Good morning. It is 930 and I'm going to call this meeting to order. It is Tuesday, October 13th, 2026 and this is your BOCC in action in Seminole County. We're going to start as we always do with an invocation and if you would, Father, lead us in the pledge after the invocation, we would be thankful. Lord, we thank you for the gift of this new day and the promise that holds. You've called each one of us here by name and you've given us the challenge to help build this community and continue to help build this community into the great community that is as we strive to answer that call. With confidence, we turn to you always knowing that you are always there and we pray, be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him. Do not fret over those who prosper in their way of life, over those who carry out evil devices. And so as St. Paul says, put on then as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. As God's children, we are the children of a loving and gentle and caring God who is ever patient with us, always forgiving even when we fail. And we ask this as we ask always through Christ our Lord. Amen. Thank you, Father, a man who needs no introduction. This is Father Blewett, who works tirelessly for our community. We know that by the number of phone calls that we get for him, from him for various causes. But we are blessed to have you here this morning and to have you in our community. We're going to start with awards, presentations, and proclamations, and we have a whole host of them today. And the first one will be read by Commissioner Zimbauer, and this is proclaiming Sergeant Kimmerle Bean, United States Army, as Seminole County's October Veteran of the Month. Thank you, Madam Chair. It is my pleasure to introduce this proclamation of the Seminole County Board of County Commissioners, recognizing United States Army Sergeant Kimmerle Bean for her outstanding service to the United States and Seminole County. Whereas the brave men and women of our Army, Navy, Marines, Air Force, Coast Guard, and Space Force demonstrate a resolute spirit and unmatched selfishness, reminding us there are few things more American than giving ourselves to make a difference in the lives of others. And whereas throughout our country's history, generations of service members have answered the call to leave their families, their jobs, and put their futures and even their lives on the line to valiantly defend our nation. And whereas for many service members, the sacrifice has ended in permanent injury or death, yet their spirit remains in the continued preservation of our freedoms and the promise of liberty. And whereas there are more than 25,000 living veterans in Seminole County who've served our nation in times of peace and war. Throughout their service, they've kept America strong. And whereas, excuse me, the daughter of a World War II veteran, Kim Beane carried forward her father's tradition of serving by joining the United States Army after graduating from high school in 1973. She completed basic training at Fort McClellan in Alabama, went on to finish first in her class as a Morse code traffic analyst at Fort Devens in Massachusetts, earning a promotion to private first class. She later continued her service as a military police officer at Fort Lee in Virginia. And whereas, sergeant being reenlisted in 1976 as a battalion armorer, she streamlined operations by reducing a three-day weapons inspection process to just three hours. After being promoted to sergeant, she trained as a stock control and accounting specialist and remained at Fort Lee as an instructor for two years. While stationed in Germany, she served as the ranking enlisted woman and supervised 13 soldiers. She completed her service on May 19, 1980, having earned two good conduct medals, the National Defense Service Medal, the Expert Rifleman Badge, and the German Armed Forces Markmanship Badge in bronze. And whereas, Kim Beane continues her commitment to service as Eucharistic minister in the St. Stephen's Church in Winter Springs, and as Sergeant-at-Arms and Color and Honor Guard Commander for the American Legion Oviedo Memorial Post 243. She leads military honors, oversees the Florida's Fallen Memorial Insignia Project, and serves with the Marine Corps' League Orlando Detachment No. 64, mentoring young Marines and supporting veterans and their families. Through her patriotism and volunteerism, Kim honors the legacy of women who advance to quality in our armed forces and exemplifies a lifetime dedicated to service. Whereas, Sergeant Beane has brought great credit to the distinction upon herself, the United States of America, the United States Army, and Seminole County. Now, therefore, be it proclaimed that we, the Board of County Commissioners in Seminole County, Florida, express our gratitude, admiration, and respect for Sergeant Beane for her outstanding service to the United States Army. Be it further proclaimed that this proclamation is presented to Sergeant Kimberly Beane, along with our sincere congratulations and recognition as Seminole County's Veteran of the Month, adopted this 13th day of October, 2026. Second. Motion and a second. We probably should vote on it. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Hearing none, it passes unanimously. To say a word, please come on up. And as we always do, we will take pictures all at the end of the five so that we're not walking back and forth and slowing down the roll. We appreciate you. Thank you, ma'am. Chairman and commissioners, distinguished guests, fellow veterans, family and friends, good morning. I sincerely thank the Seminole County Board of County Commissioners for this special recognition. Being named Seminole County Veteran of the Month is a tremendous honor, and I accept it with humility and heartfelt gratitude. I would also like to share this with the many veterans throughout our county who quietly give their time and talents every day. They volunteer, assist fellow veterans, and strengthen our communities, often without recognition or expectation of anything in return. Their example reminds us that the true measure of service is not found in the honors that we receive, but in the difference that we make in others' lives. My time in the Army taught me that service does not end when we take off our uniform. The principles of integrity, loyalty, teamwork, and service before self remain with us throughout our lives. They guide us not only in what we do, but also how we treat others and contribute to the communities in which we call home. I have been blessed with the opportunities to serve both our nation and our community and grateful to everyone who has supported and encouraged me throughout along the way. I certainly do not consider my contributions any more deserving than the countless veterans who continue to give so much of themselves. Commissioners, thank you once again for this honor, and more importantly for your continued support and commitment to the veterans of Seminole County. I am proud to call this community home, and I look forward to continuing to serve in whatever capacity I can. I would like to close with a simple thought that has guided much of my involvement in our community. No matter how much we have already done, we can always do a little bit more. God bless our veterans in Seminole County and the United States of America. Thank you. Sergeant Bean, thank you for your service and for your wonderful words this morning. The next item is a proclamation proclaiming October 2026 as Greenways and Trails Month in Seminole County. This will be read by Commissioner Dilawri. Thank you, Madam Chair. Proclamation of the Seminole County Board of County Commission is proclaiming October 2026 as Greenway and Trails Month in Seminole County, Florida. Whereas Greenways and Trails, natural lands enriches the qualities of life in Seminole County by promoting outdoor recreation, sporting tourism, strengthening economic vitality, and fostering personal health and well-being. And whereas Greenways and Trails serves as a vital environmental asset that preserves open space, protecting natural ecosystems, providing wildlife habitat, establishing safe and accessible pedestrian corridors between communities and conservation lands. And whereas Seminole County Parks and Recreation provides and maintains more than 130 miles of paved and wilderness trails that offer residents and visitors diverse opportunities to explore Florida's natural beauty. And whereas Seminole County Greenways and Trails and National Lands safeguards clean water and air, preserves essential wildlife habitat, protecting over 6,600 acres of environmentally sensitive lands for current and future generations. And whereas Seminole County's trails network connects neighborhoods communities and serves as a critical component of the statewide long-distance trail system, including the Florida National Scenic Trail and the Florida Coast to Coast Trail. And whereas the state of Florida designates the month of October as Florida Greenways and Trails Month to celebrate and promote the state's exemplary natural spaces, recreational trails, and many benefits that they provide. Now therefore it will be proclaimed that we, the Board of County Commissioners of Seminole County, Florida, to hereby proclaim October 2026 as Greenways and National Trail Month in Seminole County, Florida, encouraging all residents and visitors to explore and enjoy and appreciate the county's remarkable network of trails and natural land, adopted this 13th day of October 2026. Second. We have a motion and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Hearing none, it passes unanimously. Mr. Durr, would you like to say a few words? Commissioners, good morning. For the record, Rick Durr, Parks and Recreation Department Director. I'd like to, again, thank you for this proclamation. While this is a statewide thing, it is special here in Seminole County with the many trails that we have. As you had mentioned, over 50 miles of paved trails that connect across from county line to county line, and many, many miles of wilderness trails that are all maintained by our staff and small businesses which keep them safe and keep them appearance and keep those open up for the public and for good, safe public use. So we encourage everyone to hit the trails now that the temperatures are getting cooler, meaning it's not 100, it's mere 90 degrees, but please get out there and enjoy the trails. And stay tuned on our social media channels. We'll have a small promotion at the end of this month as we close out the month of October, and it's kind of a fun activity that we'll have out there on the trails. So, again, thank you so much for this recognition. You're welcome. And we owe a huge debt of gratitude to Rick and his entire team for the excellent service that they provide to the community by virtue of all of the work that you do, but certainly the trails and the parks and all of the activities that go on. The next proclamation is proclaiming October 4th through 10th, 2026, Fire Prevention Week in Seminole County, Florida. We have Assistant Fire Marshal Gabriel Schuller here who will say a few words, and this one is going to be read by me. Fellow commissioners, the following proclamation of the Seminole County Board of County Commissioners proclaiming October 4th through 10th, 2026, Fire Prevention Week in Seminole County, Florida. Whereas the Seminole County Fire Department is committed to ensuring the safety and well-being of all residents and visitors in Seminole County, and whereas fire remains a serious public safety concern both locally and nationally, and the widespread use of lithium-ion batteries in many devices introduce growing fire risks. And whereas lithium-ion batteries power many of the devices we rely on daily, including smartphones and scooters and e-bikes and laptops and toys and power tools, they store significant amounts of energy in a small space, and whereas when lithium-ion batteries are damaged, improperly used, or incorrectly charged, they can overheat and present serious fire safety hazards, including the potential to ignite fires or explode. And whereas residents should not use a device if it becomes unusually hot, begins to swell, emits smoke, or develops an unusual odor, as these may be warning signs of a damaged or failing battery. And whereas following safe charging practices and proper disposal of lithium-ion batteries at hazardous waste facilities or battery recycling drop-off locations can significantly reduce the risk of fires and associated hazards, and simple safety habits can help protect residents, families, homes, workplaces, and communities. And whereas residents should always use the charging cord and power adapter designed for that device, charge devices on hard, flat surfaces rather than on beds or couches or under pillows, and unplugged devices when they are fully charged. It's as though you're speaking to my family. Whereas, I was a little emphatic on that because of that. Whereas the 2026 Fire Prevention Week theme, Charge into Fire Safety, Safe Charging is a Superpower, serves to remind us of the importance of using, charging, and recycling lithium-ion batteries safely to reduce the risk of fires in homes and communities. Now, therefore, be it proclaimed that the Seminole County Board of County Commissioners hereby proclaims October 4th through 10th, 2026, as Fire Prevention Week 2026, Charge into Fire Safety, Safe Charging is a Superpower, and encourages all residents, businesses, and community organizations to learn and practice safe lithium-ion battery charging storage use and disposal. Adopted this 13th day of October 2026. Second. We have a motion and four seconds. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Hearing none. I'll ask our representative to come up and speak to this, Assistant Fire Marshal Gabriel Schuller. Good morning, all, to the commissioners, county manager, all the others in attendance. We definitely appreciate and are grateful for this proclamation. As we all know, fire prevention is much more than our fire inspectors going out and nagging businesses, but it's much more than just that. It's more than that. Also, just for us on our homes and the uses of the devices that we have in our homes, like Commissioner Hur mentioned, the simple things of unplugging devices when you're not using them, making sure we have a clear means of egress to get in and out of our homes. Simple things like that makes us all safe. So we all do our part. We appreciate your support from the commission. Definitely appreciate the support from our fire chief and all those that all support us throughout the community. Thank you, sir. Thank you for your service to us as well. The next resolution will be read by Commissioner Constantine, and it's a resolution of the board supporting the Viva Oviedo Festival on October 17, 2026, in Seminole County, Florida. Thank you, Madam Chair. And I move the proclamation of the Seminole County Board of County Commissioners proclaiming October 17, 2026 as Viva Oviedo Festival Day in Seminole County. Whereas National Hispanic Heritage Month, established through federal legislation and observed annually through September 15 through October 15, honors the contributions of Americans of Hispanic ancestry to the development, prosperity, and cultural life of the United States. And whereas generations of Hispanic Americans have served our nation, built businesses, advanced knowledge, enriched the arts, and strengthened their communities, adding lasting achievements to our shared American history. And whereas Seminole County values the contributions of all of its residents who work, service, and dedication strengthen the state, the county's economy, culture, and civic life. And whereas the inaugural Viva Oviedo Festival in 2025 brought thousands of residents and visitors together, marking an important milestone in Seminole County's cultural life, establishing a community tradition celebrating Hispanic heritage. And whereas Viva Oviedo Festival and its all-volunteer organizing committee have united businesses, civic, and nonprofit organizations, faith communities, performers, and residents in a shared effort to bring this celebration to the community. And whereas through private sponsorships, contributions, event revenue, and volunteer service, the festival is produced without taxpayer funding and offers free general admission, demonstrating the public benefit that community initiative and private generosity can achieve. And whereas the second annual Viva Oviedo Festival will be held on October 17, 2026 at Central Lake Park and the Oviedo Cultural Center and Amphitheater, extending the spirit of Hispanic Heritage Month and welcoming families throughout Seminole County and the surrounding region. And whereas the 2026 theme, Salud Est Vida, Health is Life, connects music, dance, food, and cultural programming with health education, community resources that promote well-being across generations. And whereas the community-led efforts honors the contributions of Americans of Hispanic ancestry as part of our shared American story while supporting local enterprise, encouraging service, and strengthening the bonds among neighbors. Now, therefore, be it proclaimed by the Board of County Commissioners of Seminole County, Florida, hereby recognizes October 17, 2026, as Viva Oviedo Festival Day in Seminole County, Florida, and honors the enduring contributions of Americans of Hispanic ancestry, commends the organizers, volunteers, sponsors, and community partners whose dedication makes this celebration possible and encourages residents to join this celebration of heritage, health, and community spirit adopted on this day. Second. We have a motion and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Hearing none, it passes unanimously. I believe we have Abe Lopez here to say a few words. Good morning, commissioners, county staff, and neighbors. I'm Abraham Lopez, and I'm honored to serve as the board chair of Viva Oviedo Festival. On behalf of our board, our volunteers, thank you for this proclamation, Commissioner Lee Constantine. Thank you for helping make this recognition possible today. This recognition honors both the heritage we all share and the service we give to the community that we love. We are teachers, members of the armed forces, small business owners, parents, and neighbors. We are proud of our Hispanic heritage. We're proud Americans. And we're grateful to call Seminole County home. For us, those identities, they belong together. We honor the sacrifices of our families by contributing to the country and the community that has given us so much opportunity. We teach its children. We serve its armed forces. We build businesses, create jobs, and volunteer beside our neighbors. Viva Oviedo grows from that same spirit. Our volunteers, they give their evenings and their weekends. Our sponsors, they contribute resources. Our performers, they share their talents. Together, we create a celebration that welcomes everyone with free general admission. We do not depend on taxpayer funding to produce this festival. Private sponsorships, donations, and event revenue make it all possible. We are proud of what people can accomplish when they take initiative and they work together. That spirit of service is part of the American story, and we are honored to contribute our chapter. This year's theme is Salud es Vida, Health is Life. Our partners will put those words into action through free community health resources and free screenings. And we're very pleased to say that Seminole County will be proudly presented there, offering community services to the public. Most of all, we look forward to neighbors coming together, sharing traditions, and enjoying the community we all call home. Commissioners, this recognition belongs to every volunteer who stayed late, every sponsor who believed in us, and every partner who asked, how can we help? The best way we can honor it is to keep serving. Join us this Saturday, October 17, from noon to 9 p.m. at Center Lake Park in Oviedo. Admission is completely free. Everyone is welcome. And we want you to bring your family, invite a neighbor, and come ready to dance, and come ready to eat. We would be honored to welcome you all at Viva Oviedo. Thank you, and God bless our community, God bless Seminole County, and may God bless this great United States of America. Appreciate it. Thank you. All right, before we move on to this next resolution, I just want to say, go state! Go God! This next resolution will be read by Commissioner Lockhart. It's a resolution of the Board of County Commissioners honoring the career and service of John Gillen from Seminole State College. Commissioners, it is my distinct privilege to move the following resolution. Whereas John Gillen has been a dedicated resident of Seminole County, Florida, since 2011, contributing to the education, character, and prosperity of our community. Whereas he has demonstrated exceptional leadership and commitment, notably serving for 15 years at Seminole State College as Vice President for Resource and Economic Development and Executive Director of the Foundation for Seminole State College, dedicating his career to helping people, strengthening communities, and proving that when great people come together, wonderful things happen. And whereas, during his 15 years at Seminole State College, John helped to grow the foundation assets from $11.9 million to more than $53 million and increasing annual fundraising to levels once thought impossible for the direct benefits of students. And whereas, John has further enriched Seminole County through active volunteerism and participation in vital civic groups, including Rotary Club, the Chamber of Commerce, Leadership Seminole, and various nonprofit organizations, giving selflessly of his time and resources to lift up fellow residents. And whereas, John possesses a rare ability to bring together diverse groups of people, identify common goals, and create partnerships that leave everyone at the table better than they were before. And whereas, colleagues throughout the region have long admired his unwavering belief that there is almost always a way to say yes, especially when students and the community stand to benefit. And whereas, John's influence extends far beyond fundraising totals and strategic plans, as his true legacy is found in the relationships he built, the doors he opened, and the opportunities he created for others. And whereas, John has also spread joy, laughter, and holiday magic across the community in his role as good old St. Nick. Now, therefore, be it resolved that the Seminole County Board of County Commissioners hereby expresses its deepest gratitude, admiration, and utmost respect for John Gillan for his outstanding service and impactful contributions to the residents of Seminole County, proudly recognizing John Gillan for his leadership, friendship, generosity, and extraordinary commitment to this community, adopted this 13th day of October, 2026. Second. We have a motion and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Hearing none, it passes unanimously. Thank you, John. And you'll see the good old St. Nick thing when he gets to the podium. First of all, there was a ruse. I walk in, I see the executive team from the college here. We're supposed to have an executive team meeting right now. And to see them here, I'm like, oh, okay, something's up. So I don't have any prepared remarks, but I have a lot of things to get off my chest. Keep it short, John. Keep it short. Okay. First off, going down the agenda. Don't make me come down there. Father Blue, and I've gotten a couple of your phone calls as well. So thank you for all you do at our community. The Proclamation Sergeant Bean, my father was a proud World War II veteran. He's an intern at Arlington National Cemetery and would love to be on the same day as you. Rick Durr, I serve on the Parks Board. I'm a Parks Protector. That was good stuff. Assistant Fire Marshal Gabriel Shuler. Seminole State has one of the best fire academies in the country. So there you go. And Viva Oviedo. Yes, I'm even connected to that. We have a small sponsorship, thanks to Vince. So we need to figure out who's going to go this weekend and represent from Seminole State. So there you go. Wow. Thank you. I am humbled. I'm honored. I look at this group up here as well, and I see all of you are connected to Seminole State and connected in so many different ways in support of Seminole State College outside of the role you play as county commissioner. I've gotten a chance to know each and every one of you throughout my time here, some through some interesting ways. And you coming on our foundation board, Andrea Heer, and hearing all this interesting information about what kind of a board member she's going to be. And she was one of our favorite and one of our best board members in the foundation for Seminole State College. It was not good, interesting information. She's going to be tough. And she was not only not tough, she was great. She was a great advocate for Seminole State College. Lee, as he at UCF and Charity Challenge. Commissioner Zembauer, always supportive of the Dream Gala and supports as well. Bob DiLari, always buying car raffle tickets in support of the Dream Gala and hopefully giving the car away. And we're getting a car back this year. I never won. I know, but we have another chance this year. February 13, 2027. Let that go into the record. You know the deal. Not getting an appointment. And we have another car this year. Thank you to Commissioner Lockhart and her work from behind the scenes as well to help us out as well. And, of course, Trustee Lockhart at Seminole State College and all the work you've done. And I get to carry on that work and the new job that I have with your daughter and with you, Darren, and with you, Bob, getting you reconnected to the organization that I'm going to and hopefully eventually recognize you in that board as well. Is this all going into the record as well? It is, yeah. I want to say I love Tricia Johnson. Professionally. Thank you very much. All the work we've had, all the conversations we've had, the service you've served on our foundation board as well. And so thank you very much. I get the opportunity in my next role, I'm going to be working with Leadership Florida. So I'm going to be traveling the entire state of Florida, doing leadership programs and development, and just really trying to understand this entire state, which I absolutely love. I'm a native of Florida. But I get to find out and truly validate the fact that Seminole County is a unique and special place. And so I'm very excited to still call Seminole County home. I'm not giving up my address in Sanford, and I will still be back and forth between the two, but I'll be spending some time in Tallahassee. To the team at Seminole State, to the executive team, thank you so much for the 15 years that I've been able to be here. Dr. Lorenz, our president. Dr. McGee, our former president. Thank you to everybody. I try to approach this with positivity, a little bit of humbleness with my big personality, but a lot of connecting, a lot of leveraging of resources. And we have a lot more work that we can do. But just thank you very much. I appreciate it. Thank you. All right. If you'll have a seat, Commissioner Constantine, we're not quite ready yet. I was clapping for John. You did follow my directions, but we are going to queue up the consent agenda because there are some proclamations on the consent agenda who would like to take pictures. So it's probably a good idea that we pass those before we take pictures. So, County Manager, are there any additions or deletions? Thank you, Chairman and Commissioners. No changes to the consent agenda. Commissioners, anything to pull or discuss? I have nothing. Seeing none, I'll look for a motion. Madam Chair, I will move consent agenda for the constitutional officers number six and number seven and the county manager consent agenda eight through 37. Second. All right. Are there any public comments? No, ma'am. All right. We have a first and a second. Any discussion? I heard the pounding on the desk, but I was going there. I got you. All those in favor? Aye. Aye. Opposed? Hearing none. It passes unanimously. If you would all join me on the floor for pictures, that would be fabulous. But then it's like that. It's not going to be the news. That we pull this back together. Just say it like it is. We're going to ask that the boys come back to the dais. As they say in the sorority, John Azita, good night, good night, good night. Commissioners, we are at item 39, the Mark Sand Model Update. This will be delivered by Tanya Lohr, Public Works Director, and an entire crew. I believe there might be a Stetson Hatter in the audience. Go Hatters. Good morning, Madam Chairman, Commissioners. Thank you for allowing us to give you an update for the Mark Sand Model. I also, as you indicated, Dr. Jason Evans from Stetson University is here, as well as Jennifer Rupert from the East Central Florida Regional Planning Council. I do want to say a special thank you to the East Central Florida Regional Planning Council because they actually partially funded this study. And so without our partners, we couldn't do the good work that we do. So today is actually, I think, a very good timing with 11 inches of rain last week. It's probably a good timing to talk about what our conservation priorities could be to help with our flooding protection and our stormwater system. And that's precisely what the Mark Sand Conservation Strategy that was developed by Dr. Jason Evans will help us with. So our agenda for today is to provide you with a model overview, provide you with some project objectives, the timeline, our outputs, what we used for our data collection, who we coordinated with for our stakeholders, as well as our project findings on our next steps. So without further ado, we will invite the Mad Hatter up here to lead us through the presentation. Thank you. Thank you so much. All right, so it is wonderful to be here. Thank you for having me. Oh, the crowd really thinned out. I thought they were here to learn about Mark Sand today, so I'm kind of disappointed, but that's okay. Yeah, so we've been working on this project with Mark Sand for about 18 months now, I want to say. And so you might be wondering, what is Mark Sand? So this is a model that was developed by the Nature Conservancy about 25 years ago. And it's widely used throughout the world for helping to solve really complicated conservation challenges. And so the idea is that you want to prioritize what is most important to protect at the most cost-efficient way. And so this model has been used all around the world. For some reason, not so much in Florida. We started using it with the Regional Planning Council about, what, about five years ago now? We started in Volusia County, and we've been kind of working our way through. And I'm not just saying this. This has been the most fun working in Seminole County, and the county has been so engaged. And then so we have a really, really nice product to share with you all here. And so what does it do? So you take any kind of data sets. So this can be conservation lands that you already have. This can be stormwater flooding issues. It can be trails. And we used all of this. And then you get your stakeholders together, and then they help you kind of go through, and, okay, what are your priorities? And then you take the priorities, you put in the model, and then it will take lots of complicated information. So we put about 15 different variables into these models. And then so if we were to show all those maps and try to make sense of it, that would be really, really difficult. But it helps integrate those into maps that shows the priorities. And then we're going to show maps and visualizations. And then so that's important just to look at, but there's also lots of data sets. And so you can get really granular. You can look at, like, each parcel level. And we also trained your county to use the model, which this is the first county that we've done that. So next slide. Thank you. So, yeah, so what did we do? So we worked with the county. We worked with the cities and with lots of other partners. We're going to have a list of this. And then we went through the priorities. And this was right on the heels of, of course, all the flooding that we had with the hurricanes. And so there was a lot of interest in folks. And then a lot of, with the counties and with the cities, there was a lot of really specific information where people were like, this flooded here, this flooded here. Here's a priority here. And then that was great because we'd run it through the model. And then the first model, we wanted to have feedback. And people were like, you didn't catch this. Why didn't you catch that? So then working through all of this, right, so going through this process. And then we have a report. And so it's about a 90-page report with maps as well for the county. And I've already talked about the training. So we actually trained your staff to where we actually trained them to fish, as we said, I think John Slott said. So we're going to do this, and we want to keep doing this. We want to do this in-house. And so we did train your staff to do that. Okay, next slide, please. So we started in March 2025, and then we actually got a grant through the DEP, which helped fund about two-thirds of this, I want to say, Jen. Is that about right? And we had workshops. The first one was in March. We had one in April, and then we had another one that was back in November 2025. We did the training. That was in March of this past year. So I had your staff come to Stetson. It was a lot of fun. They were taking a class with me. And it was painful for them, but they learned a lot, which was good. And then worked with your staff. And then so the first report was in, let's say, April of 2026, and your staff went through it with a fine-tooth comb, and they put me through the wringer, which was great. And so very, very particular about the maps. And so we spent about a month just updating the maps and making sure that they look the way that folks want them to look. And then we turned that in in May of – so let's say May 29th of 2026 is when we turned that in. Okay. So for the outputs, and so what does the Marksend do? So for one, looking at flood vulnerability and also resilience, I will say the county, you have these hydrologic basin studies that you recently completed. Now, I've worked in a lot of counties throughout Florida, and I'm not just saying this. I think it's – those are really the best comprehensive – I say stormwater studies I've seen throughout the county. So we use a lot of that information, which was an enormous amount of information to have to work through. And then so we can use this to update things like stormwater master plans, look for conservation strategies, and then trying to integrate conservation with flood resilience. And this is a really big thing we're trying to push all the way from the local level all the way to the federal level. We think of conservation often as it's for the bees and for the bunnies, but it really is part of our infrastructure. It's part of our infrastructure to where – so it's holding stormwater. It's things like recharge for the drinking water. And so we have this work that's being done, plus we also use it for things like recreation and trails. But then trying to integrate these things very strategically is what we're trying to do here. And so we also worked and said, okay, what were opportunities? So we're doing priorities with trails. We're doing priorities for stormwater infrastructure. So I'm going to show you. We actually did five different runs of the Marksend model where we did different kinds of prioritizations. And then we clumped everything together as well. And why is this important as well? So then with the planning, when we're trying to make grant acquisitions, we're trying to get acquisitions, right, when you're trying to do like Seminole Forever projects, they're having partners, right? So having just more information for those asks, this can be really, really helpful for that. Next slide, please. So what did we use? So we had – for one, we just had the inventory of what's already conserved in the county. We used the Florida Natural Areas Inventory. The state of Florida has wonderful inventories and maps of all kinds of different resources. And so that was actually 10 different maps that we used through there. We also used the valuations for the property. We used all of the data from each of the drainage basin studies, which, again, that was an enormous amount of data. We also looked at what's owned by the county in terms of stormwater infrastructure. We also looked at trails. And then the county also has a record of where there's been flooding. And so we used all of that information as well going back to Tropical Storm Fay. And so this is, again, another very unique sort of data set to where there's documented floods that we can say, okay, this has flooded in the past. Next slide. So here's the long list of stakeholders. I'm not going to read through all these, but all the cities, a lot of environmental organizations, a lot of state agencies were involved with this. They were really robust workshops. Next slide here. Okay. So what did we come up with? So this is the Florida Natural Areas Inventory, and this is the baseline of what we did. And so we looked through and said, okay, what is already conserved in Seminole County for each of these 10 things of importance? For example, the groundwater recharge, wetlands, a sustainable forestry. And then we had the stakeholders work through us to say, okay, what's a target for these? And we said, okay, it can't be 100%, right? Because if it's 100%, then we just are going to conserve everything. That's not to say we don't want to conserve everything eventually, but then we want to have prioritizations. And so it can't be 100%, but then we want to rank these. And so what we found was anything with wetlands and floodplains and also with recharge was what really came to the top. And so within a Seminole County, if we look at groundwater recharge, only about 12% of what's considered important is actually protected, which makes sense because where do we get recharged? That's in the high and dry areas largely, and those are the areas that we have, of course. That's where it's easier to develop. So the areas that are left that are high-priority recharge, that was really identified as, okay, we really want to focus in on trying to grab those areas. Okay, next slide. And so this is just a baseline map and showing what is already conserved, what is conserved and is actually within the Florida Wildlife Corridor. We used the Florida Wildlife Corridor because this was passed by the state back in 2023, 2024. Do you remember, Jen? But it was passed unanimously by the state, which it's very difficult to get anything through the legislature unanimously. And so the fact that this was a bipartisan thing that shows this is really, really important, and there is a lot of funding with the Florida Wildlife Corridor. And then we showed areas in the Florida Wildlife Corridor that are not yet conserved. All right, so next slide. Okay, and this is just one example with the Florida Natural Areas Inventory. I'm not going to go through all of these because, again, it's 10 of these. But what it does for these maps, it says, okay, for this one, strategic habitat conservation area, and it ranks them one to five. And so a one means that is the most important. It's critical habitat area. Five means that it is good habitat, but it's not necessarily critical habitat. And if it's not on there at all, these are going to typically be developed areas, urban areas, that are not considered to have a lot of habitat conservation value. Okay, so now I'm going to go through the models. And you can stop me any time with questions, please. So the first is what we just call this our default way for the model, where you're trying to minimize acquisition costs. And so what does the model do? So it tries to, one, meet all of the priorities that you set, and it tries to connect the existing conservation areas with each other, and it tries to minimize costs. And so it takes those three objectives, and then it runs through 10,000 iterations, and it converges on a solution. And so this is what it looks like here if just costs is the thing that we're worried about. And then we like to compare it, if we go to the next slide, so this one here, we take cost out of it. We basically set cost to zero, and this would be maximized conservation, that if cost is no objective at all, which we know that's not the case, but if it's not, then this is what just trying to link up and trying to conserve and meet all of the objectives. And then I will just point to one area here. So Black Hammock, which I'm sure you all know where Black Hammock is, but that's an area where, with costs, so if we go back a slide, can we kind of go back one slide? So if cost is something that we're thinking about, most of Black Hammock kind of falls away, but then if we take cost out of it, and then you can kind of go back again, then we see that that ends up being a high-priority area. We know, just talking with staff, that would be a difficult area to do a lot of acquisitions. You have a lot of small parcels, that sort of thing. Not to say that you couldn't do acquisitions, but that just shows the way the model works, right, with differences. Okay, next slide. So this one here has to do with drainage structures, and so we looked at what is owned by the county in terms of things like canals or pipes and ditches, right, so any kind of stormwater that's maintained by the county, and so acquisitions that may be for stormwater parks or some kind of big project. So that's what this is showing, to maximize that as your overall objective. And, again, we see with this that Black Hammock, again, kind of pops out as an area that could be good for doing that kind of project. Let's go to the next slide here. And this is for trails, and this is for existing trails, and then for new trails, and if we're saying that kind of connectivity is going to be the priority, this is what the map looks like here. And let's go to the next slide. And then if we're talking about flood mitigation, again, Black Hammock is the one that kind of comes in and out. I always just kind of was keying in on that area. And if we're trying to do flood mitigation, then that area really comes out again as that should really be a big priority. And I will just note, it's not a surprise for all of these maps. We see that the eastern county is where there's a lot of undeveloped area. There's a lot of opportunity for conservation within those areas, and that's where the model really keyed in. And there are, and it's hard to do this within this kind of presentation, that if you zoom in within kind of the urban areas, there are some places that actually do pop out. And so we can kind of see, yeah, here there's a few areas that pop out. And then the way that we visualize this as well, we kind of smooth it out a little bit. And so there are areas that, within the actual GIS data, there are some parcels within the urban area that do pop out. But you can't really see that so much within these maps. But then we do see, again, within the eastern county that, again, it should be no surprise where we have large parcels, a lot of areas that are undeveloped. That's really where the priority is for conservation. And then for the last model, we just take them all together. We take the five, and this will be the composite. And then so areas where we see kind of the dark purple, that's where it's important for every single one of the models. It was basically insensitive to any of the cost or else if we're looking at drainage. So these are areas that are really, really, really, really, really high priority. And, again, somewhere like Black Hammock, kind of in the middle, right? So that one's very sensitive to what kind of priority you're looking at. All right, so then with the overall project findings, so that if we were to do everything that the Marksend is asking us to do, that we would end up with about somewhere between 34% to 37% of the county's total land area would end up being in conservation. And that could be conservation easements. That could be green space. That could be fee acquisition. And as of right now, I want to say the county has about 27% of its land is in conservation. So this would be a bump up, of course. And then, again, most of the acreage is going to be within the eastern county. But, again, we did flag some of these parcels within the urban area. And, again, we've got the GIS data for the county to really key in. And that's where really the work is done to really get into the weeds. When you have a project, when you have a potential project, then you can do an analysis using this. And then, again, within the urban areas in particular, that's hard to see within some of this here. But then you can really key in on some of these parcels. So what are next steps? So I really committed to working with the county. So when there are updates that need to be done, say, in the next three to five years, that I'm not too far down the road. And I am happy to help with this. I'm really a nerd with this. And I hate to say this because I do this without even getting paid because I just love doing it so much. And so I know if the university heard that, they wouldn't like that. But I am happy to help, of course. And so the staff, I've asked them just, they can reach out to me. And there's not going to be, like, billable hours or anything. So please reach out. And then, of course, to help with acquisition. So we know that Seminole Forever is a really important sort of component here in the county. And then so we are going to present to them within the next couple months. And then how we can kind of integrate this with their work. And we have won an award. Can I have Jen Rupert come here and talk about this a little bit? Because she knows a lot more about this award than I do. I was going to say. Well, we won an award. It's just a National Association of Development Organizations award. This work that we've done together in partnership with Seminole County and all of the cities and conservation communities was recognized at a national scale for bringing, you know, the partnership and then some of the outcomes that we looked at joining conservation with flood mitigation. So congratulations to you all. So thank you. So thank you for that. I know it's really good for me to have this award on my seat. So thank you for the county in allowing us to work with you on this. And so, yes, if you have any questions for me now, I'm happy to address them. And, of course, you can reach out to me any time. And I'm happy to talk with anyone about it. All right. Commissioners, any questions? Yes. Commissioner Lockhart. At some point in time, the weighting, W-E-I-G-H-T, of the criteria will maybe change from what is in there currently. Is there a process established yet for how those weights might change and whose input you would take to change them? Yeah, that is a great question. And so, yeah, we would typically do that through workshops. We could also do it through surveys. And so there are kind of different ways of doing that. We can do it. It's actually really easy to change the weights in the model. All the hard work is just getting the model set up. But once we have the weights, that's actually very easy to change. And so we could even run it. Let's say if any of you said, well, what if you change the weights to this? That we could actually run that very, very quickly. Okay. That's fantastic. Because we like to tinker. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's actually very easy to do that tinkering. And then we have all of that data with the county. Be careful what you offer here. Well, that's right. And also I'll say that the county has all of that data. And then I know that, oh, you've actually got a new GIS director, Joshua Sheldon. And then he used to work for the Regional Planning Council. And I'm actually really good friends with Josh. And he's been trained. And so he knows how to do it. Poor Josh. Poor Josh. Yeah, poor Josh. Yeah, but yeah, so I could work with Josh. And I'd be happy to, yeah, that's actually really not a hard thing to do. Wonderful. Thank you. Coach, your door. Thank you. Great model, great information. But does your model or is it get into the stormwater from the TMDL standpoint? It does not really directly do that. Indirectly, I know it does. But if I'm looking at parcels, would it be looking at it from the perspective of what pieces or what elements of it to help reduce the TMDLs? So that would need to be integrated probably with the basin studies because I believe they do look at that information a little bit. And so, yeah, you need to integrate it with this other information. And then with the model, it doesn't get into spring flow shed about how to preserve that with the groundwater because you're actually talking about groundwater recharge areas as well. Yes, and actually with that, with the groundwater recharge, the way that they come up with those layers within the Florida Natural Areas Inventory, that actually does have, yeah, so that has critical spring shed areas. That is one of the most important components of that. Great. I look forward to that. Absolutely. Thank you. Follow up. Yes. So great point on TMDLs. Is there a possibility to integrate with the watershed atlas that should have our water body TMDLs? Yeah. I mean, and I have to think about that some more. And so certainly looking at areas where, yeah, you've got a TMDL that's set, right? So I'm just thinking in terms of a GIS person right now, so excuse my lingo, but in terms of the polygons, right? So you're going to have a watershed that's going to be underneath the TMDL, and you could use that geography. That could be another way of actually prioritizing things. We didn't do that this time, but say – It would be a great way to prioritize stuff to figure out – Yes. There's actually a cost savings for us from that standpoint. Yeah. Well, that's a great point, and so that is another thing that could be added in the – we didn't do it this time, but that certainly could be added. Since we know those areas, right, so if you have a priority TMDL and say we want to boost the conservation within this area because it's pitched via cost savings, that could certainly be integrated into the model. Because we actually could help get grant money to fund some of that because of the reduction of that. Yeah. So this is – yeah, this is great stuff. And so I'm actually – yeah, my gears are turning right now as to how that could be done, but it can be done. I can just say it can be done. Yeah. Commissioner Zimbauer? Well, just on the watershed atlas thing real quick. So my thought process on that is that it's very community-facing. It is something that the public uses, and so if there was a way to have that information be integrated, any member of the public could go on the watershed atlas and see what the prioritization of that water body is based on the other data that we have. Yeah, that's a great – Like in a two-way fashion. Sorry. Thank you. That's all. I promise. It's okay. And with the watershed atlas, and so that's a – so is that actually like a GIS? So I think we could probably put this information just straight up on the atlas. As long as the county wanted to do that, but there shouldn't be anything to prevent that, I don't think. It's a partnership. Is it with USF? University of Florida. Okay. Small school to the north. Yeah, that's right. That's University of Florida. Mr. Zimbauer. Thank you. As I look at this modeling and how this data is put together, are all the data points static that are considered for this modeling? They are for this round, but that's the reason why that we have to do updates because, of course, everything's going to change. So let's go back in history to Tropical Storm Fay, by example. We have data from that time frame. We have had and hired consultants, who the county did at that time, to go in and take high water level marks, measurements throughout the watersheds and so forth, which we should have, which are data that can be relied upon. With that in mind, what consideration does the model give or afford with that data when engineering fixes have already been plugged in or identified to help alleviate the Tropical Storm Fay event? That's my first question. That's my first question. Second question is, what consideration is given to wildlife species that are not static and that do, either through the breeding cycles or their natural transitions during the weather patterns, transition and go from one area to another, sometimes very far distances? And then with the cyclical nature of weather that we're experiencing and have experienced over the last, say, 10 years and continue to have these weather cycles, what consideration is given to that? Okay, let me address these one by one here. So with the flooding, so you're talking about that there have been engineering fixes that have happened for, say, something that happened during Fay. Right, and that may have been a government. Yeah, that's right. The county may have done it or it could have been multiple landowners or a private HOA who did it. Yeah. So the way that we would have incorporated that, again, kind of indirectly, would be taking these hydrologic basin studies in there because they – and so, again, they're static as well. They're kind of a snapshot in time that whenever it was done, okay, here's what the infrastructure is at this particular time. But they're, of course, pretty recent. And so that's how we're getting in the most recent information. Yeah, but you're absolutely right that these things change, right? So that's the reason why models have to be updated. For the wildlife, so that one as well with the Florida Natural Areas Inventory, they actually update their maps every couple years or so. And so that's another reason why to do updates. And so it could be things – it could be some kind of habitat change. It could be land cover change. So that we always want to take that into account. Mostly it's development is what we're taking into account. And so when we have some area that's been lost, then, okay, then we're going to change even – where is the Florida Wildlife Corridor, right? That even changes about once every year or so now. And then in terms of kind of weather patterns – yeah, I'm from Florida, so I know we go through droughts. We go through floods and then – and so that – the way I look at it is that's the reason why you want to have conservation lands is because you want to have – you want to have recharge areas because you want to have – you want to have really as much recharge as possible. And that way, that's going to help you get through the drought periods. And then, of course, during the flooding, you want to have wetlands. You want to have storage areas. You want to have – you want to preserve areas as well for that. And so really kind of our undeveloped kind of green infrastructure, that's what gives us the resilience to droughts and floods. And so – so knowing that Florida – right, we have floods, we have hurricanes, and we're all worried about flooding. And then we have a drought, which we just had, and then we're worried about water shortages. And so this is just the nature of Florida. And so what is the – what is the network kind of green infrastructure within a county like Seminole, which is, again, very urbanized? You know, so then trying to find, okay, what's left without stopping development. And so that's really the trick, and that's the reason why models like this help, because it's really complicated. It's constantly evolving, constantly changing. And so this map, yeah, it's going to be useful for the next couple, three years, and then it's going to need to be updated for sure. Yeah, and one of my concerns, especially in my district, is it's not unusual to have a property owner take upon their own infrastructure changes, whether that's bringing filled dirt in and raising property or adding drainage culverts to their property or whatever it might be, that without that knowledge being able to be plugged in, then the Marksand cannot evaluate truly what's happened or what could happen in that area or what should happen. And then finally, just a conversation with my fellow board members that struck me about the professor's update on this, talking about conservation and green spaces, is we constantly are giving up easements and right-of-ways that are green space. And I've always said I do not understand why, when we are going to, in the future, continue to need green areas for percolation or runoff and those kinds of things, because even though it may only be 1,000 feet long and 20 feet wide, it is some benefit, in my opinion. And I also understand there's a benefit of deeding it to a property owner and collecting taxes on it. But I really think we really have to take a strong look at what we should be giving up in the way of easements and right-of-ways to parcels or joining parcels, because many of these happen in the urban area, which means once we've given those up, we will never get that back. We will never have that capability, which then means taxpayers at some future time may have to buy properties or spend a great deal of money when if you had 20 or 30 of these easements and right-of-ways laying around, you could maybe offset some of that. Just a thought has always been a concern of mine. And that's all I've got. Thank you very much. Sure, absolutely. I'm going to listen to you. Thank you. Valid point, Commissioner, and one which was made in the past and should be considered every time we're looking at right-of-way giving up. Professor, thank you very much. You and everyone, the Regional Planning Council, everyone that's been involved in this, has validated, just looking at the numbers, validated, so many of the things that we have been starting, trying to start, and really in many ways succeeding here in Seminole County. It also shows where we have to improve, and like my fellow commissioners discussing how we can improve it here and how we can improve it there, nothing is perfect. But it's a very, very solid beginning to helping us map out where everything, where we need, where we're deficient. And I'm looking forward to your presentation that you will make. I will obviously, or may not, probably not be there, but what you bring to the ARC Committee of the Seminole Forever, because I think that you're right. This would help them in making determination as to properties, as to which ones would be most important, and ones that they should, you know, should really prioritize as far as purchase. So thank you very much. And always, and I know of your work in the past, so, and Jennifer, thank you very much. But I know of your work in the past, you know, on water and environmental resiliency, and I thank you very much for that, too, sir. Thank you. Thank you so much. I do have a question for you, Dr. Evans. How do you see the tool evolving with AI? You know, yeah, I've been thinking about that on my way here, and there are people that are using AI models with this, and I've already been playing with it myself. And so I think with AI, yeah, I think it's only going to improve the tool, and then it's going to allow us to take in information and even, yeah, even a lot more information and then help with the processing speeds. I've already seen there's an update to the model. Again, this is very nerdy and stopped me. So it used to take the model. When I would run it, it would take an hour, hour and a half, and then just with the recent update they did, now I can run it in 10 minutes. And so I don't know if this is AI that's just cleaned up their code or what they've done, but certainly AI is making all of this exciting, and it's also, you know, I know it's controversial, but I'll admit that I use it for the support to help improve it, yeah. Yeah, I mean, the model is ripe for predictive modeling. I mean, it's just absolutely ripe for it being a dynamic predictive modeling tool. Exactly right. So any advances, we definitely want to know about those. I actually have questions for us. So how do we not put this on the shelf? How do we institutionalize this beyond Seminole forever? And, you know, that's a very clear delineation, but any public works project that we do would certainly, this information would need to be incorporated into it. I can go on and on. It would go through Parks and Rec. It touches most departments. Right. And so then the question becomes, how do we institutionalize it? And the concept of green infrastructure become part of what we think about every year with all of our projects and some of the smaller things that we vote on, like giving up 10 feet of the backyard somewhere. And maybe we do that, but do it differently, because we don't want to maintain the 10 feet. There is value to us not having to maintain 10 feet somewhere. But I think the opportunity here is to improve on the good work that's already been done. I love that our numbers are not that far apart on the chart that you laid out. Some of them, it's a 50% increase, but it's not that big of a leap to get there. So we're in a really good space. If we institutionalize this, who knows where we can be? It was interesting, Chairman. I think it was over a year ago, I know you put the timeline, when we started looking at this. Commissioner Lockhart at this time was the one who brought it to our attention, working with the Regional Planning Council, with Stetson, and I know you all did a visit. And I remember her saying, you need to look at this, Darren. We need to look at this. So I was like, okay, I'll add it to the calendar. I'll look at it. It's honest. Yes, right? Well, great ideas, right? You just throw 10 up there and hopefully a couple stick. And it did intrigue me when I know they did the visit up to your office at Stetson, and the staff, and I know Commissioner Lockhart was up there. However, I have to tell you, when they came and presented this to us a couple weeks ago, a month ago, I hadn't seen the model as it was all put together. Mr. Lurie, our public works director, Mr. Slott was there, Richter, our parks and rec, even our development services folks, when we start looking at land use, I was wow. I was like, wow. And for this to be a tool that we could, a decision-making tool on many facets. So we are already excited about it. The team has already, has it as a tool. We want to bring it to the Seminole Forever, the art committee as well, and present it to them. That would be a great opportunity for them to look at it, to present recommendations to the board. So it will be a part of our decision-making tool on many facets that we do here in the county. I was actually, what first brought it to me, we just finished our stormwater master plan update, and I thought, what a great opportunity tool this could have, with, you know, remember how many consultants we had under the different basins and studies that we had? This would have been a great tool, actually, to utilize during that process, too. All right, commissioners, hearing no, seeing no further hands raised, thank you. Congratulations. The fact that we're saying we're going to institutionalize it beyond one department is a success. That's amazing. I'm going to put that in my outcomes. Put that in your outcomes. Put that on your CV. I will. And go Hatters. Great. Thank you so much. Go Hatters. All right. The next item on the agenda, do we have public comments regarding that? No, ma'am. There was no banging on the table. I knew you had it. 38 is seminal moments. We're going to go to Darren first, and then he'll hand it off to John's plot. Thank you, Chairman and commissioners. About a year and a half ago, this board knows that we had launched an initiative called Seminal Moments. You could call it Seminole County's efficiency program. If you remember, about a year and a half, two years ago, the DOGE concept started coming out around governments, basically federal, state. And then we actually started looking at it at a local government level. I challenged our department directors to identify opportunities to reduce the cost and improve efficiency. We brought those ideas to a leadership retreat where the directors worked together to evaluate and refine the proposals. The goal was to challenge the way we do business, encourage collaboration across departments, and identify opportunities we might otherwise have overlooked. That work has matured into an ongoing effort across the organization. We focused on three priorities. First is cost savings and operational efficiencies, where we are delivering quality services more efficiently and reducing expenses. Asset utilization is the second, making a better use of our county properties, facilities, equipment, and other resources. And finally, the one to me is a really good, important one, is revenue diversification, which we explore additional revenue opportunities to reduce our reliance on property taxes. I do want to emphasize that Seminal Moments began well before the current discussion about property tax reform. We were already looking for ways to operate more efficiently and make better use of our taxpayer dollars. The financial challenges we're discussing today only reinforce the importance of that work. This isn't a one-time cost-cutting exercise. It's about creating a culture of continuous improvement throughout the organization. And I'll tell you, we are actually seeing results of it. To date, Seminal Moments has delivered over $6.5 million in realized savings. Those results reflect the work of our directors and their teams to turn ideas into measurable improvements. Now I'd like to go ahead and turn it over to Mr. John Slott, our Director of Organizational Performance and Strategy, who will now walk you through our progress, highlight several of our initiatives, and discuss the next steps for Seminal Moments. Thank you, Darren. Thank you, Commissioners, Chair. I'm here to give the second update of our Seminal Moments program, and this will be a quarterly update. And to kick it off, there is a dashboard already available on our website with both last quarter and this quarter under the Organizational Performance and Strategy sections. As we go through... So just for the public notification and communication, Seminal Moments is really taking those ideas, as Darren has articulated. The first part was to look at our efficiencies, our cost-cutting. So in the business context, the expense side of the equation. The second part of the conversation is going to be looking at the balance sheet, all of our assets. What are the things we can do that optimizes those assets? And then finally, the interesting one, right, the revenue side. How can we diversify the revenue that the county uses to support the citizens of Seminole County? So those three aspects being what we are now calling the Seminole Moments Initiative at the direction of the county manager and, of course, you, the county commission. So to do this, we really have to identify ideas. So we've got a form, basically, a process to go through that takes these ideas and creates impact. So we don't want to just talk about things. We want to realize things and actually bring those dollars back into the budget so that they can be utilized on direct mission activities. So do more with less is a term that we hear all the time. The intention here is to identify those areas in those three components, right? So the efficiencies, the asset utilization, and the revenue play. We'll prioritize those, and we have an ongoing list. And Darren hosts this on an annual basis. We also update those quarterly to understand those ideas and concepts and really vet them. One of the things that we have done pretty well, too, is there are 23 ideas that have fallen to the floor. They were neat ideas in the room. We vetted them and said, well, probably not today, maybe not ever. But we keep the not today ones. The not ever, we sort of leave them on the floor. Finally, once we prioritize, we say, okay, here are the things we're going to work on. Then it's deliver, deliver, deliver. We've got to make sure that we are realizing those benefits. And then finally, the dashboard and the other activities and transparent government, we need to make sure that our community understands that we are monitoring these things and understand the impact of them. So as with the dashboard, we have some really quick highlights on the program itself. We're up to $62.5 million. That's up $2.5 million worth of potential savings over the five-year window. There are 49 initiatives. One initiative, of course, was vetted and dropped out from the last one. We've heard on multiple occasions around the performance of Scout. Scout is performing well when it comes to the efficiency of the dollars that this county is being spent on transportation. So $14.9 million worth of five-year realized benefit. We also had to focus over the last year and a half on overtime toolkit. This is an overall program that all the directors, managers, supervisors, and individuals within the county are doing to reduce overtime spend. So conduct the mission, get the mission done, but do it with less hours, i.e. less dollars in labor. We've also been assisted to, by knock on wood, no major events, hurricane events and so on. As this board is very well aware, but for the public, if a storm event occurs, the organization flips into emergency mode. We become our emergency roles. We go to e-rolls and then we serve the community as necessary during the potential disaster. That can run on overtime as well. So there are two components here. Number one, a lot of real good focus. Number two, a little bit of a blessing that we've had a hiatus from major storms. A couple things to put on your radar as well. The emergency response signal preemption, long words for basically a really wonderful partnership between FDOT doing some research and development to utilize some software in a different way with traffic signals. Our traffic management system within our team within Public Works and their ability to take that software and apply it to our county. Then the chief and his team in the fire department being able to go and check every single signal within the county. So now instead of having to put a device in every fire truck, fire vehicle to preempt signals from red to green when they're coming through, they can use it based on the hardware that's already there. So that basically saved us $5 million in hardware expenses that we did not have to spend to allow for our emergency vehicles to get to that fire, that incident as quickly as it can. So that, and that's what, you'll see that through, by the way, all these initiatives. This is not a one person, one thing. These are usually multi-departments working together trying to figure this thing out. Finally, two opportunities we wanted to also bring out at this board's direction and the direction of the county manager. Our teams are looking at the surplus real estate. So more to come on those, but a potential of $6.4 million of revenues that might come back to the county on that, as well as some expanded sponsorship programs that our economic development team is working on are the two big movers in this case. So at a high level, Pareto principle is broken for, since I'm following the mathematicians in the world here. So the top five aren't 80%, I'm sorry, it didn't work out that way. It's 51% in our, in our, in our program here at Seminole, Seminole Moments. But those 51% are those significant projects. So we've talked about a few of them, Scout, the emergency response, as well as overtime, and then building and lighting and a couple others. So with the Seminole Moments, so that was the expense savings, a couple of the assets. Wanted to talk a little bit about some really, the neat ideas about this asset management, as well as the revenue, diverse revenue streams. So really, we are at concept level here. We have a few things in, in the works. Open a conversation regarding this particular topic. But evaluating three areas here. So first one is the property development. So that's that asset optimization idea. So there are lands around the Sanford location, as well as Boomba, that include also the courthouse and the county services building, the building we are currently sitting in. How can those be utilized appropriately? And two, their highest use. More to come on those, but there is eight proposals that are being reviewed right now, and those will come back to the board for consideration and thoughtfulness. The other two ideas are concepts. So probably about now three years ago, we looked at the waste to energy projects within the Climate Protection and Resiliency Grant Program out of EPA, CPRG. This board, you all approved a grant application that looked at taking waste products, waste streams, biosolids, and MSW, and upcycling them. So the idea here is a public-private partnership with public, our side of the equation, the government side of the equation is land licensing, as well as a fuel source. We provide the fuel, right? Ta-da, exactly. And then on the other side, the private sector provides the technology, the operations, the maintenance of this activity. And then the win-win is we share in the licensing fee, we share on the revenue side of the equation. So that's where that potential revenue comes in. So one idea is waste to energy, and we'll be pulling together more information for this board to consider and provide feedback and direction at the county manager's direction, as well as same thing with solar partnerships. So the concept here is it's a very, very similar type of thing. We have an asset, can we create more value out of that asset? So we have a group of ponds, can we put floating solar in those ponds, create energy? And from the public sector side, we stay in our lane and our mission of providing the infrastructure. We bring in the private sector to bring in the technology, the capability, and maintain it. And then we would share, based on the licensing, we would share on the license fee, as well as potential power generation. So, and then the other concept here is, of course, resilience. When storms come through, we have another power source for our community. And the sun is on half a day. So, with the solar idea, we wanted to bring a couple thoughts to the board as a consideration. We've talked about a few of those. So floating solar is one option. So, the idea would be stormwater ponds, landfill area ponds, those ponds that are not polluted. Can we utilize those and have a third-party vendor check the feasibility, verify the design, build, operate, and maintain this floating solar array? So, and that could be the 470 or so different stormwater ponds we have, and or that could be our landfill ponds and some of these other areas. We also have a lot of ground area, as well as rooftops, facility solar. So, the idea, again, same thing, feasibility by the private sector to say, here's what this land area is. This is how much it could actually produce. And then we could bring that business case back to the board and say, here's what the business case looks like. Does this make sense for the public asset? And provide your input and your direction, guidance. So, next steps. Next steps is really, now we're out of our first year and a half. We're going to step the Seminole Moments five-year window from 26 to 27. We're going to do a final review of that 26 information to say, here's the realized expense savings that we've gotten, and look at that portfolio and update it in the spring of 27, and come back on the quarterly for updates. We'll also look at those high-impact projects and try to move them as quickly as possible to realize the benefits that they are assuming. Finally, of course, or second to last, we're looking at the dashboard and making sure that stays updated with the Seminole Moments progress for transparency and so on. Again, that is updated on our website today and if you'd like to see it. And then, finally, we're going to explore and we would consider exploring the diverse revenue streams and P3 opportunities at your direction and the county manager's direction moving forward. And with that, I will conclude my presentation and stand ready for any questions. Mr. Zimbala. Thank you very much. John, thank you for this update, and Darren, thank you for having staff committed to this. A couple points. Seminole Moments was adopted by management here almost two years ago. But for the public's benefit, this board has been very, very direct many years before that in mandating efficiencies and reductions of costs. We just happened to name it two years ago. So that's a good thing. A couple things on the solar issue. I would reach out to Frank Martz over at the City of Aldemont who already has these floating arrays that may be able to give us a lot of information that we don't need to spend or go exploring on our own to pull and extract that data. In my conversations with him, I'm not so sure that that is a returnable, measurable cost benefit to the taxpayers, but I would dig into that and flush that out. We do, however, own thousands of acres to the east in my district, which happen to be surrounded by high-power transmission lines, which would be ideal for solar array fields if there was a benefit to the taxpayers on property that's already been paid for that is being used for literally no reason whatsoever that may be a benefit there likewise. I would also wonder if it's too heavy of a lift on this dashboard of seminal moments that we would not put the same data about unfunded mandates coming from Tallahassee so that everybody knows what those are. In addition, be able to capture anything that is outpacing the cost of living on an annual basis. The example that we just recently saw were the fire trucks that are 118 percent more now than they were five or six years ago, police cruisers that are now 36 percent more than they were several years ago. And, of course, we know about the fuel and what's going on there and all these things that I would just say not very well-educated individuals believe that things should be based on population and annual cost of living, and that's not reality. And so if that was possible to add into the dashboard, I think it would be more reflective in telling the overall story and more transparency to our taxpayers, especially in light of what's coming up with Amendment 3 and all the back and forth and misinformation that's going on there. I've had conversations, as I know all of us have, with numerous, you know, folks and our constituents and some that are pretty vocal about why they should be voting yes for three. And every one of them I've challenged to look at our budget and bring me something that I can tangibly put my hands on and go to our staff and ask something to be cut. That's not happened yet. So it would be very important to be able to tell that whole story and be able to point to one dashboard and go, here's what's being saved through efficiency. This is the work that's been done. And, by the way, here's what costs are coming directly out of Tallahassee. Mandated us without funding that you, the taxpayers, are paying for. If you don't like that, talk to your folks in Tallahassee who represent you. And number two is tracking those things that are outpacing inflation, whether it's fire trucks or, you know, building materials or whatever the county is utilizing, I think would be very helpful. Thank you. Any other comments, Commissioner? Your presentation being right after the Mark Sand conversation about preserving land and then one of the suggestions is surplusing land. How are we marrying those two concepts? So I can answer that. So there have been conversations from the board about looking at our county-owned properties, not only discussion of it could be surplusing, but it could also be other utilization of our properties that could actually bring more revenue into the county. So it could either be surplusing, it could be utilizing it maybe for an opportunity, as Mr. Slott had just mentioned, it could be leasing out our properties, you know, that we have for other opportunities. So those were just concepts that came to it. The whole, I'd say, all of our directors, I always say no one concept is a bad one, so we throw everything on there. And that's why we want to continue these discussions, not only with the directors. We have it quarterly, actually. We keep it all updated. But I want to make sure we bring it back to the board on a quarterly basis as well, so you all are in the conversation. You give me the best direction how to move forward with it. So that's just one option. Got it. No, I don't have a problem with the concept of surplusing land, certainly, as long as we are actually institutionalizing what we just said, so that we make sure that we're not surplusing the property that we just said is going to be really important for high-recharge areas or whatever. So I just wanted to, as we start thinking more, cross-integrated there. I'm very intrigued by the waste to energy. I know it is a high, high-cost capital investment. It is, there are other counties who have mastered it beautifully in other parts of the state. What is the, I know you said you're going to bring back more information. What is the lead time from the time that this board was to say, yeah, this actually looks good, let's move? How many years out do we actually get something into operation that we can start to see a potential return? Go ahead. So from inception throughout, we're probably looking at, on the earliest, seven years to ten, if we were really, really pushing, maybe five. Because you have a lot of regulatory requirements, you have a lot of commissioning, so I think that's the part of Darren's guidance. Just a second ago, it takes a village. We have, within our solid waste team, the environmental services team, they have some interim goals that keep moving us forward on these items. And this waste-to-energy concept would be the big swing that gets us set up for the next 20 to 30 years. So it's not a, oh, yeah, we can stand one up tomorrow. There could be incremental solutions along that seven-year window, but full plant optimization, getting everything in, and revenue cycles, and all those things, seven, if you're really moving quickly, ten, more conservatively. I think when we start talking about the patchwork quilt or the, you know, all of the different pieces coming together and working together, we were talking about waste pickup and what that might look like and how that might modify our recycling programs or composting or, you know, all of the different things that we've talked about. And so I think it'll be very interesting if you all can bring us a suggested plan that is incremental so that we can see the, you know, crawl, walk, run of what makes sense and not just have us go, oh, we like that because it was the shiny object and we could do it in a more meaningful, practical way. Right. Good point. Comments? I want to comment on one comment that Commissioner Lockhart made about the Marksand model. I want to make sure that I'm clear, and if we have given direction that that is our goal, to meet the Marksand model of green space and so forth, that's not what I interpreted that to do. I think what the modeling says, this is what's suggested. Yeah. Correct. Correct. So I want to make sure that I'm clear on that because I think there's a lot of things there that we probably need to understand. You know, this county is putting one-third of its land mass into no more than one house per five acre and one more ten. And we've got some pretty hefty goals being that one-third is already limited for development. And when you look around this state, notwithstanding some of our sister counties to the north and in the panhandle, none of them will ever get to where we're at today in this county. So it's great to have goals and lofty desires to get there, but we also have to be straight-faced and honest with ourselves and our public that those may be goals or recommendations. We may not ever get there. So I just want to say a word, and then I'll come to you. Commissioner Lockhart, because we've preserved one-third of the county doesn't mean that we can ignore the other two-thirds in terms of doing the right thing by way of flooding mitigation, et cetera. And I know that's not what you're suggesting, but I don't want anybody to hear that. And if I look at the Mark Sand model, I would tell you that I think we look at all the opportunities in the open space, which is in that one-third of the county for acquisition. I think the acquisitions that are more important that need to be prioritized are where we're already building houses on top of houses and units in the urbanized area. That's where we're seeing these impacts. So I don't think the two are mutually exclusive, and we can't, as a body, think that the two are mutually exclusive. It's not an either-or. Commissioner Lockhart? Yeah, I'm really glad that you brought that up, because there was that one slide that had, here's where we are, here's the goal. And so one of the reasons I asked my question about weighting and tweaking is because I don't know whose numbers those were for the goal. Right. They weren't this board's numbers. So they were developed by someone somewhere with a weighted model and a philosophy that is theirs. I don't know whose it was, but it wasn't this board's. So that's a part of the tweaking that I'm hoping this board will be able to do, using that as a tool and everything that both of you said I concur with. And that's one of the reasons why, when I was willing to support the Seminole Forever Plan, it was with the addition of the language that it could be property that is in the urban area and preserving space in the urban area, not just our rural areas of the county. And that's because that is a critical place for us right now and into the future. So all of it is working together. I think we just need to have some time to really flesh it out and talk about how this board foresees utilizing that tool. But thank you for clarifying that, because my thought was using the tool and the data, not the goals that were stated, because they're not our goals. Well, and it's not stated as a goal. It's the marks and target. It's the model output, which I realize the model output is based on model inputs that we don't have clarity to yet. Scientifically. It was the scientific target based on basin studies, et cetera, et cetera. Well, we should consider, but let me tell you something. Science does not necessarily always coincide with reality in a community, especially when you're starting when a community is almost completely built out. But that's where the challenge for us is going to come. We will have redevelopment. Right. I mean, from flooding and so forth. I mean, you take my district, by example, and Commissioner DeLaurie's district, which is low-density residential, a state one per five, one per ten, except what was there years ago. We have flooding. There is flooding in that area. And we don't have the urban area, hidden urban core, like you all do in your districts, and like the flooding we see there. So the open spaces, by definition, don't always afford flooding fixes. So any other comments? I'd like to add just a couple. I do think on the dashboard we need to be delineating recurring savings versus one-time savings. And I know that you can get to the other tab where you can look at the specific projects and see whether it's recurring or not. But it's not clear on the big picture. And so I think that is a tad unclear. Just in the for-the-record category, no ugly solar floating stuff in our retention ponds that are visible to the public. I'm just going to tell you that's going to sink the whole plan. You can talk to CFX about that. At some point, the dashboard should have drill-downs. I'll just leave it at that. And I think we need to rephrase, when we are speaking about our properties, this concept of surplusing properties. Because by the very nature of the word surplusing, it means getting rid of it. It's extra. We don't need it. And I don't think that's what we're thinking about. It's revisioning the properties that we already own and what is the best use for them. I am a huge fan of perpetual land leases. I've seen it work in other parts of the world. It is a revenue stream. If you set it up right, that could potentially bring revenue into the county for years. And ultimately, the property could revert back under certain conditions. I just think we need to be thinking about it differently, similar to, Commissioner Zimbauer, what you were saying about easements. Once it's gone, it's gone. Correct. And we can't fix that. So those are my comments with regard to this. But really, really good work. I do think at some point we should maybe memorialize the ideas that did drop to the floor. Because at some point we'll think those are rather humorous. Because I do think if we don't laugh every day, we cry more often. But the idea that no idea is a bad one is really important. And so laughing along with those is a good thing to do from a cultural perspective. Any other comments? Thank you, Mr. Sly. Thank you, Commissioner. All right. Any public comments? No. I think Commissioner's hearing nothing else. We can adjourn at 1130 and reconvene at 130. Ladies and gentlemen, we're going to reconvene the Board of County Commissioners meeting here at 130. If you would all, since we have a large audience, please make sure that you silence any electronic devices that you have. If you've come here to speak on any particular item, please make sure that you fill out a yellow sheet to speak. Ms. Drager, if you would hold one up, that would be awesome. They're out in the lobby. Please bring it back to Ms. Drager. If you'd like just to have your thoughts known, there's a green sheet out in the lobby, and that does not require you to public speak. But we will pass them down the dais, and we will know your thoughts before we vote. We're going to start out this afternoon with the quarterly employee service recognition. And we have Christina Brandolini, our Director of Human Resources. So we are going to celebrate the team that brings the services to Seminole County. Christina? Good afternoon, Chairman and Commissioners. Christina Brandolini, Human Resources Director. This afternoon, we have the pleasure of recognizing several employees for their service to Seminole County. First, we'll start with Chris Patton, Communications Director, who will lead us off with recognizing Kurt Slevkowski. Video Coordinator with 20 years of service to Seminole County. Good afternoon, Commissioners. Chris Patton for the Record, Communications Director. It's my honor to be before you today to recognize Kurt Slevkowski, Senior Video Coordinator for SGTV. You might not know that, but Kurt's usually behind the window back of the room there leading the meetings and directing the production of all the meetings we have here in the board chambers. Kurt's also one of our Senior Video Coordinator in charge of editing and producing videos. One of his most recent projects is working with the Department of Health to bring the Healthy Seminole Show to SGTV, and we're really proud of it. So please join me in thanking Kurt for his service. Andy leads us in prayer from time to time. Kim Ornberg, Environmental Services Director, will be recognizing Henry Yeager, team leader with 20 years of service. Good afternoon, and it is my pleasure to be recognizing Henry Yeager for his 20 years with Solid Waste in Seminole County. He's considered, as one of the long-timers, our Solid Waste Historian. He started with the county in June of 2006 as a stormwater operator, or sorry, solid waste operator, and was promoted to crew chief in November of 24. As a result of his hard work and dedication, he was then promoted to team leader last year in February. He is also proud to be an Army veteran who enjoys family life with his wife, son, and daughter. He's a lifelong Geneva resident who has a love for classic rock and enjoys attending concerts with his wife. Nice. In his spare time, he's also an avid hunter. Maybe we should contract with him to help us with the feral hogs out at the landfill. But anyway, it is my privilege to recognize him in his 20 years of dedicated service for Seminole County Solid Waste as well as for our residents. So thank you. Fire Chief Matt Kinley will be recognizing several fire department employees. We will be starting with Lieutenant Teo Garcia with 20 years. Kim always leaves that down low. For the record, Matt Kinley, Fire Chief, Lieutenant Teo Garcia, has been a Seminole County resident for 37 years where he lives with his wife and three children. He attended Seminole State College, completing both the fire academy and the paramedic program and earning his degree. Throughout his career with the fire department, he has spent much of his time working on the tower team and performing tower and truck company operations. Since his promotion to lieutenant, he has been assigned to A-shift riding his Tech 1 while working in the capacity as a command aide on emergency alarms. His most recent accomplishment is serving as a tactical paramedic with the Seminole County Sheriff's Office SWAT team, combining his fire service experience with specialized medical support and high-risk operations. Congratulations, Teo. Also with 20 years, Sharon Gregory has served as a public safety specialist with the Seminole County Fire Department since 2014. She provides life safety education through programs including Save a Life Seminole, Hands Only CPR, Fall Prevention, Fire Prevention, and Seminole Safe Sitters. Sharon is the only child passenger safety technician instructor in Seminole County. Before joining community outreach, Sharon served eight years in the emergency communications center as an emergency communications dispatcher, including several years as an assistant supervisor. She began her public safety career as a firefighter, serving 15 years in another Florida county. Sharon is a proud Seminole County resident, and her daughter now serves in the Seminole County Emergency Communication Center. Congratulations, Sharon. Chad Wilski, Fleet and Facilities Director, will be recognizing John Prano, Facilities Supervisor with 25 years of service. Good afternoon, Chairman and her, Commissioners, Mr. Gray. It is my great pleasure to introduce Mr. Prano. 25 years of service is a significant milestone. When we talk about John, it's not about the years. It's about what he's accomplished over those years. John started with facilities as an electrical technician and now serves as our electrical field supervisor. Since 2001, John has worked on or supervised 35,000 work orders. That's what we know of, at least. I'm sure he's done a whole lot more than that. I'm sure he'll tell me afterwards, too. Yeah, I bet you do, buddy. We have fun. That's 35,000 opportunities to solve a problem, keep a building operational, or make sure county employees can do their jobs. And, again, hats off to John for that. For over 25 years, John has also played a critical role in our hurricane response operations, overseeing facility needs and emergency shelters, and addressing everything from broken doors to water intrusion. When conditions are at their worst, having someone with John's experience and knowledge makes a tremendous difference. John knows the electrical infrastructure of our county, buildings inside and out. More importantly, he's willing to share that knowledge, mentor newer employees, and step in wherever is needed. And I hear John's a pretty good bowler, too, so when the bowling comes up, he might want to reach out to John. But here's what matters most. We can replace equipment, we can repair buildings, but we cannot replace 25 years of knowledge, experience, value, and respect. Earn respect. John, you have earned that respect. You have made a lasting contribution to our department in Seminole County. Thank you for 25 years of dedicated service. Tim Jex, Director of the Office of Management and Budget, will be recognizing Sarah Carrick, Financial Business Administrator, for 20 years of service. It is my privilege to recognize Sarah Carrick on her 20 years of service with Seminole County. Sarah and I started at the county about the same time in 2006. I was a budget analyst assigned to OMB, and Sarah was a program specialist working under Pam Hastings and Jerry McCollum in the engineering division. It's not easy for financial people to get respect in those kind of technical environments, and the engineers used to call Sarah the project police. She was trying to ask questions, do a good job, follow county rules, and they would say, here comes the project police, when she would come around. But she took it in stride, and she had a great attitude. And whenever I had questions from the budget office, Sarah was the one that always had the answers. She knew the project scopes. She knew the budgets. She knew every project number by heart, and most importantly, she cared about her job. So when a position opened up in OMB, I recommended to my boss that we give her an interview. She was hired in 2014, and she's become a total workhorse in our office. She manages a number of critical processes. She makes my job easier. She's an asset to the county and a value to the taxpayers. I wish we had 10 more just like her. Thank you, Sarah, for your 20 years of outstanding service. Johnny Edwards, Utilities Director, will be recognizing a few of his utilities employees, starting with Sergio Bryant, Meter Services Supervisor, with 20 years of service. Good afternoon. He dares you. All right. So Sergio Bryant started with Seminole County in September of 2006 with the Roads and Stormwater Division and Public Works, where he worked for a short while before coming over to utilities. And since that time, moving to utilities, he's worked his way up, demonstrating a great work ethic, working with everyone, worked his way up to become the meter services supervisor, which rain, sleet, snow, or hail, they're outside in it. They have to work every day outside, you know, maintaining the meters, reading the meters. Outside of work, Sergio enjoys quality family time as much as possible, barbecuing, camping, sometimes cruises. I know we've had a boiled peanut competition not too long ago. Sergio's entry was fantastic. For those of you that like to surround yourself with positive people, Sergio is top-notch. Top-notch attitude, positive attitude in all circumstances, a smile that's larger than life, and a true pleasure to have in the workplace. Sergio, thank you for 20 years, and we look forward to another 20. Thank you. All right. Next up, we have Paul Sheep, line locator technician. All right. Paul started with Seminole County in July of 1996 at the Seminole County landfill, where he was, as a youngster, surrounded by people that had much more experience, from whom he learned over time. And shortly thereafter, moved over to utilities, where he's worked a variety of different jobs over the years and is now a mentor to today's younger generation. Paul is a line locator, which, for those of you like me, when you drive down the street, if you pay attention to things like utilities markers and paint and things like that, you know, line locators are busy, busy, busy. So, Paul, in his spare time, enjoys Seminole County trails and parks, I understand, but he lives in the lake with his wife, where, as a hobby, he builds stock cars in his garage. He has won five championships in the Volusia Speedway Park. Didn't know that until recently. But we greatly appreciate Paul's work and dedication over the 30 years with Seminole County. Paul, thank you. Rick Dart, Parks and Recreation Director, also has several employees, starting with Emily Jane McDonough, sports specialist with 20 years of service. Good afternoon. It is my pleasure to be able to introduce Emily McDonough for 20 years of service with Seminole County Parks and Recreation. Emily began her journey at Sylvan Lake Park before eventually making her way to Redbug Lake Park, where she's become an important part of our team. If Redbug had a mom, she would be it. She's always looking out for everyone, keeping things running smoothly, and somehow managing a dozen things at once. You're a true multitasking expert. But what really makes Emily special is how much she cares about others and the community. Through her annual Christmas toy drive and year-round food drive supporting Redbug Elementary, she goes above and beyond to make a difference in the lives of local families and children. Her kindness and generosity show that her commitment extends far beyond the park. Emily, thank you for your 20 years of dedication, hard work, and compassion. We're fortunate to have you on our team, and we appreciate everything that you mean to our community. Thank you. Next is Bill Pandos. Bill is celebrating 20 years with Seminole County. His career in public service, however, started much earlier, back in 1983, with the City of Miramar Parks Department. He started off as a maintenance worker, and during the next 23 years there, he moved up to work as a supervisor and building inspector, and then his final role with the City as the landscape superintendent within the Public Works Department. Bill came to Seminole County 20 years ago, where he is again, through his hard work, tireless dedication, and always willing to take on more. He's currently division manager of the Parks and Trails Division within the Parks and Recreation Department. I've worked with Bill personally for over 14 years now, and he embodies everything that's good about public service, an undying dedication to do the right thing, and embodying sound leadership and service to others. Bill, I can't thank you enough. He's been a part of my leadership team in my entire stay here with Seminole County, and there's no way I would have been able to do my job without him. One very quick story. When I had my second interview with Seminole County, it was virtually, and Bill was interviewing me. So I really appreciate it, Bill. I'm glad you made the right choice, by the way. I appreciate it. So, Bill, congratulations for your 20 years of service. Thank you. And batting cleanup for us today is George Brinson with 40 years with Seminole County. 40 years is an incredible amount of time to dedicate to one organization, and today we are happy to recognize George Brinson for his 40 years of service to Seminole County Parks and Recreation. George's story with the county started at Silver Lake Park before he eventually joined the team at Red Bug. Over the years, he's earned a reputation as someone you can always count on. He is Mr. Reliable. When something needs to get done around the park, George is the go-to guy. We know he can be counted on to get the job done right. George is also a tremendous leader. His knowledge, experience, and work ethics sets a great example, and anyone looking to build a career in public service and parks and maintenance could learn a lot by following his lead. And for George, working at the county is a family tradition. His father also worked for Seminole County and helped point him towards parks and recreation, a decision that led to an amazing 40-year career here with us. George, thank you for your commitment, your leadership, and everything you've contributed over the years. Congratulations on 40 years, George, and thanks for being someone we can always count on. This concludes our presentation. If we can do pictures with everybody, that would be great. This brings us to the public hearing portion of our agenda. Commissioners, I'll look for proof of publication. So moved. Second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Hearing none, it passes unanimously. Ex parte communication? I submitted it electronically, but we'll also pass it. Okay. Madam Chair, I've also submitted it electronically. I also have it here, but I also submitted a disk. I should have a little floppy electronic drive to the county manager, county attorney, and the development review committee, development review director. Information on that is more about flooding regarding one of the pieces of property, but it should be done, reviewed for the site plan. It has nothing to do with zoning. Commissioner Zimbauer? Submitted electronically, Madam Chair. Thank you. Commissioner Constantine? Submitted it both personally and electronically. Mine is submitted electronically. I'll ask the county attorney to read us the rules of public comment. Thank you, Chairman. While the board welcomes comments from all persons with an interest in these proceedings, Florida law requires that the board's decision and quasi-judicial actions be supported by competent, substantial evidence presented to the board during the hearings on the applications. Competent, substantial evidence is such evidence as a reasonable mind would accept as adequate to support a conclusion. There must be a factual basis in the record to support opinion testimony from both expert and non-expert witnesses. Persons presenting testimony may rely on factual information that they present, information presented by county staff, information the applicant presents, or on factual information included in the county staff report to support their testimony. All persons who present written materials to the board for consideration must ensure that a copy of such materials is provided to the clerk for inclusion in the board's record of these proceedings and the official minutes. Chairman? Thank you so much. The first item on the agenda is item number 41. That application has been withdrawn. It's my understanding that we do not need to vote on that since it's a withdrawal. Which will bring us to the second item on the agenda. It's item number 42. This will be presented by Hillary Payton, our planner. Good afternoon. Hillary Payton, planning and development. This item is a request for a special exception for the Jane Society to allow an existing civic assembly use to expand in the A1 zoning district, located on 1.93 acres on the northwest corner of Citrus Street and Laura Avenue. The existing civic assembly development is comprised of two buildings, a 4,622-square-foot single-story worship hall containing approximately 112 seats and an 8,065-square-foot single-story multi-purpose building. The applicant proposes to demolish the 8,000-square-foot single-story multi-purpose building and construct a 15,043-square-foot two-story multi-purpose hall in its place. The proposed new building will contain a dining hall with serving kitchen on the first floor and several multi-purpose meeting and meditation rooms, including a 160-seat auditorium on the second floor. This civic assembly use is classified as a community facility, which is designed to accommodate a larger number of people for a wider geographic area than neighborhood facilities. The facility operates primarily on Sundays from 10 a.m. to 1.30 p.m. However, the worship hall is available to members during the day, seven days a week. Subsequent to the Planning and Zoning Commission meeting on August 5, 2026, the applicant has updated their conceptual elevations and renderings for the board's consideration. The applicant has acquired two adjacent lots to the rear of the site to provide 50 parking spaces for the use of the facility. Combined with the existing 32 spaces, the property will have a total of 82 parking spaces. The required parking count for this assembly use is 68 parking spaces. Including the additional proposed parking lot, the site will provide in excess of 14 spaces above the minimum required under the Seminole County Land Development Code. The site must also meet all regulations under the Land Development Code, such as buffering and site lighting. The applicant proposes to demolish the existing single-story multi-purpose building and construct a new two-story multi-purpose building in the same footprint. The existing footprint does not meet the minimum required front yard setback of 50 feet. Therefore, the applicant must obtain a front yard setback variance from the Board of Adjustment in the event that this request is approved. The proposed parking addition on the west side of the property is to be accessed from West Highland Street, which will require improvements by the applicant. Staff has received seven letters of opposition, five of which are located within 550 feet of the subject site and are reflected on the support and opposition map on the screen and one letter of support. In compliance with Seminole County Land Development Code, Section 30.3.5, the applicant conducted a community meeting on April 24, 2025. An additional community meeting was required to be held upon the proposal of the additional property for parking and was held on May 4, 2026. Details of that community meeting is included in your agenda package. Section 30.3.1.5, Subsection A of the Seminole County Land Development Code requires that certain criteria be met for the Board of County Commissioners to approve a special exception request. Staff finds that the request does not meet the following criteria. Number one, the use requested is not detrimental to the character of the area or neighborhood or inconsistent with the trend of development in the area. The Jane Society is located on the corner of Citrus Street and Lohr Avenue, which are classified as local roads within a residential neighborhood. The existing trend of development in the area is single-family residential, with a 40-acre county park on the north side. A community civic assembly facility is intended to accommodate a larger number of people than a neighborhood civic assembly facility for a wider geographic area. A 15,043-square-foot, two-story community civic assembly facility directly abutting a neighborhood of single-story, single-family homes is not in character with the trend of development. Number two, the use requested does not have an unduly adverse effect on existing traffic patterns, movements, and volumes. Although the additional parking would help alleviate the existing on-street parking concerns, it does not necessarily address the potential increase in traffic associated with the expansion of the facility. The proposed parking lot would provide additional on-site parking and is expected to reduce the existing overflow parking along the surrounding right-of-way. However, the proposal would increase the size of the multipurpose building by 6,978 square feet, an approximate 87% increase, including a dining hall, meeting rooms, and meditation rooms. These additional facilities could substantially increase the number and frequency of people attending activities on the site, particularly if multiple areas are used at the same time. Therefore, while the additional parking may address the existing parking deficiency, the expanded intensity of the civic assembly use could increase traffic, volumes, and vehicle movements within the surrounding residential neighborhood. Number four, the use requested will not adversely affect the public interest. Within the A1 zoning district, civic assembly is a common use that typically supports the surrounding residential community. The established facility is located on approximately 1.3 acres, and the addition of the two rear lots increases the site to approximately 1.9 acres. The additional parking is necessary to support the continued use of the facility. However, the proposal also replacing the existing 8,065 single-story multipurpose building with a 15,043-square-foot, two-story building, an increase of 6,978 square feet. Although a condition of the development order will limit the total occupancy of the site to no more than 160 people at any given time, the proposed expansion would substantially increase the scale and intensity of the use. The site is primarily accessed by local residential roads that serve a county park, and the proposed two-story building would be inconsistent with the predominantly single-story, single-family character of the surrounding neighborhood. Under the additional use standards in the Land Development Code, staff finds that the request does not meet the following review criteria for civic assembly use. Number one, protects residential neighborhoods. The facility's vehicular use areas will be required to include buffering from adjacent residential property to minimize potential impacts. However, the proposed two-story, 15,043-square-foot multipurpose building due to a size is incompatible with and will adversely affect the residential character of the surrounding neighborhood. Number two, traffic. This community assembly facility is accessible only from a two-lane local residential road. Therefore, it does not satisfy the requirement that access be provided from a collector roadway with four or more lanes or from an arterial roadway. The property is located at the intersection of three local roads and has an established history of parishioners parking across sidewalks and within the right-of-way, including in front of nearby residences. Staff has received seven letters of opposition based on existing traffic and parking concerns, one of these which provided photographs and a video documenting these conditions. This property is located in the A1 zoning district, which requires that additional criteria be met. Staff finds that the request does not meet the following criteria. Number one, the request is consistent with the general zoning plan of the rural zoning classification. The proposed expansion of the existing facility is not consistent with the already established use and character of the area, as previously discussed. Number two, the request is not highly intensive in nature. The existing civic assembly use with the proposed expansion is highly intensive in nature relative to the size of the site and the surrounding residential neighborhood. The proposed building's height, scale, and capacity would be inconsistent with the predominantly single-story, single-family residences surrounding the property. Staff is recommending denial of the request, but if the VOR votes to recommend approval, staff requests that, in addition to the typical conditions of approval for special exceptions, that the site be limited to 160 people at any given time. There be no outdoor amplification of sound without a permit and that the site be required to connect to public potable water services and the City of Altamont's sewer services, if available. The Planning and Zoning Commission met on August 5, 2026, and voted unanimously to recommend that the Board of County Commissioners deny the special exception. Staff requests that the Board of County Commissioners deny the special exception to allow an existing civic assembly use to expand in the A1 and R1AA zoning districts on 1.93 acres, located on the northwest corner of Citrus Street and Laura Avenue. This concludes my presentation. I'm available for any questions. Any questions for staff at this time, Commissioners? All right, is the applicant here to make a presentation? Good afternoon, Board. Mark Jones, here on behalf of the Jane Society, as well as? Nimish Boussard with Ohm Engineering Services. We are the engineers for the society. So we're going to tag team you guys today, if you don't mind. I'm no engineer. Some introduction on the Jane Society of Central Florida. Jane Society was founded in 1981, so this is not a new organization. They have owned this property for, and this has been their home for 25 years. So to say they're not a part of the neighborhood isn't exactly accurate. They have started their worship hall there. They have been practicing there for 25 years. The temple adjacent to the hall was added in 2014. I'm going to let Nimish tell you a little bit about the Jane Society. So just to inform you guys a little bit about Jainism. Jain is a sect of Hinduism, so one of the real small minority sects. But their belief is basically nonviolence, avoid harm, respect, different perspectives, and then not alcoholic, basically a lot of restraints, a lot of practice, self-discipline. So just these are basics of the – I can go into a lot more details, but I'll try to keep it pretty small and basic on it from the Jainism Society, and they're basically what their community hall and what they do in their areas. So I'd like you to understand what currently goes on in this activity or this community hall. They do religious learning and meditation. This is transcendental religion. They are very big on meditation, and they're pacifists. These people, they're very peace-loving folks. They have religious celebrations. On a weekly basis, their average attendance is 60 to 70 people. So the huge traffic concerns, I don't understand where they're really coming from because it's probably coming from San Lando Park. That's something that was barely touched on by staff. This property is adjacent to San Lando Park. So these access roads that are supposed to be foreign, they're perfectly fine for San Lando Park, which holds seven or eight tennis tournaments a year at that location that have attendances of 300 to 400 people on a weekend. So these roads are already seeing a large amount of traffic. I'm not sure how you're picking that. Is it the Jane Society or is it San Lando Park? But the Jane Society, on average, has 60 to 70 people there on a Sunday. Throughout the week, it's minimal. They do have three to four events a year, which their average attendance of those is 150 to 160 people on a single day. So the condition of approval that was placed on by the county, we're totally fine with that. In fact, they're ready to make those changes to those special events should an increase happen. We mentioned that currently meals associated, there is no cooking on site. That was another concern is if there's going to be a cook kitchen needing grease traps and all those things, that's not what happens. Food is prepared, brought in, catered, and served. So there's no real cooking event happening here on site. The need for this expansion. This facility started with a residential home, and it has grown, and piece by piece, they've made it into this 8,000-square-foot community hall. They are packed on top of each other. When they have a special event, if there comes a time to do an educational program, the children are in the same big room. They have the desire to get bigger. Again, this has been their home for 25 years. The only logical thing on two acres of property is to go up. There's nothing in the code that prevents this from being a second-story facility. As long as it's under the 35-foot threshold, which it is, there's nothing preventing that from happening. The ground floor would remain the dining hall and serving kitchen. The second floor is where they would move the meditation rooms and the auditorium. The other need for this renovation, this is an aging facility. They are looking to do the whole neighborhood a favor and beautify this entire property. I'm going to let Nemesh jump back in to give you the site plan, and we'll go over some renderings. What they plan to do is basically keep a section. The remodeling or improvements basically is staying on the same property footpath, basically. Nothing's changing around the building or anything else. It's just basically the same building. We're just going up. There's a section of the existing building we're keeping intact just because it's an older section. That was actually the donation hall where there's a lot of memories and memorial section portions of it. So they're trying to keep that section of it. We went through and we accommodated all of the basically questions or comments we got from whether it was staff or whether it was local residentials. We went through, we needed more parking, so the temple themselves went through and bought the two adjacent lots down to put in the additional parking spaces. And then we went through, they had concerns regarding the neighborhood aesthetics or property decline. And we went through, basically got landscape plans, and we put in some renderings. You can go to the next slide. So here's the conceptual landscape plan that actually we put together. And it's conceptual, but it identifies the existing trees that we're going to keep in touch as well as adding additional landscape to beautify the area. I want to emphasize something here because, as you've seen in your packet, we had two community meetings for this project. At the first community meeting, the neighbors came in. We've had a very good discourse with neighbors. I believe that they respect the Jane Society. They just don't want this change in their neighborhood. Understandable. They gave us their concerns at the first community meeting. We went back to our architect and our engineers, and we addressed what we believed to be all of those concerns. We came back to them at a second community meeting. They expressed additional concerns. Again, we went back to the architects, we went back to the engineers, and we addressed all of those concerns. Now, P&Z took place after, excuse me, before the second, they did not see this round that you have in front of you. We addressed the concerns that came out of the P&Z meeting in this final plan that's before you. The major concerns that the neighbors expressed to us were parking, we've taken care of parking, aesthetics of the building, that was a big one. Admittedly, the initial concept for this plan did not fit a neighborhood environment. We have addressed that by making this building more residential in character. We provided a landscape plan. The neighbors never saw a landscape plan at any phase of this. We're about to go into some renderings to show you that what we have done addressed all the neighbors' concern and absolutely beautifies this project and makes it fit in the character of the neighborhood. They had not seen this prior to P&Z, and P&Z turned this down based upon the aesthetics of it was the big one, and we believe we've addressed that accordingly. Next slide. Here you can see the bird's eye view, basically, of the property and then also the site, and also see some of the existing trees being maintained as well as the new trees going on. If you go to the next site, you'll see on Lower Avenue, this is looking at it from for now. The second-story windows were set in to be opaque because there was a concern of people looking over out into neighbor's properties. So we've made them primarily opaque so that way it can't be viewed. We went through and added the beautification sides, if you look, down the ground, and then go to the next slide. So here's the response to the neighbor who's concerned. We've added the 50 additional parking spaces, revised the architectural landscape screening, second-story for privacy, and then for noise, we don't really – there isn't a lot of noise coming from the building, just from the noise, but the intensity we're limiting to the 160 people that the county wanted to enforce, so we're keeping those in the safeguard. And for the lighting, we're going to meet similar counties, dark sky, in which case we're going to light for public safety portions, but mitigate light pollution. Here's some additionals from Highland Street view, looking at the new Highland Street and then looking at the landscape portions of it, and then the other side on Citrus Street looking from that side. So these landscape improvements that you're seeing here, PNZ did not see these. The neighbors did not see these. This is an additional almost $75,000 committed towards beautifying the project to make it fit into the neighborhood that it's already been a part of for 25 years. So we mentioned that, and Hillary showed us, that should you approve this today, that conditions should be placed upon it. Jane Society is totally fine with the conditions that staff has recommended be placed on this project and that the use would stay with just the civic assembly, that the layout that we've proposed in our package, I'm sure some attorney will make it stick in there, that it's got to be substantially similar to what we're proposing. The building increases, further increases, any change to this would require further board approval. And the big one is the occupancy lockdown at 160 people site-wide. That's been a concern of the neighbors, that this small little religious sanctity would beat 3,000 members in the next few years. That's just not a reality. It's not going to happen. Really, what we're trying to do is move forward. And I personally believe that this proposal is a win-win for both the Jane Society and giving them the extra space that they need and an opportunity to refurbish and clean up an existing property, which is going to help the overall entire neighborhood. Again, the county would have to approve any of the final development permits, up to and including the necessary variances, which is caught in a minute. I don't believe the variances are an extreme thing because we're not changing anything. The building is going to be located in the same place as the existing building. So the other thing staff is requiring is connection to public potable water and sewer connections if available. That's a win for the Jane Society. No complaints there. We discussed it, a cap at 160 maximum people per service. Should there be a special event throughout the year that's going to go over that number, they will adjust accordingly with services, more than one service for the event. Another thing that was recognized in this whole process is the need for communication with their neighbors. That's been, I think this has all come out and has begun a dialogue between the Jane Society and the local neighbors, that they're going to get into more community involvement, community outreach, and it's going to go forward including potential signage out front to inform the neighbors of things that are going on with the Jane Society. So finally is the ask. We're asking this board to consider the changes that have taken place since PNZ, the addition of a landscape plan, the addition of community communication, and approve the special exemption BS225-02, and allow this project to move forward. Is that your conclusion? Questions, yes. Are there questions for the applicant? Not at this time. No, thank you. We'll move to public comment. Ms. Drager, would you read off the first three? Dr. Indra Devan Shah, Dinesh Vardhan, and Salish Shah. If you would all come up at once and queue up so that we can be efficient, that would be awesome. Each speaker will have three minutes. Hello, respected chairman and county commissioner. My name is Indra Vedan Shah. I'm a retired physician. I live in neighboring Volusia County for the last 40 years. I'm also president of the Jane Society of Central Florida for the last four years. Myself and entire community have devoted a lot of time during this four period to plans for the new two-story community hall. It was, and it still is our dream project. The idea of converting current single-story community hall to a two-story hall is to accommodate everyone who can participate in different activities which are going on at the same time. For example, while adults are worshiping in the temple, children can participate in the religious classes going on in the community hall. Those who have to leave early because of some reason, they can take the lunch downstairs while main event is still going upstairs, which is not happening right now because we have only one-story building. So this will accommodate all those people who want to leave earlier. On the most weekends, like Mark said, we have on an average about 60 people, and that also on the Sunday. During the regular days, all we have is just the visitors from all over Florida, all over the world, everywhere people are coming to just look at the temple. During the three or four main events in a year, we have about average of 150 people. We have proof of that. We have RSVP and everything that we can prove that it's not more than 150 at any time. As per our bylaws, we will not rent this hall to anyone. It is only for religious activities. So that problem is not there anymore. It is our intention to mix and mingle with the entire community. We have and will continue to accept any suggestions from the community. Due to complaint of the parkings from them, we are now building a brand new parking lot with addition of 50 parking spaces. We have also changed the look of the building due to suggestions from the community members in the last meeting with the P&Z. The new building or new design will match the houses in the community and will not look commercial at all. We have hired a landscape architect and are adding a lot of new trees. We will make neighborhood look better and hopefully will increase their value in the future. We are in this location for about 25 years. We had no adverse incident at any time in this 25 years. We had no complaints from community during this 25 years. It is my humble request to all the county commissioners to permit us for two new story community hall. Thank you very much for your kind attention and precious time. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Mr. Edgar, please call out the name. Dinesh Vardin. Name and address for the record, please. Good afternoon, Chairman and the County Commissioners. My name is Dinesh Vardin, and I am the past president of Jane Society of Central Florida before Ms. Dr. Inger Vardin Shah. Thank you for giving us this opportunity to speak today and to share with you why the Jane Society of Central Florida is requesting approval for this expanded and improvement of our facility. My other family members would speak more about the need for the two-story building, but I want to take you and add a broader perspective from the community point of view. So the Jane Society has played a meaningful role in helping our community grow within the Seminole County and across the entire state of Florida. Our temple, which was rebuilt in 2013 with the support of County, is truly one of a kind. Because of its significance, people from all over the United States and all over the world visit this temple when they come to Central Florida. Many families who travel to Orlando for Disney Universal and other attractions make it a point to visit our temple. Their visit supports nearby businesses, restaurants, hotels, contributing to the local economy and bringing the additional cultural tourism into Seminole County. The renovation project will allow us to continue to serve our community while expanding our educational and cultural reach. One of the most important components of the expansion is the creation of an education center within the hall. It's called the Institute of Genealogy. This center will house a collection of Jain literature, host scholars from around the world and provide a place for students and researchers to learn about the Jain philosophy, history and culture. Once completed, we will be able to host seminars and symposium focused on non-violence, which is one of the core principles of Jainism. This program will not only benefit our members, but will also serve the broader community by promoting peace, compassion and understanding. The project is not about creating something new. It is about improving and modernizing a long-standing institution that already contributes to the cultural diversity and economic vitality of Seminole County. We respectfully ask for your support so we can continue serving our community in a safe, modern and meaningful way. And finally, I'd like to end with a traditional Jain expression called Mishami Dutram. This means we ask for your forgiveness and we extend our forgiveness to all. It is a reminder of humility, peace and goodwill, values we hope to continue sharing within our community. Thank you for your time and participation. Thank you. Next speaker, Salish Shah. Name and address for the record, sir. Hi, my name is Salish Shah. I am living in Seminole County since 1987. I am also one of the founders and I am currently holding a chair trustee position in the Jain society. I have two children who grew up in this Jain society environment and at that time we didn't have any facility yet. They still learned Jainism and they are right now practicing Jainism as a matter of fact. And also at that time there were a few children. However, right now, the difference between the before and now is that we have more number of children learning Jainism. And meaning that we need more classrooms and changing rooms for cultural programs. And also we need a separate auditorium, classrooms and dining hall for future development. And as I said, not only my two children learned Jainism, but my two beautiful granddaughters, three and five years old, they are also learning Jainism in Detroit. They are living right now in Detroit. So, this has benefited so much to my children, especially learning the nonviolence and also learning respect to other people's opinions. So, my humble request is to grant us this approval and we will really appreciate that. Thank you. Thank you. Next speakers, please, Ms. Trager. Bupendra Shah, Lata Shah, and Vikash Sethi. Please come on up if you were called. Okay, who's first? Yes, you're up. Good afternoon, Chairman and the Board of the Commissioners. I'm Bupendra Shah. I retired as a senior manager from Lockheed Martin. And I, fortunately, I have also served on Jain society as a president in past and a trustee. More than 40 years ago, like a few people said earlier. We started with two families, ten families, and about 15, 14 kids. We did not have any place for worship, so we started using individual homes on a rotation basis. In those times, trying to teach children their own little things and also have adult activity in a single house was extremely difficult. So, you can understand how difficult it is to do that in a small home. Well, today, 40 years later, we have a facility, a single hall, but the community has grown much more bigger. And, guess what, unfortunately, with that many children, now we have more than 50 children and more families participating. It's extremely, extremely difficult to segregate the area to provide them a proper facility to conduct the individual worship, individual learning for various age groups, and also adult education. We are at a point where our existing space simply is no longer acceptable and adequate. As we stated before, we are forced to use one hall to conduct different children activities as well as adult activities. This creates significant challenges and hindrance and limits our ability to serve our community and children. The proposed addition will allow us to provide a safe, organized, and appropriate environment to our children's growing needs and community programs that have been an important part of the joint religion and our practices. The proposed renovation is, therefore, not just desirable. It is our pressing needs. It's not a nice it is. It is a necessity. For these reasons, I respectfully urge you all to approve the plan as proposed. And thank you for your time and consideration. Dominique, would you please call the name of the next speaker so they can come down? We can keep three in queue the whole time. Ladies and gentlemen, in order to get through this, I'm going to ask a very respectful favor of you that please don't repeat what everyone else is saying. We understand that you have 50 children. We understand that you have a need to expand. Congratulations on that growth. What we are focused on is the impact and the suitability with regard to the placement of this operation into the existing neighborhood. So as the county attorney pointed out, we have to base this on fact. And the facts are related to placement of this in the neighborhood. So with that, I'll call the next speaker. Dominique, who is the next one to come down? Next is Scott Wells. And please don't feel like you have to fill the three minutes just because we're giving you three minutes because, quite frankly, less is often more. Ma'am, please give your name and address for the record. Okay. My name is Lata Shah. I'm going to address that. Good afternoon, Commissioner and all the members here. We are blessed to have temple. Thank you all. My name is Lata Shah. I have a privilege of teaching Sunday school for more than 30 years. We call it Padshala. Children learn particularly about gen principles of nonviolence, truth, non-stealing, etc. Along with multiplicity of views called anacons. Friendship to all, respect to learned, elderly, and handicapped people. Compassion towards less fortunate and all living beings. I am very happy and proud to share that our team of students participated in National Gen Academy Bowl competition. As we all recall our childhood memories, we carry those important humanity and moral values from Sunday school. We build faith in God with community support, friendship, participating in temple activities, and doing volunteer services. Our temple is registered with Seminole County for volunteering and community hours for students. We welcome and encourage neighboring students as well. Our Padshala is growing. We need age-wise classrooms, benches to sit instead of sitting on the floor, job boards, computers, etc. We need classrooms for young parents and adults too. With our understanding, support, and efforts, we can raise good citizens for future. It will be a win-win opportunity for all. Thank you. Thank you very much, ma'am. Sorry, there was something that was repeated. That's okay. You did wonderfully. This is an example. You are the best example. So thank you, thank you, thank you. Next speaker, please. Mr. Sethi is going to wave. So it will be Scott Wells and then Sandra Keegan. And Shashikin Shaw. All right, Mr. Wells, are you here? Yes. And Sandra, are you next up? I'm in opposition, so that's fine. That's fine. That's fine. Okay. It's just how the forms came in, Mr. Wells. But name and address for the record, please. My name is Scott Wells. I happen to live adjacent to the property at 411 West Citrus. And my concern is I've heard conversation about community, and there seems to be a distinction between the Jane community and the surrounding community, and that those almost seem exclusive of each other. So the functions that they're looking to increase, I think, is admirable. It speaks to their growth and their influence. Obviously, they're an attractive force. But they don't attract the neighbors, okay? They attract from outside of our neighborhood. And some of the concerns that Hillary had expressed kind of coincide with that, that it increases the traffic. It's not people from the neighborhood walking over there. It's not people from the neighborhood interacting with what's going on at the Jane Society. They have a much broader reach. And the other thing is that the physical construction of a two-story structure, I know it's within the, I'll call it laws, rules of that kind of property, but it's totally out of character with any other building within probably a quarter mile of that. So it definitely would stand out. The other issue is about traffic. And, you know, frankly, I have more problems with traffic from people going in and out of the park than I do with what goes on at the society. But the parking issue has been something that's needed to be addressed for a while. I've been there for 10 years now. And I've noticed that there's been distinct improvements since we started having interaction and communication, which is something that was missing from earlier. Those are my concerns at this point, is that it would be out of character with the rest of the neighborhood. I would strongly suggest that maybe they consider a different way of expanding instead of going up. And if that means acquiring additional properties like they did with the parking spaces, the parking lots that they're proposing, then maybe that's the way they need to go to stay in character with the neighborhood. Thank you for listening. Thank you for being here. Next speaker, name and address for the record. And before you start, Dominique, who's next? Diane Noss. Thank you. No, ma'am, you're next. Diane, you queue up so that you can come next. Thank you. Good afternoon, members of the board. My name is Sandy Keegan. I live on West Citrus Street. I have been there for 23 years. I am here today to respectfully ask you to deny this special exception request. When the temple was approved originally in the last 20 years, I believe that the decision makers did not anticipate the long-term impact that its development and continued growth would have on the surrounding neighborhood. That approval did not adequately account for the future needs of the residents or the importance of preserving the character of our neighborhood and the green space that still exists. Although we cannot change the decisions that were made 20-plus years ago or in that time, we can make a more thoughtful decision today. You can, actually. I ask you to consider whether approving this request is truly in the best interest of the entire community, not just the needs of one property or one organization. Please take this and your responsibility to protect our neighborhood and make a decision that respects the existing neighborhood, protects what remains of our green space, considers the residents of today and tomorrow. Please do not compound the consequences of past planning decisions by approving further expansion without adequately protecting the community around it. I think we have to acknowledge the fact that this request does not meet the special exception criteria, as Hillary pointed out. It's plain and simple. It's a two-story building. It's a two-story building that just doesn't belong in a residential community. The parking is, you know, a whole separate issue. The parking in the park is where their overflow parking is. Okay. Well, you've outgrown your spot, is what I would say. And maybe you need to think about where else you can go if you're going to expand. Because it certainly isn't, doesn't fit in the neighborhood. It's just, it just doesn't belong there. So, thank you for your time. Thank you. All right, ma'am. Name and address for the record. And before you do that, I'll have Ms. Dominique call the next person to get queued up. The final speaker will be Saatchi Shaw. Thank you. Hi. My name is Diane Nass. I should have said good afternoon first. That's okay. I've been a resident on West Citroen Street for 40 years, back when it was a dirt road when we bought the house. Bump, bump, bump. I've raised six children and saw changes. I remember when the house at the corner was sold. And I believe it was, our property was zoned agricultural back then. And there was nothing, I remember looking it up and there said a church could be there. So, there was nothing that could be done as far as coming to meetings and not wanting to have it. And the home that's there now, or the church, it looks the same as it does 25 years ago when they bought it. It has not changed. The only thing that has changed is block, I guess, like a windows where you can't see in and out. It's like people have them in their bathroom. That's what's there, okay? And I think they added in the back a little bit, moved the house back a little bit. But that is all. The trees, the yard, everything has been the same. And no one has said anything. No one's complained. Anything. And now they want to change and put this big two-story building that does not fit in. As you saw the pictures, the homes on our block are, I guess they're like ranch. And everyone has a different style house. And the neighborhood, the yards are all kept up. I should say even, well, our house just got fixed up after all these years, finally. So we're the only one that finally got our house fixed up. And we plan to stay there the rest of our life. We really like it. It's quiet. It's just like, like I said, I've been there 40 years, and I really like it. And to have the property change to be so big where it doesn't fit in for the exemption that they're requesting, I'm asking you all to really consider not to deny their request. I also had a note here. I guess per everything that's written right here, I agree with everything that's written there. And I hope that you will review it again before you make your decision. Thank you very much. Thank you for being here. Thanks. All right. Last speaker. Hi. My name is Shachisha, and I live in Lake Mary, Florida. I had something else planned, but I'm going to make some modifications and go from there, okay? So please allow me, okay? So as I said, I'm Dr. Shachisha. I'm a dentist. I serve families in Seminole County. And I also volunteer as a teacher in our Sunday school. We call it Patshala. I'm here, frankly, to respectfully ask for your support in allowing our community hall to expand. It's mainly to accommodate our growing needs, as previous speakers have said. So we have kids from 4 to 17 years of age learning in our school. And then there have been times when a program is going, like one program is going on, that kids have to, like we have to divide them into small areas to just keep them within each group. And it has been getting really difficult because people, like adults, have been coming in and out and all that. So that was one of the things, when we have our events, sometimes it runs longer. And then at that time, like young kids, they do get hungry. They need to eat. And there is no space for us that we can accommodate both of them. As we said earlier, that we always cater from outside. We never cook there. We are also non-alcoholic people. We don't ever allow alcohol in our temple. We are vegetarian people. So no meat is, like, cooked or allowed in there even. So we try and serve our community in our best way possible. So, like, as a healthcare professional and a teacher, I believe that our children deserve a safe, comfortable, and dedicated space to learn, ask questions, and grow. And, like, I understand that the neighbors had concerns, and we have tried our best to accommodate all of their concerns. And just having, like, one more floor helps our community in a much more, like, much better way. We have tried to expand as much as possible, but if there was other land for sale, that was a different thing. We could have done it that way, but unfortunately it is not. So, like, we are trying to accommodate, like, with the neighbors' needs in our way possible. And I just, like, if neighbors want to be more included, we are happy to maybe do an event where neighbors are welcome to come to. And it is never an issue. We have never denied anyone from entering our temple or the halls. So, like, we are trying to be open that way as well. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Any other further comments? No, ma'am. All right. We're going to close public comment. I think the applicant can offer any comments that you'd like to make at this time, but I will caution you to make them brief. No? You're passing? I will take the hand in the side of it. I think this has been a very healthy public comment section. I think we understand the issues. Commissioner Constantine, would you like to take the lead in this discussion? Yes. Hillary, could you get – I have a question. It has been stated by the applicant after the planning and zoning meeting and the second community meeting that they made changes. I assume that you have reviewed those changes. Would that change in any way your suggestion – not suggestion, you know, what you have said as far as whether or not it would still be – you would be opposed to this special exception? Yes. So, that change actually just recently occurred. That was after both community meetings and the planning and zoning board hearing. I have reviewed those changes. It doesn't change the county's stance. It's still a larger building that's going to cause additional issues within the neighborhood. It does look better. It does look nicer. Again, we do believe that the parking lot would be beneficial. However, with all of the other things, it doesn't meet the qualifications for the special exception since they're not on an arterial roadway. Thank you very much. You're welcome. Commissioner Zimbala? I have a question for staff because I've heard this stated numerous times. Is there a way to bring up the site plan showing the additional lots that were purchased? And while they're bringing that up, the question is, the additional properties that were purchased, if you take those properties that were purchased and the existing property that now exists, if someone was to come in there and buy all three of those, could they build two-story homes in there? Two-story homes would be allowed, yes. That's what I thought. 15,000 square feet. Right, but you can go two stories. Yes, correct, 35 feet. So you could go up to 35 feet. Correct. Okay, I want to just clarify that because I kept hearing can't go two-story and all that. Just the surrounding neighborhoods, all of the houses are all single-story. Sure, understood. And when we have that all across this county where there are a single-story on one side of the fence, a two-story on the other side of the fence. Okay, I just wanted to make sure. Thank you. You're welcome. Commissioner Dilawri. Thank you, Madam Chair. Instead of the site plan that they're providing, can you bring up a site plan that shows the area in relationship to the park? Yes, if you go back on the PowerPoint. And I'd like to ask staff to... That A1 portion on the north side of Highland Street is the park. I get it. So how much traffic is there from the park perspective and from the applicant's perspective? I don't have that information. How do I get that information? Traffic engineering, perhaps? So your question is what the... So the neighbors are complaining about traffic, okay? I'm trying to understand the traffic concerns. So I'm looking at a park, and the front entrance for the park goes right through that neighborhood from what they're showing me here. So what's the percentage of the traffic from the park, and what's the percentage from this applicant? Yeah, and I mean, I could get from the park just from our park directing, but I don't have the information regarding the applicant's traffic, unless the applicant has it. I don't think we have any park folks here. No. I don't have anything further than what we previously said of 60 to 70 people on Sundays coming in there. And there was no traffic study completed? We're not there, you know. That would be the point. I understand that, but the issue is, is it compatible to the neighborhood? And so is this really... What's the traffic issues here? I'm trying to understand that. Commissioner Constantine, you had your hand up. I'm prepared to make a motion, but I don't want to interrupt the questions. Go right ahead. So I actually have further comments. Okay, so go right ahead. If you'd like. I actually did go out and drive this neighborhood. I actually parked at the park and walked the neighborhood and walked around the lots and tried to sneak through the fence and all the stuff. And I'm going to be very frank, and I'm also going to give you a little bit of background. I lived in this neighborhood for years on the other side of the neighborhood. I get what the reference is to the bump, bump, bump, bump, because I lived on one of those dirt washboard streets before you paved them. I wasn't here back then. And the fact that this organization has grown so substantially is really nothing short of a miracle, and that's fabulous. And at the same time, it is extremely difficult to appreciate how building 15,000 square foot in this residential neighborhood, but up against those houses, because the back of that building is right up against the neighbor's house. And when you take into the back properties, it's a similar situation. And the roads just weren't built for that. The roads weren't built. Let's own that. We own that. The roads weren't built. They were washboard, dirt roads that we paved over at some point in our history with no curb, no gutter, no nothing, no parking. So the parking ends up in what is, in essence, people's front yards with really no regulation. I do appreciate all of the work that was done with regard to the rework after the fact and the desire to be respectful of the neighborhood, et cetera. But this organization is going to continue to grow, and the reason for that is because we need it. We need organizations that teach nonviolence and respect and humility, and we want you to grow. But I struggle with the notion that investing in this property at that level in that area makes good sense. I really struggle with it. So that's where I am. I don't have any other questions, but I would also point out that the impact to traffic, from my perspective, is our traffic is very slow in and out of that park most days. It's when we have big events, all the people come out, it's all that, and it's when we have the classes. And it's going to be similar for this, and there's going to be overlap. Madam Chair. Yes. I had the privilege of being at the opening of the temple in 2014. I was proud to be there. This society is an incredible neighbor. They are wonderful people. The peace, compassion, understanding, the level of commitment to community is unbelievable. I was so proud and honored to be there and humbled, quite frankly, by the level of real love that was in that community. But I have to concur with Commissioner Herr. This does not belong at the extent of growth that you want to have. The two-story building, the 15,000 square feet, it's not suitable in that place. At the time when the temple was there, I noted to myself, and I have walked that area also since, but I noted to myself that it was already packed in. It was already incompatible to the neighborhood. And I think it would just be we're continuing to expand a problem that you already have. I wish I could say that there's another location that you could find immediately. That's not our responsibility up here to do that. I want you to continue to grow. I want you to stay in our community. I want you to, however, find a place that you can grow suitably that would not be incompatible to the rest of the neighborhood. And therefore, I will make a motion to uphold the ruling or recommendation of the planning board and the recommendation of staff to deny this special exception. Do I have a second? I'll second it. Further discussion? So I have to say I'm conflicted. This is not an easy cut and dry decision for me. A lot of times things come before this board, and it's very clear to me from the beginning what the correct answer is. This one I have wavered on, frankly. I have been in this situation where I've been the director of a children's ministry at a church, and we've had the walls up dividing up the different ages, and then we have to break for snack. And then I've been there. I've done what you're trying to do, and it's a challenge. And then I put myself in the position of being the homeowner of the single-story home that's lived in this neighborhood for 20 or 40 years, and would I want this to be built right next door to my house? To me, it's not the height that's the issue. It's the scale of the structure that would be being put up directly next to my home. I live in a two-story home. The house next to me is single-story. I see everything that goes on in the backyard. Happens to be my mother's backyard. It works out fine, but I understand what's happening there. I also heard the gentleman say, you've got this other lot. Is there a way to expand if you need additional square footage? Could you not use that other lot? And I thought, well, the church that I was referencing, we had an old home on the property that we converted to an office, and we used that, and we built a second building on the property and utilized that for classrooms, and then we built another home. And was it perfect? No. Did we have to carry umbrellas back and forth when it rained to get from what? Yes. Was it? It was not ideal, but it kept us on that property, and for the amount of money that we had, which was virtually none, it was what worked for us. I'm not in a position to make recommendations for what you should or shouldn't do, but it seems to me that you all have an incredible opportunity with resources to do something that others in your situation wouldn't have. And so if you have the ability to do that and not impose on your neighbors, maybe that would be the best choice. I'm very conflicted. I'll be honest. I'm struggling because you also have been here for 25 years, right? And I've looked up, for the record, most of the people who have spoken today or who have submitted, I've looked up when you purchased your house, and a lot of you have purchased your house since this facility was here. So you knew moving in that this organization was there. Not all of you, 40 years, long time. But anyway, I just, that's where my brain is. I am just, I am thinking out loud. I'm just struggling. Mr. Zembauer? Somewhat in the same realm, you know, I look at the staff's report, and I struggle with the traffic analysis. And I think we've flushed it out to the extent of, and I would not expect there to be a traffic study at this juncture or project. But we know we've got a park right next door. And we've heard, well, only on certain occasions the traffic occurs, blah, blah, blah, blah. Well, what actually does occur quite frequently is people show up there quite a bit, do travel through this neighborhood. There are special events or tennis matches and so forth that occur that do, of the county's doing, impact the traffic in this area. Not the doing of the society, not the doing of the residents who live there, but the county's park now imposes that traffic load on all of them. You know, it's a faith-based group that this county approved originally and should have had an expectation that there was going to be a time, like many of our churches and faith-based groups do, at some point tend to expand in the area that they originally came to. When you ask a faith-based group to pull up its roots and ties and move somewhere else in our community, that can be problematic with its parishioners. So I want to hear more if there is more to be heard from my fellow commissioners before I'm ready to move forward with my decision, if there is anything else to be heard. Commissioner DeLaurie. Thank you, Madam Chair. The reason why I was asking about the park and the traffic is I truly believe that it's a shared problem, as Commissioner Zimbabwe spoke about. And I understand what Commissioner Lockhart was talking about by the size of the magnitude of the building, not just the height. And I'd like the applicant to try to address that. Would the applicant be available to do that? Because I would agree with you that it's the magnitude of the building, not just the height. Well, I'm going to add to that. But I think it's also the parking. I understand that. So I think you – what I don't want to do is send the applicant back. No, I'm asking to be addressing it today, right now, having some input. No, but what – Well, but that's going to require engineering, and when we – that's going to require additional expense. And then now we have a more spread out building, which means less parking, which then that creates the next problem. Well, the reason why I was asking the applicant – So we'd have to set it all forth at the same time. The reason I was asking the applicant to speak about it, because they may not be able to do that. There may not be a way to do that. I'd like to have an engineer with them. That engineer should at least give us some enlightenment on what the availability is to do this. Andrea. I think there's some availability from the building standpoint to accommodate some of the aesthetics nature of it, from the building standpoint. The existing property layout works in – pretty much maximizes the space right now, based on setbacks and locales. As for the new properties with the parking spaces, we can reduce that to the 160 max, basically comes down, so we could accommodate some additional small structures next to it, but that would mean something. You have more than 160 spots available then, correct? We have currently – we have, I believe, 82 spots. Okay. So – and the requirements, if we go to the 160 limit, would basically come down to primarily – I mean, I think the staff said 68, so we would – you know, there's room taking out the – I think 14 staffs. In your opinion, can our concerns be addressed or not? I guess that's the basic question. Potentially, yes. Yeah, I think the only response we can have is, I mean, can the scale be brought down? I'm sure it could. We haven't had the time to talk to the applicant to see if that's what they want to do. Can they financially afford to do it? All those things. So I appreciate the thought, but I can't answer that question today. So I have a question for my – So Commissioner Constantine had his hand up. I understand, you know, if they wanted – you know, we can't – today, we can't decide whether they can do this based upon this request. What Commissioner Lockhart has suggested as far as – or, you know, thought of as far as another building on where the 82 parking spaces, which they said I believe was 14 more that they had, if they could rearrange it to where the – I can't answer that. No one can answer that today. You know, I would entertain that. The point is, though, is that we're talking about a 15,000-square-foot building second floor. I can tell you the enormity of that in that neighborhood, and Commissioner Herr and I have – I don't know if any of you other have walked it or been there, but I will tell you it is – you know, it drowns out the rest of the community, and it is not something that is compatible, and I think our staff did a remarkable job in pointing that out. You look at every single thing on the criteria, and they have pointed out point by point by point where this is not acceptable to that. I want the Jane Society in this community, but I cannot, you know, do that at the harm that it will cause right there in that community. There's got to be another way. I know that, you know, Mr. Jones has been trying to do that, working with the people, and I respect what all of you have done to try to make the citizens in the neighborhood, you know, be more comfortable with the request, but the request is still a second floor of 15,000 square feet. There's got – you know, that just is not ever going to be compatible with that community. It's the more than doubling for me, to answer your question, Commissioners and Bauer. It's the more than doubling of the size that was already squeezed in. Understood, but they've had an additional land to this project that wasn't there. For parking. And if there's 50 – Partially for parking. And, you know, they continue to talk about – Partially for parking. 50 children. Can we have one person talking to talk? So, hold on a minute. Let's go. Yeah, so if I go back to the page – Understood. So, hold on, because you're saying partially, and perhaps I don't understand, but 1464, please pull up, page 1464. Commissioner DeLore, can I address your question? No, sir, I'm running the meeting. Sorry. And so this is the rendering with the new building, with the temple, with the parking behind it. Understood. Can we pull it up on the big screen, Madam Chair? I'm asking her to. She's working on it. And I just want to say that that participant in the back of the room is so welcome here today, and she is the best clapper ever for our employees. She was clapping along with everyone earlier today. Is this the one you're hanging up? No. It's going to be. It's this one, Dominique. The one with the pictures. It's the one with the pictures. The pretty pictures. Jane Society Special Exception is the big title. There's two pretty pictures, so just if you pace forward or backward from there, you're going to find it. Backward. Slide number. Yeah. Slide number, not numbered. I have a page number in the book. The page is it? That's 1464. There. There we go. There you go. I believe, correctly if I'm wrong, Hillary, I believe that the lots that were purchased is the parking lot that's on the right-hand side of that picture in the back. That's correct. Okay. So the lots that are purchased are not being used for building. The building is being placed on top of, left. Correct. The current building, the question that I do not know the answer to is whether the footprint of that building is bigger than the current footprint of the building. It would be the same footprint of the existing building. And going up. They're just demolishing that and then rebuilding a two-story structure. And going as far back on that lot as it currently goes. Correct. Which is right up against that neighbor's lot line. I believe, yes. I really do struggle with the original vote got us into this, and we can do all the should-haves that we can, and at the same time, compounding it doesn't feel right for me. Did you have something to say, sir? Sir, so to address Commissioner Dilawri's question, there is a possibility to do this, but we would utilize the two lots right there, but it would require a second story. The parking would be below, and the second story would be on the new property, and that would accommodate. So basically take the top portion of that building and put it on the second story. I mean, that way we accommodate parking plus. And so what happens behind those, behind the larger building, that's, if I have this right, I think that's the street where the neighbors are back to back to back. So now you'd have second story looking into multiple homes. On the other side. Yep. Madam Chair. Yes, sir. The other thing that I think hasn't been said, and I respect the Jane Society, they've continually talked about 50 children for the second building. They don't need 15,000 feet for 50 children. You know, there's got to be an economy, a scale that is balanced here. And so I'm going to amend my motion, if I have a second, if the seconder will amend it also, to deny it without prejudice. So if they want to come back and redo this, again, working with the citizens in the community, maybe scale it down, we will be able to entertain that without all of the costs of coming back to do that. I would accept that amendment. Is there further discussion? All right. We have a motion and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Hearing none, it passes unanimously. I'm going to look to Ms. Borkert and just ask, do we have everything you need? I believe so, but I missed the first part of the motion, so sorry. We weren't talking about the exact same thing. The first part of the motion is to deny it. Right. To deny it without prejudice so that they can reapply and there's no limit to time frame on when they can come back with the same request. Correct. Well, not the same request. Well, the same special exception request but a different site plan for it. Correct. Right. Because it's going to still be a special exception request, it's just going to be a different site plan. And avoid the costs. I have a question. Yes, Commissioner Lockhart. And this is for whichever staff member wants to tackle this. What is the threshold that trips the need for the special exception? Is it a square footage? Is it a floor area ratio? What is it? Okay. So I wanted to explain something that seemed to be a little confusing earlier. How about just answer that for me so I don't have to remember that I asked it. No problem. It's any expansion at this time. Any. So if they expand one square foot, they have to come back for a special exception? Yes. Okay. Thank you. You're welcome. Can I explain the thing to you? Yes, please. So our code changed in 2024. At the time that code changed, civic assemblies require a special exception, whereas they did not before. That's correct. So that's where it came from originally. Thank you. So prior boards did not approve, and now we're coming and got it. Correct. That's a very important fact that we did not know. Okay. That is a very... And yet we ended up in a good place, given that fact. That's why it's good to discuss. You have everything you need. So I'm asking this question so that there's nothing that happens after we all leave here today that causes this to be problematic for your ability to go and revisit this. And so I'm asking the county attorney that's responsible for this area of specialty, and she's giving me a yes, I believe. Yes. So we're good. That's the only reason why I'm asking that. Out of respect for what you all are about to go back and do, we wanted to make sure we're good. So with that, motion is denied without prejudice. All right. Madam Chair, can we take a five or seven-minute break or something? We can. And I don't think I ever closed public comment, so I'm going to do that. You did. Yes, you did. Yes, we'll take a five-minute break. You did close it. You did close it. You did. So the next item up is the Greenway Preserve Small-Scale Future Land Use Map Amendment and Rezone. This is Commissioner Zembauer's district, and we'll be presented by Annie Silloway, Principal Planner. Good afternoon. I'm Annie Silloway, Planning Development Services for the Record. The applicant is requesting approval for a small-scale future land use map amendment from low-density residential and plan development to high-density residential and a rezone from A-1 agriculture and PD plan development to R-4 multiple-family dwelling for around 308 multifamily units, development on approximately 23.42 acres, located on the north side of Slavia Road and east of State Road 417. There are three properties that are part of this request. Two of the subject properties have a future land use of PD and a zoning designation of plan development. These properties are part of the Oviedo Boat and RV Storage Plan Development, which exclusively permit the use of the property as a parking site for boats, commercial, and recreational vehicles. The third subject property is a future land use of low-density residential, which permits a maximum density of four dwelling units per net buildable acre, and has a zoning designation of A-1 agriculture. This property has been used in part of the outdoor storage operations. The proposed land use amendment is to high-density residential, which allows a maximum of 20 dwelling units per net buildable acre. The proposed zoning district is R-4 multiple-family dwelling, which would allow the multifamily dwelling development as a permitted use. The applicant proposes to develop the site as a multifamily complex, having a maximum of 308 dwelling units. Based on the firm map from 2007, most of the site is shown in the floodplain. However, based on the county's new Howell Creek Basin study, there appears to be less floodplain on the subject property than previously shown. The applicant will compensate for any impacts to the county floodplain as required at the time of the site plan review. Based on preliminary county wetland map analysis, as well as surveys provided by the applicant, there are approximately 2.1 acres of wetlands on the subject property, and the property is proposed to retain approximately 1.8 acres of wetlands in the proposed development. A topographical survey and plan showing the detailed wetlands and floodplain delineations will be required at the time of site plan review. The site is located in Seminole County Utility Service Area, and it will be required to connect to public utilities. The property proposes access to Slavia Road, which is classified as a major collector, and currently operates at a level service C. Improvements to Slavia Road are programmed in the county's five-year capital improvements program. The applicant will be required to coordinate with staff and comply with any improvements identified through the Public Works Transportation Engineering Review, including consideration of the county's future plans to widen Slavia Road. This development will also be required to relocate the undeveloped right-of-way known as Terra Lane, and the site is currently configuring to accommodate for the right-of-way and for existing transmission power line easement running diagonally through the property. There is not an existing sidewalk along Slavia Road. The developer will be required to construct a six-foot-wide sidewalk along Slavia Road, and specific buffer requirements will be determined at the time of site plan review, and will be required in compliance with the Seminole County Land Development Code. The R4 zoning district requires a 35% open space, and it will be provided on-site. The proposed development shows compliance with this provision, as demonstrated on the development plan. The school impact analysis did provide for the proposed project. It did conclude that the zoned elementary school is currently over-capacity. However, per the adopted interlocal agreement between the school district and Seminole County, the school district analysis concluded that the students would be generated by the project for the adjacent concurrency service area would, at this time, be able to accommodate without exceeding any adopted levels of service for each CSA by school type. The proposed development was evaluated for consistency with the Seminole County Comprehensive Plan, and the project is proposing an overall density of approximately 18.14 units per net buildable acre, which is in compliance with the maximum density of the proposed future land use of HDR. Slavia Road is considered an urban major collector, thus meeting the provisions of the high-density residential flue policy by locating the development adjacent to major collectors and arterial roadways. The proposed development adequately provides for setbacks, buffers, parking, open space, and all other development standards, which is also upheld and enforced by the Land Development Code. All future land use amendments are held to the criteria projected above, as per the comprehensive plan. And for the sake of this presentation, I will provide a summary of how the request meets the criteria, with more specific points being contained within the published staff report. Staff finds the proposed high-density residential land use designation to be appropriate and consistent with the changing character of the area, which is increasingly transitioning toward multifamily residential development near a major commercial center. The site is adequately served by existing and planned public infrastructure, including utilities, transportation facilities, and schools, and can be developed in compliance with applicable environmental regulations while preserving the majority of on-site wetlands. The proposal is compatible with the surrounding land uses through the use of a natural buffer, roadway separation, and site design features that minimize impacts on adjacent properties. The development would expand housing opportunities within the urban area and support the nearby commercial employment base. Its location along a major collector roadway promotes efficient transportation patterns by reducing pressure on local residential streets, whereas the applicant has also been advised that coordination with the county will be required given forecasted improvements to Slavia Road. The proposed development is also required to relocate the undeveloped right-of-way, Tara Lane, thereby enhancing connectivity and accessibility to this site and any future development to the north. The proposal is consistent with the Seminole County Comprehensive Plan, regional growth objectives, and state planning policies by providing additional housing opportunities and a location that supports planned growth, transportation efficiency, and compatibility with surrounding development pattern. The development was evaluated by the Seminole County Land Development Code for consistency per Section 30.31.6. The request is considered consistent with the Seminole County Land Development Code, the county comprehensive plan, and the surrounding area. The proposed development supports the objective of the R4 zoning designation through sufficient buffering and a proposed use that is compatible with the surrounding trend of multifamily development on Slavia Road, as well as a proximity to a major collector node to the north. The Seminole County Land Development Code also requires a maximum lot coverage in the R4 zoning district dependent on building height. The applicant has demonstrated compliance with this provision via the provided development plan and will be held to this standard at the time of site plan. The applicant conducted a community meeting on June 24, 2026, and the details of the community meeting have been provided in the agenda package. And the Planning and Zoning Commission did hear this item on September 2, 2026, and voted unanimously to recommend approval. Please advise we did receive five letters of opposition. These letters have been published and have been provided in your agenda package. So, staff requests the Board of County Commissioners enact an ordinance enacting a small-scale future land use math amendment and concurrent rezone ordinance as per the following motion shown on the screen. And that concludes my presentation. Thank you. Thank you. Are there any questions for staff at this point? Would the applicant like to make a presentation? Thank you, sir. Name and address for the record. Good afternoon, Madam Chair and fellow commissioners. My name is Jonathan Hewles with the Lowndes Law Firm 215 North Eola Drive, Orlando 32801. And I'm just one member of a comprehensive project team, several members of which are in the audience today with me, including Chrissy Gabbard, who is with the developer representative Wood Partners, Brent Lenzen, who is the project civil engineer with Kimley Horne, and our transportation engineer, James Taylor, also with Kimley Horne. We concur with staff's recommendation. It has been a pleasure working with staff on this project, Ms. Silloway, and also other county staff members. And we would just be happy to answer any questions and like an opportunity to address any public comments that may be made. Thank you. Any questions for the applicant at this time? All right, we'll move to public comment. Do we have public comments on this item? No, ma'am. Huh. Well now. Commissioner Zembauer, I'm going to turn it over to you. Why do you get the easy one? No, I don't know. It doesn't seem fair, does it? No. Thank you, Madam Chair. I'll move to approve a small-scale future land use map amendment from low-density residential and planned development to high-density residential and re-zone from A1 agricultural and PD planned development to R4 multiple-family dwelling for a 308-unit multifamily development on approximately 23.42 acres located on the north side of Slavia Road, east of SR-417. Second. And is it possible for us to use the motion per our lawyer's request based on the staff's findings? Yes. Can we just split those motions, do the comp plan, the vote on the comp plan motion first and the vote on the rezoning motion second? Is that what the county attorneys would prefer? Yes. That's what we've been doing. I will spend some more oxygen on those. Thank you. I move to approve, based on staff's findings and the testimony evidence recedes at the hearing, the Board of County Commissioners find to request meet the identified portions of the comprehensive plan and moves to adopt the ordinance and act in a small-scale future land use map amendment from low-density residential and planned development to high-density residential. Second part. What? Then we need a second. I'll second that. Is there further discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Hearing none, it passes unanimously. Second motion, please. Based on staff's findings and testimony evidence recedes at the hearing, the Board of County Commissioners finds a request meets identified portions of the Seminole County Land Development Code and moves to adopt the ordinance and act in a rezone from A-1 agricultural and PD plan development to R-4 multiple-family dwelling for a 308-unit multifamily development on approximately 23.42 acres located on the north side of Slavia Road, east of State Road 417. Second. And I have a comment. We have a first and a second and a comment. And I've got a comment as well. Sorry. Madam Chair, in talking to staff as well as the applicant, there's a transmission line that goes through this piece of property, and I just want to make sure that they didn't hear it today, but that they coordinate with FPNL for any of the work around that transmission line. There's four affirmative head nods for the record in the positive direction. Yes. Mr. Zimbeler. My comment is that this is a zoning, of course, just a point of clarification so it's on the record. When it gets to site-specific planning, and I've already talked to the applicant, I've talked to staff, it's very sensitive. of this area is prone to flooding, and it's been addressed, and it's been talked about already, but I want to make sure that staff and the applicant is clear that we need to do everything in our due diligence to make sure that the materials that have been placed upon that property already, the fines, the impervious areas, are properly mitigated off that property to promote proper drainage of your overall site plan. Yes. That's all I've got. All right. We have a motion and a second. Any further discussion? No, ma'am. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Hearing none, passes unanimously. You might want to buy Hillary a beer. Yeah. All right. Item number 44, Land Rover Small Scale Future Land Use Map Amendment and Re-Zone. This will be presented by Annie Silloway, Principal Planner, and this is in Commissioner Lockhart's district. Thank you very much. Good afternoon, Annie Silloway with Development Services. The applicant is requesting a small-scale future land use map amendment from mixed-use development to industrial and a re-zone from C2 general commercial to C3 heavy commercial and very light industrial. The applicant would like to re-zone three individual parcels to allow development consistent with the C3 zoning district, which permits uses including but not limited to automobile sales and service, car wash, bank, and convenience store. The applicant proposes to develop a 38,000-square-foot new car sales facility that will include automotive repair and service components on the site that was previously developed and operated as Rogers' Corvette Center for more than 60 years. However, the establishment did close their doors in 2025. The site has been vacant for over a year, and that vacancy under the MDX future land use triggers the property to be re-zoned to PD. The proposed use of automobile sales and service as a single use is not permitted under the existing mixed-use development future land use designation. The applicant is requesting a re-zone to C3, which would require a future land use amendment to industrial. Previously, the site operated solely as an automotive sales business, which is permitted in the C2 zoning district. However, the applicant now intends to re-develop the property to include automotive repair services. Because automotive repair is not allowed in the C2 zoning, the use is permitted under C3, which would require an amendment to an industrial future land use designation. The existing future land use designation is mixed-use development, which is intended to support well-planned projects that integrate residential and non-residential uses in close proximity. While this designation promotes a blend of residential and commercial activities, the surrounding area along U.S. Highway 1792 has transitioned over time and is now predominantly characterized by industrial and commercial development. Given this context, the proposed industrial future land use designation is more appropriate as it reflects the established development pattern and supports uses commonly found along this corridor, including warehouses, retail, office, and other industrial and commercial activities. The subject property currently carries a mixed-use development designation. However, the industrial designation is both suitable and compatible with the surrounding land use framework. Properties to the north and west along U.S. Highway 1792 are already designated industrial, and the remaining mixed-use designation to the south provides an appropriate transition consistent with the county's comprehensive plan. Because the site has previously developed, there are no wetlands or floodplain areas present, and public facilities and services are already in place and operating at required levels, and the proposed site has available capacity through the city of Castleberry. The site is already developed, suitable for redevelopment, and will adhere to all environmental and regulatory standards. The industrial designation also supports economic development by creating opportunities for higher-skilled jobs and reactivating a vacant property. Because the property utilizes an existing developed site, it reduces transportation impacts, and automotive repair typically generates fewer peak-hour trips than other commercial uses, further minimizing roadway impacts. This infill redevelopment supports regional planning goals, including the Central Florida Regional Growth Vision, by reinvesting in an existing commercial corridor and reducing pressure for development in outlying areas. The lake located behind the property provides a natural buffer between the proposed industrial use and the single-family homes to the east, ensuring continued compatibility with surrounding residential uses. The proposed rezoning does meet the conventional rezoning criteria in that it supports Seminole County's comprehensive plan policies by placing employment and light industrial uses in an appropriate urban corridor along U.S. Highway 1792. This area is already characterized by commercial and industrial development, making the proposed industrial future land use designation and C3 zoning a natural fit. The project includes adequate transitional buffers, and the adjacent Lake of the Woods provides a substantial natural separation from nearby homes, ensuring compatibility with surrounding residential areas. The C3 zoning aligns with both the corridor's development pattern and the applicant's intended use. All transportation, environmental, stormwater, and utility standards will be met during site plan review. Existing curb cuts will support safe access, and submitted studies confirm that the project can be fully served by current transportation and utility infrastructure without requiring off-site improvements. Redevelopment of the site will increase pervious area, enhance landscape buffers, maintain and extend the existing wall along the lake, and preserve environmental features. The project meets all levels of service for public safety and utilities and supports employment-generating uses while maintaining compatibility with the surrounding residential, commercial, and industrial area. Staff finds that the proposed industrial future land use designation and C3 heavy commercial and very light industrial zoning classification to be consistent with the comprehensive plan. The applicant did conduct a community meeting on May 12th of this year, and the details have been provided to you in your agenda package. And the planning and zoning did meet and heard this item on September 2nd, 2026, and voted unanimously to recommend the Board of County Commissioners adopt the ordinance enacting a small-scale future land use map amendment and rezone. So staff finds the Board of County Commissioners, staff requests the Board of County Commissioners adopt the ordinance enacting a small-scale future land use map amendment and concurrent rezoning ordinance as per the following two motions presented to you on the screen. And that concludes my presentation. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Silloway. Is the applicant here, and would they like to make a presentation? Yes. You kind of snuck up on us there from the right-hand flank. Yeah. There's a charger over there, so I'll get my presentation, you know, up and running. Name and address for the record. Cool. Okay, well, hello and good afternoon. My name is Joe Fisher, and I'm the architect on the project with the company Ware Malcolm. First off, we'd like to say thank you for taking the time to meet with us and allow us to present the proposed zoning and planning design for this Land Rover project. So we had the pleasure, as Stephanie said, of coming here about a month ago, and we received some good community feedback. So we'd like to provide a few updates in this updated presentation. Overall, we feel like the presentation has been well-received, but we want to make sure that we're addressing the community's comments, and so you'll see some of those updates in the coming slides. So first, we'll speak through these things because Annie did a great job kind of briefing the project, and it's been a pleasure working with Annie. She's been very responsive, very helpful with some of our questions. So, yeah, looking forward to working on the site plan submission with her as well. But first, we'll kind of get into the team introduction, then we'll go over the existing site, look at the existing wetland, then the proposed site improvements, the landscaping design, and then the building design, and just closing remarks. So with me today are Jake Dong, who is representing Lithia Motors, who is the developer on the project, and also with us is Stephanie Reidener, who is the civil engineer, who is also with Ware Malcolm. Let's see, so it's great actually having Stephanie and myself on the same team. It really helps us kind of keep the communication open, and you don't have a gap in that information. So basically, team introduction. So Lithia Motors is the largest developer, or the largest owner of car dealerships around the country. They don't have a lot of signage, so you won't really know you're walking into one, but chances are you've actually been there. And then Ware Malcolm is also a national company. We have locations in pretty much every major city across the United States, so that allows us to kind of travel and work with different teams across the country. We've been working with Lithia Motors for about two years on a dozen or so projects, and I've had the pleasure of working on four of those with Lithia Motors and a couple with Jake himself. So moving into the existing site and zoning overview, I'm going to just kind of go through this quickly, not to waste anyone's time, but essentially we have four parcels on the site. One of them is already zoned correctly, and then there are three that we're looking to bring into compliance of a C-3 with industrial use. So here's the existing overhead view. Like it was mentioned, there's an existing car dealership on here. There's a vacant motel. There's a paver assembly yard, just a variety of uses. There's also an existing boat launch, which is going to be removed, and the wall will be extended in that area. Here's kind of a street view showing that Corvette dealership. That large curb cut you see will remain. We're going to keep all – we have four curb cuts, and we're proposing to keep three of them and remove one of them. So this main one you see in front of you, this will be the main entry for customers and employees. So here is the existing site as it is now. The blue parcel to the plan north, that one is in compliance. The green parcel has, I believe, a C-3 classification, but it's a mixed use. So we're looking to change that to industrial. Then the two in yellow are C-2 classifications, and we're looking for that to be updated as well as the mixed use change to industrial. And this is what it would look like if we get approved. So bringing this all into the same kind of umbrella, and that way you could have a consistent, cohesive site plan. So we did receive some comments about the existing wetland, what was there, and we've also spoke with Thomas Calhoun and his team, and we want to make sure we continue to work with them on the shoreline ordinance and make sure that all of our wetland is in compliance with that shoreline protection municipal code. So right now we have about 500 linear feet of shoreline along Lake of the Woods. Most of it's planted. You know, you can see in these photos there's long, linear segments of planting. 80% of that is native species. Our plan right now is not to touch the wetland. There is a wetland easement, and we will not be going anywhere near that. The only thing we'll be doing, as was mentioned, is extending the retaining wall. And we have some updates on that retaining wall coming up. But, however, if there are some improvements that we need to make, we'll be happy to do that during the site plan submission. Okay, getting into the new site plan. So here on our screen is kind of a colored version of the site plan that was presented earlier. So that large white rectangle is our proposed building. To the right is Lake of the Woods. To the left is the highway. We are taking a lot of paved area and turning that into a stormwater retention pond, and that is between the building and the Lake of the Woods. So currently that's all paved right now, but that will be demolished, and a shallow retention pond we planted with native species as well. A lot of the comments we got were about the look of the retaining wall, as well as the landscaping along that area, along that retaining wall. There's a couple of palm trees right there, which will remain. But, you know, valid concerns about, hey, if I'm on my patio and I'm looking across the lake, am I going to be seeing another ugly industrial building like there is now? So we took some steps to add more planting. We added some trees, we added some shrubs, and some tall grasses in this area. And you'll see in a rendering coming up, we're also proposing to paint that retaining wall green to help it blend in with the grasses around it. Right now it's just an ugly stained concrete, and our plan would be to paint that every five years and clean it regularly. And if needs, you know, recommend, then we'll paint it every two, three years. So here we have an enlarged plan. We do have a variety of pavers going in around the site. These are permeable pavers, again, to help with stormwater retention. So at the front of the site, we have basically stone pavers. And then at the building entry, when pedestrians get out of the car, those become porcelain pavers. It's a zero curb entry, so basically it really helps with accessibility, you know, people in wheelchairs and getting in and out of the site. There's a valet drop-off area, which will help, you know, with cars and, you know, people being able to easily move and get their car to the right spot. So landscape and lighting is where, yeah, we received probably the most comments last time. As mentioned, on our last presentation, we focused only on the north of the site. However, we wanted to show a comprehensive design for the overall site and how we're adding a lot of trees. I think we're adding like 12 trees along the lake shore area, the retaining wall area, as well as large segments of grasses and shrubs. They're almost continuous from the north of the site to the south of the site by the inventory. Sorry, my breathing's getting in here. And then the lighting plan. So here we basically have been working with our lighting designer to make sure that we comply with the dark sky regulations. As well as just reduce the amount of light that's going to be visible reflecting across the lake. So what we've done is on the right side that overlooks the lake, we took away all of our light poles and we just put in bollards. So you can kind of see on these photometric plans how the light is really restricted just to the parking areas, which will, you know, have safety lighting during off hours and then night sky controlled lights during, you know, regular hours. And then just to wrap it up, we have our building design. So here it's a, this is actually Land Rover's first new conceptual design in the United States. They rolled this out in, you know, England and Germany, but this is the first one in the United States. So modern materials, high commitment to sustainability, and yeah, just an overall improved client experience. Kind of really keeping just a few, you know, really nice materials and not going too crazy with the overall design. It's a consistent building height of about 24 feet tall. So here are just some elevations. Along the front is that black metal that you see, and it's basically just in rectangular bands. And then on the back half, it's a kind of a silver metal, like a gray metal. They call it a trapezoidal, and that kind of wraps around the back of house. There were some concerns about the overhead doors, and we did confirm those are high-speed doors, so they'll open and close quickly to, you know, basically avoid noise pollution. Another comment we received from the next-door neighbor, who is a long-term care facility, they were just concerned about the PA system. You know, a lot of car dealerships, they blast names across the lot saying, you know, please come to the front office, that type of thing. And with their patients, that would obviously be a problem. So what we're doing is we're creating a walkie-talkie system to communicate around the site rather than blasting people's names all across the acres. And here's that updated rendering from the back. This was kind of taken from a shot from a neighbor who sent it to us across the lake. So the retaining wall, you can kind of see it's that light green, you know, above the grass, but below the gray building, that's the retaining wall. So as you can see, if you paint it green, it really kind of goes away. And then you can see the added trees along the site as well as the bushes and the shrubs. It might not be. We didn't add as many tall grasses in here, which is probably going to be more of the realistic condition. And then we show all the existing wetland planting along the lakeshore itself. And then just a nice little interior rendering. So just very modern materials, a lot of wood, sustainable wood sourcing, ceramic flooring, and then an exposed structure painted black. And here's the floor plan. The left-hand side is your showroom. And then you move into like a hospitality tunnel with just seating areas, private workstations. You have a drive-in hall where you can basically bring your car in. It's wide enough to bring two in and drop it off for where it gets serviced in the back right of the building. That's all servicing, parts storage, quick service base, things like that. So, yeah, that's our presentation. I really appreciate, yeah, your time and happy to answer any questions. Thank you. Commissioners, any questions for the applicant? All right. Are there any public comments? Only the one written comment. Okay. Commissioner Lockhart, this is your district. For the record, the... I filed a public comment earlier. A yellow one? Ten more. Yes. This is the written public comment? Did you mean to... Oh, you wanted to do both. Okay. Please come up to the podium. Do you want your document back? No. Okay. Thank you. I'm sorry. I just want to clarify three quick things. Give me your name and address for the record. My name's Timothy Morse. I live at 132 Carolwood Boulevard Farm Park, which is straight across the lake, about 1,000 feet from this facility. So, anyway, first of all, I'd like to thank Annie Silway for such an organized, thorough presentation and packet. I've gone through the packet a couple times. I'd also like to express my appreciation for Thomas Calhoun over lake management. I don't know if he's here or not. And I'm sure that he's fully capable of implementing the Water Protection Act in Seminole County. But yet, I've been trying to obtain and not been able to get a hold of the Environmental Resource Permit. And to that, to the Environmental Resources Permit, let me just put on my glasses and read this one quick thing. New mandatory nutrient reductions under the standard statewide Florida Department of Environmental Protection stormwater rule developers can no longer just build a standard retention pond and assume it is enough, they must mathematically prove via a detailed best management practice analysis that their system will achieve a minimum 80% reduction in total phosphorus and 55% reduction in total nitrogen runoff. Okay, so, I just would, before this is finally approved and let run wild, I would just ask that special care be taken to prevent automotive oil, paint, and fluids winding up in Lake of the Woods. I have been monitoring Lake of the Woods for Florida Lake Watch now since the summer. One last thing I want to point out is I handed you all the little pictures. This is Annie Silway's zoning map. I don't know if it helped you pull that up or not. We have it. Okay. And you have 40 seconds. This is the actual zoning map, which I gave you some copies of. It shows the entire lake. 85% of the lake is residential, okay? Annie looked at it from, oh, I'm standing on 1792. This is all industrial warehouses, churches. I live on the lake, and I look at it, 85% of it is residential lake. So, thank you for your time and attention. I'm very tired of just sitting here watching y'all go on this stuff. Ditto. So, let me, if I could, I was going to reference this. And I'm going to mark it, but it was a live conversation. Go ahead. Okay. I'm sure. Hold on. What she's done. Go ahead. What she's done. Go ahead. No, go ahead. Somebody talk. You're on Commissioner Lockhart. So, what I was going to do is immediately reference the written public comment that Mr. Morris also handed in that talked about his concerns for Lake of the Woods. I have every confidence that the plans that have been submitted with the change of the retention, inclusion of a retention pond are going to drastically improve the water quality of this lake. There has been no retention or detention whatsoever. The water has been sheet flowing off of that asphalt, and all of the chemicals and paint or whatever that had been flowing before is now going to at least be stopped. I'll let the engineers talk about percentages and all that good stuff. But just common sense tells me that this is a better move for this lake than what you have now. I live on a lake that is in Seminole County MSBU, and one of our neighbors is a golf course. And I wish that that golf course neighbor was as good as this car dealer neighbor because we could really use some lack of golf course runoff going into our lake, frankly. We wind up with algae blooms and garbage all the time. So, I was pleased to see that. That made me feel much better to know that this is an improvement. I really have no other questions. I'm ready to make a motion, but if there are other questions, I'll certainly wait. Commissioner Zimbauer? Not so much a question. Just a comment, ironically, to staff's comment, that it's currently car sales that have there in the Rogers Corvette Center. I mean, this has expanded to auto repair and so on and so forth. Yes, sir. Newsflash, you know what business I'm in. There's auto repair and paint and body work been happening on that property for decades. Yes, absolutely. I've been in the paint booth. I've been there. I've seen it. I mean, so that's a whole other story, but the point being is if that was already going on unpermitted and now you're going to have an operator who will have to meet all the latest standards knowing they're going to undertake that kind of work, I think Commissioner Lockhart's correct. You're going to be in a much better place than you are right now. Yes, sir. I wasn't going to out them, but Commissioner Lockhart, back to you for a motion. Oh, I'm sorry. Commissioner Constantine. I just have one other comment that wasn't added to this. And Commissioner Lockhart, when you're making your motion, I live on a lake also, and it's less than a – it's about 1,000 feet across the lake, and I can hear my neighbors sometimes when they're talking loudly and or music. When I'm thinking of an automobile, you know, the revving up, the moving, the this and the that, you know, when you're fixing cars, you have to do the motor. Has there anything been done as far as, you know, slowing down or limiting the noise that lakes, you know, carry noise? I do know, based on the conceptual plan that they provided us during rezone, they're going to turn the building so the doors don't open directly towards the lake. So they're going to be facing, you know, north to south. 1792? No, they're next-door neighbors, east or west, yeah. I think we might want clarification from the developer on that. One of the recent Lithia updates was to add a few more overhead doors on the back side, face overlooking the lake. Those will be high-speed doors, and adding those trees and landscaping will help mitigate the sound coming off the water. And then the other update we made was to get rid of that PA system and to just go to a walkie-talkie system. But we're obviously looking at doors. We're also investigating doors that have a lower decibel volume to, you know, address that comment. Mr. DeLaurie. Thank you, Madam Chair. I'd like to ask staff a question, please. We have a sound ordinance in place. They'll have to hear about a sound ordinance. Yes, they will have to meet the performance. No matter which side the doors are on. Yes. And no matter what they do inside the building or outside the building, they'll have to hear by it. Yes. Good luck. Commissioner Zimbauer? And just as a matter of practical common sense, we are talking about Highway 1792 that carries a lot of traffic, a lot of noisy traffic. We don't have modified exhaust laws in the state. And as we all know, we hear them in our neighborhood with the loud exhaust and so on and so forth. I will also tell you, not outing anybody, but there was at one time a performance operation on this site that, in essence, did pretty much build race cars. So those noises were very loud because engines were being revved at all hours of the day and night because that's what they did. I can't imagine, knowing the Rover product line, that they could generate any kind of noise. And Rover clients typically are not ones that modify their vehicles to make loud noises. So hopefully we're in a good spot there. All right. I'm going to put this back to Commissioner Lockhart. I want to thank you, Mr. Morris, for your volunteering as a member of the Lake Watch program. That takes a lot of time and dedication. And I did pull up the Seminole County Water Atlas to see what's happening with Lake of the Woods in terms of impairment. And I think my prediction is you're going to start seeing some real improved numbers. I'm watching Thomas Calhoun nod his head in the back. And I agree with you. I think Thomas does a great job. So, Commissioners, I'm prepared to make a motion that, based on staff's findings and the testimony and evidence received at the hearing, the Board finds the request meets the identified portions of the comprehensive plan and moves to adopt an ordinance enacting a small-scale future land use map amendment for mixed-use development to industrial. Second. I have a motion and a second. Any further discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Hearing none, passes unanimously. And my second motion is based on staff's findings and the testimony and evidence received at the hearing that the Board finds the request meets the identified portions of the Seminole County Land Development Code and moves to adopt the ordinance enacting a rezone from C2 to C3 on approximately 7.51 acres, located on the east side of U.S. Highway 1792, approximately 420 feet south of O'Brien Road. Second. We have a motion and a second. Any further discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Be opposed. Hearing none, passes unanimously. Thank you very much. All right. Annie, you are, you're up again. Item 45, Palmetto Point, right away, vacate. This is Commissioners in Bowers District. Take it away. Okay. Good afternoon. Annie Silouet with Planning and Development Services for the record. The applicant has petitioned Seminole County to vacate and abandon two undeveloped and unnamed portions of the public right-of-way for a development known as Palmetto Point in the Crippens Subdivision as recorded in Platte Book 1, page 90, and the Sanford Celery Delta Subdivision as recorded in Platte Book 1, pages 75 and 76 of the public records of Seminole County, Florida. For the property located on the east side of Sipes Avenue, south of Lake Mary Boulevard, the all owners of properties adjacent to the subject right-of-way are included as parties to this application, and the purpose of the right-of-way vacate as proposed is to accommodate the second phase of a residential development in the city of Sanford known as Palmetto Point. The respective two right-of-ways are part of different recorded plats. The right-of-way is subject to the request that runs east to west as part of the Crippens Subdivision, and the requested right-of-way to be vacated in this section is approximately 15 feet in width, and 647.7 feet in length, with an area of 9,716 square feet. The right-of-way that runs north to south is part of the Sanford Celery Delta Subdivision. The requested right-of-way to be vacated in this section is approximately 15 feet in width, and 1,377 feet in length, with an area of a little over 19,000 square feet. The county has drainage facilities located within the right-of-way as part of the request. Public Works required a drainage easement, which has been executed and will be recorded upon approval of the request. The request includes the establishment of an access easement vacating both right-of-ways, would otherwise eliminate legal access via the subject right-of-way currently associated with nearby parcels, thereby necessitating the access easement. Although these parcels presently gain physical access through Eagle View Cove, Eagle View Cove is privately owned and does not provide the required legal access. The access easement is fully executed by all parties and will be recorded upon approval of the requested vacate. The applicant has provided letters of no objection from all applicable utility companies, and Public Works has no objection to the requested vacate. This request complies with the requirements of vacating a right-of-way under section 35.184 of the Seminole County Land Development Code, and the authority of sections 336.09. Staff requests the Board of County Commissioners adopt the resolution vacating and abandoning the right-of-way as per the motion projected on the screen. And that concludes my presentation. Thank you. Any questions for staff at this time? Is there an applicant that wishes to speak? You don't have to, but you're welcome to. You've had enough, too? All right. Commissioners, any... I think he does want to speak. Are you the applicant? Yes. I'm with the applicant. I'm the engineer. Oh, you're the engineer for the applicant. Yes. All right. Name and address for the record. Don Beeger. 1812, Harper Park Drive, Winter Park, Florida. I just want to say thank you for the commissioners in that. The southern... I just wanted to identify those two easements. The southern easement is actually between the same developers on the south side, which is a current development that's being done right now. That actual easement is going to end up turning into a tract on the property that's going to be a drainage track for us in the future development. The north-south one on the far east side of the property actually goes through the backside of future lots and the front of a stormwater pond and stormwater facility on the site. That's what I have. Thank you. All right, thank you. Commissioner Zimbauer, this is your district, but I do want to point out that we had a written public comment form from the Vanderwakens, which I'm pretty sure that was not accurate, but maybe close. And they are concerned with water problems that they're already dealing with with road work. I believe Tawney is in the back right there, and she would be the person to talk to about that to make sure that you're... They're right next to you, Tawney. Good job. Y'all should have been talking all day. That all worked out. That's a plan coming together. That's a good connection for you to have. I'm going to pass this down for the public record. Commissioner Zimbauer. So thank you very much. Are there public speakers? Is there any public... Oh, there are public speakers. Thank you. Just one. Jill Vaccaro. My name is Jill Vaccaro. I live on 3890 Skyway Drive. I am downhill and downstream from all these sites. I went to a meeting with the St. John's Water Authority last fall, and this entire area is considered an area of special flood concern, not the red, but the yellow. I'm a beekeeper. I am a retired firefighter with 22 years on New Britain, Connecticut, Hardin, New Britain, Connecticut. I'm a rescue certified scuba diver. I'm a lifeguard. I'm an EMT. I know it happens when water goes bad. I don't have any problems with this subdivision, but the easement that runs northwest to southeast, I have been in waders. I've been hiking through the underbrush. It needs to be ditched. It's totally overgrown. It's filled in with sand from when they did Lexington Square on Skyway Drive. All the sand just washed off that property into all the drainage ditches. I was able to get Seminole County. They were very nice. They did the drainage ditch on Skyway Drive where water doesn't like to make a 90-degree turn, where it makes a 90-degree turn north of my property, runs east-west, and then goes through one hole, has to make another 90-degree turn into the canal that abuts my entire five-acre property. There's also an unused canal that also goes north-south right next to my property that doesn't have a culvert pipe that attaches it to anything. One of my questions and concerns for you guys to figure out is when all this water comes down through here, it isn't being addressed. All these houses have the potential of being flooded. All we need is a couple of trees to be undermined and flop over and create a beaver dam, and you're going to have massive flooding in this entire area. Seminole County was very good about cleaning my section of the drainage ditch, but the other side, which actually connects with these two subdivisions, doesn't even exist. So what you're seeing on your map, what you're seeing on your piece of paper, it isn't really there. So Seminole County is going to have to pay to clean all this stuff out, or else it's going to be flooding pretty badly. That was the main thing. There's infrastructure that looks like it's there, and it really isn't. So that's my problem. Thank you very much. Thank you. All right. Do you have a rebuttal to that? The current plans that we have designed, we've taken into account the pre-post-development, water management district, Seminole County's criteria, stormwater pond is at the back. We have worked quite extensively with Jim Potter with regards to the, we're going to put a proposed future easement along the backside of our property. That ditch in that area did not have an easement over it. Jim found that out. We are going to put that easement over on the backside of our property, so there will be an easement there. That area, Jim has talked with our company, and we are intending on cleaning out portions of that ditch. Okay. Thank you, sir. Thank you. Portions of? Any other public comment? Any other further public comment? No, ma'am. All right. I'll close public comment. Commissioner Zimbauer. Thank you, Madam Chair. So some things that have been stated here are absolutely true in this district. The drainage in this district is a problem. And I'll tell you, based on what I'm hearing and what I've seen from the developer's side and what they're proposing to turn this into a drainage track, I think, is a good thing. And I'll tell you why. I had to get involved over on Skyway and Sipes after new development had occurred, which had flooded the adjacent property. I mean, I'm talking flooded. I'm talking like six inches of water in their yards because the new development had been raised up four feet. New homeowners had come in, put gutters on the house, and then dumped the gutters in the back of the house, which then ran down the hill into the neighbor's property. Fortunately, we had a good enough relationship with this developer to come in, who then themselves paid to put a drainage into the neighbor's property to be able to vacate the water. Otherwise, it would have been a litigated mess. And so it's important, and to the one resident's point, there is infrastructure there that appears to be there, but the county doesn't own it. I mean, there's several areas over there that private property owners own, and I know the county has approached them and said, hey, can you give us access so we can improve it and fix it? And several have said, no, we're not going to do it. And it's like, okay, well, then that's a whole different issue that we really don't want to go down that path. But there are a lot of areas over there that are old farming culverts. There are old drainage ditches that were put in years ago by farmers to help drain the fields and those types of things that we just don't own it. We don't have the right-of-way to it, we don't have the easement or anything. So based on my review, it appears that at least this developer is conscious of those issues and is taking the proper approach to the extent they can to gather their water and mitigate it from running off on someone else. So with that said, I will move to approve and adopt the resolution vacating and abandoning two undeveloped and unnamed portions of the public right-of-way for a development known as Palmetto Point and the Crippen subdivision is reported in Platte Book 1, page 90, and the Sanford Celery Delta subdivision is recorded in Platte Book 1, pages 75 and 76 of the public records of Seminole County. Second. We have a motion and a second. Further discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Hearing none, it passes unanimously. And Mr. Developer, please do not make people call my office for me to come out there and figure out we have a problem. Thank you. Instead of portions, do it all. Right. Yeah, well, that's it. Which portions? Yeah, it's the portions we own or have rights to. All right. That takes us to the county attorney's report. Thank you, Chairman. I just have one item. Consistent with Florida law, I just wanted to publicly announce that I'm seeking the board's direction and guidance on pending litigation in the matter Malloy v. Seminole County. And that closed session with the board will be scheduled in the coming weeks. And I will give you more details when I have them. Thank you. County manager? No report, Chairman. We do have some board appointments. Item number 46, approval of the at-large appointments to the Building Code Board of Appeals. Looking for a motion? I am. Motion to approve as presented, slate. Second. All right. Is there a discussion? Hearing no further discussion. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Passes unanimously. Item number 47, and I am looking for a motion for the approval of the- Motion to approve the slate as stated. Second. We have a motion and a second. Further discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Hearing none. Passes unanimously. That brings us to Commissioner Lockhart for your district report. All right. I just have one item in the interest of time. There's been a lot going on, and I have many, many things that I could share with you all. Most of them that you already know, it would just be for the benefit of putting them on the record. So we'll skip that. And that is a great example to set. We'll skip that performative. Great team player. Yeah. Thank you. Let's set that example. So here's what I passed out to you all earlier is a draft letter that was in response to the last LINCS board meeting. You may recall at our last board meeting, I shared with you that there was an unexpected item on the agenda for the union contract, for which there had been no advance notice or executive sessions or any discussion. After that, at that meeting, I asked some very specific questions, and I'll be honest with you, it was hard for me to tell whether or not my other colleagues on that board had the benefit of briefings or not. None of them responded in the affirmative or negative that they had. It did not go as I would have hoped that it would for an organization this size with a budget this large with the impact that it has on their funding partners. So this letter has been drafted. I would like to send it before our next LINCS board meeting. If you all have comments or concerns or see something that you think should be different, if you would mind working through the county manager and then any edits or things he can bring back to Patty in my office, we can amend the letter and get it out. Motion to approve letter as written or as edited through the county manager's office on behalf of Commissioner Lockhart or Representative Lange. Second. All those in favor? For her signature. Aye. For her signature. Right. Right? Yes. Just want to make sure. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Hearing none, it passes unanimously. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. A date by which we think edits should be back to the county manager's office? Tomorrow. Tomorrow. So hearing no feedback by tomorrow, they will assume there's no feedback. It's a short letter. Understood. I've already read it. I think it covers the points. Yep. Terrence says 3 p.m. to be specific. Anything else? No, that is it. All right. Commissioner Dilawri. Thank you, Madam Chair. A little bit of good news. I was at the Central Florida NPL Alliance meeting, and about a year or so ago, or plus, we wrote and supported a resolution supporting the expansion of I-4 from Lake Mary all the way up into Volusia County. And we were told by DOT that they're moving forward with that, and they're trying to put all the funding together. They're broken up into a couple different phases. They're looking at the first phase was just adding lanes. They're not going to widen the bridge. They're going to re-stripe the bridge. And then they were also at the later date doing an express lane, but the first one is just adding lanes, and that's several hundreds of millions of dollars just to do that piece. But they're moving forward with that. And I'll report back to you when we hear more information about that. I think that was great news that we actually did that, and DOT and our partners are listening. So I want to thank them all, especially DOT, for their hard work. I did get some information from the 49th Scottish Highland Games that's coming up this January, and they asked me to hand out the flyers and the brochures. I'm going to do that right here for your use. Can you pronounce the Honored Klan this year? It's the Honored Klan right there. I'm not going to try to pronounce it. I'll let you do that. It's a tough one. What is it? It's Farcorson. What I made a comment about when I was talking to them was I'm so glad that they were applying two Thursdays in one week because they actually have two Thursdays in one week in January if you look at the brochure for the whiskey tasting. I thought that was very phenomenal. That is great. Maybe it's because it was a whiskey tasting. That's the way I look at it, but that's all good. And I also want to thank our fire inspectors for their hard work with the Fire Prevention Week because they were installing smoke alarms this past weekend, and they did a phenomenal job doing that as well. And that is the end of my report. All right. Commissioner Zimbaugh. Thank you very much. I'll try to be as brief as I can. Just for the public's notice and congratulate Mayor Pat Bates is retiring after 37 years of dedicated public service. Her final meeting as the mayor of the city of Aldemont will be held on October 27th. 20th, 26th at 7 p.m. Long, long legacy that preceded the gentleman to my left who started over there as his career. Prayers, please, for Beau Yarbrough from the Yarbrough family who unfortunately had a very tragic incident working cattle and was trampled pretty badly and is going to have to go into some serious surgeries and currently is not able to walk. So if you keep him and his family in your prayers, we'd appreciate it. One of the last remaining cattle families, you know, in our great county here. So keep him in our prayers if you would. And, of course, this is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, October, and it's also National M&M Day today. And we even had M&Ms up here. Nobody took any. Yes, we did. You didn't see us. Okay. All right. Well, great. That's all I have today. A five-minute break is very expensive. Commissioner Constantine. Thank you very much. I would like to congratulate the airport on the air show, Wakaiva Island on River Day, the German-American on Oktoberfest, Seminole State College on the celebration of giving, and the Serbian Orthodox Church on a great Serb Fest this weekend. On October 14th, I will be speaking at a DeGroves Seminar. On October 16th, for the Center of Earth Juden's Prudence for Berry College. And then, of course, on the 16th, Seminole County Chamber's got the mayor update. The 17th, Viva Obito. The 8th, we've already heard enough of that. October 17th, English Estates is having a neighborhood event. And on the 24th, the German-American Society is having another Oktoberfest. And also, one other thing that's happening in our neighborhood, the Florida Springs Council Riverside Gala is having their 10th anniversary at Wakaiva Island this Saturday. And that's mine. All right. I'm going to do a combined report. Seminole County Public Schools had its night of impact this past weekend and raised, I believe it was over $240,000 to benefit the students and teachers in the district. I have a huge debt of gratitude for a Tall Trees site visit. We go to Tall Trees quite a bit. We've done that ever since the highway was put through and it's needed. We had Jim Strohs and Scott Kurtz from DOT and Tawny O'Lore, Marie Lackey, Joe LaFasso, David Stroh, and Jolie Boyd and George Jimenez. So we had the entire department out there. There are real concerns. We met several citizens out there and we have a path forward for exploration. On the 8th, the CFX board did approve the design contract with DRMP for over $12 million for the 452 extension from the 417 to the Sanford Airport. We want to thank Kenny Bentley for coming out and speaking in favor of, Darren Gray, who also came out and spoke in favor of, and Dr. Cheryl Nichols, who's the Vice President of Operations from the Seminole County Chamber. They all did a great job. And that concludes my report. The rest is not necessary to say. How about that? So we have one last public comment, I believe. Yes, ma'am. John Cramp. That's yours. I don't think he heard you. I don't think he heard you. Heard it, I. John Cramp. With the record. John, you're up. No, no, no. That's for you. That's for you. Where do these packets go? Pass them right to. I'll get it. And if you would say your name and address for the public record, that would be fabulous. Okay. Well, good evening, commissioners. My name is John Cramp, and I live at 2597 Sweet Creek Crossing, Chuliotta, within Lake Pickett Woods' watershed boundary. I'm here today to put a severe administrative environmental failure into the permanent record of Seminole County. Directly next to my property is a 20-acre track. It is controlled by an unpermitted developer, MLJR Investment, LLC. More than two years ago, this developer executed a massive clear cut. This was done without a permit, and it happened directly inside the protected St. John's River Riparian Habitat Protection Zone. This illegal clearing sits just 100 feet from Lake Mills Branch Stream. That deeply violates our strictly regulated 550-foot special protection buffer zone. Because Seminole County has completely failed to enforce its stabilization standards, prevailing easterly winds are relentlessly broadcasting highly evasive airborne weed seeds to address my boundary line. This has caused an exponential weed explosion that has grown into a totally unmanageable bombardment on my property. The ongoing destruction has destroyed my retirement, put my family through hell, leaving us on complete overload. Now only you have the power to stop this relentless bombardment. If you choose to do nothing, I will never live long enough to overcome this. The certified evidence packets I've handed to the clerk establish four undisputable facts. Exhibit A, the tax card proves the developer had no agricultural classification and no greenbelt exemptions. Exhibit B, the building department confirmed in writing that no applications or permits have ever been received or reviewed for any work on this site. Exhibit C, out of sheer desperation, I personally generated six separate enforcing tracking logs over two years. Yet under a 311 file, the only notation recorded by staff was a branch down. To lock this obstruction into place, staff quietly marked all of my tracking requests as completed while stonewalling my public record request. I have had zero public records delivered since 2025. On Exhibit D, on October 8, 2026, Commissioner DeLerry's office sent me an email claiming this massive devastation was simply the removal of a damaged orchid grove to invent a retroactive loophole. It was actually an abandoned, weed-infested citrus grove. The property was overrun by a massive monoculture of torpedo grass, chamber bedder, and unknown noxious weeds that no county official has ever physically evaluated. Furthermore, there are currently 20 to 30 truckloads of dirt positioned to illegally fill the southwest corner of the plot directly inside the protected riparian habitat zone. This unpermitted fill is viewable on the photos in your packets. My question to the board is, who's going to stop that? The state has already opened up a regulatory compliance audit on this parcel in the FDEP Central District. I am not here to compromise. I am formally demanding that the county manager immediately direct developmental services to execute two things. First, issue an immediate notice of violation for unpermitted land clearing and illegal basin filling preparations. Second, place a database-wide administrative permitting block and enforcement hold on this parcel to freeze that asset before they try to split or transfer the land to evade state remediation. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you for being here, sir. We appreciate your comments. I know Commissioner Dilawri's office is working on this issue already, Commissioners. The county manager has now heard your request, and we're glad you're here today. Thank you very much. Please drive safely home. Okay. So I should hear something back soon? You'll hear from somebody. Okay. Great. Thanks. Any other further comments? No, ma'am. All right. Commissioners, I think that concludes our meetings today. Meeting adjourned. Thank you.