All right. Are we ready? All right, everybody. Hello, everybody. Welcome to the October 7th meeting of the Joint Water and Climate Policy Board. There is only three of us up here but at the advice of our city attorney, apparently we are able to move forward with getting informational items. We cannot take any action on the only action item that is here, which is approval of the minutes. We can't approve the agenda, but we can certainly take informational items and ask any questions that we have. So with that, I'll turn it over to Steve. I'm going to protect you in the climate. We have two presentations today, Sean McClendon. It's going to talk to you all about food security. We'll need to climate change and then I'm going to give a brief update on what our climate summit strategies are going to be for you all. And we'll be glad to answer any questions at that point. So just keep us moving forward. I'm going to turn it over to Sean McClendon. Mr. Chair, commissioners, good morning, good afternoon. Shama Clinton, I'm the Economic Development Manager for a lots of county. I'm very happy to be here today. One of the other hats I wear is dealing with food systems in the community. So I'm going to give you a abbreviated presentation. We're going to talk briefly about, you know, what is a food system? What are the current, some of the current challenges that we face, some of those challenges are coming right at us today. How do we build resilience in the face of those challenges? And then what are some of the system enhancing initiatives that a lot of counties working on? And a lot of those system enhancing initiatives, the City of Gainesville is a vital partner with the county on these things. So overall, a food system is more than just the farmers in the field doing what they do. Food systems are defined by where things are produced, how they're aggregated, how they're distributed, who it goes to, the human capital and the equation, whether they're benefiting it from it all. And then that's a supporting environment, the soil, the health, the quality and the equation, whether they're benefiting it from it all. And then those supporting environment, the soil, the health, the quality of the water, all of those things working in concert together define what a food system is. And there's a layer on top of it that also deals with culture. Food is culture. Wherever you go around the world, there's different ways of growing food and appreciating food, even with the United States. Food culture is here. And it's often there's overlays of ethics that go into that. Part of those values in the food system get expressed sometimes in policy. And one of those value systems that a Latio County has signed onto is the Good Food Purchasing Program for large institutional food purchasers. And those values relate to whether food is produced locally, whether it's good, nutritious food that's going to us, whether the people that help to grow the food, they're valued, the farm workers in the community, whether the food is environmentally and sustainably gloom and whether animal welfare is considered in those situations. So food systems are multivalent, they are very intertwined with culture and they can be easily disrupted if they're not sustainable. Currently our food system probably isn't very sustainable. We have instances on Kami with their disparities, where there's low nutrition, there's high hunger, there's economic disparity within the food system in terms of who produces the food versus who gets to consume it. There's tremendous amounts of waste in our food system. We have over 700 tons of day material that come to the Libyan Brown Environmental Park and Transfer Station. The protein unit component is in the 10s to 20 percent. Substantial fraction that contributes to methane emissions globally in the United States as well. There are things that inhibit folks to participate in the food systems. If you're not a big producer, if you're not a big industrial producer, it's very hard to get your start because you might not a big industrial producer, it's very hard to get your start because you might not have Capital access to purchase the equipment to get your start There might be regulatory barriers if you're a small farmer that only very large operations whether you're a grower or distributor And and finally there's the conundrum of weather And in weather itself from And finally, there's the conundrum of weather. And in weather itself from 2022, Ian had a $1.3 billion impact on our agricultural systems here alone in the state of Florida. In 2023, Adalia had over $400 million of impact to the agricultural system. And in 2024, recently Hurricane Debbie has estimated that even that glancing blow delivered a $94 to $262 million impact to our agricultural system here. So all of these things lead to the middle part, which is, what do we do? What decisions do we make for thing encroaching problems that we have in our small farms that aren't very profitable? How do we maintain them in the landscape? How do we respect the small farmers? How do we grow more local food? How do we do all those great things we want to do and make that middle decision of coming from where we are currently, to where we need to go in the future? And that future can be defined by having climate impacts. We can be impacted by these issues or we can have a resilient community. We can either respect the soil and grow new soil or lose it. We can make policy disconnects where the small farmers don't survive, where people remain hungry, and they can't get access to good nutritious foods, or we can make bridges for these communities. And where are their infrastructure gaps or integration? So the decisions we make today about whether or not a grocery store can locate, say, in the east side to provide better food access will make big differences going into the future. And then most importantly, I think, where I really would like to take this conversation is what can we do here? How can we thoroughly engage people? Because that's what defines resilience. It's people to define the ability to be resilient. How are they engaged? And there are they part of the solution or they remove from it. So the example I give is the example that you all have joined with the county on, which is the Empower Coalition. The Empower Coalition is dealing not with food security issues, but it is dealing with questions of energy burden. So it is one of those multi-valent systems. It deals with communities that have been upward of 20 to 30% of their income, potentially on utility bills. But it goes into those communities and asks them, what do you need? How can we address this together? How do we design a system that can do that? And it brings trusted partners into the community to talk about. So the NAACP is part of that conversation. How do we talk about climate change with these communities when people can't pay their utility bills? It deals with people that provide services on the ground right now, the community weatherization coalition. And it brings together the ability of experts at the city of Gainesville and GRU and all that's accounting, contributing their governmental expertise experts at the City of Gainesville and GRU and a lot of accounting contributing their governmental expertise to being part of a solution to build resilience in these communities that weren't being thoroughly engaged, deeply engaged, otherwise in these questions. So with that framework, how does that translate then into that food system of agricultural production, the farmers of the world, the people that take the food then and process it, distribute it, and put it on shelf somewhere, how does it get to a human being and take into well-billing into consideration, and finally, how does that integrate back again with the environment? And so a lot of the counties get a few things going on that touches each one of these sectors. If we further develop our capacity to engage with the community like the Empower Per Program, we can better establish these system enhancing initiatives like a food hub which would be used for better distribution and aggregation of local farm goods. We could be better at producing agri-tourism, promotion, and marketing, which produces new revenue streams for our local farmers. We can think about on Ag Production side, what we do is small farmer grants to help these small farmers get over the hump of starting their farms or slightly expanding their needs for capital needs that they have for their farms. And finally for the environment, what do we think about how we handle the in-product of the consumption of food? Are we throwing it away in the cheapest hole in the ground, or are we closing the loop with that material and putting it back on the farms as useful compost. And just one one final thought, just human health and well-being. How are we really engaging with the people that are part of the food system overall? And how are we thinking about use? There's going to be an incredible demand for workers over the next 30 years. As the baby boomers retire and leave, there's gonna be a vacuum, a need for more and more skilled labor, more and more folks in vocational and technical trades, as well as in the agricultural sector. There we're gonna need to work smarter, rather than harder in many cases. And so engaging with the use, whether it's to give culinary skills, deep culinary skills, dealing with farm worker housing, dealing with questions of language access in the community. All of those things help to inform a more resilient community and better human health and well-being outcomes within the system initiatives there. These are all things that Elatio County is working on right now. And just briefly, to touch on at programs that the county is working on, the small farmer grant going into the third year of operating, it looks for farmers that have less than $250,000 of annual income, which is the majority of farmers in the Lachican. The medium size of a farm in the Lachican is only 22 acres. The majority of farms that apply for these grants have much less than 22 acres in the small farmer grant. We had a 51 percent increase in this last round that was approved by the board. We had 28 total applications that were approved. And it affords grant opportunities of up to $5,000 for capital expenses. So think things that would improve the farm's building, like fences and maybe a small refrigerator to hold stuff, processing equipment. Those kind of like very fundamental things that make a farming operation work. Out of the overall applicants that came into it, 100% met the equity priorities of the grant requirement, 96% are very, very small farmers. So think acreages that well below 22 acres and 86% are first times of midter, which is great. So we have a high turnover in terms of new people coming in, new farmers being able to access these funds. And most importantly, 36% have a farm plan. It would be great if all of the farmers had a farm plan. That's that financial plan, that's business plan that a farm has, but we offered incentives to help farmers create a business plan to help the farmer think logically, to think scientifically, to take advantage of all the great resources that agricultural extension office has available to farmers to help them be more successful and more financially sustainable. Just what do these farmers need? Think about investing in the future and they need equipment. Sometimes they need a little walk behind tiller. It's a lot easier than going out there with a shovel and a hoe and trying to break sod with just sweating your brow and using one of those piece of equipment. But having a little rotor tiller can make a huge difference for a small farm. 30% of them needed building improvements, 20% of them needed fencing. And only 10% of them just needed some irrigation. So, and these aren't irrigations that are big center point tivots you see on large scale farms where you see the big arms that kind of rotate around the fields. These are very modest systems to support their operations. They make a big difference for them. As you can see, there's a broad geographic spread. This is not something that we defined into the system, but it's just something that naturally occurred. We're very happy to see it. The grantees, the 28 grantees that came to the county, they're spread well around the community. They're even inside of the city of Gainesville. You have farming operations inside of Gainesville, which is a great story to say. And it just worked out that 50% of the grant applications were for ranching operations and 50% or farming operations. And farmers could be doing anything from apenary, the honey production, they could be row crops, they could be orchards. So there's a great range of diversity which is important for any kind of sustainable food system because you need a bit of everything to really make it work. And with that, that's the elevator speech on food systems and agriculture and what we're doing to address climate security. Perfect. Thank you Sean. Commissioner Warner. Thank you Commissioner and thank you Scott for a wonderful presentation. I wanted to say there were so many things that were exciting about this but I want to hone in on one thing in particular because I had been approached actually probably about three times by a young lady who used to live in my district but who is a farmer. And she had the desire to create a grocery store. She wanted to actually create the opportunity for a grocery store in East Gainesville but before doing that she has a place where she grows her wares. And invite it me down to the farmer's market that's just off of the property at Lofton. I had a chance to sample some of her sugar cane. She introduced me and I apologize because there is one fruit that was so beautiful and so unique. I can't remember the name of it. It was a beautiful flowering fruit. There was a maroon color that she peeled off a piece of it for me and said, taste this. You're going to love it. It was a little bitter. But she says you make these wonderful teas out of it. The point that I'm making here is that she is one of the examples and one of the farmers that I would hope is making use of this program. And now that I know that it exists, I'm going to be pushing her and others who are like her towards what it is that the county is doing because this is very, very exciting. I'm really curious to know, is there a list where we can see the farmers who have received these grants? Yes, Mr. Chair, the county did publish the list when the county commissioners approved the grant awardees so we can do that and just for anyone listening, the county commission did approve an extension of the grant program for FY25. So, around about the end of January, beginning of February, we'll open up applications again, opting, and really pleased that if farmers do have an operation and they're looking how to grow the profitability of farm, we are working with, working food, which is a commercial kitchen here in town, and they're helping these small farmers to take what they grow in the fields and turn it into value-ad food stuff. So how do you get your tea, maybe to a point where you could sell on a retail shelf at each box or a public's? And so we're helping those farmers bridge that regulatory divide by helping them get food safety plans, by helping develop marketing plans, and we're getting the first wave of products coming out of that incubation effort. So if you're a small farmer and you have a great idea and you're growing something unique, you can make an interesting product that then could be highlighted and sold locally in the community. So we're very interested in closing the loop on that. Scott, thank you so much. I did want to kind of circle back on something that you mentioned in terms of a business plan. This same young woman who had this dream and this desire to move forward with a grocery store in East Gainesville came with a fabulous idea. But I knew, needed some assistance. Did you say that the county is providing any type of assistance with pulling together business plans for these small farmers. associated with the small farmer grant the county is supporting anyone that wants to create a farm plan. I farm plan. So that's basically your business plan. Yeah. Three-step course the county will pay for that curriculum so they can do that. We'll pay that network work and that's offered at the agricultural extension office. But that's a great first step. It is. And then we also, if they want to work further with working food under the county for again opportunity to develop business plan and marketing plans for their food products there. So we're offering services that allow for the subsiditation of the kitchen space, for freezer space, for sitting out with experts over there to help them to launch their programs, like any incubation space that you see in the innovation district in the downtown area. There's no reason why we can't do that with food here. A lot of what it is that you're doing sounds like some of the stuff that we were working on in, oh you're going to have to help me here remember the name of the committee but it was it was not the food systems committee but it was food and something committee that the Sun said it several months ago so I'm really glad to see a lot of that work being carried on through this. Thank you for that. How are we getting the word out or how's the county getting the word out about this? I'm sure you're doing a wonderful job, but because I was not aware of a lot of this that's going on I want to make sure that I tune in but also that anyone else who's listening to this Might become a little bit more aware of how we can find out about these opportunities. Yeah Advise everyone it wants to reach directly out to me. I'm happy to do that and I can leave my information with a clerk so they can do that. But, S. McClendon, MC, L.E.N.D.O.N. at allattrocany.us, who may email me in asking, or give me a call at 352-548-3765. Excellent, thank you. My last question for now is the Empower Coalition. Sounds very, very exciting. Can you tell me about the institutions that are a part of that? Is it institutions as well as individuals? It is. It is institutions as well as individuals. So, neighborhoods, so devolved community, Spring Hill, the SWAG community, they're all part of this initial push to develop a program that establishes a community fund that provides for long-term services in the community with the community actually acting as the Board of Directors to say this is how we want to spend these grant resources or private sector donations to this fund that enables us to provide ongoing weatherization services in our community or to help develop technical skills to get a green job because there's going to be huge demand for anyone that can be a plumber or a electrician or work in the building trades. These are all potentially green jobs. There's many, many more beside that, but there are a lot of resources that exist right now and if we can connect those folks with employment opportunities, with assistance to reduce their energy build, it just improves these communities overall. We're very excited about that. Absolutely. We just go to the website and we need to reach out to you for more information. Reach out to me for right now. The website is in development. We better tell our story but we hope by November of this year the website will be up and running and we'll have that. Excellent. Thank you so much Scott. Thank you. I can go. It's Sean. Sean. That's okay. And Sean, you know, Sean, why did you let me do that? I just don't come right here dinner. I'm back, oh my God. I know he's not, but don't let me be that kind of commissioner. Okay. Thank you very much as much as I've worked with Sean and appreciate his work. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner Wheeler. I have a couple of questions, guys. I don't know, Commissioner, if you all have gotten calls from any of your constituents here in Gainesville regarding food shortages and the fact that the food has been destroyed because of the power outages and trying to replace that food. It's expensive. And now we've got another storm coming in where they just replenish their shelves and are gonna have to worry again about, you know, another power outage that's gonna take that. My concern, Sean, is that if we, now that we've got these storms like this back to back and we have food shortages in the outline, particularly in the outlining municipalities, that's why I didn't know if you all had heard from your city folks or not. But in the outlying areas, we've got food shortages where people are scrambling because they have no electricity still. And I don't know if there's any, we're going to have to problem solve in a whole different way, I think, that we've ever done before. And I think that's what you were asking for moving forward how can we address some of this and I don't know if the schools can be included in this or not because they have stockpiled resource in a food that will store and is not necessarily kept in refrigeration, or they have the ability to keep things cold enough so that maybe the cafeterias could be opened up as a soup kitchen, or that we have food distribution to children who are in the public schools, they not be in that school in their neighborhood, but at least they are school children in our community that they could access food through the schools. You know, I don't know if we've talked about that or not, but it seems to me now it's the time that we talk about distribution and times like this where there is no electricity. And our farmers, we have these conversations a lot on our board because of Anna and Mary. They have been their big focus. The commissioners on our team are big time farm folks. And a lot of these things that Sean is sharing with you now are coming from the work that they've done on our board. And that's great except the farmer, it's all seasonal. Right now, the farm, the fall vegetables that are coming in are different from what the summer is. And so maybe a little bit harder to market or not. But I just feel like that there ought to be a way that we could include, you know, the churches and the schools who are serving the neighborhoods into soup kitchens, you know, turn them into a place where people can go at least get a hot meal. Because generally they're the first ones that get turned on, the electricity, you know, find the places where the electricity is turned on first. When I was in high springs on Friday, they were still a whole lot of outage up there, and they were still scrambling, trying to find food for folks. And I don't think know what that means of food truck. That's got a big soup pot or what. But we need to find ways that we can address the immediate needs in times of disaster like this. And we have the resources. We have folks out there cooking all over the place. If it's food trucks, the churches, or schools, I can make a pot of soup as good as anybody. And cornbread will go a long way. So I don't know if we have gotten that far, but it seems to me an immediate concern. Mr. I would say that all throughout COVID, the school board stepped up to handle nutrition needs in the community. So just about every day that you would drop your kids off or pick your kids up there, would be someone out in the pickup drop offline to push a cart through, making sure that the family went home with some food, just knowing how tough it was. And in the middle of the disaster, the school boards the first to step up and provide resources for those that are in shelter operations. For a resiliency question and looking at, you know, how much food is available and what happens when the power goes out. I think we, you know, I've been looking at the Asheville example for communities that have been completely cut off when they lacklulations where they're having to chop or end food where they use meal teams now because the roads are so unpassible to bring food into communities. Any grocery store on average might have three days worth of materials to sell before they're sold out. It's just the way it works with a distribution hub to the supermarket retail outlet. Definitely the county commissioners are thinking about the systems level of this when we develop our own food hub. Hopefully on October 22nd, the County Commission's next board meeting, the services contract will come back. We'll begin that 30-month investigation for how the county could establish a food hub. Again, that's a place where you can aggregate foods dust from the local farms and then do distribution out again. So having access to that processing facility, having access to that cold storage type facility could definitely be a part of the amendment to that process of which the school board could be a partner because it would be geared toward institutional purchasers. Right and I would say to one more thing Mr. Chair, the in high springs particularly and that's where I spent the welcome at time investigating what was happening. There are a lot of homes of there who have so much damage to their homes too, that they can't get the electric restored until they go through and get an electrician to repair the damage done to the house. And that sort of thing. And I would say our agencies, I don't know if United Way or I know the Central Florida Community Action Agency, you know, need some of these organizations that we could coordinate with to make sure that our constituents homes are being repaired so they can get that. But in the meantime, you know, then how are they going to get the resources they need to continue their life, you the life that was disrupted. This was my concern, that somehow that we coordinate through our city mayors, that when they meet to come up with the county plan, that we can help each other, community to community, because I think Newberry is pretty well a step back to normal as a Latua is, but high springs is not. And I don't know how Hawthorne, you know, I think Hawthorne did pretty well. And I'm not sure you would know about Waldo, but you know reaching across the county to help each other out, I think is important in going through maybe the mayors with the towns. What does it call the League of Cities? That meeting that they have, that we could somehow get a hold of that meeting time and help initiate a plan that would respond so that we're all in this together. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Hi, thank you. Commissioner McGuire? Thank you, Mr. Chair. I you. Commissioner McGuire? Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have done absolutely no research on this next question that I'm about to ask at all, Sean. But an idea popped into my brain have no idea how novel it is or if someone might be doing something along these lines. But I'm thinking about the preservation of food and times like this, emergency times like this. Someone shared with me a few days ago that a local windixie, the power had gone down and all of the meat in there was about, it was about to go bad. So immediately I started thinking about generators. And I started thinking about the access, particularly of spaces that make food accessible to us. And having access to a generator, it kind of blew my mind that perhaps some of our larger grocers may not have access to that, but apparently it might be a real thing. But when I think about it on a smaller scale, like some of the churches that are doing this food outreach, some of the shelters that have items that need to be preserved, the idea that that food would then go to the bad. We already know that supply is a problem, but then to have something that then parishes because we don't have the capacity to save it or to keep it is something that was in my brain as well. So I'm thinking about, I'm looking at this wonderful opportunity that the county is providing with your grant program to farmers. And I'm not saying the county needs to do more and more more. It's just making me wonder how we all might be able to participate in creating the opportunity for those who are distributing food to save that food in situations like this with a generator. I'm putting that out there to my colleagues because like I say, I haven't had the, I'm listening to this presentation for the first time and it was just something that popped into my mind. But if there are ways that we can create pathways for those who are doing this incredible, life-saving, and essential work to be able to preserve what they have, I think that's something I would really be interested in learning more about and charting pathways towards. I wonder, you know, because a generator, you know, I don't know a lot about generators, but if it can save food and give us the opportunity to help more people, I certainly would be willing to find a way to incentivize that or provide funding for agencies to be able to have those. The nursing home that was in high spirits, it was in trouble that they had the generator of the bottom floor and they could have had a generator on the bottom floor. And they didn't want the bomb. They could have gotten a generator from the top floor, I guess they could have provided that. It seems to me that there was some outside agency that would have done that if there had been real trouble there. I'd have to ask Jen Grice how that works for healthcare facilities, for backup generation. I know that just within our shelters that we partner with here in the community, it's really important to have, because we might have special needs, we might have elderly coming into our, so it's really important that when we bring in the generators that we might rent, palatized generators that come in on a truck, and when it hooks up, it hooks up right the first time, and not it doesn't hook up. We're trying to, you know, beat the storm before it happens. But there were funds that we could use to actually have them out at public works or some, I mean, you know, we, our public works people are just terribly overrard during that time, but I didn't know if we purchased more. So we believe in the combination of we own backup generators at specific locations that need power 247, but we also have provisions where we can plug in generators in certain facilities where we rent a generator for a certain time, and then they make preparations ahead of the storm to be a habitable, will call basis. But Ramon Garvete, our public works director, they make sure to coordinate that, and that's part of the overall EOC function. So we'd rent them out, because like a business, I don't know that it's the same thing as public health and safety. And on the county side, on a smaller scale, as part of the empower coalition, as part of the grant application we'll put into EPA in November, we were asking for funds for a resilience hub. And that would provide for solar panels and battery backup systems so that places where people can go just to cool down. People can pay places where people can go to charge up their phones or contact their relatives as to say I am safe. That would be part of the overall application process to establish resilient subs, not using so much diesel powered emergency backup generator, but using battery backup systems and solar panels. Could we add to that application that we would have things for food preservation? We can definitely talk about that. I think it's worth an ask. Definitely part of the overall resilience, I think. Part of it, part of the application, not specifically for food itself, but being able to say that, you know, in times of trouble, in times of need, neighborhoods, especially neighborhoods that don't have a lot of resources, you know, have a lot of options to be able to go to someplace where they can get something you need to cool down to charge back up again. That's important for sustainability. So it's a good thought, you know, I mean, you know, we could work on trying to find. I appreciate that. Otherwise, you know, the only thing that came to my mind during this whole thing is building a fire out in the yard and bringing all this stuff into a big pot, you know, camp cooking, you know, so that this food was not wasted because I know even from the pink flamingo and the great outdoors, he said they lost about $300,000 worth of meat and food reparations. So, you know, he's probably gonna need to get a generator. Absolutely. And thank you for asking that because I learned a lot. I did not know that the county had generators that were being made accessible to, and who are they accessible to? Who can rent a generator from the county? So again, the county would go out and they would rent a generator for facilities that the county maintains. So we have generators that fix the buildings for antennas, for communication devices, for like the jail, all these facilities that require, because they have populations associated with them. Gotcha. And hospitals will have backup generators. That we have to maintain. So you have our mechanics that will go out to maintain these heavy diesel generators that produce electricity associated with these facilities. Or we rent them and bring them in and out of them off. Okay. One more question. Do you think when we have the Center of Operations Center over there from National Guard, will they have those kinds of that equipment there or is it all of that to be sent out into the? So part of the United States Army Reserve, a quick concentration site, part of the benefit of having them in the community is they are a hub for the South East and the United States and the Caribbean for when our storm does rip through. They're part of the team of people that come in and help to get people back up on their feet and they also provide generators and I believe there is a mechanism through the federal government that if a generator is needed in the community, you can't work through them to bring that generator and have it go for a certain amount of time. Wonderful. Thank you. That's another option potentially in the future when they're up and running in 2025. That's why we want to make them our good buddies and our good neighbors, right? All right, thank you. Perfect. Any other questions? All right, thank you so much for the presentation, Sean. We can move over. Well, do you have anything else on the climate action? Play an update? That's all I have. I have a short presentation on that. Okay. Then I guess we can move on to the climate summit update. Yeah, that's what it is. Yes. Perfect. All right. Okay, I've got a brief presentation just to give you all an update on where we're on the climate summit, which is just over a month away. So again, it's located at the Blount Center right down the street at Northwest 6th and University. It's gonna be an all day event and we will be sending out invites to the public in about two weeks. We're gonna be sending an invite to commissioners, county city commissioners, probably toward the end of this week. Let's see how the storm affects us there. So I wanted to just show, here's kind of an updated draft agenda. This is the morning session. So registration will be at 8.30 and we hope to kick everything off at 9.30 with a welcoming. We're going to do a nice break up with the group. I think the University of Florida is going to help us with that. We're going to have a presentation focused on hope and climate by Cynthia Barnett. We don't want to use fear and warning people of these concerns. We want to show and demonstrate that if we work together, we can tackle this challenge. We're going to have an update on the climate impacts from retired meteorologist Bill Quinlan, who is going to do a little bit of what we've done in the past, where we talk about what the vulnerability analysis has shown us and what we expect to experience in the years to come. Then we're going to get into the weeds and the details of the plan. And we're going to get into the weeds and the details of the plan and we broke it up into two sessions. So we're going to do what we call Climate Action Plan 1 presentation through about 30 to 45 minutes. And then we're going to break out into groups, talk about strategies and get input from the community. In that breakout, we're going to have a lunch and refreshments. We're going to hear from our younger generation as to why it matters when we come back from lunch, from sunrise movement and the environmental vassagers. So these will be high school and college students expressing why this is important to them. Then we're going to break out again, or give a presentation on the second half of the Climate Action Plan and have another break out and discuss strategies and get feedback from the community. Then we're gonna come back together and hear what we've learned from those breakouts and then have some closing remarks. So it's an all day event. We've tried to push it up to be done by four o'clock because we do have a football game that night. So we want to try to get this through. So that's the general makeup of the summit. And we'll have a little more detail that varies in the next week or two. Again, the summit is at the Blount Center. Due to the size of their largest room, we are having to limit the capacity to about 120 to 130 people. So that's unfortunate. That I do expect to reach that cap. I do expect to have at least that many people there. But we're also going to have exhibitors and tablers at the event. We are specifically working with nonprofits and agencies that will be able to give feedback directly to citizens that arrive about what they can do to address climate. So these will be groups that can give you information on how to get rebates on energy efficiency issues. What to do if you feel like you're in a crisis and not sure how to handle the situation while the crisis is centered there. So we were really focusing on vendors that can provide that critical information back to citizens that come to the event. We're going to be covering nine or 10 chapters. We're going to, these are the counties climate action plan. We also have the cities climate action plan. They're almost identical. There's probably three or four differences in the two. And Dr. Dan Z Zoo and I will probably present that in one of those presentations so that you're going to hear about both the city and the climate action plans and the similarities as well as a few of the differences. And I think that'll be helpful for the other city representatives that are there to understand how their communities could be engaged in this climate action plan strategy as well. Our themes, we've done our best to try to integrate equity in all of the decision making we have in the climate action plan. And I think you're going to see that both in the plan when we release it as well as in the presentations. We are trying to gather what the baselines are now today as they relate to these climate issues and then come up with what those targets are going to be in the future so that the community has a good idea of how we're addressing these issues. We've looked at past and current efforts as well, and then the main focus is really, as what is our feature strategies to address these issues. And then finally, I just wanted to give a little timeline as to when we hope to finalize these efforts. So we are hiring a climate specialist in the county. I believe that physician is going to be advertised next week. And so we hope to have that person on this fall. That will hopefully match up well with Dr. Dan Zoo and we'll be able to have a really strong ongoing collaboration in this effort. At the summit, we hope to get a lot of good feedback. We will continue to try to get feedback from the community. I've talked with some of the other city mayors and commissioners they're interested in having this information brought to them as well. So I suspect this is just kicking off the issue. We will continue to provide updates to municipalities, communities, and nonprofits who are interested. We're going to do ongoing surveying to hear from the public as to what their biggest concerns are. And we do hope to have a draft of the climate action played released since late 2024. I suspect it will probably be early 25 based on just additional feedback we're gonna get. We also wanna release a web-based dashboard with that draft so that it's easier to gather information than it is to read a thick document. What we're hoping to do in citizens, if they have a particular issue of concern, they can click right on that button and get that information immediately as opposed to trying to weed through a 200 or 400 page document. And that's all I've got. I just want to give that update because I don't believe this committee will meet again before the summit in November. Thank you. Any questions? I just have a comment very quickly that I'm really glad to know that you're thinking about taking it on the road because when we were at Hawthorne last weekend there were almost 125 people there you know that a large group so 125 folks coming in the gains will it's not not a lot of folks and it's probably going to be the people you know who we've already talked that has talked and it's probably going to be the people who we've already talked, that has talked this, it's not new, this is what I mean. So the idea of going into the different municipalities or different organizations, different into the high schools, to the school system even, taking it on the road I think is important because 125 is not a lot, folks. No, it is it and I know it's very easy to fill up a room with that many people when you have an issue like this. It covers so many different areas. I mean, just talking about food, we could probably fill out. It will be the choir. So, you know, it'll be the choir that you're going to reach. Yeah, so one of the things I'm going to look at at and we're going to get with our communications office and maybe the cities as well as seen if we can't do a virtual Connected oh aspect to the meeting where we get feedback. So one of the I hope Need things we're going to be able to do with this conference is we're going to be asking questions Wow, we're presenting and getting direct feedback from the people watching. We also want to ask questions and send questions to the people that sign up, even before the summit so that we make sure we make this as functional and as useful as possible. We want to know what your biggest concerns are. That's what we're going to talk about. You know, we have a list of about 15 different categories that we could have a breakout on. We're going to try to figure out what maybe one of the top six so that we have the right people at the summit to answer those questions. That's a really good idea. If you could figure out a way, I don't understand the technology well enough to be able to even express what I'm going to ask you or suggest. But I know that I have been to conferences or been in situations in classrooms, I think where you're connected to it through the phone and the question comes up and you can answer directly to whoever it is or give the ideas. Maybe you can figure something like that out so that people at home who are watching or paying attention could interact by questions or not so much questions but suggestions as to what we can do. Yeah, so Mr. Chair, that's exactly what we're doing. We are going to, so when you come into the meeting there's going to be a QR code, you get your phone hooked up. Everyone in the audience will be receiving questions and getting feedback. We're going to have to try to figure out how we can do that if we have a virtual connection as well. That might be a little trickier, but we have a team that's actually from UF that have done this quite a bit. We've been meeting with them every other week to try to get us to this point. And they will help people like me who come through the door to do, okay. Answer those questions, right? Yeah, we'll have the technical team there to help you get connected in hopes of that. I'm coming from a generation that never did believe that you would have to pay for water someday out of a machine. You know what to me, that was just the most bizarre thing I ever heard in my life and it happened. Hey, that all commissioner. All right, commissioner, you're not a walker? Yes, thank you, thank you very much. Commissioner, I wanted to speak a little bit to that. When I first came on in 2021, I held a town hall, a gun violence town hall. And I am not familiar with or do not 2021, I held a town hall, a gun violence town hall. And I am not familiar with or do not recall who the city used. And I know the county is working on this. But I did a hybrid version. So some of us assembled here in this chamber, but also it was held virtually. We had over 1100 people that turned out for that. And because of that virtual component that was afforded to folks, folks really came out. There was a charge that was associated with it, it was moderated. I don't know if that is anything that the county wants to do, but it was a service that the city actually purchased. So just a kind of, if you were not already aware, that was something that the city did do by way of that town hall. It was, like I said, in person, it was telephone and it was virtual. So you had three different things that were going on. You had the moderator that was present to kind of help the conversation move along a little bit more. You may not need that, but there was the ability to do the question and answer portion. Comes with a little bit of a price to head, but it was worth it on our side because we were able to gather a lot of useful data from that town hall. I just want to ask these questions. How do we RSVP and Windows registration close? Do we have a certain window that we need to tell you we want to come back? Yeah, so we're going to be sending out the RSVP hopefully this week and we're probably looking at a two week request so within two weeks that I know and the other reason I'm saying that is well normally about six weeks out but we want to make sure we know who's going to be able to come from you all policymakers so that we know how much is open because I know as soon as we open it to the public, it's going to fill up. And so if you're late and responding, we don't want to leave you at the event. So you don't come out probably later this week and you're probably asking, like, you give us, you don't know more than two weeks to know. We're going to try to lock in that time. Absolutely. Well, thank you all so much for your work on this. I'm really excited. Here's my RSVP in advance. All right. But I really hope we're able to find a way to include that virtual component because I know so many of our neighbors that are both local and frankly in other places. I'm gonna wanna see what Gainesville and Elatua County are doing so that they can either dovetail off of the wonderful policy that we're moving forward or so that they can just know what's happening around the globe in terms of this critical issue. So thank you all for your work on it. Thank you. All right perfect. Thank you. I mean, and I know that you have Dan working on all of this, but one of the things I see sometimes we have these events, I see the Catti really taking the lead on getting all the setup, moving forward, making sure everyone is there. I know we're going to have a lot of folks that are there saying, you know, well, we're talking about, you know, the water runoff. Well, what about the place by my house? People, you know, the jurisdictional lines don't mean so much to folks, right? Like they just want to know, well, how about the, how is, how is a more flooding going to impact my particular house, whether they happen to live in city means, which has a significant amount of people. It's about 50% of the population versus in the county. And so however, whatever our staff, whatever staff you think would be helpful for us to be there, so that we're able to be able to move that forward. I think that's going to be important. But I really appreciate all the work that you guys put into doing. It looks like it's going to be a really good event. I'm also free on November 16th, so I'll be happy to be there. All right. Thank you so much. in our whole team, I've been working together collaboratively for months on this effort. Perfect. All right, thank you guys. All right, thank you. All right. And I think that brings us to a member comment. Any comments? All right. Ray will have always wanted to do this. We are adjourned. Yeah.