We're going to call the meeting to order and I'd like to welcome senior pastor Reverend Graham Glover from the Abiding Savior Lutheran Church in school to give us our invocation. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. On behalf of my parishioners, but most importantly, my 30 teachers and about 185 preschoolers that keep me on slides and swings and the late 40s of my years, I bring you greetings. Let us pray. Or God, we ask that you keep this community under your care. Bless the leaders of our county, especially these commissioners that they may be a blessing to those that they serve, grant that they may act justly, contribute to wise decisions for the general welfare, and serve you faithfully in all that they say and do. Give to all those present here today the peace that the world cannot give, that all of our hearts may be set to obey your commands, and also that we being defended from the fear of our enemies, may live in quietness and peace. Faithful God, whose mercies are new to us every day, we humbly pray that you would look upon all of us with your love and renew us by your spirit. Keep safe, our going out and our coming in, and let your blessing remain with us throughout this day and your holy name we pray. Okay. We have a motion to approve the agenda. In a second, do we have any comment on the agenda from the public? Seeing none, we have a motion to approve the agenda. I have a motion to approve the agenda. I have a motion to approve the agenda. I have a motion to approve the agenda. I have a motion to approve the agenda. I have a motion to approve the agenda. I have a motion to approve the agenda. And a second, do we have any comment on the agenda from the public? Seeing none, all in favor of the agenda, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed like sign? All right, we are now ready to move on to announcements. Welcome, Mark. Thank you. We missed you last time. Yeah, Mark Sexton, communications director. And we have a few announcements today. We're going to begin by sharing with you on behalf of the manager her images from her recent trip to Sweden and tell me when you're ready. We're just going to let him run in the background and I have Jessica here off with me or tourism director Michelle Lieberman, your county manager. Just wanted to give you, I know a lot of you wanted an update on how our trip went. We've been back, of course, for a few weeks. And I cannot take credit for all of these photos. Some of them came from Jessica. Some of them came from Stephen Rodriguez, who was there and also Joleen Catchettori from the Sports Commission, who was there and also Joleen Catchetori from the Sports Commission who was also present. Just can I cross pass? I left on the day that she arrived, so we never did get to see each other there. It was a two-week event. I have to tell you though that it was, among the most rewarding trips that I have taken in my career with county government. The people that we met and the people that we got to see, this is actually from a team manager meeting. This is the USA Track and Field Reception, which visit Gainesville, Aachua County sponsored along with USA Track and Field. There were over 600 participants from the US that were there, Sweden as the host country had 1800, about 1800 participants. We met people from all over the world who were very excited to come to the United States for the masters in March, got to interact with a lot of people from the world masters organization who were very excited to have us host. And for those who aren't aware just a little bit about, I learned a lot about the whole program. So we are hosting the World Masters Indoor Championships, which does have some element of outdoor to it as you're aware. This is the World Masters. You can see how many people attend to watch the athletes. This is the World Masters Outdoor Championships. So the Outdoor Championship is held every other year, the indoor championship every other year. So we are the indoors in the odd number of years. So this was the Outdoor Championship, which is a little bit bigger than ours. They had about 8,000 participants. They were anticipating around six and they ended up with eight. So I watched things like the men's 100 meter final for age 90 plus. And I watched the high jump for men 80 and over. I watched the women's poval for 50 and up and watched a woman almost break the world record. I met a former Olympic athlete from Kenya who is a team manager there for Kenya. So a lot of the people that compete, so world masters is age 35 and up. USA track and field, this area is 30 and up. And it captures those athletes. A lot of these people were college athletes. They're Olympians who, when they get past that age, where they are competitive in that realm of the Olympics, they then move on to this. They are truly our world records and very competitive. People are very competitive. But it was a very fascinating trip. And Jessica got to do a lot of interesting things as well. So I'm going to let her tell you some of the things that she did. I echo the manager's sentiments about the value of the trip, how meaningful it was to meet people from around the world. And I know I messaged you. My very first day I was there within the first three hours. I wrote down every single country of who came to our booth and spoke to us. And I had over 50 countries just within the first few hours. So I do have to say this spirit of goodwill among everyone who came to our table. And in addition to the competition, one of the big takeaways is just the socialization. They're coming here every evening. They go out in groups of 20, 30 people to restaurants or hotel lobbies. And so we're working now. So we have a long list of kind of to-do items, takeaways from the trip. And one of them is really, at least from our side, while our partners at the sports center are working on the competition site, we're working on the accommodation site. How will we make sure our restaurants and all of our businesses are ready and prepared for the international travelers coming here from all over literally Europe, Asia. I met someone from Mongolia. I too met the athletes traveling here from Kenya, former silver medalist. She'd won the Boston Marathon two or three times. So I echo all of your sentiments and was so grateful for your approval and opportunity to travel there on behalf of the county. Awesome. Thank you. I had the most interesting comment the other day. You know, Elacha County has a great history and tradition of athletics with young folks. And they were so interested in the fact that we're perhaps creating also a legacy of athletics for all ages. And I think that this could become that, which I really hope that it does. So, Commissioner Prisya, yes. Thank you. This is great. It's exciting to see what's possible. I. Thank you. This is great. It's exciting to see what's possible. I wonder, you mentioned that this event was many more people than they originally anticipated. Do we have a sense of that potential here and sort of how we might mitigate any of those, you know, sort of overruns or getting to the point where we have more people than we have hotel rooms, things like that. So, in our meeting with one of the masters folks, they did have a discussion with myself and with Mr. Rodriguez, who's the director of the local organizing committee, about concerns, positive ones, about having more people than we anticipate, especially being that this is the first time that it's in the United States and that it's in Florida in a good time of year where it's really cold other places. So we talked about that and there is, we do believe that the schedule that was built in for the events has some flexibility to be able to get enough of the runners in or the events in. There was some talk over potentially doing a cap on the number of participants if need be, but I don't know that that has been officially decided at this point by the World Masters Council. And I'll know, I know a lot of you had the opportunity to meet the World Masters Council. And I know a lot of you had the opportunity to meet the World Masters Council when they came initially. They are some amazing people, again, from several different countries. And they'll be back in December to take a look at our progress with some of the capital improvements and having things prepared. The deadline for is, I believe, January 23rd for participants to put into for the events. All right, Commissioner Wheeler. Yes, in terms of housing for folks, did you get a sense from people there that everyone was expecting luxury accommodations? I mean, is it the point that we could also look at Cusco Willa as a possibility? And Madam Chair, we have already taken care of that. We have put, we have blocked off Cusco Willa for a period of time because we did have questions about, well, are the dorms, do you have dorms available at the university? We explained that that wasn't going to be a possibility that time of year to do that, but that got us thinking about Cusca Willow. We did block off that time and so we are looking at, there's about 100 bed spaces there for those spaces to be used as well. And I will tell you as far as accommodations, I had people, there's already people starting to book hotels and book their travel. And I did have some people tell me that, you know, they understand it takes one day per every hour of time difference to get over jet lag to be at your optimum performance for competition. So I've had people tell me they were coming a week early, 10 days early. They're going to train here. So I expect them to be here for rather lengthy stays. Well, if we could engage the community and I know we're going to be doing that, but I mean starting, I see that clock ticking back there, every time I go back there, and it's kind of alarming to see how close it's getting. So I think if we could kind of marshal the troops and from the community to get folks involved, even in terms of, I don't know if there might be some churches that would be able to accommodate, you know, in a church hall, something, cots and things like that. If people are not looking for luxurious accommodations, if they're really here just for the event, that might be a possibility, too. And Jessica can talk to that because we have a variety of hotel options. Correct. So there is an official hotel room block that are kind of the hotels who have signed up through the website that people can be directed to. As far as are they looking for luxury, I think a lot are looking for affordability. A lot of people will even book their hotel before they complete their registration and one of the things we learned is they'll hold off on the registration because if they have an injury as it gets very close to the competition time, those fees are harder to get refunded than a hotel block. And I'll just say this about Airbnb. Some of the people who came up to the table, we mentioned the thing about the social. They like to travel in groups. They'll go in together and get an Airbnb and cook some of their meals at home in the kitchen there. And we in the county have more Airbnb's than ever before. So I think we're looking about an availability of 1,800 different Airbnb's in the county. So whether the participant chooses to go into one of the sanctioned room blocks or go in with friends and get an Airbnb, we're closely watching those bookings and closely kind of watching the registrations and how those numbers will increase toward the January deadline for registration. Stephen Rodriguez is in close contact with many of them. Many of them wanted our email addresses too, and that's great because if they have specific questions, we can respond to those. And I did want to share too. In addition to sponsoring the USA Track and Field Receptions for two of the evenings, Jolene and I got invited to come to the Team Canada Reception. So we did get an opportunity to present to Team Canada and spend an evening with them. And we have a huge delegation of our neighbors to the North planning to come here to Elacio County in March. So that was another one of the groups that we spoke with. And just so that the public is aware also, this is run like the Olympics. You have to compete for the country that you are a resident of, and you have to be part of that. So somebody who wants to compete, for example, even locally who maybe has not done this before, they have to go in and become a member of USA Track and Field. And when they put in their application to be a participant, basically that country's Track and Field Association will certify that they are eligible to run for that country. Well shoot that leaves me up this year. Maybe next time. Well how will help you get signed up for you as a track and field? Okay. Okay. I'm encouraged. We know some people now. Okay. Mr. Chestnut. I guess my question is about transportation. How is that going to work for those individuals? So the local organizing committee has established transportation between I believe it's 16 hotels that they have on that list of hotels that have signed up with the room blocks and they'll have I believe it's four shuttles so they'll run about every 30 minutes. Those are the, basically, the closest, most of them are the close hotels to the arena. Then there will also be a separate shuttle that will travel regularly back and forth from the arena itself to West End and back for the outdoor events. Thank you. Excellent. All right. Well, thank you. I don't see any further questions. So thank you very much and congratulations on a great trip. Representing well. Madam Chair, Commissioner Wheeler, if you like, you can join me in my training. I plan on competing in the 90 group. Come in. I'm trying to convince him. Oh that is so good. I've been working on him. You know you said oh Mark. Madam Chair, we wanted to share with you that the Elachua County Crisis Center is holding their annual symposium and this year the subject is writing your own story on wellness and healing. And there's the information about the summit or the symposium coming up. It's September 16th through the 18th, 530 to 830, Eastern time, PM, to honor Suicide Prevention Month. The symposium is intended to bring accurate and insightful mental health information to everyone who is interested. Oftentimes it can be difficult to know what information to trust. The presenters of the symposium are trained mental health professionals, including Alachua County Crisis Center staff. And we've invited mental health professionals, faculty from council or education programs, and presenters from local organizations. If you or anyone you know want good, accurate, helpful information about mental health issues, we encourage you to attend. And you'll recall that we had a visitor from FEMA at a recent meeting. And one of the things that she said after the meeting was they were working on getting a disaster recovery center opened in Alachua County. And I am very pleased to report that that has happened today is happening in about an hour at 1 p.m. disaster recovery center is opening at the Mill Hopper Library, which is located at 31.45 northwest 43rd Street in Gainesville. Beginning today, it will close at 6 p.m. today. Then starting tomorrow, the DRC, disaster recovery center, will be open Monday through Friday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and closed on Sunday. This center, these are temporary offices set up after a disaster to provide support to impacted areas and communities. These offices may assist with the application process, answer questions about your application, and help you submit the information directly to FEMA. You can learn about disaster assistance programs, apply for disaster assistance right there, check the status of your application, get help understanding FEMA notices or letters, get referrals to other agencies that might offer assistance. And you can also meet with the US Small Business Administration, the SBA, Representative right there, and apply for low interest loans. So we're very pleased that that's happening here, and we appreciate FEMA following through on that promise to open a center in Elatua County. And Madam Chair, those would be announcements. Thank you, Mark. And I will say I recently went to a symposium in the federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal federal assistance please give them another chance they are working really hard on revamping their program and Making it more available especially to populations that may have not gotten the best attention from FEMA in the past So I was very pleased to hear of those changes. So All right, I'm chair mark. How long will that office be open? Do we know that yet? Is it on an as the basis? The temporary office at the library. Thank you to the library for doing that. Madam Chair, Commissioner Cornell, I do not have that information on me, but I will get it and report it to you during this meeting. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. No, thank you. I'm sorry, I didn't see your light. All right, we will move on to approval of recognitions. Is approval of the recognitions? Yes. OK. We have approval of a proclamation declaring September 20, 2024's National Suicide Prevention Month in Elatua County, Florida. All in favor of the motion signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed, like, sign? All right, I'm going to read this one. You got a map here. I'm going to. Did this one last year? All right. So, so on. Okay. Today we have a Electric County Florida Proclamation declaring September is National Suicide Prevention Month in Electricatua County, Florida, whereas suicide is a national and statewide public health problem which occurs among all age groups and across all socioeconomic, racial, and ethnic backgrounds. It is the 12th leading cause of death in the United States and the second leading cause of death among individuals between the ages of 20 and 34. Whereas today we remember and acknowledge the individuals, families, and communities that have been impacted. It is also a time to raise awareness about suicide prevention and share messages of hope. And whereas we reduce the stigma surrounding suicide and encourage the pursuit of mental health assistance and whereas we bring hope to those affected by suicide including those who have experienced loss. Now therefore through the authority vested in me by the Board of County Commissioners of Alachua County Florida, I do hereby proclaim September as National Suicide Prevention Month in a natural county Florida duly proclaim this 10th day of September, AD, 2024, signed by me, Board of Laws and County Commissioners and Justice Irby. And one thing that's very important for me to mention here is the amount of suicide that we see among our LGBTQ population, especially our youth. And as we look among all of our youth today and all the challenges that they are facing, whether it's violence, whether it's sexual orientation, whether it's just the changes that we see in our world every day. You know, please, when you see a child that's struggling, reach out and give them the help that they need and the resources that they need, which I know are going to be shared right now by these wonderful folks. I'll turn the mic over to you. Give you this. Thank you so much, Madam Chair Commissioners. Allie Martinez, Director of the Elachac County Crisis Center. Oh, it's such an honor to be here with you all. And yes, the crisis center continues to be there well over 50 years of providing 24-7 support to anybody in any kind of distress. I wanted to point out a couple of things real quickly and one is lately I feel really, really aware of just how important our partnerships are in the community. There's a lot on the horizon and a lot of really kind of strengthening our partnerships, a lot of really cool initiatives coming. And on that note, thank you so much, Candy Morris from the American Foundation, so you have prevention for joining us. This is a work that we can't do alone. And just like with our struggles in life, we cannot do this alone. Life is really challenging. We are meant to share our joys. We're meant to share a grief. We're meant to share our pain. And so really, I always want to take this opportunity to also say, this is not just about suicide prevention. This is about catching ourselves, catching folks early who are just in any kind of distress and encouraging them to reach out, ask for support, ask for help, and sometimes it's really, really hard to do that. But we really, really, really encouraged strongly for folks to just that moment that we start to kind of feel, gosh something doesn't feel quite right, so really reach out and we're there. My team of staff and volunteers are just incredible and I want to do a huge shout out to them. And we have this symposium coming up next week. This is probably a cusher eighth year of doing this symposium and it's such an incredible opportunity to kind of share a voice not only with professionals but with people in the community that's why we do it in the evenings we want people to be able to make it and get whatever information and we always just have really really great speakers of that and I'm honored to share next week I'll be in New York at the 98s. Standards training and practices committee meeting have been invited to be a part of that committee to improve and really continually evolve kind of the training practices and standards for 98 nationally. So be very excited to represent us all up there next week. So thank you so much for this. Thank you. Awesome. Thank you. Awesome. Thank you. Awesome. Thank you. Awesome. Thank you. Awesome. So we continue to lead the way, don't we? All right, Dr. County. That's more things going on we realize. Thanks to the folks in the community working. And Madam Chair, just to follow up on Ken Cornel's Commissioner Cornel's request, citizens have till Wednesday, October 9th to take care of the disaster recovery center. Thank you. Madam Chair, if I could just take a quick minute. You know, Allie is recognized throughout the country. And I think sometimes we take for granted the amazing resources and individuals that we have working in Elastor County and I just wanted to make that point that we've got statewide a national recognition of some of the best in the brightest here and thank you for all you do and your department. Yeah our crisis center was a model a national model for the 988 system and I don't think people recognize that you know that system was put in place when I believe I was in middle school when that system was put in place and I'm old yell so that is we are so lucky here in a lot of county to have the resources that we do and the dedication that we do to mental health. So thank you everyone. Madam Chair, can I ask a question? Sure, please. Could we? Sure, Prisia. Yeah, I was wondering if, while we have them here, if we could get an update on where we are with the, um, like mental health first aid program that we run in for community, for community members who are interested. Are we still offering that regularly and are our staff still being trained on mental health first aid here at the county? Madam Chair, Carl Smart, Deputy County Manager. The answer is yes, we are still moving forward with Bill Health first aid and providing that service. Right now it's online so that persons can take it conveniently online without having to appear in person. We can get you an update if you're likely to update on numbers, on stats, as far as the number of persons and organizations have taken advantage of it, but right now, just want to let you know that it's still going on. Great, thank you so much. Thank you, and I would like that update. Carl is to what percentage of folks have gone through it and things like that. We'll do. Thank you, Madam Chair. I'm Jeff. Yeah, when a commissioner, we kind of pledged that we would all take it. I don't know if we all have, but we tried to get we tried to get 100% participation in that throughout the county. And I think we achieved pretty close to that if not getting there. So I remember taking the course. It was pretty amazing. I don't think I did. I feel like I failed just eight hour course. That was all right. OK. I did in person. It was easier. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I think it would be really useful class to take in person. But I do understand this constraints of personnel and being able to do that. All right. We'll move on to our next item. The health facility's 30 appointment. I will turn that over. Oh it's 12 o'clock. Sorry, moved along too quickly there. It's now time before we do that. We'll take general public comments. So you may come forward and comment about anything on the agenda for three minutes and three minutes for anything off the agenda. If you would please introduce yourself before making comments and if we have a lot of people we can use both podiums. So if you would like to come forward please do. Good afternoon, Madam Chair, commissioners. My name is Donna Blanchard and I just wanted to speak off topic and actually it might even pertain to something that's going to be on this evening's agenda on page 5 item 3, stormwater advalorem assessment. My neighborhood has been and continues to suffer flooding at Southwest 12th Avenue. Some of you have come to our neighborhood and toured and are very much aware of our situation. And I just want to continue to present it to you all, to keep it on the docket, to keep it as part of your moving forward agenda. There were some building preparations that we were told would happen up in Tomoka Hills. We've not seen any forward progress on that. I understand that there is some legal ramifications, and I'm asking very – I'm urging you, please, to resolve those issues and to commence with working on the retention pond. And I'm hoping that for the sake of not just myself, my family, but for our entire neighborhood that we get a piece of this pie that you can help us, please. And thank you. I appreciate the work you do. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Blanchard. OK. Feel free to come up to the microphone and be ready to speak, and we can alternate microphones, if you'd like. Good afternoon, Madam Chair, commissioners, Madam Manager. My name is Kevin Smith. I'm the general manager of GioFell Environmental. Though the topic is not on today's agenda, I'm sure as far as you all know that the repercussions of the yard waste debris collection in the county has definitely not been up to the public's expectations. I do want to come and humbly apologize for the frustrations that the residents have been incurring, but I do want to say that it has not been an effort where hard work has not been put into place. The true volume of curbside, you know, and that's something that we have to deal with, but I just want to personally come to apologize and still say that we will visually continue to work with outside of the box ideas to ensure that every resident has to expect expected service in which is that they feel that they should have. Thank you, Mr. Smith. And I know the residents appreciate your comments. Yes, thank you. Madam Chair, ma'am, just look, look, look, wait till after all of the public comments are over and then we can go back. Okay. Good afternoon. I'm Brian Bischer from High Springs and thank you Madam Chair for allowing us to speak and members of the commission. As you know, I was here last week regarding some issues and I think even the week before, but City of Elachua planning is getting way ahead of themselves. I was here last week to talk about the Terra April development, a topic that Elachua County weighed in on with the letter of affected party status, and thank you very much for doing that. That item was removed from their agenda for tonight, and we all breathed a sigh of relief, and then we had a chance to look at other items on their agenda. And lo and behold, what they haven't removed is an amendment that would alter their comprehensive plan that would incorporate mixed use development in zoning designated as community commercial and commercial. And what that means is they would allow things like apartments and townhouses and duplexes and quadplexes. And even they've made a general categorization of, let's see, I need to look up that term, visitor accommodations. So they've changed things from like Ben Breakfast to visitor accommodations that would be hotels, motels, event centers, et cetera. So this has the potential to dramatically increase the density of development in and around Mill Creek sink and Mill Creek, which has been identified as a significant environmental, ecological and geologic feature. So on the face of it, the men men appears to impact only two areas, what they call the central city area and the community development area. However, the change is city wide. So it impacts every single zoning designation that's community commercial and commercial. And both Tara April and Tara Phoenicia and Tara Phoenicia overlays the known cave system there that feeds milkrieg sink. Both of those have community commercial zoning and therefore it would be directly impacted by the change in the comprehensive plan. So this is up to 15 units an acre in these commercialies own properties on top of the commercial portions. So this would be a dramatic impact on water quality and I support the county and their effort to protect the citizens related to water quality. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Prasier. Good morning, Madam Chair, Commissioner Staff. My name is Tamar Robbins. I'd like to speak to three minutes of items on the agenda and the items on the agenda is the specific items P23 and 4 which would be County Attorney comment County Manager comment and Commission comment and I'm going gonna ask you to either comment yourselves or ask that the appropriate staff comment on how did the issue of the special exception permit that was supposed to be on the Planning and Zoning Board in a city of allatred tonight become tagged with a remove status. I don't know I need the overhead if somebody's I guess nobody's paying attention. It became an affected or excuse me I'm confused because usually you guys are on. Yeah, usually they're on it. I don't see I think marks. There's just a screen. not down for a public comment. So if you'll just yield my stop my time here so I can have an opportunity please. Yes, please go ahead. Thank you. Okay. That's the agenda for tonight's meeting, which you did. The staff did send in. It was signed by Chair Alfred, an affected party status for this item. So first of all, Chapter 286 doesn't require an agenda at all for a public meeting. It needs to be for a hearing, noticed, posted, and published. The three factors for public notification legal requirement were done for the special exception. So somehow it got tagged as removed, even though it's still there. So what has happened is that, yeah, as was stated previously a sigh of relief, the public that has been noticed has been disenfranchised essentially from having an opportunity to speak to this item. So the decision-making body, which is the planning and zoning board, is the ones that should be making the decision whether or not an item is to be postponed to a future meeting or the applicant removed their application or whatever. But I was told there was staff from the City of Elatio and said the county requested this item to be removed. Okay I spoke I'm just saying you guys didn't vote to do this I know that you haven't had a meeting. I contacted county staff this morning and was told that no the county didn't request it be removed and that is what the City of Alachua had. So my concern is that there's I'd like the manager to report what she knows about this because if there's backroom conversations going on on the phone, Madam Chair and commissioners, then he's a stop because the City of Alachua from my 30 years of experience is not to be trusted with what they are going to do. Essentially, they could hear this tonight and vote on it because all the legal requirements have been done. That agenda not even required. Okay, so tagging it with a removed title doesn't remove it. It says it's removed. All the backup information is gone. So I think staff should still be there. I think you still should be exercising. And Mr. Hofstetter told me that he was in conversations with the city to have a meeting to discuss stuff. Well, who's initiating this? Where are the backroom conversations and requests? I wanna know, please. And if you're communicating with the city of Elatua, I respectfully ask that you set a criteria that all communication be done in writing and it be made public. Because I got a legal notice and now they have pulled a legally noticed public hearing for the public's opportunity to be heard. You should not be part of that in my mind. And I don't think you would if you had the choice. Thank you. So now I would like to speak to a couple of items off the agenda. I'd like to follow up with the StormDibri pickup, which I sent you guys an email about the lack of StormDibri pickup. And Mr. Almo said that this storm had minimal, Cindy had minimal impact, although it created a lot of yard debris, I get that, okay. I believe you have enough money in your budget, which you're gonna be approving here later this evening, to make sure there enough money in your budget, which are going to be approving here later this evening to make sure there is money in the budget and you have a contract in Place for backup debris pickup. You don't need FEMA funds to do this Okay, there's no reason to wait for other financial outside financial resources Okay, make sure that debris is picked up timely. It creates safety hazards. Blah, blah, blah. The foliage dies. It washes into the storm drains. I mean, it's just bad. So please, I ask you to budget some of the millions of dollars that you guys have and additional that you're getting this here in your budget. I don't know if any of you have driven by on 39th the location of the US Army Reserve equipment concentration site lately. What is going on? Because there was a contract you guys signed to lease them that property, 130 acres for a dollar. With the understanding they were going to do all these improvements in building on that property. And then you gave them an extension last year for another year, because they weren't moving forward with their construction as planned, right? Oh, supply chain shortages, COVID, that's over. Okay, drive by the site. City of Gainesville is responsible for permitting that. There's piles of big tree debris, big piles, mounds of dirt with big weeds all over it. The fences are breaking down. It looks like an almost close to abandoned construction site. It is an eye sore. And I don't see that they're moving forward. And I think you need to get them back here in this room and find out what the heck's going on. Because if you need to get them back here in this room and find out what the hex going on because if you need to cancel your contract use that land to build a animal resource center. Right? You guys have land. You gave them that thinking that with the understanding that the county doesn't need it. You do need it and apparently they don't need it enough to complete their building. Drive by there. I'm my way to and from the airport this past week, I looked at it, I was going to stop and take pictures, but I just didn't want to take the time to do that. So I'm asking you to require them to come back in here and give you an update to what's going on, or the County Manager probably could do that for us all. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Holmes. Okay, do I have any further public comment? Mark, do we have anyone on the phone? Oh, this mark, okay, go ahead. That's right. Mark, Mr. Spirken, this is about your retreat thing coming up, and I was thinking of the building community and people that make homes and apartments and that sort of thing. As you probably know there's like hot water heaters and there's on-demand hot water heaters and you know the difference in wiring the cabinet, the breaker box is about like 50 bucks or something and that when you're actually making the home. So one of the things that you will probably want, like going forward, is homes that have like a little bit more to go beyond the building code. They're maybe wired already for on-demand hot water heater. And since it's only 50 bucks, if you do it later, you have to go back, you have to rewire and did. There's a dude and it's like $900 just to get ready to go and get an on-demand hot water heater as opposed to the regular thing. And the same for like solar, like if you want to have a connection that goes to the roof where the solar panels are on the roof and you can wire it up and it just come and doing it later is a lot, you know, more difficult and that maybe is only a hundred bucks or something. And like that, the group you like three or four things that you have the builders consider doing and maybe you give them some money or maybe the home gets like a special stamp that says it's climate ready. Or perhaps you're some kind of incentive where the home itself gets a 2% tax break on the local taxes for like 10 years or something like that. Or some kind of thing where it gets like a break and then the people that developing it, you know, start doing it because they're going to get like $500 extra or because it's a combination of several things. And so, and maybe to get that community, you know, to sort of get excited about it and get involved, you know, because they're kind of like on the front line of all of this. They're actually like, basically, they're basically implementing new structures every day to get them sort of like feeling what you're about to do or the direction you want to go. I don't know, like every six months have an afternoon at first magnitude. Maybe there's some survey sign involved or a barbecue or because the cheapest time to do a home is to do it when you're positioning or when you're making that home the first time. So just like the idea when you do your retreat things, like what are the things that you could do to sort of like get that sort of building section, like you know, get the movement going and get them part of the, I don't know, get them excited about all this. And maybe there's an extra point, if they, for example, they realign the home so that the travel of the sun faces basically the direction, the nave, the central direction. Because that makes a huge difference in how the energy is absorbed into the home itself. As opposed to some random location, you actually just change the direction of the home. Because even then you could even say, I'll give you an extra point if you put in a door on the house where you can enter into a greenhouse. Like literally you prepped a home so that later on a greenhouse can be attached to it. Do you know why? You know the thing up north, the polar ice cap, one step goes, you're going to wish. Every homeowner is going to wish they had a greenhouse gas attached to their home. It's serious. Thank you Mark. I appreciate it. Yeah. There's a project for you, Mary. Madam Chair, we have no callers. All right. We have no closer up. We right. We have no poster. We have one more public comment. No one else, sir. Good afternoon. My name is Duane Baines. Here as a citizen and advocate for East Gainesville. Often times we see East Gainesville overlook. And I wonder how many of y'all have actually been on East Gainesville to roll by and seeing the conditions and no grocery stores and you know nothing over there for the youth to do but we always see the police are TV 20 news reporting on it but we have no support. The city say oh it's the county the county say oh it's the city and when I look at the agenda on eight for the Lutheran service, they get a million dollars and a third of that is going for employees. That's sad. It's a slap in the face. You know when we see the county throwing away millions of dollars and none of it goes to the East Side of Gainesville. This haven't just started. It's been going on for 20 30 years and like when are we gonna get some change like you know like I said you go to the city meetings oh that's the county East Gainesville it's just called East Gainesville you know East Gainesville don't even have a name really you know when you really look at it you know if the East part of games is that a county by late forest and all that you know it's not necessarily a city it's not Hawthons not Waldo you know it's not those areas so so who do we report to who do we cry out and ask for help who Who we say, hey, what about our kids? What about our youth? Only time you sent them locked up. We don't see any mental health. Tent set up. The crisis, you want it? Yeah, you know, it's good that, you know, September is mental health. Crisis, y'all just said. But we don't see any tents over there for the drug use. We see just as she said by the airport, you know, with the homeless shelter over there. You know, the drug infested, crime infested, you know. That's how we see on the east side of the gamesville, police station, the sheriff office, homeless, it's like it's the waste area. Just put whatever you don't want on East Gamesville. And then we're going to blame it on East Gamesville. Then then we gonna blame it on East Gamesville, then we gonna use funds to go everywhere else. This million and something, dollars that y'all give them to the Lutheran services, not even going to a lot of the county basically. They based out of Texas somewhere. They probably have a home office in Tampa. But it's fun, like this, and we wonder why that the county be millions of dollars in debt. Because we just kind of go along and just pass things on the agenda. Oh, it looked good. Oh, it went through the committee. Oh, it went through the subcommittee. But do you actually take time to look at it and where it's going? Do some investigation, some research. Do we actually sit and say, hey, I know y'all here about this all the time. I know y'all see about these games, Bill. You came up, but see it. You know, and I heart bleed over there. I kids bleed over there. I community leaders. I don't know where they at. But it's time for a change. Thank you, Mr. Baines. I appreciate your comments. Do we have any further public comment. All right. Chris, you're prudent. Sure. I wanted to address the comment about mixed use in a latch room. I am a huge proponent of our work. And I am so proud of our staff for jumping in with both feet to protect Mill Creek's sink and to make sure that we are being responsible with the decisions that we're making about development. But I think that arguing against mixed use development is throwing the baby out with the bath water. We need mixed use development because we really, really need homes to be where commercial development is so that people can walk to the grocery store, so that people can bike to schools, so that people can live, work, play, and move all within a context area. And by creating mixed-use areas, what you're doing is creating places where people can live and work. And by putting apartments and mixed-use housing in areas where otherwise it would just be single family housing, you're also offering a diverse set of options for housing, which means that more people at different price points can afford to live in an area. So I'm in agreement with you that I don't think commercial or mixed use belongs on our cave systems or on that Terra development at all. And I believe as a commission of committed to making sure that we we fight that development and and the concept of that development on one of our most sensitive water quality areas but I do believe that going against a government's efforts to try to create compact development in areas that make sense isn't about Mill Creek Sync. It's about their overall comprehensive plan and the way that they develop their communities. And I personally applaud cities that are trying to create more compact development, more housing choices, and try to think about the ways in which we create spaces that are more accessible and easier to deliver services with efficient tax dollars. So I just wanted to put that out there that I'm with you on the CreakSync and making sure that that development doesn't happen or happens responsibly at the minimum, but hopefully doesn't happen at all. But I do want to go on the record saying that I don't think mixed use housing and this should be combined as a conversation because they're two completely different issues and I just don't want to get into us looking as if we're not in support of smart development decisions while fighting a development that isn't smart. So thank you. The other thing I just wanted to quickly say is that on the East Gainesville side we hear you loud and clear I think this commission has been really committed to addressing issues in East Gainesville. I'd love to meet with you at some points so perhaps we could get you go get on my calendar and we could chat. I could share some of what we are doing in East Gainesville on Eastern Alonso County and here's some of your specific concerns so we might be able to address those. Thank you for being here. Mr. Kugel? I was going to make that same offer. Mr. Bain is happy to meet with you. We have been doing a lot. We could always be doing a lot more and would happy to be meet with you and talk to you about what I heard today and also what perhaps we're doing that maybe we haven't informed you all month. So happy to do that if you can get on my calendar. Just a point of order, Madam Chair, while I care very, very much about many of the comments as Mr. Robbins, you don't get to refer to something with Manager comment and then get to three minute terms. So I appreciate that you kind of gave her the latitude today, but I think in the future, you get one chance to speak to us about things not on the agenda and you can't say this is a management item so I'm gonna take twice as much time Okay, it's fine And I care very much about everything miss robins spoke to and if we could get when it's when it's time and army reserve update I drive by that every day and they're actually They're doing a lot of stuff and so I would love those to have a timeframe of what the status is. Thank you, Madam Chair. Okay, Commissioner Wheeler and then Commissioner Nurches. Thank you very quickly. Mr. Beans, we're glad to see you here and you're talking about the leadership in East Gainesville. Sounds like to me you just stepped up. So we'll be glad to see you again. All right, okay. All right, and then Mr. Smith, thank you so much for coming in because we do get, you know, we get calls regularly about the pickup. So I appreciate you coming here to share and share your information with us about all of those things that we share in terms of the good and the bad. But I will tell you too that I hear compliments on the young people that you have, the men and women you have working with you. I also hear, you know, some of them are a little sloppier than others, but for the most part, you know, my, what I'm hearing is that folks are, where they may be not exactly happy about when the garbage gets picked up, they are at least happy with the young people who are doing it. So thank you very much for that. And Mr. Fisher, it's Fisher. Thank you for coming. What is your, what's your, Fisher? Fisher, Fisher of Fisher's. Fisher. Fisher. Fisher. Is it what is your what's your Fisher God it now. I'm so sorry. Are we do we have anybody who is going are going to these meetings? Are we just kind of following as their As they are being filmed video or. Item chair Steve Foster, electrical and environmental protection requirement. We will be attending any item in which those development projects are coming in. We were not coming tonight because that item had been removed from the agenda. Thank you because I was just at the meeting last night in archer and I realized that these meetings, if we're not in the room often, exaggerate or are not truthful about, you know, our participation is the county. And that's why, you know, if we're watching carefully so that we can counter anything that's being said out in the community that's not true. And that's, you know, I would, you know, I don't know how we can monitor those meetings, but I think if they're controversial like this and they are impacting the environment, or impacting the whole county that we should have somebody, at least listening in who could call, or, you know, I don't know how, that's asking more of the staff I know. And that led meeting last night went to one o'clock in the morning and I wouldn't expect any of our staff to be there until one o'clock in the morning. But I realized a lot of information was coming out that was not accurate. In Madam Chair, as your Chairletters have pointed out, we will be attending any of those development project proposals that come into the city of Alachua. Thank you. And just to follow up, we did not request that item get removed to, right? Madam Chair, that is correct. I have been coordinating with the city to suggest that we meet and we've been exchanging emails on dates of availability. So, I have not and I'm not aware of any staff who have said, you need to remove that item. In fact, I was first notified from a citizen that that item had been removed. I did not have a conversation with city staff on that. Yeah, I was pretty sure that was the case. All right. I can just add my phone conversations with the cities have strictly been coordinating those meetings. When I send an email and I have not heard back, I make a phone call to make sure they're aware I sent that email just so that that email got to them. I was concerned that they had not received it. All right. Thank you, Mr. Hofsteller. And I have one more misplanchored. Do you, I don't know if you have my number or not, but you may know that I've worked with a lot of these communities on flooding issues and I'm glad to do that. So if we can get together, I would like to see. Yeah, I've been there before. I think earlier on when I first came on this board, when I first came on this board, I think I was over in that area. So I'm sorry to hear you while we're still having issues. But let's talk. All right. All right. All right. Thank you. Maybe we can get an update from staff when we have a chance either at manager comment or later on public works. Because I know we have been working towards lying houses in that area. Right. That's the area we basin and the Tomoka Hills. I just want to get an update on where we are. Next we have Commissioner. Thank you Madam Chair. I just want to make a comment about the Mr. Bain about East Gainesville. The county gave the City of Gainesville in terms of the CRA funds. We gave them $70 million over a ten year period. And thus far nothing has happened. Nothing has happened. In a couple of our joint meetings I went off about it. It falls on deaf ears. They give us a big presentation of what they're going to do in these games. And about a community center and all of this stuff and redoing citizen fields and all that stuff. But it's been three or four years now of funding that nothing has happened across the street. And it was our fault, I'll be honest with you. It was a county's fault because we didn't put any stipulations on it. We just gave them the money. And we did that because, and I voted for it, but I voted for it because I thought they were going to do the right thing and they have not. And so it's very disappointing to me when that comes up with the CRA. We combine the CRAs so we could give East Gainesville the money it need to flourish. That has not happened. And I feel your frustration, brother. I really, frustration brother. I really really do but It takes three votes over there takes four so I don't know what's going on over there But we have done our part and we could continue to do our part You know we're doing everything we help with the new health clinic that's out there and all of that stuff So so we're doing things but we're kind of stopped because of the city of Gainesville in terms of East Gainesville. We're trying to do the best we can, you know, but it's just frustrating when we have colleagues that are not following through. That's all. And so I mean, I feel your frustration, but hopefully something will happen soon. I'm sure we're going to get an update in our next joint meeting with the city to find out where we are with that. So, but anyway, thank you. Thank you for coming. Mr. Cordo. I was just going to ask if we could get an update on this blanchor's question on the stormwater. And Mr. Smith, thank you for being here. I know Commissioner Wheeler mentioned that your apologies and I appreciate that. I will tell you since GFL has gotten the issue, I have gotten more calls than I've ever gotten in my three terms. And so I hope that GFL will dedicate more resources to Elatio County because there's clearly a resource deficiency. So please, thank you for being here, but please hear us because we are just expressing what we hear from our citizens and I've gotten more calls in the last year since the contract has gone to y'all than I've gotten. I would say in the previous eight or nine. So I take that very seriously and I've asked staff for an update and I'm really glad you're here But you being here isn't the update them getting the trash picked up is the update Thank you All right and Anybody else all right? I just wanted to comment mr. Baines I I lived in East Gainesville. I lived right across the word school buses pull out. And that's one of the reasons that I ran for office is watching how East Gainesville operates. And that inspired me to get involved in many different things. And your passion is appreciated. I wish so many people would get involved to the level that I've seen you get involved today. So thank you and look forward to working together. I had one more question. Um, well I think we covered everything. I'm chair if I could. Yes, please. While you're looking, I just wanted to say that that, that, that, that, Lutheran services, just so that you know, that isn't us giving them a million dollars is getting money. It's a grant that, that we're getting to be able to do work around, in the community, healthcare. So just to be clear, I just didn't want you to think that, I mean, I think that a lot of times things on our agenda because there are appropriations, things on consent agenda. If unless you look at the backup, it's not 100% clear that what it is. But just as an FYI, Lutheran Services is a group that often gives us funding in order for us to be able to do community services related projects. And that's what that one thing is. All right. Adam Chair, just very quickly. I really like the idea of the climate ready building community. That's kind of in your lane. And I like the idea of building for climate readiness. Yeah, it's something that I've asked for in the past to have solar-ready buildings. I'm not convinced on instant hot water heaters because that encourages people to use more water. But I also believe that it's not just wiring for solar, it's also the structural aspects of solar as well as charging stations for electric vehicles pre-wiring for that would be helpful as well. But when I've asked about that in the past, I've been told that it would be a difficult lift to add that to our cloud. In our summit in the fall, it might be something that we could, you know, have a breakout or something for. Thank you. Mr. Prisya. One question. You know, I just was looking at our calendar to try to know when we might get an update on the CRA. And I noticed that our next joint meeting with the City of Gainesville isn't until December 16. That's nine or nine months since the last one. We usually, every quarter, is there a reason why we're not having one in the fall? Madam Chair, the city canceled the the upcoming meeting that was scheduled and they wanted to wait until after November I believe to hold the next one. So it's scheduled for December. But we will have a GCRA update. When did you say Sean? Before April. OK. I guess I would just ask that one of the things that happens when we have those meetings is there's a lot of issues. We have a lot of issues to talk to our partners in all of our cities with, right? And especially the state of gains will because it holds the majority of our population. And what happens is we have those meetings. And then everybody on that dias complains because those meetings are so long and because we have so many items on the agenda. One or two items on the agenda, well if we're only having meetings every nine months, there's no way we can have only one or two meetings items on the agenda. So with all due respect, I mean it's fine that they cancel, but I just want to be clear that they better be prepared for a long meeting in December because that's just how it goes. When you only have one meeting a year or two meetings a year, you're going to have a lot of agenda items. There's no way that one or two items is going to be on that agenda. So I don't know. I mean, right now I'm just talking to my colleagues across the street, but I just want to be clear like we can't. Yeah. That's the point I thought of when I heard able to get the first question. I'm not going to be able to get the first question. I'm not going to be able to get the first question. I'm not going to be able to get the first question. I'm not going to be able to get the first question. I'm not going to be able to get the first question. I'm not going to be able to get the first question. All right. We'll move forward with making the appointment. Chair, we have two applicants, Daniel Farron and Tyrone Johnson. We'll start with Commissioner Chester. Oh, actually, actually, I'm sorry. I have a quick question for staff before we do the vote. I noticed in the back-up material that we saw attendance information for both Tyrone Johnson and for the other applicant. But it didn't say that Tyrone Johnson was a member of the board. He's not. But it showed attendance information for him like he was a member of the board. No, he's not. He just attended. Okay, I just wanted to. I didn't think he was, but I thought that was interesting that it was presented as part of the backup material. Something to check upon. Yeah, anyway. All right, sorry, go ahead, clerk. I'm sorry, Mr. Clerk. Farron. Mr. Cornell, you ahead, clerk. I'm sorry, Mr. Clerk. Farron. Commissioner Cornell, you're nominee. Farron. Commissioner Wheeler, you're nominee. Farron. Commissioner Krzya. Chair Officer. Farron. Move that we appoint Daniel Farron to the CIS in a large position for the Elat County health facilities authority Okay, we have motion a second any further comment on the motion I Would like to say that I appreciate mr. Johnson attending the meetings even though he was not members of the board We always encourage people to get involved and so I appreciate his involvement All right all in favor of the motion signified by saying, aye. Aye. Any opposed, like sign? All right. All right. Congratulations, Mr. Ferrin. We will now move on to the next item, which is too many. I'll use it at the agenda here. The approval of the Joint Wild Space is Public Places Infrastructure Project. Accessity of Ercher. Good morning, Gina Peoples, Assistant County Manager, Chief of Staff. The Archer City Manager is unable to join us this morning to have a lengthy meeting yesterday. But I'd like to share with you a little about their application. So for their Wild wild spaces partnership project, they are looking for the Archer Community Center at Maddox Park. So this facility will serve a dual purpose of a meeting hall and a basketball court, and there's currently no similar facility in the Holly Hill community for residents together. And then as far as their infrastructure partnership project, they are looking to repave Southwest 143rd Avenue and place millings on Southwest 141st Lane. That is also in partnership with our Alachua County Public Works Department because there was a companion item on today's consent agenda. So if you have any questions, I'm happy to attempt to answer them, but that's the information I do have. Okay. How's it going to make a motion? Before? Okay. I would move the approved Archer's application for World Space's Public Places Surtax Partnership Grant Funding in the amount not to exceed $333,000, $333,000, and conditionally approved Archer's application for the other infrastructure partnership grant funding in an amount not to exceed 80,000 contingent on the board of proving change order number two as part of the agenda item 24.00814 and authorize the chair and clerk to execute grant agreement for each application using the form grant agreement attached to this agenda item I think there's great projects second emotion a Motion a second. Commissioner Prisya, did you have comments? Yeah, I just wanted to say I think it's a great project and I wanted to commend public works for being creative with how to do in kind support for this project to make it possible and to leverage the funding we're already spending for wild spaces, public places and for or for the infrastructure service and road's work. So thank you to public works for that. Yeah, when I shared the announcement about 170th Street, I got many questions about 143rd and 141st. So I know that the citizens are very anxious to see those happen. So all right, do we have any public comment to the motion? I'm not speaking against it, per se. If you're going to speak, you have to come to the microphone, sir. Again, my name is Duane Baines. I think this is great. I'm not speaking against it, per se. It's just a concern that I have that. I'm not speaking as the land conservation board. Although I sit on the board, It's just a concern that I have that I'm not speaking as The land conservation board although I sit on the board and we see that that's another concern that want to turn these games villain to land conservation and so you know, that's a problem You know, and so I don't I know y'all probably see these acquisitions come before you but I think the- Did you speak to this motion? Yeah that's what I'm saying. This motion I think is definitely good. I definitely agree with it but I just kind of want to put that out there as well. Okay thank you sir appreciate you getting in thought. All right is there any further comment comment to the motion? Seeing none, all in favor of the motion, signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed, like sign? All right. Wonderful. And I'm glad to see those projects go forward and archers desperately needed in Holly Hills. All right, we will now move on to the Community Health Worker Program update and some recommended changes. And this is a wonderful program. So excited to hear about it. and some recommended changes. And this is a wonderful program. So, excited to hear about it. Good afternoon, manager commissioners. I have AM, J.A. Thickhaven Choices program manager. And I have Sheree Spritten with me here today to do the presentation. She is the program administrator for the community health worker program. There you are. There you are. There you go. Good afternoon, Madam Chair and commissioners. Good afternoon, Madam Chair and commissioners. Good afternoon. Picture it, you're 18 years old and just landed your first full-time job. Your family is so proud of you and independence feels so good. It says, though, you're overflowing with potential. One week later, you feel unwell and you visit your doctor. They run a few tests and you discover that you're pregnant and HIV positive. They provide you with a packet of information until you to schedule an appointment with OB. You're shocked and completely overwhelmed. It feels as though the sky has collapsed onto your head. Situations like this aren't unique to Elatra County. There have been plenty of discussions on how to support someone when they feel isolated and totally overwhelmed with accessing care and resources in their community. What needed to be unique to Elatra County was how it addresses inequality in accessing care and resources. Elatra needed to be unique in how it empowers the community to advocate for itself. The Elatra County Community Health Worker Program was created to assist residents with accessing healthcare and social service resources. CHWs fulfill many roles and have many titles. They are your patient advocates, educators, mentors, outreach workers, translators, and of course, resource navigators. They don't just address health care. They address other social determinants of health. The Elastra County Community Health Worker or CHW program model is a combination of the lay health worker and care coordinator model. It is unique to Elastra County. In this model, the CHW is a link between the resident and all health care and social services available in the county. Elatio has a wealth of resources, but awareness and navigation of these resources can be challenging. Our pregnant 18-year-old knows there may be help available, but does she know where to start? A CHW can be the bridge between the resident and all of the support she could possibly need. Over the past year, approximately 700 residents were informed of the CHW program and its purpose. About 70 residents expressed interest in becoming CHWs and eight successfully completed the training program and were hired by local agencies. The CHWs live in zip codes 3261, 07, 08, and 3269 and provide services to residents in their home zip code as well as other areas of Elatio County. The education and mentorship components of the program were designed to be complimentary. All CHWs complete a comprehensive training plan, facility, the community health workers course, facilitated by UF Workforce and professional development lays the foundation of what community health is and how CHWs play a vital role. The best due to 2.0 workshop, which is facilitated by DOH, reviews health information and resources specific to Elatria County. Mentorship is facilitated by Pastor Duncan, who provides a CHWs with one-on-one guidance related to communication, engagement, and advocacy. On the job training, it was facilitated by the agency hosting the CHW. Five agencies are currently hosting CHWs. These agencies address various disparities including food security, housing, medical care, and childhood education. The CHW is gaining access to employment and practical experience while agencies connect with the communities they serve on a closer level. For quarters 1-3 of fiscal year 2024, the CHW's organized, attended, and led 258 events and classes. The services they provided span 13 different categories, from medical care coordination, financial literacy for displaced homemakers, food distributions, and mental health just for fathers. The CHW's went from providing over 1,900 services to residents in quarter one to almost 4,000 services in quarter three. CHWs are becoming important voices in our community. They are members of task force, collaborative, and they are participating in community meetings. When you do incredible work, the community notices. On the county level, the children's trust of Elatua County has created a funding opportunity for organizations to address youth and family disparities through CHWs. At least one community agency applied for cap funding specifically to higher CHW. On a state level, a DOH-Alatua CHW was awarded CHW of the year by the Florida Community Health Worker Coalition. She is the first CHW to achieve this honor. And there is a happy ending for our pregnant resident. At her first OB appointment, she was connected to the Paranatal Coordinator at the Health Department and the Dualist CHW at UF OB. She'll have this dual beside her from her second OB appointment to 18 months after baby's birth. The coordinator will assist her with scheduling transportation for her appointments, accessing no cost HIV medications and affordable housing. The dual of CHW will check in with her after appointments, be with her during delivery, and assist her with obtaining insurance for baby. This is just one instance of the power of CHW, power of collaboration with CHWs. The Elatra County CHW program has made a positive impact and is ready to grow the support of the BEOCC. The Elatra CHW program had an allocated budget of 500,000. The program spent around 191,000 and encumbered around 227,000 for administrative positions and CHW salaries. The program has about $78,000 remaining, which can fund two CHWs. For fiscal year 2024 and 25, the program is projected to reach its goal of 10 hired CHWs and exhaust all CHW program funds. Career Source reports that the majority of potential candidates learn about the CHW program at weekly WEO orientations. The candidates shared that mentorship and trainings were the motivators for them to enroll in the program. For the rest of 24 and 25, the Elastra County CHW program will continue to recruit, enroll, train, and place residents as CHWs. The program will work to increase the number of partner agencies that hire CHWs and measure the health outcomes of those survey CHWs. The program will be evaluated and continued to seek out additional opportunities for sustainability. During program implementation, the CHW team encountered some opportunities for improvement. The first, budget amendments, the first recommendation is to approve the reallocation of funds that were allotted for communications to CHW training. This will allow the program to provide additional support regarding the CIEUs required for CHWs to maintain certification. The program also recommends the reallocation of funds that were allotted for regular salaries to contract salaries. The second recommendation is to approve the updated template for the county's OJT agreement. This updated agreement would provide clarification on the program's processes. With that being said, thank you for the board for your continued support and direction as we work to strengthen the CHW program Thank you so much. We have a couple of comments. We'll start with Mr. Prasya Alright, thank you so much. Y'all this has been I've been pretty engaged with program As you all know when I brought it forward last year and and I've been so excited to have staff like work so hard to make it possible. Thank you, Sherees, for being the fearless leader in the community, pulling this together and coordinating everyone into Erica and Pastor Duncan and all the CHWs and J. It's been an amazing journey to watch how it's evolved and how it's grown. And I just, I'm so proud of this program and the county supporting it because I think that when we talk about root causes when we talk about Really addressing the social determinants of health the things that end up causing the health disparities that we're seeing in our community That this is the front line of that work This is getting into people's lives and helping understand what are those root causes? What are those challenges that they're facing? And giving them the support and the navigation to help them find those resources. And for us to be able to get the data and information that we need to understand what those challenges are, so we can prioritize funding and support in the future. So I'm really grateful to you. I did have a couple of comments and a question for you. And then I also had a question for our I see a CHW and Pastor Duncan in the room and I had a question for them as well. My question for you is with regards to the funding you said we don't we have enough for just two more CHWs and does that include what about for your position for staff time to be able to support and continue the existing CHWs and coordination of the program, all of that. So funding in regards to my position has already been in comfort. The 78,000 that we have remaining would be able to hire two full-time CHWs for a year. Okay, and that would be just the 10 that we originally had. Yes, we would be able to hit our goal of 10 CHWs. And where are you with demand for CHWs in the community and sort of conversations with additional employers? There is demand for the CWs. As I mentioned in the presentation, I know of least one agency that applied for cap funding so that they would be able to hire CW. I've been in talks with other agencies that are totally onboarded the idea. They just needed more information on sustainability and would it be able to work with your program? But there is demand in the community in terms of agencies that are seeking CHWs and people that are interested in becoming CHWs. Thank you. And then my, I guess my other comment is on the contract. I think the contract looks great. I do think that on the reporting form, I know that you and I talked about this before, but I think that when they do the reporting to us having another category on both those forms that they submit, so that if it's not in one of those categories that they can still write it in, and I think having that in the exhibit is important because what we're saying to them is that they have to report based on that form to the employer. And so if we don't have that other form for them to fill in the other things and the other supports as if it's services they're providing, they may not get the opportunity to report that to us if it's not on that form. So I just want to make sure it gets on the form. It's just space for them to write in other things that they've done to support their clients in both of those reporting forms. And then I guess I wanted to ask if I could, Pastor Duncan and or Aeronica. I guess I'm interested to hear from you all about your experience on the ground, working with these CHWs. And from that perspective of, I can't see him, but, in that perspective of sort of what you're hearing from the community about navigating those resources. like what are the things that people are asking for the most? What are you from a social determinants of health standpoint? What are you hearing from people on the ground? Greetings Madam Chair and Board. My name is Erin Isha Hamilton. Here's the community health worker. I do have some supportive visuals. If it's okay to show on the projection screen. And then if anybody needs this in digital form following this, I can definitely send that as well. So this one is a brochure for Pleasant Street, Civil Rights and Cultural Arts Center, which is located in East Gainesville. And it's a safe space where our community has gathered him to conduct our classes. So, one, I would say, safe spaces. I think under the leadership of Pasaduncan Mentorship, we've really been able as community health workers to directly connect our community organizing with the medical professionals and industry. So people that have safe spaces to talk about their health indications and options to be able to support them in that journey. So I resource center and I'll put it over for those who need the address or contact information. It's a safe space for our community to come and gather and have personal and group conversations with our community health workers that are located on myself and Jorail Whitehead. Another visual that I'll show here. Yeah, there you go. So the Food is medicine program that we conduct at Pleasant Street has been able to one talk to the results. So when people come in, one of the trainings that we've been able to get as community health workers is to learn more about lipid testing, blood work. So we're able to get a baseline understanding of where our participants are coming in. As we address health disparities, we're understanding people that are dealing with obesity, high blood pressure, cholesterol, and we're backing that up with the diagnosis from physicians. And we're seeing our communities baseline. So when we take them through six months of education about how their body works and what you're putting into it, after that weekend as community health workers do their blood work again and show them, okay, this is the blood work in the beginning that came from your physician and after six months of a program, this has been the outcome that we've received. So that for them to be able to get the outcome and see it and be a part of the experience collectively has shown a great community engagement and companionship as we build with our community. Social disparities and so once we have graduated them through the program what we've been organizing now is our community members volunteering at the Resource Center. So them being testimonials to new people that are going through the program, but still having an opportunity to stay connected to what's happening in the space, really has been doing a lot for them as well. So even though we've adjusted your medical concerns, now socially you're still getting a safe environment to continue up the efforts because accountability is also a big thing that I feel as community health workers that we're giving them. So we see you doing good if you're not here for a while we follow up with you and we're helping to keep them accountable but then having each other as well gives them a lot of accountability. I have a couple of success stories and one of the success stories that I bought today was Ms. Clark and she explained how when she started our walk group, she really wasn't liking it, but walking with a group of people really helped her get into it. So now she regularly walks with community members that also went through our food as medicine program. Thank you. And that's a little bit more data information about our program and some outcomes that we were able to achieve. And again, all of these forms I was in a rush to print so I can send digitally as well for a better view of them. Thank you so much. This is awesome. I think that social terms of health slide that you just showed, the thing you just showed is right on think that social terms of health slide that you just show or thing you just show to write on the money in terms of what I was asking. It sounds like your experience is that people that come really do look for lots of other resources in addition to whatever it is they're coming for. So they're coming for the the food as medicine program. They're still also needing to connect with housing resources. It looks like it's a big one. Transportation resources, those sorts of things. Absolutely. What we're doing is just to start. I mean, as community members have expressed today, East Gainesville is in need for a lot of support. And what I've loved since starting the program last October is we've expanded to a full resource center. So not only do we have the food pharmacy where we're hosting the Food and Medicine programs but we have a whole community resource center so individuals are able to come in outside of food needs and get other needs as well. Thank you. Well not such a testament to the children's trust and the work that they're doing with partners of for strong families and thinking about these resource centers as really critical components around our county of how we need to connect the dots and I think you know I spoke with Marsha about their navigators and the people that were being in there being community health worker training and making sure that we had community health workers in there that could really be that on the ground support for these sort of resources and navigation. So I'm excited to see that that's happening. And a big thank you to the Children's Trust. Please pass that on Commissioner Cornell. It's great to see that collaboration. To my colleagues, I guess I want to say, I hear 78,000, and I think that's not going to go very far. And I know we have some of our money in the resource recovery funds that we set aside specifically for health disparities. I'd love to see us dedicating more of those resources to this program. I think we're not ready today because we don't have a budget of what that could look like or how many CHWs we would target. But I would hope that you all will come back in the near future with some recommendations with regards to what we might do with additional resources for this program so that we can continue its progress and continue its momentum. I think it's doing great work and I'd love to see it expand. The other thing I would like to say to my colleagues is one of the things that I heard that it didn't get talked about today is I think we have right now it's kind of a little bit disjointed to some extent in terms of how it's organized because we have it's sitting at the health department We have it sitting in career source and we have it sitting at the county. So it's been a little bit challenging to coordinate all those different bodies. And so I would also love to ask staff to bring back recommendations for how we might consolidate this program and the coordination of this program in any recommendations they might have with regards to you know moving this program either under the county or under career source or where we might put this so that it lasts long term. I know we set it at the Health Department initially and that's great but that's a State Department of Health and I really think this is a local program that belongs being managed locally and in coordination with our other programs like the core program that we just passed funding for that fire rescue is going to be doing and the community paramedics program that they're talking about implementing and our community support services program that does so many housing navigations and case management. I just think there's so much opportunity to coordinate internally with our team and having it sit at the state office I think maybe was a recommendation of the healthcare advisory committee back in the day as an initial thought thinking we would do billing through them, but we can do billing through fire rescue too. So I feel like we should move it over to the county and we should be running it and owning it, but I'd also like to hear from staff about their ideas on that before we make that final determination. So I'd like to make those two recommendations along with the motion, and I'm ready to make that motion once we hear from the other commissioners. All right, Commissioner Cornell. Thank you, Madam Chair. Yeah, so that's a big item there. I'm not ready to move it out from under the health department because the health department deals with the county's health. I mean, that's where we don't have a county health department. And so as I understand what today is, today is the annual report for the subrecipient agreement. Is that what today serves as? It was an annual report. It was the annual report in the program. Right. OK. Well, I mean, the background says the Board of County Commission is entered into a subrecipient agreement on April 18 2023 with the Florida Department of Health to provide the program administration for the community health care worker program and then it's required to give an annual report is that what today is yes so today is fulfilling the subrecipient agreement under the Department of Health. Do we have anyone from the Department of Health here? Sure, he's, it besides me. And yeah. That, okay. So, you're serving from the, okay. I'm sorry, I thought you were for the county. I apologize. So, I have a couple of questions. On the zip codes, I heard you say 32601789. Did you say 326411? I did not. We do have some potential candidates that are in the works of enrolling that are from through to 6, 1. None has been officially onboarded, but the C.H.W.s that we do have provide services to three residents in through to 6, 1. For example, for example, food is the Pleasant Street Food is Medicine Program is centered in 3241. Okay, yeah, I mean 326, when I think of where this has the greatest impact, that's the zip code that just comes in my mind and I completely agree with Commissioner Prisya is that it's here to address root causes and when it works, it really, really works. And what I'm trying to figure out is, I know the children's trust is doing an RFP, and we have our newly appointed chief operating officer, Christie, thank you for being here. For those of you that don't know, Christie got, she's our COO now. And we actually put this into our RFP for funding to encourage around the entire county. So I wanna make sure it's working. I guess you said in one of your slides that we have five partnership agencies. Can you tell me who they are? Yes. So of course, DOHL Actual has a CHW grace marketplace. Just on the contract for their CHW, I think he's actually starting today. Pleasant Street, the one family community resource center, has- This is the great, which is, by the way. Three CHWs. Gainesville for all, specifically the Gainesville Empowerment Zone, has a CHW that focuses on family and childhood education, and UF-OB has the dual of CHW, and they're currently in works with their contract. Okay, so Grace is starting today. What was the first one you said? DOHL Actual Grace Marketplace, Gainesville Forall, UFOB and the Pleasant Street community, one community family resource center. Okay, so then on, thank you. So then on that same slide, you mentioned that the quarterly services are increasing from 1978 up to 30754. What specific service is that a conversation? Is that like what is a specific service that's that you are identifying? So some services that we're seeing would be food distributions. So these are typically larger events workshops for if we distribute food to 20 people is that 20 services? Those are 20 services. Okay. If there's a for example we've had financial workshops for displaced home makers so if there are 10 people at that workshop that's 10 services added. Medical management, our CHW if you see 10 people those are 10 services. Okay. So that's helpful for me understanding. Really, it's really just in the community doing the hard work, driving folks to better health. Yes. Okay, so on the next step, last slide, just continue data collection. What kind of data are we collecting? Like what is the, I saw a lot of data from Pleasant Street, which is great. But like how are we systemizing or formalizing to Commissioner Prisius Point, the data collection on the reporting? Like what are, what are we collecting? So the CHW program created a template and training videos on the data that we would want to see collected. Some agencies are reporting using our template, but others are not. And because of this, we're not really able to have collected data in terms of duplicated versus on duplicated services. That is the bit three. Yes. In the back. Yeah, that's what I was talking about. So most agencies are using that template which allows us to collect robust data but we have other agencies that don't and that kind of creates. Yeah so these are the commissioners I'm having a like I'd love to expand this if I knew that it's working consistently throughout the county and work and we have the data that shows that. Feeding 20 people versus feeding 10 people is 30 services, but what I'm more interested in is how are we targeting those services? Who are we reaching and how are we affecting their health? And this has Rx transportation housing, specials food, and then you're saying other. And if we could see kind of where the need is based on consistent data collection, then I'm much more apt to say, let's expand the finance, let's expand the program, or let's see where we need to expand it. From my perspective, the fact that we're not even in 32641 is a problem. Well, that's a huge issue. We are in 32641. It's just that the people don't live there. So we're trying to hire people who live in the communities where they work. So those stars are where the community health workers live, where they were recruited from, not where they're working. OK, I miss on that. So they're working in 32641 a lot. In fact, I think many of them do a lot of their work in 32641. It's just where they live. Okay, well then that's, yeah, then that's, yeah, then that's addressing that need, that's where the need is, so that's good. Okay. The last point to me is kind of the most important point. And that is measuring health outcomes evaluating the program. How do we evaluate the program in a way that is consistent data driven? I mean, I hear Commissioner Prisya say everything's got to be data driven. So how are you proposing we do that? To answer that question, I think we need to have further discussions with the core team. And of course the healthcare advisory board who've kind of been providing additional advice and support for that, our program has insilitified what type of outcomes we'd want to see, but we're working on that. And I can get that information back to you. Okay, so to me, but we're working on that. And I can get that information back to you. OK, so to me, commissioners, that's to me that I had the biggest problem. Here we are at the annual review. We've spent now not half a million dollars, but we don't have a recommendation on how we evaluate this program. Can I ask you a second? When we did this program, that's why I want to move it under the county. When we did this program, the way that we had it done, wasn't that they were our community health workers, that we were paying for in funding, and that we had set outcomes that we wanted. What we had was that we were going to allocate money so that we could pay agencies to hire community health workers to do the work that they wanted them to do. So we are giving money to grace for them to hire a community health worker to do work that they think is important in community health. We're giving money to the one center for them to have community health workers to do the food as medicine program and the programs that they think are important. So it's like each or agency is defining what those goals are for that community health worker. And in my opinion, in addition to that, which I think is a good and important work because each of those agencies is on the ground working with individuals, but we were subsidizing, essentially subsidizing asking agencies to do more community health work, asking these agencies from UF Health to whoever, saying, hey, get people in the community, talking to people, following up with people, working with people, where they are, that understand the barriers that they have to your healthcare agencies, so that they get better care. But what I am realizing in looking at the data and information that has been presented here and talking with community health workers is that we end in looking at the fire rescue audit that we got that said that community paramedicine would be a huge savings to us because we would be doing the work in the community and they wouldn't end up in the emergency room that we need community health workers that are that we are defining the goals and the outreach that they're doing and we're defining what those to services they're going to be delivering are and that we're going to be coordinating those pieces and collecting that data and right now that's that's not what we have and so I guess that's why I'm suggesting it move under us and that it live here so that Claudia's team and fire rescue and our partnership with the Children's Trust, we can be defining those goals for those CHWs and then we can be defining, we can be measuring the outcomes and evaluating them based on our strategic goals and our vision for community health in Elatric County. So let me thank you, Commissioner. Let me ask Christy, since you're here, how is the trust looking at how we would, I mean, at the trust, everything is outcome based. I mean, it's all database. How have we talked to Bonnie about how we're going to evaluate the effectiveness with the agencies of the community health? Madam Chair, Christy Goldwire, Chief Operating Officer for the Children's Trust. So within our youth health RFP, there are a specific number of different measures from how much, how many, but also the impact, how well. What is the outcome of the health, our organization saving smiles through University of Florida, that specific program will be looking at the impact overall in youth dental health. They will be looking at and measuring the services, the satisfaction, but also working directly with the families to see if the impact was made as it relates to connecting families to health services that they didn't have prior to. So our impact is looked at for each initiative and specifically for that one and that's the one that you and I have been talking about. That's what they'll look at. They'll look out where they were prior to receiving services. Did they have connections? Did they need health care insurance? Did they know how to do that? And after being served by the community health worker that will be employed through this RFP, do they now have the services? Do they now have connections? Have they established a health care provider? Do they now have the actual health insurance needed? So hopefully that was answering your your question but that is the impact that we're looking at specifically for saving smiles. Okay thank you thank you so Christopher I'm just not sure I'm not sure if it should be under the county or if we need more work at the health department. I think that's why I want to my emotion is to refer to staff to bring back recommendations for how the program should be organized. Well I'm always in favor of suffering recommendations. Budget recommendations for what if we were going to fully implement this program, what that budget would look like. I'm not looking to do it today. I'm just looking to prepare it. Okay. To come back to us in the near future. Are you all okay with Pastor Duncan jumping in right now? Sure. He's ready. Yes, yes, please come forward. Good day, Madam Chair, Commissioners. I wanted to, first of all, speak to Commissioner Cornel's. The majority of the data that has been presented in the overall presentation, that data come from the Pleasant Street community center. I think it's doing great work. And that program itself is situated in 32641. That data comes from 32641 and 01 as far as the highest population in zip codes that we've identified with the health disparities. But I want to back up for a moment. The foundation in the birth of the community health workers was actually established upon similar passion that Mr. Bain had. That program exists now because of the work and the policies that the board had implemented during COVID. Out of that came where I identified a way to provide a collaborative services throughout the community. What organizations to help them to understand how do we get to a place to where everyone in the lots of county has an equitable opportunity for quality of life. I would even humorously think about how when I recruit as a mentor, I look for community members with passions such as Mr. Bain and Mr. Bain and the Interest and I love to have a conversation with him about being a community help worker. But I think we're speaking overall to the program, I did not want to highlight the work that we're doing at Pleasant Street over any other organization. But as you're speaking, I think the policy and inception that actually was constructed during COVID and with the help of advisory board, also with food insecurity that Shawn and Shawn have put together was based upon the most impacted zip code, which is 32641, and O1, which that data is there, as well as recently our most recent community of worker actually was actually hired to manage our resource center that is funded by the children's trust, so the children's trust actually is funding one and a half community of workers through our resource center. And through that resource center, we have some amazing data we didn't include in on that. But the resources that we are currently receiving is coming from the county. It's a lots of county support services that we are providing and services from that Resource Center as well as the services that we are providing through the Food and Nutrition Program as well. So I wanted to definitely be able to say, you know, this because I think that the program itself, it has a lot of great attraction, but at the same time, a lot of the employers, and the current majority of the current employers were employees for an inception that I recruited. And when I recruited those employees, engaged those employers, it was with the hopes that they would also have a common interest in how we can be able to provide access to a lot of county community members as well. But at the same time, there's a lot of training that also has to go with some of the employers, which is often a conversation that I have with the employer as it relates to after they've hired a community health worker, they have not yet completely understood what the've hired a community health worker, they have not yet completely understood what the role of the community health worker is. And so, you know, my hope is to continue to expand on the program, but to also to to to your your comment, the majority of the data that we're showing is 3641. And we have a lot of more data. We hire someone in there. Like can we hire someone? Well, well, you know, that's the challenge. That's the challenge because the process of that goes through career source. And so through career source and training through the WeOa program is where I recruit that but for the community of workers that we've been able to recruit, you know, identifying specifically. But I believe the next two community health workers, are community health workers that we're currently working on specifically in 33641, which is in that zip code. But there are services that are going in there, as well as in the presentation that Erin Isher, she provided, she didn't mention, there are 26 physicians from 17 health care organizations and we also having one other speaker during public comments we have an evaluator here who's just completed evaluator and worked along with our community of workers as well and that'll be some information that we'll be putting out but I definitely understand the concerns and as a pilot program we're still looking at ways that we can engage more community members from the community. But as far as the services, all the services are being flooded into that area, over 1,000 people are being served a month and 3, 2, 6, 4, 1. And not just only with any type of food, but they're going through the food as medicine program as well. And then with the Resource Center that's currently funded by the Children Trust and having the community have work to work in there. All of the programs that we're referring are coming from a lot of accounting support services and a lot of accounting support services staff has been very supportive and ensuring that the support services that are made available are available to all of those particular participants or patients that come in looking for food and for service as well. So I just wanted to comment on that and I wanted to be silent for a minute but you were asking some very tough questions which is reasonable but I wanted to definitely ensure that there are quite a bit of services and a lot of that, that's 3, 2, 6, 4, 1. Yeah. No, listen, I'm only asking questions because I want this to work. And I want it to work well. And I think it's working in certain areas. And it's really based on the people, one of them who, which of here is here today. So thank you for being here. And if we're talking about doing something countywide, I want to make sure that we're taking what's working and then let's expand that and the rest of it ask why it's not working and not worry. You know, that's my biggest fear. And so you're, thank you, Pastor Duncan. You're from your recommendation, Commissioner Prision. I want to hear from my other colleague. So I'd like to hear staff's response to what you're proposing. Because I am just defaulting to it being under the health department. But if staff has a different opinion, then I'd like to hear that. Well, I guess I'm not recommend, I just want to say I'm not recommending anything today. I'm recommending that we ask staff to think about it, to have conversations with Shree, so with Pastor Duncan, and to bring back recommendations for how we do exactly what you're saying. How do we maximize the benefits of this, and reduce the sort of confusion that I think there has been in terms of coordination and management, and what do we need for budget to make it work? All right, great. All right great. Commissioner Wheeler. Thank you. I've not been as in touch with all of this as you all have. So I've got some questions to ask you about the actual running of the thing. When you're talking about these five agencies that have hired, are they actually paying for these folks or are we you funneling money to them to pay? Excellent question. So in some cases, the agencies themselves may choose to pay for the CHW salary. In other cases, the CHW may be funded by a by WIOA and the agency itself, so it's kind of like half and half. And in some instances, the CHHW salary may be subsidized specifically by the CHW program. I see. OK. And what is that salary? For the one CHW that is subsidized by our program, it is about 45,000. But I can verify that information and get it to you per year. OK. 45,000. All right, please. And who are these people? Who are the folks that you're hiring? What is their background and how do they qualify to do this? So fortunately all the CHW's work in the zip goals where they live. So for example, the CHW adds Gainesville Empowerment Zone, she is from 3609. The agency is located in 3609, and her role is primarily as the program manager, so she is the one who organizes, coordinates, and hosts the events that are specifically for the children and families. So when I listed the example of a financial literacy workshop for displaced homemakers, she's the one actually organizing and leading that workshop for the parents and she checks in with them on a monthly basis, for example, like case management. What are, okay, how do you, you recruit through career source? Is that, yes. So the CHWs can be recruited through community events, so Pastor Duncan may encounter someone who we think is a great, would be a great CHW, or they would actually be at career source for an orientation stating that they're seeking jobs and they would complete the orientation, they would learn about different programs, and if they say, I think I'd be a great match for the CHW program, that's how they find out about the program and become enrolled. So really it's more about an interest and commitment to that kind of service that would make them qualified as opposed to higher degrees or work experience in another area. They are required to have a high school diploma. Okay. And there's other screenings that they go through. Is there an age? There's not. Okay. At least 18. Okay. All right. Thank you. Those are my questions. Thank you. Commissioner Prisya, are you ready for a motion? I'm gonna ask you a quick question then before you go to the motion. How many people have been through the program that haven't been hired? Like you've got a training program, right? And people go through it and then they may or may not be hired? Yes. I don't have that exact amount number for you right now. I can work on that and get it back to you. My, the reason why I'm saying that is there's this benefit of having this training program and the knowledge that they receive and the work that they may do as an individual even though they're not paid because they have that knowledge and they've been through that program. I kind of liken it to the, the folks that go through the training for the CRC, the community, not CRC, the resource. No, the folks that do the energy audits in our houses, right? So, yeah, CWC, yeah, the folks that go through the community weather as they are Asian, right? They may not become an auditor, but they've got that knowledge and they take it back into their communities. And so I think that's maybe a benefit to this program that you know we're not quantifying as well. And that's why I thought that might be an interesting number. As far as I'm aware, there hasn't been a candidate that has expressed interest when through the trainings and education and not been hired because they're usually seeking placement. It's a lot. Well, I hope that we make that training in a classroom form at some point because I think that the training itself is probably extremely useful. It's someone that may work through their church or someone that may work through a daycare center or all the other places where people might come into contact with folks that might need help. Agreed. Yeah, so anyway, well thank you and I'll pass it over to Mr. Prisly for a motion. Yeah, and I think that that is one thing that's unique about our program is that in addition to the online certification course, which is a long course that I can't imagine anyone would do unless they actually wanted the certification, we do have an in-person component that Shreece works to implement that is about how do you do this in a way that's in keeping with sort of cultural sensitivity. How do you think about how do you approach people? How do you talk about difficult subjects like really providing that hands-on opportunity in a classroom to practice and to learn more about the sort of nuances of doing this work and the way in which you do it with compassion and empathy and the way in which you do it in a way that's gonna reach all the resources that are here locally, like giving them the on the ground. This is who you should know. These are the kinds of organizations you should know, which is part of how I got to the conversation that I had at the policy meeting about our resource guide. And it was our CHWs sort of sharing with me that oftentimes the resource guides that we have are not accurate and they're trying to lead people to resources and then they show up there and it's not open or it doesn't exist anymore or they don't qualify for that thing. But anyway, I'd love to make the motion to accept staff's recommendation with regards to the application with the addition of the other on the Exhibit 3 and to refer back to staff to bring back recommendations for funding and programmatic changes to have a sustainable community health worker program in Elantra County. I'll second that for discussion and I would ask the manager to see how she interprets the last part of that motion and mistook the see how she would interpret that My understanding is we're being asked to come back with a recommendation On how to further the program in the future Right whether it's we discussed though or is it under the health department? Is it under the county? Is it how are we coordinating all the different agencies? Well, I think the first thing would be where it's housed, because if it's housed with the county, we're going to treat it like any other program, with our requirements for scope, with our requirements for showing numbers, all of those things. But I know they're also doing that at the health department currently requiring that statistics be reported to justify payments. We're gonna do the same, you know, so they would be held to all of those standards as well. I'm not sure what that, I mean as far as parameters I'm not sure what you mean by that. Okay, we're just asking for a recommendation. Got it. Okay, I'll support asking staff for a recommendation. All right, we have a motion in a second. If there's no further commission comment, is there any public comment to the motion? All right, I see some folks. Hi, Nancy Daron I just want to say as a former RN and someone interested in community and public health this is awesome. I hope that we find ways to continue it and probably under our auspices. So I so appreciate this commission looking systemically at these kind of issues and really engaging in community and building that strength. So fabulous. Thank you. My favorite kind of comment. Dr. Simea here, I am a health services researcher and an evaluator. I've been working with Pastor Duncan when evaluating his work. And I would have to say the comments I did focus groups with the participants and also group interviews. And it is amazing what we are doing when it comes to transforming the mind. Behavior change starts here. And what participants expressed was the impact of the program dealt with how now they have a sense, not just of community, but healthy eating. What did it mean to them? What it meant when they received biomarkers and all this work that they have been working towards, eating an apple versus potato chips or fried chicken. What did it mean to them to now be able to tell their young family members to select certain types of food versus what they have traditionally ate for the past 20 years. How they didn't want to clog the arteries, how they wanted to be more monitoring the A1Cs. These are some of the interview data that we have that we have collected. And I know in the future, I'm assuming that he will be bringing some of this information, but it is amazing. Every time I left an interview section or a group, or a focus group, my heart dance at the fact that there was transformation happening in the minds of the participants. And that's all I have to say. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. K. I think any community organization is a great organization. You know, I graduated from Santa Fe with a biotechnology degree, St. Leo University with a BS in social work, University of Louisville with a master's in social work. And when I was at Meridian, they paid me only $40,000 a year, a little master's degree. So, you know, getting paid $45,000 is good. On the other hand, you know, for the whole summer, that's kind of like I have an organization called Light of Refuge. And that's what we did to, you know, bring the community together. And we did that with our own funds. No community help. And actually, I was threatened to get taken to jail by GPD and talk to the City Commission and all that. But anyways, this is a, like I say, any organization is a good community organization, based organization. I would like to learn more about it. I would learn how I want to learn more about starting a pilot program to be able to acquire funds for East Gainesville. I would love to represent East Gainesville in any kind of way I can. So, you know, I'm not here to get paid per se here because that's when my heart has. So, yeah. All right, thank you, Mr. Beans. Thank you, Madam Chair. Commissioner's name is Tamar Robbins. A couple of things I just jotted down that I think about is so I agree, Madam Chair, with Commissioner Cornel's moving forward cautiously with taking this in-house. I think that when the mention of handing it off to Claudia, my concern is that staff has programs. I mean programs should be where they, if there's the health department, this is a health issue. Like you can only take so much on, like for example, you have a housing situation that you still have not figured out how to accept donations for property in your affordable housing trust fund. Okay, so that's four years that the voters approved that. So what I'm saying is that there's a lot of work to do in other areas and so I just encourage you to not think that you have to take on everything and control it all because you know best. Okay, there's only so much money and so much time and you want to achieve. I mean you have a gun violence state of emergency that you have tasked staff with coming up with stuff so you got to be cautious how many things you literacy program you've got with a school board. Oh, you're going to establish a literacy program. Well, that's the school board's job. So you just can't get all excited about every social program and think you're going to take it under the counties umbrella of funding and executing because it's really, it just doesn't seem right. I'm concerned about how broad base this is reaching. I heard a lot of 32641. I live in 32615 and I think Archers different in the whole entire county. Is this a countywide program that you're reaching out to all the zip codes in a lateral county? Are you applying your equity policies to this whole program and just because you have a big equity thing are you applying your equity policies to this whole program? And just because you have a big equity thing, so equity goes a lot of different ways. Equital distribution of access of services that are being funded by public dollars should be available countywide, not just to certain zip codes. There's a lot of zip codes in the county. Perhaps you want to look at intergovernmental interlocal agreements with the other municipalities to be to Work with these programs it always seems to be that a lot of programs end up being focused on gainsville I will say it and I live in Alachua and It seems to be the resources you guys think your gainsville's your Wheelhouse while you are county wide government so please consider spending public county money county wide thank you. Thank you Miss Robbins do we have any further public comment? All right do we have any responses? Commissioner Prasil? Yeah my only well maybe it sounds like you might hear. My only response is just that I think, I just wanna be clear that I think the reason why I am advocating that this program potentially be at the county and again, I wanna hear from the team that's been doing this on the ground but what the recommendations are, is that we have a number of different initiatives and in fact Miss Robbins just pointed them out, gun violence, literacy, housing, food initiatives that we're doing. And essentially the Community Health Workers Program is a way for our Community Sports Services Office and our Fire Rescue Office with Paramedics Program and our Housing Team, well that's Community Sports Services too, to have boots on the ground, to reach out to the people across our county and a dream world if this was not just a pilot and actually hear from the people on the ground and help them navigate them to the resources and the programs and support, this is essentially a county outreach program in a dream world, right? It's a way for us to take social determinants of health and the health disparities that we've identified and address them by supporting people where they are, where they live, and the ways in which they access resources, and with people who look like them who understand the barriers that they have, and getting all of the investment that we've made, and root causes all the investment we've made in housing and food and literacy, and gun violence prevention, and all those things, and getting them into the hands of the people, because what happens is we talk about it up here, we create these programs, but oftentimes they don't reach the people that they need to reach the most, right? Because those people have all kinds of barriers. In fact, if you looked at that report that Aeronautia showed, the number one barrier was transportation. I don't remember how many people in that social term in its health, but transportation was like over half of the people reported transportation barriers. So by us getting those people into the communities where they live, they're actually bringing the services to those people and that's why I think of this as such an important thing. And because fire rescue and community support services are talking about building a core team, which is essentially a community health worker team that's going to be going out around our opioids. On our fire rescue audit we were told build community paramedics program because it will save us money and it will save us long-term cost for the taxpayers and emergency room visits and that's essentially a community health program and so we're talking about doing this in a lot of places we talked about housing navigators going out and helping people and so rather than having a bunch of duplicative programs around the county that are you know doing similar types of things, having one program that staff oversees and coordinates, that is a program that's doing this work holistically makes a lot of sense to me. And that's why I suggested it might live here. It doesn't have to live here, but I think that it makes a lot of sense to live here. And so, in my mind's eye. And again, I'm not the one on the ground implementing this, so I really want to hear from the people who are on the ground implementing this, both the community health workers and the team that has to manage it about what makes sense if we are going to do this long term, what makes sense, and how would we fund it? Commissioner Cordo. Thank you for those comments, Commissioner. And the budget amendment is moving regular salaries to contract the services. I mean, I think we originally envisioned it being, I mean, is that why we're doing a budget amendment? Because we don't have employees doing this. So the reason that we're doing the budget amendment is the money for OJT was originally inadvertently put in regular salaries. Oh, instead of on the job training, it was in a, okay, so that's just a mistake. Yeah, so it was just a, it was a accounting error, but we still need to do a budget. Well, it wasn't you were envisioning what Commissioner Prisya was talking about already and we're moving. It was originally budgeted for OJT, it just got put in the wrong place. Okay, fair enough. That's fine. OK, well, let's see what staff comes back with. And I mean, to the extent staff is interacting with fire services, and obviously they interact daily with the health department. Let's see what they recommend. OK, thank you. Wonderful. And I just wanted to say, looking at the dollars here, There are any families where we look at someone's A1C and we can prevent acute diabetes or acute high blood pressure. Anytime that we can prevent somebody from moving out of their home and keep them in the home that they're in, you know, anytime that we can provide these basic kinds of services, we are saving the county money. Because as soon as those become acute diseases and people can no longer work and no longer maintain their families in the way that they were used to and as soon as we have to provide housing services to a family, that's when it gets expensive and so I see these programs as being incredibly cost efficient. Yeah exactly. And so having said that I'm ready to take a vote. All in favor of the motion please signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed like sign? All right. Wonderful. Okay. It wasn't a negative. I know. All right, we are now moving forward with a presentation on the Food System Workforce Development Program. This is a mid-project update and welcome Sean. And I'm gonna need to step out for just a second. So I'm gonna pass the gavel over here for a moment. Madam Chair, or Mr. Chair, Shaman Flinden, economic and food system manager for a large so can't the office of seeds. There's a, I'm just thinking about how to cue this agenda item up given the conversation day. There's a really nice continuation of thought between all of us and to paraphrase our friend Nancy Daren, we're thinking systemically and engaging with the community. And so food systems was brought up a lot. And I think over the next three agenda items, this being the middle one, and the last one talking about agricultural land conservation programs, there's a really interesting kind of doing what you directed us to do to think deeply, to think about root causes. We're going to bring up Shelby Dixon from Working Food to see Executive Director to give a mid-project update for the food system workforce development and jobs pipeline program. And thinking about food systems, food systems, or about all those actors and things, the interactions that go into production and aggregation and processing, distribution, consumption, and hopefully the recycling of nutrients. But in the end, you're really talking about people. And people experience different types of food systems. They're not always the same food systems. They're disparities. The food systems that are in 3265 zip code might be different from the 32641 zip code. And this program was meant to address that with youth. We're talking about people dealing with potentially unhealthy outcomes when they get older, but we're dealing with it on the front end of this program, talking about the youth, and we're also thinking about production, thinking about our small local farmers. And I think we have some good mid-project results to present to you, and I think it'll be a great segue to the next agenda item conversation. So with that, I'm going to turn over the presentation to Shelby and her team. Hello, and thank you so much for having us today. I'm Shelby Dixon, Executive Director of Working Food, and we're here to talk about all of the incredible programming that we were able to host over the last year, thanks to gracious funding from Milachua County for the Workforce Development Program. I'm joined by Jesse Wilson, our youth program director, who's going to start us off by running through a full school year of programs. This encompasses all of the Young Chefs program, as well as a new internship pilot where students are paid. And then I'll take it over and talk about the first year of planning for a farmer support program for value-added products, which actually has two years left on it. So I'll hand it over to Jesse to start. Thanks Shelby, thanks for having us here today. actually has two years left on it. So I'll hand it over to Jessie to start. Thanks Shelby, thanks for having us here today. So I'm just going to jump right into it. So we are starting out with our Young Chefs Teens Culinary Program. And I actually realized the way I did this, oh, let's see, is that how do I shift forward? There we go, this one. So this is our longest running program out of all these programs. This is actually now in its fourth year. And it's a monthly online course for teens to cook nourishing meals in their own homes with their families. We deliver meal kits packed with like farm fresh goodness, right to their houses, and then they're able to cook at home with their families. We made a lot of really cool meals this year packed with a lot of good veggies. We were really excited to try a lot of things that the students may not have been super comfortable with. One of the ones that was a real hit was a veggie lasagna where we use things like egg plants and oyster mushrooms to really get that like good meaty flavor but just packed with a lot of nutrients and it was, the kids did a really great job with it. At the end of the year, we always celebrate with the Young Chef's pop-up, which Commissioner Wheeler was able to join us for this year, which was really nice to get to show off our amazing students. We had one of our students who was a graduate of the Young Chef's program and went on to Eastside Culinary, came back to act as the Sioux Chef, So like the second chef in charge and sort of direct the meal, especially the desserts that she's focusing on baking for her culinary journey. And let's see, let me go back here. So we featured a lot of really awesome local foods, one that we were really happy about in like connecting that whole local food story was an heirloom conque pie, which is a type of field pie. And it was stewarded by working food, like really bred to be locally adapted and then grown by Nacoya Farm. And then the kids got to feature that really cool vegetable in their final meal. I'm gonna see if this will play. I had a little video of everybody busy at work in the kitchen because it's like 10 young chefs all in the kitchen at the same time. I don't think that's gonna well. Let's see. The noises are actually terrible clinging so we won't even listen to that. But it's just everybody like in their cooking so each student like cooks their own meal for their own family. And then they bring it up to them, like fancy farm to table, dining experience. And it's really nice to see how it's a really empowering experience to get to feed your own family and take care of people who work so hard to take care of you. So yeah. You know, these programs are really amazing, but they're not without their challenges and setbacks. So you know what? I had one nice thing to share before the challenges and setbacks. So I had one nice thing to share before the challenges and setbacks. We had so much good parent feedback. The parents loved how much students felt much more comfortable in the kitchen after they were in the program. So one parent said that it teaches them their way around the kitchen and just a real responsibility. Or another parent said that their child just really, really enjoyed the program and is cooking all the time now, which is what we like to hear. Again, just that empowerment around food. But something that we really struggled with this year was attendance and it was kind of like, I think in that way that the community health workers can kind of open a door into what people are struggling with individually, working really closely with these families, you know, made us aware of a lot of challenges, and there were a lot of folks who struggled with housing this year, and there were folks who struggled with just like kitchens that weren't truly functional, like appliances that weren't working or electricity that was like on and off at different points. And so just bringing that forward that there's still a lot of, you know, life challenges. But after discussing with parents and our community partners, this program is run with Greater Duval Neighborhood Association and Chef Empowerment. We decided we're going to do the program entirely in person next year, which we've never done. It will still be monthly classes, but students will actually come work in the working food kitchen. And this was started during COVID, which is why we started on the online format and working in folks homes. And that continued to feel really useful, but I feel like the challenges folks were sharing with us. We realized like being able to offer that after school care for teens is really important to safe space for folks to gather in person hands-on learning. And just that like personal relationship building that you only really get in an in-person class. So we'll be doing that next year. Our next program is the Young Chefs Kids Program. So kids who go through this program then get first twice placement in our Young Chefs Teen Program, which has been happening, which has been really exciting to see over the course of this program. We meet with this group in the Greater Duval Community Garden every week, but then once a month we do a more in-depth culinary class. And the kids really get into it. Two favorites this year were a marinara and a chili cook-off. Both of those we did as sort of like a almost competitive cooking style where they harvest all these goodies from the garden and they cook up like their own marinara or their own chili, which was really heavy on veggies and collards. And then they get to spice it kind of however They want with a little bit of guidance and share it with seniors and elders in the community They like kind of rank it like this was the best and they really Yes, all I want is a eight piece dark meat Yes, a chicken. Hey, how can we? This is the first time. This is the first time. This is the first time. Thank you. This is perfect. I said it was perfect. It's not you all. It's not. I thought it was like a video, but I was like, I love it. Oh, is there somebody on our food? Or somebody calling it? Perfect. They heard about the good food we were making and they were ready to jump in and join us. Okay, so the students really enjoyed it and one of the things that we're really excited about is that our young chefs teens graduates, four of them have been helping out as volunteers in this garden for the past year, which has been really incredible. They have actually been participating in the garden for almost three years now. And they're just so involved in it belongs to them. And that's really what we've been moving towards is a greater sense of and not just sense of, but true ownership over this space and these programs. And so those students are going to be able to be paid chef stipends to come back and teach those cooking classes next year alongside elders in the community who are really involved in the garden who will also be teaching those cooking classes And we're just really excited to see that program move forward. I have so much good feedback from those students that I wanted to share But I'll just share two of my favorite quotes. One is from Morgan who is actually have some other pictures here On the right here who is teaching us some other pictures here on the right here, who is teaching us a class on making salad from the garden. And she said, you all teach us how we can make a lot of different foods with the same things from the garden. With just a little bit of stuff, we can make a lot of different food. And then Trey, who's on the right in this group picture, he said, I like to know where my food is coming from. I like being with the younger kids and being a role model to them. I would love to be the next leader of the space and be the person that the kids can look up to, which he already really is, which is really joyful to see. And then next program in the Young Chefs Trio is Young Chefs Project Youth Build. This is a condensed nine-week culinary course that's tailored for project youth build students. So those are students in an alternative high school program who didn't succeed in a traditional high school setting, but now have an opportunity to earn their high school diploma. And they are students who are specifically interested in pursuing careers in food service, specifically serve safe managers certificate, but also serve safe food handler certificate. So they get 15 hours of exam prep and 12 hours actually in the kitchen training with Chef Robert from working food. And it was really a great program. It was a lot of fun. The kids just showed huge improvement in feeling comfortable in the kitchen and enjoying that process. But one of our success stories that we were really happy about was one of our students, Maya, also participated in the Giving Gardens Apprenticeship. So that's kind of a nice like cross collaboration. Maya also participated in the Giving Gardens Apprenticeship, so that's kind of a nice cross collaboration. So she got experience working in the farm, working in the kitchen, and then was hired by one of the clients that works out of the Working Food Kitchen, which is called Groovy Grove Burgers, which produces veggie patty burgers. And so she was able to get her certificate through our program and then go on to be hired by a local food entrepreneur, which was very exciting. certificate through our program and then go on to be hired by a local food entrepreneur, which was very exciting. There were some struggles with this program as well. The students struggled with the sort of safe manager certificate and it really wasn't content-based. It was more test readiness and like understanding the vocabulary and the structure of those standardized tests which are really complicated. And so this upcoming year we're going to spend more time on test prep and do more test training. There were two students who passed for the food management. And I think it was five or six students for food handler certificate. And then the last one I'm going to talk about is the food systems youth leadership program. So this was a program that was run under a contract with chef empowerment, which is Chef Carl's non-profit and part of his underground kitchen restaurant. So this was professional level culinary training and mentorship for four interns that he hired for seven month-long modules, where they just kind of learned all of the core ideas of like how to run a successful food business, everything from like sourcing ingredients from local farms, which he has his own auxiliary farm that produces a lot of the food that he uses in the kitchen to just like on the job training. And so they got 40 hours of free high quality instruction each month and then 20 hours of paid on the job practical work. And it's really individualized mentorship, so each student got to come in and say what their personal goals were, which was really different for each student. So one student is really interested in teaching her community about food preparation, and so her goal was to be able to co-teach the classes that Chef Carl leads with the Gainesville Housing Authority, where another student is really interested in like elevated dining and becoming a chef eventually and she was able to be placed with a job at Chop Six restaurants. So it's been really cool to see students kind of go through that and that individual mentorship where it's not just a job it's like you get to have that experience where somebody can really be a part of that journey for you. And with that I'm gonna pass it over to Shelby. Awesome. Thank you so much, Jesse. It was a really beautiful year for the teen and youth programs. Up next, I'm going to talk about a brand new program that we're piloting that is helping farmers make value-added products. And value-added products can be a variety of different things. But traditionally, it's food that is going to become shelf stable or have a longer shelf life that is prepared so that it's ready to eat or prepared in another fashion so that you can take it home and cook it more quickly. And there's a ton of benefits both to the farmers participating in this, but also to the community. It allows farmers to have diversified revenue streams, which is really, really important. It also allows for market differentiation. So if you're showing up to the market every single week with the same exact thing that everyone else is, it allows you to put your own spin on your products. It helps extend the season so that you're not kind of stuck in that growing season. And it also ensures that there's just a lot more variety at the markets when you come to shop. And very importantly for our farmers, it helps increase revenue. So you're able to sell these products for more money than you would be able to sell the individual raw ingredients that are a part of them. Since this was a brand new program, we spent the first several months just making sure that we got the structure right. This was done in community having conversations about what would be the most helpful and what we landed on is that every farmer who joins this program will receive one-on-one consulting to make sure that they get all of their inspections, regulations, and processes correct. This is something that we do not traditionally offer our clients, but almost every single farmer that's coming into the kitchen is making a product that is going to have an extended shelf life or that features ingredients that are considered risky by regulatory authorities, which means the majority of them are going to end up needing hasoplands, better process control school, or another layer of regulation that can be really expensive, really time consuming, and really difficult to move forward on your own. So we've seen some of the farmers who have entered spend a week or two directly with our kitchen team. Others have been working for three to four months to make sure that their products are correct. Once a farmer is fully inspected and ready to move forward, they then receive the first six months of their kitchen rental in storage, completely free, so that they're able to launch their product in a safe space. After that, they're going to receive a 50% discount. This is on top of our seasonal product agreement. So anyone that's making local products already has a lot of flexibility in their contract. And then for the remainder of their contract, they'll receive a 25% discount. And part of the reason that we wanted to go this direction is one to make sure that the program sustainable and can support new farmers coming on. to make sure that this isn't a situation where if we do not have funding to offer in future, all of a sudden we've yanked the stability out from underneath farmers who've really tried to diversify their products. This grant also allows us to purchase specialized equipment so that farmers are not required to make large investments out of pocket for these new endeavors. We have money set aside for different products, but one that we've already been able to invest in is a multi-year lease on a commercial dishwasher, which is instrumental if you're trying to can, ferment anything that needs sanitization upfront. We can now do. It's also really helpful for anyone who is producing products with meat. And I will say that it is cut prep time for youth programs probably less than and half because we're able to wash all of the reuse items after the fact. Once we had that structure outlined, we then did a multi-month outreach where we reached out, I believe, to over 40 farmers of those 20 individual farmers were interested in speaking with us about the program and 11 decided that they wanted to move forward. And these farmers came from very diverse backgrounds, but they were also interested in producing very diverse products. So we currently have five farmers who are actively working in the kitchen or just past inspection in the last couple of weeks and we're expecting to onboard several more farmers this fall. All of our vegetable producers wants the seasons up and running. In Florida you have a very, very slow period over the summer, so there is not a whole lot going on for them to be value-adding. And these products feature a ton of different variety, like I said, so we have some people who are making just ready to eat products like soups and salads and breads. Those are hands-down the easiest to pass regulation, because you're eating them as soon as they hit your hand it over so there's less concern. We have a farmer who's making local elderberry juice in syrup which is especially helpful during flu and cold season. We have some farmers who are making value added meat products like sausage, bacon, and processed or prepared shellfish and then a ton of vegetable based products. So farmers who would like to do fermentation, pickling, jams, but also looking at dehydration, possible suit mixes, and we're even excited that some farmers are looking at making local body care products out of the herbs and different things that they're growing. This program, unlike the youth program, is extended until June, 2026. So we've really only completed one full year and we have two more years to explore this. So we're really excited to come back and share all of the impacts that we've had. We'll be able to tell you what farmers are producing, where they're selling, what impact that has had on their income, and then also see if their expectations shifted during this process. So we can really ensure that this program is sustainable in the long run and that we're addressing all of those concerns. And with that, I just want to say thank you again from the entire working-food team, from our community partners, from the families participating in these programs and from the farmers who are partnering with us. It is instrumental to have a commission and a county government who is interested in investing in grassroots programs that are really meaningful and that are also able to be agile. So as we enter this next programming year, we're excited to take all of the learnings from year one, make even more improvements so we can have bigger impact and we're excited to continue working together. And with that, it is pretty hard to summarize an entire year's worth of work in 15 minutes. So if anyone has follow-up questions, we're very, very happy to answer or provide clarification. All right, great. We do have a couple of comments. First is, a financial Wheeler? Thank you. I really appreciate your investment in the kids, for sure. And the after-school program, I think, has a great idea doing it in person because really that's where the bonding happens and I really appreciate that investment. And I'm wondering and youth build as well. I know it's a tough population. It's a population I've worked with most of my life in my adult teaching education life. But I would love to see at some point, you know, with these kids maybe a food truck or something, you know, that they could actually learn, I mean, about the marketing of it as well. Well, because Chef Carl is amazing and always one step ahead of the rest of us, that is exactly what he's planning to do with the food system interns next year. So he's already purchased the food truck. He has it parked at Underground Kitchen and the idea is for that to be kind of youth-owned and operated. Well, wonderful. Yeah, we will get lots of good pictures of that ends up happening like all things. There are like a few, you know, loopholes to jump through to make it work, but yeah, that's the plan. OK, I got more. Yeah. Because this is a population that I'm really interested in. And I didn't know if there was some way that you could get actually a class at Lofton or at some of these alternative schools that we have that you could actually take the class to get a larger audience. And I don't know in the afternoon, is there a limit to the number of kids you would take you had 10 this time? Yeah so for our programs we've been kind of like small and mighty as our approach of this idea of building these really strong mentorship opportunities really over the course of many many years. So we do work with a small group of kids. For this program, we would only work with those 10. But I just want to say that, again, these programs are in partnership with community organizations that kind of take on those other pieces, right? So all of our Young Chefs programs are in collaboration with, actually, the Young Chefs kids and Young Chef teens are both in collaboration with Chef Empowerment and Greater Duke of All Neighborhood Association. And Chef Empowerment independently has a nonprofit, Chef Empowerment, which does those types of classes to a much broader audience. So meeting with folks, you know, from Gainesville Housing Authority, East is in motion like these much larger after school spaces. So I feel like Lofton would be a great space to potentially connect him to, but that's funded through Children's Trust also, which is great. And that really reaches that much larger audience with one time, two time cooking classes, rather than building a relationship with a group of families over the course of many years. It just might help with the certification that you were talking about. That's all having it in an academic setting sometimes helps it you know be a real serious focus whereas the other might just be more fun you know but that's all I'm thinking that it that might and then the last thing the the farmers marketing or these these products that are being produced through there is there a way to have a showcase someplace or market these things that, you know, where, you know, this seems to me with, you know, the arts community that they have, you know, a store where they market the arts of the community that somehow we could, you all could join with some of these marketing spot. You're smiling good for it. I was, you know what I'm saying. Absolutely and I will say that staff has been extremely helpful in making sure that this is a goal of this. So we are making sure that all the farmers are set up and successful first and they're all going to start in their current sales avenues. And then we're going to look at expansion. So does this mean that they can operate in different locations? Most importantly locations where they don't have to physically stand and sell their goods, especially if they're shelf stable or able to be moved. And so we have had connections made with different markets, different grocery stores, but it really comes down to capacity and scaling. We want to make sure that this is sustainable and that it can continue into the future. And so we're making sure that the farmers are really set up for success there. We've also discussed what that looks like for labeling and just making sure that there's recognition of these products both through our outreach efforts, but then through local markets too. I know that airports sometimes, at least showcase what is happening locally or the visitor centers as you're driving into the state, you know, that sort of thing that would be a great spot to put some of our folks. Yeah, now say the biggest thing is just going to be making sure that we can scale. So we have farmers who are starting small and then the goal is to help them continue to scale and to make sure that we have the resources available to support production on that level. So they're starting out again small, small farmers market spouts. But we are checking in with all farmers monthly, and we're tracking progress and increase in products so that we can really meet them where they are and anticipate what that next step would be. OK, thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. All right. Commissioner Cornell? Thank you, Madam Chair. So I was able to listen in the back. So I'll go back up. I just want to thank you for the presentation, for the work you're doing. It's, you know, again, every time we talk about food, food systems, it takes me back to more than four years ago when Commissioner Frizzi wasn't on this board, but she was asking for money for a freezer, you know, a freezer. And come over here and see it and you'll create up this food economy and we're not quite there yet but we are a lot farther long they were decade ago so thank you Commissioner Prisya for your work on this. Next is Commissioner Prisya? You're welcome. I have to say I haven't been able to be as involved actually at all in working food. Both because I'm here and I'm busy doing this work and because it's in good hands with Shelby and everybody else who's been doing this work. But I had to leave her a minute because it brought me to tears. Like this kind of work, like honestly it's not just because it's working food and it's not just because it's working for you, but it's not just because it's food. It could be anything, but like the work of building deep relationships with families, of continuing to hold the hands of children who often don't get that kind of support through an entire sort of trajectory of what's possible for them and to help them pursue their passions and find their goals and then define those and then have the support to be able to make those goals a reality. That's the kind of work that we have to do with all of the children in this community. And it's really what is, and I know it's not easy. You have to do it with small groups. You can't, it's as deep work, it's not broad work. It's a mile deep and an inch wide instead of the other way around. And it's challenging, but this is the work that our community organizations that we're partnering with, hopefully through the Gun Violence Initiative are doing. And so I just wanted to encourage you to connect with those folks. And I know that you have all these community organizations that you're already working with and I know your capacity to expand is limited. But to the extent that your model, the kind of work you're doing can be supportive of the organizations through the children's trust that are getting funding through our gun violence initiative that are getting funding and or those youth could be referred to programs like this so that they can get that kind of support and I think is important and the other piece I wanted to bring up is some of these farms and the farms that we got, small farms grants, connecting those dots if they haven't been connected to it as they get the funding. I'm sure they are, but as they get that funding, they have the opportunities, and I see some of them up there, so I know they are. But the food is medicine program that was in the last program. They really need fresh fruits and vegetables. They get some through brighter than mighty and they buy food and so they do have some money and it would be great to connect our local producers with our food is medicine program. So we could see more of our local fresh fruits and vegetables getting into the hands of people who need it. The most. So I just wanted to encourage you to connect with hit pastor Duncan and the hands and people who need it the most. So I just wanted to encourage you to connect with hit Pastor Duncan and the other and Erin Nisha and those. I know you have their contact information, but connecting with them on how they could get this food on the shelves of the Foodism Medicine program. And with that, thank you for all the work that you guys are doing in the community and for this great update. Thank you so much. I just want to really quickly add, Commissioner Prisya mentioned that it is important to note that we're actually seeing growth in students and I don't think Jesse will share the beautiful success that they've had with this but we're seeing students come out of these programs and powered not just for working specifically in food industry but excited about becoming doctors, exciting about becoming educators, excited about doing deep community work. And I think it shows that these are life skills that are incredibly transformative. They can have long lasting implications on physical health, on mental health, on community health. And we are having students who are moving forward into these more traditional culinary positions. But we're also being able to see one-on-one mentorship have resounding impacts on young people just feeling empowered to take that next step. And Jesse's done a really incredible job in connecting those students to opportunities that we do not personally offer. And so we've seen a really beautiful network start to blossom. And that's where I think the more connections that we can make and the more opportunities that we can have to make sure that young people are being caught every time they graduate to that next step is going to be instrumental for our future generation of leaders here in Alachua County. Beautiful, Seth. Yes, very much so. Yeah. And I, you know, I know the role cooking and food plays in my life. I'm, it's not just nutrition, it is stress relief, it is a way I should love to my family, it's so much a part of who we are and helping kids that have lost that connection to gain it is so powerful. And I just want to say when I was in Tampa, Pinellas County for the FAC event, Pinellas County had a booth where they were handing out samples of local products as a souvenir of Pinellas County. And I thought it was really great that the county supported local agricultural products. And yeah, I see Sean filing that away in his head because we have several events coming up over the next week where our county will be, you know, in the center of a fact event. And we have this world, masters coming up and lots of ways for us to be proud of the agricultural products that our county is producing, support local agriculture, and put all that together in one place. So thank you. Thank you very much. And what's up? It's just cheering. It's incredible. Oh, okay. Yeah. But anyway, I know we're not taking action on this, but I know we had people that came to hear this presentation. So would you mind if we take Republic comment on this? Okay. We'll take Republic comment on this. Thank you for giving public comment, Nancy Daron. I'm going to cry because I've been following working food since its beginning and that this county has supported a vision of a systemic holistic approach that just touches everything. It touches our health, it touches our future, our kids. I mean, I just, I'm not, I'm at a loss for words right now because I'm too emotional. But the people who have stuck with this, with working food and brought it through its evolution and continue to do so, are the most just amazing women and Jesse is just unbelievable and and everyone. So what this brings to our community, what this brings to things that are so much bigger than we are. I just thank you for the support that you've given these holistic approaches and how you're connecting the dots that we take it to the next level and keep connecting them more and we weave this web of health and community well-being that brings back love and kindness in this world too. So, and gives our kids a future. So, thank you. What is your short statement to Cambridge? It says farming is public service. Okay. Excellent. But also with the farming and now we have the farmers engaged too which is in essential parks. We have to have that whole system from the soil all the way around. I just had my elderberry lemonade from the market the other day. I do almost all my shopping at the 441 market nine months of the year and get food from a lot of these people of all sorts. So it's really exciting that now they have a way to begin to do the value add as well. And we should be highlighting at these events. Yes. Good next step. Thank you. Okay. We have some more public comments. Thank you. Madam Chair, commissioners. My name is Tamma Robbins. Well, I read through all of the information. I was happy to see that there was a chili made with tempeh, which is my secret ingredient to rock, rocking my good chili. Didn't see anything with tofu yet, and it'd be good to teach the kids how to work with tofu. It's inexpensive and it's good for you. And it's actually, I love tofu. And Rosal, saw Rosal, as some of you know up there. I had some Rosal plants I was offering out. So I do appreciate seeing the Rosal on the use of listed ingredients. Couple of questions though. Well, just another idea. So the previous meeting you were talking about your advisory boards and lack of, or just not full participation in all the boards and what could you do maybe to encourage people and it was noted that they're at difficult times people haven't had dinner. Well maybe working foods could get their students to make some lunches, lunch bag meals for the advisory board members. You know, then I think that would be an interesting project and it would give the advisory board members something to eat while they were serving and they during those dinner times. Just an idea to cross reference ideas and resources. Again, I think the zip codes that are shown on here, there's a reason why they're shown on there for the students as well as the farmers. I think you should have a map so that you really can see that this, the programs of the county are funding need to be recruited and utilized throughout the county. I'm gonna say it every time and I say it on numerous things that I watch the county tax dollars go to specific areas and they do not reach the entire county. Cusco Will is going to buy a bus. There's a way to truck students around, right? You're not using it during the winter months maybe. I'm going to date myself, but when I was in school, I had home economics. And just learning the basic cooking skills is something that kids can take with themselves forever. I mean, you don't have to learn. I'm not saying it's a bad thing. Well, I am because it's a perfectly seared steak. It's not going to happen in my kitchen, right? But I'm just saying that teaching kids more of them, less specific chef skills and just usage skills of how to cook and put some flavors together, can serve them for their entire life, not just during a program like this of cooking for their family. You cook for your family and yourself for your lifetime. And maybe in the church kitchen or whatever else, other kitchen you're in, but home economics, I taught me how to sew and cook a lot of it. So it was a really useful, just basic programs. Thank you. Thank you. I'll have to say I made sure all my kids know how to make beans and rice because you can live a long time on beans and rice when you're broke. All right. That was excellent presentation. And I want to, again, thank the working foods folks and all the other folks that came and presented. And we're going to move along now to, let's see, we're at the K1, the land conservation projects, our cultural land protection strategy update, and we have Andy on board here. I noticed that. Okay. Good afternoon, Madam Chair, commissioners. Andy Christmas Land Conservation Program Manager. And I'm here today to provide an update and recommendations for implementation on our agricultural land protection strategy within the land conservation programs operation. Several of the slides I'm going to run through at the beginning of this presentation you've seen in previous meetings but for the benefit of the citizens I'll address them briefly and I'd like to also take a pause at this moment to say that everything that you see in this presentation and the backup materials that were provided were produced collaboratively with our contractor, Elatio Conservation Trust, unfortunately, the two key representatives from ACT are not able to be here at this moment due to illness and child pickup schedule, but hopefully we'll hear from one of them. And also with consistent ongoing and extremely valuable feedback and input and participation from stakeholders in the community. So that's agricultural landowners, citizens, advisory board members, large cross-section of folks have given input into this. So kicking off, as you know, I manage the land conservation program. Many people know of that as the Elatua County Forever program. The focus of that program is protecting environmentally significant lands. And that's done through the purchase of land as a fee simple acquisition and also through the purchase of conservation easements, which functionally means development rights from willing landowners. And then our staff manages those lands to protect wildlife habitat, to protect water resources, and then also to provide recreational opportunities for the citizens. Since program inception, 24 years ago, we've protected over 34,000 acres and on this map the light green properties are partner conservation lands things like state parks water management district lands the dark green properties are the fee simple preserved lands that Elatua County has protected in some cases together with partners and the bright yellow properties are the currently held conservation easements that the Elitro County Forever program has protected. So we've been working in easements since the program began. Wow, so I'm sorry for the formatting here. So as we presented in a few meetings now, we have identified the 30 by 30, the national and international 30 by 30 target as a target that we are working towards within the county with our land conservation program, which is to protect 30% of the land and water by the year 2030, which is over 40,000 acres still remaining for us to hit that mark within Elatua County. And that target is set based on the need for prevention of mass extinctions and also successful human futures with a big focus on mitigating against some of the worst impacts of climate change that we are seeing and anticipating. It's been accepted that agricultural land protection is a key part of that big scope of land protection efforts to achieve that goal. As you know, Elatua County has also recently gone through the process of having a climate vulnerability analysis completed with the report just issued in July of 2024. And protecting land, protecting both working lands and natural systems serves to provide the green boxes you see here are the environmental land protection values provide support to water supply protection water quality protection flood control prevention it supports climate resiliency sequestering carbon harboring wildlife and also promoting outdoor recreation, specifically reducing heat, both day and night time heat, reducing flooding impacts, preventing wildfire, and that's largely through land management practices that land managers do in Florida, supporting water quality, protecting potable water, and then these orange boxes represent where agricultural land protection provides additional support to some of these great climate vulnerabilities that we are seeing and anticipating, specifically in flood prevention, protecting food supply into the future, protecting water quality, potable water availability, and supporting economic viability. Since our program has been created, it's been working in... It's fine. It's helpful. Thank you. Yeah. As you can see the whole thing. It's been working in geographic project areas and then more recently defined as key corridors. The Santa Fe River corridor, the Florida Wildlife corridor, which hooks through the county on the east side of the county, and the southern corridor. Oops. All right. Oh, there we go. And we, beginning in February of 2023, identified agricultural land protection as a strategy to support all of these corridors and additionally support water quality recharge and local food production because of the preponderance of agricultural lands in their highly permeable soils, primarily on the western side of the county, but also as you can see and that's the brown parcels on this map that you see before you now. There are agricultural lands throughout the county providing products and services to the communities surrounding them and those agricultural lands are part of the entire strategy when we look at lane conservation. So why do we need to even address this as a separate process or separate strategy? The program, the Elatro County Forever program was created with environmentally significant lands as the focus. That's really the core definition of what that program works to protect with its highest priority. Many agricultural lands don't flow well through the evaluation and ranking and consideration process for the Elatro County Forever Program because it wasn't really created to protect agricultural lands. There are agricultural lands that will make their way through that process when they also serve all of the other values and mission of the Elatua County Forever Program. But we have found that we're missing some opportunities for land and resource protection with lands that are not natural fits to the environmentally significant land process that we have. We've proposed a parallel strategy, really a sub-strategy within the program that would allow us to provide some protection for these agricultural lands. As you've seen before, the agricultural lands within Alachua County are predominantly grazing lands and hay production, however, and that's the orange and yellow parcels on that larger county map. There are also significant footprints in field and row crop production, as well as fruit production and a significant amount of that is blueberry production. There are some livestock horse farm dairy farms and then there also are some greenhouse and nursery farms. The 2022 USDA Census of Agriculture is given an overview of the agricultural lands within the county. 1700 farms, almost 200,000 acres in farm with an average farm size of 116 acres and a median farm size of 21 acres. Right, a lot of small farms. So the green box on this slide is to represent where we are in the strategy development process. We've spoken before and you've given input previously in the early stages of developing the framework, the mission, the early consideration of the ranking criteria for lands that may be nominated through this process, where we are now is that we have received a final report from a Latua Conservation Trust, our consultant we've had a final public workshop to date unless we're directed to give another opportunity for input in that way. And we have consolidated that input both from our consultant and from our stakeholders to provide recommendations for implementation for your consideration. And again, really the super simplistic view of this is that the way that the Elatua County Forever program or the county's land conservation program can work to protect agricultural lands or farm lands is by doing what we already do, which is purchasing development rights and establishing agricultural conservation easements. So this is one prong. You've heard some other county programs and initiatives that are supporting aspects of agriculture within the county. This prong is really about protecting the land footprint. The way we would do this is with our existing land conservation funding, which is the Wild Space and Public Places portion of the local government infrastructure surtax. And the county attorney's office has given us a review and feedback on usage of those funds for agricultural conservation easements and has identified basically three key components that we would need to meet for us to utilize the funding that way. One is that any easement we establish is perpetual. Two, that the easement allows for continuation of current or historic agricultural uses. And three, that the activities must be in accordance with best management practices. As I mentioned, the program has already protected 17 conservation easements, a little bit over 5,300 acres. Eight of those are not agricultural. They're easements with landowners that just wanted to establish preservation on high-quality habitat that they owned. In fact, the most recent one we closed on last Friday in the watermelon pond area, landowner willingly protecting their sand hill habitat. However, nine of those 17 easements are agricultural easements. They're not 100% agriculture, but they have agricultural production going on on the property. And in this slide, when I say agriculture, that's including timber production. So that's about 4,300 acres, again, not all of that acreage is actually in ag production, but the total easement footprint. The smallest one is 76 acres. The largest is over 2,200 acres. The funding for those nine agricultural easements, the total cost of acquisition was almost $18 million with 11 million coming from county. And that's the original ACF bond and earlier iterations of the wild spaces and public places, Sirtax, and then 6.7 million coming from partners. And in this case, the partners have been the USDA Agricultural Land Easement Program. And then we've actually had donations. Landowners have donated portions of their easements, and one landowner actually donated the entire easement. So across all of that acreage, what that has translated to is about $4,300 an acre, and that's ranging quite a few years and quite a few real estate values over that time from 2007 to 2024. We recommend going forward with whatever direction you give us that cost sharing continue to be a priority for any easement work that we do. The funding partners that we're most likely to work with, the federal government, USDA through the ASAP ALE program, also USDA through the RCPP program, and then the state of Florida through Springs Protection and Alternate Water Supply funding, which is administered through the water management districts, and then the Florida Forever Program and the FDACS World Family Lans Program. Each of those is different. In some of those partners, the partner would have to hold the easement and the county would be a funding partner but not the primary easement holder. However, for any instance where we are serving as a funding partner to a state held easement, we would ensure that their minimum deed requirements included in the deed for that easement that protect the county's investment in that easement and give us an independent right of enforcement so that should there be a failure with a partner, we would still retain the rights to protect the citizens' investment in those easements. So again, we're talking about using that SirTax funding, traditionally, the way that we've been utilizing that funding is through conserving land, and really as a result, green infrastructure, critical to community health and climate resiliency and on this pie chart the brown areas are the more traditional infrastructure investments and that includes county and the municipalities that's ever like all of the disbursement from the state the blue areas are primarily the more recreational park and public building investments and then the green areas are primarily the more recreational park and public building investments and then the green areas are the more traditional wild spaces areas. So of that bigger green pie, the lighter green pie piece represents what we're proposing as the identified funding for the agricultural easements. Andy, do you mind if you take a question? as the identified funding for the agricultural easements. And, do you mind if you take a question, Will? It's actually a question for Bob for county attorney. So Bob, on this slide, you know, we have one-half-scent for infrastructure, one-half-scent wild spaces, public places. If we had any use of the value that wanted to utilize the infrastructure side, the brown or inside for a public, for a municipal park. Would we say that that was a allowed use? Because I believe that's not under the intent of the ballot and I'd love to have our staff's opinion. Dave Forzeana with the County Attorney's Office. The, you're right, the ordinance says divided half sent, half sent. The half sent for wild spaces is generally for conservation and for parks. The other is for, and it's broadly for infrastructure. This board decided to define those uses to be for its own purposes, roads and affordable housing, workforce housing as, roads and affordable housing, workforce housing as well, and economic development, all kind of go together. We left it broad enough for the municipalities because they had other infrastructure uses like renovating their admin buildings and fire stations and things of that nature. I think if you were to drill down on this, they could use the wild spaces half-cent to buy land for a park, they could use that funding then to develop that park or technically they could use the other half-cent as long as it qualifies as a public facility and there are specific definitions on the statute as to what qualifies as a public facility. If they can meet those definitions, then they can use the other half-cent to develop the park. But only if it meets those definitions. Okay, thank you. Okay, Commissioner President, do you want to speak now or do you want to wait? Okay. Okay, so you may recall in February 2023 when we presented the 10-year plan and funding strategy for the land conservation efforts with the CERTEX funding. What we identified was continuation of working in our identified key corridors and other ACF project areas. And where we're sitting with that is we've got at this point right now today, four properties under contract, six in negotiation and we have three large projects that we are working on, which could lead to are recommending that $10 million be set aside for agricultural easement protection. With an additional, I've added one more million there for implementation, vehicle staff, et cetera, outreach contractors, all of those other components of the services that are needed to implement a strategy like that. And then possibly up to 20 million for public use infrastructure on these newly acquired preserves that are acquired with the current surtax. So that would be boardwalks, bridges, observation platforms, trailhead parking areas, and it also would include the land conservation office and field support facility. So we're allocating that funding within our total pie, and I just want you to see what the egg pie looks like there. Again, that's our recommended amount to allow us to continue to work towards all of the goals that were identified in our 10-year plan. Throughout the process, which has been a year-long process that we've been developing the strategy, and again, the strategy is really just to provide a pathway for agricultural lands to move forward more successfully and let the county be more successful and more proactive in this protection of agricultural lands as part of the broader land conservation strategy. So we have had starting off with a charette with our stakeholders and landowners and funding partners in November of 2023 going through this year with multiple public meetings and finally a public workshop that we had About 35 stakeholders landowners and others attend. Also during the whole process, we had one-on-one interviews with about 30 different farm landowners or farm managers within the county. And we have captured feedback from, public, we've had multiple public presentations to different groups and committees, captured feedback from those, and have also, you know, had folks that have just emailed and reached out independently. We've utilized that feedback throughout the process to fine tune the mission, the matrix, the geographic model, and the other aspects of the process that would be what determines how successfully an individual property is able to move through the process towards a potential easement establishment. What is iterative feedback? I've never heard the iterative the word before. potential easement establishment. What is iterative feedback? I've never heard the iterative the word before. So multiple iterations basically? Oh, okay. Yeah, so you start with a foundation, you get feedback and you revise. And you build on it. And then yeah, you get more feedback and I heard it. That's it. Thank you. Yeah. Sure. Again, apologies for the formatting. Something with that font I used apparently was not received well by the system. But the strategy mission statement is to increase farmland conservation within a Latua County through the purchase of agricultural land conservation easements. Again, sorry about that weird font. The ranking matrix is the thing that we had the most feedback from citizens on. This is like the ACF matrix. It is one of the tools that staff uses and that the advisory board, the land conservation board, uses to evaluate properties that are presented. It is not the only deciding factor for a property's success moving forward or not. Because really, there are many, there's the real estate market, there's urgency on the part of landowners, there's the real estate market, there's urgency on the part of landowners, there's available partnership funding, there are many factors that contribute to this. So the matrix establishes seven screening questions and 23 ranking questions. The question values, like functionally, the intent of the questions, is recorded in the draft resolution that was attached to this agenda item. But the questions in the scoring criteria are not included in the resolution, and that is the same way that the ACF board resolution, 22066, is established as well. The scoring process uses all available data sources and those data sources can evolve over time. And as I mentioned, it's not the final determination on property suitability. The screening questions, again, these are not scored. These really facilitate a conversation with landowners to help them understand and also help our staff understand how suitable a property and a landowner's intent is towards success as a conservation easement, particularly an agricultural easement. The first one is does the property qualify for surtax usage? Are there known hazardous sites? What's the easement size? Does the landowner have a realistic timeline for easement knowing they're working with the government entity and the government process that has its own time? The farm ownership structure, if its own agriculture, and if the landowner understands that easement values are based on fair market appraisal. The environmental ranking questions look at aquifer recharge value proximity to the Santa Fe river or other key watersheds whether the property has wetland or floodplain, basically flood storage capacity on the property. If it expands a conservation land footprint or buffer, the type or quality of wildlife habitat and the soil productivity. There are also farm operation questions, those relate to whether or not what type of agricultural operation is currently in use. And if the landowner knows what they, if they have a future transition in mind, then what that operation is as well. If the farm sells products consume locally, if the farm utilizes materials that are produced locally or sold locally. The amount of the farm that's offered for easement, if the landowner is directly involved in the property or farm operation, if the property is already enrolled in best management practices for whatever practice they are doing, or if they agree to enroll. If they're doing any kind of regenerative farming practices that prevent soil erosion, that reduce tillage, and if they're willing to write or establish a management plan. And then there are questions that address cost share potential. If it's already ranked for a partner cost share program, the next two deal with qualifications for USDA cost sharing whether or not the property is greater than 50% agricultural land and that's not counting timber as agriculture. And whether or not the property is less than two thirds forested. And finally, if the property is in a springs priority focus area, which translates to the likelihood of springs protection funding for the project. Finally, social value questions. If the landowner is historically underserved or limited resource, and that's also a federal definition that would be utilized in this case. If the property is an errors property which does potentially present challenges to a successful closing but does is important to also consider and look at. If the landowner has a farm succession or transfer plan and if there's threat of development. There is a GIS based or geographic analysis component similar to the ranking criteria. It is not the ultimate final decider of a property's ability to move forward. It's part of the information set that's used to evaluate properties. And again, I apologize for that font. It uses eight data sets that are combined equally into a geographic model output. And what the bar chart on the lower right shows is basically that all of the agricultural lands in the county that were run through the geographic model, had even distribution. There are some, a small subset that rank as very high suitability and a small subset that ranks as low suitability, and then there's a chunk in the middle that are more moderate. And that actually is an indicator of a good model design that we have even distribution of that data. Combining all of those data sets, we have an output map and on this map similar to the ACF project area map, the darker green indicates highest suitability and then moving down through green to yellow to orange and red indicates lower suitability. You can see there's a strong cluster of darker green in the northwestern part of the county and we can zoom in a little bit again sorry about that font on the high springs in a Latua area and then you also see there's some areas that are much more orange and red. And that orange and red color is either driven by, it's not falling within a springs protection area. It has a lower soil productivity score, maybe farther from existing conservation lands. There may be multiple key inputs that are proper use, not scoring as well on, that result in that orange or red coloration. On these maps, the peachy color are the conservation lands in that grayish, light green. Those are pine plantations in the county. We are recommending that a citizen board be constituted, nine members plus one alternate with six representing agricultural interests including the alternate and four citizens at large. However in the resolution we did not recommend defining required participation from each of or a subset of those agricultural skill or involvement or professional roles to ensure that we could fill those spots on the board. So, this is similar to how the land conservation board is structured. It groups membership by natural resource professional or citizen at large. And we are looking at that as a board that we're able to successfully maintain membership on. And we feel that that flexibility of not having extremely finely defined membership roles probably contributes to our success in maintaining membership of that board. So we're recommending more grouping by agricultural experience or professional knowledge versus citizen at large. We are also recommending that operationally the strategy be housed within our existing land conservation program as a strategy under Alachua County forever. So again, it's built largely based on our successful implementation of the Alachua County forever program. And we're just looking at this as a tool that gives us a better opportunity to work with these agricultural lands than we've had. Currently in the fiscal year 25 proposed budget there is a senior planner position included that's still within the budget focused on implementing the strategy beginning implementation. Our intent is that we would be recommending in fiscal year 26 a second senior planner. We also would be potentially looking at contracted outreach so that we can build better effective relationships with the farming landowners and farming community. We would probably be also asking for a vehicle. And we would anticipate a need for an expanded negotiator services contract as a reminder that's our contract with the Latua Conservation Trust to provide us with a in-program person Michael Bird who serves as our negotiator. We also are anticipating impacts on our legal support. We receive excellent support from the County Attorney's Office, in particular Dave Forzeano, has a fairly heavy and consistent workload from the number of contracts and projects that we are having his input needed on. And we will be and we don't want to break him. In addition to additional internal workload within the county attorney's office, which they have a broad number of clients that they serve internally. We also are a little concerned about our additional workload to our one closing attorney that the county has on contract currently. So there's a lot of work to be done. We are not the only clients and so we would foresee some additional conversations about that work depending on the success and the rate of work that this strategy might generate. They would midnight the handle more. There are, as we know, we have an existing active acquisition list. There are properties on that active acquisition list that have been placed there that in all honesty are more suitable to be protected through an agricultural land easement rather than a more preservation focused, environmentally significant land easement. Our recommendation is that there are three of those that we would suggest be funded through any funding that might be allocated to agricultural easements. And those are properties that have already partners identified, state partners as funding partners. So that is our recommendation. We've presented those properties previously. And then overall these are our strategy recommendations. One is adopt or ask that I revise the the draft resolution that was attached to your agenda item here codifying the mission the ranking matrix citizen board structure and operational process to allocate 10 million dollars of the land conservation Wild spaces and public places surtax funding to the acquisition of agricultural land conservation Eastments through this strategy while allowing us to fund the three existing projects. For partner funded easements, we ask that you direct us to establish and require minimum deed easement requirements that we utilize with any of those partner held and partner funded easements to protect the citizen investment. Direct staff to prioritize projects with cost sharing from partners where possible. Consider any upcoming operational needs that we may present in future budget cycles within the scope of the county budget and priorities. And then direct us to return in fiscal year 26 with recommendations for amendment. The Alachua County forever process went through multiple iterations of amendment once it was in process. Once basically the needs and the areas to fine tune were identified through use of the process. It has come back many times for amendment, and we would presume that the same scenario would be at place here with the strategy. Oh, Commissioner Persia. Okay. Thank you. This is awesome. I know you all did so much work. I got to attend some of the community meetings and I just wanna say a huge thank you to you. I know this is stretched from the work that you already do and it took a lot of extra effort and I just wanna commend the professionalism and the commitment that you made to making this possible and to having the conversations with all the stakeholders and working with ACT. It was impressive work and I know it was iterative work. It was work that took a lot of back and forth with us with the community and I just really really appreciate all the time and energy that went into this. And I'm excited to I'm happy to make the motion. I have a couple of things I'd like to talk about or add. I guess one thing is on the environmental components in addition to wetlands and waterways. I think it's how it's worded. Hold on. Wetland or flood plains. If we could also include cast features or sinkholes in that, I think those are key strategies in our strategic ecosystems. And so I think adding those is something that we want to make sure we're protecting on these agricultural lands. It's really, really important. So I would just ask for that addition on the environmental ranking questions and a lot of our farms on the western side do contain those and they're really direct conduits to our aquifer. Yeah, so best management practices are extra important. Exactly. And then my question for you is those three properties that you're recommending be funded under this. How much, how many acres and how much money is associated with those three projects specifically? OK, thank you very much for that question. None of those properties are under contract at this moment. So the dollars are unknown. However, both our assessment of recent expenditures and ACT's assessment within the project report that they prepared would estimate that those properties would probably be between three and $4,000 per acre for the easement. So the three are 325 acres, up to 605 acres, and 340 acres. I haven't done that math. Okay. 325 plus 605 plus 340. We'll just say 4000 a acre to be conservative. That's 1,300. It's basically 1.4 million. And note that when I quote the per acre costs, that does not include the due diligence costs. So there's an additional percentage associated with that that you could probably estimate to be depending on size, because that affects the survey costs significantly, potentially $50,000 to $75,000 per property. Yeah. I mean, essentially what we're looking at, I mean, what you're saying is to allocate, I mean, to allocate $10 million to this project, but then we're taking another, we're taking two million of it away to fund projects we've already put on our active acquisition list. I have to say I'm not that in favor of because we just spend a lot of time talking to the agricultural community about this as a new program that we're gonna do and we're probably gonna have a lot of interest and excitement in that program and taking projects we've already allocated. I mean, unless they really, I mean, we've already allocated to the active acquisition list so they're already being funded through our active acquisition and conservation and they made it through the conservation matrix to get on the active acquisition list. They are among the 170 properties. They probably wouldn't make it to the top. This would help them rise up to a level. I get you. The third party funding matches. The S3. I get you. Okay. The report is funding matches, right? These three, yes. You. Okay. Yeah. Okay. That makes sense. Now I got it. I was confused by that. Now I got it. Okay. Well, that answers that question. Thank you. Well, I just thank you. And I'm ready to make the motion once we hear from my other colleagues if they have any comments or questions. What a lot of work and great, great job. Commissioner Prisya, another one, like one of your first years. Oh, I see you got to have two terms to see some of the stuff that you bring up in the first term. So thank you for getting us to where we are. On these three, how much is the match approximately? For two of them, it's 50%. We anticipate 50% from a 50% funding partner. So we anticipate. Oh, would that reduce that 1,000,000 five cut that in half? Or is it? Well, the third one is less than 50%. Okay, but it would be less than that. So, okay, so that's really my only questions are how does USDA rank for funding? How does some of our state partners rank for funding? The process that they use. Yeah, we've developed this matrix of, I think it's 115 points. Is that right? So the rural and family lands program uses a question-based scoring process. We have not received those questions that were utilized in the most recent ranking cycle. But my understanding is that it's fairly similar to the process that we're using, but the questions might be different. The USDA has minimum requirements that are stated much like that less thirds, less than two thirds forested and more than 50 percent agricultural. Those are part of the USDA's minimum requirements. So they have a standard of minimum requirements and then they have a standard of value added requirements that have some overlap with standard of value added requirements that have some overlap with some of the questions that we are utilizing but not 100% overlap. The USDA easement program, the agricultural easement program, there's only one to my understanding one easement within Alachua County that is not already a partnership easement held by the county. Those partner programs or partner easements that I mentioned earlier, those are all USDA partnerships. Right. So they came to us because we had an opportunity to leverage money. Correct. They have expressed that they are excited to partner with us moving forward. But that each property we might present to them is going to have to obviously meet the standards that they have for the funding that they would utilize, which is not the grass land of special significance funding that we attempted to use previously, but the ASAP ALE, which is more traditional farm protection funding. So in the rankings, Andy, what it looks like we are giving 20 of the 115 points to that category. And how does that coincide with three and four of your recommendation? Oh, sorry. That's what I can say. Of your recommendation. Oh, go back. Okay. Yeah. Because it would seem like this recommendation is saying, Dr. Sath to really look for those partnerships and prioritize them higher, is that what we're saying? So the reason I included these recommendations is that in anticipation that this strategy might work in a similar way to our current ACF process, there's a list and there's a scoring for every property on that list, but there's a significant amount of staff review on which property can move forward next. And my intent is that by asking that you direct staff to- Before. Yeah, before really to prioritize projects with cost sharing is that we are actively scouring that list for cost share and we also ACT's recommendation in the resolution, which I know is very wordy, has three pools, like sub-pools within the priority pool, all of which relate to cost share. So there are properties that don't qualify for cost share. That's one sub-pool. There's properties which may qualify, but it's not established yet. And then there are properties that already have established partnership funding. But in theory, if this program works the same way that our ACF program has worked, any property moved into any of those three will get presented to you for consideration for the active acquisition list, which means properties without cost share would be being presented to you at the same rate possibly as properties they have cost sharing. So then it'll come down to staff. Yeah, and our partner just sent her to room here. So Tom, thanks for being here. So commissioners, this to me, I think is the biggest thing that we should probably direct. I am in favor. I am in favor of directing a staff to really prioritize at the top and only bring to us first those where we can leverage our dollars. I think we have far more opportunities than we have dollars. I like the 10 million of the total so I think that's a good place to start. I don't mind the three we pre-identified because they're all cost sharing and it's actually going to be less than that million five. But I think we will quickly run out of money if we don't direct this point either through changing the 20 points to 40 points or Anne also directing staff to really that fourth bullet. Because I don't want to say we don't want to fund projects that don't have cost sharing, but I want us to say that we've really, we got to leverage you dollars. Because we don't have enough and we'll never have enough. And I want to prioritize as much as possible with the money that we have until we can renew it for a third time. So I don't know how y'all feel about that, but I think that's, to me, all this work is incredibly awesome and great, but we have to give them that direction if that's what we want. So I 100% agree with you. 100% agree with you. And I think number four does that. I don't wanna change the ranking criteria because I don't think that, that's fine. because I don't think that I think they should stay I think that the prior criteria that the that they work so hard to develop with stakeholders is really based on how how much that property is prioritized based on its importance in the landscape as well as its ability to match and then it's staff's direction to go in and prioritize within that once we have all the projects that have good match and meet our landscape qualifications then they prioritize the ones that are matched first and foremost for limited amounts of funding. But it doesn't mean that they don't get on the list, just like we have hundreds of properties. They're on the list. Right, so they get on the list and then as we have more funding, like, you know, we get reauthorization or, you know, something bizarre happens and somebody says, we want to donate a bunch of money to agricultural land programs. We've got the opportunity to do that. So does that fourth bullet do exactly what you just heard these two commissioners say or do we need to strengthen that? Because right before I spoke in Commissioner Prisiot spoke you said you're going to us first and foremost, unless we can't spend all this money, only projects where we're leveraging those dollars so we can get as many of them as possible. I want every project that applies and gets through that criteria to get on the active acquisition list. Yeah, sure. So that means they get presented to us because we get presented every property that goes on an active acquisition list. So I mean, they're usually on consent. get on the active acquisition list. Yeah, sure. So that means they get presented to us because we get presented every property that goes on an active acquisition list. So I mean, they're usually on consent because we're not like having to review them a whole lot. They made it through the process. They made it through our land conservation board. We have the chance to look at the documentation on consent and just move it through. And then if one of us has an issue with one of those properties we pull it. But present to us means get on the active acquisition list. And I want us to see how many farmers are willing and have lands appropriate based on our criteria to get on the active acquisition list. Doesn't mean we're going to fund them. I'm talking about only term of funding. Yeah. So that's the next stage. I mean, that's what this would do, right? Well, a strategy that could be utilized. So currently on the existing active acquisition list, there's the Bargain Chair category. The way the ACF resolution is written, 22066 requires staff or a partner to identify a minimum 50% funding partner before we can do any next step on a property. Often that means a property might not move forward for a long time. So you can- Oh, so are you doing it? We are with our existing ACF list. Yeah, so functionally that could be language that's added, similar language to what's in 22-066. That would be added. Wait a minute. Well, and the way I see it playing out is that potentially every agricultural land conservation easement that comes to you automatically comes as a bargain share. Like that would be possibly your action if that was the case. That's going to tie your hands so much. I mean every time we've had one of those bargain shares, we've had to go back and revise them most of the time because it's like we can't get 50 percent. But we found this other partner that's willing to do 30 percent or we found this partner that's willing to do 42 percent and then you have to start all over again like tying your hands with that bargain share thing at the start I agree that We should have that option on certain properties, right? Like you bring them to us and you say this is an okay property like we did that with the with the mining property Like we were right. We were like this is a good property. We want to protect this We know it's going to protect our aquifer, but it needs bargain share. Like we need to have a 50% partner because it's going to take a massive amount of work. We're not going to be able to afford it without that. And so we make that decision on a case-by-case basis. But I think match is really important. But I think the flexibility of our staff and ACT to find match partners needs to be allowed. If we do 50% tie on these projects, we're gonna be driving our feet for years. Well, and, and, and, and, Bargain Shares create additional work for staff or partners unquestionably. Part of why this smaller strategy within our existing program has recommended dedicated staff as an anticipation of grant applications and some of that additional workload that we feel very likely will come with attempting to have partnerships on these projects consistently. So that's a piece of it. I guess I would say speaking to the way the current bargain share language is written as it requires a 50% funding partner, there are cost share programs that are 25% that are within that table. I wouldn't require 50%. I just want some level of partnership to leverage money. Yeah. And so if that's what four does, great. If that's not what four does, and my colleagues agree, I'd like to add whatever wording we need. And then my only other question, and I'll turn it back to the chair, is, are we adding these easements to the registry? That, so typically easements are not added to the registry. Because that would be, unless that was a requirement that was part of the screening criteria, that would be something that could only be done with a willing landowner. Because of course the landowner still owns the underlying fee. We're just buying some of the interests in the property. Generally the landowners want to retain flexibility. And that we've only had one easement landowner and it's actually one that is under contract currently that is going to hopefully close before the end of the year that has asked to be included on the registries. Definitely not. My perspective, the registry prevents the future boards from reversing this action without a ballot initiative, and it protects public funds that are being spent for this purpose. And so... The reverse of the contract is not going on about, I mean, we have a contract, a perpetual contract, because it's like, we're reversing a... You're sort of... Well, there's a recorded conservation easement, D, that does state that the easement is perpetual. However, what would prevent, what's the hang up of all the land that we acquire for conservation we put into the registry, correct? We're in the process, but yeah, it gets time, but then once it's there, it's there. But except for the easements and except for properties that are jointly held with partners where the partner does not want it okay but our perception is that the partner interest provides additional protection in the okay from just an individual action on the part of the county okay because there's another party that's the reason why. Okay, all right. All right, those are my only comments. Thank you, Madam Chair. Mr. Wheeler, yes, how do you get an appraisal for the value of that land in order to know how much the match should be? So that is one of the tricks with bargaining share properties in general. Typically we are estimating based on sales in the area or maybe properties we've bought recently or had appraised recently that were nearby or similar. We will, for these grant applications for the funding partnership, we will estimate what we think the sale price will be and then use that for the grant application. Similarly, you can do the same thing for an easement if you have a similar easement. The way the easements are appraised is that that conservation easement deed, the document that's recorded in the end at sale, that deed has to be written before the property is appraised. So there's a lot of upfront work that goes into conservation easements without a guarantee of a closing, because you then give the deed, which basically item by item identifies what the landowner is selling, what rights they're selling, and what rights they're retaining. The appraisers utilize that document to determine the value of the easement on that specific property. So that is part of why we've been very careful about what easement negotiations we enter into because of the upfront work that could result in maybe not success. We've been successful because I think we've been very careful about which how committed a landowner is before we engage on easements. That going back to what you're talking about the Lyme Rocklands, we were able to get $800,000 as a match from 20 River Management, but we never knew what the price of the property was. So that's why I was curious as to how you could ask for it. It's challenging. And that property being so atypical me even more challenging that makes me appreciate the work you all put into it and that much more I appreciate that okay I had a couple of questions for a pass it back to you Commissioner Prisya what if an ag property is both agricultural and has appropriate land for other conservation. How? Because I know we have some properties that are like that. How would that be evaluated? So that would be, again, probably a early decision based on initial assessment and that would probably be largely GIS based on the part of staff when we receive a nomination to say, you know, does it mean criteria that make it likely to be successful or a priority through the environmentally significant lands? I think that would that just may take priority even though there's that component too. We would try to route the properties according to what they're most suitable for. We've seen the need for these specifically agricultural properties that just don't do well but have values they're contributing and have a worth for protection. The ones that are more hybrid, like a good example would be at the beginning of the calendar year, the Rembert Conservation easement, protected major creek footprints upstream of Mill Creek Sink, and has agricultural footprint as well, but has so much of that environmentally significant land component that, Grannon, we didn't have this choice to route it through, but I think it still would have automatically qualified for the original ACF Inverte mentally significant land process. One thing that I'm concerned about going forward is as land becomes more and more valuable here in Elatua County as more and more people come here, I worry that future generations would be feeling cheated out of land value as given the amount that we're paying for development rights. And what's that? That's the case across the board. I know it is, but I feel that in agriculture, I feel like we're saving a generation now, but as we go into climate change and as we deal with harder and harder challenges for agricultural community, I worry about hamstringing them a little bit. And so I just wanted to make that comment because I feel like we might have to take care of some of these properties a little bit in the future. So if I may comment on that, Madam Chair, one opportunity that comes from establishment of an agricultural easement is an opportunity for land transfer to a future farm owner or Leisee. So if the current land owner who establishes the easement wants to retire or move whatever their choices, that actually makes that farm more available for a new farmer to potentially move in because part of the value of the family farms. For farms that would continue to stay within a family, they're receiving funding right now. If they utilize that funding in some ways, it depends on their choice, it could actually generate future revenue for them that makes it easier for them to continue to fire. Well, yeah, and I agree with that too. I just worry about decisions that are made today that might not be relevant. I use that money to create some, you know, invest in one particular agricultural endeavor that doesn't turn out to be the best endeavor given the future of, you know, agriculture in a changing environment. So just a thought process that I was having as I was thinking about it. I totally support the program. I just, that's something that concerned me. This was also a point of feedback consistently from the stakeholders that we engaged with. Like... Awesome, those rights, if you. Yeah. Yeah. And then my final question, and I apologize if I missed this in the presentation, but how does agricultural tourism fit into the use of any of the properties? Depending on the nature of the tourism, should be a use that is allowable. The restrictions that generally are established beyond the sale of the development rights tend to be focused on not expanding impervious surfaces. So above a certain square footage that's a number that's established in the conservation easement deed typically. So as long as the like an agri-tourism strategy that the landowner is working towards didn't relate to large-scale pole barn or paved areas to support that activity that exceeded that square footage that is established in the deed, it should be allowable. Now on our existing conservation easement deeds, most of them have preservation areas that are established and mapped within the property. And we would hope to do that for any suitable agricultural conservation easement as well. And there might be limitations on impact in those preservation areas from a tour or, you know, something that might disturb that area more than just regular foot traffic. So that could be a conflict we would need to make sure we kind of pre-consider. We attempt to talk through all of these potentials, you know, just even now with any landowner that we're working with, and particularly our conservation easement landowners, because it is a to Commissioner Cornel's point a permanent relationship that you're entering into and it ideally should be one where both parties are in full understanding and agreement otherwise it will not be a successful relationship. Yeah, that's kind of you know it looks great today. I'm just worried about 30 years from now. Okay. I think those are all my questions. I know you're up for a motion but I see the manager also has a light on it. Madam Chair, I was just going to go back to the discussion that was a little bit ago about adding to the registry with the conservation easements, adding to the registry means changes can't be made without a referendum, which when it has to do with fee simple ownership, we make sure we go to the departments, we talked everybody internally to know if we need to exempt anything out, for example, for future right of way or need or public needs, drainage, whatever, so that we make sure that's carved out and we don't have to go back to the voters for that. With the conservation easement, we have had times in the past where there have been, there has been a necessity to go in and both parties agree to make amendments to that conservation easement for a variety of reasons. And as long as both sides agree that can be done if it goes into the registry you would probably have to do a referendum and it may be something that's an important amendment that we need to make or adjustment we need to make for a variety of reasons. All right thank you all right Commissioner Prithi. I would move staff's recommendation to adopt the B O C C resolution, codifying the mission, ranking matrix, and citizen board structure, and operational processes to allocate 10 million of wild spaces, public places funding to the acquisition of agricultural land conservation easements through an agricultural land protection strategy and authorized staff to fund three existing projects with this funding. And for partner-funded easements to establish the required minimum easement deed requirements that retain our rights. To direct staff to prioritize projects with cost sharing from partners, Orlando and our donation, to consider identifying staff and operational needs in coming budget cycles. And to direct staff to return an FY26 with recommendation for amendments after implementation and evaluation for small farms and inclusion in the climate action concurrency and also to add sinkholes and carst features to the environmental considerations ranking criteria. Okay, we have a motion on the second. Do we have any further discussion from the board? All right, we'll take a couple of comments to the motion. Thank you, Madam Chair. Commissioner's name is Tamar Robbins. Kudos to Andy and your team. A lot of work. I know this has not been in the queue for attention for that long and really produced. So I have a couple of questions. One Commissioner Cornel asked the attorney about the pie and the half-cent infrastructure surtax and he said yes that a minister palli could use their half of the infrastructure surtax as long as it's open to the public. And I questioned this before about the purchasing of conservation land with wild spaces money. And I said it has to be open to the public and farmland be open to the public. And I was told by you guys that that's only if it's publicly opened property. So that doesn't make any sense to me. I'd like clarification on publicly available open to the public. Farmland's not in a lot of the conservation land isn't either. I think you should include watersheds in your strategic your sinkhole ad. I think you should put watersheds in there too. Just saying. So one of my concerns about this is, so say there's two big tracks to land. So you talked about tree conservation, right? Your tree policy protecting land and in the policy says it's inside the urban services line, which I think you should do away with that and it should be the entire county tree protection, right? Okay, this is countywide, correct? This whole this program is countywide, okay? So program is countywide, okay? So say you have a big track of farm land that's grazing cattle or whatever right now and you have a track of forested land and the pasture land goes into conservation which would be maybe a natural progression of somebody who said, I'm sick of farming, we're gonna liquidate our property and we're gonna sell it to a developer to build houses or what, right? Okay, there's pretty much less likely that there are going to be a lot of trees on that land to cut down to build than on the big track over here that's forested, that what if they then go, okay, well that's in conservation, we'll buy the big forested track and we'll cut down all the trees and develop houses. So I think you need to look at your tree policy in conjunction with an unanticipated consequence that may exist if you start preserving the land that may be what be developed and is not available now. And the alternative is a big track of treat property. Okay? That's, and Madam Chair, just give me, I only have 20 seconds, I'm a hope to get this on here. So, in the resolution where it says the matrix, the conservation decision matrix and values, I think, I don't see the values placed here. I think that is something you should be engaged in to determine what is the county's values that you want to give the highest points to, which may then decide where the land is considered in your ranking system, which may then fall into whether it is there's cost sharing. So it's the values. I think you need to look at. Thank you. Prioritizing. Thank you. If you could clear up on the attorney about the public use. Thank you. All right. Good afternoon, Madam Chair and commissioners. Apologize for having to slip off and then slip back. But it is true you can get halfway across the county and back again in under 45 minutes. with no red and blue lights behind me. Well, I just want to first say thank you to Andy, Kevin, Emily, Michael and their staff helping us through this whole process. It's a lot of time and effort and resources obviously to do the legwork we did. And I think it's showing up in what was presented to you all the day. And by do think there's a lot to say that we got farmers out there. And it seemed like we were kidding around about the fact that it was like we almost didn't want to have to happen. Because the first time we did this stakeholder meeting with the farmers, we had that was a night before the hard freeze. So a bunch of them couldn't make it particularly growing row crops. And then the second one we were ready to go and then Tropical Storm Debbie came through. And so we had to reset it, but we still had a really good turnout. And I think one of the things that came out of that is to what Commissioner Cornell said was there is tremendous demand for this program. There's no question there will be tremendous demand for this program. And I think it's also having to what Commissioner Chestnut said that when this passed in 2022, which is hopefully we can do this again in 10 years, because there's no question based on a number of projects that we have that are very large, that we need to kind of get done now. You know, large ones that fall in our environmental and sensitive lands where these landowners are trying to get out, and if we don't do it right now, I think the outcomes are probably not going to be good. So I think it's critical and it's wise that you all are putting this program together right now because getting this on track, giving the demand, and the change in transition in farmers and just the aging out is evident that there's a need for the program. And Commissioner Alford's point, one of the benefits actually, and what we've seen with a lot of people that we've worked with for, you know, we've been doing quite a bit of farm ACT with farm easements over the last decade and a half, is a lot of people are ultimately using that tool to help with succession planning. So it lowers the price, not giving an example, what, excuse me, one that we're working with outside the county, although we're working with actually in Latchell County, too, that one's not finished yet. But where there was three children, two had no interest in farming and one did. And so it's how do you keep them in? If the one daughter wanted to continue to stay in farming, how is that going to be viable? Which she wouldn't have the funds to buy it. So by selling an easement, in that case, we're doing that one with NRCS in the state. Take that money in. They can basically use the property, almost as an ATM to get the resources out to the other two, and then allow that transfer to keep the farming in place. So it's a lower, that basis is much lower and easier to make that transfer. And in some cases, other things that we're seeing with farmers is just getting more efficient with their farming. So either reducing the dead off their property, particularly if they're in like row crops and they're using center pivot irrigation, if you saw the dead that some of these farmers are carrying, it's unbelievable. So it's a tool to get that off. So again, easier transition to the next generation. And the other alternative courses may be just phasing out of that stuff, getting out of it, and then going into something that's less intensive, that will have less impact on the unerecological resources, but also make it more viable for them to carry forward with the farm. So again, thank you all for doing this. And again, thank you to Andy Staff. Thank you, Tom. Thank you, Tom. Thank you, Tom. Hi, Nancy Daron. I add my admiration and thanks to staff and Andy and ACT, just an amazing amount of work and a great outcome. I fully support this. I think and I agree with what Tom said. Flexibility really, really important. So farmers and ranchers can adapt to climate change and other pressures. Looking at how we allow them to include diversity. So we have diverse, silver pasture instead of it has to just be a pasture. That we look for ways to do extra points or whatever for agroecology and those practices, and also to be able to stack programs because there's so much federal and state programs that are coming out, recognizing that ag and conservation are interwoven. And so like with USDA, they're combining, you can now get the conservation grazing lands and equips. So they're starting to put programs together instead of it having to be in silos. Really important. And with having so many small farms and the fragmentation, I'm really excited to see, looking at how do we, if we can't do it in this program, what other programs can we begin to partner with or develop to deal with our small farms and keep as much in grazing or in cropping that utilizes pollinator friendly practices, soil health, so that we move away from industrial farming and I still hope that we can get local meats much more readily available so that we build again a very robust and comprehensive system to keep all of our farmers going and through the next generations. But that flexibility and being able to adapt to the deluges that are coming down in all and not walking people in a box that if you're doing this, that's what you can do. So thank you. Thank you Nancy. All right. Any further public comment? Any response to the comment, Commissioner Prisya? Yeah. I just quickly won. I did. I was remiss in I was saying, thank you to Andy to not say thank you to ACT, because I know Erica and Justice and the whole team over there put a lot of work into this and I just really appreciate them sad. They couldn't be here today to see it come to fruition, but they'll get lots more work in the future. So quickly, I wanted to say on the criterion the flexibility, I know future and current is in the statute. We have to, I mean, current and past operations. I do hope that as we work on defining those with the easement contracts that we will, we can broadly define those. If they're in animal agriculture and silver pasture now, they can still change species. They could change different types of trees. They could shift gears to, there's lots of different perennial trees, some that grow fruits, some that don't. It would give a lot of flexibility still within that current and past agricultural uses so that they have that maximum flexibility, particularly with climate change. That's sort of the strategy we're hoping for. Yes, Madam Chair, absolutely. And that's been a consistent message from the stakeholders and landowners we've spoken with too is the critical aspect of that flexibility without being able to predict the crops. It will be successful in the future, the water usage, everything about agriculture moving forward with population change, climate change, all of those things. I had a related question if that's okay. Is the evaluation matrix, how much of that in your thought process deals with resilience? I think that the strongest category is in the environmental section, subsection. I think that the cost share section actually in some ways addresses it as well. Climate migration is a component of the social aspect with the development pressure but I think probably farm operation, the regenerative practices, this one question in that. So I think it's scattered throughout but that is why I included that as a recommendation for when we do come back to really take a deeper dive into climate plan concurrency for the county. I like that. So thank you. Thank you for that. Are you Commissioner Prisid? I'm sorry. No, my only other comment was actually it was more of a comment than a question. And I was like, I think that something that'll be important as we, that future kind of conversations is to think about linking this with a strategy that our new economic development department is going to be having and thinking about agriculture and food systems and how we can potentially have a land matching program whereas these farmers are thinking about their transitions about plans and their long term plans for these lands if they don't have family members that want a farm that we have a way to say well we have these lands that are in easement and available and we have young these young say, well, we have these lands that are inesment and available, and we have young, these young farmers that are interested in agriculture, being able to connect the dots from an economic development strategy standpoint. Not a conservation strategy, I would not put that on conservation staff, but I think that could be an interesting opportunity, and I know I'm teaching some generations of new farmers that want to go into Ag and land access is a big issue because land is so expensive here and that's nothing to compare to what it is in other places like New York or other you know strategies and so that young farmer matching and access to financing pieces are really critical I think pieces that we could layer on top from an economic development standpoint to support this program in the longer term. Thank you. We did have a suggestion from the public about adding watersheds to the car's feature in the motion. Watersheds are all, I don't understand what that is. Watersheds are the whole entire space. Like a watershed is. Well I think, you know, in my mind, yeah, that's kind of where I was, that's kind of what I was thinking. You need those make it to the concert. That's the property. Well, wetlands are included. Wetlands and floodplains are included already. Watersheds, I think the way it could be included would require us to actually go through and rank the water sheds to be able to be rough. Yeah, I like the way that you've got it included now. I just wanted to make sure that we were thinking about how we were thinking about water as we were evaluating it. And it sounds like that's included pretty well. Okay. I'm going to do prioritize like creek streams like those sorts of things anyway because water quality is one of the primary, right? The primary sort of overall goal is a lodge for killing forever to begin with. Correct. And I think the tree policy was a discussion to have it a future time. But I tend to agree that there is a possibility of unintended consequences there. But that's something that we can address with the tree policy as we go forward. OK, if there are no further comments, we'll go forward with a vote. All in favor of the motion signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed like sign? All right. Thank you very, very much, Andy. And I just wanted to note that the last several items that we should note that Commissioner Prisya's influence on the commission as well noted. This was I said that during a gender of view this is Commissioner Priszi a day. Thank you I really appreciate I mean they're all passing in and yes. It might it might have been my initial work but I think all of the I've just been really proud that all of us have recognized the agriculture is an important part of our community and an important part of our county. And I think it's a testament to this board because we heard so much from our rural areas and from our small municipalities that they don't often feel heard and they don't often feel prioritized. And I think a lot of the work that this commission has done over the past four years is showing that that's just not true and this program is one example of that where we're really listening to the people who are in our rural areas who want to protect their lands and their legacies for their families and in order to do that need to be able to realize some of that development value in some way shape or form so they can continue to keep this land and protect it. So thank you all for being able to buy into this. Yes, nine more years. Yes, and renew it in nine more years. Yeah. We understand who the population is. Eight and a half. Yes. Never too early to talk about renewal, was it? All right. Well, the last item for today's agenda, not including tonight's agenda, is the authorization of a levy for a not-anf allure special assessment due to a basement of public nuisance and this is public hearing. Hi, good afternoon. Good afternoon. Diana Johnson, senior assistant county attorney for Alachua County. Yes, we do have a agenda item for you. We're asking your authorization to levied the collection of non-advalor and special assessments, specifically this in regard to nuisance abatement. This is a property that you have already had a public hearing declared to be a public nuisance. And you under the process given in chapter 74 of the Lachua County Code, authorize staff and his contractor to go and abate that nuisance specifically. It was junk and several vehicles that were on the property that was done. The property received a special benefit. There was a cost incurred by the county in the amount of $10,000. And this is a way that we have on our code to try and recuperate those costs. And do you have code enforcement, director Scott here? If you have any questions? Commissioner Prisya. Yeah, so we want these people to behave. I mean, the whole reason we did this is because it's for people who are chosen to not take care of something that they should be taking care of. And they're becoming a nuisance not to their neighbors and to our community as a whole. And so I appreciate that it shouldn't be on the backs of all the taxpayers, you know, to be able to take care of this and we should be able to recruit some of those costs because they're the ones that are the bad actors. However, I also want to be mindful of the fact that a lot of times, you know, if you start bleving on their tax sales tax, it's going to push that to tax deed sale because it's going to get expensive really fast. And I don't know that the intention of this board is to basically create situations where families can't even afford their taxes anymore and then they force taxed the sale on these nuisance properties necessarily. Now, that may pile up over time, but I guess I'm interested in if there are strategies that we could apply where we could put, say, a percentage of that fee or that fine on their taxes a little at a time as opposed to just a lump sum of like here you go you're ten thousand dollars or twenty thousand dollars in fee and on top of your taxes and now you know you're not a long time to get to this point yeah this is not like it's an everyday thing if I may respond to several things Madam Chair first of all, actually, the property owners are not currently paying the taxes at all to begin with, and it actually already has a tax deed application filed and is going to be pending for sale. So the placement of this property while we'll impact it, it already has problems. The second thing is that, as you all know, because you remember the pictures, when you did declare to public nuisance there was an extreme amount of junk trash to breathe out on this property. This cost is very high. There is discussion, and I'll leave that to code administration, you know, of doing this in the future, but perhaps $100 there to Moa yard or $500 there to, you know, do something minor, would be more how this would flow from here on out. This one seems to be quite extreme. But yes, there is a process that we could write the resolution in such a way that it would be broken up over time. Similar to a road assessment, sometimes those are over a 10 year period that they have. What is there ever been an opportunity to negotiate a payment plan if you were in a situation where you got it cleaned up and then you had to pay the abatement? So actually under, if I may, I'm sorry, if it's okay, under chapter 74. So there is the requirement actually that before we even get to today's public hearing, we did have to send a copy of the invoice to the property owners and they were providing 90 days to pay and within that time frame they certainly could have come to the county and said you know we can't pay this amount right here maybe not you know today but would you take a band plan and you know there is that opportunity but in this case in particular those 90 days running we heard nothing from those property owners thank you yeah I personally I feel like I'd like to get the money back. But Commissioner Kuerna. No, I think this is going on a long, long time and for the neighbors benefit, I would like to move. We authorize the Levy and Collection of a non-Avallorum special assessment. It gets a property located at 1411, South of East 44, Savinu, Gainesville, Florida. Gainesville, Al, Gainesville, Outdoor County, Florida is more particularly described in the attached resolution for costs of abating the public nuisance of certain property, approved and adopted resolution, posing a special assessment on the assessed property authorised to chair to sign, authorised the county manager, does he need, certify the nuisance, abatement, non-Avalorem, assessment role to the tax collector. We have a motion on the second. Do we have any public comment to the motion? Seeing none all in favor of the motion signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? Like sign. All right. Thank you for your work on this and I know that the neighbors would appreciate it. We can we can adjourn now. there are actually quite a few items under Commissioner Comet. I didn't know if any of y'all were interested in doing any of them now. Yes. I have a manager. I do have a manager. Yeah. Under manager Comet if we want to. Yeah let's just do it now so we can leave earlier. Okay we'll go, managers comment first then. Yes, Madam Chair. The clerk's office and I really do appreciate there being attuned to, you know, as the arm of finance for the county are expenditures and making sure that all the eyes are dotted and tees are crossed. And with regard to that they Have asked the board as you're aware approved a chair letter Supporting Commissioner Cornell's candidacy for floor association of counties vice second vice president Which leads to the presidency of the floor association of counties if so elected and the clerk would like an official public purpose determination for any expenditures related to that. There are some nominal expenditures and I'll let commissioner Cornell jump in and explain that. But they would like a public purpose determination. I think there's two nominal expenditures. One are thank you cards for those that I speak to that I've planned to call all the commissioners around the state and the second is we ordered some slate cards that basically discuss my candidacy. I think the cost of both of those are in the hundreds of dollars and so we would like we would like a public purpose. We would like this board to determine that there is a public purpose for this candidacy so that we can pay for this. Okay. Commissioner Prussi? Yeah, I guess I'm just I don't understand why this candidacy wouldn't be a wouldn't require fundraising the way any other candidacy does. Like I guess I just we we don't have a, we don't have publicly funded campaigns currently. I just don't understand, I guess I just don't understand like are there other costs that you're gonna have in the future for the campaigning? Like, you know, like I go to those events at FAC and there's people running and they've got like buttons and all kinds of stuff that they're doing in order to run their campaign. I guess I'm just not necessarily in favor of funding all of that with county tax dollars. So if we find this as a public purpose, would we get the opportunity to weigh in on other things that would be a public purpose? Yes, you caught the only two costs that I'm aware of of spending is the slate cards for the upcoming election December 5th. And then thank you, cards. So anything that would be above and beyond that would then come back to this board of public purpose. No, this is, we're asking if you declare this to be a public purpose. Right now that expense is $250, which is technically within my authority. The clerk is asking that you declare the actual candidacy. within my authority, the clerk is asking that you declare the actual thing to be a public purpose, not approve a specific, I suppose you could do it that way, but I've been saying like I, I guess I just, when I go to these elections, I see that they spend a lot of money on promotional materials for their own candidacy. And what I'm saying is I don't know that a lot of county taxpayers should be paying for anything that's like a campaign oriented something like other than like I like this late cards with information. I like thank you cards because it's communication to constituents that are related to the fact and I get that. So I get that's a total public purpose. But if you're talking about buying buttons or peanuts or You know other things that would be part of your campaigning. I think those are things that would need to be fundraised for the way that any other Madam chair if I could offer. Yeah, I had appreciate that Arx section communications director and I've been involved with FAC for 20 years County commissioners getting involved with FAC are doing a service to their constituents. County commissioners involved in FAC not only keep an eye on what's good for counties in general, but they keep an eye on what's good for their county. They keep an eye on legislative issues. And the more involved a county is, the better it is for the county involved. In talking with gender to call and having had experience with other commissioners that have run for office. Excuse me. I can tell you the expenses are nominal you know the little displays on a table information cards stickers the in total cost of this is about $250. It's normal. People do this all the time at FAC. They don't expect individuals to pay for it or fundraise like it's a political campaign. This is solely for the good of a Latchua County. Yeah, and even if we did spend another $200 on Reese's Peanut Butter Cups or whatever, I don't, you know. I don't intend to. But I mean if we did I see the fact that that if Ken is elected he would be in Tallahassee as a representation of a more liberal county in an environment that you know we need to foster communication in Tallahassee. And I think having someone from our county represented on fact in a leadership position where he would be interacting with the biggest leaders in our state and as well as leadership across the country, I think there's real value in that given. I don't argue that. And so that is not a public that his running and becoming a member of FAC is a public service. But so is all of us serving up here and the county doesn't pay for our campaign. So I'm just making sure that if there's a bigger campaign that happens and there's a lot more expensive, I just don't know what goes into a FAC campaign because I've only seen a little bit from the outside and so I was just asking if we're doing public purpose that we're doing public purpose for these items and incidentals and that it's not just generally speaking for campaign materials if they are going to be big but it sounds like they're not and I don't argue that his work here is going to be a public service for a large county it's definitely in service to us and in service to really to the state of Florida Because it would be bringing in my opinion a common sense approach to the work of fact I move we approve the amount that's been requested No, no, that's not it. We need to approve it as a public purpose. I'm moving a Prohibit is a public purpose second But you need to make a specific finding why it's a public purpose such as you know the fact that it supports his running for an office supporting leadership at the county level statewide. Mark said some things that could be included in finding a public purpose but you have to make a specific finding. So moved. That was beautiful. How about we move that we find the expenditures for Commissioner Cornell's campaign for the Florida Association of County Second Vice President of Public Purpose as he will be representing a lot to a county at the state level and providing input for a lot of county residents into state governance of our state association. Well you said except that is a course of course absolutely. Absolutely. Whoever can say it best because I would like to. I would like to. I would like to. I would like to. I would like to. I would like to. I'm just seconding that. Yeah. No, it doesn't matter. I just don't think that he's going to have any opposition if we can get him out there quick enough. I thank you, but I have been told I'm going to have not less than four others that are going to be running for this election. That's cool. So it's, yes. But, and I appreciate the clerk looking after our dollars. Absolutely. Yeah. Okay. Did you have anything to say? Madam Chair Todd Hutchison, Finance Director for the Clerk of the Court. One I just want to thank staff for being proactive and preemptive, making sure that we just have all the as-daudied and the tees crosses, the manager discussed. Also appreciate the attorneys comments to make sure that we do have that legislative finding just showing what the benefits going to crew back to Elatua County in these campaigning efforts. So I appreciate you taking up this item on short. Notice that our at our request. All right. Yes. Thank you and I do see the public purpose and I do appreciate you running Ken and thank you. You too. I'll bake pound cake or something we could give that out. Yeah, we'll all bring out cake. That'll be what you can't doubt. That would be really cute. Yeah. All right, all in favor of the motions. Oh, wait, do we have any? No, don't see other public comment. All in favor of the motion signify by saying, I, I, any opposed like sign? OK. Without some of those marketing, you know, the sauces and the so best of paper that pickles and the keep it low cost and simple. Yep, low cost and simple. So one other item that we had that I'd like to go and take care of is we got a letter from the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice. We need to have a county commissioner or design on the juvenile justice circuit advisory board. And they would attend quarterly meetings throughout the year. So yeah, me too. Either one of us, I think, would be happy to do it. I'll make all of us are committed to that. Okay. So the next meeting is November 8th. So we need to appoint a member and we need to add it to the board's committee list. And then, um, And you say you want to do it for Mary-Ella? I'm, I'm willing, any of these women who want to go as family, you know, you did not want to do it, correct? I do want to do it. I mean, we all want to do it. I think it's all I serve on the justice and I move chair. I'll I move chair. I'll. Okay. We motion a second. Is there any further discussion and we'll be rotating around shortly anyway. All in favor the motion signify by saying aye. Aye. Any post like sign. Thank you. I mean, I'll attend the meeting on November 8th and then we will be looking around redoing boards again with a new new chair. So, okay. And then I am been asked to attend the community consultation for the IRC. So this is the International Rescue Committee and the Greater Gainesville International Committee Refugee Resettlement thing that is happening through former Mayor Lauren Poe. And I attended the previous meeting as a representative of the county. I will not be able to attend the meeting on Thursday, September 26th, at 1030. And I would love to have someone else to be there. The rescheduled date, which is held remotely by Zoom, is Thursday to September 26th at 1030 AM. There? What county resources are being used for that? Very little, actually. That's why I want some. I can't go, but I think it would be useful for us to go because they're going to be talking about people. Now they're beginning to actually identify populations that are going to be resettled here. They're going to be talking about, they have a whole list. They're going to be talking about the placement updates. They're going to be talking about how they're going to be integrated, capacity, and challenges. And I feel like ultimately they're going to be placed in our county somewhere and us knowing where they are and what kind of challenges and opportunities and what resources group that's coming, 1030. On the 26th. It took 30 at the morning. And we are talking, is yeah I can go just tell me yeah and it is a very small group of refugees they're talking about less than 50 but it's you know it's still going to be an impact and we do have limited housing we have have limited resources. And so for me, every additional person that comes in is makes it harder for one more person. So I do, you know, well, it's going to be a Zoom meeting, Mary Helen. Oh, OK. I can do it. Thank you. No, this is one of the reasons I ran for Congress. The work that I did, I all of the district too, I organized in terms of immigration reform. I guess my concerns are, I guess if we're going to participate, if we're just being informed as to what's happening, that's one thing. If we're going to be participating where county resources are going to be required or asked, then that would need to come to the manager. They will be. Yeah. And that's why I think the mayor is attending. Yeah we've got the Elena Bustello for the Director of Refugee Services, the State Refugee Services program director David Draper, State Refugee, Health Coordinator Tammy Garrett, Gainesville Mayor Harvey Ward, City of Gainesville immigrant affairs manager John John, me was listed. Allotra County Language Access and Immigrant, liaison, Garcia Fernandez, yeah, Chief of Equity Inclusion and Community Engagement for Allotra County Public Schools. This is an invitation list. This isn't, I mean, I guess I'm not the manager. No it is not required but it is requested and I feel like we need to protect the county resources which is why we need to be there. While they may not being asked but we know that there will be an impact. And you send me that and or let me have that. And I think this information, this is an information that you can make. The more information we have, the more power we're going to be to get. But they do ask for. Relatively responding, instead of reactively responding. And they do, but they do ask for input. They ask for my input when I was there. And that was the input that I shared. And while I fully support helping refugees, I wanna do it thoughtfully with respect to the citizens of Elachro County, because we do have limited housing. And so there are requirements for the immigrants this program, they have to be self-sufficient within so many days of coming to Elachro County. So all these things have to be pre for your range before they get there. So is there a county representative that can report back to us as to what is discussed and what county resources may be required? Well, Rossia is going to be there. Well, yeah, but I think it's going to go into. I'll be there and take notes if it's just a Zoom. You know, I can take notes from. I'll be there and take notes if it's just a zoom, you know, I can take notes from them. Yeah, I mean, I reported on the last one, I don't know if you remember, but I appreciate the fact that they are inviting us to keep us in the loop on this. So, but since I couldn't attend, I really appreciate somebody else doing that because I think it's important. Maybe you can go to. No, I don't want to. I want to. No, I don't want to. I want to. But you want to hear. If the county resources, here's my only point. If county resources are being asked, I would like for the manager to be aware of that and let us know. Because as I understand it, this is a private nonprofit. Not doing bad work, not doing good work. I have no opinion on the work they're doing. But if they are bringing folks into the county that are going to require county resources there should be a process right. They're really is that my understanding is they're not asking for county resources but my point is this county resources will be affected because we have limited housing we have limited jobs so I have limited I imagine they're trying to see what resources are available. There's a lot of requirements that the state's anxiousness is this whole program and part of the state requirements are that they don't use resources in the community. I see. So yeah, I mean, to the, okay. So to the extent that the state, which we are subdivision of, has guidelines for us, if we can know what they are and what our role is, that's my only point. That's a good point. That's my only point. And if the state is, well, I mean, I don't know enough about other than that statement. Not for or against. But if we have a county representing going to gather information, then they should report back to us what they find. You did that. As opposed to where the county person is going to say we're here to support it. I have an opinion about that. I had not heard since the last meeting I went to so I had no idea where we were with that. Right. I've been in deep in the weeds in this for a long time. We'll get your perfect person to go, so thank you. Yeah, I probably am. So, okay, I had one more item that I wanted to talk about. I know you guys probably have commission comment as well, but I did attend the jail and have lunch. I saw a range of notes. You read my post, yes, and I am a little bit concerned about the representation of fresh food. I'm a lot concerned. I'm not asking for garages, but I'm not. No, absolutely. Not anything yet. Yeah, and so I don't know what we want to do with that, but I would encourage you all. It was actually a lovely experience. I fully enjoyed interacting with the trustees that I had lunch with. I learned a lot in my short half hour visit with them. The food was not great, but what I decided to eat was very edible, and I would encourage all of you since we do have the opportunity as county commissioners to go to the jail at any point in time to take advantage of the ability to do that. It was very useful to hear positive reactions from the folks about, for instance, the costs in the commissary. They felt were very reasonable, which I was glad to hear. But, you know, it was a lunch with trustees who are kind of the best of the best. So I just wanted to share that experience with you and share that it was positive experience, but I had real concerns about food. I also have heard from some folks that have worked in the jail in the past that while they do have calorie counts based on, for instance, a spoon of beans, that they're adding water as a way of making food go further and water doesn't have calories. So if you make soupier beans that has less calories, then it less soupy scoop of beans if that makes any sense. And so I was concerned about that. So I have questions about the fresh food aspect of the contract. I have questions about the calorie counts of the contract. And I have real complaints about the dinner at the, it's no longer three hots, it's only two hots. And that the, there was a lot of discussion about how gross the evening meal was, not just the fact that they're getting below me half the time and a huge amount of calories are coming from bread, but that the peanut butter that they serve is, they said disgusting. And I don't know how disgusting it is because I didn't try it, but I don't know if it's rancid or just not sweetened or what, but they did not. I'm sure I'm going to have to excuse myself. I didn't, I had a Zoom setup that I did. Okay, that's fine, but I did want to just share all of that with you guys. I hear that. What's that? I haven't talked to the sheriff yet. Okay. I think we should all have that up. I commend you for going. Yeah, I remember a couple years ago, I recommended we tore the jail. And you took that to the kind of next level. So you stayed at the jail, which I commend you for doing. Talk to the sheriff. I was under a few times on an announcement. Yeah, it's good. It's good. Yeah, so but I think we need to stay on top of that. And I did think it was interesting that I got meet loaf and they had never had that before on the day they knew I was going to say it. And it was wrong. And it was wrong. Anyway, I guess I would say that they are coming back to do a report for us. I asked that they come back and address some of those issues in the future. And so hopefully when they come back we can have some of that dialogue. And I'm with you. I think that, you know, and we as a board unanimously passed a good food purchasing program for the jail and they adopted it and they did their audit. We had that presentation to us. It was very clear that there's not a lot of fresh food. There's that we have a local tons of local farms and local economy we're trying to build. They could be buying from those local farms. They're not. So I think we have an opportunity. It's our our dollars being spent. The challenge is that the budget that we have I think for those meals is pretty small. I don't know what it is per inmate per day but I would venture to guess it's probably about a dollar per meal per day per inmate that they're spending on food. Give or take. I mean, a school district is 125 a meal per day per student for school lunch. So I wouldn't imagine we're probably someone in the same neighborhood. So. So. So. So. So. So. So. So. So. So. So because we I thought we did increase the we amount we were spending on food with the last contract May have but anyway some conversation for when they come back But yeah, if we could get some of the backup material that gets in the interms We make sure we're prepared with the contract and doing those things that would be great Yeah, okay any any other Commission comment I just jumped in and did mine first, but I have Three three things one in there both all three or just quick asks. One is there was the Union of Sportsmen. It's agreed to put in a dock at the end of, oh yeah, yeah. Nounans at the Nounans Lake, you mentioned it a long time ago at the end of the University Avenue where it dead ends into Nounans Lake. I know they're working towards that. I know that our staff were going to coordinate with them to some extent. I just was wondering if we could get an update on that project. Some future date, email is fine. Second is Farm 2. I mentioned this to you all. It's the reimbursement for meals, institutional meals. So that could be jail for fresh produce. That could be school districts, that could be hospitals, any public institution that's serving meals. Potentially, if this passes, we'll get reimbursement up to 20 cents per meal for using local farm food. We voted before to have our lobbyists help work on this in Tallahassee, and so I just wanted to give you all the latest materials So I have those for you all and for the manager and clerk They are so you guys have those and I'm sure those will get updated You know how legislation goes things get edited on the regular, but those are the latest information and I am I have agreed to serve on the committee that's going to be helping to them on some of the guidance in terms of the development of how the policy gets implemented should it get passed. And then last but not least, I did have a question. I know we had in the past a landlord mitigation fund. And I remember Claudia telling us that that mitigation fund wasn't being very well utilized. And I think that some of that may be because landlords either like didn't really know about it or the people who are doing placements for housing didn't really know we had that available. And so I was hoping we could at a future date get some information from community support services about our mitigation, landlord mitigation fund usage and have a conversation about recommendations for how we could revamp that program or support that program being better advertised and utilized in the future. Because when I talk to landlords, I've been having more conversations with landlords and the housing authorities and the housing placement provider for grace and all of them have indicated to me that a mitigation fund would be really helpful. How do we put money into the landlord mitigation fund? It's just money that sets aside so that if a landlord takes in a tenant that's a, say, an unhoused person who has mental health challenges and then they destroy the apartment, they can apply for mitigation funds to restore that apartment to its original condition. Oh, and we put aside what $100,000? We put aside money and I don't think anyone's been really using it, but I think that I've had now multiple people say to me If we had one of those it would be really and I'm like wait a minute We do have one so I just want to get an update on how much has been utilized and then like how it's easy What we could do to From better promoted and kind of get it more Well-known like maybe it's going to the Reelaltors Association or maybe it's talking to our housing authorities, but I do feel like we have it and it's not being used. Yeah, I know of landlord that rendered to a foster child exiting the system and she basically destroyed the apartment. She goes, I'm never renting to another foster child again. And if she had access to that mitigation fund, she may have felt differently. And it was there. That's the thing. I think that I just don't know how people access it. I don't know what the application process is for it. I don't know how we're promoting it. So I'm just asking for staff to bring forward and update on the mitigation funds sometime in the next not too distant future. That's it. That's awesome. Do you have anything Mary Helen? Up, she's gone. All right, can I think? Good. All right. All right, we'll call this meeting adjourned until 5-0-1. Thank you.