Good morning everyone. Welcome to the regular BOCC meeting October the 6th, 2026. At this time we will stand for the invocation followed by the pledge. Fire Rescue Chaplain Hanley, would you please do the invocation. Victims of yesterday's accident and for those who are still recovering and for all of their families. Please pray with me. Heavenly Father, your word reminds us that everything that we do should be done in love. As we gather here today, help all of us who serve this county to do so with respect, fairness, and genuine concern for our neighbor. Grant us wisdom, patience, and judgment as we go about the business of governance. Bless this meeting, our county, and its people, and be with those who are dealing with yesterday's tragic loss. And I ask this prayer in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Thank you, Chaplain Hanley. At this time we will go for public comments concerning agenda items. Amber, do we have any? Yes, ma'am. We have several for different items. Okay. Not counting the, when we get to the commissioner's report, which ones are they? Tell me which ones are they? They are for N1. I have several for N1, which is under commissioner's reports. And then there are several for the Eloise item. Okay. And Madam Chair, I believe for N1, we had decided those will be heard at the time that N1 is speaking. At the time of what we're having. That's right. Yes. So anyone that's outside from that time can come and speak now. Yes. Would you call them? Yes, ma'am. I will. The first one is Jenny Barton. She is speaking on I-4, I-5, and S-2. Jenny Barton, right there at the middle podium. Hi, good morning. My name is Jenny Barton. I'm from the- Madam Chair, before we start to interrupt, you say I-1, I-2, those are ex-body hearings. Is that correct? Oh, I-4, I-5, and S-2. So those will be heard during ex-body public hearing time. Okay. So sorry. Sounds right to me. Thank you. Yeah. Anything before that? Anybody before that? J-1. Sorry, the numbering. Those are, no, they're public hearing. J-1, they're public hearings. J-1 is a public hearing, yes, ma'am. Yes. Yeah. So anything that's not an I or J? Yes. Or a K? Yes. Okay. So we don't have anything for the other options? Nothing for, okay. Wonderful. Thank you. Sorry for the confusion. That's okay. That's okay. Madam Chair. Yes. So S-1 is a consent agenda item. So would that be spoken to now? Do we have an S-1? She had mentioned We have an S-2. S-2, yes, that would be. That was Jenny. Jenny, we're going to have you walk back up again. I'm so sorry. So we're back with Jenny? We're back to Jenny. We just really wanted you to get your exercise. I guess so. So I'm not really sure what, I wasn't really sure what this was about. So we have a lot of things about the LOE, about LOE's community and CRA on your agenda today. So I wasn't sure which ones I needed to put down because I wasn't sure what was going to be said and if I needed to speak or not. So can you tell me what S-2 is referring to? Yes. That's regarding the land use change. Ben Zisco, Ben Zisco, this is the approval that we needed from the CRA in order to move forward with the land use change. Is that not correct? Yes, sir. Good morning. Ben Zisco, land development director. Item number S-2 is an item of the LOE CRA board. As the board of county commissioners, you also serve as the CRA board. And an item on your board of county commissioners agenda today is regarding a land use change request in the LOE CRA. So item S-2 is for you as a CRA board to find that request consistent with the LOE CRA plan. Madam Chair. Yes. So procedurally, if we have someone here to speak now about that, even though it was an expedited hearing, should we wait to move that till after the hearing so that we have the hearing, hear the public, and then, I mean, I know it's going to change the order as presented right now, but I think that we should hear the public before we... So again, so all three of the items are related. They are unique items and unique findings that the board will be asked to take. Item S-2 is as a CRA board, you are finding the request consistent with the LOE CRA plan. Item I-4 is a future land use change amendment that the board will consider. And item I-5 is a corresponding land development code text amendment. So all three are related. Um, although the, the BOCC and the CRA board technically are different boards and different, different governing bodies. So I believe first, if, is it Ms. It's not Ms. Jenny. It's Jenny Barton. Yes, sir. Ms. Barton. Yeah. Um, if you got anything to speak on S-2, you can do at this time and then there will be public hearings and you have the ability to speak during that time also. Okay. But right now, just make procedurally, if you have something to say regarding S-2, go ahead and make your comments so the board can consider that item. Okay. Thank you. So we, um, Mr. Ziscoll, he comes to all of our CRA meetings that we have quarterly and there's been a lot of back and forth on this, um, on this agenda item. So I'm, I'm just not a hundred percent sure where it's landed. So I think hearing all the information that's going to happen with the other agenda items will allow me to know what I need to say. So at that time, you will also have an opportunity to speak on those items. If you've feel, um, necessary at that, at that point. That's perfect. Thank you so much. Thank you, Ms. Barton. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner, for bringing that up. Well, I guess my question is back to Ben or Randy. We would be convening as the board to approve the agendas before we hear. Well, the consistency of it, I believe at that point, I think you have to have it prior to them moving forward on the other items. Correct. We need to be, we need to be the board. Right. But you would have the opportunity to accept or reject it at the time of the, uh, land use cases. Yes, ma'am. Yes. Thank you. All right. Uh, Stacey Butterfield, our County Comptroller. All right. Good morning. Today we have for you to approve and ratify payroll checks number 04940 through 0578 in the amount of $109,101.33. We have 6,543 direct deposits in the amount of $9,883,480.60. Those are all dated September 18th through October 2nd of 2026. We have wire and electronic funds transfers of $68,020,464.50 dated September 15th through October 5th of 2026. And lastly, invoice checks numbered 513454 through 514677 totaling $32,805,754.65 dated September 15th through October 5th of 2026 for you to approve and ratify, please. Madam Chair, motion for approval. Second. I have a motion and a second. Any questions, discussion? Hearing none, all in favor? All right. Opposed? Motion carries. Thank you. And we also have minutes of several meetings. So we ask the approval of your minutes of your regular board meeting that was held on September 15th and your two budget public hearings that were held on September 14th and September 21st of 2026 for you to approve. Second. I have a motion and a second. Any questions, discussion? Hearing none, all in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. Anything else? Yes, ma'am. So October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month. So if you see purple around in a number of places, I know there's other October awareness months for other things. But purple, Domestic Violence Awareness Month. And I just wanted to bring to your attention, the public's attention, that the role that the clerk plays in our domestic violence. We have, last year, we had just shy of 3,000 injunctions for protection. People know them as restraining orders that were filed with our office here in Polk County. And we have developed a process where someone can file that injunction without even having to come to our office. Wherever they feel most comfortable and safe, they can go online, they can file it. We have some DIY tools. And then they can actually, when they complete it, it's like an interactive question type process, kind of like a turbo tax, if you've ever experienced that, so that we can drive them to the appropriate information to then file it with the court to ask for that protection. And if they do want to come into our office, we have a dedicated space and we will assist them with the process and the information so that we can get it to the court as quickly as possible so they can get an answer. So we have a dedicated staff there to assist and we partner with Peace River Center for some resources. Larry Williams and his group there do a fantastic job. So I just wanted to bring that to your attention since it is October already. I know. So thank you. We're just waiting for the weather to agree with the month, right? I know. I know. That would be great. Thank you for that. Thank you for the time. Okay, moving on. We're going to do the approved consent agenda. Move for approval. Second. I have a motion and a second. Any questions or discussion? Madam Chair, if I may. Yes. Just specific to R-16 and R-17 for those that maybe did not review the agenda briefing from Friday. Those are related to the Kathleen Government Center and just for the public's information. That's for both the engineering, which is the design and architectural design of the facility, and then a construction manager. But these two contracts, just based on timing, wouldn't be in place until after November, after Amendment 3. So right now there's budget allocated for both of these. But again, subject to change, just putting everyone, if you will, at least updated on the information that we have. So right now these would be moving forward, assuming funding stays in place. But there is potential that while we've selected the companies, that there may be a change of that timing-wise based on budget. That's all I have. Thank you. Thank you. Anybody else? Okay, so I have a motion and a second. Any more questions, discussion? Hearing none, all in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. Madam Chair, at this time I ask you to recess as the Board of County Commissioners and convene as the Eloise CRA. Okay, so at this moment we will recess as the County Commission Board, and we will be the Eloise CRA consent agenda. Yes, ma'am. And for approval? Second. I have a motion and a second. Any other questions? Okay. So, Randy, is there something we're going to approve here? Yes, ma'am. You need to approve it. There's a couple items on the consent agenda that will be approving. So, we just need, we got a motion and a second. So, we just need, correct, the call for the motion. Okay. So, I only see the consent agenda, but what is it? It's on, it's on, it's S1, S2. You're approving the minutes. Let me make sure I have it. And adopting that, the resolution. Okay. So, on page eight of the agenda. Thank you. Okay. So, we're going to approve the Eloise CRA meetings, minutes for September 1, 2026. And adopt a resolution for the findings of consistency with the Eloise CRA plan for LDC PAS 2026-6, Eloise Main Street Corridor CPA, and LDC T2026-13, Eloise LDC text amendment. Yes, there's a motion and a second. So, we're the SRA, we're the RA, Eloise Board. All in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. Thank you, Madam Chair. At this time, we'll adjourn as the CRA. We'll adjourn as the CRA. This is always very confusing and go back to our board meeting. And we'll reconvene back to the BOCC. Okay. Wonderful. And I believe the next items, my, Madam Chair, that's the selection of the county manager, effective June, or January 16th, 2027. And I will pass out the ballots. I'll just remind the board you need to place your name and signature on the ballots. They are a public record after the decision. And I'll come back up, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, we do have a selection of the county manager, and it's unanimous. The selection is Mr. Ryan Taylor. Mr. Taylor, would you please come up and say a few words? Madam Chair, appreciate it. Is it on? Thank you, bud. It's my first time. Madam Chair, Commission, good morning. Truly appreciate the opportunity and the confidence that you're placing in me. I truly am grateful for the strong working relationship that I've built with you and look forward to continuing that in the years to come. I'd also like to state that I look forward to continuing to support Mr. Beasley, learning from him, leaning in, and learning more about the role that's prepared for what's next. I'd also like to take the opportunity to say that I value the relationship I have with Mr. Bodie, and I look forward to continuing working alongside him, as well as all the other incredible professionals we have here on the Polk County team. And when the day comes, I look forward to serving the citizens of Polk County. It will truly be an honor and a privilege to do so. Thank you. Thank you. Any comments from the board? Yes. Yeah, I just, you know, since I've been here in 10 years, we seem to have a deep bench. I've said this before. That comes from a long-term plan starting with Mr. Freeman. Mr. Freeman and you, you guys understand these are not positions to be taken lightly, certainly, but they're long-term positions that need good leadership, strong personalities, strong leadership, people who can say no when they need to say no and yes when they need to say yes. And I think it's just one more time, Polk just seems to be really fortunate with some of the way things have laid out for us. I mean, we're lucky to have you. We're lucky to have all the other candidates and all the employees we have. I mean, we've just got a great group here. And we say it all the time. We don't say it to the audience like this, but we go to these Florida Association of County meetings. I don't know, it seems like half a dozen times a year now, but too many times, but it's a gathering of every county commissioner and often every county manager in the state. And we see the dysfunction, the infighting, the feuding, the difficulty they have getting along, and we just don't see that here. And I think we respect each other. We like working with each other, but we also know there's just times we disagree and we have to have to disagree and keep moving. But congratulations, Ryan. I know you're going to do a good job. Thank you, sir. Madam Chair? Yes. Yeah, Mr. Taylor, I will say for the interview process, there was no applicant that made this easy. And for me as an employer locally, but from an engineering consulting career, really the accolades that every one of you guys possess was very high. And it's one of those things that I think when we go through and evaluate it, I really appreciated your ability to want to continue not only the great legacy that Polk County has, but to change it up enough to make it even better. And not that we're doing anything bad right now, but we can always, for me internally, I look at how can I do a little bit better tomorrow versus what I did today. And I think you definitely bring that to it. I'm looking forward to what change you do instill to make the team even better. And I say change, not necessarily people, but just things that maybe make the workplace a little bit better. Maybe the communication and perception of the county to one constituent becomes better. And so whatever way we can support you as a VOCC, I'm looking forward to that. And me as a commissioner, I do sincerely appreciate Mr. Brody, your time, Mr. Dunn, your time, and Mr. Taylor. I know it's not easy. Those interviews are high pressure. Haven't been on that side. I've been in interviews, but that was a high pressure one for sure. And I think each one of you handled it with so much professionalism. Again, it took me hours to kind of go through and sift through and really give deep thought into the choice. But, again, the right choice wasn't an easy choice, but we really do appreciate it and look forward to what you bring. Thank you, Commissioner Scott. And I think it's a testament to Mr. Beasley that we have such a deep bench to make it a difficult decision for you. Any other commissioner? Yes. You know, everybody said a lot of good things which are very, very much true of how this went down. And, you know, it's been we always are looking to the future, and that's why it goes back to having a deep bench. As Commissioner Braswell said, you know, talking with other commissioners in other counties, they don't have any of that. And something happens, it is turmoil. And we will continue to do that with the great people that we have here in this county. The good thing about it is this county can keep going the way that we are looking at for the future. And instead of somebody wanting to bring in somebody from the outside in, which we've all seen that, and sometimes it's great, and sometimes it's not. But I'm very happy. Great staff. I mean, the interviews were great. Great people. But you've got to make a choice. And the great thing about it is everybody works together. Everybody's got everybody's back, and we're going to get the job done no matter what. So congratulations and look forward to moving forward. Thank you, Commissioner. Ryan, congratulations. Mr. Bodie and Mr. Dunn, thank you as well. There was no wrong choice, and we're very fortunate to be able to say that. You know, Ryan, this position, as you already know from shadowing Mr. Beasley for years and working with him, it requires a sacrifice not only of you but of your family. And so thank you for being willing to serve. It's not just a job that you leave and go. You have to take phone calls 24-7, 365 from five bosses. And we appreciate that, and we look forward to helping you grow, and we look forward to you helping us grow and giving us pushback and guidance when we need it. Thank you. Yes, ma'am. Thank you. Ryan, or should I say Mr. Taylor from now on? Whatever you want to call me, man. Congratulations to you on this well-deserved appointment. We're ecstatic and looking forward to seeing what you can do. I want to say to John Bodie and Dunn, thank you for applying and for taking the bold step of going forward with this. I think the three of you all have grown tremendously during this process, and like it's been said, it was not an easy choice. So congratulations to all of you, and thank you for applying. Ryan, unfortunately, I'm not going to be around to help you like the rest of them will, but I look forward to hearing some wonderful things that you and your staff will be accomplishing for our county. So thank you so very much, and again, congratulations well-deserved. Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Chair, based on the selection, I will begin working with Mr. Taylor to bring a contract back to the board to be approved at a later date. Perfect. Thank you. Thank you. Madam Chair, just real quick, one word of advice I've given Ryan in the past. Surround yourself with good people and turn them loose. Okay. Moving on, Mr. Beasley. Madam Chair, members of the board, members of the viewing audience, the manager's office will have two items for board consideration this morning. Item number G1 is to request the board to approve, I think, a major construction contract with the Junior Davis Construction Company in connection with the County Road 557 widening project. Board action today will reflect a construction contract award not to exceed $90,062,272.91. Polk County has completed the public process to solicit bids from qualified contractors interested in roadway construction to include drainage and pedestrian features, roadway signage and pavement markings, traffic signalization installations, maintenance of traffic for the project's construction duration, roadside curb and gutter segments, and stormwater collection and conveyance systems. The limits of construction will begin at West Alford Street on the southern end and extend approximately 5.7 miles northward, terminating just south of the County Road 557 I-4 interchange. This project will vastly increase vehicle capacity along the improved roadway, provide safe accommodations for pedestrians and bicyclists, and will greatly improve roadway and intersection safety and operations. Bid number 26-112 was issued and five contractors submitted bids. The apparent low-responsive bid being submitted by the Junior Davis Construction Company out of Kissimmee, totaling $89,662,272.91. A recommendation of award was issued and no protests were received. In accordance with resolution number 2026-052, $250,000 is included in the proposed contract award to address contingency and allowance work conditions, and $150,000 is included to accelerate the additional improvements relative to the planned traffic signal to be located at the intersection of County Road 557 and Old Lake Alfred Road, for which 100% of that $150,000 is to be reimbursed by the developer. This contract time set for this project is 1,190 calendar days for final contract completion. This project is partially funded through the Florida Department of Transportation's County Incentive Grant Program in the amount of $7,800,000. The Florida Department of Transportation has reviewed the proposed contract award documents and has provided approval for the county's planned contract award to the Junior Davis Construction Company. All remaining construction funding is budgeted within the Impact Fee Zone A Fund, included within the Roads and Drainage Division's five-year board-adopted community investment program. So, Madam Chair, members of the board, in keeping with the board's priority commitments to transportation infrastructure improvements, I would request the board to approve the proposed construction contract with the Junior Davis Construction Company in connection with the County Road 557 plan roadway widening efforts in an amount not to exceed $90,062,272.91. Madam Chair, a motion for approval. I have a motion and a second. Any questions, discussion? Hearing none, all in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. Next item, Madam Chair. Yes, I'm sorry. Go ahead. I just want to ask Jay the other day. I just want to let everybody know. These are some big numbers. And when the cost per mile, just the construction cost, I think this one here was, excuse me, this one here, Jay, was like $17 million a mile. That sounds about right. Yes, sir. Thompson Nursery is $20 million a mile, somewhere in that area there. But, you know, our cost, this cost of this is unbelievable and that we have to deal with. It's just not because, it's the cost. But when you have 17, that's just construction costs, not right away or nothing else, but $17 million a mile to get a four lane, which we need a lot of them in this county. But that's what we're up against, cost. And it's gone up with everybody and it goes up with us. That's all I wanted to say. Thank you. Madam Chair, final item from the Manager's Office, item number G2, is to request the board to approve a construction contract with Central Concrete Products Incorporated here out of Bartow in connection with the Rifle Range Road Drainage Improvements Project. Board action today will reflect a construction contract award not to exceed $1,710,349.61. Polk County has again completed the public process to solicit bids from qualified contractors interested in completing the drainage improvements along Rifle Range Road. Rifle Range Road is an established collector roadway serving local businesses, churches, homes, and commercial establishments within the Juanita community. The existing drainage infrastructure is substandard and primarily consists of open ditches and undersized metal culverts. The proposed upgrades to the drainage system will improve pedestrian mobility and enhance safety to the public by alleviating flooding conditions along that segment of the Rifle Range Road. Bid number 26169 was issued and 12 contractors submitted bids. The apparent responsive and responsible lowest bid being submitted by Central Concrete Products totaling $1,600,215.13. A recommendation of award was issued and no protests were received in accordance with resolution number 2026-052. $110,134.48 is included in the proposed contract award to address allowance and contingency work conditions. Contract time for this project has been set at 180 calendar days. The Rifle Range Road Drainage Improvements Project is an approved project within the board's adopted five-year community investment program and is fully funded by the federal government's community development block grant program. So, Madam Chair, members of the board, I think consistent with the board's commitment to localized drainage improvement projects, especially when being able to leverage federal and state funding, I would request the board to approve the proposed construction contract with Central Concrete Products Incorporated in connection with the Rifle Range Road drainage improvements project in an amount not to exceed $1,710,349.61. Second. I have a motion and a second. Any questions or discussion? Madam Chair, please. Yes. Mr. Beasley, just to confirm, with respect to the CDBG funds, I know in the past we've had not a lot of errors, but there's been a few things on tracking the accounting side for the CDBG. But if I recall, we've kind of reestablished our procedures for that, so we don't anticipate any confusion or anything erroneous on the actual accounting side. Because I know we get audited, right, on that annually. So just if you could just speak to that on how we're managing this different than maybe in the past. We do get audited at on a regular basis. Those are federal funds, and we report back to the federal government on a regular basis. And that money is reviewed by the board, usually in the late summer, where we allocate that to different projects that are qualifying communities. So we get a lot of mileage, no pun intended, out of that CDBG federal money. It's helped a lot of small communities. Very. Thank you. Any other questions, comments? Hearing none, all in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. That's it, Madam Chair. Before we go into the labor appointments or the expedited hearings, I want to make sure, Randy, this is a question for you. We were under the CRA board, and I'm not sure if we gave the speaker the time to speak during that time. I don't know if she wanted to speak during that time. Is she still here? I don't remember. She's going to be able to speak during the expedited hearings. That's what we have determined. Yes, ma'am. I just wanted to make sure that we gave her the appropriate time to speak. All right, perfect. Thank you. Now, Chair, before we begin, the expedited hearings and the regular public hearings, I will go over the public hearing general procedures at this time. I will remind everyone, if you wish to speak on any of the public hearing items, you need to fill out a speaker card in the back and give the card to a member of the communication staff. 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 to three minutes. The board is experienced in 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 necessarily prolong today's business. The commission expects civility at all times during all public hearings. Speaking out of turn, shout out from the audience. Disrespectful sounds or utterances while another is speaking are unseptable and you will be asked to leave the chamber's for the remainder of the day. If any person decides to appeal any decision made by the board with respect to any matter considered here today, you would need a record of proceedings and that for such purpose you may need to ensure that a verbatim record of the proceedings is made, which record includes a testimony and evidence upon which the appeal is to be based, which you must gather at your own expense. Anyone in the audience who wishes to speak or present testimony today must be sworn in. All testimony given during public hearings shall be deemed to be sworn. At this time, if you're going to address the commission or speak on any case today, please stand, raise your right hand and answer out loud to the following questions. Do you swear or affirm the testimony or evidence you provide to the commission days of truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth? Thank you. Madam Chair, at this time, I'll go over the expedited hearing procedures. Expedited hearings are held pursuant to resolution number 2022-089. Expedited hearings are used when no opposition was present at the planning commission hearing. The applicant agrees to the expedited hearings and recommendation of the development review committee is for approval. Expedited procedures are the following. As their staff briefly introduces the case, the hearing will be open for public comment. If anyone speaks during public comment, the applicant will be given the opportunity to respond. After public comment, the board will consider the land use case. At any time, 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 will turn it over to Mr. Ziskell to present the expedited hearing as Madam Chair. Thank you, Mr. Mink. Again, for the record, Land Development Director Ben Ziskell. There are seven items on the expedited public hearing portion of today's agenda. Item number I-1 is an expedited public hearing for case LBC-PAL 2025-2, U.S. 98, and Peace River ARR to consider a future land use map designation change on approximately 116.5 acres. The subject site is located due east of the city of Fort Meade. It is a piece of land that has been residential in nature and has consisted of residential homes since the 60s but has a designation of phosphate mining in keeping with the board's direction to proactively change these residential parcels from phosphate mining to agricultural residential rural. We present this item at its adoption hearing and recommend approval. Any questions for staff? Yes. Ben, are we doing this only on the east side of 17 or are we going over to the west side as well? We're looking wherever we can find these pockets of residential. We're trying to find them to bring them proactively as we evaluate the pieces of land. All right. Yeah, because I was thinking there was more on the west. I may be wrong though because I always forget there's more on the west. Okay. All right. Thanks. Yes, sir. Anyone else for staff? Okay. Hearing none, I'll open it up for public comments. Amber, do we have anybody? Not for this one, ma'am. Thank you. We close the public comments and we'll bring it back to the board. Second. I have a motion and a second. Any questions or discussion? Hearing none, all in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. Item number I-2 is an expedited public hearing for case LDC-PAL 2025-3, Parrish and Keller ARR to consider a future land use map designation change from phosphate mining to agricultural residential rural on approximately 66 1⁄2 acres. This item is very similar to the previous item consisting of residential homes that have been in existence since the 1960s. As you can see here, the request again is to change this pocket of homes from phosphate mining to agricultural residential rural. This item is also before you on adoption hearing and staff recommends approval. Any question for staff? Hearing none, I will open it up for public hearing. Amber, do we have anybody for this one? Not for this one, ma'am. All right, thank you. We close the public hearing and bring it back to the board. Madam Chair, a motion for approval? Second. I have a motion and a second. Any questions, discussion? Hearing none, all in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. Item number I-3 is an expedited public hearing for case LDC-PAL 2026-4 Organic Matters CPA to consider a future land use map designation change from Business Park Center to Industrial on approximately 71 acres. The subject site is located just to the west of US-17, south of the city of Bartow. It is actually flanked on both the east and west by the city of Bartow as well. And as you can see on the screen here, the subject site does not have access to US-17. It has access from Austin Phillips Lane. It is in the middle here as you see both properties to the north and the south of the subject site have the industrial land use designation and the request is to change this parcel to industrial to match those properties to the north and the south. This is a large-scale comprehensive plan map amendment. It is on its adoption hearing before you and staff is recommending approval. Any questions for staff? Hearing none, I'll open it up for public hearing. Amber, do we have anyone? Not for this one, ma'am. All right. Then we close the public hearing and bring it back to the board. I have a motion and a second. Any discussion questions? Hearing none, all in favor? Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. Madam Chair, item number I-4 is an expedited public hearing for case LDC-PAS 2026-6, Eloise Main Street Corridor CPA. This is the item that Ms. Barton would like to speak on. This is a companion item to item I-5. There's two components to this request. I'm going to spend a little bit more time explaining this item even though it's on expedited public hearing. The subject site is just shy of 26 acres of land in the Eloise community. It is on the south side of Snively Avenue. As you can see in the box on the yellow in the top picture here, it includes land all along the frontage of Snively Avenue as well as a large parcel which you can see my circle here. There's many components to this item so I want to break this down a little bit. This entire area is within the Eloise CRA which has a redevelopment plan to help create incentives to redevelop properties within this community. Currently, all of the land in the yellow box that is subject to this amendment is designated as residential development which would allow single family residential. There are three main components to the request before you today. The first portion is the property closest to U.S. 17. As you can see on the screen here, the properties that front 17 currently have a community activity center designation. However, they are sandwiched between U.S. 17 and the residential designation and when we apply the setbacks required by code from U.S. 17 and from the residential zoning district, it gives a building envelope that is unfeasible for any development to occur. So absent a change to either the setbacks or some other sort of relief or to the land use map, those parcels fronting 17 are essentially undevelopable. The request is to expand that community activity center slightly to the next road to allow the properties on 17 to develop and to also wrap around the corner and include those parcels along Snively and give them a community activity center designation allowing commercial development or commercial redevelopment to occur and we find that the demolition of existing non-residential development to build a single-family home on Snively is not a feasible redevelopment strategy and we don't believe that the market will facilitate single-family homes on Snively. The second component is there is a pocket of existing religious institutions and non-profit organizations in the community. Those properties currently have a residential designation. The request is to change them to our institutional designation. Institutional is a designation very common for religious uses, government building, civic organizations, et cetera. This will allow those properties more flexibility to expand their operations if they're given that institutional designation as opposed to residential. The third component is the largest in the bulk of the request and that is to introduce the main street land use designation to the Eloise community and there's two areas that we are proposing expanding this main street designation. The first is along the remainder of Snively that is not up by 17, the main line of Snively along Snively Avenue and then this large parcel that has a truck parking facility that has been there for a number of years. Again, the designation right now is for all of that to be developed with single family homes. So in order to redevelop the truck parking facility, a road would have to be constructed and then new single family homes would have to be developed. Our request in consistent with the CRA plan is to try to create a downtown or a main street for Eloise. So the request is to designate this large parcel as main street corridor which could facilitate again the construction of a new road but local neighborhood based business opportunities for development as opposed to single family homes. This could include shops, restaurants, personal care services like barber shops, nail salons, etc. So it's again a three part component. It is one item but we would be requesting to change the low density single family home designation to community activity center, institutional, and main street corridor on this 26 acres. Any question for staff? Yes. I don't have a question. I just have a couple comments. I think ultimately for the residents there what this is trying to do is head off what could happen and we don't know what's going to happen there even when we do this but we're trying to steer it in the right direction. The problem is directly across the street is an industrial complex and come January 1st of, I think it's January 1st of next year this board is not going to be able to look at something and go that's just not compatible. We're going to have to have good reasons. We're going to have to put those in writing and it will open up a lot of opportunity for somebody to come across the street there and say we want to put whatever industrial here and how can we say no when it's across the street already. I know it doesn't maybe sound all that great to the residents but I think if you look at it from the point of what could happen and I've talked to them and we've talked about the Live Local Act some of these other things that could I'm not going to say ruin the neighborhood but certainly impact it negatively I believe this is a better choice it opens up some opportunities and I think the individual that owns the largest parcel there is certainly willing to work with the residents you know he wants to get rid of it and I think he's open to a lot of ideas that aren't industrial that aren't apartments that aren't this and that so I just think it's a good idea and I think we should vote for it. Anyone else? Yes. I would just concur with that you know for the neighborhood if you travel through that neighborhood there's a lot of pedestrians there's not necessarily a lot of mobility of some of the residents there and this really allows an opportunity to build services and provide restaurants and things that will actually serve that community that we have a lot of pedestrians within that community. Your mouse? Question how long is that or what's the space of that corridor that they're planning to make the purple one purple color? What's the size of that roughly? Ten acres? The larger one. Around there? Yeah. And that's a lot. It's pretty good. And another question is for the pedestrians to be able to get there I'm assuming the sidewalk will also be upgraded or improved am I correct? Yes ma'am so we have talked about Snively Avenue quite a bit over the years and even predating my time with the county five years ago and before that the TPO did a complete street study on Snively Avenue we're aware of challenges with the sidewalk network there of course is an elementary school in the area we are working in tandem with the roads and drainage division to see what impacts the completion of Thompson Nursery Road will have to Snively it's certainly a big part of completing Thompson Nursery Road which is going to be just to the south the new connection will be just to the south of Snively so Mr. Jarvis Mr. Kordick and I have had numerous conversations about wanting to make transportation improvements on Snively but we want to time it correctly to make the correct improvement once the Thompson Nursery Road project is completed in this area I got a question and I believe we addressed this a few meetings back when we talked about this but at the intersection of 17 where Snively is westbound that corner is what a 7-11 or something going in there are they making is there going to be turn lane improvements there because I know I've experienced it and everybody else who drives down that road there's not enough left turn lane to make sense I mean you've got cars stacked up that want to make a left turn that can't get to the left turn lane is that being looked at it certainly is and I believe there might be a dual left turn but there certainly is an improvement to that intersection you're talking about this corner here where the gas station proposed our recollection is that there is an enhanced turn lane improvement I'm just saying just look at it anybody else okay so we'll open it up for public hearing and Amber I think we do have at least one anyway yes ma'am that would be Miss Jenny Barton good morning I'm Jenny Barton I live at 832 Snively Avenue in Eloise Florida and I just want to thank I thank Mr. Ziskell for that very detailed explanation and I want to thank Commissioner Braswell he allowed us to come and meet with him and discuss this matter and we appreciated his input very much especially in regards to the live local act so we are in agreement for this to happen as it stated because it appears to be the lesser of two evils to us so we are in agreement to that but I just want to second Commissioner Braswell I think what Mr. Ziskell was just pointing out is they're adding a left turn lane into Snively we need a left turn lane out of Snively because it backs up all the way back I've seen it backed up as far as 6th Street I'm sorry as far back as 5th Street to get left to turn left onto Highway 17 we started a I work for a non-profit in Winter Haven we started a private school in Eloise to combat the illiteracy that we are finding there and it is bad every afternoon trying to get in and out of Snively Avenue is really difficult Snively Elementary is at the other end of the Eloise community and the backup for that school when dismissal and drop off are happening is at least 4 or 5 blocks blocking Snively Avenue and as you know it merges if you don't know it merges at the end of Eloise into one lane going out on the rifle range so it's really bad so if the roads commission we've talked about this in our CRA meetings multiple times we always get the same answer waiting on Thompson Nursery Road waiting on Thompson Nursery Road it's not going to change what's happening in Eloise so if that could just somehow get on the radar of someone to improve our transportation just the mobility of people getting in and out of Eloise we've had numerous accidents children are so close to the road with the way the current sidewalks are designed we need a lot of improvements to keep our children our seniors and our pedestrians as well as the drivers through that community thank you thank you Jenny I've been caught in that turning lane and had to wait a long time so I know what you're talking about isn't it there's a concrete median there they could just get rid of that the same thing they're doing on 17 to make an additional left turn lane into Eloise they could do the same thing at the end of Snively so we could turn more people could turn left heading toward Bartow we've seen I drive the road twice a day every day taking children to and from school and there are people in that second lane that go ahead and turn left they go ahead and do it so accidents are waiting to happen they're pushing people over to the sidewalk my dad drives an 18 wheeler he sees it it's terrible there's bad things going to happen there if improvements aren't made thank you Commissioner Braswell thank you everyone anyone else Amber do you have for this no ma'am no one else okay so we close the public hearing for this and we bring it back to the board all I hear of first and a second any comments or questions hearing none all in favor opposed motion carries Madam Chair item number I five is an expedited public hearing for case LDCT 2026 13 Eloise Main Street Corridor LDC text this item ordinance amending the land development code to provide specific uses that are either permitted conditional uses or prohibited within the Eloise Main Street so this item applies to that sort of pinkish color that is a long snively and this larger truck parking facility to establish the list of uses that are allowed in this community there is a matrix in the attachments and meeting with the CRA advisory committee in the community we went through the list use by use to ensure them that what we are providing again is neighborhood type of retail commercial support services for the community but to Mr. Braswell's point earlier this does not include the industrial uses that are across the street those are specifically prohibited the main street corridor is that retail walkable community type of land use that does not include those uses that may have excessive noise excessive dust excessive odors so we have met with the LOE CRA advisory committee staff also met with the owner of the large property to review the list and we have a compromise list that we're presenting to you today and we would recommend adoption of this text amendment any question for staff hearing none I'll open it up for public hearing Amber do we have anybody yes ma'am Jenny Barton good morning Jenny Barton back again 832 Snively Avenue Eloise Florida we appreciated Mr. Siskel at our last meeting where we discussed what could and could not be there that was very helpful but we have not been made aware of what the compromise list is that when he met with Don Smith so is there anything changed there Mr. Siskel no so staff met with Mr. Smith prior to meeting with the Eloise community the compromise list at the Eloise CRA advisory committee you'll see on the screen here the community had asked us not to include bars taverns or any kind of night clubs or any other night life uses so those were in our original proposal but after meeting with the community we have stricken bars taverns lounges and alcohol packages sales so they are prohibited and not permitted in this land use that's wonderful thank you Mr. Siskel no further thank you no ma'am no one else signed up second madam chair item number i6 is an expedited public hearing for case ldct 2026 dash six lake marion creek drive ldc text amendment this is an amendment to the land development code to specifically provide a compromise list or a reduction of a list of uses permitted in the leisure recreation land use district in relation to a proposed land use map change request that will be before you in two weeks the leisure recreation land use district allows a plethora of uses and the applicant has voluntarily restricted those uses to include only about half of those uses this item is on first reading before you today so no action is required in two weeks you will hear the land use change request as well as the adoption hearing request for this text amendment any any questions okay hearing none we'll open it up for public hearing do we have anyone amber yes ma'am tom slatton just for the record he said no tom is not it's not going to speak right he stated no comment all right anyone else amber no ma'am no one else signed up then we close the public hearing and we'll bring it back to the oh we don't bring it back to the board because it's first hearing reading okay we will present for adoption in two weeks yes right okay and finally for me on the expedited public hearing agenda is item i7 which is a expedited public hearing for case ldct 2026 17 ldc chapter nine changes this is a request to amend chapter nine land development code really related to some some cleanup items some old terminology structure that has existed for years but also to clarify some of our processes as it relates to code enforcement violations specifically providing that a code enforcement violation is not cured until a necessary improvement is made and constructed language is not quite clear in the code today so there could be an interpretation that once a plan or a site plan or a drawing is approved or a permit is approved that that cures the violation but of course that doesn't do anything to solve the issue on the property so this clarifies that the improvement must be made it also provides clarification for our site plan review process at our development review committee as well as our pre-application and pre-design processes for meeting with the development community prior to submitting an application for either a site plan approval or permit or construction this item is on its first reading before you today so following any questions or comments there's no action required by the board and we will bring it back to you in two weeks for adoption any questions for staff okay hearing none I'll open it up for public hearing Amber no one signed up ma'am thank you I'll close the public hearing and we'll wait for two weeks before we have the final thank you madam chair that concludes the expedited portion of the public hearings and I will turn it over to mr. Peterson to begin the regular public hearings Eric Peterson for the land development division I bring before you a partial plat vacation of neighborhood 3 west village 8 in the point sienna subdivision plat normally when we vacate right-of-ways and easements you have Scott Lowry come before you for individual ones but when we're vacating big sections of the plat it comes before land development and it goes on to mr. ziscoll for the plat amendment but before we do that we have to get your permission to vacate all of these right-of-ways and easements that are in this we've gotten clearance from the other members of the plat we've gotten clearance from the power companies the communication companies the water management district for any drainage easements this will not close off any right-of-ways the property to the south has just been purchased by the state for preservation the intent here the request from the school board is to put a high school place a high school on this property and with all that information i will stand for questions questions for staff okay hearing none we will open it up for public hearing and we do have anyone yes ma'am tom slattin okay tom have you come up to the front no comments okay tom you're keeping us on your tippy toes who else no one else has signed okay then we close the public hearing bring it back to the board move for approval second i have a motion a second any other questions comments hearing none all in favor opposed motion carries next one good morning commissioners for the record mark bent with land development i'm presenting agenda item j2 ldc pal 2025-7 mems crossing you can see on the slide the notice that we provided 49 mailers 17 boards ad published in the lake and winter haven sign on september 23rd we did receive response from the public four emails in opposition one petition opposition 527 signatures one email in support the planning commission did recommend approval of this request and staff recommends approval we are submitting into the record the staff report application impact assessment statement this is the transmittal hearing for this request what that means is if approved by the board this request will then go to the florida department of commerce for review and we would have an adoption hearing on december 15th the request is for a large scale comprehensive plan amendment to change 1,261 acres from phosphate mining to industrial the map on the left shows the general location which is south of mulberry generally located at the what i'll call the northwest quadrant of state road 37 and county road 640 you see the area on the right outlines the location of the site and if you'll follow my cursor state road 37 county road 640 and then also anderson road is located here and again here's another area of the site the next few slides are going to show some pictures the intent is to give you a general understanding of the characteristics of the area this is the state road 37 county road 640 intersection the site is located here as the helicopter went west this is more centrally located in the site this is an access road at the northern end of the property that has direct access to 37 and then you see the black line where county road 640 is going further west this picture shows the portion of the site that is south of county road 640 this picture shows the properties on north side 640 either side of anderson road part of the site is located here and then here also this is another view of the site looking southeast again state road 37 would be a reference point here and you can see the characteristics of the site open pasture scattered woodlands and lakes the last photo here is looking northeast you can see 37 here this is an existing industrial use scrap metal I believe is the activity going on here and then again to summarize this is the site this is the current land use map and I want to speak to this for just a minute because you'll see that along 37 south of mulberry the area predominantly has business park light industrial industrial uses also along 37 there's property already designated industrial industrial and then further west west of anderson road there's also property designated industrial and you can also see the purple here that shows industrial the so what if you will of that is the area has a lot of industrial uses and designations in the area this is the proposed future land use map that would show the entire site as industrial if you notice the case number had a 2025 number on it originally that's because we initially received this request back in I believe June of 2025 and the original request was just about for 5400 acres originally proposed 18,000 residential units 2 million square feet of commercial 700,000 square feet of office excuse me you can see the quote there would have been the third largest city with a population of 50,000 we basically spent the latter half of last year three rounds of review lots of issues to discuss go through the big issue and I put it in highlights here was utilities provision of water and sewer service that was an issue that just couldn't get addressed or resolved so around the first of the year we basically took a step back went through with the applicant identified some potential solutions that we as a staff would thought would fit with the comprehensive plan so then the revised proposal dropped it to 2475 acres consisted of the industrial portion 1200 acres of residential and then about 14 acres of commercial at the intersection it addressed the utilities issue because then that request was for suburban instead of urban areas sewer wasn't required the applicant does have water service available so we started going down this track and presented a staff report based on this what then happened was on august 20th staff received a request from the applicant to modify the application to only include the industrial in other words it went from the map on the top to the map on the bottom so the current proposal just so all clear the current proposal is for only industrial for 1261 acres the staff report that you've been provided reflects that change just for the 1261 acres of industrial I thought it was important to go through the story of how we got from there to here impact assessment of course with no residential now being involved you know no impact to schools parks water and sewer is not required for industrial development in the rural development area transportation will be an issue if this site were to build out at the maximum floor area ratio but that would be monitored through site plans and concurrency there are environmental considerations the applicant gave what I thought was a good presentation and he can explain that further but there are floodplains and wetlands on the site so to sort of wrap it up our justification is that there's industrial uses and designations adjacent to the property it has have direct access to an arterial highway which is one of our criteria for industrial for those reasons we consider this use to be compatible and consistent with the comprehensive plan and I'll stand for any questions thank you questions for staff yes I know it's not part of this approval but just so I'm aware when we talk about transportation at full build out being an issue do we envision that of both of the main highways being improved to mitigate that as far as what the county sees as again from a level of service of the build out yeah it's hard to tell because we just don't know what will come in the door so to speak in terms of size impacts if there were to be any improvements it would be the intersections first because those are the choke points if you will as opposed to improving the roads right but 37 and 640 would be the two that are primarily going to be subject to that correct yes I agree very good thank you thank you any other comments or questions okay thank you we'll open it up for public hearing Amber do we have any no ma'am no one signed up ma'am chair before we proceed we need to hear from the applicant okay yes and I think mr mims here for the applicant presentation thank you commissioners my name is tom mims I'm at 439 south florida avenue lakeland florida and I am the owner and applicant of the proposal so to start it is an industrial land use change so where we come from I think mark did a good job of explaining that the slow process okay so this this will give you an example this is a site and you can see in 2000 mining activity was on the eastern or the western side of the property and if we can keep moving through here this is 2007 and you can see that the right side towards 37 was mined at that time but to give you an idea this property has been mined over 100 years it's been mined remined and this was done in 2007 and then again the release of that happened around 2017 it got completed you can see the reclamation on the site but what I want to point out is mark had mentioned the wetlands so the wetlands are twofold so in the center you have what's called Burr Branch Creek which is the center which we have as a wetland mitigation bank for impacts to not only this property but other properties that we have as well as any within the Alify River Basin but further the lakes that you see on here are created as a result of reclamation and those are part of an ERP permit which means that we can utilize those for a reservoir for stormwater ponds as well as also additional wetland mitigation so in fact we can actually fill them and part of our ERP permit allows us to fill large areas on this site that may have flood plains to them or wetlands so before we got it released we got our permit approved by the district SwiftMUD that allows us to have an ERP so this site is literally designed for the types of uses that we are proposing so the original proposal that Mark described was a plan that y'all have seen this is a large scale development that included as Mark said approximately 50,000 residents I would have loved to have seen this happen this would have been a really neat project not only for the area but for Polk County but due to the utility issues and other issues that came with that that didn't make it feasible to proceed continue on as you can see it would have been 17,000 housing units 50,000 people and 2 million square feet this is what's on the agenda today and that is a industrial land use change from phosphate mining to industrial the property is located south of Mulberry along with a long history of phosphate mining the industrial land use will create a tremendous number of jobs and as we go through the slides you'll see what kind of industrial activity that has existed in this area but to the east all the parcels adjacent to the east are industrial highway 37 is also a buffer county road 640 is one to the south west is phosphate mining and additional industrial uses into the north it is phosphate mining no portion of the property is adjacent to residential that's being changed this is what's allowed under the current existing pm land use this is the mosaic new wells facility which is depending on how you calculate where their actual plant site is our corner abuts the property that is adjacent to this area where they have stormwater ponds and retention ponds for their processing the comprehensive land use plan talks about the compatibility and how it has to be developed in the uses that are adjacent to that and if you'll continue on you'll see that one of the provisions is that there has have been provisions made which buffer incompatible uses to dissimilar uses this land does not have any adjacent uses that are not similar to the existing ones incompatible uses are made to be more compatible to each other through limiting intensity and scale this is inapplicable since our adjacent uses have the same or more intensive uses the uses are transitional through a gradual scaling of different land land uses activities through the use of innovative development techniques such as a planned unit development this is not applicable for the same reason the adjacent uses are very similar in nature this is going to give you a quick presentation of what is exactly in this area this is an industrial site that is actually north of the site keep going same with this this was built in 1914 it was used up into the 2000s this is an industrial site that is also north of the proposal area continue same we're going to go through these pretty quickly because you'll have them in your brochure as well so you can see them but area roads adjacent to the industrial we've talked about highway 37 is an urban minor arterial road 640 is a major collector road so we have Chris Kay who is our civil engineer here to speak on traffic if you have any specific questions with regards to traffic but I think we're going to just to kind of make a note of that under the existing land use the floor area ratio under PM is 0.75 so under industrial land use in the code is 0.5 so you're actually seeing a reduction of 33% from what the existing allowed traffic under the existing land use is allowed versus what we're proposing the mulberry chamber of commerce says this is a lot of hometown support for the upcoming growth in our centrally located mulberry although we are a small city we have an abundance of large industrial that keeps us going that is what this area is all about this is an industrial area this talks about what we just spoke on with regards to the ERP permits that we have that allow on-site mitigation a reservoir of which we've met with the district with regard to a reservoir they are very supportive of reservoirs being used versus upper Florida as y'all are all very much aware of the complications that come with that in addition to that stormwater ponds the ability to use these man-made lakes for stormwater ponds under the new stormwater rules that y'all are about to see that coming down from the state will be significant be able to use these another picture of the site showing those lakes and areas for the ERP permit additional and nearby uses we're going to go through these pretty quickly this is to the north of the site which is the mosaic gyp stack this is the old agrafos mine this is all now zoned for industrial land uses but it has a long history of over 100 years of being used for industrial with a major rail line this is the phosphate gypsum stack as well to the south this is BB1 sand mine which is just to the north of the proposed site on and and surrounding compatible land uses the comprehensive defines compatibility a condition in which land uses and conditions can coexist in relative proximity the land uses that are being proposed have been here long before any houses have been there mining goes back into the early early 1900s continue this is go green recycling which is on 37 contiguous with the property that we are looking at changing one other thing commissioner scott you had mentioned or asked about traffic dot has already acquired from us this intersection additional lands they are putting a very large roundabout in this area at this intersection to help reduce traffic flow and increase traffic movement through that area continue on this is a solar farm it is located to the south of the site as you can see on the map this one is actually located to the west of the site northwest of the site which is a solar farm you can see that the aerial does not reflect it but it is actually built out at this time extensive rail lines to the north of the site as well as to the south you can see this is the south and the west those are two different areas there one is a very large rail yard and as you can see these have extensive spurs to the south of this location with some additional industrial uses that we have continue as you saw earlier this is the new whales phosphate chemical plant to the southwest of the site and central florida development council poll county designated economic development organization is actively seeking additional market ready industrial sites and manufacturing sites especially large scale that's one of the things that they say would help us bring more industry to the area continue so this is a rare opportunity to have large scale industrial site which allows for the storm water the utility to buffers as you can see this site has gas lines on it I mean it has utilities with regards to the electric as well as we have a water use permit for 326,000 gallons a day of water for the site continue these are also some notes that you will see from Mulberry and the industrial development I don't need to go through them with you but as you can see they are very proactive with regards to industrial uses in the area these are a list of the land uses that are existing you see this transition of moving from PM land uses to other uses like you saw it going to residential earlier in your hearing today and some other types of uses this is simply a transition the land uses are very similar between PM and industrial as you can see almost identical in many cases as you can go right through the line here continue and here are some other ones that show the similarities between the two continue the benefits for Southern Polk County is that it provides a true huge employment opportunity for a lot of industry to come to this area and support jobs in the community we'll move through these pretty quick y'all are I'm sure very aware of Polk County and what's in and around Mulberry on Highway 37 to the north of the site these are along Highway 37 coming towards our site and adjacent to our site many of them you can see almost all of them are industrial type uses no residential uses are on this corridor that's a view of it looking to the north from the site and additional ones as well also one of the sites that you will see you can keep going one of the sites you will see is that y'all recently approved adjacent to our site is a salvage yard which abuts our property on 37 as well so one of the arguments that I've heard from people well just one is that they're concerned about us utilizing changing this for our industrial to industrial to be utilized under the live local act that's simply not the case under the live local act it is very clear that phosphate mining has the uses that apply to the live local act for commercial and industrial uses the pm land use that we already have allows us to fall under the live local act so we don't need the live local act to build residential affordable housing on any of these properties so this isn't the reason why this is being done this is being done purely for industrial land use changes and you can go to the next slide and this defines exactly what is allowed and why it is applicable on pm land uses but and with that I'll stand for any questions that y'all may have any questions yes just a couple appreciate the presentation I guess two things one with respect to the reclamation you said that's released so all the post rec monitoring all that's been met and there's no more monitoring that you guys are having to do for the wetlands or the ponds is that correct that's correct okay and then going to the actual you mentioned about the use of reservoirs and also stormwater capacity when you look at the overall development of the site and then you did mention the permit that you have for the water consumption so my question prior to mentioning that was were you planning on using like a community well supply again not a part of this approval today but just more so information for the community is that there would be water supply by wells or a community well and then you're talking about reservoirs as kind of an alternate water supply is that kind of the line of thought yeah there would be both I mean there would be wells as well as the reservoir potential use okay gotcha and then just for clarification you mentioned that there is floodplains that are on the site obviously it's a larger site if those are impacted though for clarity for those that watch and have questions yes all right I appreciate that thank you any other questions any other questions okay thank you thank you now we'll open up for public hearing do we have anyone no ma'am no one has signed up okay so we close public hearing and bring it back to the board second I have a motion and a second any questions or discussion on the motion hearing none all in favor aye opposed motion carries thank you all right madam chair at this time we will go through the commissioner comment section we will start with commissioner troutman yeah I just again we are all aware of the tragic accident that occurred yesterday so hearts go out to the families and friends of the loved ones a very tragic incident to survive as a young individual but I also want to say we had over 100 first responders that responded to that many of them with their own children on school buses many of them you know that can feel the pain there so that is something they face day in and day out so again thank you to our first responders and my condolences to the family thank you commissioner wilson i just i just want to carry to carry on with what becky said tragic but we have to carry on but nothing else ma'am thank you commissioner brasswell nothing okay commissioner scott and madam chair i believe before we move to commissioner scott uh items and the first item being and one consider the resolution permanently removing the second director of care source pope president and ceo stacy campbell dominick my understanding the direction from the board prior to us actually considered the resolution to give um miss campbell dominick or her represented opportunity to be heard by the board and at time they can present evidence witnesses or other documents to the board is that still the pleasure of the board how much time are we allocating uh right now my understanding as much time as needed but i talked to mr finney who's uh miss campbell dominick's representatives my understanding hours don't be probably sufficient uh he may need a little bit more time but i think that's in the ballpark of what i think the expectation is at this time i want to make sure that we understand so we have the lawyer that's representing a group of people uh no lawyer representing miss okay so after that they will have opportunity for public to speak if they want yes yes madam chair and then we will make sure everybody then we will take up that item yes commissioner before we get started with this can we race us maybe for use restroom break and five minutes will be good since we're going to be another hour yes madam chair if i may just for clarity to you on this particular item it would be at the point of public comment that the members of the audience including the board members of career source folk would have an opportunity to speak as well correct the plan that's the plan at that we'll give mr finney or miss kemmel dominique the time at to to present their information at that point the commission will hear from the audience anyone who wants to speak give them three minutes and then after that the board will take up the item for it and let's have a five minute recess we'll be back at 1035 thank you madam chair to be heard by the board upon his request good morning my name is leonard finney jr i'm a partner of the port st lucid law firm simmons finney winfield and i represent stacy campbell dominic as you and i both know there's resolution in your board package today which terminates miss campbell dominic before you've heard anything from her this thing signals a either pre-determined outcome that would neither be fair nor impartial or is planning on your part to to move forward with the motion so at the onset and consistent with my september 28th 2026 correspondence to county manager beasley which i formally moved to make a part of this record we appear today without waiver of any objections miss campbell dominic express reserves all rights claims defenses and remedies nothing said or submitted today should be construed as consent to an unfair or structurally prejudicial process or as a waiver of miss campbell dominic's right to seek relief and review in the appropriate administrative body of florida circuit civil court including injunctive and declaratory relief and any contractual remedies available under her employment agreement these things i must say before we get started we are here because the county has taken an extraordinary step of removing a sitting president and ceo and is now moving towards permanent removal based on an asserted cause theory this is not a routine personnel matter it is a career ending allegation made in a public forum with consequences not only for miss campbell dominic's livelihood and reputation but also for stability of the workforce agency that serves the residents of this county there are three points the commission must keep in focus today first the governing contract for calls standard is narrow and is not satisfied here miss campbell dominic's employment is governed by a ceo contract for july 2024 through june 2029 that contract permits immediate cancellation for calls only for the following three reasons willful failure to substantially perform duties after 30 days written notice of such failure conviction of a felony crime or arrest for indictment for breach of trust crimes such as embezzlement fraud or perjury there's no allegation let alone proof of a felony conviction there's no allegation let alone proof for any arrest or indictment for breach of trust crime and the county's record does not establish the contracts required notice and cure predicate for any alleged willful failure to perform under the party's agreement that is the threshold problem the county cannot get around second we anticipate the county may attempt to broaden the playing field by invoking a statutory for cause that's far broader than the contract and to use that broader language to justify a result the contract does not permit the county notice sites section 445.007 paren 2 paren c florida statutes and uses broad labels such as neglect of duty gross mismanagement and lack of performance it is our position that these labels do not override the party's contract the county cannot lawfully convert disputed compliance interpretations documentation disputes and governance disagreements into contractual for cause termination where the contract requires at minimum 30 days written notice and an opportunity to cure any alleged willful failure to perform after the county attempts to proceed under the broader scrutiny language the commission should be cautious about treating generalized labels as proof neglect mismanagement and lack of performance are conclusions they are not facts they are not evidence the question is whether the county can prove with specificity what miss Campbell-Dominick did or failed to do when she did it what role or requirement was violated and how the conduct rises to the level that justifies the extraordinary remedy of permanent removal third the process used to get here has been fundamentally unfair and structurally prejudicial and that matters because it increases the risk of error before addressing the four allegations identified by the canopy report which you have it's important to recognize the broader context in which the decision to terminate the president ceo for calls occurred on july 31st 2026 the polk county board of county commissioners held a public discussion concerning career source polk's performance governance physical management performance improvement plan employer services and executive leadership during that discussion alleged resistance to change was one of the concerns raised others were raised others raised for organization performance physical stewardship transparency board governance and effectiveness of career source polk's leadership the discussion also included references to potential changes in board membership the authority of the chief local elected official and the possibility of changes in executive leadership these comments occurred immediately prior to subsequent actions involving the president's ceo and appeared to have significantly influenced perceptions of career source polk and its leadership in advance importantly many of the statements made during the meeting relied upon alleged state feedback purported statewide rankings assumptions regarding organization performance or conclusions that were not supported by documentation presented at the meeting subsequent review of federal performance reports board reports governance documents budget materials monitoring reports and employment Florida data indicates that several of these assertions were incomplete unsupported or presented without critical contacts because the July 31st 2026 discussion may have materially contributed to the circumstances surrounding the termination decision it is necessary this time to address not only the four allegations identified in the canopy report which we will get to but also the broader claims raised during that meeting a fair evaluation of the president ceo's performance requires consideration of the complete factual record rather than isolated statements assumptions or characterizations that are inconsistent with available evidence the following response therefore addresses both the allegations contained in the calendar report and the related assertions discussed during the July 31st agenda review meeting that's a formal response document career source poke appreciates the board of county commissioners commitment to transparency accountability and continuous improvement with the public workforce system constructive oversight is essential to ensuring that workforce investments produce measurable benefits for employers job seekers and the citizens of Polk County the discussion regarding the career source poke during the July 31st 2026 agenda review meeting raised a number of important issues concerning organization performance governance fiscal management employer services and the organization's current performance improvement plan while career source poke welcomes thought for examination of operations and performance several statements made during the discussions require clarification to ensure that public discourse is informed by a complete and accurate understanding of the facts organization performance and historical context throughout the discussion multiple comments suggest that career source poke was consistently performed near the bottom of Florida's workforce system for several years and that the organization has failed to improve despite warnings and opportunities to do so career source poke respectfully submits that the historical record does not support that characterization the tax seven year review of federal performance indicators illustrate that career source poke has repeatedly met or exceeded numerous federally negotiated performance measures I will be handing to you that performance seven year performance report and documents I will be submitting to you the historical review reflects that career poke has helped thousands of poke county residents obtain workforce training earn industry recognized credentials secure employment and increase earnings while serving employers throughout the region while certain indicators have required corrective action particularly in recent years within selected youth and dislocated worker performance categories these indicators represent only a portion of career source poke overall responsibilities and outcomes the historical record reflects an organization that has experienced both areas of strength and areas required improvements rather than an organization that has consistently failed to perform Mr. Finney before you move forward did we just have one copy of this or do you have multiple copies I have I have one copy I have two copies of it I could not put it up on the board so what I'll do is pass it down so they can look at it and then at the end if Commissioner Scott will you give it to the clerk to place into the record thank you Madam Chair and County also the document this document yeah I will move that document to the evidence as well okay thank you Mr. Finney while certain indicators have required corrective action particularly in recent years within select the youth and dislocated work performance categories these indicators represent only a portion of career source poke overall responsibilities let's talk about clarification regarding 17 out of 21 which was mentioned at that meeting 21st out of 21 which was mentioned at that meeting and last place which was also mentioned at that meeting a central theme of the July 31st discussion was the repeated assertion that career source poke was ranked 17th out of 21 21st out of 21 or last in the state however career source poke has not been provided with any Florida Commerce or career source Florida report as establishing such rankings the federal performance reports identify career source poke as LWDB 17 which is the board's regional designation not a ranking further Florida workforce accountability system evaluate local workforce boards against negotiated performance standards and letter grade methodologies not a formal first to last ranking system accordingly references to career source poke being last in the state should be viewed with caution absent documentation supporting that conclusion performance improvement plan career source poke acknowledges that it's currently operating on a performance improvement plan however a PIP is a corrective management tool intended to identify performance gaps conduct root cause analysis and implement improvement strategies it should not be interpreted as evidence that the organization has failed across all program areas career poke fully participated in the development and submission of the PIP and has continued to implement corrective actions the organization performance history reflects ongoing identification of challenges and implementation improvement strategies rather than failure to recognize or address performance concerns allegations of resistance to change commissioner scott suggests that career source poke and his board have been resistance to change career source poke respectfully disagrees no specific recommendation was identified that career source poke refused to implement or deliberately ignored to the contrary the organization participated in ongoing monitoring technical assistance audits corrective action processes and performance improvement initiatives performance reports openly acknowledge areas requiring improvement and document actions taken to address them the record reflects continuous improvement efforts rather than resistance to change governance and board oversights comments were also made suggesting that long-standing board membership may have contributed to organizational challenges career source poke's board composition is governed by federal and state workforce requirements local agreements and organizational bylaws certain positions are required by statute and must be filled by designated workforce education labor economic development and government representatives board continuity alone should not be viewed as evidence of a governance deficiency particularly where board composition remains compliant with applicable federal and state requirements commissioner liaison participation during discussions concerns were raised regarding interactions between commissioner scott and career source poke the record reflects career source poke provided orientation materials board training opportunities and ongoing access to leadership following commissioner scott's appointment as liaison while commissioner liaisons are not voting members and are not required to attend meetings opportunities for communication questions and engagement were consistently available of the two board meetings commissioner scott attendants february 2025 and february 2026 there was opportunity for him to express any concerns he may have had career source poke respects every employee experience however historically employed Florida records reflect applicant activity for multiple right trailers job openings over time while individual position may not generate the number of applicants resired the available records do not support a broader conclusion that career source poke failed to provide for referrals or employer assistance commissioner scott also acknowledged that factors other than career source poke may have contributed to his experience the discussion suggested that career poke presented a more favorable public image than its performance data warranted career source poke respectfully disagrees recognizing the compliment and acknowledging challenges are not mutually exclusive the organization has consistently reported both strengths and weaknesses through performance reports board meetings annual reports and public presentations notably career source poke publicly disclosed its pip status in its physical year 2025-2026 annual report distributed at its annual meeting which was open communicating successful outcomes employer partnerships workforce initiatives and participant achievements reflects actual services delivered and outcomes achieved not attempt to obscure areas requiring improvement budget expenditures and allegations of mismanagement commissioner scott also characterized career source poke expenditure rate as evidence of mismanagement citing an expenditure level of approximately 29% of a two-year allocation career source poke respectfully submits that such a conclusion is unsupported by the available evidence WIOA funds operate on a two-year life cycle and are intended to be obligated and suspended over multiple program years expenditure rates therefore fluctuate through the grant period based upon participant enrollment training initiatives conduct obligations service delivery schedules and program implementation activity career source post-budget training materials specifically explain the WIOA funds have a two-year life span and are subject to expenditure and obligation benefits throughout that period more importantly career source poke operates under extensive financial oversight including quarterly budget variance reporting to the board independent financial and programmatic monitoring Florida commerce monitoring and desk reviews annual independent audits multiple levels of budget review and approval no evidence was presented during the discussion demonstrating that career source poke failed to meet expenditure requirements violated grant management requirements or received findings of systematic fiscal mismanagement accordingly expenditure percentages alone do not establish fiscal mismanagement without consideration of grant timelines obligation requirements participant service commitments and the actual federal funding structure question was also raised regarding career source poke's role in supporting economic development and high skill high wage employment opportunities career source poke's performance history demonstrates significant success in participant earnings workforce training credential achievement and employer engagement the organization provides recruitment assistance labor market information youth workforce development on the job training programs incumbent workers training and other services designed to support employers and stricken poke county's workforce whose improvements remain necessary in certain performance areas the overall record reflects an organization that continues to play a meaningful role in workforce and economic development throughout poke county miss campbell dominick was removed effective september 1st 2026 and immediately denied access to career source poke offices career source poke issue equipment email accounts electronic files records and staff communications those restrictions prevented her from reviewing and rebutting the very materials the county and its consultants rely upon requiring a response on a compressed timeline like we were required while simultaneously denying access to the relevant records is not due process it is manufactured disadvantage compounding this problem the canopy materials themselves reflect scope limitations incomplete production including items requested but not received and items only partially received proceeding to a removal determination on an incomplete record while restricting ms campbell dominick's access to that same record creates an unreasonable risk of error and prejudice against that backdrop it is important to remember who ms campbell dominick is and what the record shows about her performance her most recent performance evaluation completed by 15 board members in october 2025 reflects consistently strong performance across core leadership competencies with ratings that meet in several areas exceed expectations board comments emphasize her balanced approach to accountability and empathy her strategic vision and operational leadership and her expertise in workforce development laws and procedures noting she is well regarded within the Polk County and across the state of Florida as a credible advocate and effective leader the executive committee's November 2025 meeting minutes also reflect that finance audit items to approve the fiscal year 2024 2025 audit was presented as a clean audit with no issues and approved unanimously and approved unanimously I also know the 23 the two year prior to that we're saying they're on the disk that contain the information that she will be giving you that is not the profile of someone who should be permanently removed for calls based upon based on disputed interpretations incomplete documentation of contested allegations so what are we asking the commission to do today we're asking you to apply the correct standard insist on specificity and proof and recognize that the contract for calls requirements have not been met we're asking you to recognize that the county's own materials reflect disputes unresolved factual questions and knowledge evidentiary gaps this is not a record that supports the extraordinary remedy of permanent removal Ms. Campbell Dominick is prepared to address the allegations directly she's prepared to answer your questions and she's prepared to demonstrate that what is being characterized as calls is at most a set of disputed compliance and documentation issues that are correctable through clarification and corrective action not grounds for permanent removal finally to the extent the county intends to treat today as a final adjudication we iterate our request for meaningful hearing process clear notice of the specific factual basis asserted as calls access to the evidence relied upon including the complete underlying record adequate time prepare the ability to present documents and witnesses and a structured process to permit full presentation of the evidence and defenses and respond to the adverse presentations with those reservations and objections preserved we are ready to proceed and what I'd like to call to testify before you Stacey Campbell Dominick would you like to swear in if you if you mind I'll do it Mr. Fending okay raise your hand do you swear or affirm that the testimony of this you will present today in front of the commission is the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth I do thank you please state your name for the record please Stacey Campbell Dominick what was your position with career source Polk president and CEO how long have you worked with career source Polk hold on a second since 2002 that's 24 23 24 years somewhere how do you send to the position of CEO after working for career source Polk for four years I was encouraged to apply for the position and interviewed and was selected in 2006 and so you've served as president and CEO since 2006 yes please briefly strive career source Polk's mission the role of career source Polk the formal mission statement is to be the innovative leader to ensure and sustain a quality workforce for today and the future but our goal is to help employers and job seekers connect so that we can help our residents sustain quality a quality of life what were your primary responsibilities as CEO to provide oversight to the local workforce system including youth services adult services dislocated worker services business services react warn when companies are laying off administrative services and financial services are you involved with any local or state organizations in a professional capacity I am and what are those so I am a member of the Florida Workforce Development Association and a past president of the Florida Workforce Development Association which is the association of all the CEOs workforce CEOs across the state of Florida I am a member of a number of boards a number of boards in Polk County the Lakeland Regional Health the ALPE Board of Directors I was I was formerly the chair for almost seven years of the Citizens Health Care Oversight Committee but I've been removed from that but on that serving on that Citizens Health Care Oversight Committee for collectively over over 15 years and several others why were you removed from that I'm not sure was it after after you were suspended or semi-terminated from your position yes does CareerSource Polk partner with any other local organizations CareerSource Polk by nature of the business we partner with numerous organizations our role in the community is to help our partners who work with individuals whether they're receiving benefits or need support we are the go-to for helping them find employment or to enhance their skills and education so that they can become successful is your employment governed by a written CEO employment agreement yes does that agreement define what for calls termination means yes were you ever convicted of a felony no were you ever arrested for or indicted for a breach of trust crimes such as embezzlement fraud or perjury no were you given a 30-day written notice of willful failure to substantially perform your duties with an opportunity to cure no did you ever refuse to perform your duties after receiving a written notice and an opportunity to cure no although we disagree with the four cause standards apparently being used by this commission and the material that you have seen do you dispute that you have neglected your duties as CEO of career source florida i'll poke i'm sorry i do dispute reviewing the records from canopy have they concluded that there has been gross mismanagement not that i've read in the report that was provided to me is there in record evidence of any lack of performance by you no have you been non-cooperative with florida commerce no have you been non-cooperative with career source florida no in this correspondence this florida commerce's letter ever detailed any significant facts showing a trend of non-cooperation questionable fiscal management and in some cases outright deception not that i read in the materials that were provided to me do you dispute the characterization request detail facts substantiating these allegations yes lastly florida commerce's letter stated you had effectively abdicated your job do you deny this i deny this but i don't know what abdicated means okay sorry let me abandon oh i have not abandoned my role has anybody shown you proof that you've abandoned your role as ceo no tell us about your board and the individuals on it do they represent a cross-section of community leaders yes what specific requirements there are there is to be on your board yes so so under the workforce and innovation and opportunity act there are multiple positions on our board i can't name them all but many of them are workforce i'm sorry like vocational rehabilitation labor union representatives these are public sectors people or agencies serving individuals with disabilities community individuals with community action agencies or block grants a number of those so there are specified positions that are public or government sector that are required by way in addition to that the board also has to have 51 percent of their board from the private sector and we look at a cross-section of all of the businesses in the in our targeted industry sectors aligned with that of central florida development council and recruit board members for those areas in addition to the requirement to have those board members there are term limits and in 2021 the state reset all board members terms they could be on the board for a total of eight years and you can divide that up to two-year terms and we divide it to four-year terms and the goal of what that reset was to also allow the workforce boards throughout the state to stagger board members so if we had a board member who was rotating off then we needed to make sure we had a replacement so that not all board members rotate off at the same time does that maintain continuity within the board absolutely are you subject to annual reviews by your board yes what is a competency evaluation that relates to your job the board evaluates me on an annual basis through a performance evaluation and they that is handled through typically our HR process where the board gets the evaluation form they complete that but ahead of that I give my CEO report for that year submitted to them and they get the performance I'm sorry they get the job description along with that and they complete the evaluation and it is always sent to HR without me seeing any of the raw data it is compiled by HR the ratings are our input combined ratings are input and the comments are listed not attributed to any board member do you select the people who serve on the board no who select the people serve on the board so well by nature of by nature nature of the board positions we go through organizations for required seats and then for private sector we reach out to those individuals who may represent industry sectors or needs that we have and those private sector members must be approved by a local chamber or an employer or business organization so we get that endorsement from either the LEDC the chambers it depends on where they are and then it goes to the board for I'm sorry it first goes to the executive committee career source folks executive committee to consider those board members that are being presented then it goes to the full board and after it goes to the full board it has to come to the Polk County Board of County Commissioners for approval so the County Board of County Commissioners approved the person before it comes on your board yes are you familiar with the board CEO competency evaluation completed in October 2025 yes is that the last evaluation you received yes how many board members participate in that evaluation 15 15 15 in general what did the evaluation reflect about your performance let me see first take a look at on a rating system what is the rating system between one and three and one being does not meet expectations two meaning meet expectations and three meaning exceeds expectations yes scroll down what did it reflect about your job knowledge so the categories you mean so communications teamwork leadership job knowledge planning and prioritizing innovation service awareness problem solving skills policies and procedures and budget so on a on a rating from from one to eight first page you receive an average of 2.9 communications yes 2.9 in teamwork yes 2.9 in leadership yes 3.0 in job knowledge yes 2.8 in planning and prioritizing yes 2.8 in innovation yes 2.8 in service awareness yes 2.9 in problem solving skills yes 2.9 in policies and procedures yes 2.8 in budgeting yes how did it make you feel at the time great looking at some of the comments these comments anonymous you don't know who said them correct that was a reference to number 15 I've been a board member since 2016 under Stacey's leadership I witnessed the board involved and grow positively impacting lives of job seekers and employers she's a leader with extensive knowledge who is also leads for authenticity in the heart you don't know who said that do you no number 13 says this is by far the best board that I serve on our CEO is so transparent knowledgeable and inspiring it is an honor and I'm very proud to represent the career source board of directors you don't know who said that either did the executive committee approve the 2024 2025 audit in RS form 990 yes was there any findings in your audit not that I'm aware of when was the last time that you recalled there was a negative finding in the audits of your organization maybe over 15 years ago but I'm not I can't recall I have on some drive the last three years of audits I'm going to ask that that be printed to be provided to you to document the fact that there are no negative audit findings your removal that became effective on September 1st 2026 where were you when you found out about this in St. Louis Missouri after that removal what access were you denied related to career source officers equipment email and records I got a call from the board chair at the time who informed me that the commission voted to I can't remember the language terminate or remove me for cause no access to anything no pay no benefits and that he had contacted the county attorney or the county manager I'm not sure to let them know that he needed me to complete a form before removing my access so if they could just delay the removal of my access until I completed that form I completed the form for him the investigative form it was with all the information and I think I submitted it like at five o'clock or five thirty maybe six o'clock I can't remember and emailed him and made him aware that I had submitted the report he requested and I was signing off and I turned the computer off my health insurance benefits I was told would end because it's paid at the beginning of the month and that was September first that it ended it would end September 30th did they give you opportunity for COBRA or anything to extend your benefits no no mention of that even before we came here today have someone have they asked for your keys back I did get a email my days are mixed up a recent email with asking if I had my keys or computer I can't remember these restrictions that were imposed upon you on September 1st you subsequently received a correspondence I think on the 15th asking you to respond how did this impede your ability to respond well I did not have access to the necessary information and I wrote a letter to the county manager or attorney forgive me may have been both requesting access so that I could answer some of the questions but yes what access did they give you the they told me to reach out to Nilda Blanco and get the information information and that's but they also sent me information in a packet sent some information in the packet and I think that was the canopy report I might be tying two together but the canopy report and that the backup documentation for the canopy report purpose of the record the canopy report is a report from the organization hired by the county to review the allegations were you given full access to the same records the county and consultants relied upon I am not sure are there other records that you wish you could have accessed in order to better respond today yes I do believe that I have information in my emails that I would have used to accompany any responses my understanding there was four allegations that were given that came out of this and so let's deal with those allegations okay allegation number one PIP pre-approval controls CSP conducted staff training on June 11 through 12 2026 and had board approved local operating procedures in hand as of May 21 2026 yet did not submit these LOPs to the state for required pre-approval until June 30 2026 19 days after training concluded it appears they're making an allegation that you began training on things that had not been approved as required first explain what was career polk trying to accomplish through the performance improvement plan process so with the performance improvement plan you mean once it was approved or in general in general the performance improvement plan first time in my history and I'm assuming in all the workforce board's history at least in the last 20 years or however many years I've been in this position we've never been on a performance improvement plan and this was new to me and we had to write the performance improvement plan based on the measures that we failed so I spent from February to try to get all of that I'm sorry from March to completion to get all of the performance improvement plan written and then approved by career source Florida and I think Florida Commerce what was your understanding of the difference between board approval and implementation and operations sure so what was a little bit challenging for me is that the date on the we took so typically our local operating procedures and local policies are not subject to state approval it's kind of trickled down the state establishes a policy and we're to use that policy if we want to create a policy but it has to align and make sure we've got the appropriate language in there otherwise we could just complete local operating procedures that align with what the policy allows for so to speak but the the I'm sorry the local operating procedures what is the delay is that what you asked me so first of all after the governance piece of it because we've never been on a PIP and a performance improvement plan and that is a serious matter I did not think it was appropriate it would be appropriate for me to submit policies and local operating procedures to the state and my governance board had not seen them or approved them tell us what happened on this June 11th June 12th when they're saying that you did something without approval okay so the notice said that I implemented co-enrollment protocols prior to it being approved and I received that notice on August the 20th the day of our annual meeting at 4pm and they were submitted June 30th and the so I June 11th and 12th or whatever days those were okay June 11th and 12th was our corporate institute normally we would have a full day of a corporate institute where we do team building with our staff or we get feedback from them just kind of getting together we have two we have a mid-year corporate institute and we have another corporate institute in December December is more of a celebration so at this one in March of in March of this year we had there was a week where the state monitors came down and at the end of that week was when the technical assistance team was coming on that Friday to discuss the pip before we submitted and during the state monitoring meeting my leadership team and I were in Bartow with the monitors and some of the other monitors kind of stayed back during that particular time one of the representatives who stayed back at our Lakeland career center where all of our front line staff was we were informed the management team were informed that that state monitor told our front lines met with all of our front line staff and talked about the performance improvement plan of which had yet to be approved but we had not discussed that with staff so they talked to your staff about performance improvement plan that had not yet been approved one one person okay that I'm that you're aware that I'm aware of had an hour long meeting or more with and the way a staff texted one of the managers and said we're on a PIP or whatever they said and so trying to deal with that because we were not trying to hide anything from our front line staff but that was before the PIP was approved and if we were going to have a communication it would have been formalized in a way that you know we pulled them all together ourselves but since that happened that I mean our staff knew about the PIP before we made them aware so then the PIP got approved in March then we're spending all the time on the creating the local operating procedures and trying to align and see if we need updated any policies that took a significant amount of time because we needed to get that to our board for the May 21st meeting which has to be to them within seven days of the meeting so having gotten that information to the board for approval then the June was coming up that was May 21st of that meeting then we're preparing for preparing for a number of things the annual meeting all of those things but the June corporate institute decided to expand it for two days we had originally already asked staff feedback about what they wanted to do for the corporate institute so we had scheduled a company tour because that was one of the things that they said they'd like to hear more from the employers about what it takes to work for that company and how the types of positions they have so that morning the first day was a full day that was from 7 we started at 730 well the day starts 730 to 4 four five page state interview questionnaire so that was that staff time after that and all the tours were complete we ended up going to take the staff to lunch was there any staff training on anything prior to approval no the second day was I will say the second day of that was in Bartow where we said we needed to sit down and talk to the staff about the PIP because they were asking individuals so we had to address that and we expressed we told them about the PIP we told them we answered their questions about whether they're going to lose their jobs or whatever the case may be and had that but we did not have any training to implement anything we solicited feedback from them and we broke out in sessions at one point I think we had them as a group but then the last I think 45 minutes before we took them to lunch across the street before the end of the day we took time to break out in sessions and I was with two members who talked about their caseloads it was about what they needed but it wasn't any training on anything no training absolutely let me move to allegation number two ETPL and local plan deficiencies provider list ETPL without the provider facing procedural notice opportunity to respond and appeal information required under WIOA section 1222 and 20 CFR 683 38 630 B did you remove three CDL training providers from the eligible training provider list we removed everybody we didn't really remove them the agreements expired June 30 so agreements expired you did not remove them that's correct okay why did you allow the agreements to expire it it had an expiration date okay I mean there's a question okay sorry so why didn't you renew it we so we did not renew it because I had been working with a colleague up in career source gulf coast to figure out to I guess understand their best practice of not even having agreements with the training provider and how they handle not having agreements because the state is ultimately responsible for approving all training providers a local board cannot approve a training provider unless they're on the state list but a local board does not have to approve a training provider and WIOA is not about training providers it's about customer choice at the local level so any customer who wants training and they're eligible under the WIOA program can and they come to us and they say they want to go back to school then our case managers work with them but they instead of limiting them to some training providers that we may have on our list they can go to the state list and choose and that's still that's the case and so so those three providers are still on the state list and customers here in Polk County can still select to go to those everybody yes now there was some language in the caniper report about one provider that was still on your list as of June 30th yes why was that because we had yet to update everything on the website we were getting the information from career source Gulf coast and once again that was in June planning for the annual meeting trying to make sure that we had that done and we said we'll take care of it because our program was not open in July for people to apply we didn't open our application until I think August so the once we updated our website it clearly indicated our intent now that one provider so it showed it wasn't any discrimination between them and the other three had that one provider agreement expired on June 30 yes okay and you were in the process removing of not renewing any right let's go to allegation number three governance annual meeting and men of the workforce yes the allegation the men of the workforce campaign maintain a sex exclusive eligibility structure that creates exposure under WIOA section 188 and 29 CFR part 38 to the extent the campaign constitute a WIOA title one financially assisted program or activity was administered by WIOA recipient used recipient staff time or facilities or conducted as part of the one-stop delivery system what is the career source folks annual meeting our annual meeting it's an annual meeting I don't know how to say it how does it compare with other career source annual meetings throughout the state based on what I'm told our annual meeting is very unique that and we typically we have this annual meeting has been in place for since 1996 my predecessor did it for 10 years and then I carried on with that and so the annual meeting you mentioned the men of the workforce event or the men of the workforce event was a campaign that ran from April 20 to June 20 what is the men of the workforce so in I think it was February in February at a board discussion executive committee I'm sorry it's our 30 year anniversary and I was charged to consider giving away 30 cars we have plenty of people who have barriers to transportation through our workforce I mean I'm sorry our WIA program that's the workforce incentive award which we have in place for over 10 years unique to this board to address barriers that we can't use federal funds for but is necessary for those individuals in order to obtain or retain employment so the campaign is a separate event and so ask those gentlemen if they would I got suggestions from community people to ask those gentlemen if they would participate and the goal was to raise funds to support workforce incentive awards so with the annual meeting the man of the year would be recognized at our annual meeting and that information was conveyed through a letter asking them if they would participate so the campaign would happen early in the year and you would just recognize the man of your annual meeting which we award we give out awards at our annual meeting to many how much do you raise from that count $31,220 and at your annual meeting you said you gave away 30 cars we did this was not with non-restricted funds yes you can't use workforce funds to buy cars or two but not all many were several were donated to your knowledge to any participant lose services benefits opportunities eligibility based on sex or any other protected characteristic not at our annual meeting do you consider the men of the workforce campaign a woke event the men of the workforce campaign I don't know what woke means to your knowledge did the independent review by canopy actually conclude that a violation of WIOA section 188 or 29 CFR 38 had been established or did they say it may be an exposure I don't recall but I do know that it didn't identify it as having violated WIOA okay allegation number four office closures and customer access pendency reconciles the public closure communications communications in a dash 067 through I dash 070 against the board approved schedules in a dash 602 through A64 the reconciliation identifies five closure events that were not tied to a board approved closure and did not cite emergency calls the July 10 11 records support CSP position that services were delivered throughout through an organized appointment based model but they do not resolve whether that service format change required separate board approval the children are not allowed policy remains there separate access concern requiring operational equal opportunity to review to your knowledge what does the canopy report conclude about the original closure so they identified if I recall correctly that there were notifications we communicated to individuals notifications and they identified that on our schedule of operations which is posted to our website that there were some closures that did not that were not on the schedule of operations okay were those closures board approved or those emergency situations so some of them were not board approved and would not necessarily have not in the past like the corporate institute the youth leadership institute where we I think this is one forgive me if I'm wrong but where we have over 250 young people to prepare them for a week to go into internships for the summer and I can't remember I can't identify any other did they identify any dates for you there was one there was one talked about closing for beautification and we were having an open house on that Thursday and we our goal was we're in a state owned building when we went over there and looked we needed to clean the mold the mulch everything to see them and make sure the AC was working because we expected hundreds of people to participate in our first ever open house so so was that intentional not posting that was closed or getting the board approval first we posted that we were closed but I guess the challenge is that it was not on a schedule of operations that we submit to the board in prior year but it was also not a planned event at that time talk about this many years ago there were signs at our career center that said no children allowed and that came after a number of challenges we used to have a kiddie corral in winter haven that I recall but then you had kids coming here for spring break we also and I can't tell you the timeline but career source Polk was also asked as many other workforce boards to participate in a Florida hires program and that work we worked diligently in the prisons to work with those who are up to 180 days from release and to prepare them so that when they transition back in we could help them and they could have job offers if we did what we needed to do we were successful in getting computers in the prisons and hosting classes for them those individuals when they come out of prison they come to our career centers if we worked with them and so we had no children allowed signs but the one that they're talking about is on the website because we used to have it on the doors and I understood I can't remember what year it was that it was taken off the doors but I guess inadvertently left on the website that no children people don't I wouldn't have even noticed and I go to the website but what Canopy stated was that it was likely an outdated but we accommodate individuals with children we also have to work with those individuals who come out of prison and they come in and they see a child and say I can't be here some prisoners can't be around right that's correct attorney Finney I know that your hour has come up how much more time are we looking at and Randy is that something yeah I believe we need to see Mr. Finney you got an estimate of how much time you need I probably need at least another 40 minutes 30 40 minutes I never said one hour one hour to me the opportunity to respond I need to have her finish her testimony I need to let you ask her questions that you may have I need to bring at least one board member I would suggest Madam Chair at least give them 30 more minutes to proceed and then see where we're at that time of the hearing your timer is in the top I think you have one right there so just be cognizant of the time but please know that I do not feel rushed and so not to rush them and that to give them the time that he that's needed for the hearing if documentation of someone told you that the website needed to be improved without to be taken down would you have taken it down I would have communicated with my communications director and she would have taken it down based on your record based on your knowledge and looking at canopy report the records that you produced and I've got some more that we're producing to the commission does the record show any intentional misconduct on your part no not to me any fraud no any personal gain no any discrimination no any customer harm by you no if the board believes additional documentation procedural refinement is needed are you willing to participate in corrective action and enhance oversight if I'm restored what do you respectfully ask permission to do today regarding permanent removal for cause I would ask if there is documentation that they have that they feel outside of what's already been provided and what has been provided to me that they knowingly feel warrants removal for cause and if so provide that documentation to me us for to have this same opportunity to dispute that documentation if there's something other than what's here based on the allegations there and all the things that we've discussed over the course of the years that I've been in this position would not warrant termination for cause I'll offer I'll have questions but I want to hear everything that you have to say prior to questioning I just have one quick question when you said the performance reports were given to HR evaluations so for the board just say you're my bosses and I submit my report for the year for you to review you've been with me for the year and you complete an evaluation so that the evaluation remains anonymous with your comments and your ratings all the evaluated the completed evaluations from you would go to our human resources the career source HR yes okay that's that's I thought you were saying our HR no no no our HR person yes no questions right this time but I just one so who is the HR director at career source folk lose her radio okay and they report directly to you is that correct well she's part time but they could she the HR person would report to me okay and that's a part time position is that correct it's right now it's a part time position thank you please continue okay you just slide over but let me just say this to you lose her radio is not the one who would have done that evaluation we had another HR person prior to that yeah you just move over Mr. Adil Kahn Mr. Finney you just wear in all right thank you yes thank you all commissioners Mr. Kahn please state your full name and where you reside Adil Kahn Lakeland Florida 167 Shannon Oaks Drive how long you lived in Polk County 27 years and you do you consider this your home community of course yes what is your professional role I run a private investment group prior to that I was executive with Lakeland Regional Health Systems I was the CEO of the Lakeland Surgical and Diagnostic Center I was the CEO of Clark and Dotsie Medical Group so they were the ones that recruited me from Boston to Florida back in 1999 how long have you served as CEO outside your professional work and board service are you involved with any other civic business or community organizations in Polk County sure I I on a number of boards here in Polk County can you name a few of those please sure I previously with the Lakeland Chamber of Commerce for about six years Lakeland Volunteers in Medicine for about 10 years I was a past chairman with Lakeland Volunteers in Medicine I was with Achievement Academy I'm the current chairman of the board for the Achievement Academy I'm a board member incoming board member for the new senior hub for seniors program so a number of organizations when did you first become a member of the career service board of directors I believe I was with the chamber of commerce and I was recruited from the chamber Lakeland chamber of commerce on to career source board sometime around 2013 what motivated you to take on this volunteer role I heard great things about it my organization Clark and medical group we have approximately 350 employees we participated in the best places to work award program by career source broke and we had won an award and the annual meeting is if you have been to that that that's you know that's a wonderful program and thousand plus people at hand so I started to learn a little bit about it and some of my colleagues on the chamber of commerce had positively as well and so I said let me help out with that organization it's a very good organization and I like the idea of helping employees find jobs and the job training and being in healthcare we had a lot of employees that came through career source broke and what capacity have you served on this board I been a board member for a number of years I was the chairman of the finance background I was the CFO of Clark Indodachi Medical Group for five years before I became the CEO of the Clark Indodachi Medical Group for about eight years before I became the vice president of ambulatory services for the Lakeland health systems Lakeland it's called now Lakeland regional health but it was Lakeland health systems at that time I moved on to vice chair I also was the chair back in the COVID period so one of our chair I think had to leave because of COVID or something related to COVID and so I had to take over as chair earlier than expected so I was the chair during the whole COVID period and I completed that position I believe in 2022 okay in your role as chair what was your working relationship with Ms. Stacey Campbell Dominic as president and CEO excellent relationship very transparent good communication she would bring up stuff I would say look at you you're the expert you know this better than we do but she was very good about communicating prepping before executive committee meetings prepping before board meetings prepping before finance committee and the number of other committees there are youth services committee we have about five or six standing committees so she's always on top of everything and she kept her board up to date her chair particularly up to date when I was a chair and I'm sure the chairs that took over after me would say the same thing did you were there any fiscal problems never how was your audits during the time you served oh we always had stellar audits and you know we had the miss Dominic was very good about bringing the auditors to meet the board so this wasn't one of those things where you just get a report and you read it we got the report we read it the auditors we would meet with the auditors we would both meet them in the finance committee as well as at the board and executive level and ask questions of the auditors all of those audits were always very good from your first hand observations how would you characterize her leadership of Corriso Pope I was the one on that evaluation that you put up there so I happened to read it as you put it on the board all so what specific strengths have you observed her management of organization particularly in areas of workforce development strategy community partnerships and fiscal stewardship she's very good in all of that her experience is exemplary and her knowledge she communicates with other workforce boards which I found was very good you can't just live in your own bubble you have to communicate with your colleagues around the state in this particular case just like I would have done conferences go to talk to other healthcare organizations about things that they're dealing with so she was very good about that and she would bring that back to our board she took our board the executive committee she would take us to the annual conference in Washington D.C. for the National Association of Workforce Boards and we would hear from national speakers and hear from people from all over California Texas Kansas wherever it was 1,000 plus people there and not just executives from the workforce boards but also their executive board members that would come so that we would learn so she was very good about making sure that we had our knowledge and you could see that she knew what she was doing are you aware of any instances during your tenure where the board expressed dissatisfaction miscumbled Dominic's performance or raised concerns about any misconduct I did bring up an issue one time with Ms. Campbell and that was that I refused to receive emails at 4 o'clock in the morning because she was notorious for sending us communication constantly and I said no you're not allowed to send anything before 5 a.m. so that was the only issue I had with her can you describe any programs or initiatives she championed that have meaningful impact on Polk County workforce development situation I was thinking about that we had a campaign when we had the recession it was very new and I believe it was right after the big recession there in 2008 2009 I wasn't on the board at that time but I remember seeing that campaign about the 10,000 jobs or 10,000 position placement and that was a thing that she created herself and it got spread all over the state of Florida and a lot of other workforce boards tried to do that because of course we were all dealing with the unemployment issues and so she I forget the date maybe it was 2000 23rd okay I was on the board yeah so that's how I knew so much about it so I had just come on the board or I was just about to come on the board and that was one of the things that excited me about it and and we saw that I saw that at the annual meeting and the whole thing about the 10,000 job placements that she did this campaign that was just this phenomenally unique the other big thing is we give away cars I told her as I was chair I said she was doing two or three and I said no when I was board chair I wanted at least five so she got it up to five and all of this was unrestricted money it was all donated money and we have a huge unrestrictive war chest that she collected that money I doubt many workforce boards have that kind of money that we can do to help promote again the job placement the things that aren't covered by the grants that are outside of the program so these are some great ideas that she had and we still implement them today you mentioned before that you participated in the October 25 board evaluation competency were there any concerns flagged on the evaluation process or was the consensus reflected in the written statement describing her as an exemplary credible and motivating leader who leads with authenticity and heart consistently with how you viewed her leadership so you know we do the evaluation completely anonymously so every board member gets their own evaluation they fill it out we don't discuss with each other those evaluations so the fact that 15 people all rate her the same that tells you a lot because they're completely 15 individual evaluations it's not like we get a committee together and you know sit five of us together and come up with a joint evaluation now they're individually done anonymously and then the human resources director compiles them together makes that report which then is presented back to us as board members so that we know that it's consistent with what we presented following the evaluation the executive committee approved a merit increase for Ms. Campbell Dominic in November 2025 were you aware of that and did you support it yes based on your experience as board chair and long serving member how does the board typically handle administrative compliance issues through corrective action or executive or anybody in any organization you have policies and procedures on how to handle personnel issues compliance issues whatever it may be the natural process is to go through a corrective process evaluation if there's deficiencies training program recorrection termination is I've had under my years I've had thousands of employees under me I've terminated a handful and it would have been something egregious and it would have been after a long process of corrective or training programs that failed are you familiar with the four allegations that have been raised against Ms. Campbell and Dominic yes allegations of PIP pre-approved controls allegation to ETPL CDL provider removals yes allegations three men of workforce campaign and governance concerns and four office closures from your perspective as a governance insider do any of these allegations rise to the level of intentional wrongdoing fraud personal gain or willful misconduct as opposed to documentation gaps or administrative process questions no were you ever personally informed of or involved in discussions regarding office closures operating schedules or the annual meeting event during your board service we'd have updates in the various meetings board meetings and we would approve those as necessary as recommended by our CEO and look through the organization minutes you created the chairman's choice pillar of hope award in 2022 yes i created that in recognition of frontline workforce staff can you describe the purpose and how that initiative reflects the organization's culture under miss campbell dominic leadership yeah you know a lot of our programs are directed to the to help people for job placement job training things of that nature but this was something that wanted to have for the great staff that we have in Courier Source Polk you know the staff deal with a lot of difficult situations and it can be a difficult position sometimes stressful and we wanted to find some kind of program to reward those staff members that really step up above and beyond the call of duty and so this was an award that I created under my chairmanship and with the help of Stacy and how we and we created a whole evaluation process and there's an application process and an individual chosen each year and given that award are you familiar with the career source annual meeting in this history yes I've been going to those meetings for years before I even became a board member does annual meeting serve legitimate workforce development and community engagement purposes yes absolutely were you involved aware of the men pain yes what's your understanding of the purpose the main goal was to have some champions and you know we do that in multiple organizations you have champions for your your to do fundraising program and that's basically what it was what's your reaction to collect some money for to give away some extra cards that was our goal what is your reaction to the fact that Miss Campbell Dominic was removed without notice effective September 1st 2026 and immediately denied access to officers equipment emails and records then required to respond to allegations using those very records yeah so I'll use my polite words that I think it was inappropriate in your governor's experience is that type of process consistent with fair treatment of a CEO who has served 24 years and see consistently positive evaluations no do you have any knowledge of the motivation behind this removal effort and strike that I'm not even going to ask that is there anything else about your experience working with Miss Campbell Dominic or your knowledge of career source post operations that you believe the commissioners should hear yeah Miss Campbell Dominic has been a member of our community for several decades she's worked diligently above and beyond the call of duty for most executives I'm executive 25 years of executive experience I work with only executives and she's top notch her involvement in the community whether it's the citizens oversight committee which I dealt with through the health care component whether it's her chamber of commerce leadership Blakeland she was speech and hearing program all of these things she does great work for the community she's very very conscientious and her goal to help citizens of Polk County get jobs that's what it comes down to that's what is workforce development it comes down to we help people get jobs we connect job seekers with employers because you might think that you can just put an ad in the web website or back in the day in the paper or wherever but it takes more than that and there are a lot of people that need that help together whether it's resume development whether it's the gentleman's institute that was created to help young men learn how to put on a suit and tie and how to do an interview because they didn't know how to tie a tie I donated 100 ties out of my own wardrobe to that organization because these young men didn't even have a tie to go to an interview for so these are the kind of programs that Stacy was committed to she always wanted to help particularly the younger members of our community to get into the workforce to get the education trained because she knew that if they didn't get there at a certain point it's going to get harder and harder as time goes by and she kept her board motivated you know the board attendance meetings our attendance is phenomenal because we enjoyed going to those board meetings because we knew we were doing good work and we had a good leader guiding us through thank you sir I am going I have a series of letters and rather than reading them it's like over 25 letters and I looked in my inbox this morning I'm still getting more but I'm just bringing you what I had from last night those letters from I'll just read some names and let you know who these people are Marcus L. McBride who's the chief executive officer of career source Escarosa who is the chief executive of career source Escarosa who writes regarding his entry as CEO in 2020 and how Ms. Campbell Dominic assisted him moving into his role I have a letter from Kimberly L. Bodine who's the president of the Florida Workforce Development Association she preceded Ms. Campbell Dominic as the president of the Florida Workforce Development Association Joshua Wood who is a career source customer who talked about the personal involvement he had Ms. Campbell Dominic and how she assisted him young man who had gotten out of prison and finding doors slammed in his face throughout the community Cindy Janamoso who is a Heinz City Economic Development Council member and former CSP board directors Cheryl Taylor president CEO of North East Florida Lisa Jones Watkins Winterhaven Housing Authority Executive E. Webster Rashad Youth Keepers of America Executive Director Chandra Hall Human Resources Professional Hanes City Reverend John B. Mike London Minister Luden Minister Emeritus of the First Presbyterian Church of Lakeland Don Savage President Owner of SHR Human Resources Reverend Dr. Nathan McCullough Pastor New Bethel AME Church William Hope Chair Agriculture and Labor Program Dr. Orthal Northern College Professor Corey Turner CEO Made Mentors a local non-profit youth mentoring organization Rosita Stubbs a church member Derek Woodard Pastor Educator former board member Ollie Bernard Stevens a friend Mildred Blake another church member Shirley D. Parker local attorney Beverly Johnson a local citizen Sharon Miller former resident of Polk County and Marissa Green Haynes City Commission Marketing Manager I'll give those to the clerk as well just some closing words first I want to thank you for your time you want that sir I want to thank you for your time and attention you have given to this matter you have now heard directly from Ms. Campbell Dominic you have also heard from board member and former chair Adele Kahn and you have letters that I've provided to you from various sources I've also provided to your report to you the indicators performance reports over the past seven years also on this jump drive I have I have the last three years of audits which is on the website for you to review as well those voices matter because they speak to what this decision is really about this is not simple a vote on resolution it's a decision about whether Polk County will impose extraordinary remedy of permanent removal on a long-serving workforce executive based on disputed allegations that most describe correctable administrative and documentation issues it is a decision that will follow Ms. Campbell Dominic for the rest of her professional life and I speak to you personally that this has affected her emotionally physically and socially and professionally and it is a decision that will affect the stability and credibility of the workforce system that serves the residents of your county the county has used the word cause but cause is not a label you can apply for repeating conclusions cause must be proven with specific facts tied to the governing standard and supported by a fair process the record before you does not justify permanent removal what you heard today was not evidence of fraud not evidence of theft not evidence of self dealing not evidence of a breach of trust crime not evidence that she harmed customers or denied services to eligible residents not evidence that she acted in bad faith there's no evidence of gross mismanishment there's no evidence of lack of performance the evidence before you is that her performance was exceptional what you heard instead was a story that's familiar in public administration complex compliance requirements involving guidance documentation expectations and disagreements about sequencing processes and record keeping these issues can be addressed through corrective action oversight and clear direction they do not warrant the most severe sanction available and the letters that you receive reinforce that point from every single angle in those letters is a workforce leader known as Campbell dominant professionally for decades inscribed her as a hardworking innovative and a person of integrity recognizing the highest levels of Florida workforce leadership one of the letters tells you that describes her as a unifying statewide leader and a champion for both employers and job seekers one of the letters is from the leading Winter Haven Housing Authority explaining that career source focuses on an important partner and residents have benefit from workforce connections training opportunities and support and urging you to consider corrective measures and oversight rather than ending a more than 20 year career and losing decades of institutional knowledge and relationships one of the letters is from a community leader serving youth and underserved families describing her integrity vision compassion and commitment connecting people to training employment resources counseling and support service one of her colleagues described her as a present dedicated loyal and dependable and asked that she be heard with an open heart and given the fair hearing every individual deserves and of course the one from Joshua the customer who told you in plain terms that his work this work changes lives he explained that he carried barriers that many employees would not look past that career source helped him obtain employment that became a turning point in his life these are the human faces he reminded you that numbers matter but they do not measure trust persistence in the moment someone decides not to give up that's the human impact of this agency that's the mission and that is what Ms. Campbell Dominick has spent her career doing commissioners we're asking you to pull the motion to terminate and to reinstate Ms. Campbell Dominick not because it's the easiest thing to do not because it's a hard thing to do but because at this juncture it's the only right thing to do it's the right thing to do because the record does not support permanent removal it's the right thing to do because the remedies should fit the facts and the facts here call for clarification and corrective action and career not career ending punishment it's the right thing to do because this county benefits from experienced leadership institutional knowledge and trusted partnership with employers educators non-profits and community organizations it's the right thing to do because fairness does matter when government takes action that destroys a person's reputation and livelihood it must be based on specific proof and a process that is fundamentally fair if the commission believes additional controls documentation or oversights are needed those can be required if additional reporting is appropriate it can be ordered if correct action is warranted it can be implemented but permanent removal is not justified by this record for these reasons we respectfully ask you to vote no on termination reinstate Ms. Camden and direct that any remaining concerns be addressed through a fair structured corrective process rather than an irreversible and unjust outcome thank you for your time thank you attorney Finney at this time we will proceed with public I believe that's the will was there any questions I just have a question on how we're going to do this so we've heard from her attorney are there others at this time we'll open it up to anyone who signed up to speak on this matter they'll speak and then we'll discuss it as a board correct so at this time we will open it up for a public hearing do we have any Amber yes ma'am there are three first one is Gary Clark okay Gary would you state your name and address and you've got three minutes madam chair if I may yes mr. being just to confirm after a public hearing if we want to ask the representative from ms tacy camel dominic if he can come back up or is that we're just going to do it amongst the board only I'm going to leave that to the board because there was some discussion about asking questions of ms camel dominic once everything's concluded so I will leave that to the board at that time okay thank you okay go ahead Gary okay madam chairman members of the commission I appreciate the opportunity to speak here to address the board of county commissioners the career source polk board of directors has diligently served this community by ensuring employment and training opportunities available to county residents the organization led by the ceo and a dedicated staff has provided impactful youthful programs for decades launched and provided insightful employer sessions such as annual workforce summit and employer round tables to boost the skills of our county's human resource professionals and it's been a leading organization in the community the board of directors of whom I am proud to represent as the past board chair and many of whom are here today is comprised of professionals who are well regarded in the community and represent some of the county's best employers all our volunteers and all have supported the organization's mission and are passionate about creating opportunities for the young people veterans those who have been impacted by layoffs and individuals who are looking for improved or better skills for good jobs we've been the sponsor for the best places to work awards since 2003 recognizing such companies as coca-cola south state bank the city of mulberry the citrus connection city and many other large and small businesses in our community throughout this investigative process the board has not been given the opportunity to share its perspective on the stated issues with the commissioners we could not have predicted how quickly this process happened that in itself is concerning we've been cooperating with the county on the required reviews and we've remained focused on maintaining services we've always been open and willing to work with county commissioners to address any areas of concern we've not been given the opportunity to discuss what that could look like today but would want a chance to engage in the work to improve the organization and continue to support its mission we respectfully request that if you are aware of any issues any problems with career source polk provide us specifics we always want fact based evidence of such problems and the opportunity to address those as volunteers we serve with integrity professionalism and a passion for the workforce we give many hours take time off from our jobs and cover our personal travel costs we are proud of our work and we will continue to be advocates for improving access to training and competitiveness for jobs we ask the board to recognize the meaningful service of those who have served and continue to serve thank you for this opportunity to speak thank you next Amber Adil Khan then the next one would be William Boss good afternoon Reverend Boss is my name and I'm grateful of course I'm from Lakeland Florida and I'm coming to speak in support of Mrs. Dominic and I certainly want to thank you for your leadership and all that you do and all that you have done let me reflect back on earlier this year I had an opportunity to attend an annual meeting and an awards breakfast I can honestly say I was deeply moved by the service delivery of Polk Career Source under the leadership of Mrs. Dominic and also this governing board I visualized something that was so special to see such diversity on that stage and persons receiving vehicles to get back and forward to work I saw a young man that was hired on the spot I saw faces shine and I saw other pastors other leaders in the community hearing about the service delivery of this institution and the leadership of Miss Dominic even hearing today how she has performed hearing today how unfortunately misinformation has been developed by this governing entity and how council has presented such powerful testimony and even exactly how she has been evaluated consistently and historically over 20 something years and as a pastor and a community leader I have full confidence in this governing entity that on today that you would make the appropriate decision and not hasty judgment to remove Mrs. Dominic from her position given the facts that you have heard today I'm confident that this community want to assure that this governing body will rule fairly because I know and you know you don't want to go home today knowing that all that you have heard presented to you today and her testimony reflecting no intent to do anything unethical or illegal and then having to even entertain the thought of no insurance wages were taken God forbid if a medical crisis had occurred in her life and having the opportunity to respond and get medical treatment it would have been sad so today in my closure I have full confidence that you will make the appropriate decision and restore Mrs. Dominic thank you so much thank you Amber do we have anybody else no ma'am that is all that signed up I'm going to give anybody an opportunity that needs to speak on this to come forward okay seeing none let me just say Katrina Lunsford been around a long time been in crisis a long time give me your address 3733 Paula Court Lakeland Florida here in Lakeland been around a long time worked with problems a long time in this community worked with this county in this situation a long time in this community and one thing I would like to say when management and organization works together and get together in crisis we probably won't end up this way previously before we've had it where we've had problems before and there was a liaison there was this board there was meetings monthly there was CEO and transitional meetings with you all but to sit here and I prayed a lot and I thought about due process I thought about where we are in this country I thought about where I am as a community I thought about the hours I spent and I spent in serving and I thought about fairness and I thought about righteousness I thought about a story that I knew and I heard and that I lived by with a man that paid an awesome price to serve and they say Hosanna one day and then three days later they killed him and I thought about that there was a price that was paid for standing up and that one person counts and so a lot has been said and I'm very very concerned with leaving a room with shortness of anything that would not be where we can come forward it took a lot for us to fight to get before you today and that's never happened in my career Polk County all these years that I've served behind the scenes I never saw where we would have been fought to say hello to each other like it's been in this time I'm grateful and thankful for all of you all my prayers is that righteousness was prevailed that's where I am I'm not on facts facts is there but that we would consider how we would want to be treated in any given situation and that after we leave this room we have another county manager work with Bill for a while we got another kind of manager and then I'll say this is there something in the county that need to be tweaked for even your employees that will be more fair about treatment and let's look Mr. Braswell let's look further about how we operate and what that looks like so that when it comes down to issues of this sort that things can happen a little quicker behind our doors than coming before you all thank you thank you Amber did I see somebody giving you a paper for this nobody signed I am then 2425 performance evaluation that each of you can have and also have a copy of the responses to the July 31st meeting so at this moment I close the public hearing and I bring it back to the board well just for the record everything he just submitted I just want to say that we've already had for quite some time the responses and the evaluation that he's provided so that's not new information I'm just curious Ms. Lunsford is there something I missed just want to say that when we got in problems before you had the county manager you had the attorneys you had the board you had them to get together and you had them to communicate before you got excited in this room and that did not happen this time so I was saying that if you have an opportunity to look at your future maybe look at some of the operational side of it that would cause you less stress when you have to make your decisions for what you're doing okay now I understand and Commissioner Braswell if I may in the in the past the career source Polk had regular meetings with delays on that was forthcoming from them on a quarterly or maybe more frequent basis that was been years back prior to my okay so those meetings used to occur haven't occurred in a while and not while I've been liaison as well so again I think her point was more communication more frequently between career source Polk and Polk County versus getting to a point a discussion like this okay who wants to start the conversation okay is that yes for me yes yes for you I'm sorry yeah first of all I don't like how this has all come down because career source Polk is not part of Polk County we don't oversee career source Polk unless I'm missing something I can be honest and say I knew very little about career source Polk until this all showed up and I have a question Randy for you maybe you can answer is there an ongoing investigation here is there something else to follow have we seen everything there is to see I mean there's no there's there as part of our agreement with canopy they are still continuing to collect information and then I think as part of that to assist the board in what needs to be done going forward so they're still employed they're still looking into this or not not into this specific issue and stuff as far as what other corrections that need to be made with career source Florida that they are career source Polk that they find as they move through this process until December 30th and end of December and at the end of that we'll get some kind of report that says career source Polk needs to do this or that as the process goes through yes okay all right as I and you know when this came up the first time I thought it was being rushed I still feel that way I don't know if we have all the facts I don't know if we'll ever have all the facts I don't even know if anybody's looking for the kind of facts I'm thinking about that said and I'll just stay right out I'm not in favor of termination with cause because I don't think cause has been established I just don't think that's even appropriate at this time at the same time there is no doubt in my mind at the state here's an organization we don't pay any salaries right we don't have any financial it's a non-profit it's kind of sponsored or funded with federal money that flows through the state down to career source Polk that's my understanding and here we are making a determination about what direction it goes what I'm gathering from this whole thing is the state of Florida has determined that they don't have confidence in career source Polk that's the way I see it they haven't come out and said that but they certainly were the spearhead on this entire deal I feel this has kind of been kind of dumped on us and for that reason I think that it might be appropriate to just reset the entire career source Polk start all over again so to speak and if Miss Dominic is terminated I don't believe it again it should be with cause let her contract play out shut her career source Polk for a better way of putting it until it can be sorted out until it can be reestablished until the state is happy with what's going on I don't see any other way because right now the state my take is once this wants change and my experience with that is there's going to be change whether we do it or whether we don't so I don't think it's fair to her to do this with cause but I do think there needs to be a reset I'll let you guys talk next fair enough just from record perspectives to go back through on data I know there was questions as far as where the 17th came from where the 21st place came from this is going on public domain of analytics.careersourceflorida.com letter grades and performance is the direct link and in there it actually summarizes the scores first right now the latest reporting is Q3 of 2025 and then dating back to the fiscal year 2022 annual score and in those it does give a numerical value which obviously corresponds to a letter grade but there's numerical values for each one of those years 22 23 and 24 and then for 25 it's Q1 Q2 and Q3 when I look at those again this is data that's public information it does list career source Polk again in those either last place 17th place there's a number of places now we'll say going back to 2022 that there is a higher score that's there and then from 2023 forward you see the trend of downward and not really kind of that inflection point to bounce back up and I am aware that there are letter grade metrics if you will a score sheet that comes out each year that's the local workforce development board letter grades that's also on public domain there's been some discussion that I've heard as well where there's very subjective input that results in the score and again reading through the metrics that are there and assigns a weight to each one of those metrics not saying it's 100% empirical but it certainly is fairly direct and I would say scientifically based on math of how you get to what score you earn within that year and there are updates annually from again published information on letter grades but those letter grade methodologies are published on the same website and then there's also other information that's there in the list so again going back to where does that data come from it's very transparent it comes directly from career source florida and that is numerical data that's on there it's nothing that I interpreted or otherwise calculated to opine upon in my personal opinion a couple of things that I had just in and this is I guess it could be questions or it could not be one of the things when we talk about CEO review I hear that you know 15 board provided feedback on that what's interesting is there wasn't feedback from what I heard at least that there's anybody that works with the CEO in the organization that's partaking in the reviews as well it's only the board that does the review of the CEO or offers any feedback if that's the case then I would wonder why that is because really within an organization the health of the organization is not just the board members only that are volunteer based and attending meetings it's the ones that walk the office halls and sit in the seats so again more of a clarity point if that exists great if not I think further future board and CEO reviews should incorporate some feedback and some ranking or ratings from those that are directly involved in the full-time process from a just relating it to the October 2025 board review of the CEO understanding the average score was you know up near the highest that could be obtained mathematically and then during that time would have been the data that would be available from career source Florida would relate to the county being in a spot that's that's a sliding score so we're not quite getting to where we need to be again just based off of empirical data so when we look at the performance itself I think again to be not evaluating and understanding how the organization is doing would be a bit narrow-minded if you will on a review to conclude at someone's performance on the CEO side of things and then I'll just go through again this information is on the website you can see it they publish it they've got the quarterly data that's there one of the other things for me and kind of onboarding the onboarding was I think was fine I didn't have anything to compare it to for career source Polk as far as coming on as liaison on behalf of BOCC I did attend the the awards banquet and breakfast meeting however it's classified as in 2025 as well so I've seen you know the car giveaways I've seen some of the excitement that was referred to by the members that spoke today and and my opinion isn't the career source Polk is horrible as an organization or that it's failed 100% of the time my opinion is is that it's it's slipped significantly starting you know over the last several years and it hasn't had a course of of rebound and it hasn't had the leadership to get it to where it could go to career source Polk is an organization that that topic is needed there's a lot of people within the county that need jobs they need a way an avenue to understand how to get those jobs they need training how to get those jobs and then to go back to what the attorney had said specific to my company my that was just me giving testimony of we reached out directly to career source Polk and it did not have a good experience it wasn't reflective of again the whole bulk of career source Polk it was just an experience a couple times that I tried and the third time we tried it so we'll we'll give up on it because it's obviously not something that works and I blamed it on us it wasn't the right position whatever it may be and again that's not empirical that was just me stating in a meeting my personal testimony based on my experience as an employer in the county that I didn't have success with it didn't say that it was horrible then didn't go online and bash it then just simply stating my experience but not necessarily the last thing I'll say but I guess one of the other points I'll make to you is in June of 2025 career source Polk closed the Winter Haven facility as far as offering services and when you go online and list the Lakeland Career Center for all services now is the only spot you can go to and then it's still the same city on here as well the the issue that I have again when I look at from a leadership perspective and this goes both of the board and and the CEO and and querying the records there's almost two million dollars of funds available to career source Polk now not all of that is unrestricted there's different buckets of that's in I'm not saying it's all spend it how you want to spend it but there is significant funds in place to the tunes of hundreds of thousands of dollars that should have been able to keep open a Winter Haven Center or find a new center to where we can offer services to the residents of Polk County without them having to come directly to Lakeland only when you look at the size of Polk County so again looking at that and all that being said going back to the cause discussion again the pip to me is a written notice that is put together it has metrics that need to be met areas that need to be improved upon again and speaking with the state and going through the dashboard that's on public domain there's ways that we can educate ourselves meaning as board members as a CEO like learn new stuff have more improvement and have a better outcome that would be very beneficial to career source Polk and lead to again a better outcome without coming to this conclusion so I see the pip is again providing that 30-day written notice to a CEO you get on a pip as an organization that's never been on a pip before obviously it's serious in nature and to have that and to still have performance lacking and then to have the again I think a lack of clear leadership moving forward to rebound from that not only from the pip but when you look at the prior years again it's not like this just went into effect the pip is recent but the analytics don't reflect an organization that just started to slip six months 12 months ago it's been for a couple of years based on that and again going through the metrics of how they score that's we got to look at it and from a you know for me as a liaison I before the state letter even came out I brought it up to the BOCC to start kind of looking into it because again to me I've I spent a year and a half what I call evaluating learning educating participating from the rear view or from the front seat it doesn't matter I'm very intuitive when I look at how to understand an organization and so I brought it up to the board of just say I'm I am concerned with career source Polk not that I anticipated a letter from the state coming it it just it did happen but that was me looking at it as I would like to go ahead and go into explore exploration mode and then hopefully that would have some conversation come back from career source Polk as well to start that and then obviously shortly thereafter we got the letter from the state and that whole whole litany of obligations that we had as a county we had a timeline they weren't willing to extend it and so I just say all that this is a it's a complex issue but there are there's been years of it getting to where it is now and even go on to just the last bit again from an integrative data if you go to the Clio's dashboard on the career source Florida site participants served for 2025 Q1 it says adults is 126 for 2025 Q2 it says 126 adults served and for Q3 2025 this is 126 I don't think we served exactly the down to the person 126 people every single quarter for three quarters in a row again the I just see there's several components of career source Polk that need to be shored up and then obviously the letter from the state defines certain ones but there's other stuff beyond that that can make your career source Polk great and they can make it serve this community as it needs and with that I'll end there at this moment I'll just uh say this I'm going to shorten mine up pretty quick because everybody's pretty much said uh what I've had on my mind and what I've been thinking you know as myself personally I'm kind of like Bill I wasn't really big into this career source I mean I wasn't involved in it and uh you know didn't really uh know a whole lot about it uh then we got it we get uh like uh Commissioner Scott said you know he brought it up but then we get we get a letter from the state telling us what we need to do and how much little time that we have to do something and it is that we don't have never had any control over or probably should say myself didn't want any control over it thought it was not something that we had to that would be in our court but it has been and I can tell you this we spent time on it we spent taxpayers money on it doing stuff that we were required to do and uh and so now here we are and uh I think just like Commissioner Braswell said I think the state's going to do something uh are they wanting us to do it or not do it but we will do something but uh you know I think there's still some things to happen but like I said we didn't ask for this we didn't it's it's become something that we should have to come but it did so we're going to handle it so that's all I got to say I got a lot so bear with me um I have poured hours hours into deciphering what is going on here and I'm gonna I probably jump around a little bit but I first I want to go to the point about this being rushed in August of 25 we as a board and workforce our career source Polk was notified of the issue this is not new we have to take ownership in the fact of that we were not aware of our oversight responsibilities and that's why it feels rushed going back to some of the points um from the attorney that spoke again as with Commissioner Scott I believe when you're placed on a pip that means that technical assistance has already been tried and failed so that is obviously notice that the job is not being performed satisfactorily saying that we don't have factual information and asking if we you know how do you justify being either 21 out of 24 or 18 out of 21 again you can easily go to career source Florida click on the letter grades it will give you a numeric number or a number and that then translates into a score and I will say we were performing well as career source Polk up until 2022 at which time we began to see significant decreases and if you go year after year and look at the changes um from performance year 22 to 23 our performance went from a 95 to a 79 23 24 we regained about three points a little over three and a half points from our 15 point decrease and then when I look at the numbers they have had the measures come out they haven't assigned a number yet but I I think we're going to be probably back down to where we were after 22 and 23 career source Polk and in my view therefore the CEO is is evaluated on the federal performance requirements those are 18 measures that are included in this report I'm sure every board member has seen these you've talked about the areas youth your dislocated workers your veterans so very clear understanding year after year after year how you're being graded now this grade isn't the same across the entire state they look at the economics of your local workforce they look at your population and then together with the federal information and the state information and the local workforce board you come to an agreed upon adjusted goal we are failing to meet that goal and I wrote this down into what Mr. Finney said to sit here and expect that we need to see failures in all areas to say that there's a problem is short selling the people of this county one of the questions that's come up is you know I've looked carefully at at the board and when I look at the current bylaws that are on the website we have bylaws that were effective February 15th of 2024 I asked this board where is your member from Polk State College I asked the CEO that where is the member from Polk County Public Schools and you may say well we we address those in the bylaws well I ask where are those bylaws because your minutes of a meeting do not match the bylaws that are available for the public the minutes for a meeting that says that there was action taking on the taken on this matter include a person who was marked absent so I don't know if it's the fact that you don't know how to take notes and to keep records or if there is deception but I will tell you there is great concern when I look over this and so let's say that you did adopt the bylaws where you're going to remove that membership for various reasons I would direct you to look at another section of your own bylaws where it says the superintendent of Polk County Public Schools and the president of Polk State College shall have permanent appointment by the virtue of their positions they're not on that board and the bylaws in the minutes do not match we cannot operate like that as a government entity we've had a lot of discussion today about Stacy's performance evaluation for 2025 the piece that is missing in that performance evaluation is what career source Polk is responsible for and that is for job for people of Polk County nowhere do we look at what are the metrics that come out of this report and is that factored into her evaluation I understand that she may demonstrate leadership and and the other components that are in her evaluation but the ultimate responsibility of career source Polk therefore the CEO of career source Polk is about meeting those 18 federal standards and we have failed to meet them year after year after year starting for sure in 2022 how long do we need this to go on before we are in complete failure and what do we what do we risk as a county if we are in the situation where I think we are in looking at the data we are now according to career source Polk's policies their workforce policy we're eligible for sanctions those sanctions may end up in career source Polk being merged into another workforce board that will be detrimental to the workforce into the economy of Polk County we are an individual MSA when we talk about our jobs in our industries and to now consider that our workforce training and development may be combined with another county I think that's alarming for economic development or they may select an alternative entity to administer our workforce training when I think about all the opportunities that we have in this county to provide meaningful workforce training tied to our economic development that is now at risk why because it appears that we have failed a couple of these federal required standards for three years in a row I'm not a workforce expert but I'll tell you I have figured out trends just in my time spent understanding what all is going on when you look at the performance there is no question about what are the facts the facts are we are not performing as career source Polk when you look at the facts the facts are either our meetings are not being conducted in a way that that we are at capturing that information correctly to a standard that is should be expected of agencies serving the public that receive state and federal dollars if we're making changes to bylaws and we as the governing body have the ultimate oversight we should understand that those bylaws are being changed nowhere in the record was there any information provided to this board that you were changing the bylaws but again I go back to the fact that there is no record apparently of those bylaws being changed there's mention of it in a minute in the minutes by somebody who wasn't there or were they there and we're not taking records these are serious concerns that I have over the performance of career source Polk and as Bill said I think it is time for a reset it absolutely is time for a reset do I believe there's calls I do believe there's calls because this job by the standards that everyone understands how we're being measured has not been carried out now to get to Bill's point do what's the quickest and easiest way to get there we we can have some discussion on that but I absolutely believe that there needs to be a reset I absolutely believe that since 2022 we have been on a significant trend downward and then we need a change and the people of Polk County deserve it and they deserve better there is a tremendous amount of money going into this and I cannot sit here and think that we're going to choose to do nothing when what is at risk is the workforce development for the people of Polk County when I ran for this job you've all heard me say it I wanted my daughter to go off to college to come back and get a job in any industry that she wants and to recognize the place she's going to have the luxury to go off that many children many families don't and our action here today could severely impact the ability of our residents to be able to stay in this county and to get training for any job that they want and I and I think we need to do everything we can to ensure that that will not happen thank you let me just say that when Commissioner Scott brought to our attention back in September I think it was July that the standing of career source was like the bottom of the bottom I could speak for all of us I think we were all surprised about that information and that news so we did approve what we did say would you go ahead and move forward and do some more investigation on that and he did what I didn't expect was the fact that the next meeting we will have a removal of the CEO for career source Stacy Campbell that I did not expect I thought because this is all new to us I thought we would go through some process some meetings and things like that in fact I I said at that meeting at the board meeting that I will not support the removal of Stacy Campbell because I just thought we were not there lots of information actually I'm just going to say convoluted information very convoluted and when it's something like that I I can't I can't can't reset right now I think we need to continue to move forward with some more conversations and some more information Stacy has been in this position for a long time I think we all heard the opportunity to share if it's saying from 2022 why and how can we correct this but that has not happened actually I think I'll tell you who who's responsible for that the board is responsible for that not necessarily us so based on my standing the first time I'm just going to say I'm not going to support this resolution for permanently roomings uh removing Stacy Campbell I'm I'm gonna I want to see how this goes out the state sent a letter I get it we've got um uh attorney Finney presents some information very good in presenting your information to me but I'm just not there I am not there so any further comment from the board yes ma'am yes uh just a couple things uh one is and Commissioner Wilson brought it up so the letter from the state at this point and Mr. Meek confirmed I think it's $195,000 that we've contracted uh for canopy correct somewhere around there I believe that's correct all right so we've now had to spend a hundred and well in the process of spending $195,000 of Polk County taxpayer money to respond to the state's letter something that that Polk County from obligation perspective wouldn't have been on the radar for it but I'll say this going back to me on boarding and uh 2024-2025 time frame the PIP discussion um Ms. Dominick was very good during the meetings and other conversations of what I would consider or classify as rationalizing what's in the PIP that it's more so administrative in nature that there's what I would say as a sitting in the boardroom it came across as it was um the first time that career source Polk had been on a PIP but it it wasn't that serious meaning the feel of the room wasn't like oh my gosh we've got a we need to pause let's have an emergency meeting let's get under this let's establish procedures let's understand what we need to do it was more so of you know we didn't fill out some paperwork right there's some reportings that are not what the state wanted although we didn't know they wanted that way so those are the things that we went down so there was a during the testimony one of the board members had mentioned as far as uh with respect to office closures events and annual meetings uh that that he would uh you know he would approve them based on the recommendations by the CEO and to some extent I can understand that because Ms. Dominick was very good at pitching what sounded like everything is great and indeed going back to this board if I have my hindsight 2020 glasses on I wish I would have uh not taken that for face value and going back to August of 2025 ratcheted this up then but I truly thought that career source Polk and the board of directors you know so CEO and the board they got it like I'm just the liaison here I'm I'm I suggest but it's an important role but I'm not here necessarily to direct them how to do their job or how to vote it sounds like you guys have got it keep rolling what you're doing awesome but that wasn't the case and then to go there was a statement made during the uh presentation that there was no audits with negative findings in years and going on career source Florida literally from the programmatic report released September 11th 2025 identified 11 findings six other non-compliance issues four findings were repeat findings from prior year and uh overall the findings and the uh other non-compliance issues related to a lack of documentation so to Commissioner Troutman's point when we talk about uh even broader of board minutes and votes and the whole organization you kind of start looking at a characterization that blankets that overall and the last point that I'll make um as there is a specific topic talked about on the CDL or the ELDT training for commercial driver's licenses and the reference was made that uh career source Polk relied on a program approach from career source Gulf Coast on that very topic what's interesting and again if we look at it there was testimony given that you know executive leadership wise you know you kind of you're in executive leadership you talk to other executives you put yourself around people that are better than you or equal to you so you can have a a best opportunity and a good organization so when we look at how we should really posture ourself as career source Polk I would think we would look and mirror those that are number one two three four five like somebody an organization that's already executing and is showing excellence in their program or career source Gulf Coast has literally been last or next to last since 2023 so we we mirrored a program or we took some ideas from a program from a career source that's actually ranking lower than Polk County for other years so again looking at it from a direction of a CEO and I'm not here to say 10 years ago that Miss Dominic wasn't superb and a superstar I think that was referred to but I'm telling you over the last four years that there's been this slide and there's been what's perceived as unwillingness to correct and right the ship to have it go back to its former days of excellence or even beyond that that's what I would push for is not that the past has been good enough let's establish let's be a number one number two number three in the state out of 21 we can do that as a career source Polk but it's going to take proper leadership and a board that is again I was to Commissioner Troutman's point when I when I looked into the board representation and Polk State not being on there but Polk State has a really strong desire to have representation on there like that I've already gotten that feedback from Polk State they want to be on the board and of course for the school board as well a private you know a private entity to me doesn't count as school board member when you look at who's on the board so I think overall from if I said gross mismanagement there's some topics that I would say yeah it's gross mismanagement because if there's proper management we're not aligning with another career source that's last or next to last and we're also not going through and kind of being apprehensive about the urgency and need to address audit findings and get under it to keep you know if we if we do nothing as a board here the governor can come in and say here's my action have a nice day and that as Commissioner Troutman again said is a disservice to this county and to those that need the services that should be being provided but to more people in this besides the 126 supposedly reported from quarter after quarter after quarter three quarters in a row we just have a lot to improve upon so that's my last comment and I'm ready to make a motion anybody else needs to comment yes well again and then I go back I actually have the monitoring report from 2324 and in that year again we have seven of those findings and to read you know from this report itself a high risk issue that directly impacts the integrity or effectiveness of program operations or could potentially result result in major program deficiencies again monitoring year after year we're seeing these issues and I can't stress enough that we may not have been part of the discussions but this has not been rushed we were just not in the discussions where it was being discussed and I believe if we continue to kick the can down the road however we want to reset it I believe we are being charged and I believe it's the responsibility of this board ultimately to reset this so workforce meaningful workforce development aligned with economic development and the needs of this county should go forward and to say that we're rushed only because we got in the conversation when the when the state called our attention to it I'm embarrassed to say that's when we got in the conversation but we know better now and we're going to do better in the future as far as oversight but we we are late to the conversation but the conversation had been occurring for well a well established period of time and beyond before the pip there was corrective action plan in place that involved technical assistance but again we weren't part of that conversation we did excellent I will say in you know in 2022 we were right in the middle we were 12 out of 24 and since then we have been very far from being back at that middle point anyone else yes yeah and I'm just going to touch on this again ever how we do kick this can down the road whatever you want to call it Polk County is out right at $200,000 I know career source has money in their bank and then this thing's over with we need we need to be reimbursed that's the way I feel about it because we didn't cause you did we we did we didn't look where we should have looked I agree or been on top of it but we're the one that's got the letter we're the one that's trying to figure out what's going on here and it's costing the taxpayers money in this county and I think we need that to be reimbursed no matter what all right Commissioner Scott do you want to yeah just last comment up and Randy did you need to read the motion or sorry read the resolution before the no I believe you just adopt the proposed resolution the resolution is attached to the agenda so okay if I can just one one more comment with respect to the board again I brought this up to the board of county commissioners back in July which is more than a month from getting the letter from the state obviously at that time I wasn't aware that the state was going to send a letter but looking at again how the board and the CEO for career source folk presents themselves if you sit in those meetings or read the minutes like there's nothing that comes across as this is fixing all crumble and collapse on it nor is it come across as you know the state's going to put ownership on the county and the county's got to hire a consultant 911 style to respond to it so learning lesson for me as far as how severe I guess if you will the penalties can be from the state but also you know without me making a recommendation a year ago to dismiss the CEO and the board I don't know that the result I get comes any sooner because again I'm I'm cautiously optimistic I want to work with those that are in an organization I'm not to come in there and to disrupt it just because I'm new to it is not my style I want to make sure I understand what is going on how it's going on who's doing it root cause analysis and then if I assess that I'm like okay we have a bigger issue then absolutely I'll bring it to the board's attention that's what I feel I did in July and then to go forward again I think we have a work session on that if we don't get a letter from the state we have a work session on it and we kind of go through our normal process of exploring what it is but with the state's letter and the timetable it gave us and with no extensions being granted even though we asked for them it's a forced hand at that point and so again Commissioner Santiago I understand your point of of being you know of a quicker fashion but again this does go back to July and again me gathering data and the understanding I didn't want to prematurely alarm the board to something that from what I was hearing was kind of low-key in nature but under my own assessment that was no longer the case so I just wanted to bring that up for final and with that I'll make a motion to consider can I stop you right there real quick Mr. Braswell considering your comments am I understanding that you might entertain another motion that would be more tax friendly to our taxpayers to do a reset my only point I mean I certainly believe we need a reset start all over board everybody it has to do with with with cause and without cause um I mean I would support removal without cause I believe would be the term I believe unfortunately I believe based on the statute the removal has to be for cause not without cause so so there can't be just removal no it the statute requires for for cause as to find so so legal term or legal question because in looking at the contract we're not a party of the contract that's ironically but the the contract calls for a 52-week severance which is basically a year's worth explain to me then how severance would would factor into a remove a removal with cause since that's the only way I will tell you the the county's position is that we're not subject to that contract okay so that that contract those contract terms those are uh subject to the the statute and the statute doesn't provide severance calls our severance uh pay and so forth so I don't think that comes in a factor I'm sure there'll be a disagreement from the from from Ms. Campbell Dominique but uh from our perspective is we are working under the statute the statute allows removal calls there's no severance um provided under it and that's how we will what will be the position of the county okay okay let's proceed all right so I make a motion motion to consider a resolution permanently removing the executive director of career source Polk president and ceo Stacey Campbell Dominique second I have a motion and a second any further questions or discussion and just to clarify that motion is to adopt the resolution that has been sorry I did not say adopt yes I said correct to consider adopting the resolution and that second is to for the adoption of the resolution do you have to state state it commissioner travel that's sorry yes sorry all right I have a motion and a second any questions or further discussion hearing none all in favor aye opposed nay so it's three two did I hear a name from you yeah three two the motion passes three motion passes thank you and um and two we have another motion by Michael Scott yes ma'am uh and attorney me just want to confirm this one since it's we haven't had the resolution before this one's just your most you're making a motion right and then I think we still need to have that opened up for public comment okay so make the motion first yeah let's do that so the motion's out there okay and then did we you're going to provide clarity on the third bullet point of the motion is that correct yes sorry to those stated yes okay all right so I'll make a motion uh based on the career source Florida's notice data dated August 25th 2026 the compliance and governance assessment prepared by the county's consultant canopy management consulting group um I move that the boards that the board finds cause pursuing the section 445.007 Florida statutes to remove all current board members of career source uh polk board of directors such cause to include without limitation neglect of duty gross mismanagement and lack of performance and direct staff to provide the board members notice of the board's findings and give individual board members of the career source polk board of directors the opportunity to respond why cause did not exist to be removed and request to be reinstated such requests shall be submitted on or prior to October 19th 2026 and for the board to consider the request that a future board meeting to be determined and the intent of that is that the upon adoption of this motion they are permanently removed at that time and the board is just going to reconsider whether to reinstate them once there if they request to be reinstated and they show there was not cause to remove Randy I'm sorry would you sorry yes the motion is at the time of its adoption that they would be permanently moved at that time they would have the opportunity what is that time at the time of adoption of the motion today okay uh and that and then they would have the opportunity if they they so choose to request or submit a request to be reinstated and explain why calls did not exist to have them removed individually and then the board would take that up at a different date whether or not to reinstate those individual board members okay so now we will take public comment on the motion okay so now we will take public comment do we have anyone yes ma'am um adil khan has signed up to speak okay he is deferred i think we have another looks like i believe he's not going to speak okay do you have anybody else no one else has signed up to speak we do have someone coming up yeah erinza robinson i live in lakeland 1929 uh it's pretty uh strange that we as a people find somebody without a cause how could how could you actually do that how could you actually get rid of somebody without a cause which is what we what you are saying no no well clear me up on that i thought just just to be clear the motion that mr scott made was for termination with cause and what cause yes and you guys know the cause no you don't know the cause yet right you just they're just wording out there this this is time for comments and that's that that that's what this purpose is you can make comments but it's not a question and answer time okay not a question answer okay so i'm just gonna make a comment then the comment is with to get rid of someone without a cause and then to put the word cause in there just to make it sound good it's not really a cause it's just playing with numbers or playing with words mr scott has come up here and said i had said several times mumbling just mumbling really things that doesn't make sense i couldn't figure out if that you said that one person that was you were trying to get a job for didn't get a job i couldn't figure out if that person trying to get a job was you trying to get a job and ms dominic didn't approve of your you getting the job or you were trying to get a job for someone else you basing her whole income her whole lifestyle on one person and you were very elegantly saying that that person didn't get a job and you thought that ms dominic was mainly almost the cause of it rather than the board so i i fully couldn't understand what you were saying and let's do not get rid of anyone without a cause and for you guys to say that and then we're going to come back two weeks from now and figure out a cause i think you should let those people work until the cause is established and on on record thank you madam chair if i may yes yeah just to provide clarity uh we don't need a response just want to provide clarity my reference to an individual meaning my own job posting with career source polk as an employer was not favorable i did not base my findings or any of these facts that are on career source florida's website or any other things in the canopy report none of that reflects on my personal experience with career source polk what i was simply stating is that us as an employer of people in polk county tried to use career source polk a couple of times and did not have a favorable outcome meaning there was no response and i followed up four times to get a response back of at least they received the position and then there was no applicants after that so it's nothing and none of that was used in my judgment of it it was simply years prior to me becoming commissioner uh that i had an experience times two or three with career source polk and did not have a favorable experience so that was all did you talk with those 115 people that did get a job no and as i said before sir that the career source polk as an organization i'm not up here saying that the whole organization is horrible and that it should be shut down because it does no good or has no merit to stay in the county i'm saying it can do a lot better than what it is currently doing and that the polk county residents deserve the best that we can offer when we look at employment and workforce training that's all thank you anyone else wishing to speak on this and number two becky but you want to speak on this one also yes commissioners that's a lot to take in your name and address becky oh sorry becky bywater 916 brookwood drive lakeland florida with my years in business what i'm having a hard time wrapping my head around is number one why is no one here from career source florida florida to listen to all of you and give their input as to why they made that recommendation my other real problem with this is that uh miss trotman you keep talking about uh you now looked over the records um but in my business experience world at the end of each year um an evaluation was given and so if in 20 i forget 20 22 23 you say it all started going downhill uh why did it take florida a career source florida so long to bring this up i i don't get it from 23 to 26 and then in july you get this and now you're considering removal of the entire board i think you guys need to do your homework thank you anybody else before i close the public hearing 27 27 27 37 gibson only gallery road i've sat back here and listened to this massive confusing day this is just so confusing every bit of it a young lady trying to do her job the best she could do the state jumps on her tail and y'all y'all just have nothing to do with it it's just as much your responsibility as dominic's miss saniego if you really have a question you really want to get the honest answer to call your state uh state attorney general he will answer any question that you really feel should be made you need to look to the state i've got more to say later but i'll leave it alone okay this time i will close the public hearing and bring it back to the board and if i'm not mistaken we have a motion in a second that's right that's correct so um any further discussion madam chair if i may yes right all right just for clarity on uh specific commissioner roswell's concern on where career source polk stands if there's dismissal of the ceo and of the current board uh career source florida my conversations with them are they as an organization are supportive of uh providing guidance to career source polk there is an interim ceo nilda that's currently in that position of ceo so there is a leader in place and as far as a re-establishment of a board and a board that would be in compliance with the bylaws of career source polk career source florida is not expecting that we walk out of this meeting today and have a new board of directors assigned tomorrow 8 a.m so they are aware of the potential board replacement and they are also willing to support polk county and career source polk and establishing that board and will offer guidance as needed or as requested anybody else yeah so again just some general comments and and to what miss bywater said you know there's we've had to do a quick study of our homework and again i will say um the knowledge of the oversight that was expected by this board was news to me but i will state again the state of florida was working on this issue starting with technical assistance corrective action plans and then leading into a performance improvement plan they were working through the process of corrective actions to try to get this organization back where it needed to be were we deficient in our acknowledgement in our knowledge level of what was going on well first of all some of us weren't even here but i think the rest of us it it was an eye-opening experience for us and to ignore that would be disingenuous of this board so uh there's truth that that we have um oversight and i hope that going forward we'll do better but when it comes to the board what we're talking about is whether the board was performing oversight and accountability and when i look at the evaluations that was provided by the board members and not one single piece of that evaluation was based upon the performance of the organization to provide people meaningful jobs sustained employment and meaningful workforce development i think the role of the board has been watered down when her last evaluation that we spoke of where she gets meets expectations or exceeds expectations and we are failing i believe we failed three years in a row now on two of the same measures the year before that five of the measures the year before that four of the measures and to be failing and to continue to get meets or exceeds expectations makes me wonder what is a board looking at and i can look out at this board and there are several of you that i know have given to this community for decades and this is not about judgment this is not about that i think you're a bad person this is about oversight and governance and since 2022 there has been significant decrease in the performance therefore the services to the people of polk county and during that time frame to continue to get meets or exceeds expectations without really digging into those questions and i will tell you right now i was extremely disheartened when i look at a letter that once career source polk was placed on a pip performance improvement plan and the chair of career source polk basically writes back to the state of florida and says but no it's not our fault the other boards were all declining too except for two so therefore state it's your fault we have to take ownership of that and when we have a board that says well we're doing bad but please excuse us because everybody else is i was dumbfounded and when i look at the evaluation and you dig into the facts again in october of 25 we're reviewing data that shows we were number 20 out of 21 workforce boards we had failed five of the 18 performance standards and we get to a performance evaluation and pay that is with taxpayer dollars the chair brought forth a recommendation to approve a four percent increase the floor was open for discussion there was a comprehensive discussion regarding the ceo's current pay the decline from the ceo of merit pay increased during the previous year in the incentive structure and the successes under her leadership all members provided input there was a counteroff our motion made to approve a six percent increase to make up for not receiving the increase in the previous year and a ten thousand dollar incentive based on goals while we are failing i do not understand that and as a board i don't know how you can stand beside that because of the removal of the president and ceo stacy campbell i'm going to support the removal of the board members i want whoever comes in next and as a president the ceo to have a clean slate and to have board members that would work with the person he or she uh to make sure that we move forward with the board uh with the whole uh career source moving forward so we have had any more discussion yes madam chair if i may just one last comment and i know this the board members that are here now and the board members that are watching this that i'll watch later yeah i'm not 85 years old yet at this point in my life but i've been around corporate america for many many years decades um all the way through fortune 100 companies and i will say that in a case like this when you're still in the weeds as a board member and you're questioning why our decision and why these facts and kind of what went awry there's no for me anyways there's no rationalization for you to answer that question right now but when you get outside of this current situation and maybe two weeks from now it may be six months from now maybe a year from now maybe longer at some point you will look back and and i am appreciative of i know it's a volunteer board and i know you guys and and spend literally hundreds of hours over decades doing this and i appreciate that but at some point you're going to realize that this was the right reset the right decision to make career source polk which you as a board member have dedicated a lot of your time to make it what it is but realizing it can even do more and better and not be in a pip status and not have the county spending 195 000 to remedy a state letter you will realize that it is now a new chapter a better chapter but do realize that during your time as a board member you did help continue the organization and to have it be its own standalone organization and us as a board are now making the decisions albeit tough decisions but making the decisions to keep career source polk as it is now versus versus it not existing at all or being merged with another career source so again i know today is not easy and it's not one that you want to hear you want different outcome but some point in the future you will look back and say i understand and whether you appreciate it or not i don't need that affirmation i'm just saying it will make sense at some point in the future and that's all i'm not sure anybody else okay so we have a this is discussion and question on the motion be made so all in favor i opposed motion carries anything else mr scott yes yes ma'am last comment that i had just again from the as the clio for career source polk i didn't expect to get into being a liaison for an organization and having to call attention to it and really look at potentially large change i know the state letter obviously accelerated our path but i would like to look at seeing this through so that i can you know kind of look at the rebuild process and then go go through that because again i look at this as this was being presented in a much better way than what it was with respect to the board and the ceo and now that we've know our responsibilities because when i brought this up in the july uh agenda briefing it was very much apparent the county wasn't even aware of how much we could or couldn't do based on what we as a county organization uh weren't aware of uh what's career source polk that's all i'll say thank you ma'am okay then uh i have something two things under my name uh was randy do you leave randy do you you want me to make the motion or do you make it how do you want to do that well you can't make the motion unless you ringling your chair so you have to look to one your father one of you will make the motion for me well one of you can make the motion for me it's 0.1 consider removal yeah you better go on your mic oh sorry you caught me off guard here it's okay uh make a motion to consider removal of commissioner scott as lazy on of career source poke and assigning a new new lazy on as career source poke me the motion do i have a second yes you need a second you got motion we need a second so yes i'll second that okay so we have a motion and a second um to remove uh commissioner scott as the layers on to career source um yeah any questions or comments about this and i think we're here because of attendance i think that's the issue um oh i'm sorry i think i think i don't know whether we would have gotten a heads up sooner but i think that's what's driving this letting you know anybody else again just just to speak on that with respect to the specific quarterly meetings again a lot more of my time was interacting on career source bulk not just at a quarterly meeting and again attending those quarterly meetings that i did the message was always the same as everything's going great it looks good we're on even when it got to the pip again it was dismissive in nature so i would politely uh just you know disagree with attendance is the only thing required for this position i think knowing it as an employer knowing it as the inner workings of it knowing the state um you know data that there's a lot of value that i bring to it um again i'll respect the wishes of this commission but i do think from me going forward it's uh fully sleeves rolled up and into it but again that's that's where i stand again um seconding what mr bradwell's bradwell commissioner bradwell said i do believe we are here ultimately because we look at the attendance but i cannot hold you at a different standard than i hold the rest of the board and so um i have to support this motion and go forward and again look at a reset um for this entire board which includes ourselves and i definitely would agree that whoever's in there next we have to roll up our sleeves everybody has to get busy there needs to be more information than just the quarterly meetings i think it's been structured like that because that's when the state releases data but i think we really need to have a more intimate relationship um while this is going forward and in getting this back on the correct track of course okay well my comment in this for bringing this forward is we we've removed the ceo president we removed the board members and i think we need to remove the liaison county liaison select somebody else um if we're going to reset let's reset from top to bottom we're not going to keep board members and then keep you and not keep you or or do away with the board members and keep you i'm calling for reset for the whole thing then and that's that's where i'm at with this okay all right so we've got a motion and a second and discussion and uh now it's the vote did you want to say something i was on as part of that motion was to consider assigning someone as a new someone else as the new liaison curse source poke we can do this motion and if it passes then have a motion for exactly is that that's what i thought pleasure of the board okay yeah okay so sorry i need to recuse myself from the vote correct or not or can i still no you're not don't receive any special benefit okay very good all right all in favor i opposed no okay carries so now we go into the replacement of um commissioner scott so we need a motion for a new liaison to career source poke okay okay we have a motion and a second to uh select a new liaison for career poke source and that being that motion is for uh chris or for commissioner troutman to be the new liaison for career source poke and and this is until troutman i know until the new um assignments yeah the new uh chair will redo the list so yeah i think just for clarification for the public's purpose um in november when the board exactly is re-established then the chair at that time makes the assignments to the various boards so so you may end up on it and you may not and may end up on it or not on it at this point okay um there's one more thing i have and that's i'm sorry oh i'm sorry yes i'm ready to move this on okay so with that the motion we have the second any question discussion hearing none all in favor aye opposed motion carries yeah okay and then i also want to say that um fire national fire prevention week is october 4th through october the 10th and the theme for this year is is centered on the safe use charging and disposal of lithium ion batteries if you want more information on that we have information on the polk county fire rescue page on their facebook and also on the county website at polk's uh polk county website so it's the national fire prevention week october 4th through 10th stay safe okay madam chair yes before because i don't know if um we may see some mass exodus here um to the board members that are here in polk county as i've said to many people with public comment um i know gary you have my cell number i think katrina does um if anybody wants to you know make individual appointments and have time to talk through this um i know i'm open as well as the rest of the board to continue these conversations i've tried to be transparent um as far as the information that i've dug into to go with miss what bywater said absolutely we had some homework to do and i dug into that homework this was not made lightly at all in the decision and the information i've gathered i i put a lot of time and effort and thought into this but again many of you i hold in the highest of regards of what you have done through this community and and for others in this community for decades this is not a judgment on who you are as a person and so i want to make that again clear thank you for what you've done and we will go forward okay at this time we will go into the general public hearing comments so if do we have any we do we have a list let me give off let me give two or three minutes for the for the um people to leave oh aggravating okay amber do we have anyone willing to speak yes ma'am first up would be teresa gillard teresa as you come up state your name and your address and you have three minutes yes ma'am my name is teresa gillard i currently reside at ibis community housing in tampa um i was a resident of pulk county until june 5th of this year when i was evicted i am here to demand accountability answers and actions on june 5th i was evicted from the motel i had been living in for over 10 months i was afraid this day might come and had posted all the prior month searching for a foster home for my babies at that time no one was able to take them in i had four cats seeing my babies being taken and not knowing when i would see them again took away my will to live those cats were far more than pets or emotional support animals they were my family i told the officer in whose car i was sitting he may as well take me to the hospital as i didn't want to live without my cats they were my reason for living he asked me if i would repeat what i had said i said what i don't want to live without my cats i don't he then placed me under a baker act and took me to the hospital i repeatedly expressed concern for my cats and the nurse kept saying they would be fine but she would call polk animal control and ensure their safety i was placed in a room with a staff member monitoring me at all times the deputies came in after a few hours and told me my cats would be held for 10 days and after that they would either be adopted out or euthanized at that thought i screamed then they had me sign surrender paperwork it was full of blank spaces and i was still under a baker act therefore deemed unfit to make decisions for myself they told me 10 days there were no 10 days my cats were euthanized the same day they were taken every one of them marked healthy on their intake papers their kennel card said due out june 5th the day they arrived they were put in the freezer no hold was ever entered i never got to say goodbye i am asking this board for three things first an investigation into how a promised 10-day hold became a same-day euthanasia second answers who approved it and why and you're a part of that and third a policy change so that no one in crisis is ever again asked to sign away their family on a form full of blank spaces while under a baker act only to learn the promise that made was made to them was never real thank you thank you miss amber who's next cassandra richards cassandra richards i thought she would have left by now miss cassandra would i think it's evening good evening a long day i'm cassandra richards 2357 freeland the road you know i'm here most of the time don't always come up and speak but i need to speak first i want to say thank you jay i know jay probably gone oh thank you jay for the note for looking at the no through for the rest of the streets in highland park that's a great thing although i was leaving out yesterday evening and a truck came right on down one of those roads and he must have been there was a stop sign there because he always hit me but we do need the no through areas there because the traffic have tried to avoid the speed bumps so now they go down the other roads and the children are trying to get home uh get to the bus stop and that's an issue because they're flying down there another thing is the code enforcement i came to code enforcement meeting uh with one of the members out there because we have a lot of issues with um rv trailers being in the wrong place and it's still going on and that and that member have called several times i know we have a new code enforcement person she constantly calls code enforcement and they have not yet came out to holland park to enforce code enforcement i'm asking for them to be out there to enforce code enforcement and if they want to see someone knock on my door because i said to her when i came to that meeting come see me i will ride around with you out there to help you with code enforcement that's no problem because i'm pastor cecil garrett daughter i don't fear no man and another thing is stop sign the stop sign coming from bepsom park right there at lewis griffin and freelander it either need dancing lights around that stop sign or reflect or something because people are running past that stop you cannot see it especially at night i know because i ran it coming from church one night and i didn't even know that i had ran that stop sign till i hit one of those speed bumps i'm serious and i say wow where am i i had ran the stop sign i need those things taken care of because highland park will get under control i'm the president and it will get under control thank you thank you john if you would take her concerns john bode would take her concerns we don't want to forget them and see yeah thank you there's amber amber's there too but yep next we have rebecca landerman please take your name and address you got three minutes um rebecca 8983 okeechobee boulevard west palm beach florida i checked i'm allowed to speak today um that being said if i go over three minutes please i just want to finish um so good afternoon commissioners uh my name is rebecca i'm the founder of rescue dog network a florida 501c3 non-profit animal rescue last month i contacted poke authorities regarding animal cruelty investigation in this county i handed them the name the address the statutes i even offered the evidence i received no meaningful assistance no follow-up in regard to my quite serious hoarding and neglect complaint so i actually emailed every single one of you sitting here today um i'm still waiting for a response even an acknowledgement um i'm here because i didn't get an email back so um i think a lot of people like me are not getting emails back about this it seems so i made it easier i took a vacation day from work i woke up at 4 a.m and drove here from west palm beach i don't live in poke county but what happens in poke county does not stay in poke county when this animal welfare system cannot keep up rescues fosters donors volunteers and other counties are expected to absorb the consequences sorry i'm gonna go a little fast here we take the animals we raise the money we provide the medical care and that's why i'm here now i'm not asking everyone here to be an animal lover um but humor me how many of you do have a pet at home please raise your hand if you have a pet at home i mean everyone in here who has a pet at home okay great anyone who didn't raise their hand i'm asking you just to be an informed taxpayer right now so um because you're paying for this system so the system that you're currently paying for and your constituents are paying for in 2024 the share of animals failing to leave poke county animal services was roughly three and a half times the statewide rate um so for the taxpayers in this room how does it make you feel knowing that roughly four out of every 10 dogs and cats entering this system did not leave alive and you guys pay for that system so um it's uh not that you guys have more animals orange and hillsborough handle similar volumes poke had over 400 animals die in their care orange had 145 poke recorded 564 lost or escaped animals not sure what that means hillsborough recorded three miami-dade animal services handled more than twice pokes dog and cat intake yet fewer animals died or became lost in its care so intake alone does not explain this so i'm gonna sum it up of course have a bit more but i don't want to be cut off i come from a county that has banned pet stores we have incredible laws and ordinances and more coming down the road i highly recommend you guys start looking into this i think it's an absolute embarrassment for your county and sitting here today you guys seem wonderful educated friendly everyone here has been fantastic and i don't want that for you but your county is making waves in ways that you don't want it to and i will make sure that it does because this is insane i believe in taxpayers and their money going to the right things so again animal lover or taxpayer something's being mismanaged and i really think somebody's oh and i'm leaving with nine sick puppies today from your county because of that neglect and i have to come back and get six more thank you thank you thank you eve salambini hi everyone um eve salambini 4230 live oak road lake in florida um so i have a good follow up here since uh that woman really laid it out um polk county's facing a preventable crisis it grows every year and every year that we fail to act two foundational programs determine our shelter systems succeed or sometimes collapse that's pet prevention and pet retention in the past year the board's approved many multi-million dollar road expansions athletic fields uh trail lookout um the ridge district sheriff's station for 10 and a half million dollars these investments prove one thing clearly when you identify a priority you fund it yet the capital improvement program for the county which will serve over 800 000 people has no mention of the animal shelter at all even though we have a five a 50 year old building um our quarantine space of course is very lacking um are you aware that people are adopting dogs that die within 24 hours anybody because it's happening people are adopting animals from animal control and they die within 24 hours from preventable diseases we can't call ourselves forward thinking without our shelter operations and conditions that would be unacceptable anywhere else in florida commissioner wilson you prioritize public safety animal welfare is public safety braswell you focus on an order enforcement and clear standards backyard breeding ordinances and modern intake protocols are all of those commissioner santiago your leadership in education and community health is tied to accessible spay neuter vaccination clinics and programs to educate families commissioner scott you've emphasized transparency accountability yet we have no safe quarantine space in our shelter and commissioner trout man you spoke about strengthening communing well-being and supporting families pet retention programs do this so what do retention programs look like they look like spay and neuter ability um microchip clinics pet retention is low-cost veterinary support behavioral assistance short-term crisis boarding polk county repeatedly demonstrates that it can fund major initiatives when it chooses to animal welfare is not a secondary issue it's a public health issue a fiscal responsibility issue and a moral issue every year we delay modernizing the shelter and implementing prevention taxpayers pay more i urge you to make pet prevention and pet retention funded priorities excuse me and to place a new modern animal shelter in your five-year plan thank you thank you thank you kim smith kim smith okay okay uh kevin noble okay mr abercrombie brought some evidence with me name is james abercrombie 2737 gibson galloway road this is all evidence make sure you get some public records the first picture not very visible i can tell you what it is but i'll show you in a minute basically it's a control box for lighting for a baseball field next picture please should be a post that's it i'm sorry that's the post you see the wire hanging out the side of this post that box fell off there about six months ago i went out there yesterday just to make sure it still wasn't hadn't been fixed it's been out there that's management for you folks and it goes all the way to the top every bit of it goes to the top now the next pictures go ahead and just randomly put them through these are all hunt fountain park folks um this is what happens when the rain when the rain gets pretty soggy out there and oh this is nice it takes away a lot of the parking area for the whole area every bit of it they get out there with them big trucks afterwards and and that's it now there's what you i really want you to see we paid five million dollars to replace 50 linear 50 000 linear feet of fence this is what we got they replaced chain link galvanized chain link fence with aluminum fence on a base on a football on a baseball diamond that's how it ended up folks and the whole park is like this i'm sure not a one of them is going to go out there see it even though it's your favorite park but the whole place is like this there's a lot more of repair needs to be done here so instead of repairing it now we go and build a brand new and half a mile away that makes a lot of sense to me now you can you condemn this young lady for not doing her due diligence once again you guys were just as responsible as she was just as responsible you know about it two years ahead of time you gave her no assistance you know you didn't have try to help her at all once again this supposed to be a community deal this is all government you're all paid by tax dollars you should work together why not this lady didn't didn't know you've got a county manager once again he's just he's responsible for as much as you are him first because he's supposed to bring this to your attention at all times especially you the the chairperson chairperson same thing with the county attorney he should be informing you you said something about didn't know about this for two years you got notification two years ago you didn't know nothing about it there's your there's your answer that those two right there they're supposed to be running helping you stay knowledgeable stay knowing what's going on exactly you need to get busy you start blaming every some some instead of everybody else doing it yourselves thank you turn around thank you mr umbra combi who's next betty emerald betty oh sorry and stand up in the city for a long time i know you have too my name is betty jean emerald and i live at 1159 colony arms drive lakeland um well first of all just real quick this is kind of off but what uh eve just said in may i adopted two kittens from animal control and you know i'm a cat mom and i do go out there periodically to check on the cats because i care about them and i'm also if they ever reinstate the program i'm an approved volunteer from grady judge sheriff's department um i adopted two kittens they were about eight weeks old in may because um my one of my um yellow cat orange cats had passed away and brought them home and like a week later their nose started running i started running and then they gave it to two of my other cats so between um four cats that i took to christina animal hospital my total bill was almost between four of them a thousand dollars and that's a lot of money but they had they had obtained something from animal control some kind of virus and then it was brought home and my others got it so you know hopefully maybe we can have some recourse about that in the future um the first thing i wanted to talk real quick about is to commissioner scott i appreciate so much the interest that you have had in animal control and we try and take your advice as much as we can i'm one of three that visits as many as we can animal shelters and we have been to the ones you have we've been to hillsborough pasco i have not been to sumter but in july we went to brevard animal shelter and uh with which sheriff wayne ivy runs and just a real quick um they had at their animal shelter they were wonderful they gave us a great tour i wish i had had pictures i'll have to bring them next time as we walked in the lobby they have about five small glassed-in rooms made for cats to play in and then they have two glassed-in rooms for dogs when they need to take them out of their kennels they're just having a bad day they're real hyper and they can put them in there just to kind of be quiet and settle in and two of the things that we saw while we were there we were real excited about while we were there a man had brought in a feral cat that he had uh caught and it was going to be um they were going to t and r um spade and neuter and vaccinate and then he was going to put it back out and they have a huge um volunteer program and they brought out the cutest little black kitten you've ever seen and the um volunteer foster mom was there to pick it up so that that that's why their um load is so low because they have such a great volunteer program the day we were there they were between 87 and 90 dogs and they had 40 cats which is a low number um so i just wanted to give you some input that we are trying to get to as many of the shelters that we can get to and i really appreciate your interest in the shelters thank you madam chair for thank you yes yeah just appreciate you guys going to the shelters and again i believe we've got uh a meeting scheduled at some point not in the distant future uh to talk about that and share ideas so i appreciate that and the time that you're spending for that thank you becky bywater my name is becky bywater 916 brookwood drive lakeland florida i've not spoken in a while but i follow speakers and please for help from you regarding the county's lack of concern when it comes to human humane animal welfare you have not moved your position even with all the media and social attention in 17 months i was here the first time in june 25 however you do continue to draw criticism from and outside of polk as this lady today uh is example of a petition currently circulating from change.org i'm sure you're familiar with it is an online petition and civil action platform it is currently non-profit owned and has more than five million users change.org petition does not legally require a government officially to act but it can create organized public pressure here is their opening and a few points from their current petition with these things will not cost you a penny you have it in your power to request this from the sheriff i'll read it verbatim polk county animal control plays a critical role in our community finding homes for adoptable animals and helping families reunite their missing pets however statistics show the animal control reform is needed to improve the outcome for polk county pets the polk county shelter has the highest euthanasia rate in the state of florida i know you've heard this many times according to the university of florida's college of veterinary medicine the shelter's rate of euthanasia animals dying in its care and animals marked as missing a combination uf calls the non-live rate is also higher than any other shelter in the state please sign the petition to show your support for the following five point plan for change each one of these five points has a detailed explanation number one allow cell phones inside the animal control facility number two remove the shelter escort policy number three create a lost and found pet board number four permit community volunteer programs number five establish an animal control advisory board ruth bader ginsburg famously wrote real change enduring change happens one step at a time animal advocates here and beyond have taken those steps and offered to help it is unconscionable that you refuse to initiate change thank you thank you the last one is lisa hutches lisa looks like she's gone too that is all we have that is it yes ma'am so we close the i'm sorry no the what that's all we have that's all we have that's correct madam chair okay we're adjourned it was too you you you you you