Everyone Thank you all for being here. I appreciate so many people showing up for this issue I hope you've all recovered as best you can from the hurricane or on your way to getting power if you don't have it already But thank you for being here are meeting this afternoon We only have one item for discussion and that is the Mill Creek Sync Project discussion. Move agenda approval. All right. We have a motion and a second to approve the agenda. Is there any comment to the agenda? Seeing none, all in favor of the motion signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed like sign? All right. We'll move forward with this agenda item. Thank you, everyone. All right. we'll move forward with this agenda item. Thank you, everyone. All right, good afternoon. Madam Chair, commissioners, I'm Steve Hofsteader, Natural County Environmental Protection Department. I'll just briefly talk about how we're gonna do the presentation and kind of give a quick overview. So Stacy Greco, a water resource program manager and myself will tag team this presentation. We're going to start off with kind of an overview of why protecting our springs and groundwater is so important. And then we want to get into the details of Mill Creek watershed in particular. And then we'll follow that up with a more detailed look at what the proposed development activities are in the watershed and get into the details of those projects. And then we'll talk about the opportunities we might have in dealing with those projects and things like low impact design and other aspects. And then we'll conclude with what our next action should be and recommendations from the board as to what action you like us to proceed with. So with that, we do have other staff in the room that could answer more detailed questions when we get to that. Mayor Zorco, our water quality engineer is here. Mark Brown, our Natural Resource Program Manager, that oversees the county-wide wetland analysis as well as Greg Owen, who could answer a lot of our springs in water quality questions as well. So with that, I'll get started. So first I want to point out, we did a study that'll over 10 years ago showing how just recreation and value alone contributed over $84 million to the community for the Santa Fe Springs protection. So obviously, spring protection, production of our aquifer is not only environmentally important for us, but economically important for us as well. Here's an example of an image from the Waters Journey, which is I think back in 2003, showing actually a well, that's a drinking water well, sticking through the ground there as they're swimming by. And what was interesting if you've watched that video just before that they show a sinkhole with a lot of trash in the room. Really not that far away from this drinking water well. But it does show their vulnerability and the sensitivity of our aquifer to pollution, to over pumping, into any activities that are taking place on the surface and how quickly that material can get down into the aquifer. So we have a couple things in our codes in our comp plan that address the sensitivity in the need to protect our water resources. This is one of those maps in our comprehensive plan. This is the aquifer recharge map. And what this shows is that the yellow and brown areas are the high vulnerability and vulnerable parts of our county. What that means is that anything that lands on the surface in these areas is likely to get down to aquifer. So any activities there, the aquifer is vulnerable to pollution and land use activities. In addition, there's a stream-to-sync basin layer that also is included as areas of high-recharge and vulnerability and what we mean by stream-to-sync. These are creeks and rivers that terminate at a sink feature and go directly into the ground directly into the aquifer. So any of those watersheds also would be included in an area of sensitivity. And what we did is we put a star, right? And I guess, okay, here we get, it's only the ones in the front here. But there's a large red star there. That's the general area of the Mill Creek St which is our main topic of discussion. Another thing we utilize in the Completed Code is something called sensitive-Carsed Areas. So these are areas of the previous map in addition to layering over soils that are excessively well drained or well drained. And the combination of that creates the sensitive cars to areas. So that shows areas that we know have a direct connection down to the aquifer. What's interesting, and we'll talk a little bit about that, is you see little patches that are excluded from that. And that's because there are some areas that have clay layers on there. And we'll probably get a little bit in that discussion, because that does apply a little bit to the area we'll be talking about. Another aspect is our outstanding springs, priority focus areas. And as you can see, the Hornsby Springs, what we call the PFA, the priority focus area, the Mill Creek Sync is within that priority focus area. And that also adds additional protection strategies and opportunities as well within our code. So these were just some of the examples in our Complain and Code that show what we're doing to recognize as well as add additional protections to our aquifer, to our springs and to our groundwater. And with that, we're going to shift now into a little more detail of the Mill Creek watershed itself and I'll turn it over to Stacy. Thank you. Stacy Greco Water Resources Program Manager. So zooming in on the watershed, so this is the Mill Creek watershed. You see our Mill Creek preserve, which hopefully everyone has been to up there in the head waters. This watershed, a lot of agriculture, that's the tan, range land, is the green, upland forest is also green with the urban and built up being the pink. And a lot of that really being near that interchange of I-75 and 441 in Alachua. Mill Creek sink, it's the terminus of Mill Creek in Townsend Branch, it's actually a swallowette where the river ends and goes into a sinkhole. So it's part of an ancient drainage system connected to Hornsby Spring in the Santa Fe River. Hundreds of feet, actually, I just learned today, 8,700 feet of mapped cave systems there. So it's a very interesting, very important to our cave divers, a very interesting place, a very complex, and some of those caves go very deep in that area. You know, some of that footage that Steven showed you from West Skiles Waters' Journey, that iconic moment of West Skiles walking through the sunny, so that is Milsink right there behind it. And this is inside that cave system. And that Milkrieg sink itself is owned by the National Sphiological Society. They actually bought those almost nine acres there. So the county, we funded a die trace study in 2005. We hired Corses Environmental Services. So the county we funded a die trace study in 2005 we hired car environmental services Was really proud to be a part of that study. I guess I'm dating myself here Die was deployed at the sinkhole and it was detected six miles away at Hornsby Springs within 12 days So that shows a real direct connection. That's a long way to travel in such a short period of time. Lots of wells in the area were also sampled and detections were detected at the Santa Fe Hills well. So that is a public water supply system that is right now owned and operated by Alachua County. Die also made it to Darby Springs six miles and some of the dye was detected up to 154 days later so not everything is in those big conduits that the cave divers can go explore. There's other passages and it takes some of the water longer to get there. This is a map from that Mill Creek Sync report. It's a great report. It is on our website. And this is those big thick lines are just showing from the Mill Creek Sync to Horn Speed Springs. That's not necessarily the pathway. That's as the crow flies. So really just kind of showing that it can feel far away, but you know, our aquifer really does connect to our springs and river. We also more recently, Greg Owen received a tag grant and we did a biological survey of Mill Creek Sink, so that was also with Carson Environmental and they was to look at those troglobitic species, so those cave adapted. Over 30 of those isopods and amphapods were recorded and it was the first ever recording of such species in this location. One cave adapted crayfish, I'll show you the guy, the pallid cave crayfish was found there. The Mill Creek Sink Water Quality Improvement Project, this is actually behind Sunnies and Pizza Hut there. This was actually a city of a Latua project. So this was a $2 million project that was funded by Swanee River Water Management District and DEP, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection. And this was phase one of the Mill Creek Sink Project grant. This is it. If you get the pleasure to be there, it's a treatment. Wetland, the goal was to reduce nitrogen loading to the Santa Fe river basin because that river is impaired for nitrogen. So the city of Alachua, just like us in Alachua County, is obligated to reduce nutrient loading to that water body. It was also intended to remove other pollutants that storm water often transport, especially from roadways, so such as heavy metals, the polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, and then suspended solids. And this is a great project. It was done by the city of Alachua. I don't think there's public access there yet. I think they're trying to get fun so that they can open. We got to go there on a field trip with the Santa Fe Springs Protection for a couple of years ago. And it was a nice sight to explore. So land conservation. So as part of that Mill Creek project, we also had funding from Sowani for the county to acquire some of that land to put it into land conservation. So the hatched areas that are in that red outline, that was going to be purchased by the county. We were not able to negotiate an agreement with the landowner. So that part, that phase two did not occur. However, there is land conservation in this basin. This shows the Mill Creek project area, the bright green, those are preserves, the yellow are conservation easements. So those to the Hitchcock and Rembert will be in that ag land use through a conservation easement. So there is definitely interest in land conservation in that basin. And now I'm gonna turn it back over to Stephen to give us a history lesson. Sorry, no problem. So I just wanted to go back a little bit and kind of start where I think a lot of the county engagement started in this area based on concerns with the proposal for a large Walmart center just south of 441 just south of Mill Creek, Swallette. And so back in 2006 based on concerns with stormwater design for that project, there was an agreement that went in place to address those concerns and we coordinated with the water management district and went through that process. Nothing happened for some time and the issue came back up 2015. We did another settlement agreement. This included deed restrictions for that project. Unfortunately, that agreement was only for the Walmart site itself and it's adjacent developed area. And it did not apply to any other areas in the watershed. Plus, as we know, that site never did get developed. But a lot of the agreement and strategies in that deed restriction would be potentially similar to the kind of things we would potentially be talking about for any development in that watershed. So there was a lot of good detail, a lot of suggestion. I went back watching Mark Clark at the time, Dr. Mark Clark, gave a presentation as to the benefits of these strategies for water improvement. We do potential for sinkholes and to protect that cave system. Out of that, the board made a couple motions actually, but part of that was to work on addressing these strategies countywide. And so out of that process, we did the board ended up adopting a county wide storm water code that went into effect in 2018. And I did send the board a summary of that process of how we went from that 2015 motion to our 2018 code. we did hire experts, we had a stakeholder group, we went through a long public process to come up with what was eventually our stormwater code that we adopted in 2018. In addition to that, there were additional countywide codes to adopt it, not necessarily directly due to this project, but we also had county wide wetland protection strategies in 2018 as well as additional water quality like irrigation code adoptions as well through that process. In addition to the stormwater code, we did include an advanced stormwater treatment manual that is recognized and statewide to be a very effective manual to help with LED and other water quality measures. So a lot of that came out of that process. And so what, oh, I should let the community know if they're not familiar with where that Walmart site is. Here's a map of the site. It's the area outlined in purple. It's below the Mill Creek sink. It's a below 441. And as you can also see, the orange line is the map 2016 map cave system. And you can see that it did show that the cave went under the Walmart site. And it also shows that the cave network crosses across the northern property, which will get into those properties in a moment, almost reaching lows on the corner there, the large white building right there, which is already developed. So, you know, what I think brought us here today was the concern with several projects and we kind of lumped them into what we called the terror developments. And so there were, there's at least five, six depending on how you break it up. And I'll point them out maybe just going from West to East, there's terror April. This aligns I-75 and is on the west side of Mill Creek. There's Terra Forest West that basically runs from the boundary of the foot plane, the conservation area here, all the way up to this first red line. And it integrates itself into Terra Finesha as well. Although they are somewhat recognized as separate, There is a connection to those two projects, likely for access needs. And then there's Terra Force East in the top corner in Terra Baywood to the South East. Just to point out, you can see that these areas have been clear. They have already been approved under development and some of them have already been, they've been started construction as well. So we don't have, we can talk a little bit about that but we won't go into too much detail on those two. In addition to that over in this corner is a proposed golf course, Tomoka Hills, which we may also discuss a little as well. I wanna, if I can get the overhead. So this, this area unfortunately, when I took off the, from the Zoni map to didn't include Terra April. So I do have an overhead that includes those areas. So I'll quickly talk about what the city, and just to remind everyone, this is all within the city of Alachua. So none of this is unincorporated in Lachua County. So these are the zoning for the city. And so starting I guess I'll just start again going west to East Bay Hill is It's not going to show, let me do it this way. So this is Bay. This is Tara Abram and it's got what we call both AG and CCZoning. So CC is community commercial. So that basically allows commercial as well as multi-family use and that but it's about 10 acres It can also include anything up to a gas station stores That those kinds of activities in that little area there I will talk a little about terror April the project itself was actually for stormwater designs It's it's not at this moment proposing what would be in that commercial area, but there are three stormwater projects being proposed for tariff April. Those projects would also include treating runoff from I-75. The next, you then have conservation. This is basically the floodplain area around the creek. And then you have a strip of ag in between that in what is RS4. So that is residential zoning, allowing up to four units per acre. Then here is East, Terra Force East is RSF3, so that's three units per acre and Bayward has a combination of, I think it's RSF56. So that is the most dense project with up to five units per acre. And then below that is a commercial industrial, which is the area right here. And those are the, that's Terra-Fanicia. And that's the commercial slash multi-family zoning options there. So that's the current zoning in place for those projects. What is the density on that with residential? Is it? I actually don't know exactly what the density could be for residential. I know it's a multi-family option so I'd have to look I can pull that up but I don't have that in front of me. We go back to the slides. Again, here are the five projects I just mentioned. Here's the size of the projects to give you an idea. What we did was we put them in order of already developed to earlier in the review process. So, Tehrer Baywood, which is the farthest one to the east, has a final approval that was done in July and it's under construction, Tehrer Forest East, which is right above Baywood, received its final approval in July. Again, those are both residential developments and then there's Terra Forest West. That was the one that I think sparked a lot of community concern and interest and it has the density of four units per acre. That 395 includes the agricultural zoning. So actually the size of that project where the development is current is about 138. When I did the math, it was exactly four units per acre. So they were maxing out the unit options within that built area. Then you have terror April. Again, this was the furthest one to the west that had some stormwater infrastructure planned. And that's currently waiting public hearing and the Terra Forest West. It was coming in for final and that was also pulled for the opportunity for discussion. And then finally Terra Farnisha, which is still under review. Here's a close-up of the development for Terra Forest West. So again, North is from the top, so this is west to east, north to south. The sinkhole is just a little bit below the image. One thing you can't really see, you can't see contours very well, but each of these are small units. Again, minimum lots has of 7,500 square feet per lot. So it's very, very intensive. These areas here, this line is at Ag zoning, and then you can see the proposed stormwater designs. There's five or six ponds between the developed portion and then sloping down to the flood plane conservation area here and right here would be the creek system running through. So one of the things in looking at this that was of concern, and this was pointed out in the environment report from Wood, which was hired by the city to look at concerns, is that they were worried about the transition point of around 75 foot elevation, and what that was was where you had two different points meeting where you had clay meeting with the unconfined point. And they were concerned that that line, that area there was probably the most significant area of potential sinkhole formation. Now, you can't really see these numbers. Let me go to the next slide. It might have a better one. So here's the 75 foot line. So that line is kind of a transition between the flood plain area here, which has a clay underline layer, which is why it's wet. The creek's running through here to this unconfined area up here, up the hill. And so basically the hill is running down slope until you get to the creek. So this line, the 75 foot line, was of concern for them in their report. So if I can go back, these stormwater ponds are between about 65 to about 75 to 80 feet. So that's right in that line of transition. So that is something we're hoping to have a conversation about having basins that size. I'll just say in general would be a big concern for the potential for sinkholes. I do want to point out I'm not saying they're going to happen no matter what, but obviously when you have areas in western lots of county where you have these cars features, we do see a lot of sinkhole formations and new storm water ponds, especially large ones where you have a large head pressure from water sitting on top of these basins. Now they're proposed to, I believe they're dry basins, but that does not mean during storm events, they're gonna hold a lot of water and there could be potential risk for sinkholes. So that's something we're looking to address. So concerns, concerns with development in this area. It's carst geology, increases the chance for sinkholes. And the reason that's important is that sinkholes open up direct conduits to aquifer. So anything that's on the surface, if you're mixing dirty and clean water together, all that material is immediately going to the sink hole. And as we heard earlier from Stacey, it's immediately getting to our wells, to our springs and to the aquifer. So any efforts we can do to try to minimize the potential for the formation of sinkholes, I think, is probably our number one priority. And so, you know, looking at design strategies, it's going to be one aspect that we would do if developments are proposed to move forward. The other aspect is once they're built, you know, we have to deal with landscape on the strategies for their sites. So manicured lawns lead to a lot of more nutrient impacts from fertilizers and more additional water use that could put an additional burden on the potential for sinkholes, as well as adding nutrients and other pollutants to the mix that could find it's way into the storm water ponds should sinkholes open up. Or we have an event that exceeds the capacity of these storms would also lead to the potential for runoff either both surface or groundwater penetration through sinkhole formation. So both of those are of large concern. So I'm going to shift back over to the stage again. She's going to kind of get into the details of what we can do to kind of address this concern. He said lawns, so you need to hear from me. So talking about ways to protect the watershed. So obviously the best strategy is to create conservation land. You know, we know intuitively and there's research and research that we've even funded that once we get in and start developing the land, you know, it behaves differently and it leaches nutrients and nutrients run off. If an area is to be developed, low impact development techniques should be in place. Also monitoring wells should be installed so that we can demonstrate protection of the Florida aquifers. I think we've already demonstrated that this is a really sensitive area with great public interest and great resources there. So low impact development, everyone has an idea of what that is, and I want to be clear that low impact development is an approach to design. It's not a specific technology or a technique. We think about rain gardens, permeable pavement, those are all tools in the toolbox, but really it is a higher level, different way to do development. And it's most successful when it's incorporated into the earliest stages of planning. And our stormwater manual is a very good resource. As Steven said, it is recognized across the state as one of the best resources out there. And it really outlines the three strategies of avoidance, minimization, and mitigation. And I'll go into all of them. So that site planning that avoidance, this is really should be the priority. This is where you can really make the most difference and that's going out to the site and being very familiar with it and really focusing on these top bullets. So what is your hydrology, your topography, your soils? How can you protect surface water and wetlands and preserve that open space and that tree canopy in our native landscapes? One thing we've learned through implementation of our irrigation design code is that what we see in traditional development, everything gets scraped off, fill gets brought in, and then we try to establish these landscapes, and it's very challenging. They're on life support, and that's where we get into that irrigation and that fertilizer use. So anytime we can retain that canopy and native landscapes, all of those top four bullets, really that's where you can get the most bang for your buck. And then beneath that tree canopy is, if you're going to develop, you could cluster, so that you are having your development in just one area. By minimizing our building footprint, we can leave more area in that native landscaping. Minimizing your impervious area so that you're generating less stormwater. And eliminating our curbs and implementing curb cuts, for a while, there was that trend of curb and gutter everything, get everything centralized, bring it to a big basin and you're done. So really trying to reverse that thinking and starting to how can we treat things closer to the source and not have everything be connected to just one big basin. Here's an image that shows what that can look like on your right is LID that is the green. That's you say all that green that would be protected area that would be your native vegetation because the development was clustered whereas in the traditional example there you can see there's way more impervious area so there's a lot more stormwater because the development was clustered. Whereas in the traditional example there, you can see there's way more impervious areas, so there's a lot more stormwater basins because more areas where water can't soak in, it's got to go somewhere, that means you have to put more money and land into that treatment. So going down, your second priority should be minimization or this is your source control. So as you're going out and developing the site, what can you do to minimize that pollution? And again, minimizing clearing and grading and minimizing that soil disturbance and compaction. Those are all really important things. And that's where we can start to get into retaining the native landscapes even on the lots or doing Florida friendly landscaping and even things that we can do with the homeowners right or the property owners can we minimize or eliminate fertilizer and irrigation so making sure if it is going to get developed how can we reduce the source of the pollution? And then the last and final kind of step of this is mitigation. So how can we limit all of that pollution from impacting our water bodies? And this is just a list. These are all in our manual. And you can see things that are more traditional, like basins. You know we see those all the time and then some things that are a little bit more alternative in our rain gardens, bioswales, permeable pavements. These I will say, actually I'll say that in the next one. So to summarize, when you're talking about low impact development, it's really important that most impact we can have is in that site planning. Really early in the process, how are we developing? Second priority should be given to those source control BMPs. And then the last resort is really those structural BMPs. And in the five years of our code, I would say that most sites are meeting that extra inch of treatment with four bays in retention basins. We have not really seen that shift in the way that we're doing development and a big change in how we're approaching sites. And finally I did want to point out one option for source control. And this would be, for these sites that we're talking about today, this would be for the city of Alachua if they desired. Codes, covenants, and restrictions could be used. Or the utility use agreement, their utility will be providing water, and there's always an agreement between the development and that utility and there can be restrictions put into that such as prohibiting permanent landscape irrigation. We know irrigation is one way fertilizer moves throughout the watershed. Prohibit irrigation wells. So we know that the aquifer is vulnerable there. Let's have all the water be metered from the city of Alacua and not have these extra straws into the aquifer. Requiring native or floater-friendly landscaping and requiring soil amendments. So these are the types of things, some source controls that could potentially happen if development is there. But again, the mechanism would be through the city of Alacua. And to wrap it up, I'm going to turn it back over to Stephen. All right, again, Steve Hosta, our Environmental Protection Department. We want to get into the next steps and possible action items. And these were some of the things we're recommending. There may be more as we get into discussion. But our intent is to attend all feature city of a lot to public meetings and hearings related to projects within this watershed that we've mentioned. And to retain affected party status, I think the board has directed to make sure we continue to do that. And we'll work with the attorney's office to make sure that happens. Meet with City staff to discuss our concerns. We do have a meeting set up already on Thursday with City staff and the developer to talk about these concerns and as well we'll willing to meet with any development representative and the water management district as well since they're going to have a strong influence on on stormwater strategies here as well. And then we want to provide updates to you all as we go along as we're moving forward. So those are kind of the general steps we already have kind of in place and we're going to continue to do that. In addition, looking ahead, I think, you know think that the statewide stormwater will just get passed through the process, however, it doesn't go into effect for 18 months. So it'll be January of 2026 before we implement that. But there are some new strong standards in place with that statewide rule. And it is probably a good opportunity for us to look at the effectiveness of our current stormwater code as it relates to that state rule and into other aspects including our self-certification process and we may talk a little bit more about that but currently within municipalities that is the process we use to require that the meeting in our code is that they certify professional self-certifies that and uses an affidavit to state that they've met our code. Continuous assessing opportunities within the watershed for acquisition in our land acquisition program. So, we'll continue to try to make additional efforts both for fee simple and conservation easement opportunities there. I do think we need to improve our collaboration with municipalities. Every municipality has a different process and it's really hard for staff to keep track of how there's different processes function as we learned a little bit with this process and we need to find a way to get involved earlier than in the middle of the development review process because that's where it gets really messy. Our code requires that they submit that affidavit within 30 days of approval. So that doesn't give us a lot of opportunity, even if we were to look at those projects to see if there's change opportunities. So I think there is a lot more we can do there, and I think it may require things like formal agreements with each municipality as one option to consider where we can figure out where it's best to be integrated into making sure that our storm water code is being met and that we're protecting our aquifer. I think that's the last slide, yes. All right. Thank you. I have a question here for Commissioner Pursier. Yeah, on that last, I mean there's so many questions and comments, but like I'm just going to do the one for now. I mean that is on that last point. Where we have, I mean, we have clear authority over our watersheds, our air quality, our water quality and protection of those areas. And in the, in conservation and agricultural zone land, particularly right, as that gets annexed in, but this was already in the city of Latvia. I guess do we have any current formal agreements or understandings with municipalities that contain our like for example our priority watersheds or our priority conservation areas strategic ecosystems the spring sheds that when they have a development in those areas that they should be making us aware of that Fact and coordinating with us on those efforts or is that just sort of assumed? How does that work? Madam Chair We have a lot of different codes I'm not aware of any agreements related to stormwater Or water quality and states of correct me if I'm wrong there. For strategic ecosystems, we did go through a process with the city of Gainesville. They adopted the strategic ecosystem policies and tweaked them a little bit. So that was an option that worked out for us. But none of the other cities do we have a formal process for stormwater, wetland protection or strategic ecosystems. For wetland protection, we have a little bit of an easier end with the ERP process for impacts to wetlands. We get notified pretty early. They usually have to submit those things early as well because it's a slow process to go through the city for wetland impacts. That allows us an early opportunity in. There are cities and at times we do get notified when those things are happening. Mark Brown and our team kind of leaves that process and I think we've been pretty on top of those for wetlands. But when it comes to the stormwater, our percentages are low in terms of how much gets submitted compared to what we see at in the unincorporated. And to Stacy's point about the need to get involved early, given that Terra forest west is already at final plat, are we beyond the stage at which we can have an influence on low impact development in that plan? There may be others that could also chime in here in terms of legality of that. However, if they've already gone through polymer clay plat and so they're at a final stage, and we're probably gonna have that conversation on Thursday with the city and with the developer, but there are opportunities in areas that, like for instance, where the stormwater ponds are designed, there's probably opportunities there where we can make modifications, whether that's adding berms to separate the size of the basins or adding BAM, you know, bio material, the soil amendment to the basin. That wouldn't alter necessarily the design. It could add protection strategy. So there could be situations where we could think kind of at the end, the mitigation side, there might be opportunities, maybe a baffle box at the end, the mitigation side, there might be opportunities, maybe a baffle box at the outlet of the stone water in the bottom. No, my back. But this, that's crazy over a cave system. That's going to be a disaster for all the people involved, including the homeowners who are going to end to buying those homes. So my question is, how do we change that? I think that's a more complicated question and I don't know how much we can do in changing that design at this point. Madam Chair. Madam Chair, at this stage what the Board would be reviewing, what the Planning and Zoning Board in Elachua would be reviewing, is whether the approved plans by the City of Elachua are consistent with the plan that they're going to be recording. And that you get those sometimes and you want to make some changes to those and we tell you that your review is limited at that point because you already have approved the development as is. They've approved it as consistent with their code already. Now could the developer agree to make changes? Sure. I still always are still good. How we have oversight over stormwater, they've got a development over the largest cave system in our county basically. They're getting ready to build something that's going to cause sinkholes if they build it as sand. How did this get all the way through to plat without us having some kind of input into the design? I'm just so confused. I don't think that's a question for legal, but what I would tell you is that the way that our stormwater code is set up, the developer needs to certify to us that they've met the stormwater requirements that we have that was while we do have authority in the charter for water, the charter also says that land use authorities in the cities. So they certify that this met LID principles and that this was going to cover any concerns that we have with regards to stormwater on this site. That was like a legal affidavit that was signed by somebody. Madam Chair, we do not have that yet. We don't have an affidavit from this project. It has not been submitted to us. And it legally doesn't have to be submitted to us yet, because it's not received a final. So that's where you, I think we're kind of seeing the challenge we have. We've not received an affidavit from them that the stormwater certified to meet our requirements. The only one we have is Tara April. So would it not make more sense for us to be receiving those affidavits at preliminary development? So if we had an issue with our stormwater design, we could intervene and have a conversation with them before they go to plat? I do, yes, I would agree. It makes more sense to find a way to get earlier in the process. But the way it's currently written, it's even in 30 days of final. I'll conclude for now. Thank you. Mr. Cornell. Okay, thank you Madam Chair. And I appreciate that you got right to the slide I want to talk about. So can we go to that slide. So before I even get started, I want to thank, I see the mayor of high springs. Thank you for being here. I think I read in the paper that the city of high spring has taken a position that they are concerned. And so have we been granted party status by the city of allotchwell yet? So, Madam Chair, that is done at the hearing, both the hearings that we requested party status on were discontinued in one way or another. So the board would have to make that, their boards would have to make that determination. It has not been made, I expect we will get party status. Okay, and so this kind of deals with the question Commissioner Prissy was going at we have authority yet we're requesting party status. Which is it like are we determining what happens or are we having input with their legislative body as to what happens? It's a land use decision. So in the land use party status, on water quality, we don't need party status. We already have authority. So we've taken the position that we have the right in the regulatory realm to impose certain restrictions or certain obligation, certain standards within the county as a whole, and that when they develop, that's why we require certification when they are developing, that they have to certify that they've met those conduct regulations, that their standards have met that. So in that has to balance with the other language that we have in the charter that says that cities decide, have, decide their land use issues. They decide those. So between the two of them, we're balancing them and saying if they meet our standards, then they can develop however they want to develop them. Okay, and our standards, did you want to jump in? Go ahead. One is what, what do they do? If they say they do and then they know. And there's a lawsuit. There's a lawsuit. All right. I mean, I guess that's what would be for us to decide if we wanted to pursue a lawsuit. Gotcha. Two, three. OK. All right. Okay. Madam Chair, there's a couple of different ways that it could work. One would be we would at first look at the code and comp plan of the city to see if it meets the code and comp plan and we could challenge it based on that. The other is we have conduct based regulations in the form of our wetland code and our storm water code. If you think of it as a how you can act or how you can design it, not so much where you can design it. We don't get involved in the design of where things can go because that becomes a land development regulation. But did they follow the right code? But did they follow the right code? So our stormwater code, our wetland code, are not applied by the municipalities when they review an application. However, we do try to inform developers that, hey, this code exists. You have an obligation to self-certify. You can't impact wetlands. You need to design in a certain way. And at that point, if somebody were to violate our code, we would seek an enforcement action under the provisions of our code. It wouldn't necessarily be a challenge to their land use approval or their development approval. It would be something where we are saying, you have done a thing. You have acted in a way that we said you cannot act. Okay, and we are going to enforce our code. That's great. And that's great. Does that answer you? Yeah, that answers the question for me too. That's great. So back to this. So under our self-certification process, I guess I'll ask Stacy and or Steve. Stacy said under best practices, first avoidance, second minimization, and then third mitigate. What if they don't do it any of those? Because when I'm looking at that and Commissioner Prisya's question and point was that they didn't avoid, that to me looks very different than the other slide that you showed which was minimize versus traditional low impact design. And Steve spoke to, we may have some options when it comes to mitigate about how they're designing their ponds. But what if they don't do the second part of our code? Is that something that we could challenge? So the preliminary. I'll start and maybe Stacy might have something to add. So the challenge is that our code is performance-based. So, they're trying to meet a nutrient reduction attempt. It talks about single-consumption, but it's not what the code is. Code's looking at how to reduce pollutants, particularly nutrients. So, that's, if you go in and we can go through the Fiverr, four or five code requirements, but it's basically a performance base to reduce nitrogen and phosphorus into the system. It doesn't, it suggests going through an LID process, but that alone isn't the only thing. I mean, if they meet the performance, they meet the performance, they meet the performance. Okay, so even their expert you indicated had a lot of concerns about this line of transition. So I guess the question would be is when we have an opportunity to review the self-certification, we don't agree with it, then we don't agree with it, and then we're back to some of the things you talked about earlier. How would a sinkhole be mitigated and who would be responsible for the damage that it caused? Would it be the developer or would it be the city of Alachua or would it be both? Or us, who was the homeowner? It would be the developer who ever is currently responsible for that development. It could be the homeowner association. It usually starts with the developer and eventually gets turned to an H.O.A. What about the city of Elatua? They, I don't believe they would be responsible. They have sovereign immunity? I'm not sure. I can answer that question. Were they approved it? And then it failed. So Madam Chair, the city of Alachra is not responsible for the developer meeting our code. It's our code, and it's not a land use code that needs to be applied to their development. It's our code, and they have to meet used code that needs to be applied to their development. It's our code and they have to meet our responsibilities, our standards as well. The same as the City of Alachua can approve a development that the Water Management District would not issue a permit for because that's in the Water Management District's arena. This is an R arena. This is us as a regulatory body applying standards to something that is also having the standards and the requirements of the city's land use code applied to it. Okay, well if it's our responsible to make sure water quality is maintained and something needs to happen, I intend to use whatever authority I have to make sure that whoever's responsible pays for it. I don't know how that works. I would like for you all to have some discussions with staff, but the people I'm looking at here today are concerned about that and they elected us to protect the water quality and the charter gave us that authority and responsibility. And so I too have so many questions about where to go from here. But I wanted to at least make that statement. And I want to thank you guys, you know, when this came up, a month and a half ago, and we said, we want to be party status. I know a lot happened. And a lot has been happening. And a lot's going to continue to happen. But this to me is one of the most sensitive places in a lot of county. And if not to protect this, then what are we protecting? This to me is like, it's got to be, I think, commissioners. One of our highest priorities, not only to deal with what's already been approved, but to deal with the next two approvals or the next two things coming and whatever else is coming down the road. Okay, let me just go through a couple other questions and I'll turn it back over to my colleagues here. So actions to protect the watershed, that's slide 25. If the area is developed, well it's in the process of being, low impact development techniques should be in place. So if there aren't, can we issue a stop, whatever you're doing, and start doing something else? Like what's our authority and ability under our code to say, you know what, here's our code, avoidance, minimization, mitigation. You didn't do the first one, you didn't do the second one. So since you're not doing the third one, stop doing whatever it is you're doing. What is our authority there? Yeah, in Corbin can interrupt me if I go arrive. But those slides that I was showing, that's really from our stormwater manual. So that is really the best management. That is the ideal world. The way that our code is written, like Stephen was mentioning, is really performance-based. So if they do a four-bay, if they do a big storm motor basin and develop business as usual and demonstrate that they are going to get that nutrient reduction in that four-bay, then it meets our code. So I think that's why we're recommending that. No, to me is we need to adjust our code. Correct, yeah, I agree. We need to have the authority to say stop, can't go any farther. It seems like when we do that, everything starts to happen the way it's supposed to happen in the past. So I'm ready for that to come back to us as soon as possible. So that's just a point to whoever's right in the motion, or I'll write one later. We need to just our code, self-sertification. We haven't reviewed what they've already done. So I'm not in favor of self-sertification anymore, commissioners. I'm kind of over self-sertification. So that's note. I'd like for our staff, and if we need to hire staff, whatever. I'd like our staff, especially in sensitive areas, to be sort of fine our code. Because is the city of Alachua here? Is anyone from the city of Alachua here? Oh, well, I'm not a citizen. Okay, so this is noticed. It's obviously important to the citizens of Alachua. Have they interacted at all with this presentation? Have they commented with you guys? We have a meeting scheduled on Thursday. Yeah, well this has been going on for a long, longer. Yeah, so if, if ours, and I like our friends at the state of Alachua, but I would wish they were here because they, they, it affects them more than anyone else. And I would like them to be sitting on the same side of the table with us, not on opposing sides. And I feel like we might be going down a road on opposing sides. And I don't want that. I want those that are elected to represent the citizens that they were elected by to protect the water. So I'll just make that statement. OK. So I'll just make that statement. Okay. Let's go through, um, let's go through site 33 low impact development landscaping and irrigation. Okay, so I've seen two approvals, um, from this presentation. We've got a tear baywood, tear forest east and the preliminary and tear forest west. from this presentation, we've got a Tara Baywood, Tara Forest East, and the preliminary and Tara Forest West. So, prohibit permanent landscaping. Is that on any of those approval on any of those projects? I would highly doubt it. And this is something, we don't review covenants, codes, and restrictions within the municipalities that would not come through our office. I guess my question would be, has the City of Alaska done any of those four things? And if not, why not? If that's what our code requires. Yeah, my guess would be they have not. I mean, these are pretty extreme steps. These aren't required. Yeah, these are my suggestions that if we are concerned with this area, these are the types of things that we will discuss with their staff and offer that this is something that they could include. It's something that, you know, City of High Springs could include in developments there. Unfortunately, we don't have this authority there and in even some of our neighborhoods like that prohibit irrigation wells or something We've talked about for a long time, but them being a utility affords them some additional Options, okay Clean off Okay last question and I'll turn it back over to you on the looking ahead. Steve, you talked about this. Evaluate the effectiveness of the stormwater code to identify opportunities for improvement with the statewide rule coming into effect in January of 2026. So I will tell you that the Florida Association of Counties probably the largest and one of the most active and important subcommittees is the Water and Environmental Subcommittee. And I will tell you that in the jurisdiction of Duval County, Jacksonville, that a couple of commissioners lost their seat in the primary, in the Republican primary. These were both Republican primaries because their opponent was running on a no growth, slow growth platform because they're sick of it in DuVolk County. I mean, they're just like no more. Just, we're full, no more. And water is obviously a bipartisan issue across the state without a doubt. And so tell me what the statewide rule is requiring for implementation in January, which is different than kind of where we are now as a state. Because I think that's important for everybody to see. Can we get the overhead please? Well, you can look at here at this. So this is like a comparison table. And so you've got different water bodies, all waters, outstanding photo waters and paired waters and redevelopment. And the county wide wetland code is the 77 number on the second column. So that's our stormwater and water quality code requirements. The county requirements are the next column, so column three. That's the 80% and 70% nitrogen and phosphorus reduction requirement, the comparison of the state rule. So it was proposed and then the final is that the last column is really what came out in the end. So what it now requires is greater than 80% total phosphorus and 55% nitrogen reduction or a post as good as, as, or pre-equal the post. And that's for all water. So if we go down and you look at impaired, it has some additional standards that you can see, it actually goes up to 95. So there's actually some aspects of the statewide code that are now in some regards stronger than our strong water code that we had in place a few years ago. So for the last three or four years, and up to January our code is stronger, but there are some improvements that are now coming in place. Which commissioners just tell you, this is the same white issue, and it's really important, and it's great. So, and how will those be applied to existing developments? How will those apply to existing developments? Or will they be applied to watershed level? Are you talking about the current state? Oh, because it changes when the changes come into effect. How will it apply to every project in the county? Going forward. Going forward. What about past projects? It might understand is it would not apply to past projects that have already received approval. I have received approval. What about those that have received preliminary? I don't know is it an ERP based determination? So if they've received an ERP, probably a preliminary ERP final. Final ERP from the state and they would qualify to not have to meet the new standard. Okay, so it would apply to all developments that have not received the final ERP. But as of December. As of December 2025. Next year. Okay. Yeah, in fact originally I think the staff wanted 12 months we ended up with 18 at the end of it all. The new rules apply to everything that hasn't received the final ERP by December of next year. Okay, thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. Meet. Thank you. Commissioner Wheeler? Yes. My concern too was the regional impact of what this development is. I don't know if it's gone to North Florida Regional Planning and what they've heard from them. If they see it as a significant impact to the region or not. And if it is an impact to the region, I'm so sorry, sin. Are we, again, the question is, who is liable for the contamination of the water if it is going to have a regional impact. And if we are sued by our surrounding counties who feel like that we have impacted their water quality. Or any individual who's well is pumping out garbage? Okay, so Madam Chair, I'll start with, I think your first question is the regional planning council involved, and my answer is probably no. This is not a project that has a comp plan a men, men, or anything like that. So it probably doesn't reach a threshold where the regional planning council is involved. So they're probably not engaged. Plus the city has planning staff and it has the capability of making sure they meet their city rules. So it probably does not have the regional planning council involvement in the project. In terms of its regional significance, that's a more complex question. So if here would be my view, if their project as a design was causing harm, then I think there's some merit into that issue. If something happens where the sinkhole opens up, and then there's a contamination concern, that's a more complex question because that's a harder assessment of the why and how that sinkhole form, for instance, versus not meeting a standard in which the project was designed for. If the project is designed and it is failing, then it probably would fall on the county to identify a violation of a water quality code and then find strategies to, like we do with erosion, sedimentation, violations. Find a way to fix that issue. So I don't think I think I only partially answered the question, but I'm not sure I can answer that question. When you said the county would be what have to somehow somehow fix this, you know, of course then that's that's what I was asking, you know, who then would be responsible for correcting any any problems that that might occur from a development like this in a sensitive area. I think there I mean there could be some state level involvement as well if we reach that level of concern. Right, thank you. Thank you Madam Chair. Thank you. Before I go to you, Commissioner Prisya, I had a couple of questions. First, if this is determined to meet the comp plan for the City of Alachua and it doesn't meet our comp plan. Can we challenge the comp plan of the City of Alachua? If it doesn't meet our comp plan, I think the answer is no, because our comp plan would only apply as obviously. Right. If it violates our water quality code, then we could, I think that is a process in place, but we would, as I think Corbin mentioned earlier then we could, I think that is a process in place, but we would, as I think Corbin mentioned earlier, we could. Our comp plan aside, is there do, you know, if we see a city and their comp plan, I don't know, doesn't meet what we believe to be the best interests of our county. Is there, are there ways to challenge a city's comp plan? I'm sure there are ways to challenge a city's comp plan, but typically you would do that when you have a comprehensive plan amendment and you do it at the outset, saying that they didn't have data and analysis to support the decision. So if they were to say this area is just great for very intense development and we didn't think there was any data and analysis to support that, you can challenge it at that time. Yep, it's too late now. Most likely, I mean, but if there are provisions in the comp plan that you think apply to a development order, that they're not following, then that does leave you room to challenge it. Okay, thank you. I'm gonna go back to, I and I apologize to everyone, I'm not feeling well today, I'm trying to stick this out as best as I can. If I can't make it, I'm gonna have to leave, but I'm trying to stick this out. Commissioner Prisya. Well, if others that haven't spoken have their lights on all okay until Commissioner Chess not then. Thank you Madam Chair. I'm just sitting here thinking when it came before us before it was an issue that we could possibly stop to some degree, I thought. And the developer went away. I guess Walmart went away. They didn't want to go through the hassle. They didn't want to do the things that were necessary for the development. And so my question now is, we put things in place, but how did this get by us? I mean, I'm just saying, how did this get by us? We knew about the Walmart. Why didn't we know about Terra, but their, their plans and their developments and all of that stuff. Since we said that this was very sensitive to us as a county and that we wanted to protect that land, I think that we tried to purchase that land but that never did occur. And so did we just drop the ball on it just to say that we just leave it up to the city of Alachua and hoping that the city of Alachua do just the right thing. Or we thought that since the last time we sort of had that interaction with the city of Alachua that they understood where we were coming from or that they were on board with what we were trying to do is to protect the water quality and the springs. And so I'm just kind of confused here, how did they get this far without us raising some concern about the development and knowing about the retention ponds and all of that stuff. So, you know, we changed things, we changed the code. But so, I guess my question is, I heard what Commissioner Cornel said about changing the code. But if we change the code, what else do we need to do to make sure that this does not happen again? That's where I met because I'm kind of frustrated because I was here then and it felt like I didn't do my job to some degree but I thought we had an understanding and that's why I thought that since the Walmart went away, that we had an understanding, and that we thought we had had a relationship with the City of El Achoa, that those things would be talked about, or discussed about. Maybe that's my assumption. But I just thought that, you know, I don't want this to happen again, because it puts us, you know, it at least puts me in an awkward position because I've been here sometime and for something like this to come back and it's like we just let it go into the radar and it got past us and now we got to accept whatever has been done and that's what frustrates me the most out of all of this is that, you know, everybody don't think or feel the same way we do, but we would at least think that the protection of our water quality would mean a whole lot to us in our environment, but that's not the case to all. So to know that, and it doesn't appear, and I don't want to know that and it doesn't appear and I don't want to speak but it doesn't appear to most developers that that's not important. It's about the dollar. It's about the development about making money and moving on to the next project. And that's what frustrates me because a lot of people like a lot of county they want to come to a lot of people like a lot of county, they want to come to a lot of county because of our rules and regulations and how we do things and how we make our environment amenable to our public. And I think that those are the qualities of a lot of county. And so if our goal is a county to protect those qualities, then I want something that's stern in terms of policies or directions that make sure that those policies aren't affected in the future. So, of course, future commissions can come and change all of that, but it's just the fact that it's just frustrating to me to go through another relationship with the City of Alotua and they have done something and we're chestising them for it and all of that stuff. And then it creates those relationships even with the small municipalities that we're the big guy and we're trying to control everything. But all we're asking is them to be a partner with us and to make things better for the county. And I mean, even though I know they have home rule authority and all of that stuff. So all of those issues come in to play too in terms of how they want to develop their city and all of that stuff. But it's also to protect our natural environment and our water quality. And I think that that's important. So I guess my only take from this is how do we fix this? So this does not happen again. That's just my question. So thank you. Madam Chair, did you want me to try to answer anything there? Okay, I think as I think commissioner some suggestions. Yeah, so I think as Commissioner Cornell mentioned, I think there is a need to fix how our processes set up to get notification. That late notification is really part. I'm not going to put all the blame on that, but as part of the challenge we had in the stormwater and design of the project, we did know early on about concerns with anything over the cave or in wetlands. And we found out that and we made sure that the cave area and the wetlands were not being impacted. Then there was a void of time. We weren't aware of what was going on too much. And so I think that's the corrective action is somehow for this aspect of our code, there is some earlier way into the system. Because we knew about avoiding wetlands early on because they were submitting ERP to make sure there was a minor crossing across the creek kind of concept. So we were there at that point, but then there was this. We weren't aware of additional things going on. And I don't know where to put the blame. I mean, some blame might be with us, but it's hard for us to know and integrate ourselves in a process that is different than ours. And there weren't doing, you know, some, some comp plan or zoning changes in there that, that we were able to catch. I'm not going to come up with excuses because a lot of this all started during COVID, that, that's not an excuse. But I do think that is a main aspect that we need to do to focus on fixing it is to find some earlier connection to the process. Thank you. All right, Commissioner Prithia. Okay, I guess first thing I wanna say is like, there is no correcting this once it goes awry. Like I hear you all talking about like corrective actions and who's responsible and who's going to pay for it. But like once a sinkhole opens up to that cave system, it's opening up to that whole spring system. Like it's a mass, there's not going to be no easy fix to that. You know what I mean? It's like, it's, I mean, that cave that we're trying to protect is essentially like that, you know, and it's like, and that's one. And so I think it's hard to say like, who's going to be responsible because once it's done, we're all responsible because it's all of our drinking water and we're all going to be paying the price of it, you know? Okay, 2015 settlement agreement with Walmart. Is that public record? Can we get a copy of that with all the deed restrictions and everything that was in that settlement agreement? Yeah. So that settlement agreement was with Walmart, the city of Alachua did not participate in it? I know. I just want to see it and read it. Second, the sensitive, cast areas, okay, so we're talking about performance space. I understand this whole performance space thing. I get it, but you can't measure performance before something's been done. And so we have this performance space where they run some models and they tell us it's going to work. And then we're just supposed to like be like, okay, great, it's going to work. But we've seen again and again that their models fail. Like we have sinkholes all over Western Alastair County where developments promised us that their stormwater systems were going to work and now their sinkholes in them. It's happening in hail, it's happening in Oakmont, it's happening all over my district in Western County, it's just like sinkhole city. So, I guess on that performance base, how does sensitive caste area come into play in terms of design and decision making it says, and treat with LID. So if LID is what we're expecting for sensitive cost areas, and the primary thing in LID is prevention and avoidance, and they're showing no indication that they've done any prevention or avoidance, then in my opinion, they haven't met our performance based code because they haven't done that, and they are in a sensitive carst area. Is that, in fact, true or not true? Madam Chair, the performance requirement is one inch of water quality treatment. Hopefully using LID. Hopefully or using LID? Using LID. However, four-basin retention basins would be an example of an LID practice. That's an LID practice that they can't do with prevention and avoidance. Have they proven to you that they can't do it with prevention and avoidance? Our code doesn't lay out that the prevention avoidance is required. It's any aspect of LID. So that's, and it stays the kind of hit on that earlier. If they, and we usually see this, if they do a four bay design in a retention base, and that will qualify to meet one inch of treatment. So there's another thing we need to do is to, so one corrective action is that we get review of their stormwater design at preliminary, instead of a fine plant, or within 30 days. Second is that they, that we do review in any areas that are sensitive-carsed areas or springs protection areas or any of our sort of strategic ecosystem areas or areas of special concern that we would do that review as opposed to self-certification I'm guessing. But a third is that we require that people follow the treatment train for LID, that they do prevention and avoidance, then they do the other stories, and then at the last thing they get to mitigate for their impacts. And that would be something that we could ask staff to bring back. Or you feel like that's something that's doable within the code, the way that it's written? Madam Chair, I think that is a large overhaul of the edit. I mean, I think we're up for it to evaluate the code. You know, look at what projects are out there. You know, what are we getting with this code and then try to evaluate what do we change to really get at how do we shift those development patterns. You know, I will say if we were reviewing everything in the municipalities, we'd have to work that out with legal to see what we have authority were reviewing everything the municipalities would have to work that out with legal to see what we have authority to do within the municipalities and definitely could not do that with current staffing levels. So that will be something. We can come back with recommendations of what we think we could do. I don't know that it needs to be everyone, but ones that are in these sensitive areas that we've identified and mapped as being important to protect. If you like, we have a responsibility to review it and to understand that it's going to mean our code in time to have a say in how it's done the right way so that we're not in this situation again. The second, I guess my next question is, can we go to slide, proposed error development slide? The table? No, it's just a, well, maybe the table. The one that shows the site plan, this one? No, it's the one that has all the different ones. Sure, this one. Go back to that one. Okay. So, Terra Finisha, where are we with that? It says under review, what does that mean? So that one, they are in a process of review for the city. So they've not had any engagement as to what it's currently proposed there yet That'll be part of our discussion with them. So It's already been submitted though. So it's it's under existing stormwater code as well I would have to see what has been submitted for that but It's probably it's probably true. That's the one that's on top of the cave system, correct? That's correct. And that's the most intense development. That's commercial. Commercial makes you some multi-family. Yeah that's yeah by zoning. That's the one we have to be most concerned about. That's on top of the caves, that's on top of all of that cave system and it's literally going to be the most dense. Terra Phoenicia. And Terra April that's going And Terraphanesha. And Terraphanesha. And Terraphanesha. And Terraphanesha. And Terraphanesha. And Terraphanesha. And Terraphanesha. And Terraphanesha. And Terraphanesha. And Terraphanesha. part of this being problematic is the approach that the developer's taking. And this developer always takes this approach. And I try really hard not to attack any individual, but the approach that this developer takes to development in my opinion is, it's just without any kind of, yeah, it's totally incurs, without any kind of consideration to the environment, to the people that are next door to it, to the people who are going to live in the homes that are going to buy these things, it just not thinking about the overall big picture. It's about maximizing profit. It's irresponsible. And that's it. And it's so frustrating because again and again and again, it always comes back to Terra projects, being the projects that we use as our examples of what not to do in this community. And I just wish that this developer would hear us and work with us to come up with better solutions. And instead of having their legacy be destroying our communities and creating problems for us, being someone who could have their legacy be protecting the most important parts of our natural resources and the communities that matter the most because they live here in this community. I just it just blows my mind. Sorry I just had to say that but what do we have in the way of intervening in Terrafonicia since it is not at final pot? We should have a lot more opportunity to see any design strategies for that. The only thing I'm aware of at this time was some road crossing suggestions to get access to the Terra Force West but strategies for that. The only thing I'm aware of at this time was some road crossing Suggestions to get access to the terrafores west, but I don't know all the details to that That'll be one of our primary questions on Thursday to the city Okay, and on Thursday you all are gonna be talking about terror April as well in these recommendations that you have for those stormwater design for those basins Yes, is there any discussion about pushing for rethinking the way in which the basins are all on one side of the development and that there's no distribution of stormwater LID practices throughout the development or do you feel like that chip is sailed? We will see what options are available. Yep. I mean that obviously creates more design change to the plan and that would probably be something that would have to be acceptable to the developer at this point as well. But we'll see how far along we get on that. The only thing I can say about Terra for Niche is we don't have an ERP submittal for that one either. So I do out of all these projects, I think that's one of the furthest, not along. Ask what they want to sell it. I want to buy it. I want to buy it. I just, so frustrated. I just, this is bizarre to me. I feel like Alathwa County has voted again and again to ask us to protect our natural racers in the environment. And I feel like the city of Alachua and the developers of Tara and their engineers have us over a barrel right now. And it's really disgusting and unfortunate that this is the position that we're in. And I'm frustrated that somehow we didn't know better because I know we have amazing, I know we have amazing staff and we have an amazing team who wrote an amazing code for us and wrote an amazing compiling for us and put us in a position and I just am blown away that we're even in this situation right now and I'm sorry that I'm ranting but I'm just very frustrated. All concluded. All right, Thank you, Commissioner. I can make a motion. I have, but go ahead. Well, I've got me now. I'll work. Yes. Yeah. I'll just listen to you all. All right. Do you want to go ahead? Do you want me to go ahead? Let them go and all of them. But if they ask me, do you have is we're talking about this development. Can you move here? Yes. There. There's a lot of property, a lot of large acreage of here. It's not like he's going to be losing a lot if we can negotiate to get that land, that property. It would certainly be an effort on his part to work with us and to show the community that he does care about where he is developing and that he understands the importance of this to the rest of us. So if there's some way that we could negotiate to do that while you all are talking with him, it would really help. He's got, it's a lot of land that he's taken right there There's a lot of land in all of a Latvia County that he's developed and I think that in good faith or as a gesture of goodwill It was really nice to have him honor our concerns with this so as you all all are talking I don't know how we can do that but we've got a good team going so I know you all can do that as well as anybody. And does Walmart still own the land below that they aren't developing? Madam Chair I don't know the answer to that. For some reason, I feel like they don't anymore, but I don't know the answer to that. I don't think they ended to begin with. They just had a developer that ended. So I'm not. OK. It may be the same. Before you make a motion, Ken, do you mind if I ask one more question? No, go ahead. I got plenty of room on this page. OK. I asked this question, I believe, before, but I don't remember exactly the answer. So as we look at trying to prevent this kind of thing going forward, I keep thinking about Marion County and their Florida Spring and Aquifer Protection Act in that zone and how they have restrictions on the things that can happen in those areas that affect their spring zone. Is that type of an overlay district, the kind of thing that we might could look at as we have well mapped to Lutra County, we know which areas we don't need this type of development to happen on. Is that the kind of thing that we could consider going forward not that it solves this problem? Yeah, that where we have authority. The problem is we don't have authority in the municipalities. Well, they have authority here. I want to understand that. Yeah, Madam Chair, I think that's in the unincorporated part of Mary County where they've they've applied that I don't believe it's in this I thought it was in the city, but maybe I'm wrong There are I'm sure there are a couple of ways that you could handle something like that if you remember back to 2000 when we did the county growth management area That is one example. Our charter, as Mr. Torres said, reserves the right to land use planning reserves to the cities. You can change your charter. You can amend your charter to include things like in this overlay, we have land use planning authority, the same way that we did in the county growth management area. But what was submitted under that was a I believe it was a map that really only included unincorporated areas at that time to address things like annexation. So a piece of property that was already in the municipalities would not have been covered by somebody. It still wouldn't be covered, even though it would deal with natural resources and water quality and things that have effect. From a conduct-based regulation, we can address it under our charter powers, even though it's in the cities, but from a land use planning perspective, absent a subsequent charter amendment, that power is reserved to the government. I'm just trying to figure out how to code everything, I guess, that does sound like that's a good way to do it. And I can't speak to what Marion County has, it might be incorporated. It might be in their charter. I'm not sure. Yeah, I don't. I can't remember. I've done several things over there, but I can't remember. I just remember it being extremely prescriptive and well done. So all right. Thank you. Can I say something to that though? I mean, in an ideal world, our cities in Elatua County would care as much about the quality of our water as we do. They have to serve those same citizens. They have to provide for the health and well-being of their residents too. These houses, they're going to have to deal with it. They're going to be the ones who show up at their doorstep when sinkholes open up and houses start falling in the ground. Like, they're going to have to deal with that too, and they should care as much as we do. And I believe that they do. I think that perhaps this just wasn't like the sensitivity of this land, particularly the ones that are not on that cave system. It just wasn't on the register, on the radar, when these were starting to happen. And now that it is, and now that they realize that they have these assets, I would hope that they too would be asking their staff, how do we fix our comprehensive plan and our code so that we're protecting our water resources for the community? Like, I really, really hope that they're asking the same questions that we're asking right now, and that they're frustrated that this is happening in their backyard. Because if they aren't, then we have a bigger problem and we have a bigger conversation to have when we have our next joint meeting because we need our municipalities to care as much about these as we do. Our last meeting with the sea of lots where we actually talk about a joint water exactly we wanted to protect the springs in. Yeah, I think so too. We've stifled hot hot thorn in some ways too because of the water protections out there that we've imposed County from that part of the county too. Mr. Cornell's next Okay So Commissioner Prizia on the prevention and avoidance. I think the right time for that might be the EAR, which is, is it next year? We start the EAR process? What's that? The comp plan on the comp plan. So I've got a seven-part motion six deal with right now and then that one I've saved for the EAR. So let's, but I'm happy to modify any of these if you want. Okay, I. I think that that's the stormwater code though. But go ahead, you do your motion, and then I'll chime in. OK, so Steve, could you do next steps? Because this is where the motion starts. The next step slide. OK, so I would move that we direct staff to follow those four points identified in next steps That's part one part two bring back recommendations to strengthen our stormwater Quality code regulations and procedures Well, so I think that's kind of too part. So I think whatever we can do right now, let's do right now, your discussion is about actually not recommending but actually regulating for sensitive areas that we require prevention and avoidance prevention and avoidance. Well that's hard. But the earlier submitting it, the more ordinary and those sorts of things are things that you can get. So part two is bring back recommendations to strengthen our storm self-sertification process for the county stormwater regulations and look at improving these regulations prior to preliminary approval. Part four bring back what this is Chuck's bring back whatever recommendation staff has so that we can avoid this being in this situation that we are in now from happening again, which might include, but not be limited to, and this is what you said looking ahead, Steve, formal interlocal agreements that improve collaboration with both our state and municipalities. Part five is to authorize a chair letter to the City of Alachua to discuss holding off on any approvals of Tara April and Tara Phoenix. A Phoenicia? Sorry, Tara Phoenicia. Or anything that relates to the Mill Creek watershed. Number six is to ask staff to inquire with the developer if they're willing to sell Terra-Finesha to the county. And then the seven is the longer term one which is for the sense of areas within the county during the EAR process, bring back potential requirements for our comp plan and code which would require prevention and avoidance. That's seven part motion. That's my motion. Second. Any parts you need to just? Are you? All right. Are we? I think that the prevention piece is going to have to also go in the stormwater code because the code is what tells people what they, but I hear you saying it's too big a thing to do right away. So one step is during the, one step is now and the other step is during EAR we can also update. Based on Stacy's kind of common of really, that's a whole current codething. Yeah All right the manager's request is speaking to you mind if she goes next On that last part of your mission commissioner Cornell you said that you're requiring that staff Bring back something that you're asking staff to bring out something that requires those I would ask that we review those before to bring out something that requires those. I would ask that we review those before so that we can bring those options back to you to make that decisions. Or that we review our current, yeah, that's fine. To make sure we have the bases and such before. Right, it's going to the EAR, so there'll be plenty of discussions. Yeah. I'm not saying we have to require it. As part of the process, what are y'all's recommendations to improve it? Thank you. All right, Commissioner Prisciety, have additional comments before we go to public comment? All right. All right. We are now going to open the floor up for public comment. So we have two microphones here. Feel free to line up so that we can move very quickly through public comment. If you would take a moment at the beginning to identify yourself for the record, and we look forward to hearing what you have to stay. And thank you very much for coming. And we'll start over here. I can't believe I'm first with all these people from the neighborhood here. But Cali Brown. Let me say first, you can see three or four of those five terraces, no shovels yet. So it's not too late, but it is late. This points out that you need to proactively go out to all the municipalities with a detailed chagging of everything environmentally sensitive in their areas and agree with them up front and get it documented how to handle those areas. You think that a regional planning council would coordinate all this but that's just what the name sounds like. Regional planning councils were created because of a state rule that made all the little cities submit the kind of polished documents that you can do if you have a planning department. They even call it planter's welfare. So that's what they do is just write those for those cities and they don't even, that's stumbling because they don't have department of community affairs. But what I studied in regional planning would have been that kind of coordination. But in that, in that time, I also wrote environmental record reviews for a private planning consultant in Huntsville and it could be a sewer line under a lake and they still come out with no significant impact. So I guarantee you that some Damator Pito's attitude has already happened in this and you called their name. Now these folks here they they're going to yell everywhere that somebody can hear them. Let me tell you about cars. They're building a sinkhole city. And who's going to ensure that? The developers got to consider who's going to be their customer. Nobody can get a mortgage because they can't get insurance. Even cash buyers are going to reconsider when they continue hearing these people talking about sinkhole. And this water is continuing south and into the aquifer and it's affecting a lot of water supply. So where's the water management district? Those people who can demand and pretty quickly place some monitoring wells. Now these people are hollering cars and monitoring wells inside. That's going to change the thinking of these developers. So there's multiple ways you can push this. Thank you, Mr. Blunt, over here. Madam Chair, commissioners, my name's Jay Rosenback. I'm Chair of the Environmental Protection Advisory Committee. EPAC recognizes the economic and political challenges of balancing the need to accommodate a steadily growing population while simultaneously protecting a LATURA County's natural resources. Thus, it supports low-impact development on sites that eliminate or minimize threats to critical allatua county natural resources. Therefore, it voted unanimously at its last meeting in favor of the following motion. E-PAC expresses the strongest possible support for the allatua county environmental protection department and board of County Commissioner's efforts to eliminate or minimize the environmental damage to water resources and cost features that may result if the City of Alachua Commission approves the TARA Forest West development. EPEC considers the potential consequences of degradation of these resources by this development unacceptable. Therefore we endorse the use of all possible database, legal and political tools and arguments to protect these invaluable resources. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Rosenback, and thanks to EPEC for addressing. We get a copy of that motion. Mr. Rosenback with the clerk. Yeah, just bring to the clerk and she'll make copy of the source. Thank you. Good day, commissioners. Thank you for giving us an opportunity to weigh in on this project. I know it's late in the game and all of us are feeling the pain of not having been informed earlier in the process how these developments would arrive. I'm Sarah Younger. I live in a Lachua County in the Northwest section and just outside of an incorporated area of high springs, my well water is affected by this system. I am very concerned. As you know me, also as the Sierra Club chair of the Conservation Committee, we are all concerned about this system and what this potential threat to our water system means. What I wanted to make you aware of, maybe you are not aware of this, but I think the city of Alachua is under the false impression that the storm water treatment systems that you have devised now to help with the Mill Creek area will mitigate for this project. So with staff are talking to them, I urge them to please let them know the limitations of that system. It is to the east of I-75, not to the west of the Mill Creek. So it's definitely not going to be a way to mitigate for stormwater runoff. Those problems with sinkholes, we all know being a Alachua County resident. Sinkholes are a very real concern, especially in areas that are, as you said, so much unbounded areas that could easily just create with the weight of overburdened ponds. So whatever other methods they have to mitigate for stormwater runoff, obviously sinkholes are going to be a concern for our area and that would immediately mean intrusion into that system which we know within days is in Hornsby Springs and in our water systems up in high springs. I know that the county has has a history on this project or this area. I would urge you to definitely look and research what was done in the past that might be able to be utilized at this time. We have obviously all banded together. The citizens come today obviously after a major storm in our area which left many of us reeling, I had two trees on my roof, okay. I managed to get here today. I'm sure there would be even more people here today. Had there not been a storm just days ago. So we urge you to take action as far as you can. I know the city of Alachua will not necessarily be as cooperative as you might think right away. But I think in time they'll come to see the reasonableness of this because it is a of reasonable sentiment. Thank you. Thank you Miss Younger. Hi. My name is Dennis Price. I have a business called Southeast Environmental Geology up here in North Florida. I've been working as a private business for 30 years prior to that. I worked for the Water Management District in Swansea River and DEP at a Swansea River in prior to that. I was working for the phosphate mine up in Hamilton County as an exploration geologist. I've done a lot of drilling. I'm a well-driller. At one time, I drilled monitor wells of map sinkholes. I've written a couple of papers back when buried back if anybody remembers, buried back from many years ago in a sinkhole institute. And I will say, for my experience, I would stay off that slope. To me, that's a very sensitive part of this whole thing. When I'm looking at some of the drilling that was done up in the uplands they were saying well the clay layers were hitting clay about 15 feet down and it's dry so that means every bit of water that falls on that clay seeps out and generally speaking those slopes have a seepage slope on there somewhere and it's pretty sensitive. I mean I could give you examples in Lake City where water seeped underneath one of the buildings at the old mall, it caved in. And that's all it was was the sand rambling out into the ravine. It's the same situation. Revene. And all these things are connected. You may have a sinkhole here, but you might have a stable area over here, but they're connected. You know, you may have a sinkhole here, but you might have a stable area over here, but they're connected. And if a big volume of water goes in here, it's going to unsettle that. And that's what happened at Lake Harris at the country club when they drilled a go-away well to drain a lot of rainfall from a big storm. But 300 acre feet of water went into the ground all at once and about two miles away, it activated a basin that was watery and a house came to end. I'm just saying it's all connected. And that slope to me out of all of that is the most dangerous part of what they're doing to put, you know, storm water on that slope. And in addition, I've been working around here for 50 years, and my experience as a geologist says that most every sinkhole has occurred that I'm aware of in the last 50 years is mostly caused by people. You know, there are very few natural sinkholes anymore. And I'm not saying that don't occur, but I have never found one. And I've done sinkhole patrols when I work the district. And I would also question the Water Management District about the water use permit. I mean, I work for Columbia County a lot. We couldn't even get a water use permit for $200 million a day for some manufacturing that would have brought in jobs and young people to work and have homes for them. This is going to be a retirement community. And where do they get? people to work and have homes for them. This is going to be a retirement community. And where do they get? I don't know how much water they got as a, you know, from the change in their water use permit. But that doesn't seem like a very good use for it, especially because of Santa Fe River is already, you know, being under some sort of dire circumstances. Thank you for your time. Thank you, Mr. Price. Yes. Thank you. And hi, my name is Joanne Trimbley. I'm president of our Santa Fe River and I'd like to add on to what Dr. Price said, the effects of that slope. There's a very steep slope and tarot west that high density development is right on that slope and all of that, all of that housing provides impermeable surfaces to run off and cause a cascade of water. So I'm most concerned about that high density area of terawest. The Santa Fe River is greatly impacted by what happens at Horn's B Springs. Horn's B Springs used to be a magnitude one spring, but since all this development has come down, it's really reduced in its flow. And so the Hornsby Springs, Treehouse Springs, Columbia Springs, All-Feed, Deiapras, Santa Fe, and all three of those springs and the Eppras, Santa Fe are impaired. Okay, so what we're doing here, we're by allowing this development to go through, we are impacting the way the water flows. And there can only be disaster because whatever we design is always less perfect than what Mother Nature has in store. So anyways, thank you so much for taking the step that you are taking going forward. And if there's anything that we can do to slow this project down Anyways, thank you so much for taking the step that you are taking going forward. And if there's anything that we can do to slow this project down and to reduce the density and to stay away from the area of where the clay and the the purvious and the impervious sections are, that would be fantastic. Thank you very much. Hello, my name is Soyuni Kojo and hello everyone. Thank you for your time and thank you for speaking to this issue. I live directly north of the property that is proposed to be developed in the subdivision and I'm going to be having possibly 30 to 50 new neighbors. And I have to say that I'm very conscious on my property of what I do to my property. I like my neighbors. I like my neighbors over in high springs and I like them to have clean water. They're worthy of drinking water. That's clean and that won't, you know, make them sick. And this came to a surprise to us. The level of density We've been promised by the developer and the owner, and sorry, the owner, that he was going to return the water to the sink cleaner than how it drops from the sky. And I, as a registered nurse who does critical thinking, I was kind of appalled. So other than that, we're at the point where I'm a freediver. I love freediving. I have stayed in Gainesville, Florida, and now in a la place city of Alachua. Because of my freediving, and it is really sad to know that future generations might not have access to the springs in the way I have. I've spoken to Joe Heiner, who helped coordinate and film, and was a part of that documentary by West Skiles. And it was incredible for her to tell me that Horn's Bee Springs used to look like Ginny Springs, that it was crystal clear. And I just want to make sure that we have a Florida that we can pass on to future generations. I cannot have children, but I want my neighbor's children to have amazing opportunities that I got to have. And on top of that, I want you to know that we have lots of go-for turtles. We have lots of swallotel kites. We have owls and anytime anyone does delivery to my house. They're impressed and they say that they didn't know that my, that a lot of city of a lot of actually even had this kind of wildlife. We have deer. We have coyotes at night in that area, that howl, and it's beautiful. The amount of density that is being proposed is it's more than I think that our neighborhood and our subdivision can handle. Obviously we're a part of that recharge area, but the whole thing is just, it's been a lot for us. Thank you so much for your time and everything that you're doing and that you're're and the expectations and the expectations you have for your staff and I wish that that's the example that we can set up for other counties across our state so thank you. Thank you. Good afternoon Madam Chair. I'm glad to see you're back hope you're feeling okay. My name is Catherine White's. I am the current mayor of higher springs but I'm here as a resident and as somebody who cares about the water in high springs. I would be remiss as we are still digging out in high springs to not thank Commissioner Wheeler for all of her help. She's been an incredibly resource, incredible resource for us in high springs and we appreciate you so much. Thank you, Mr. Hofstetter and Ms. Greco for putting all this together. It's a lot of data. We know it is and we appreciate you. In terms of sinkholes in subdivisions, I can tell you that the sinkholes that open up in Bailey states all the time in high springs, it falls to the HOA. And the HOA fights amongst themselves and nothing happens. They tape them off and they continue to be open active sinkholes. So that's a really good question to ask and it's a genuine concern. One question I have about this development is does it call for reuse water to be used for irrigation? Because that could be more introduction of nitrogen as well. The golf course that is planned across the way, the nine-hole executive golf course that is designed around current wetlands. But it's great for golfers to help increase their skills to work around the wetlands. I'm having a hard time with that one. My understanding is that state of Florida requires any new golf course development to irrigate with reuse water. Do we think it is an environmentally responsible approach to be introducing reuse water directly adjacent to wetlands that are there actively right now? In terms of the Sentinel wells, installing Sentinel wells in the area is great like it coppers. It was great to make sure that we were protecting the GRU well field but that was a whole different deal. Their geology is very different. The Sentinel well is not going to care when a sinkhole opens up and whatever is there goes directly to our Florida aquifer. And for us in high springs, as I've said, as many times as people will listen, we have only Florida aquifer. We don't have a confining layer of clay. We have carstiology. Everything that opens up goes right to our drinking water. And you could look at our wastewater treatment plan expansion project where we were constructing infiltrated wetlands and a couple of sinkholes, the size of semi-trucks opened up in those constructed wetlands areas that still are not active. GPR, the engineer couldn't believe it happened because ground penetrating radar didn't predict that would happen. Well, it didn't predict that it would happen across the street at Bridalwood either and it did. There's were not big, but. So we have no opportunity to get this right a second time. We have to get on top of it before it impacts our drinking water because high springs is all downgrading of this. Our well field is downgrading of this. If it impacts our municipal water supply, what do we do? We don't have an option. Thank you so much. We appreciate your effort. Thank you, Mayor Royce. Hello. My name is Bob Wollenubb. It's I'm the president of the HOA for Dogwood Acres First Edition, which is that little residential area Bob will not but some of the presidents of HOA, were dogwood acres first edition, which is that little residential area that's just north of Tera East and just east of Tera West. So we got a total in that area of about 39 homes, all of which are two plus acres. When we all moved there and bought our property, it was zoned as low density. Some point, unlatchable, changed the density plan to high density for the areas around us. I don't remember any notice that ever came to us. And so when Terry East came along, they were pretty far just like you guys. They were pretty far down the road before we even got noticed that it was going on. So we were sitting there in all sudden comprehensive plans already changed. They were down to the point of final plot approval on East. And we're sitting there. Well, they can sue us if we try to do anything now. And I was told that the mayor's objective was to put a house on every square inch of the city of a latchless property that he could put one on. I guess we were just unbelievable to us. So the density question is, and now there is actually a proposal if you're not aware of it, that one of those other areas, they want to go even more density. They want to put apartment buildings in those areas. So that's gonna be another large impact for people, for roads, traffic, shopping, water usage, water drainage, et cetera. Every one of our homes in our community has a well. So like everybody else, that anything impacts that water table, it's gonna impact our wells and the quality of the water. So I'm concerned about that. And last but not least, the sinkholes. You've talked about the HOAs being responsible. We have no control. This body and other bodies of government are what control what happens up front. Once that's done, the nature way can't take on those things to fix them. What means do we ever have to control them to begin with? We have covenants, somewhat witcher, have things like, you know, swanney river, friendly, florida fling, friendly, bushes, et cetera. But that's not enough to stop what you're talking about. And of course, for the sinkhole, you develop a sinkhole in New York, because I looked at a couple of lots that I really wanted to buy when I moved here 20 years ago. They had sinkholes on. Insurance companies won't issue insurance. So you've just totally eliminated any asset that that come homeowner has. He can't sell his property and always going to insure it. So you've taken all the value away from the homeowner and all the control. Haways can't help. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Devinson. Good afternoon. My name is David Moritz. And a little history first. This is Mill Creek, as well. Can you pull your microphone up just a bit? There you should. Sure, OK. Mill Creek sink is where West Kyle's film, the documentary Waters Journey, way back when. And if you remember that particular documentary, that's where Tom Morris goes down into the aquifer. Tom Morris also, a number of years before that, did a die trace. And he showed that, of course, there's a cave system. We're not talking about one cave, we're talking about a cave system that's right there at Mill Creek's end. But there's a major conduit that goes leaves from there, and the water going into that conduit goes north. First it goes through the subdivision of Spring Hill and about within 20 days it makes it all the way up to Hornspeastring. By the way my sympathy goes out to the citizens who are living in Spring Hill because their water is going to be very dirty very soon after this, you know, if this particular development is allowed to go forward. The other thing is that with more people, it means we're going to have more people taking water out of the aquifer. And one of the things that causes sinkholes is there's less water in the aquifer. I mean, there's less pressure going through the aquifer, holding the ground above it, away from it. So as the aquifer goes down, then the land above it sinks down into that and that's how we get sinkholes. So we're going to increase sinkholes by having more development there. I don't believe that there is and this is backed up by a statement that came from a U.S. Isis water person many, many years ago, probably back around 2010, I forget when it was when they had their conference here in Elatrio County. And the statement that one person, I remember them saying, was that there are some places in Florida we just shouldn't be developing. And I think that around Mill Creek think is one of them. And I think we're in for a lot of trouble. As for things we should do going forward, I don't think that one of them. And I think we're in for a lot of trouble. As for things we should do going forward, I don't think that one of the things that's considered here is the risk factor. Now, whereas there's more of a risk developing over a system like this, then there is in some place where you've got a covered aquifer. So we need to take that into consideration when we're drawing up the new regulations We're going to have to do to get better protected here. It takes into consideration the risk and says, okay, this is too much risk here to build over this. It's not just a matter of performance. What you can do with getting your pollutants down. It's a matter of you're certainly going to cause a problem here if you develop because you're right over a cave system there. Thank you for your money. Thank you for your money. Thank you David. My name is George Fopati. I live at 903 Northeast Boulevard in Gainesville. I'm also on EPEC, but I'm speaking as an individual. I just want to read something that summarizes what I chose to focus on rather than the regulatory aspects. I guess my obsession has always been particulates and pollution and why do they matter. So with the focus, world focus on plastics, I'd like to call attention to the threat that the stormwater from Tara West will most certainly pose to the Florida and aquifer, from transported tire wear particles, TWPs, and the chemicals that leach from these tire particles. Very little discussion addresses this. Right now, you guys are having to deal with regulation, but hoping to emphasize just how nasty these things are and how insidious that perhaps will entice you to push harder. Chemicals like 6PPD, which is a stabilizer of tires, has been studied and has been reported widely now, as causing the death of coho salmon and four out of 11 other species of fish. This will eventually, I'm confident, also apply to other organisms as well, both plant and animal. The milk-reak carstopography, I totally agree, is extraordinarily vulnerable, and we've got to focus on trying to prevent this from developing this development from proceeding. The mitigation techniques, storm water control will be very difficult because even if you use porous pavement to filter or sedimentation processes through retention and detention ponds, I don't believe they're going to be adequate. The sheer quantity of tire particles is such that the Pew Research Foundation came out with a research report recently that asserts that about 78% of plastics in the ocean are a result of tire wear particles. So very little is being discussed about that. We see plastic water bottles and things floating on the surface, but what's underneath as far worse. That basically summarizes. Thank you. Thank you, Josh. Good to see you. Good afternoon commissioners. Sound okay? Okay. Thank you. Thank you for your time and your attention. And you've asked some extremely well-informed questions. Can I see a show of hands or any of you scuba divers? One outstanding. You can see a show of hands or any of you scuba divers, one outstanding. I'm a scuba diver, been diving since 1993. There are many scuba divers here. And West Guiles was better than just about anybody capturing the beauty down there. So if you haven't seen that, I would encourage you to watch that movie because most people will never go inside these flooded caves. My name is Fred Stratton. I'm the current chairman of the National Speel Illogical Society's cave diving section with about a thousand members in 25 countries across five continents. We're a part of the National Speel Illogical Society, our parent organization. That organization has 8,000 members. So this is really an issue that's spreading a claw across the globe. It importance thousands of people come every year to Florida to learn how to cave dive. This is a cave diving maca along with Mexico and a couple of other places. But Florida is the epicenter of cave divert training that statistics from 2000 to 13, $84 million impact for people coming for water related activities. It would be interesting to know what that number is in 2024. It's probably two or three times that. So I'm not gonna address the biological or hydrological issues today. We've got people who are scientists well more versed in that. But I would ask you to also consider the economic impact of coming to see dirty, nasty, polluted water. Or the opposite. Well, you're all striving for what we're all here for. It's clean, beautiful, clear water that's worth playing in, drinking from. I thank you for your time. Thank you, Mr. Stratton. Hi, my name is Dale D'Arante. I'm a resident of city of Elatro, right next to the sinkhole. I have a video of the sinkhole a month after our hurricane in August, early August. Is it possible to decorate the house? If you hit play and you put it down on that thing right there, we can zoom in on it and perhaps see it. Mark here will help you. Yes. Give him a couple of extra seconds. I'll resetting that up. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Sorry for the phone. So this is kind of looking over the the sinkhole towards i-Sanify area. This is a month after the hurricane sinkhole towards I-75 area. This is a month after the hurricane, about September 13th or 14th. Yeah, if I were to take my drone out there, probably look a little bit less like this right now. Maybe a little more about previous hurricane, obviously. I just haven't been able to take it out but this is what it look like and it always looks like this from what I've seen so it's always kind of backed up a lot in problems so yeah but that's it that's all I want to show you guys. Thank you. Thank you Mr. Dante I appreciate that. Hi I guess this is my turn. Hi, my name is Bobby Sharping. I'm the conservation chair of the National Spellialogical Society Cave Diving section. I'm also a cave scientist at the University of Florida. And me and others are here from the NSS because you could see on that map that we've been seeing, that small bit of land labeled NSS is we're responsible for. But something I want to bring up today because we've talked a lot about the watershed was going on kind of top side in this area, is when we see these cave maps representing where the cave passages are going, and we're considering what to do with development on the land surface for that. I just want to emphasize that a major motivation for our organization and others for making these maps is to inform better management decisions. These maps aren't just put together for fun by cave divers, but they're also difficult and dangerous and sometimes like dearly bought. So I just wanted to say quickly that just like just to, when we see a cave map and to consider how that will impact our management decisions, to take these maps seriously. Thank you for your time. Thank you, Mr. Sharpey. Chair, can you hear me? Yes, go ahead. My name is Jacob Fletcher. I am the president of the Florida Speleological Society. I was prepared to really hammer in the importance of the cave systems and all that. But I think you guys are already well aware. So I'll address some other things that was brought up by the commissioners. One is legislation, like legislative policy. You guys are starting to see like that's where the teeth are going to be. Moving forward, definitely within Elatua County, that's where I would recommend your guys' focus as, especially in these car sensitive areas that we see they're all right here, maybe looking into how those areas can be addressed a little differently than some of the others. Another thing is I don't know if you guys looked at the City of Alachua's comp plan or their gateway project if you are familiar with that. Well my understanding of it is they basically want to build up that area right on 75, 399 that exit, which is right in the middle of where you guys have deemed as car sensitive. And so these things like the tar development are part of the actually the tar parcels from the September 10th board, seven board Planning Meeting was actually listed within the comp plan amendments in those. So I would really look at or have your staff look at the Alachua comp plan and get a better idea of how that's going to really affect Alachua. And then on top of that, one of the questions you guys asked a lot was how did it get here? So I was kind of, my dad was a Parks and Ractor actor and so I got to see how like the city works, at least where he was from. And what I've learned was that the city staff or the county staff, they tend to know how things felt it out as, you know, board or counselors moving and out. They go, but the staff stays. So I would really take a look and talk to your staff about what conversations were happening around that time when the tar development, that area, that deal fell through and what the communications are were from the city of Alachua, their city manager and whoever was running this show over for the county at that time, really take a look at that. And those are really the points I just wanted to cover on that. And I thank you for your time. Thank you, Mr. Fletcher. Hello. Hi, commissioners. My name is Zee. And I will first want to thank you all for listening to this. I'm a citizen of Gainesville, but as we know water connects us all and I especially want to Say that I really love what Commissioner Persia said and Commissioner Cornell all of you really And especially what Commissioner Chestnut said how did we we get here? Because I'm just hearing about this. And a lot of us are environmentalists. Folks are showing up after this storm that were severely impact that been four days without power. And we're here because we care about this water. So I'd like to implore you, I remember Commissioner Wheeler one time told me the county has the means to do things. I implore you to take action against the city of Alatua because I find it very interesting that they're not even here, not even one representative to speak from the city of Alatua. And secondly, I see this tar developer guy everywhere. He's on 39th, he's just everywhere. He was also at another meeting. I was at I believe it was something to do with the golf course. How can you hold him to impeccability, to integrity? Because if this tarar guy just takes over a Lattua County, there's not going to be anything left, but just rename it tarar, you know? So I'd really like to implore you to do your jobs. I really love that Elatua County Commissioner, I personally feel are the only legislators within this little area that really care about us and listen to us. I will not speak to other bodies. But you guys care and I implore you to take action on this and shut it down. I mean, do your work and I know you guys will overhead. There we go. All right. All right. Great. Thank you. Hi. Good afternoon. Brian Bischer. Hi, Springs. Thank you very much. Commission for hearing this today. And sorry, Commissioner Alfred chair, that you're feeling poorly. All right. Brother, be here. They're in the world. I know listening to this, I've gotten kind of sick myself. I feel like we're in a box, right? And the only way to get out of this box, I think, is we're going to have to become adversarial. Because the City of Alachua is not necessarily looking to collaborate, they're looking for a workaround. They're looking for a workaround in every policy that the County of Alachua is put into place to protect the quality of water and the quality of our lives as citizens. They have prior knowledge that this is a sensitive area through the Walmart debacle, right? The developer was even a part of the negotiation with the conservation land trust. So they're aware this is a sensitive area, and yet they've chosen to move forward. I know the county staff has reached out and thank you very much, the EPD for putting this together. But county staff has reached out to them multiple times to try to get a meeting. And yes, they do have a meeting coming up Thursday, but that's been weeks in the making. You know, they're not necessarily looking to cooperate. I just added this cave map here. I do have a KML of this. I can provide to Mr. Hofstetter. This is the latest map, the one that the City of Elach was using as I believe from 2004, 2005. So not even close to the current map. So they're using faulty data. Speaking of faulty data, I know staff mentioned the Woods report about below 75 foot elevation being the most sensitive area for sinkholes and needed further study. So the developer went out and hired GSE, which is another engineering firm to say, no, it doesn't need further study. Woods doesn't know what they're talking about. And so they're relying on faulty data. They're looking at hired guns in order to give them the information. So to answer Commissioner Prisya's question about the multifamily option for community commercial, they do have a comprehensive plan change amendment in place related to their multi-use, and that's to increase the density from 10 to 15 units per acre. So that's going to have a significant impact here and also Tomoka Hills. Speaking of Tomoka Hills, I know they represented that engineering firm represented the EPD department that it was just a golf course in 10 to 20 houses, neglecting to let them know that there was another 750 housing units and commercial, 540,000 square feet of commercial involved with that. If I can just have a couple more minutes. Yeah, I took a few minutes for you to get that up there. Just, okay. Okay. Thank you. So I think there's some legal points and I do appreciate the motion that Commissioner Cornell has put forth. And I think it's very forward looking. And I appreciate that. I think one thing that I didn't hear in that was I didn't really hear that a direction to the staff to take whatever measures are necessary to challenge developments within this Mill Creek watershed. And I think that's going to be important, not only from the EPD but also from legal staff. The legal point, I know that there was mention about the county, or not the city code, and the city code has in their planning element to coordinate with local agencies like the city and county. They neglected to do that, so they've gone against their code. So there's a lot of things related to procedures that I feel that the City of Alachua has missed related to this particular development, and I encourage you to direct council to look into those procedural, I guess procedural malfeasance. Thank you, Mr. President. All right, don't forget your pictures. All right. Don't forget your pictures. All right. Any further public comment at this time? All right. Thank you, everyone. Commissioner Prisya? Thank you, everyone. I appreciate all the comments. They were helpful. I do have a question. It's probably for legal. Our code is conduct base, meaning that they have to meet standards and goals with their stormwater management, treatment train, whatever you want to call it, their ponds and whatever. If we have engineers telling us that those ponds will in fact develop sinkholes because they are in fact on land that cannot support them, then isn't that they can't meet their conduct if they can't even have their stormwater ponds be functional. Like if, I mean, I guess I'm sort of trying to understand where the line between design and conduct actually exists, where if you have a design that's inherently flawed, that's never going to be able to conduct what it says it's going to be able to do, then in fact, isn't that conduct based? And Madam Chair, when you're looking at the design of something and you're looking at, you know, possibly these certified documents, If we have other experts who disagree, who think that, no, it's not going to do what that engineer says it's going to do. In fact, it's going to fail and it will eventually impact and violate our code. If we have a good case like that, that might be something where we can seek an injunction saying they can't go forward with the development because ultimately we can show that it's going to fail and it's going to cause this harm that we otherwise can't correct. Well, I would love to add to any motion for us to allow staff to seek any professional guidance that we need to look at their store water plan and if the engineering in fact will support what they're claiming and their self certification. I don't want to hold that up. So obtain any consultant support or any other documentation or information with regards to the stormwater plan for Terra West and an understanding of if it will actually do what it says it's going to do. Secondly, I wanted to ask community commercial sounds like they have an amendment currently on the books that they're applying for. Is that is now a time for us to perhaps have a conversation with them about that amendment in sensitive cost areas since you said the time is when they're making amendments to the complaint. The City of Elatua Conference of Plan Amendment. That is something that we could look at as far as what is the data and analysis that supports it? Are they taking all the measures that they're required to take as far as protecting resources on a, you know, to make sure that it's consistent internally with their comprehensive plan? So yes, now would be the time that you would look at something like that to say, are they doing what they're supposed to do? Is there data and analysis? Now, keeping in mind, the same level of difference in discretion that we enjoy is the county. The municipality also enjoys from that and it is a fairly low differential threshold for them. And is it something that can be, I mean, I'm happy to hear that cities are trying to increase density in certain areas, particularly in commercial areas where there's services, right? Because the more density you have, people can then live, work, play, move within a context area. I mean, that's what we want to see. We want to see compact development that's done well. But there are certain areas that just aren't appropriate for that intensity of development. and exploring, talking about that amendment, is it possible to just look at data that supports in certain areas where they have that zoning? So for example, they might have community commercial all over Alatua, and there may be many, many places where it's totally acceptable. But in this area where we have a cave system directly underneath it, it's not acceptable. So that's, I guess guess can we challenge just a certain piece of it or ask about just a certain piece of it or are we just supposed to they that they say accept in the milk creek water basis right exactly like we just we comment that we don't have any objection against the density but we are asking that you amend your compliment amendment to say accept in the milk creek Yeah, so I'll add that to it. Well, yeah, let's add that for this complement amendment that we asked them to consider that community commercial zone in the mill creek sink. And when you're looking at a watershed plan amendment, you are looking at the, you know, everything that could happen under that comprehensive plan amendment. So the data and analysis should support all of the possible outcomes that that comprehensive plan amendment would allow for. So that is something that we could look at, yes. Okay, that would be great. In sensitive-carsed areas and the Mill Creek sink watershed. Thank you. Ken, for adding that. And as a seconder, I agree. And then lastly, the Tomoka Hills. I was just, we were told a few houses and a golf course. Now I'm hearing something different from the public. Do we have a real understanding of what that development proposal is at this time or if there is a formal development proposal submitted to the city of Alachua? Madam Chair Steve Hosteter, they are working through that process. One thing of note, I don't believe they have to get approval from their commission to have a golf course. I think it's a by-right option. So that would be a project that would have administrative approval in the city. So we will follow up with them. We've had that one conversation with them. We met with them once. We've focused on the golf course. There are obviously more development that fall on the fringe and outside of, I think, the area of the Mill Creek watershed. But we'll follow up with them on when they plan to submit for that approval. Thank you. Commissioner Wheeler. Thank you. I have a quick question for Mr. Bashir. Do you feel like that the commissioners have feel like that they're getting false data? Is there, have you had any communication with the individual city commissioners up there? And I would ask that same question of everybody else who's here if you've contacted the city commissioners individually. I have not, and the reason I have not is because they've been adversarial from the Planning and Zoning Board all the way to the City Commission. They've been rather upfront about their adversity to hearing another opinion. Oh my goodness. Okay, so the data that you think has been shared, the faulty data that you feel like has been shared, is there any way that you can get, I'm trying to understand if there is faulty data that you know about that you feel like is not forthcoming? I just wondered how they are feeling about this data. As I had mentioned before, it appears for me from my experience and looking at these developments is that they basically just looked for the hired gun who can come in and and and contravert the opinion of say woods in their environmental report. So woods said anything below 75 feet needs further geological testing. GSE came in and said we believe in their report, we believe that the topography measurement that was used was inaccurate. Therefore we don't think the city needs to require an additional study. Then they brought in a third who sent in an email and this is in the staff report to send in an email and said yes I looked at it and I agree with what GSE said. From some of the early reports I got from some of the community members it sounded like that folks who were sitting in the meetings with even the new commissioners who didn't have the history of this did not realize that the history of the piece of property that the county was willing to buy. And that's what I was wondering if maybe those folks had not been fully informed or prepped for what was happening. And so therefore we're really not as well informed as they could have been to make that decision. In a meeting in which I spoke during a public comment section, the mayor, when we brought up the issue of Walmart and the sensitivity related to that area, the mayor said that that was false information that we were providing, that Walmart left due to economic influences as opposed to environmental influences and the difficulty that they would have in developing that property. So the mayor has basically gone on record and informed the rest of the commission as well as the public that they're highly in favor of moving forward with whatever the plan is. All right. Thank you, sir. Thanks. And can I just add something on the Tomoka Hills? That is a comprehensive plan amendment. I did attend a neighborhood meeting, which as you know is the first phase in the comprehensive plan process. So they do have, they have put that forward and they do have the documentation in the city staff report related to the number of units. Have you seen the agencies like that are represented here today? Go before the City Commission and Alasroy. No. I don't. I've seen a few of my newfound friends at these meetings, but no, I have not seen that. Is there a reason that they haven't gone? I mean, we've got Sierra Club. We've got, I've got Sierra Club. We've got, you know, the Speliological Group here. I don't think he can speak to all of those organizations. Well, I just didn't know if, you know, if you're sitting there every time, though, right? I know you're there. Sierra Club is well represented. Our Santa Fe River is well represented. Right. We have not yet had the national team that we're going to be able to do. time though. I know you're there. Sierra Club is well represented. Our Santa Fe River is well represented. We have not yet had the National Speel outgical society represented any of the meetings that I've been to. Although they did file a letter as an affected party related to the September 10th hearing for the Planning and Z zoning board that was withdrawn from the calendar. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Chair. Okay. Christopher Cornell. Christopher, what'd you say about, Luca? I guess the part I wanted to add was just that we direct stuff to look at the data analysis for the plant amendments that are coming forward for community commercial and to mocha hills to see if we need to potentially challenge that with regards to protection of the natural resources and water quality in that area. Okay so I don't know that that's worded correctly but yeah that sounds good so I've got six additional parts to add. You want to re, so we restate the motion? Two, three, six. Nine part motion. So first of all, let me thank all of you for being here. 16 speakers, taking a big part of your day. Many of you without power. Chair got it yesterday. I got it two days before. This is important. We appreciate you. I also want to thank EPAC. This is one of our committees that I rely heavily on. And to see three of the members here. Thank you for being here. To remind us what their motion was. The last sentence was, EPAC considers the potential consequences of dev- degregation of these resources by this development unacceptable. Therefore, we endorse the use of all possible database legal and political tools and arguments to protect these invaluable resources, which speaks directly to Commissioner Pridzius' point about we can't be worrying about the sinkhole. I mean, we need to worry about it after it may happen, but really, how can we prevent it from happening? And I think that's what we're here for today. To the National Geological Society, I have never seen three members in the same room and our chambers, and thank you all for being here. When I said I was a cave diver, that's how I met my wife back in the day. I haven't dove probably in three decades maybe, but I've never dove in a cave. Did a cavern, I was about as scary as I could do. Not a cave, but I know a lot of folks at our cave diver's locally and I really respect the work they do. And I do believe the economic impact of what we are known for around the saving, around the world when it comes to cave diving is important. Melissa McKinley, chair or the president of FAC, her brother lives and works in that field. Okay, so I would like to add six parts to the seconder. Help me here. So, sorry. All right, number 10. Obtain an SRE experts to determine if the storm, directs app to obtain an SRE experts to determine if the storm water plan will work. 11, ask staff to review the community and commercial comp plan amendments and ask our staff to engage on the... Okay, so that was, okay, so the only five changes. And the Tomoka Hills comp plan amendment will combine those to engage about excluding sensitive carts areas and specifically the milk creek for that complaint amendment. Number 1012, I think commissioners, we should send a chair letter to the Water Management District expressing our concerns and get that on the record. They are also a regulating body, and we've got a lot of data. They have a lot of data, so I would, if you all agree with that, do agree with that. Setting a chair, let her just express our concern. Okay. So that's 12, 13. I quite like Colley's comment and this is a long term thing for our staff. But I think that we should ask our staff to review the complaints for the municipalities around the county and identify where there might be some conflicts with sensitive environmental areas and try to be proactive in a discussion with those cities about those areas. I think that would have a drift. If we did that back in 2015, we might not be where we are today. So is that one okay? At the coming joint meetings and 25. Yeah, for the for the 2025 upcoming joint meetings, is that give you guys enough time, Steve? Yes, sure. Okay, and then the last one is the one that I'm going to be back in the next five upcoming joint meetings. Is that give you guys enough time, Steve? Yes, sure. Okay, and then the last one is the one that is the last one. So I'm not ready to direct staff the challenge yet. But I'll tell you what I am ready to do. I think we had close to a million in our legal reserves for the phosphate mine. And I think we need to direct staff to take whatever reserves those are and just make sure that they're there and available. I'm not ready to direct staff to do any changes. I want to try to work all this stuff out, but I want us to be ready on our balance sheet if in fact we have to do that. So I asked at the last meeting where this came up, how much of those reserves have we utilized? We were looking into it. I never got an email. I thought it was a couple hundred thousand, but I think we had originally put a side of million dollars. We just passed our budget. So they're not there anymore. But I guess I would ask, instead of moving it, I would ask staff to look at it and then bring back to us a recommendation for having money from our reserves moved into our legal reserves. You okay with that? Yes. So that's, you okay with that, Michelle? Yes. Thank you. And also we will need to bring back to you if you're talking about having experts review outside of our staff review things. We also are going to need funding for that. We don't budget it for that. So there are a couple areas that we're going to need to come back and have that discussion with you. I mean, I would presume those would be budget amendments. But, Commissioner, I think this is a pretty important, well, I've already said how important I think this is. So important well, I've already said how important I think this is so I'm fine with that and Staff needs to bring us back we need these four people that can help us and it's gonna cost xyz bring that back to us So I'm happy to approve that out of our reserves So those were only five additions to the nine part motion is the seconder okay with this All right, well we have an amended motion. I want to thank all of you guys. You know, as an environmental engineer, I was all thinking I would get all up into this and I'm just barely hanging on today. So y'all didn't let me down. Thank you. I mean, I have, this is such a great board. We're Thank you guys for electing us I guess we are ready to take a vote Everyone in favor of the motion. Please signify by saying aye aye any opposed like sign All right, thank you for the staff. We just laid out a fairly intense amount of work. And normally I would have a point of order, not a law applause, but I mean, yeah, I'm with you. So yeah, at this point, we will take general public comment for anything we didn't talk about today if anyone has anything they would like to address the commission about. I'm coming to you with an apology. I extended an invitation to you earlier. I'm not rescinding that invitation but I'm delaying it. What I overlooked, what I invited you to, was an internal planning session, and I will come back later to invite you to the result of that planning session. So stand back and stand by. Thank you, Collie. Just wanted to thank everyone for your time and your efforts. And something that we didn't mention earlier was one of our reports at one of our city hall meetings, we were disclosed that this entire development is going to have zero impact on our roads, on our 441 traffic. And as you know, that's impossible, either the event happened or it didn't happen. So zero impact to me is, it's very misleading. I commute to work. Many people in a latch when high springs use that 441 and I-75 intersection of commute. We're not getting a traffic light. So we already have issues on 441 there in terms of traffic. It tends to be free flow at times, but that's just something that I wanted to make sure we know. What's that? Thank you. Can you give us your name one more time? Oh, yeah. So Yini Kajo and I go by soy. Can I ask you how long you can hold your breath to go down and if then you're free? Oh, yeah. long you can hold your breath to go down and then you're Oh yeah, so if I'm not fighting the current at the jug that the itcha technique had spring I could hold it for about four minutes, but if I'm fighting the current it's about a minute and a half, two minutes. So yeah, thank you. I'm quite a free diver there. All right, any other general public comment? I want to thank all of you all for attending, having involved citizens in our county is really what makes a difference. So thank you all for taking the time to be here. Thank you all for caring deeply about your community. Thank you all for doing the research and for writing the words and sharing them with us today. I really, truly appreciate it. Do we have any comment from the board? Any further comment from the board? I have one. And Tim, microphone on. I have one. I've been reading in the paper about, as of today, the band on public encampment. And I have some real, real concerns about it because what is happening in South Florida and Miami Beach is they passed an ordinance against that, and they're currently locking up homeless people in a jail population has really increased. And so if our Sheriff Department is going to start enforcing that new statute, 1365, House Bill 1365, I think it's gonna cost us more in terms of jail, in terms of housing, our homeless population. I really think it's a bad bill. I really, really think it's a bad bill. I mean, it's insensitive to humans, I think. People are living in conditions that cannot help. They're homeless. Some of the things I read in Miami-Dade County is that a lot of the people are becoming homeless because they have increased their rent on these folks and they no longer can afford it because their income is less than what their rent is. So that's part of their homelessness problem and I think that that problem is going to work its way up this way too. And so I just want us to be prepared for it and how to deal with it when it does come. Because I think it's insensitive to human folks who are actually living in camps or stuff like that. And to punish them and to lock them up, I think it's really, really bad. It's very, very insensitive, meaning that we don't care for the less fortunate in our community. That's what it means to me. And I just think that that's really, really sad as a country that we have moved to that kind of position, instead of helping folks and trying to help folks get better housing and stuff like that that we just rather lock them up, put them in jail and let that be the problem. And I don't think that's the way to solve it. So I just wanted to bring that up. Just for our attention to pay attention to. Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner Chestnut. Commissioner Prithya. Well, I thank you. And I agree with you. I think I borrowed that last commission comment that I do want to have a proactive conversation about this. Like, what are the things? And I know part of it was we wanted to wait for the city of gains. We were going to put it on a joint city meeting. Because they've been talking about master planning around the Grace Campus. And there's been conversations about what they're doing and what we are doing. And I agree with you. I think our jail, we already have about, I think it was about a third of our jail population is unhoused individuals. And so we already have a problem. And our jail is already bumping up against the thousand mark on a regular basis. So I mean, we're getting close to full anyway, which is already a problem and another conversation for another day, but I'm with you, you know, that's not a way to house people. And it's a way more expensive way to house people in the long run than just helping find suitable places for them to live, yeah. Thank you. Richard Cornell? Just gonna re-enterate what Commissioner Fizz is just said. I think this is our issue for next year. This is going to be, you know, we have this grand bargain that we do with the city. It was kind of a five-year plan. We're kind of at the end of that now. And we kind of have to revisit all of that. So I did have some conversations with the mayor. I saw him on yesterday and I'm with both of my colleagues here that this is something I think we're gonna have to look at and put together our plan for how we move forward with this. And with FACS help, I think FACS got some thoughts as well. So thank you, Chris. That's when I was gonna say it, sounds like a FACS issue too. It's gonna be statewide, not just us. I tried to get the mayor to join me in a state of emergency for housing last year and And he kind of himden hauled and we never got there. But I do believe that that and the fact that, you know, we can address, we have our new center opening up at Meridian to de-escalate folks that are having mental health challenges and substance abuse challenges, but at the end of the day, if they don't have any place to go, they go to jail. And if we don't solve that problem, then it's, you know, all of this is so related, it's so complex. And it's expensive. 130 dollars a day to keep somebody in jail. And more than that, keep them in hospitals. So if we can find people housing first, if we can put people in houses first, then let themselves, their problems, we'd be a lot better off in the long run. And thank you all for listening to our secondary discussion, which we often have at the end of our meeting since we addressed other issues. But thank you all for attending, and I will call this meeting adjourned. Take good care.