 2 percent, stormwater 40 percent, and then we have our environmental lands program at 17 percent. So that just gives you a general overview, and we'll go into the specifics. We'll start off with the general fund. The first one is our chemical storage and facility that's being implemented. We had a question come up during our analysis of how we're storing our chemicals and what we're doing with our loading and those types of comments from the Florida Department of Ag and Consumer Services, and they've provided guidance on our biological mixtures versus our other mixtures, and the biological mixtures need to be stored in a refrigerated climate-controlled type of environment for those particular products. So we've worked with facilities. We were able to retrofit an existing building on site to be able to store those chemicals. Now, for the remaining chemicals, it's going to require new construction of a chemical storage barn. But what that brings forth is being able to work on designing this larger facility so that we can drive straight in, load the chemicals straight on that platform. We're more efficient, we'll be more effective, it's safer. Then we have heavy-duty shelving in that facility, which will allow us to stack the chemicals so storage space will be a higher capacity for us. Right now, we can't actually order all what we need because we're having to, you know, have such limited storage space. We will have a secure mixing station, which is important, and then all the safety, product contamination errors, and eyewashes and other safety equipment. So what this is going to do is just help us expedite, get out in the field quicker, and do what we need to do as far as meeting the storage requirements of our chemicals. Ms. Sharon? Yep. What is the basis for the climate control, refrigerated, air-conditioned, whatever? That's a bacteria-based type of product. We use it in mosquito control. It attacks the larvae of the mosquitoes when they're in the water systems and wetlands and prevents them from emerging. But what it is, since it's a live organism, we have to have the climate control to keep them alive. So it's just for that? Just for that product. And that's why we were able to move, take one of our buildings and move it in that. It was cheaper to do that than to design a whole building climate control. Thank you. And so we'll move on to our Fort Fraser Historical Outdoor Exhibit. This is an exciting project because it's coming out of our History Center programming. And what it is going to do is highlight the significance of Fort Fraser. That was established by General Zachary Taylor in 1837 on his march against the Seminoles. The planned exhibit is near the general area of Fort Fraser itself and is planned to be about maybe 1,000 feet from the intersection of, you may be familiar with the U.S. 98 and Boy Scout Ranch Road intersection. The new nearby project that was occurring at this time has been kind to dedicate some property to the county in order to be able to promote the importance of the Fort Fraser itself. So they've dedicated this strip of property. Now the county's commitment is to be able to build the outdoor exhibit to highlight the important significance of the Fort Fraser. But along with that, we're going to also include benches, kind of a rest area for people that are traversing along the Fort Fraser Trail. And with the expansion, as Jay Jarvis mentioned earlier, we're going to even have higher visitation along that area. So it'll be a much-needed spot for them to be able to stop for a little bit, view what's important about the Fort Fraser itself, and then move on to go on down the rest of the trail. So we are actually getting ready to go into design for this and looking forward to having this great project. Now I'm transitioning over to Tabitha Bill, who's going to talk about the conservation bank and mitigation banks. And then she's going to also lead in to the stormwater and environmental lands portion of our program. Good morning again, Commissioners. I bring to you today a new sort of proposed program or project for the county. This project of putting a conservation bank and mitigation banks as an in-house project serves not just our division with parks, but also serves the rest of the infrastructure in facilities, roads and drainage, utilities. We're all going to be able to take advantage of this if the board directs us to continue moving forwards in this direction. As you know, there are a variety of conservation and mitigation options out there, and I'm going to break down the different concepts to try to explain at a high level. There's the wetland mitigation banking, which we discussed with Jay's project of what's required there. If you impact wetlands, you'll have to offset by purchasing wetland mitigation credits. Those credits can range from $50,000 up to $145,000. So there's a wide range of the credit fees that you have to pay. Unfortunately, sometimes for what's available in the credit banks, you have to go outside of county. So you're paying outside of county fees, credits to private banks. We're focusing today on the conservation bank, which is the federal bank for federally threatened and endangered species, in particular skinks, blue-tailed moles, skinks, and sand skinks. Normally, I'm here to present to you how we're conserving them with purchasing new properties, those kind of things. The federal government will not allow funding that's dedicated for conservation purposes to go towards the acquisition of a conservation bank. So that's why this project sits in the general fund spot. There's still value to this, and I'll talk more about the value of that before. And really what we're proposing is there are private banks that are out there, but we're talking about making this something that Parks and Natural Resources staff who are experienced in these fields and with these regulations could oversee for the county to have in-house banks. So for our in-house projects, we would be able to have more reliability and some additional things. Going back to the conservation bank, they require about at least 100 acres of sand skink habitat, existing good habitat, and those credits can range, you know, in the $20,000. So it can go up to $26,000, down to $20,000. So there's a bit of a range that the private banks are allowed to set for themselves. For every acre of skink habitat a project impacts, they have to mitigate by purchasing two credits or two acres of skink habitat in a conservation bank. Then we have the gopher tortoise recipient sites. These are a little bit different. We could set up a gopher tortoise recipient site on one of these projects as well. This is relocating gopher tortoises. This is managed by the state, so it's FWC, not the federal government. And it requires 40 acres more in size. And again, the cost per tortoise is usually what you pay to the recipient site. That can range. Again, we're just using the average of $14,000 for tortoise right here. Often, in the site that we're currently looking at, we could do at least two tortoises per acre. So you're looking at that cost for this particular site. One of the reasons we're bringing it to your attention is we've come across a particular site in Polk County that had already started the permitting process. The permitting process to become a conservation bank for skinks can take three, four, or five years. It just depends on the federal process and review. So we're able to sort of jump in on this permit that has already been through the approval phases, and we could possibly have this site permitted and ready to pull credits out of between April to June 2025. So this is sort of why we're presenting it to you at this point. So some of the additional advantages is reliability and time savings. If a private bank fills up and our project is ready to move, the projects go on standstill. And so this provides reliability that we know the credits are available and we're reserving them for those CIP projects that are moving forward. It expedites some of the county approvals. There's potential financial gain. While we're proposing this to be an in-house conservation bank, we could potentially open it up to PRWC, the school board, some other close partners that work with the BOCC on projects. The site that we are particularly looking at, I mean, we would have 154 credits released immediately upon permitting. With a little bit of restoration over the next year, additional 413 additional credits could be available. Ms. Jarrett, if somebody come up tomorrow and said, I'll take all 154, what kind of, what would be the total revenue we're looking at there? 154 times 22 is the average. Sorry. I don't know if they can tell. You mean from this bank? No. The proposed site would have 154 credits released immediately upon permitting. Could be available April through June. That would be the initial release. So you would have. It's got to be a ton of money. Sorry to bring my thing up here. Well, if that site stayed. It would be $3.4 million. 3.53? No, 3.4. Just averaging is the value of those first, the initial release of those initial credits. Where do you set the value on each credit, though? $22,000 is the average. For a skink. Yeah, that's an open market on mitigation credits. Right. Right. So the average for sand skinks is $22,000. Because what I. Correct. The sand skink banks to buy into a conservation bank for skinks will average between $20,000 to $24,000 is the private banks. Somewhere from $75,000 to $150,000. That is a wetland mitigation. So those are the two different ones. And so what we're proposing is starting a program where we start to look at this more internally, just to do more efficient and effective management for projects, for implementation, but also maintaining that what the county is putting into it stays in county. So those project areas, the funds for the projects stay in county. I think on today's agenda we moved to consent, but we had several million dollars in credits that we're purchasing, not only a quarter of, well, I think from four different outfits, only one of them, Polk County and the others, were outside the county. Is that correct? Yes. I believe so. Yes, sir. What was that about money? Depends on where you shop. So we bring to you just sort of the summary of the general fund part of the Parks and Natural Resources CIP overview that you see here. Currently there is only $100,000 dedicated to the Conservation Bank, the mitigation project, so we would need to identify additional funds to make that project whole as we move forward. Any questions on the general fund? Moving right along to our stormwater portion of the Parks and Natural Resources FY 2425, you heard Mr. Dave Carter speak earlier today, gives a nice overview of the last 10 years of where we've been, where we're going, and overall this is a peak year for implementation of and construction for the ARP fund. So we have a high sort of a peak in our funding at $47,000, and you saw the breakdown. A large portion of that is outside funding. So we have a limited stormwater MSTU that's leveraging heavily outside funding to come in. And the video I'm about to show you sort of breaks down those projects based on those funding categories. The ARP funds, our state resiliency funds, and then our innovative technology funds. The fiscal year 2425 CIP proposed budget for stormwater is one of the most robust budgets for the program. This is in large part due to funding from state resiliency programming, ARP funding, and other grant sources. The stormwater CIP has been summarized and will be presented in those categories of implementation. Here we are discussing resiliency and regional stormwater solution projects, an accomplishment that was successful acquisition and protection of the Bellini Preserve, which protects over three and a half miles of Lake Marion shoreline. Building resiliency using nature-based solutions like protecting living shorelines in the Upper Kissimmee watershed and restoring historic wetlands in the Upper Peace River are ways to increase stormwater infrastructure for the quickly urbanizing and growing landscape. Additional ways to address water quality issues and build resiliency include septic-to-sewer projects or just the prevention of septic tanks being placed on ridges neighboring lakes. Studies have shown that septic-to-sewer conversions are very expensive. A septic-to-sewer feasibility study conducted in the Kissimmee watershed evaluated several priority projects. One identified was on Lake Pierce, which covers approximately 30 acres and includes 105 homes or septic tanks. From conceptual evaluations, the cost to convert from septic-to-sewer may be close to $8 million. However, the county has received state appropriation funding to design and permit a couple of these high-priority areas. We are in the process of selecting those with our utilities program. Once projects are shovel-ready, additional funding for implementation will be sought. These projects focus on implementing ARP-funded projects. Approximately $15 million of the Fiscal Year 24-25 stormwater budget is ARP funding. Staff is poised and ready to complete construction for the Lake Lulu restoration. This 120-acre wetland on the south end of Lake Lulu is also the outfall lake for the South Winderhaven chain of lakes. All water exits through this control structure on the south end of the project and enters the Juanita Drainage Canal, eventually making its way to the Peace River. Restoration and cleanup of this project will enhance the wildlife habitat, fisheries, and water quality. Work on the ground began on this project on July 1st. Additional construction is scheduled to occur at Lake Annie, an approximately 165-acre site that was an old muck-mined area. The plan proposes to improve berm construction, holding times of water, redirect flow of water through the system, and increase native vegetation to improve water quality in the area. ARP will also fund stormwater construction projects at Zimmerjunds Park Stormwater Pond, the Berkeley Road Stormwater Pond, and Lake Hamilton Swales. The remaining ARP funding will be used to build additional resiliency and stormwater treatment in the Peace Creek Canal. Next, we move on to the innovative technology projects. Next is a compilation of videos and photographs demonstrating innovative technology projects and devices. Parks and Natural Resources staff are using these to address stormwater and water quality issues throughout the county. Many of these projects are 100% funded through grant agreements with the Florida Department of Environmental Protection. In the middle, we have the Green Eyes Continuous Sampling Machine that is currently installed in Bayer Branch. This device collects continuous water quality from the canal, allowing staff to better estimate the nutrient loads moving into the Peace River. This technology will allow staff to better examine a pilot project planned for Bayer Branch, where a utrosorb injection system will be installed to remove nutrients moving through the water before reaching the river. The picture on the left is an ultrasonic algae removal unit currently deployed at Lake Blue in Winter Haven and a second one at Hickory Lake, south of Frostproof. Early data shows that this device has reduced the amount of bad blue-green algae, those known to produce harmful toxins, by 50% within the treatment area. The picture to the right shows the deployment of the utrosorb clay lanthium product. It binds the nutrients in the sediment. Sometimes lakes with large amounts of sediment that are high in nutrients can become the number one factor contributing to the lake's impairment. This product is an innovative alternative to dredging, which is expensive and challenging, to address sediment issues in our lakes. Lake Decent is scheduled to receive this innovative treatment later this year. And that brings us to the summary for the Stormwater CIP. It's a similar list that Dave showed this morning, highlighting those projects that are funded through the ARP funding. I bring you trenchant that 18% of the budget is funded by our Stormwater MSTU for this fiscal year, 24-25, meaning that 82% of the fiscal year, 24-25, is coming from outside funding. I do want to take the opportunity to just publicly appreciate Mr. Dave Carter and the rest of the STAT committee for their service and their guidance on that program. The next program I'll move into is the Environmental Lands Program for Parks and Natural Resources. And you can see it's 17% of our overall division's program budget. The Environmental Lands Program is a compilation of the first year and second year of the new referendum, highly focused on acquisition with a couple of additional CIP projects. The proposed fiscal year, 24-25, Environmental Lands Program's CIP budget represents the second year of the new Conservation Acquisition Program, approved November 2022 by voters and implemented by the Board of County Commissioners. To date, the program has received 27 site nominations from willing seller landowners. The Technical Advisory Group, known as TAG, is made up of experts from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, Florida Department of Environmental Protection, Southwest Florida Water Management District, State Parks, and other specialists in botany, water resources, wildlife. The team has evaluated over 14,000 acres, providing insight on the unique natural and water resources of each site. This information is presented to Classic, the Volunteer Citizen Advisory Board, appointed by the commissioners. Classic reviews the information collected during the TAG tours and makes a recommendation to the Board considering how the property fits into the landscape and helps build on corridors like the Florida Wildlife Corridor and buffering of existing conservation lands. Projects are then presented to the Board who makes the ultimate decision on whether staff should pursue acquisition. To date, the Board has recommended staff pursue acquisition on 24 projects. Staff is working on private, state, and federal partnership agreements and obtaining title searches and ordering appraisals for these approved projects. The individual acquisition projects are incorporated in the CIP by the corridor that the project best represents. For instance, a property that occurs north of Lakeland near Rockbridge Road is in the Green Swamp Corridor. Ultimately, the county is working to build connections to protect Polk's water, woods, wildlife, and working landscapes. I'd also like to take this time to appreciate TAG and Classic volunteers and Commissioner Wilson's leadership with Classic. It was a whirlwind first year, and the volunteers have stepped up to the plate and dedicated a lot of time and energy and knowledge towards the process, so we appreciate that. Here's a summary of the environmental lands proposed CIP. The first couple projects listed are Circle B and Polk's Nature Discovery Center. These are sitting outside of sort of the acquisition-focused CIP. These are to do some increased overflow parking areas and improvements for the site that are much needed and some additional environmental education program outside exhibit setup. And the rest of them, you can see, are based on the corridors that we mentioned in the video, fit nicely to really represent those wildlife areas and buffers that we're focusing on connecting and making those connections on. I'm going to wrap up the natural resources side of this presentation, and I'm going to hand it over to Mr. Mike Callender. Good afternoon. I guess it's early afternoon now. The park CIP is just a little bit over $49 million, and it's basically two major categories, the new park amenities and the park replacements. We're going to be focusing on eight of the projects today, and then we'll have a summary at the end. The first project today is our Bone Valley Off-Highway Vehicle Park. The focus for the next several years will be the continued development of the north 300-acre property. This year, a bridge across the county road 630 was completed to allow safe access for patrons. The bridge was open for public use at our annual Rally in the Valley event this spring. The new motor coaster trail on the north property was also open at the same event. Patrons were also able to see the new motocross track under construction at the Rally in the Valley event, as shown in the time-lapse drone footage provided by DreamTracks. The year 24-25 funds will be used to complete design and permitting, leverage additional grant funding, and begin construction of access roads, infrastructure, and a campground at the north property. Our next project will be the Daugher Road Hunt Fountain Improvements. Hunt Fountain Park is a fully developed 60-acre property, as shown from the aerial view. Development of the park began in the late 1970s and continued into the 1980s as funding was available. This area of the county experienced a large population growth over the years, and the park has experienced the effects of overcrowding for several years. In 2007, the county purchased the 30-acre property on Daugher Road for the development of a new park to address the high demand for recreational facilities in this area. The current year CIP includes improvements to the soccer fields, and next year CIP will begin Phase 1 development of the Daugher Road property. Phase 1 will be construction of three multi-purpose football soccer fields to address some of the needs in this area. Our next highlighted project is our Northeast Regional Park. As shown here, the construction of much-needed storage building and additional batting cages is almost complete. This building will provide secure storage for the turf, groomer, eight portable pitching mounds, and other equipment to support the baseball complex. This beautiful park is the most popular and highest revenue-generating park due to its location, artificial turf, athletic fields, and annual Rustland Tournament. Funds in the physical year 2425 CIP will be used to add scoreboards and score booths at the baseball complex and replace the playground equipment located next to the Grand Pavilion. Our next project is all-inclusive playgrounds. We recently completed receiving public input from parents of differently abled children and groups that work with this population. This slide shows a concept plan for a playground which enhances accessibility and provides special equipment to provide all-inclusive opportunities for children. The first playgrounds of this type will be installed at Northeast Regional Park and East Central Park. Hunt Fountain and Loyce Hart Parks will follow soon after the first two are completed. Our plan is to have different themes for each playground to enhance the user's experience. Our next project is Simmerjong Artificial Turf. Phase 1 will convert the five soccer fields at the north end of the park to artificial turf. The soccer fields at this park support a large recreational youth league and an adult recreational league as well as soccer and football tournaments. As shown, the fields continue to decline due to the high demand and difficulty scheduling downtime for the natural turf to recover. This project also includes the installation of Musco Lighting System on three of the fields, and as you can see, this work has already been completed. Two small precast concrete restroom concession buildings to support the fields are also included in this project. The next highlighted project is our Saddle Creek Office Maintenance Area Renovation. We'll be giving you a brief tour of the offices currently in use today with this video. Saddle Creek serves as the main office for all parks maintenance activities. This office houses eight office staff and is a reporting site for 25 maintenance staff. The main office building was constructed in the late 1970s or early 1980s and is about 2,400 square feet. The modular office building was added next to the main building in the early 2000s and is a little over 1,600 square feet. As you can see, we've outgrown the building and need additional space and upgrades to support the staff. This request is to construct a new 7,000 square foot office building and to convert the existing main office to a much-needed storage building. Our next category project is Replacement Repurpose. This CIP project has many components, and today we're going to be featuring the court resurfacing component. We recently completed the installation of a new plastic tile court surface at the Hunt Fountain Park as shown here. This new system can be installed over most existing court surfaces with minimal preparation and will endure the constant wear and tear the courts receive for many years with very minimal maintenance. The ability to choose a wide variety of color schemes will brighten the facilities, and we receive very positive reviews from the patrons at this facility. Physical year 24-25 includes installations in the Northeast Regional Park basketball and tennis courts, East Central Park basketball and tennis courts, and Poinciana Park basketball courts. All tennis courts installs will include striping to accommodate pickleball, as was done at the Hunt Fountain Park. Our last is our boat ramp ADA dock projects. Construction of the new boat ramp is well underway. The project includes a parking area and concrete boat ramp system. The contour of the lake and the seasonal low water conditions require the installation of a seawall and dredging to provide year-round boating launching. We will also begin the design and permitting phase for a new boat ramp launching facility on Lake Marion located in the new Bellini Preserve property that was recently acquired. The video got cut off a little bit, but that is our Lake Buffer and boat ramp. And this is a summary of our park CIP projects. The addition of the one-time funds are included in the Daughtry Road, Hunt Fountain improvements, county lighting enhancements, and replacement repurpose projects. Those funds are incorporated into those particular categories there. Also included in the Athletic Fields Artificial Turf Project is funding to convert the multipurpose slash soccer slash cricket fields at Poinciana Park to synthetic turf. And that concludes our presentation as far as the Parks and Natural Resources go. So we can stand for any questions. Anybody? I'm good. We've got one more section, Mr. Chair. Facilities will be about an eight-minute video encompassing all of the projects and sheets. So it's a little different than the first four you've seen, but it'll be a continuous video. Good afternoon, Commissioners. Thanks to the assistance of our communications division, as Ryan's saying, our video or our presentation is all about video. If at any point that you have any questions, let me know and I'll pause the video. If not, I'll stand for questions at the end. Welcome to the Polk County Facilities Community Investment Program. We're committed to building a brighter future for all our residents. Through strategic investments and infrastructure, we're enhancing the quality of life for our entire community. Join us as we explore the innovative projects and initiatives that are transforming our county with various investments in our community's growth and prosperity. Our Building Asset Management Program consists of several projects and future needs. Here is our list of community investment program projects. Polk County Americans with Disabilities Act, ADA, Compliance and Transition Plan. The Sheriff's Burnham-McCall Training Center. New Sallyport and Lawrence W. Crowe Demolition. Our one-time fund project. American Rescue Plan, ARP, funded projects. Fire Rescue Division. Building Asset Management successful projects since the year 2013. Facilities Management has completed over 324 projects, totaling $19 million since the start of the Asset Management Plan program in 2013. For the coming fiscal year 2024-2025, we've developed different projects, such as the Addict Structural Evaluation and Repairs of the History Center, for an estimated $250,000. The Haines City Health Department, HVAC, and Control's replacement is estimated to cost $440,000. We plan to repair the roof of the Bartow Courthouse for an estimated cost of $227,000 and rebuild the chiller for an estimated $315,000. The planned Emergency Operations Center chiller replacement is estimated to cost $530,000, while the Sheriff's Emergency Communications Center's replacement is estimated to cost $475,000, and at the Sheriff's Operations Center, an estimated $410,000. At the Frank B. Smith Building, the Air Handler replacement is estimated to cost $560,000, and the chiller coil replacement is estimated to be $150,000. Last but not least, the South County Jail Boiler Replacement is estimated to cost $210,000. The combined total of these estimates amounts to $3,567,000. Polk County ADA Compliance and Transition Plan The ongoing plan is to modify existing county facilities to meet current Florida Accessibility Code requirements and ADA standards. For fiscal year 2024-2025 projects, Bartow Courthouse Public Restroom Modifications are ongoing, and Auburndale Health Department Restroom Modifications are planned. For the further preparation of our law enforcement officers, we have expanded the capacity of the Sheriff's Burnham McCall Training Center by constructing a new building within the complex for $8,100,000 and an estimated completion in the fall of 2024. The scope of the Emergency Operations Center Warehouse Project is the design and construction of a new 8,000-square-foot warehouse with an estimated completion date of 2025. The next project is the new Sallyport and Lawrence W. Crowe Building demolition. The plan is to design and build a new Sallyport to connect to the Courthouse Tunnel and demolish the entire Lawrence W. Crowe Building with a budget of $3 million. Our one-time fund projects include $7.5 million for the Medical Examiner's Office and Facility Expansion and Renovation, $3 million to the Sheriff's Office Central County Jail Security Camera, Intercom, and Door Replacement, $1 million for the Sheriff's Office of Vaughan Road Evidence Storage Yard, $10 million for the Sheriff's Office County Joint Use Supply Warehouse and Facilities Management Admin Building, $1.5 million for the Sheriff's Office Property and Evidence Storage Building Renovation, and Bartow Property and Evidence Demolition. $9 million for two fire rescue stations at Tenorock and Eagle Lake. $3 million were funded by the EMS Millage. For the Northeast Fleet Management Satellite Repair Facility, $3 million. $1.75 million for the final three fuel sites at Frostproof, Sheffield Road, and the North Central Landfill. And finally, $2.5 million for Court Annex Programming. The total amount of all one-time fund projects is $39.25 million. The American Rescue Plan ARP-funded projects are The Administration Building HVAC and Building Upgrades with a budget of $3,059,395 and an estimated completion of 2025. The Sheriff's K-9 Facility with a budget of $1.5 million, an estimated completion in 2025. And finally, the Sheriff's Ridge District Command in Point Siena with a budget of $11,310,849 and an estimated completion in 2025. Every hour, a new family moves to Polk County, contributing to our rapidly growing population. As more people choose to make Polk County their home, the demand for essential services, particularly fire protection and emergency response, increases significantly. To ensure the safety and well-being of our expanding community, we must build more fire rescue stations. These additional stations in Phase 2 of 2024 will enable quicker response times, better coverage, and enhanced capabilities to meet the needs of our residents, such as those around recently completed Watkins Road Fire Rescue Station. Eaton Park, Moore Road, and Masterpiece are under construction, with an estimated completion date of Eaton Park and Moore Road in Fall 2024, with Masterpiece completing in Spring 2025. Continuing to invest in our fire rescue services infrastructure is crucial to maintaining a safe and resilient community for all. In the upcoming Phase 3 for Fiscal Year 2024-2025, we have the following Polk County Fire Rescue Stations. Colusa Lake, Polk City, and Bradley are slated for construction. Smith Lane, a joint use station between the City of Bartow and Polk County, is also slated for construction. Lakeland Hills EMS is under design, with construction slated to begin in Fiscal Year 2024-2025. Planning for the years 2025 and 2026, we have Phase 4 with the following Polk County Fire Stations. Eagle Lake, Tenorock, and Willow Oak are all slated for construction 2025-2026. The Polk County Fire Rescue Training Center Construction Project is a comprehensive initiative spanning from the 2021-2022 to the 2024-2025 fiscal years. This project encompasses both the design and construction phases, aiming to create a modern and efficient facility to enhance our fire and rescue capabilities. With a substantial budget of $14.5 million, the new training center will provide the necessary infrastructure to support our dedicated first responders, improve response times, and ensure the safety of our rapidly growing community. This investment reflects Polk County's unwavering commitment to public safety and preparedness, laying a strong foundation for future emergency services. As the future Polk County Fire Rescue Headquarters, this state-of-the-art facility will span an estimated 20,000 square feet, providing ample space for emergency response coordination and administrative operations. With a budget of $8 million, this significant investment underscores our commitment to enhancing public safety and preparedness, marking a pivotal step in our efforts to support our growing community and ensure the highest standards of fire and rescue services. The Polk County Facilities Division is working together with other divisions to create a thriving, inclusive, and sustainable future. Together, we're making a difference. Any questions, comments? No, but let me say I like the video method best. Pretty good. Mine and whoever put it together, good job. Mr. Chair, it's large, it's complicated, and it's what we do. My compliments to the men and women who put all this together and who are really in the trenches making this happen. Polk County's big government. Yes, sir. Thank you.