We've got one minute if you folks could grab a seat, one minute. We're here. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Charlotte County Board of County Commissioners and Lee County Board of County Commissioners. joint meeting it's now 2 o'clock. If we can have roll call we'll start from my right. Candorities Charlotte County. My g Greenwell, Lee County. Chris Constance, Charlotte County District 2. Brian Hammond, Lee County. Joe Tassayo, Charlotte County. Cecil Pettigrass, Lee County. Bill Truett, Charlotte County. David Malica, Lee County. OK, if we'll please rise for the pledge. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God in the middle of liberty and justice for all. Okay, we had some late changes to the agenda. Mr. Flores. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thanks commissioners. Just change number one and that is to, we added the attachments and revised some of the logos just to sync up and that was for items 2B, 2C and 2D and under 2B we updated slide 6 and 9. Okay. I'm going to move the changes. Second. We have motion a second to move the changes. Is there any further discussion? Any opposition to the motion passes unanimously. And Mr. Flores, why don't we do introductions at your table and then to the attorneys table as well? We'll start with your table. Okay. I'm Hector Flores, County Administrator for Charlotte County. Thank you. Good afternoon, Dave Harner, County Manager for Lee County. Jeanette Nolton, County Attorney for Charlotte County and Mr. Chairman, if I may. I just wanted to remind you that under the new statutory requirements or amendments, one of the things that authorizes this, the statute that authorizes this joint meeting also prohibits any of us from taking action at the meeting. Okay, thank you. Good afternoon, I'm Richard Westley, Lee County attorney. Thank you. And while it's not on the agenda, I would just like to offer some opening remarks. I would like to thank Lee County and all your representatives and staff members for coming up here to Charlotte County. I want to welcome you to the Charlotte County event center. I don't know if you had any comments as well Mr. Flores you'd like to make? Just to add quickly just this is a great opportunity commissioners just so you know our teams Dave and I we've spoken spoken usually once a month in gray skies or in tough times even more almost daily so I appreciate his communication and just his support and ideas we've exchanged. Our staffs work well and there's usually not many items that usually rise to our level others and good touch and based on the collaboration that we do. Appreciate that. Yeah, would the Lee County Administrator like to have any comments? Thank you commissioners. I'd like to say the same thing. Hector and his team are a great group of people. We have a great relationship. Regardless if it was blue skies or gray skies, we worked very well together and we truly appreciate the partnership. Thank you very much. Okay, we're going to move on to public agenda items only. Anybody wishing to address the board during this portion of the meeting must fill out a card, state their name for the record, and state which agenda items or item will be addressed. Remark shall be limited to three minutes, and shall be addressed to the commission as a body and not to individual members. There will not be any discussion. And I have some cards here. The first one is Marsha Ellis regarding to A, which is water quality. Good morning commission or good afternoon, rather commissioners. It's Marsha Ellis for the record. So I'm going to apologize a little bit on my notation of 2A. It I kind of grouped all of those items together. It's actually I'm speaking now about the solid waste item. So I have been for. Excuse me, ma'am I learned that a second incinerator was under consideration for north of the clout, Cluesa Hatchee River, back last November, November 5th. It was named in a, after the Board of County Commissioners had heard all their items, The County manager had requested permission to speak with Charlotte County about pursuing discussion regarding the incinerator near or at the Zimmel Road landfill. So I have had concern for an additional incinerator moving into the area and had been waiting for several months to learn about where that location might be under consideration. My concern is that solid waste is not, it loses its incentives towards waste reduction when we talk about building an incinerator. Incinerators are costing when we look over at Miami-Dade that recently had the Duralin incinerator burned to the ground, a 1.5 billion investment. Huge investment. Municipalities, counties have literally gone financially belly up in situations like this. And it takes away that incentive towards waste reduction and putting in zero waste principles that are much more responsible way to manage waste. I've also seen a lot of over development take place, especially in that burnt store corridor. And I think it took quite a bit of digging into the Charlotte County GIS to determine exactly how close development is getting to that Charlotte County landfill and the exponential explosion of growth of people that could be exposed to the toxins that are emitted into the environment from a title five that is a stationary source of air pollution federal permit. And I just want to make sure that the community, the Burt store community, the surrounding community, and Lee and Charlotte County, the existing residents, that we all have the opportunity to get in front of this and defend our community and defend our environment. So I just want to make my position clear. Thank you for your comments, ma'am. Next we have Annette Warren regarding Vincent Avenue. Please state your name when you get to the mic and where you're from. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the bathroom. I'm going to go to the mic and where you're from. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay Store Road. And we're looking at another five years for that extension to be started. It's a little bit ridiculous. And actually's negligent and that's supposed to be a evacuation route for Cape Coral. We don't have very many evacuation routes. So I am strongly urging you guys to move up that timeline for the rest of the extension for Bernstor Road just out of safety. There were three deaths within three weeks along that portion of Bernstor Road. It's just getting worse. There's accidents every week. It's very dangerous. Please do something about this on a quicker timeline. Thank you. Thank you for your comments, ma'am. Rob Hansick regarding Vincent Avenue. Good afternoon commissioners. I am Robert Hansick. I have resided at 24189 San Lucas Lane, Punta Gorda, Florida in Bernstor lakes for over 21 years. I have been from time to time on the Bernstor lakes property association board and currently vice president. An option not considered in the presentation or discussion which we haven seen yet, is ownership of Vincent entirely and its paving by Charlotte County. However, this would come with a condition. The gate at McCombie Key Road, a construction gate, and especially Cape Coral Boulevard, at Vincent would be closed. Cape Coral Boulevard at Vincent directly dumps in the Cape Horn Boulevard in Bernstor lakes, which is burdened with marine traffic accessing Bernstor road via Cape Horn Boulevard and Peppercourne, which are two of our residential streets. Irrespective of the new design of Vincent and Bernstorre Road, intersection, the burden of the Marina traffic through Bernstorre Lakes will dramatically increase onto the residential streets, not designed for through traffic. that access through Bernstor lakes will be more convenient and quicker rather than through the new intersection at Vincent and Bernstor road, irrespective of the design, even the one that they have proposed. Also, you'll see one of the recommendations later that makes no sense or benefit to paid half of Vincent. Lee County residents would still enjoy access without any financial commitment. If a decision is made not to pay Vincent, the residents of Bernstorlaix and particularly those on the north side of Vincent must be refunded their MSBU Edvallarm tax for this project element. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Next we have Rita Kenton plow. I think I've got that wrong regarding Boke grand to be That's close. It's Kittenplon, Port Charlotte. I think we all know what the proposed parking ordinance for Boka Grand is really about. Some well-heeled, politically well-connected residents of the island are trying to limit access to their beach paradise by the Hoi Ploy, a sophisticated way of describing the wrong kind of people. Some have tried to do that by planting large trees and setting out huge pots of plants in the easement between the sidewalk edge and the street to discourage parking, which is it's intended for parking. It didn't work so well, so they got the Lee County Commission to draft an unreasonable parking ordinance that will serve not only to limit the number of people having access to the beaches but will be the death knell for businesses and bokeh grand because it will limit traffic. Limit the available spaces for parking, you limit the number of people who visit, you limit the people. You limit the number of people shopping in town or participating in charity and work church activities. No more pancake breakfast, silent options, trunk shows, farmers market or archo. The island is still recovering from hurricanes and it's the influx of tourists that will continue to pour money into your community each year to help you rebuild. The ordinance moved along without an economic impact study or public hearings. They're serious constitutional issues being raised by this ordinance, not the least of which applies to the church's on Gilchrist. The attorney's arguing for the implementation will say the economic impact study requirement is overridden by community safety concerns. Well, I'd like to know the dates and places where emergency vehicles were kept from their destination due to parking on the side streets. Blocking roads, driveways and fire hydrants are parking in non-designated spots. Our law enforcement issues that happen in many high traffic areas that don't result in severe restrictions or denial of access. Can this board honestly tell me that the people who score these fewer parking spaces won't be the same ones who urinated on people's property before? No, you can't. That's why this is a scam. the violations. Pun punish the violators. Don't deny access to the general public. On side streets, limit parking to one side only. And why do public hearings? Is this a done deal? And the commission's just going through the motions to appease certain island residents? Gensperilla Island is not a private island, even though there are those who would love to make it so. Roads are maintained by taxpayer dollars and are public roads. There are state parks on the island and those who park there do spread out beyond the park's borders to other parts of the beach. And they can do this, because the beach doesn't belong solely to the homes who front those beaches. So you're punishing the masses to appease a select few. A few who probably donate to your campaigns. Thank you, ma'am. Dr. Mary Ellen Kiss regarding to A, to C and toD. Good afternoon commissioners. I think I do know most all of you from Charlottesville. Sorry, Paul's your time. And where you're from, ma'am. Oh, sorry. Dr. Mary Ellen Kiss, Bernstere Corridor Coalition, and resident of Bernstere Lakes. The Bernstere Corridor Coalition does appreciate the efforts by the leadership of Charlottes and Lee counties to encourage engage in dialogue on issues of mutual concern to both counties, especially those issues that affect South Charlotte and North Lee counties, including Northwest Cape Coral. We are particularly concerned about the impact of new development, current and future on changes to the watershed and our water quality. The established communities that border Charlotte Harbor on the west side of Berthorne Road in both Charlotte and Lee counties are particularly at risk, including Berthorne Arena, Berthorne Lakes, pirate harbor heritage landing, and three communities located on the east side, bordering Berthorne and Zemmell Roads, Berthorne Colony, Berthorne Village and Woodland Estates. The Charlotte Harbor Environmental Center, the Charlotte Harbor Preserve State Park, Babcock Web, Wildlife Management Area, the Babcock Yuka, Tens Preserve, or also impacted. We believe that increased oversight of the areas under development and adoption of policies to manage the approved growth are critical to the water quality of Charlotte, Arbor, and distributaries. It also includes ensuring that our water treatment and reclamation facility has the capacity to sustain a approved growth without concerns about waste contamination. A second area of concern is the disposition of solid waste. We recently became aware of a proposal to build an incinerator near or on the existing landfill property. The coalition is concerned about the negative impact this would have on our air and water quality and general adverse effects on wildlife and the quality of life of residents in the areas referenced above. A third issue is the disposition of upkeep maintenance of the Lee County side of Vincent Avenue. Currently this road is not accepted by Lee County for maintenance and upkeep and is considered a private road. The coalition contends that Vincent Avenue, in fact, supports traffic generated by the general public who use the golf and country club and the marina's facilities and amenities. Contractors also generate significant commercial traffic. We strongly urge the boards of county commissioners to resolve this longstanding ownership conflict today if allowed. Thank you. Thank you for your comments, ma'am. And also let the record show commissioner Stephen our thoages present. Next we have Dwayne Zobrist regarding Bokeh Grand. Just let us know if you're from Lear Charlotte County. Both. So my name is Dwayne Zobrist. I live in Charlotte County and I have a business in Lear County. So, and I own property in both. I'm actually here representing both my own business, as well as the Book of Grand Merchants Association. I want to share first our concern about the lack of coordination that's happened in this parking proposal that's coming, this parking ordinance. Because of the lack of business impact estimator, we went ahead and commissioned our own. A study of five beach communities who have implemented similar plans, actually the exact plan in Santa Bell, have experienced anywhere from an 18 to 25% decrease in sales tax revenue. If we have an 18 to 25% decrease in sales tax revenue, we can assume that's an 18 to 25% decrease in sales, a 18 to 25% decrease in bridge tolls. And the number goes on, 18 to 25% decrease in sales tax. We've seen this playbook and we saw this playbook. As I said in Santa Bell, Santa Bell, which was one of the primary models that I took when I created this case study that I'm happy to share with anybody. They implement a 30% reduction in available public parking spaces. They put an expansion of resonant parking designations. They increase enforcement of parking time limits and they heightened parking citation penalties. All sounds real familiar to us being proposed. What that led to is at a time post-COVID in 22 when everybody else's volume was going up, Santa Bell's dropped. Santa Bell's sales tax revenue dropped 19%. In the Santa Bell kept the chamber, they talk about the lack of foot traffic. I mean, this is serious stuff that we're talking about. 18 to 25% closes businesses. The operational costs come around if you have to shuttle people. We have proposed some balance solutions. If this is a seasonal problem, let's have a seasonal solution. Let's look at February and March. If it lets increase parking by increasing access to Wheeler Park. We acknowledge there's issues with the Beat Street access parking. Once again, instead of reducing parking, let's go ahead and figure out how we can increase enforcement along those Beat Street. There's also ways to increase the paid parking structure, if that's what it is. There's ways for merchants to be able to give out validations. Two hours isn't enough. Two out, Boko Grans worth more than two hours. And what we're being given is really a death wish for those merchants who I'm here representing. So with that said, once again, Dwayne Zobris, thank you for your time. Thank you, sir. Rebecca Cleveland regarding B'm speaking on the parking in Boga Grand and I'm from Charlotte County. I've been a business owner in Boga Grand for two years. However, my business has been on islands since 1982. Parking has been an upcoming issue throughout the entirety of mine and my family's time here. It hasn't been fixed because we've made do knowing what parking tariffs will do to the island and its businesses. As a Charlotte County resident, I would not have a guaranteed parking spot. I would struggle to find parking and need to close my shop every two hours to assure I can be open a full day. As a renter, I also pay taxes on this island, but I can't park here. I'm sure this has been said already, but two hours is not enough time for our visitors to go to the beach, out to lunch, and shop the tap. It's not enough time for the workers that are fixing your homes from hurricane damage. Two hours will result in continuous traffic among the island as people scurry to move their car and find a new spot, and new arrivals drive around the whole island to find one. The median on Gilcrest is not belong to the homeowners nor the church. Why has it become such an issue for visitors? scurry to move their car and find a new spot, and new arrivals drive around the whole island to find one. The median on Gilcrust is not belong to the homeowners nor the church. Why has it become such an issue for visitors, churchgoers to park there? Where's the alternative parking area for our members of the church on days such as Christmas that don't always fall on a Sunday? Imagine your sweet little grandma having to walk to church because her parking has been limited. Why do the residents want to limit non-residents from enjoying such a special place? Frankly, it's greedy. We. church because her parking has been limited. Why do the residents want to limit land on residents from enjoying such a special place? Frankly it's greedy. We as a town are so lucky to be back up and running as quickly as we have. The same is not to be said of our neighboring beaches and beach towns. This leaves vacationers to go where? Possibly Voka Grand, adding more business to our town. This is not a privately owned island. From what I've heard, it seems as if some are trying to make it just that. The business on this island do not solely survive off its winter residence. All the business on this island do not solely rely on the residents to survive, some of which are only here for weeks at a time. We thrive off those that come here as a destination. Those that have been visiting for generations. Those that find us by accident fall in love with the town's glory and in turn, by souvenirs, eat at our restaurants, tell their friends, and build more business for the town. Growing up in a seasonal island in Maine has taught me the importance of not only showing some respect to our visitors but having some patience with them as well. Without the snowbirds and the vacationers, much of our business would be lost. However, we are no longer just seasonal. We operate year round. A shuttle bus is not the answer, as our workers all have different schedules, and there's nowhere to park at the head of the island. It may be frustrating that half of Park Aves parking spots are taken by the people that work the shops and restaurants. What other option do they have? There was a time when we could park up by the railroad, now we no longer can. To our parking is not a solution to the problem at hand, taking away what little parking we already have is not the solution. To those that don't think that this will have a negative impact on them, keep that. can. To our parking is not a solution to the problem at hand, taking away what little parking we already have is not the solution. To those that don't think that this will have a negative impact on them, keep that in mind as you run your errands with ease for the time being. As you know, when we had a post office, that alone could take 30 minutes of precious parking time. Taking away what little spots we have left will make get more of a madhouse on park gav. Respectfully, you may own a home here in Boka, but you may not see the worker bees that keep this town running and bustling as smoothly as it does. Please don't- left will make it more of a madhouse on park. Respectfully, you may own a home here in Boka, but you may not see the worker bees that keep this town running and bustling as smoothly as it does. Please don't restrict us from what we've worked so hard to achieve. Being a single mom, losing business because people didn't have the time. Two times up. Thank you. Thank you. Gail Cleveland, B am the former owner of Smart Studio Art Gallery on Park Avenue in Bokeh Grant. My artist, when he established the gallery in 1982, my daughter, Rebecca, who you just heard from, is runs it now. I'm very familiar with the parking issues that have plagued our beautiful town for many years. Our gallery does not have a parking lot, we and our customers rely on street parking. We offer custom framing and sell large-scale art. Our customers need to be able to park close by to load and unload. Business owners and their workers, lunch crowds and beach goers, bike riders and shoppers are all competing for the same few spaces available. One of the unique things about Boka is the four churches along Gilcrust. Each one of these churches adds richness and vibrance to the town. Different groups utilize the church building's daily. These churches are a vital part of our community. As our community and outlining communities grow, the need for more parking also grows. More people will want to come to town for their AA meetings at one church, or their charity events at another. The need for parking does not fall on Sunday alone. The need for parking is every day. This issue seems to come up every few years. I remember my mother telling me about a new beach fronter illegally planting prickly cactuses, blocking the public right away back in the 1980s. About 10 years ago, I was interviewed about this exact topic by the Boca Beacon. I was quoted in the paper saying that if you don't want to go to church, that's one thing, but restricting others is an entirely different thing. Many of the people who utilize the churches are older and summer-informed. They need to be able to park close by. The answer to the issue at that time was to plant rows and rows of coconut plums along Gilcrest to discourage parking. Did you know that on an average 150 people die every year from coconuts falling on their heads? That's not just Florida, that's worldwide. I've noticed that the Gilcrest medium is often filled with workers trucks servicing the beach fronters homes I haven't heard any complaints about that though. It appears off islanders are welcome only if we were doing doing some affluent persons bidding Main is my home state. I love it there many people go there to vacation love it to People from all over have bought homes in Maine because they love it But oftentimes they try to change it to make it more like where they came from, ruining the charm and the process. Thank you. Thank you, ma'am. Van Hubbard to a water quality. I'm going to go to the next floor. I'm going to go to the next floor. The next floor. The next floor. The next floor. My name is Van Hubbard. I live in Charlotte County and I fish in both Charlotte and Lee counties. I've been a fisherman since I was discharged from the Navy in the early 70s. I came down to Bocogran, moved down here in 81. So I've got 45 years experience down here, and I have a clue as to what I'm talking about. One of the things we need to keep in mind for Lee County is our Bocogran guide docs there at the guest grill at end. I want to talk to you about water quality. I'm sharing my knowledge to help you understand. First, thank you for listening to us. I forgot to say that, and that's important. We appreciate that. I'm sharing my knowledge to help you understand how water quality and fishing are at risk. Sure, some of the President Day fishermen think it's great now, but they have no idea how much it's degraded. Our water quality is the big problem loss of seagrass contributes to this. Algae is a big problem. It feeds nutrients pumped into our waters from... Our water quality is the big problem and loss of seagrass contributes to this. Algae is a big problem. It feeds nutrients pumped into our waters from septic tanks and minimum treated sewage. We need advanced waste water treatment. No nutrients or prescription drugs are removed under the current systems. LG will allow seagrass to receive sunlight and continue to replenish. Growth without advanced wastewater treatment will only feed our problems. Roadrunoff boatwake to turbidity just add to the problems. Explosive growth is killing our quality of life. You can ignore these problems, but our waters will pass the tipping point soon, and our waters are critical to our economy, and they are impaired now. Please just look at other places that ignored these problems until their waters died. The Chesterpeake Bay is the best example. It takes time and research, take the time to research how much, time, money, and billions of dollars they've spent attempting to revive their waters. The only thing more expensive than saving our waters is attempting to clean them up. Today's Daily Sun newspaper, Front Page article about Irma's nutrition, nitrogen, pollution input and 17 points out these problems. Please take the time to look it up and read it. And note we've had several, about a half a dozen major hurricane scents. Our waters are almost way to seagrass and algae is covering any attempt to grow back. We're losing manatees because of it and the National Oceanic Administration says that 65% of U.S. estuaries in coastal waters are experiencing excess nitrogen and it's caused by human activity. Thank you. We depend on fishing, boating, and tourism to support our economy. Can we afford to watch it crash and lose this income? Plus our property tax base. Thank you all very much. Thank you. And I'm available anytime to work with you to try to address any of this for either count. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Thank you for your comments. Terrorist gene regarding water quality. And this is my final card. Anybody else from the public wishing to speak? Please fill out a card. You'll have an opportunity. Good afternoon. Tara Jenner from Lee County. I think we can all agree that water quality is something that we think is a very important thing here in Lee County. I have an all social health county. In fact, all of Florida. I have been in contact with a number of professional engineers and they've brought something to my attention that I would like to also share with you all as well as the public. Last summer, HB7053 and SB7040 were adopted. These rules will be fully implemented in December of 2025 and will require new development along the counties of Southwest Florida to meet a 95% nutrient reduction standard and that includes being less than pre-development pristine land nutrient loads in many cases. The goal is to keep nitrogen and phosphorus out of our waterways and obviously that is a goal that we. But the implementation comes with a staggering cost between 35,000 and 150,000 per acre. These costs will hit local governments, private builders, school districts, taxpayers, very hard. It will damage the local and state economy, and it seems that Southwest Florida counties will be particularly hard hit by these regulations and yet these investments will do little to solve the real source of the Gulf nutrient crisis. Nearly 80% of the nutrient pollution enters the Gulf from states north of us flowing down from the Mississippi River. Florida's share is minor by comparison and unlike Florida those states are not going to be held to the same standards. They don't have to retrofit systems, invest in expensive treatment or comply with performance-based nutrient removal. So we have to ask, is this right or is it effective for Florida to shoulder the cost of the entire watershed when the main contributors are not required to share their burden? The answer is no. Our citizens should not be punished for doing the right thing, while others are released from any obligation. We need to push very coordinated, basin-wide nutrient reduction strategy. Otherwise, this environmental policy is done in a vacuum, and will have no real return on investment for the people of Florida, both financially as well as environmentally. The new law should not go into effect in December, so I'm asking each of you individually, as well as your individual board of county commissioners, and all the individuals in Lee County and Charlotte County, to contact your state legislators to see what we can do about repealing this particular law that will be going in effect in December. Contact the governor as well. This is an ask that I'm doing because the cost-benefit analysis is not there and we are going to be taking the brunt of it and it will impact our economy especially in Lee and Charlotte the highest because we are on the waterways and I ask each of you to also look into something I'm delving into and that's who makes the benefit and the profit of the credits that will need to be purchased by individuals who will not be building where there's enough land. Thank you. Thank you, ma'am, for your comments. Okay. I, although the parking on Boca Grande wasn't specific on the agenda, I offered a little latitude there in the name of free speech. It was more towards coordination efforts on Boko Grand. I just wanted to make that point. So we're going to move on. That was my final card to agenda item 2A water quality. I'm commissioners for the record, Brandon Moody, water quality and resiliency management Charlotte County and I'm joined by Roland Adelini who is the director of natural resources for Lee County. And as you have just heard, when we talk about economy and quality of life down here, and variably, water quality gets into the conversation. And so we were asked to kick off this afternoon's conversations with the discussion of our county's water quality programs, how they're organized, how we manage them, where our focuses are, and where we have common ground and both our concerns and activities, as well as opportunities for us to work together and learn from one another. So starting with Shirley County, our water quality activities are divided amongst multiple departments, whether that's in some cases the obvious like utilities, obviously managing wastewater and drinking water. They also manage our environmental laboratory, public works, of course the manage storm water, but they also handle arch appliance with base management action plans and total maximum daily load requirements. They fund our ambient monitoring program. Outreach and education is handled by a number of different departments, but community services does quite a bit with the public in terms of educating them on our water resources and habitats. And community development handles a lot of our code compliance as well as floodplain management. Now a few years ago, my position as Water Quality Manager was created by the commissioners. And my role is basically to take all of these different activities that these different departments are doing and find common strengths, common needs, and ways that we can better work together with both internally and our external partners to advance water protection. It also, I was also tasked with creating a data-driven process for assessing the health of our waters through the implementation of a monitoring program and water quality assessment dashboard and development of something that we're calling the OneShall that OneWater program and OneShall that OneWater plan, which is a suite of activities that both complement the work that our different departments are doing, as well as building upon and creating new initiatives to drive our protection schemes forward. Great, thank you, Brandon. A little bit about Lee County's Water Quality Program. We've been in the, I guess the water quality business for a long time, our natural research department as well as other departments, Lee County, or heavily involved with it. I would say the driving force for us was the Florida Department of Environmental Protection's impaired waters program as well as a TMDL, the total maximum daily load as well as the base and management action plan, a B-map. Primarily, what driving that is our water quality data. The county's had a real robust water quality sampling system. We've been collecting monthly samples for several, many years actually in most of our waterways, water courses. And like many waterways in Florida, it's impaired for something. Nucyans primarily bacteria in some cases. So that has been a drive for our program as well as episodic events. We've had fish kills over past and time. We've had red drift algae. We've had blue green algae. We had red tide. Huge releases from Lake Okeechobee. Those all drive in public Al Cry and a drive for our department as well as the board of push for these water quality initiatives. More recently we've had the, well, not recent, the Cluesadji River watershed, the Estuary portion, had its TMDL developed back in 2009. That in turn turned to a Basin Remanagement Action Plan in 2012. What that basically does is establish the stakeholders in the basin, Lee County being one, the cities, water control districts, CDDs. They all have a role to play to show reduction and load reduction and low pollutant load. In this case for Clusa Hatch, he was total nitrogen. And so the P-Map has been issued in 2012. It's gone through several iterations. There's a new draft out now. We're reviewing it. Larger, it's actually refocusing a greater emphasis on agriculture impacts as well as wastewater impacts, but still is a major stormwater effort for us. Giving an idea of the load reductions that were required. Initially, they required Lee County to remove 150,000 pounds of total nitrogen per year through several iterations, through new modeling down to 65 65,000 and to date we've removed over 123,000 pounds of total nitrogen per year and that's through different programs projects and Initiative Lee counties has endeavored in So a little bit about the programs have involved with water resources there That's our surface water and groundwater department. They build the projects, the cap improvement projects, build filler marshes, retention, detention facilities, flowway restoration, restoration of properties. They are the driving force in most of the projects we've done for water quality to use nitrogen in most of our basins. They also have a groundwater program. We have a well-filled protection ordinance that makes sure that proper land uses are protecting our public water supply and the major well fields. Also, moving on to the water quality and policy section, that's the group that manages their BMAP, the TMDL. There's a lot of reporting that goes to DEP on what we've accomplished, the milestones we've met. Also they initiate the public education and program to getting the message out to our citizens as well. They also are involved with the, they've created a, what they call a story map, an RGIS map where you can go on our website and see graphically areas of concern in the county, the causes of pollution, what Lee County's doing, and there's a map showing you can pull a detailed individual projects, and then also a description of what the other agencies are doing as well as a portion that shows citizens what they can do to help with water quality. Moving on environmental laboratory, that's very important to us. They're knee-lack-certified lab. They test not only the surface water we do, but also the utilities department gets their water sample from that group as well as we have walking customers. Environmental compliance, we do the review as well as larger community projects like Babcock, for instance, the larger rezoning, the comp plan amendment type of projects. DCD takes care of the individual ones, to make sure they're meeting south water, water management district, water quality criteria. But we look at some of the larger projects. The water policy group also involved with the, I'm sorry, the environmental compliance also has a pollution prevention program where they go to businesses and instruct in the proper handling of hazards, waste and waste to get them out of our stream because it's a lot cheaper to handle it at the source than cleaning up once it's all on out into our water bodies. And of course marine services, that's the end end all. That's where all the watershed goes, that's where all the water eventually, you know, we have one-have healthy and clean beaches. We take care of our beach nourishment and management planning as well as living shorelines and artificial reefs and derelict vessel removals. This is all part of the whole picture of water quality and what the watershed has impacts. So just a couple of the programs, just a little highlight some of the upper upper left there is our conservation 2020 program. It's inception in 1996. To date, they've purchased over 30,000 acres of land. It's not all preserved land. And some of it is actually land that can use restoration. They've been great properties for opportunities for water quality treatment. Some of them we've utilized to build water facility and water quality projects. So that's been a very successful program. The photograph below that, that's the Boma testing facility. We share our good working relationship with the South Florida Water Management District. Back in 2007, we cost shared with the district as well as DEP to purchase 2,000 acres in Glades County where it just straddles the south side of the Cluesa Hatchiet or Tonal Lock. And what they're doing there is testing for total nitrogen reduction. So because the problem with us, most of the science has been phosphorus removal for the everglades. This is an opportunity to determine which activities, what types of techniques and technologies you can use for total nitrogen reduction. They start out with using these mesucasms, which are basically large tanks, using different techniques, different types of vegetation, some merge, emerge to define which areas or what techniques would remove the nitrogen the most efficiently. They now upscale it to this testing facility and ultimately they'll build a project in that full 2000 acres. Talked a little bit about our public education program. We just kicked off this one in the middle there, the Nome, no matter what. We've had a fertilizer ordinance since 2007. While back ago we had the fertilizer spreaders and before that the Green Monster. We've been getting this guy on the TV commercials, billboards. We've got a big cut out of him. We take two conventions. With Aghix Bowies there as well as the Mighty Muscles game. So we try to get the message out. Also not only fertilizer, but also we can get out information or pet waste ordinance because that is also a cause of bacteria in our waterways as well as nutrients. The photograph there, the project, this is talked about land and purchase unique properties. This was an old dairy farm or dairy area, heart's dairy. Uniqueness is as sandwiched between two older mobile home parks. And so they were built, you know, probably late 50s or early 60s without any water quality treatment. And here's an opportunity where we're able to pull that water into this series of wetlands and lakes we created, then send it back out to Powell Creek. And so you'll find those type of opportunities. Like lastly, I'd like to say is having the water quality is very important because that will determine where the problems are. Not only trends, where where we're going, where we've been, but also defining the hotspots in your community to see, hey, this is a good place for a project. So if that would like to turn it back over to Brandon. So, to kind of tie this all together, there are a number of parallels between leads, counties, focuses, and activities in Charlotte counties. The primary difference, though, being that lead counties is in many ways a bit more mature. In some cases, by necessity, there's a lot more regulatory action that were imposed upon lead county mandatory monitoring as part of the stormwater system that Charlotte County historically had not had. A lot of the requirements for water quality improvement implemented through or induced through TNVLs and the base of management action plans with the Cluesa Hatchee B maps that Charlotte County did not necessarily have to implement at least nowhere on the same scale as Lee County. And so there's opportunities here for us to kind of take a look at the similar projects and issues that we have here in Charlotte County and kind of glean from Lee what they have seen that has worked, what hasn't, pitfalls, and that sort of thing. And we'll get a little bit more than that in a minute to specifics. But that's really kind of the big difference, where I think we're driving in Charlotte County is where Lee County kind of is now, and having these comprehensive suite of initiatives and to mature monitoring assessment system. We're well on our way to that, but given that our Ambitment Monitoring program is about three years old, we're still kind of in early days of that. We also have a lot of shared hurdles. None more so than the legacies that we inhabit from what was allowed and decided years and years before we became into positions of authority and decision-making here For Charlotte County, one that looms very large is of course the large sale of lots and plating and sales booms back in the 1950s, 60s and 70s. Lee County is a stranger to this. Obviously I believe Lee Huyakers is one such example. For Charlotte County there are large swaths of our area that were completely altered both in terms of landscape and hydrology by the mass plating and sales of these lands. This for example is the entirety of what we call mid county just a little bit west of where we're sitting now and in very short order we went from a fairly open area that was a little bit altered with maybe some agriculture fields, but also mostly untouched marshlands, and to a very heavily highly managed system with a complicated network of canals. This has been compounded by the fact that because these were platted out back in the 1950s and 60s, these are single-family dwellings that are not beholden to the stormwater raw requirements in the 1980s, much less the ones that were recently adopted that one of the citizens mentioned in her comments. So, and as you can see in this example here, there's also very little opportunity to do the types of things that have traditionally been done in other counties for water quality treatment, in other words, large-scale treatment wetlands are systems. There's just not a lot of large land masses with which you could direct a significant amount of water to do treatment. So we have to be a little bit more surgical in our approach, both in terms of education like what Lee is doing, and also looking at our canals as the treatment systems themselves. And looking at in-line nature-based solutions, for example, we're looking at piloting and a couple of e. e. e. e. e. e. e. e. e. e. e. e. e. e. e when they get well-established. I know that there have been some eelgrass plantings going on the Clues Hashie River. So there are similar actions being undertaken over on the Lee County side. And what it all comes down to, has been stated numerous times, is basically our nutrient issues that we're experiencing throughout Southwest Florida. As you can see here in this map, this is a graphic of the state's assessment of our waters, both around Lee County and Charlotte County. Nitrogen is, of course, the common theme that we see throughout in some areas are impaired phosphorus and is one of our other citizens mentioned. This is at least in Charlotte Harbor, resulted in an explosion of macroagene cyanobacteria blooms, which in some areas have smothered historic seagrass bed populations. We've seen some pretty dramatic drops over the last several years. One side note, the graph there talks about seagrass populations through 2022. The 2024 numbers just came out, I think about a week or so ago. So I don't have the graphic, but what we've learned is that there's an overall 6% drop in seagrass populations in the Charlotte Harbor area, 2022 and 2024. So once we get those numbers, we'll have future conversations with our commissioners, we'll talk through those in more detail later. This is why the work that we're doing now, and the work that Lee County especially is doing in terms of both the local water quality improvements and their advocacy for responsible management of Lake Ocotobi is so vitally important and I'll let Roland talk more about that. Thank you Brandon. Yeah it's something new near and dear to Lee County is the Lake Ocotobi management as well as all the work that's going on the Everglades. Thank one of the commissioners, a couple of commissioners here sit on the County Coalition and they're quite advocates for proper management of those systems. So thank you for that. One of the things that we've been actively involved with the last couple of years was there a new operating manual. And this was like a two year process that the under Army Corps of Engineers undertook with all the stakeholders out there and just get a snapshot with the county, Lee County or what the Cluesa Hatchee needs is is a better more flexibility and regulation schedule because we have we have fresh water grasses in the upper restuary and we have salt or sea grasses in the lower part as well as oysters that enjoy a certain range of salinity and's, you know, they're gonna get a certain amount of runoff from the Cluesa Hatchee River itself, but we also get direct connection from Lake Okochobia. And that release schedule is very important to the ultimate salinity that comes our way. So unfortunately in the past, we've got pretty much no water in the dry seas when we need it and blast it out in the summertime when there's too much water in the watershed. And that watershed goes all the way up as you know, North of Okochoby, all the Orlando. So it's a very big system. This process was involved, many stakeholders and all the stakeholders are just as admin about their enthusiastic about their resources as well. You have stakeholders from Lake Okeechobee who didn't want the water too high because it smothers out the grasses there that are important for the fish. You've got water users, not only agriculture, every grade's agriculture area, the sugar farmers, but other farmers as well as east coast population. They also rely on water from that system. You have the Everglades proper. You have Florida Bay. You've got the tribes involved. They all have a passion interest of what's going on out there. So not everybody got everything wanted, but it was I think it was a good exercise. And one of the positive things, if there is more flexibility, and hopefully that will result in a better flow regime for the Clusa Hatchatchee. Besides, we have a significant financial investment in the Cluesa Hatchee ourselves. I mentioned the B-Map for the Cluesa Hatchee. We've invested a lot of money on lands as well as projects along that way. We need to see and want to see that system recover. So anything that comes out regarding Lake Coca-Ca-Chua, we operations or comprehensive Everglades restoration plan, we're tracking that, we're providing comment and belong participating in some of those forums and the coalitions to gear our message across. So with that, I'll head back to Brandon. I also just want to note that, you know, Charlotte County has expressed its support more than just verbally for what Lee County has been doing related to Lake Okeechobee. I know that a few years ago when the operating manual was in conversation, and Lee County had some serious concerns about it. Our commissioners felt strongly enough about it that they submit in multiple letters of support for Lee County's stance to federal and state agencies. And that's the kind of partnership and cooperation that is going to be so important for all of us moving forward. Regionalization of our efforts, both through existing initiatives, like here with the Charlotte Harbor Monterey Network. Some folks may not be aware, but that estuary monitoring system that is administratively managed by the Coastal and Heartland National Estuary Partnership, we in Lee County are both longstanding participants in that, well as other networks like the Regional Ambient Monitoring Program, the Flows Initiative which is a more local effort to restore hydrology in a certain part of Charlotte and Lee County's. These are the sorts of things that we want to continue to promote and find new opportunities to do additional cooperative efforts like this. Also, I will say on a kind of more personal note, when I first came here a few years ago, one of the first things I did after being given the directive to figure out what is going on with water quality and shrug harbor is to get together with a lot of our neighboring counties, Lee, Collier, Sarasota, to kind of understand the work that they're doing, what they have seen, what works, what doesn't, there are hurdles. And in the folks at Lee County have been work extraordinarily helpful, especially in the beginning, Rick Armstrong, who's the head of your environmental laboratory, over that Lee County, spent in a northern amount of time walking through what they do and how they do, what they do, and some of their findings and recommendations if they were to do it all over again. And I took some of those to heart in the way that I designed our monitoring program. Also, Maria Romero, who's your team, the Elk Coordinator in Lee County, has been a great source of information as we are starting to embark upon our own restoration planning process for our impaired waters. Not just in how Lee County is approaching their impaired waters, but also in how Lee County interacts with DEP. How those have gone, what has worked, what hasn't. Those have been extremely valuable insights that I've been able to take with me as we kind of start to communicate with DEP on how we're going to address our impaired waterways. So there are lots more opportunities for us to communicate and coordinate with Lee. I know one of the next things I want to do, Roman mentioned a little bit about education and outreach. I think that's going to be a cornerstone of our water program as there is a constant need to educate and re-educate are growing and churning populations here on what they can do to be good stewards of water quality. And as was shown in some of the earlier slides with kind of the development characteristics, the historical plating and whatnot, source control is going to become extraordinarily important if we're really going to get ahead of a lot of these nutrient issues that we're dealing with today. I think that's pretty much summarized it. You know, we think this is a great collaboration. We're welcome to share anything we got, practices, projects we've made and successes and some of the downfalls and some of them. And I certainly are impressed with your old septic to sewer program, the public information you got on at. So that's also something that we can take and learn from as well. Any board member comments for staff? Commissioner Truax, you recognize sir. Thank you very much, Doug. First of all, thank you both for your presentation. Hello? Can you hear me? OK. Is it loud anyway? don't know. I'm pretty loud. But I do want to thank you. You know, one of the things that I'm very cognizant of being over the West Part of Charlotte County is the fact that we have two rivers that end up coming down to you guys. So what's coming down to us is going to you and what's coming down the middle of state is going to you and then what's coming from Ochovia is going to you. It also comes to us with that plume, but I think that's one of the biggest reasons that our board felt very very strongly about working together collaboratively with Lee County in moving forward on water quality because because we need to spread our influence to the north and try to help continue to positively affect change throughout the state of Fort because we do receive, as you guys know, a good chunk of the volumes to come back. So thank you for your efforts. Thank you, sir. Commissioner Constance, you recognize. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I do appreciate some of the comments made by the public. I agree for a long time with regard to the Mississippi, it's not romantic to have black water. I don't care what they sing about in the songs. That's highly polluted water that's entering the Gulf and the North. And we've talked about that at the national level with the Gulf States Council with all the commissioners rimming the Gulf. They have to do a better job of regulating. And so I think EPA and some of the other agencies have really fallen down on the job because that's a huge point of source of pollution that's hitting the Gulf. And then we're stuck kind of cleaning things up down here. I just happen to search SwiftMud and they have a technical report February 10th this year on the Lake Okeechobee Systems Operation Manual. My first question is, are we happy that 14 up to 1400 cubic feet per second can be released to the east but 2100 cubic feet per second can be released to the west. You know, we're still taking a huge nitrogen load off of that lake, and it's negatively affecting the whole Kalusahatchi system. It's hitting the barrier islands that we know and shooting up the east wall and killing our seagrass. I mean, there's a lot of negative environmental impacts, and they're not paying to play. They're just destroying our environment, willy-nilly, because they're the Army Corps, and they can do what they want to do. So, I mean, it is what it is, but how do we continue to fight that, because it's still not good enough? Yeah, I mean, specifically, the 2100 CFS, cubic feet per second, still within that optimal range for us. So that's fine. when they blow it out like 20,000 or 10,000 for a certain period of time because the lake got too high and are concerned about the lake level. So, you know, we're always going to be faced with those situations where they're having to take a balancing act between flood protection and other users. You know, and there's a big driving force to keep the lake as high as possible for water supply folks as well. So it's always going to be that challenge. And I guess when we get to those situations, it's science from staff like ours as well as the advocacy and the support from commissioners like yourselves to get that word to the core of engineers, the kernel, of what have you, if we see ourselves in that kind of a situation. So it's, I think there's a combination of policy push as well as providing the technical data that we do. And because we meet with the quarrel most weekly to talk about the conditions of the estuary, what it's looked like. And so we give them the information, but how they decide is, we don't always have that control. Well, and I appreciate that. And it's very, very well stated. And I think then what I want to make sure we're advocating for is just parity. If it's an emergency and they're afraid of a breach, it's got to go both ways equally. They can't be burdening the West Coast of Florida. Because if you think about it, I know they've got a bay on the other side, but then they've got the Atlantic, which has cleansing abilities far beyond the Gulf of Mexico. So we're going to deal with red tide, they're not going to. So I mean, we still need to do a very good job and I appreciate our representation. He's in the Q, Commissioner D'Orady, for sure, on the county and in that coalition, because I think that's where our voices get heard and we have to just you know jump up and down and shout a little bit louder because you know this is a problem that's not going away and we're still not happy with where we are. So thank you. I have Commissioner Hammond in next and that Commissioner Dordy and the Q. Thanks Mr. Chairman. I just had a question for for the staff for the team. Do you all have this amazing opportunity that we have here to have 10 decision makers from, well I guess nine, we're missing our year. Well we're missing our year. Yeah, we certainly send our thoughts and prayers to him, but tremendous opportunity to have nine voices at the table for from Lee, five from Charlotte County. The question I have for the staff is, you've given us a tremendous amount of context and information today. What problems are you looking for information? What policies are you looking for policy input from us? It'd be interesting, is there a discussion topic you would like for us to hit on here and discuss with each other? I would say it's more so for support rather than a decision. So as we move forward on increasing and enhancing the water improvement and protection measures that we're going to need to do, You all, as you are probably every time you have a meeting, are faced with having to balance cost versus benefit. And the cost of everything, as you all very well know, is skyrocketing for everything. And so what I would ask is that as we bring these initiatives to you, the honest is on us to demonstrate the benefit of doing whatever activity at whatever cost it is, but having that support from you all to make that happen. Also, I think as we continue down the pathway, especially when it comes to funding from external agencies, the state, feds and whatnot, I think regionalization is going to become more and more important. So rather than competing with each other for funds where we have common needs, whether that's a septic dissuer for instance, that just popped up. That's a very expensive proposition that we may actually have a stronger case to make for funding if we're doing on a larger regional scale than if we're competing with one another for that same pocket of funds. So that's one thing that I'm also looking to do and that we're talking about through those group initiatives that were popped up there. So supporting those kind of efforts as well to help us participate in those group activities as thinking, helping us to think more about regionalizing and cooperating, reaching across the Peck County boundaries more often to basically help each other both in how we interact and educate our communities, but also how we can maybe acquire more funding to accomplish what we need to in our own individual jurisdictions. I'm for Clean Water. Commissioner Dory, you're recognized. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I wanted to respond and help a little bit with the conversation about Lovesom. And Commissioner Constance, I think it comes up periodically at the coalition meetings over in Okitobi. Bottom line is that, as you know, went through a whole series of public meetings and analyses. It's a modeling that took place. This is the initial results. I think that's the best way to describe it. How they're going to operate the lake in gentlemen, if I speak out of something incorrect, please correct me. But, once additional improvements take place, additional storage gets built. They're looking at a 200,000 acre storage facility north of the lake to be, it's in and it's in a wardup. It got approved to get going. So when those elements of the integrated delivery schedule get built, the core will go back and redo those models. And those will have positive impacts. And hopefully we'll get stuff built to the south and we'll get all kinds of things that will help the flows going east and west. So I just wanted to share that with you. We're not stuck with the elevations, the stages that we've got right now, but they had to come up with something. It's reasonable, I think everybody came to that conclusion. Rollin' in my basic land target. You're right on target. Thank you, sir. Yeah, I would add that. One of the things you learn on this job is the parameters of how far you can go into decision-making process, and you learn pretty quick what your wheelhouse is. And when it comes to water quality, it's not only a county issue or a regional issue. It's obviously a statewide issue and that's been echoed here. You know, a lot of people say, why can't you change the discharges from Lake Okeechobee? Why can't you change the discharges from certain industries throughout the state that enter our waterways and ultimately make it to our harbor. Those are done by different regulatory agencies that we don't have jurisdiction over. The rulemaking is very, very important in the state of Florida when it comes to water quality. In Charlotte County, for instance, we're spending tens of millions of dollars of tax pay or money to do septic to sewer conversion to reduce the nitrogen load. We're doing storm water improvements. We're doing a whole host of environmental benefits to the water system. But that's just Charlotte County. If all the other surrounding counties that discharge into the harbor are not doing what we're doing, the impact is less felt in terms of the water quality. And the sins of the past when they developed Florida with the dredging permits prior to the 1970s when EPA stepped in, it was kind of a free-frault. You were getting dredged permits. It was almost an over-the-counter permit. And there was no environmental studies required, habitat studies, things like that. You know, back then it was developed Florida and drained the swamp. And to try to undo what has been done over decades with Lake Okeechobee, with the channels to the east and west and the Calusa Hatchee, we're dealing with those today through these discharges that the Army Corps of Engineers has regulation over. So one of the things that I, when I talk to people about water quality is I try to explain what we can do as a county and we can take positions which we do. We can take legislative positions and we can fight for water quality. But the understanding has to be it's really a statewide issue. I know our legislature has been talking about water quality, pumping hundreds of millions of dollars into the system, but it's gonna take all the municipalities, all the counties with a unified water quality policy. I think to have the biggest impact, it shouldn't stop us from doing what we can do locally. But I think we, you know, as commissioners, when we go to places like Florida Association and counties, when we talk to our colleagues across the state or we talk to other officials, you know, and explain, you know, what are you doing for water quality? And I think it was mentioned earlier, you know, the board of county commissioners in Charlotte County decided to hire a water quality manager And that's why we hired Brandon we were fielding so many calls and there were so many moving parts Who's testing what where do those test results go what exactly are they testing for how do those tests impact Charlotte Harbor? You know there was just so many different agencies and people doing testing We wanted to try to get our arms around all of that and that's why we hired a water quality manager to build a system in Charlotte County that we can work off of existing data and make data driven decisions on how to approach water quality. So I mean, that's what we've done in Charlotte County. We've made the investment, but you know I think this is just going to be an ongoing discussion. How can we do things better? Any other comments on this item? Good question. Okay. Good, Mr. Mayor. Thank you. Cecil Pentegrato-Clie County. For staff, we have one of the speakers earlier to talk about this issue, Water Quality. And we all, we talk about... Is it the right thing to make the mic on? I'm going to try to get a shirt on here. Yeah, okay, just going to get to you. Cecil Pedagraphy County, I had a question more or less for staff. We had to speak earlier to talk about the... I'm going to close the mic. I'm going to try to answer it's on here. Yeah, okay. He's going to get to you. Cecil Pedagraphy County. I had a question more or less for staff. We had to speak earlier to talk about a house bill that's going through about the requirements. Rowland, do we have information on that? Is somebody been monitoring how this is going to affect the counties based upon nutrient counts? As far as how much money we're spending locally and how important water quality is, this will also be a cost-wiggingly incurring. Yeah, the state has adopted new stormwater rule criteria for development. And that's been in the works for a long time. It was up for a bill years ago and it failed and it went back a couple of years ago. Then it's finally ratified last year. What that does is require individual owner developers to upgrade their water best management practice, their treatment facilities, on-site, and their design to dress nitrogen and phosphorus nutrient basically because the old rules were ancient, they were from early 80s and all they were designed to do is remove turbidity from water. Didn't really look at our nutrient impairment issues that the state has identified, which I understand there's concern about water coming from the Mississippi and what have you, but the water quality data that we show shows that our individual water bodies are impaired, and so that's why they're adding these new regulations and developments. So when they go in and build their reduce in the pollutant loading off these sites instead of just dressing turbidity from the property. And that was my concern. I think it was the call of the House bill of 7053 Senate bill 7040 was one of the referent to. getting off these sites instead of just dressing turbidity from the property. And that was my concern. I think I was pulled up. House bill is 7053. Senate bill 7040 was one of those I think it's big for someone to. And that's the city. You come with the water from Mississippi, North of us like Charlotte County said earlier, the water is all one water. The water, the bay here is Charlotte County, where tomorrow being, Lee County to Dex Day be down in Mark, Ohio. So I understand one big body of water, but you know, how much that, you know, we're currently all this extra waste on the Cassini Basin down to the Chaudaille Valley. be down in Mark, Ohio. So I understand one big body of water, but you know how much that you know we're occurring all this extra waste from the Cassini Basin down to the Capricoli back to us. Charlie County's getting it, we're getting it. And then now we're the Mississippi and we're doing all the well we are, we're spending all this money and then globally you look at what happens across the world, China with pollution, everything. So it's sometimes going to impact us, we're going to spend a lot of money because the dirty water, we're going to even north lot of money because the dirty water would even be in North or shortly, kind of, which is the Mississippi. That's one of staff that's been following that also. I can look at what you have, Dennis. So thank you. Yes, sir. Commissioner Leica, you're recognized. Thank you for that. And David Malek, again, proud. And thank you, thanks to both teams for your coordination efforts. I am proud to serve on the 10 County Coalition for the water and I have my first meeting with the chair here to do that Nookuchovie and the scope and magnitude of this issue can be overwhelming. I mean the billions of dollars and trillions of gallons. But it is scary when you go to these meetings and they say the toxic sludge at the bottom of the lake is Toxic waste to be hauled out by a truck But we have to leave it where it is and we'll deal with it as it comes that comment that Katten Hubbard made that The cost of prevention sounds like a lot of money But the cost of curing it is a whole lot more But I want to applaud you for your efforts at the Roland and his team every drop of water in the Lee County area, the coordination efforts that we're doing on all these 10 counties tying out in the intertwined efforts that have to be made on these septic and new advanced sewer things. Every one of these things are a step on the right direction, but it is an immense undertaking to do. But I will applaud both on all the team's efforts on this, but we have to keep making consistent efforts to do the to keep our life but of the water clean water it's got to be a top priority as we all know thank you for your efforts. Yeah I had a question for staff so in one of the graphics you showed the thousands of planted lots that are not part of I guess the swift mud permitting process the way a new development would be their platted lots that are not part of, I guess, the SwiftMud permitting process the way a new development would be. Their platted, it just drains into the ditch, they don't go through the same review for drainage. Would you say, in your opinion, the developments that are being proposed today that fall under the SwiftMud or SouthMud permitting agencies, would you say that that water is treated at a much better level than it would be if it was just on a regular plated lot? In theory, it's not subject to the same rules. Yeah, in theory, yeah, because the graphic that I showed you earlier, they're not only plated, but because their individual single family homes are presented from the current requirements, the new requirements. So really for those areas, we're looking at either having to institute our own treatment train for waters that run off from those properties while also trying to implement as much source control as possible. And so again, it goes back to why the education part is and sort of encouraging BNPs on these individual laws are going to be pretty critical. Yeah, I get that part, but the newer developments that are coming in in Charlotteson Lee County, they have to go by the new rules and have a master storm water plan, is that a net benefit compared to just building on platted lots that are exempt? Yes. Yeah. And to keep in mind too that whatever requirements they have to meet are dependent on the timing of permit applications and whatnot that were filed. So even if a community is under development and they submit a permit application for their storm water system prior to a certain date, they actually fall under the old rules. It's kind of, and I don't remember, I don't know if maybe you have in your head, but I don't remember the exact timing of when permits from ex-date forward applying to the new rule. But yeah, in general, any storm water management requirement is better than just, you know, straight open applied of these lots. Yeah, because I think Charlotte, I know we get these questions. I'm sure Leigh County gets it as well, is that when these new development or planned developments come in and they have to meet these new storm water rules, a lot of people think, well, it's bad for water quality, but in actuality, they have to follow the rules and have a plan that meets the standard for treatment. Right. Keep in mind, too. I assume this is also the same throughout Lee County as well, but for most of the populated area of Charlotte County, because of the nature of how our population is growing around the harbor and the bay, that's outstanding Florida waters that are also impaired. So you're looking at a mandatory 90 or 95% reduction in Nigerian phosphorus that has to occur from one off from those lands. Okay, any more comments before we move on to the next item? Okay, we're gonna move on to to item. Oh, thank you gentlemen for your presentation We're going to move on to item 2b coordination efforts on Boko Grand Mr Elias approaching Good afternoon commissioners for the record John Elias Charlotte County Public Works I'll be co-presaining on all my presentations today with my Respectively County in this case it'll be Mr. Rob Price We're gonna echo a lot of this sentiments that went on with the water quality team and Kind of just highlight some of the cooperative efforts that take place On a barrier island that we share responsibility on so I'm just gonna kind of go through some of this Hopefully this works technology Yep, so first slide we have is just where is Boka Grand? For those in the audience that may not know, it's a barrier island. There is a bridge to get out there. We do have some barrier islands that there's not bridges to get out there. As indicated previously, it's a barrier island. It's partially in both Charlotte and Lee counties. And there's three primary maintenance entities. their Charlotte County, the Gaspel Island Bridge Authority, or Giba and Lee County. So what I'm gonna do is kind of outline some of the, well first off, I'll talk about the roads. What, this is the roads in blue are the area that Charlotte County maintains on the island. I'm gonna go show the other roads as well. The Guestborough Island Bridge Authority obviously maintains the causeway that's in yellow on the graphic. In Lee County, indicate shows here that they maintain the roads highlighted in red. So, Mr. Price is going to talk, elaborate more on some more extensive recent collaboration that we've had post storm but I'm just going to talk about some of the existing coordination efforts. So we have an ongoing solid waste agreement with Lee County. We've typically worked with Giba. Thank you. So we've typically worked with Geba for placing out barricades and working with, I think they had National Guard actually helping close the causeway during these last storms. And the last storm we actually worked with Geba to remove some of the debris off the causeway. formal agreements we've had in place are specifically for the solid waste and it kinda details that. Essentially we pick up the solid waste on the island. There's also another agreement we came across and we had to get with our public safety team. There's been an ongoing agreement since 98 to work with Giba to allow us to share emergency services and to share contracts if we need to post disaster, share radios, and just basically a collaborative effort with Giba. I'll also add, I don't want to speak for Chief Faire, who's also in the audience, but but in talking with him There's also pretty extensive cooperation with the public safety out on leak on the on the barrier island with Charlotte and Lee And with that I will turn it over to mr. Price Before mr. Price speaks I just wanted to know is having a full beard a prerequisite to be a public public works director. It is. Absolutely. And being colorblind. So we were just going to highlight a couple of the things that happened after Hurricane Selene and Milton last year. We did get out and help Giba with some of the work that they were doing on the bridge. We also assisted Charlotte County with some drainage issues that were happening right at the foot of the bridge in the Charlotte County side since we had Lee County teams already onsite in Boca Grande. We offered our assistance and so we wanted to highlight that as well. On this map here you'll see there's about 21 locations where we had complete road washouts on in Boca Grande. It included damages to the utility infrastructure underneath the road so we got a contractor on board within about three weeks after we had identified all damages and by December we were out there actually making repairs to restore those areas. Here's some pictures of some of the areas. You can see the damage in the top and the top two pictures, and then on the bottom left is when we were out there doing the restoration efforts. That restoration effort required a lot of extensive planning and coordinating with all of the utility partners. You had your water authority out there. You also had Comcast, you had CenturyLink, all of the different utility companies. And every single one of these locations included utility impacts. We also had to coordinate with the residents who had driveways that were feeding into these holes in the road. So there's another location you can see the utility lines here as well, where there was significant damage that had to be coordinated. We didn't want the utility companies coming in fixing their utility and leaving the roadway damage worse. There was coordination we had to do with FEMA so that we could receive reimbursement dollars for the work that was happening. So a lot of effort went through getting these areas restored and now I'm proud to say Bocca is back to normal from the roadway perspective now and this is I think the last one as we move to the next one So let me go back so that was it for what we're having on our Bocca coordination discussion If there was any questions we'd be happy to take them. Yeah, I would just comment Lee County it was you know in Charlotte County It was just a herculean task to do what you did in such a short amount of time. I had an opportunity after the storm to go down there. I wanted to do an inspection to see what the status was and boy had a hard time getting past the Lee County Sheriff's Department where they had a lockdown on that right at the Charlotte County line. But I got through and did an inspection and the pictures really don't reflect everything that I saw to your point. The utility coordination was just unbelievable. The damage and undermining and the deposits of sand that were impacted everywhere there. And to see it today, it was just a Herkulean lift. So I just want to thank Lee County and your vendors and everything I know we worked together I know the county line is right there and that always struck me as odd how that got divided up it's like two-thirds of the island is Lee County and a third is Charlotte County so it's kind of weird but anyway any comments on this item? I just, yeah, yeah,, you're recognized. I want to say thank you because I know that Commissioner Ruyin and I were constantly in communications after the storms. And at one point, he said, don't worry, we got it. And sure enough, you guys were out there really helping us out. And so greatly appreciative of that effort, that we all we all try to work together to do what we can, and that was a true team effort. And you're thinking about your neighbors. So thank you. Yeah, our pleasure. Sadly to say we are becoming experts at Hurricane Repair. You know, we are getting good at this stuff. It's not really a good thing. But just another note that picture with the car upside down is down the street from a house I built. And the owner called me up and said, you gotta come out and check this out. Well, let's just hope this year we don't have to find out how good you are. Let's just break it. I'll do you. Yeah, we need a break. Commissioner Constance, you're recognized, sir. Mr. Chair, thank you. So I guess I'm gonna try to pick up on some of the fact that there were so many people talking about parking. I just wanna ask the question, was that April 1st, was that an item April 1st and that's completed? Or is that still? No, I believe there's a proposal before the Lee County commissioners for parking ordinance. It was the first public hearing that a proposal was going to come back and make. Okay. Because I'm sure all of these hurricane impacts have absolutely not helped the parking situation. So, you know, I obviously, we can't do anything for a Charlotte County residents, but it sounds like, you know, there's a lot of aspects to this that still have to be fleshed out, and I'm glad that folks will be able to come down. It's an important point that the Chairman brings up is this interesting dividing line on the island where we have the bridge on our side and we have a small portion and then all of the main town is sort of to the south. But I just want the public to understand we did hear you so there's not much we can do in Charlotte County. But hopefully you'll have an opportunity when there's the second public hearing for the ordinance to have your voices heard because it's constrained. There's no doubt about it. Thank you, sir. Yeah, I think what Commissioner Constance was trying to say is it's a Lee County problem, not a sharp down problem. Which is why I let the public speakers go on. No, I get that. But I just, you gave a lot of leeway, and I appreciate that, because we're not going to have an opportunity for what we will have public input on on any subject at the end so I guess they get a chance second by to the apple but you know it does affect our residents we just have no legislative purview that's all right exactly yeah yeah on that topic I also thank you that people who came here spoke on that issue wasn't did we be talking about that today but uh this is sort of the Charter County Commission knows that we, I guess that we've had a lot of public meetings on this, and we've been talking about for years. At the last meeting, actually, I asked for the motion maker to have a public meeting in Book of Grand on this issue because so that people wouldn't have to come to Lee County for that meeting that fell. So hopefully, between now and then we might have some public meeting on the Island Book So people wouldn't have to have more input in the community, the business owners, but as I ran them, there's nothing playing as of now. Thank you, sir. Commissioner Maluka. Mr. Chair, thank you for saying it's all our problem. But, respectfully, some of the conversations that we've had in our meetings, the impact of the hurricane is obviously a big one if we're not open, we're all in open is a problem The other contingent issue is the state parks and then the Charlotte County parks. Yeah, but people are seeking Beach somewhere. Do you have any updates or any other progress reports regarding your parks reopening that we could share with our residents That might be a benefit to this conversation going forward as well. Yeah, I mean, I think if we're gonna to have a park update, I would probably leave that to Hector. If you've got any updates, or I guess Mrs. Lewis is in the audience somewhere. Yeah, we've updated the board and had recent discussions with an Englewood Beach, how we can try and phase that in. We've got to bring that back to the board for that next step proposal so that the folks can have beach access right now. We've opened up parking. We've got a parking circulator to get folks there. But certainly the residents want more and more. We want to do it safely. It's the main thing that we've got to make sure we accomplish. So yeah, Englewood Beach is obviously one of our largest beach and that was a sand recipient site that we used for months and we just were able to sift all the sand to get it back on the beach and now we're in a phased approach to open it up. We have phase one, which were open. Phase two is underway to make it safe. We just did a demolition down there of the boardwalk and a lot of the amenities that were completely destroyed. So we're trying to get it open in a safe way. As we all found out after the storm, the way it hit and the way the surge hit, impacted our beaches maybe a little differently than in Lee County, than Sarasota County. It was kind of unique to where you were. And some of the beaches don't share the same amenities. Some beaches don't have boardwalks, some beaches don't have bathroom situated the way we had or parking lot situated the same. But yeah, absolutely. We're underway with a phased reopening right now. Commissioner Chu, actually. Yeah, that's our sorry. Yeah, but that's made a date for that. We had a four month time frame roughly. Yeah, about four months. From today or... Yeah, that's our sorry. Yeah, that's made a date for that. For Anglewood Beach. Yeah, we had a four month time frame roughly. Yeah, about four months from today or a group. Yeah, it's partially open now. So by next season, it sounds like we'll be here. Yeah, well, this year for sure. I mean, we'll get it done. Yeah, Commissioner Choix. If I can't all elaborate a little bit more because there's people in the room that probably don't know what all did go up the lawn out there besides the sand site. All the boardwalks did have to get torn out. The sidewalks got torn out, the asphalt's got to get torn out and redone. So just the south end is open right now, which is around 25 parking spots. And the circulator that Mr. Floor has referred to actually picking people up at Tringalli recreation center and the library area there and it takes them out so it circulates throughout the day. I think it's 10 to 4 and it looked at expanding those hours out and we've had about 120 riders take advantage of that so there are trips they've been doing so it's it's underway to try to expand that option but it is putting pressure on because Stumpas State Park is also not open you know we've got other places that aren't able to take people in and I know that people are looking for those alternatives. And there are just people that love to go out to book a grand and spend time out there on that beach. I've been here 34 years and it's where we used to go all the time and my wife and I wanted to go out to the beach. Because it was actually a little little closer to the thing it would be. But anyway, I just empathize with what you guys are faced with and what the residents are faced with, but I do know that I'm getting a lot of phone calls from businesses and from Charlotte County residents who like to drive down there and some of them live on the island. It's not just people who live off island that have reached out to me. So I know that the director of the book, the Chambers here, they have concern and of course the merchant network out there are all very interested in trying to keep as much partying open as possible so that they can continue to try to recover financially as well. Commissioner Deoys, you're recognized. It's all, it's all. I think one of the biggest things I found in one of the problems is communicating to the whole county that the park down the street from their house was not the only thing damaged during the hurricane. And one of the things we're trying to do is to face things in because you know people in the in the southern part of the county Maybe have them been to angle would be the people in angle would be having been now in harbor a boulevard to see the neighborhood park And I find that people in different parts of the county want to get their thing done and they don't realize the extent People don't unless they've traveled the whole county and seen what a lot of us have seen going around in our communities, they don't see or appreciate the extent. And one of the comments I made the other day, we had $150 million and was handed to us today to do all the work. It would probably be six, seven years to get everything done to the way it was before the hurricane between permitting and planning and engineering and design and hiring. And I think it's important, at least I see that in challenge, trying to get the workout and let everyone understand. We're doing the best we can. We're phasing it in. We're trying to do stuff all over the county at once, but it's going to take a while to get it done. And I had another email today about the fishing pier, just today about underneath the bridge. That's gonna be a couple years before we get that back, for sure. I see that as a challenge, and I don't know if you folks have it, but I found it very, very, very impactful. We have two or three challenges. You know, in communicating, many people realize the depths and the extent of what we got to. To your point, I'm a contractor by trade, and the clock always moves slowest at your customer's house. Right? Commissioner Truex, you recognize. Thank you. I also just want to acknowledge Chief Bossers and the crowd, and there's a lot of coordination that goes on to our public safety departments, look at the Grand Fire Department. He's a very integral part in recovery out there, it's focusing on people out there. And I appreciate you coming today, sir. I know that we want to continue to work with them and Lee County Law Enforcement, Charlotte County Law Enforcement. Everybody's trying to work together so that we have better response to these, Hopefully not soon but these situations in the future And we're comments on this item Okay, we're gonna move on to item two C regional solid waste Commissions again for the record John Elias public works director. I'll be co-presenting with Miss Rodriguez from Lee County I want to kind of, we're going to kind of go over our respective programs and at a really high level, we're just going to have discussions about how we have to take a regional approach to some of the decisions we make as we move forward with solid waste and how we deal with it. So I will kind of bounce around here as we go over that. So the key discussion points I'm going to be covering immediately are the vertical expansion update. The interlocal with about Bokeh grand. We didn't know where we wanted to put that but we kind of get into more detail about the agreement we have with Bokeh grand and some combined outreach. So I'll start with vertical expansion. We kind of touched a lot about our cooperative efforts for storms. Anybody that's in the solid waste industry will tell you that storms drastically impact the life of your landfill and reduce air space at an exacerbated rate. So we have to look at that. So we took a good hard look at that. We look at it annually, but this year we got our Board of County commissioners to approve the vertical expansion option. This option has the potential to increase the landfill 11 years past 2029, which buys us some time. Quite frankly, it buys time where I won't be here. Time to deal with it, but depending, if I could stop spending money. The engineering firm that we selected was SCS engineering and the total estimated cost for the engineering and permitting for the vertical expansion will be 97,500. I'm sorry, I should have been going through slides here. Sorry, I get sidetracked. We kind of just go over the highlight here of the timeline. The vertical expansion, there's a cover sheet for the design plan. And essentially what we're doing is we're going from a permitted height right now currently of 130 feet to 195 feet. Obviously, it's getting narrower, so it's not the full size of the landfill that we're getting used to. But again, it should buy us about 11 years. So the next slide I'm going to show is we recently constructed a new scale house and convenience center and we move that far to the, I'm going to say, to the west of the existing scale house and that's because eventually we're going to expand behind it and we're doing roads and infrastructure ahead of time so that when we eventually do have to do a horizontal expansion or open new cells to the landfill, we'll be positioned properly. These are just pictures of the new scale house in the convenience center. So, I've left it open for questions. If there's no questions, I've got a couple more things I want to go over but I would like to just touch briefly on some of the things that we're going to be bringing to our county commission. Again, super high level. We're in constant communication with the Lee County team. The reason we have to be, and we'll get into some of this here, is when we expand, we have to take into consideration currently we take out of county waste. A lot a solid waste facilities do not accept out of county waste. That's outside of the agreements that we have with Lee County where when your roads and infrastructure is devastated, we allow, we have an agreement that your stuff can be brought to us and it just makes everything work more efficiently. I'm talking about like commercial waste from out of county gets brought to our landfill and we track that and it's picked up exponentially. Another thing that we'll be bringing to our board in the future is our tipping fees. We're looking at those right now. We have a good fun balance to close our existing landfill, but to open a new landfill is going to be some substantial money. I think we're talking one to two million million per acre and we'd like to open the 25 to 50 acre starting out with. So as we bring this to the board in the future, we're going to be having those discussions and it'll have to be part of the decisions we make in Charlotte County are going to have regional impacts to include do we want to consider going to an incinerator? And there was some discussion by the public and I know Mr. Rodriguez consider going to an incinerator. And there was some discussion by the public, and I know, Mr. Rodriguez is going to talk about their program. Two agencies right next to each other probably can't have an incinerator program. So those are discussions we'd have to have. So again, I just kind of wanted to set the table for future conversations I have with my board. And before I move on with some of our interlocal, I was wondering if there's any questions. Any questions for Mr. Elias? Okay, thank you, sir. Oh, we have a question, but I just was wondering. So on that, on that. with some of our interlocal, I was wondering if there's any questions. Any questions for Mr. Elias? Okay, thank you, sir. Oh, we have a question. But I just was wondering. So on that site that you showed that 180 acres for future disposal is that. So is that land that could be developed in the future? Is that what you're showing? Yeah, we bought an extensive area there. All that area in red could be future landfill. the existing landfills to the right. Okay, thank you so much. Any more questions from Mr. Elias? Okay, thank you so much. Any more questions from Mr. Elias? Okay, thank you, sir. So I will kind of go on to just detail a little bit more with the agreement that we have with Lee County. And it is unique. You guys mentioned it previously about how the islands split up with the Causeway and the Lee County and Charlotte County. So we've had this agreement since 2020 and it's five year term and it allows the franchise holler waste management for us to provide residential and commercial collection services for garbage recycling, yard waste and bulk items for Lee County residents. Lee County residents of Boca Grande can also use both Charlotte County mini-transproof facilities. County residents of Bokh Grand can also use both Charlotte County mini transfer facilities. Charlotte County residents of Bokeh Grand can use Lee County Solid Waste Division Programs Community Cleanup Events and Household Cleanup Events. And again, I touched on this Lee County, can I show it County to accept waste, including municipal solid waste and yard waste during a post disaster, which we've always had a very good cooperative relationship in that regard. The next photo I have is just showing the facility. The red is our landfill and the yellow and the blue are too many transfer facilities. We also do a bunch of combined outreach, brand and touched on this with his water quality stuff. We do the same thing as it relates to public outreach, advertisement. A lot of times we'll collaborate budgets and work together so that we're all getting the same message out and we leverage the funding to affect more areas so it just works out better. So there's some of the examples of some combined outreach that we've done. That's all I have. I'm going to turn it over to Ms. Rodriguez before I do though. Is there any questions? Any questions? Mr. Constance, you recognize her. Well, I just wanted to ask so there were some statements about incineration. Are we going to hear about that now or? We're going gonna hear what Lee County has going on, but the discussion that I had on it is when we bring this back to whatever we have to really start, and I jokingly said I won't be here. It could, if we have another storm, it could drastically reduce the life of our existing landfill. Other factors contribute to that as well. But when we move to our next phase of our landfill, we currently have a clay-lined landfill that's no longer allowed, it will have to be a synthetic barrier. And we'll have a bunch of decision points that we'll have to work with our board to determine how we want to move forward. We want to go with an incineration that takes in fly ash and has it greatly reduced, so do we want to continue with the operation that we have now. I'll also mention, I should have mentioned this, our recycling efforts have greatly expanded the life of our landfill as well. Early in the, I'm sure saying the 90s and 2000s, I think we have some of the highest recycling rates in the state and that's drastically increased our life. So, but all that's going to be decisions that we have to we have to make. So we're not proposing one way or another, but it'll be discussions we have to have. Okay, and I think I just wanna know that when and if that information is forthcoming, there are a lot of environmental concerns from hearing. So obviously we need to know about water, air, all of those things are all the pollutants captured. What's the competency of that information? And then of course, they do raise a good question about what if the place burns down and you've lost all that investment. So there's insurance costs and all those other things because I wouldn't want to self-insure a facility like that. So all of that has to be bundled before we could even think about moving forward. Sure. Clearly that would all be have to stuff that we would have to bring back to you for discussion. The challenge that all solid waste facilities are facing throughout the country and the world is we're running out of space. So one of the ways that you greatly reduce the amount that you're putting in your land feels if you reduce it by burning. It's the most you can probably reduce it by. We compact it in our current facility, but it's literally compacted just to a specific point where we provide coverage every night and it breaks down and we collect that gas in the leachate, but you could get a lot more material put in there if you were burning it. But again, to your point, Commissioner, it comes with a a bunch of challenges. Right and I think when we probably two or three agreements ago with our hauler you know we went to really pushing for recycling and the good news for Charlotte County is you know I think 75% of the stuff we throw out in my complex goes into the recycles and 25% goes into the bin and that's 75% leaves Charlotte County and goes to Tampa. So to your point about you know better utilization of the recycling ability that we have within our county because we don't keep it, it goes away. And then best practices you know how do we get businesses and consumers in the area to think about zero packaging and all those other things because they've got to understand the more they consume and throw out there's going to be a big bill to pay on the back end. And you know, I never want to take advice from California, but there's a few things that they're doing that probably are worth looking into with regard to how they reduce their waste and how they're recycling and how they're having a more of a zero footprint and maybe not there but other places in the country. So I hate reinventing the wheel. I'd like to find out how communities are being proactive to not generate as much waste. To your point, Commissioner, just anecdotally, I have the same situation with the advent of Amazon and how much stuff I get delivered to the house. It's, we sometimes have so much recycling that we have to have like a stage dairy in our house. And I buy some stuff that my wife probably doesn't want me to buy, so I take cardboard over the mini transfer facility and get it out. before she gets home But with the amount of with the amount of the she knows it's still a we share a decout With the challenges though to your point We don't have control of how stuff's packaged and with the amount of stuff that's being delivered There's so much being generated way more than I ever dreamt we get just in the cardboard that we generate at my house Any other comments for mr. Elias. I'm gonna have somebody I want to see our our presentation I think what you gentlemen are about to see is a power plant that uses garbage for fuel. Yeah, so check it out Mrs. Rodriguez you are recognized Thank you very much. Okay, very good. Thank you. Rebecca Rodriguez, Interim Solid Waste Director for Lee County, Florida. And I think I have your last presentation for the day. So we'll be providing a broad overview of the Lee County Solid Waste Systems. Lee County Solid Waste Systems serves residents in both Lee and Henry counties. Overall, we bring in just over a million tons per year of all waste types. This photo shows our cornerstone of our solid waste system, which is the Buckingham Waste Energy Facility. This site is located in Fort Myers and also includes our curbside recyclable processing facility, construction and demolition debris recycling, yard waste processing, a transfer facility, and our fleet maintenance shop. So waste that cannot be recycled or converted to renewable energy at the waste to energy facility is disposed of at the Leigh-Hendry landfill, which is about 30 miles to the east of the Buckingham campus. So at this facility we have disposal sites for ash, construction debris, and wet garbage or MSW, as well as a compost facility where bio solids from county-wide wastewater treatment facilities are combined with compost from the yard trash processing to generate a fertilizer soil amendment. So this slide shows how waste flows through our system. It's simplified and I'll note that the approximately 1,000 tons per year of waste from Boka Grand that goes to the Charlotte County system is not shown on this slide. But entering our system, we have inbound garbage, recycling, yard waste, and commercial construction and demolition debris, goes to our waste to energy plant at Buck at the Buckingham facility. Those curbside recyclables are processed and then sent out to markets. Ash from the waste to energy facility is sent to the landfill along with any overflow garbage from the waste energy facility, residue from construction, debris recycling, and mulch from the processed yard trash, whereas I mentioned it's combined with county-wide biosolids. The compost that we generate there is then distributed primarily to agricultural interests in the inland. Finally, garbage from our transfer facilities. We serve both Lebel and Cloiston and unincorporated Henry County are taken directly to the Lee Henry landfill. So this slide shows our current capacity in some capital projects that we have in the works are recently completed Our waste to energy facility is at capacity as of about 2020 and overflow from that facility is delivered to Lehendry landfill We anticipate the Lehendry landfill capacity will remain until 2040 Our recycling facility we are investing in a new facility which we expect to come online in 2028 which will serve our needs for the foreseeable future and we've recently completed a major expansion to our compost facility at the landfill which again will provide capacity for compost into the foreseeable future. So this is a broad overview of our system, and I will open it up for questions. Jim. Yep, Commissioner. So, right off the bat, the first thing that strikes me about both presentations were we both run out of landfill space in 2040. So you guys in 2029 will do your expansion. You'll get 11 years of space. You'll run out in 2040. We just showed we're going to run out in 2040. So we have a problem here that we're running out of space in our landfills. And so the question we need to ask ourselves is going forward in the future, what do we want to see going to the landfills? Do we want to see raw garbage that can only be compacted so much going to the landfill? Or do we want to see ash going to the landfill? Now the way it turns into ash, as I mentioned, we have a power plant in Lee County where we use garbage for the fuel to create power. So think about all the power that goes into making the things that we throw away, right? We recover it at the Lee County waste energy plant and then sell that power back into the grid. It's amazing because it reduces the amount of garbage to just ash, so it reduces the amount that goes to the landfill. Before they send it to the landfill, it's beautiful. They get everything out of it. They run it over magnets and they pull out any of the metal that they can pull out and then still send that to be recycling. So the whole system has been so thoughtfully designed to really reduce reuse and recycle everything you possibly can out of the municipal garbage stream. So right now, if you look at Lee County, I don't know if we can put that one that has the map of the county and the whole flow on it. The thought I had, we are growing tremendously in the northern part of Lee County, North of the Calusa Hatchee River there. It kind of bifurcates our county. So Cape Coral is going to continue to grow the whole communities pre-platted. They say it could have 400,000 residents that build out. We've got some development that's planned in the north and eastern part of the county. We've obviously got Badcock Ranch, the Lee County side and you guys guys have the Charlotte County side. So a lot of units are coming on both in both of our counties. My thought is our bridges are only so wide. There's certainly already a capacity, instead of trucking our garbage across the bridges every day to the waste of energy plant out off of Buckingham, why not work together to build a waste of plant that keeps the garbage that's generated north of the Clusa Hatchee River north and the garbage that's generated south, you'll free up capacity at that Buckingham plant so that it'll have much more years to come. So that was the idea that I wanted to talk with you folks about today because I think it makes so much sense for both of our futures knowing the growth and the infrastructure that we need to build going forward. Thank you, those comments, sir. Any other comments? Okay. Well, I mean, I would just say that, you know, one of the things we need to do in government is always look for efficiencies. And I also like partnerships when they make sense. So is having a joint facility to handle garbage, an efficiency, and a net benefit to Lee and Charlotte County, and to our ratepayers who pay the fees? I don't have any experience in garbage to energy and that type of model. I mean that would probably require a deep dive, but you know interesting comments. That Commissioner Council sure. Well, recognize. Yeah, and having said that though, we do waste energy where we are, but we do methane and we create electricity. So this is a little bit different. And I had seen this in West Palm Beach, so I know it's being done around done around the state but again it's got to be sort of 1 plus 1 equals 8 because if it's just a matter of you know we're we're gonna wind up giving up capacity that we would use ultimately that's not gonna work but if it's something where this is gonna because keep curls a pretty big place everything North of Kluzih lots and lots and lots of houses. And by 2040, and I sort of say this a little tongue in cheek, but maybe at that point it's time to stop issuing building permits. I mean, there comes a time when we're maxed. Go to South East Florida. It's awful to live there. I disagree with the people that live there and think it's a wonderful place to live. I can't sit at a traffic light and wait for three changes before I get through the intersection. It's just unbelievable. So, you know, there comes a point where we can't make the roads any wider. I don't know. I mean, you know, this may be, this may be nature telling us we have a capacity at 2040 that says, you know, we're kind of done. But food for the. I would just say, you know, even if we don't add a single new house to either of our areas, we're still going to continue to make garbage. I mean, this is a common we go to the the Florida Association of Counties and we talk about what's generated, you know, wastewater. And obviously the solids that come out of that, right, humans do a couple things. We generate garbage, if we generate number two, as we call it, we only have to take the kids to the bathroom. So we got to figure out where do we put this stuff and how do we handle it in the most efficient way possible. And so even if we didn't build any new houses we would still continue to just if we just landfill it. We're just going to keep building mountains of garbage. And I don't want to live in a floor to someday that's just covered in mountains of garbage. I think there's a much smarter way we can deal with garbage. And I think the smartest way we found so far is to do exactly what the guy at the end of the movie back to the future did. You take the garbage and you burn it as fuel man. We go back to the future and we take the garbage and we burn it as fuel, man. We go back to the future and we take the garbage and we burn it as fuel and we stop putting so much in the landfill. To me, it just makes sense. Any other comments on this item? Okay. Just to share if I may. Oh, I'm sorry. You're recognized, sir. 20, 40 sounded like a long time away till you realized it's only 15 years from now. Re-sectorcling business and waste energy is something that I am involved with on a daily basis, not the waste energy part, but recycling and encouraging the use of recycling to reduce the length or extend the length of life or something I think we all believe in. Has anybody done a study of how much a plant like this costs and how much do you time you need for permitting? Because 15 years ago, I pretty quick, if that permit takes eight years. So with art with Charlotte County, I can answer that that we were considering bringing that to the board more recently, but we did a feasibility study to see if we could even explore the option of going vertical and once we found out that we could at at a relatively inexpensive price, that bought us some time. But to your point, Commissioner, we would want to be working on this seven to 10 years out, just to have those conversations, the complexity of the regional aspect of it, the permitting, the size that you want to open, all of that, the construction, how you're going to construct it, design, all those things. It's a long lead time item. And if it was a joint project, the interlocal agreement, and who's responsible for what? I feel like those details could be worked out. How would you burn them? Any more comments on this item? Okay, we're going to move on to item 2D, Vincent Avenue. Mr. Hammond, those details are going to be coming up. So we're going to talk about Vincent Avenue, and I'll kind of go over some of it. Some of the commissioners from both, well, I know the commissioners from Charlotte have heard it from me through various presentations, but I know we recently had a joint MPO meeting, so some of the Lee County commissioners were there and heard some of the discussion. So what we're looking for is just some discussion surrounding how we could potentially address this. So the background, the background, Vincent Avenue's look included within the geographic boundary of the Southburns store street and drainage MSBU unit. The unit boundary was created in 1990 and it was amended in 2010 and it talks about what the unit's purpose is to provide construction, reconstruction, paving, resurfing, widening, drainage, etc. The next graphic is just a map showing the area with the most southerly road there being Vincent and we blow that up a lot more in Mr. Price's presentation. The challenge we have in Charlotte County is it was last paved in 2005. The Bernstor Marina, sorry thank you again. Bernstor Marina contributed $150,000 at that time for the resurfacing of the roadway in 2005. Our MSPU systems provide us funding to do a lot of these things, but they do come with timelines that we have to follow, so we've started collecting an assessment for this recent round of paving and we have to pay, we have to do something in that area this year, so we've started. Okay. So it is scheduled to be paid this year with the remainder of the Southborne Bernstur MSPU boundary. And again, I'm just going to kind of, I show the road there and the right away kind of goes right down the middle of the road. And again, Mr. Price's presentation shows some more detail. And I had my team just go out and take some current pictures of the existing roadway. And with that, I'll turn it over to Mr. Price. Hi. Good afternoon again, Rob Price with Lee County DOT. So this graphic here just kind of shows a picture of what we're dealing with here. The county line straddles the center line of Vincent Avenue. On the north side you're in Collier County, that right away is in Collier County. On the south side you're in, or I'm sorry, Charlotte County. Thank you. South side we are in Lee County. We want to highlight the Bernstler Road project that knows some of the residents that were here today brought it up. This project has been going through the PD&E phase with FDOT running the project development and the environment phase. It's nearing completion. We had our public hearing earlier this year. We will have our approvals, we expect by the end of this year. At that point, that will be accompanied with design-building criteria package, meaning that will be at basically 60% design. And by F.DOT standards, the project will be considered shovel-ready. We would just have to move forward with a design-building criteria package and hiring a consultant and a design team to actually complete the design and start construction. So the continuous green tea intersection at Vincent Avenue was a very hot topic through the PD&E phase. Lee County has a controlled access management resolution for Burt Store Road and our access management resolution shows this intersection as a directional left-end right and right-out driveway. There was, it was met with with great opposition by the residents of the Burtstall Marina side and also Charlotte County in, in, of Vincent Avenue. So we worked with FDOT and the community to come up with the compromise. This road being a primary hurricane evacuation route, it carries a lot of traffic and it's under no stops. We designed this road from Veterans Parkway all the way up Bernstor Road to be a super street and not have a lot of signalized intersections and a lot of capacity draining driveway connections. So the continuous screen T is kind of the perfect compromise. It gives the left turn out of Vincent Avenue and maintains that left turn out under signal control. Those folks will make the left turn into a northbound acceleration lane and And then northbound traffic will be outside of that acceleration lane and the Vincent Avenue traffic will merge into northbound traffic. There will be no stop condition for northbound vehicles that are exiting Lee County and entering Charlotte County. There will be stop condition for southbound vehicles at the intersection when the events and avenue green is active. Push the button. Okay. So this is a copy of the plat for Bertson Arena Overlaid on an aerial. And we show this just simply because you can see all these roads here where part of a development plat. Roads are very commonly developed this way. Vincent Avenue being one of those roads. That road provides access to residential development. It is a private street with public rights, which is what the plat says. It is not a publicly maintained county maintained street. So Lee County does not maintain Vincent Avenue. Here is another highlight those yellow lines are privately maintained streets. So this is of our road maintenance database. And you see burnt store is the countyer road Vincent is not. There is a process that Lee County has for us to accept maintenance of a private street that is outlined in administrative code 11-7. Being that Vincent Avenue is a local street there are some criteria that we would that we would require if the county was to be asked to look at whether we would accept Vincent as a county road. Our main test is does it add anything of regional significance to the county roadway network? For instance, is it connecting two major county arterio roadways? In this answer to this case, is it is not. It simply is a roadway that provides access to residential lots. In our Department of Transportation's recommendation, if we were approached and asked to accept maintenance of Vincent Avenue per our administrative code, we would recommend against it. Ultimately, that decision is made by the county commissioners. So we would bring that item forward to the county commissioners with the recommendation not to accept maintenance. If the commissioners direct us to accept maintenance, we would move forward at per their direction. So we just kind of wanted to go through that. That's the conversation that we've had at all the MPO meetings and some of the joint MPO meetings that I know that some of the Charlotte County commissioners have been on. So that was something that I'm sure is gonna come up. I think John is gonna pick up on the slides. So just to elaborate a little bit more, we do have similar situations. The condition that Mr. Price pointed out is the roads that I'm going to mention aren't dedicated not accepted or privately maintained but public access. These are roads that are typically owned and operated by the agency that we have the agreement with. So the first one I want to point out is the City of Northport. And as my team pointed out to me today, if there was ever an agreement that we would like to emulate, it's this one, because it's the easiest one for staff. We simply work with the City of Northport and any work that we're going to do on their roads, that those specific roads, Hillsborough and Chancellor. And I think I have a map showing the location of those roads. We simply build them and they pay us back 50% of it. And it's been, it's worked swimmingly, I would say. We have a really good relationship with them and that's one option that we've used with an agency that but's one of our roads. Excuse me, John. Yes. Were those roads, this example you're using, were they accepted by the city? Yeah, so that's the difference. That's the distinction I made at the beginning of this. They're not the same in that, as Mr. Price pointed out, Vincent is a, I think the term they use is private with a public access where we call it dedicated, not accepted, dedicated to public, but not accepted for maintenance. These roads were in fact dedicated and accepted for maintenance by both agencies. And then we also have an agreement with the city of Punagorda that's slightly different and the street that we share is Colony Court. And this agreement allows us to basically assess the residents that live on that street for the capital projects. We don't do the maintenance of like drainage stuff on those swales or anything like that but for us to pave the road on that Colony Court the city allows us by this by this resolution allows us to assess those residents the same as we would our residents to accomplish that. So that's the that's another option that we've explored with a local agency. And again the map for that road is right there. So moving forward again unfortunately for Charlotte County we have to we're forced to to pave this area this year by the MSVU process and the the case law that we followed we try not to extend any of our capital out past seven years once we've started collecting Assessment with that said the cost of clearly gone up since when we did it In 2005 or whatever I mentioned earlier. I think at that time we indicated that burnt store Marina contributed a hundred and fifty thousand to their portion. The current cost, if we were to cost share this, the Lee County portion would be $386,423. And I say Lee County, it could also be the Bernstor Marina folks again. But if you'll notice, we've had numerous conversations with the Bernstor Marina folks to fund their portion as was previously done, and has been met with some Resistance so just putting that out there for that information. The options there are other options But the options that I presented to my board previously Was that we could another options we could only pay of half of it the challenge we'd have with that is it probably costs us a little bit more because we'd be forced to mill the whole portion of it so that the asphalt doesn't line up. It's not ideal but that is an option that we could do or we have options if our board directed to fund the paving events and having about anonymous view funded sources. The challenge every agency has is that we're strapped for we got so many capital projects out there, recovery projects, I'm FEMA reimbursement and we're trying to stretch every penny as far as we can. Or we could obviously enter in a local agreement with Lee County to fund 50% of the paving of Vincent. And with that, I will turn it over to the board for discussion. Any board comments? Commissioner Constance, you recognize it? Yeah, so if Lee County were to fund half now and then create an MSPU for the birds for marine folks to pay for the other half of the road, that would kind of take care of it. And they'd have to accept the road for paving, is that correct? That is an option. That is an option they could explore. They could create an MSPU for the area that's adjacent to it, which will be the Bernstahl-Marina area and have fun. I hate to play hardball, but I'm going to since I have a baseball player next to me. At the end of the day, I like Commissioner Hanchick's idea that if we're going to pave the road and Bernstahl-Marina doesn't want to pay for it, then we're just going to close off those gates and just put some some berms up or whatever it is so that there's no access and we'll just pave the whole road and we'll take it over and we're happy to have it be part of Charlotte County and we're done. One of the complications I should mention as part of this and I don't know that it's detailed on a map that we've got in our presentation, is that the methodology we use for our MSBUs is front footage on the roads. So in theory, creating an MSBU for the Bernstorm Marina, you may not be able to assess everybody in that Marina. You may only be able to assess the people on the road, which creates another. But everybody in that Marina, in essence, is going to be using access. So you're telling me that all of those properties north of don't get assessed within that, uh, birds or meadows or whatever that unit is up there that we only do the frontage on Vincent? This is where I would defer to keep me out of jail to the county attorney where there might be an option that we could explore creating the MSTU which gives us more, which would give Lee County more flexibility but I would have to explore that but our methodology currently is that we assess the front footage of something. When we have tons of areas where that is exactly the case where people utilize the road but aren't being assessed for it. I yield. Okay. I've got Commissioner Dordy and then Commissioner Pendergrass on deck since we're doing the baseball analysis. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. A couple of questions from Mr. Price, I think. I guess the first step in this whole process needs to be, and I assume y'all did this, researching the record plat Bernstorne Marina, the dedication statement should have said these roadways in the Marine, including Vincent, were dedicated to the public, but the Board of County Commissioners have never accepted any of those streets in the Marines. Is that correct? That's correct. So you classify them as private. They're dedicated to the public, so the public has rights to use them, I guess the lawyers can answer that. But the bottom line is we've had this problem for over 40 years in Sheryl County, really half. And the solution that we came up with is a mixture primarily MSB use, but John, you're correct. My recommendation to Lee County would be would be if you can find that I respect your administrative code, this is so unique though. This road was built by a developer, Pentegrin Isles, and it is centered on the county line. It doesn't fit really probably to your typical local road that would be entirely within Lee County. it's not split. You might have some like we have with Hillsboro, but this because it's so unique, I would just reach out to y'all to say, what would be the problem with at least accepting it for maintenance, enter into an interlocal agreement with Charlotte County to pay for 50% but set up a municipal service taxing unit and have the Lauren Taxing Unit that would then levy a millage on all the properties in the marina. The milledrate would be so small, relatively speaking. I haven't done the arithmetic, but I haven't looked at the values down there, but that place is pretty much built out. So, but an MSPU would be ridiculous to try to do an MSPU down there. It's assessment, the legal aspect of it, in my opinion, I'm an engineer, I'm not a lawyer, but I mean the legal aspect of it would be amazingly difficult. But an MSPU would be fairly simplistic. It's just, and I respect your administrative code, but I would really appreciate if you could look at it from the standpoint of the uniqueness of this road, straddling the county line, and the need really to provide the public, because the Marina folks and the project to the north utilize, the public utilizes this, and they've used this road that access from Vincent into the Marina for construction for decades. I did a lot of design work, a lot of the condos and villas down the marine in the 80s, late 80s, as an engineer. And the construction equipment coming in on Vincent was just continuous. So they've been using our road. And they'll get a benefit from it. But we really need your help to set up something like that. But I can see where you're going to have to figure out some way to deviate in your typical administrative code. But thank you very much Mr. Jim. Commissioner of Pentegrance, thank you. Greenwell. Rob, you asked your question for me. So we've been talking this road for a few years now. What's the condition there of us? I thought last year we were told this road was good for another 10 years and now being told it's gonna be paved this year. Yeah I would say our assessment of the condition of the roadway is that it can last another 5 to 10 years. And now being told it's gonna be paved this year. Yeah, I would say our assessment of the condition of the roadways that it can last another five to 10 years. We have several roadways in other areas of the county that are in worst shape, that are on our five year paving plan. I think what John was alluding to in his comments was, there's some limitations as to how much they can hold the money that helps to pay the paper road. So I think they're running up against some time limitations so they are scheduled to resurface it. And that's a lot of the reason why we're having this conversation now where we feel like the road, this conversation could wait another three, four, or five years. The road is in good enough shape to do that and my other question Rob is I know it was my suggestion about making us the county Lee County taking this and putting an MS to you We have a process in place for that currently now correct correct that'd be if it's those are need It may ask why they've done that in the first place because the residents could voluntarily do that now with 50% plus one of a vote correct? They certainly good. And they try that way later. Not to my knowledge. Can anybody here tell me and staff on either side till why that hasn't been attempted yet? If I could I would just like to touch on two things. To answer your question is it related to Mr. Price. You all probably do a pavement assessment analysis across all your roads. Charlotte County has been blessed slash cursed with the MSPU system. It provides a lot of guardrails that we have to work within. But it essentially allows us to pave all of our roads every 20 years and we've gotten our board and the people that support that. So that's why we're paving it now and that's why we're at the end of that seven-year assessment. With that said, to your second question, Commissioner Pendergrass, is we have reached out to the burnt store folks just to see if we could enter an agreement like we did before. Of course, anytime the government comes to a group and says, hey, do you guys want to give more more money to pay a road that maybe not everybody uses? They didn't seem to agree able to that. And we didn't bring up the MSTU because we couldn't compel them from Charlotte County to create one free from you all. And my next question is maybe this is for the county. The attorney's too is, why could we just donate our side of the road to Charlotte County? the Reds was still living in Lee County. The residents wife couldn't have that road be just turned for a short. We have this issue in other places that the county worked out. We have a road called Coconut Point. It's a quarter mile long off of 41. It goes to very popular hotel. And that we, this wildlife trail brought up something about is annexation and what happens. We have two cities in the county that owns this road. the register of Bonita and Lee County, the quarter mile long, and trying to get three government agencies together to repeat the aid of the sidewalks and it's like... and the county that owns this road. The register of Bonita and Lee County, the quarter mile long, and trying to get three government agencies together, three tables, but sidewalks and it's like, you know, trying to, you know, chase monkeys, right? You're not gonna happen, it's not gonna happen. So, this is a fresh ratio, I think I think we probably have up here. We want to, the service of residents of both sides, But what am easier to do is all in Charlotte County, all of the county, just to split it down the middle. Maybe the county attorney is going to respond why we could just donate our side of the both sides, but what amazers the road is all in Charlotte County, all of Lee County and just have split it down the middle. Maybe the county attorney's going to respond to why we could just donate our side of the road to Charlotte or Charlotte, to donate their road to Lee County. This is so easier, more feasible in the future for replacement and maintenance. And I know, as I'm being a retired police officer, that this happens a lot and are working accidents or crime scenes that be on one side of the road not the other and you see people trying to move cars to get on one side of the road outside of another direction. that this happens a lot and are working accents or crime scenes and be on one side of the road and not the other and you see people trying to move cars to get on one side of the road outside of the other jurisdiction for that reason. So it's obviously it's an issue for public safety. If you will have a crime there one day, it will be on one side of the road and not the other it will be across the border. So what would be the legal response to turning the road turn in the road over to one of the other counties. Mr. Chairman, board members, Richard Wesch, Lee County Attorney. Let me take a shot at answering our commission's question. What makes this situation unique is the roadway as I understand it is privately owned. There is a public interest in order to use the right of way, but It has not been dedicated to the public nor accepted by Lee County government for perpetual maintenance Unless the rest of the rest of the number I have gave us permission so right now we could spend one dollar to touch the road on the current conditions correct Not under our administrative code It would have to be brought up to Lee County standards and then the process could move forward. In simple answer to your question, there's not a Lee County public interest to give up to Charlotte County. What you would have to do is, in my humble opinion sitting here and there may be other viewpoints, approach the legislature to actually move the County boundary line to address the issue that you have raised. Maybe sure, maybe sure, county want us to give this to the Northern part of Guestboro, how to make book a grant all over the county. You know I was... No, we will be the first one. We'll take the northern part. You guys have an offensive. Can we do that before the parking ordinance, Mr. Chairman? Yeah. Well, Commissioner Greenwood. Commissioner Pindegra, touched on exactly where I was going. And that is one, us taking this over, we have many of these situations that come up. And once you open that can of worms, you've opened that can of worms. It's a privately owned road. And we've kind of stood steadfast on not taking those over in the past. And I was going to offer the same exact thing since we do share part of the Bokeh Grand area. We will take one of those issues, and you can take the other. We're kind of joking obviously but the reality of it is that's my concern is that we take, once you take over that private road and Lee County we do not do that in the past and once we open that up it's going to be going to get bombarded with that in the future. That's my concern. So I want to make sure that we understand why the county has that policy and we kind of adhere to it pretty strongly. So what I'm hearing is you want to do in exchange where Lee County takes over all of Vincent. We take all of Boko Grand. Is that what you're providing? That's what I thought I heard. The issue. You take care of the issue and we'll go from there. I would say, I would say that we would take Vincent and both grand of pay for the road. Commissioner, I appreciate the lighthearted fund that we can all have here today with everybody. So I wanted to get back to just a couple clarifying questions to see if I can understand it. So you said it's not ours to give. Basically, Mr. County Attorney. No, come back to the privately owned. Yes, sir. So this is it? The county does not have an ownership interest in the roadway. Okay. As many roadways were created in the past, they were privately developed, privately controlled, privately maintained, but open to the public. And so when it was developed, there was no, like, so for instance, if a row goes bad inside of my HOA that I live in, it's gonna be on us, the residents of the HOA to pave that road and fix it. There was no maintenance created for this. There was no mechanism, there's no CDD or HOA or anything like that. That's correct. It predates all of those concepts. Commissioning. Okay. So what are the options that the board could look at to create something like that for the development that benefits from using the road? Under this statute, the Board of County Commissioners of Lee County could create a tax and unit involuntarily and impose it upon the residents. That has never been done in Lee County before. You have an administrative code that seeks out what we call voluntary units whereby we solicit the areas to be affected and Garner their input and typically the board does not move forward if you do not have 50 plus 1% of the affected property owners in support of the intended action. Okay. Whose role is it or what is the process for seeking the 50 plus 1? Could we send our MSTU coordinator out there to meet with the board of directors for that? I assume there's an HOA out there. Meet with them and talk with them to see if they would go to their residents to solicit the 50% plus one and then get back to us. I would defer to the county manager as that person is under his control? Yes, that would be correct, Commissioner. We would send our MSTU coordinator out there. Would you need direction from the board to send him out there to do that? No. I'm just trying to solve the problem here. I believe you could give us direction, but I believe we've had conversations over time with a number of communities to create an MSTU on private roads. Yeah. I mean, at some point we got to take action. You know, and I'm just trying to solve the problem here. I think private sector business moves a lot different than the government does. You know, whereas we would say, okay, we've got customers that have this problem. We would send people out there to try and help come up with a solution from the problem. And if you were a business, you would sell them that solution, but we're a government. So we're going to try to offer them that solution and give them an opportunity to voluntarily take advantage of it. But at some point, I just want to help you. I want to help everybody kind of move the ball down the field. I think people really get fed up with government sometimes if we just keep kicking the can down the road. That's all. That's why I'm trying to get the process questions asked and answered. Commissioner, you bring up a point about wanting to move the ball down the road. I would say one thing that was touched on by staff was that even though your code, your administrative code, says you can't accept the road because it doesn't meet certain criteria, that's a policy question for the board. If you think it's good policy, regardless of that code, it doesn't meet that specific example of why you should accept the road. You can just make a policy decision as a board and say, we want to accept the road anyway. Because we think it's good policy, and now you have ownership of the road because you've accepted it. And I think then we can explore and enter into an interlocal agreement where we pay half, you pay half, I think, ownership's an issue. Once you establish ownership through accepting the road, I think your toolbox may get a little bit larger. Am I, is that correct? If the board wants, it's a policy decision at that point. That was my was my statement is we would our recommendation would be not to accept. It's ultimately the board's decision and what the board direction is as well we would do. Yeah, it's just a true decision. Okay, I had Commissioner Constance and Pendergrass and then Malika. Yeah, I mean, and I appreciate that because you know, At the end of the day, this is about making sure we have access for everybody and public safety and all those great things. We're trying to solve the problem. I understand the policy, but this is an extremely unique situation where half is in Lee County and half is in Trelac County and that could be the differentiator because this is very unique and if it were all in Lee County then you can make a policy decision because you're on both sides and you can look. But this is something that's very difficult for us to handle. It's a regional and that's where I think this kind of falls out of your basic policy structure. Thank you. Okay. I'm sorry. I had, did I have a penigrass? Pentegrass? Yes. I think the county attorney was trying to get our attention a minute ago. Can I turn it? Do you want to respond? Well, just Lee County commissioners, please bear in mind that while from Charlotte's perspective this may be unique circumstance I would remind your board or our board that we have this circumstance, certainly not the split ownership situation, but the private road maintenance situation opens to the public throughout Lee County. And while an argument could be made that this is unique in its character, I would respectfully suggest you all recall the numerous discussions we've had about similarly situated roadways that are private but open to the public and people addressing you requesting public maintenance of that private roadway. It were from Newport Myers to St. Carlos Park to the private roads off of 41 in business of my question is I think you mentioned before the state nursery could recognize the boundary move, you know, all joking aside, but really the width of the road is 14 feet because they move the line 14 feet, would take the road into all Shari County to make it more easier on the north side and make it all Lee County. That would without any type of other geographical residents to change it because that, he attempted by the state if there was a local bill or something like that? Absolutely, in fact. There is a fix that we want to clarify for future meetings for the next 100 years. Because this is an issue we have throughout the county, too, we have cities and counties having the maintenance of the same road as it's not conducive to do that, to have a city and county, or in this case, two counties over one road. This is you're not going gonna repay or contract a road with two parties. This is not gonna happen So what it be is you're just a fix it that way long term just to take away all the discussion Are the residents could do the ms to you through our crown practice correct? yes, sir and Perhaps the takeaway from today's meeting would be the multi-function approach of directing our MS-TU coordinator to go out and pursue that avenue. And likewise, we also pursue the state remedy of moving the boundary in that area. I don't want to oversimplify any process when you have Tallahassee involved, but literally it's as simple as redrafting the legal descriptions for both Lee and Charlotte counties. Okay, thank you. Commissioner Malika, you recognize. All right, so I'm the new guy on the board here, but when I look at this as a practical matter as a business person, this is a 20 years, last 20 years, this project each half is roughly $400,000. Right? I would say total over the last 20 years counting the latest projection we're closer to right around a half a million dollars. Okay, so if half is our half, so to speak, or the south half, $40 for the Lee County portion. Okay. So the front store residents are choosing right now to opt out of paying for their private road. And they would like us to fall in, not because they didn't choose to ask for the money to pay to maintain their private road. They would like to push it onto our lap. So that was being tabled? I think I'm confusing your question with our residents, assess themselves, and are getting their roads paid. I'm saying the burnt store, the south, correct the lease. In the past, they've, and I don't know the agreement or the mechanism that we, that they were compelled to pay, but whatever the agreement was in 2005, I believe it was, they stroked a check for $150,000, and we pave their portion somehow. Yeah, I don't know how they just opt out of taking care of their road. That's all that's my question. To the Lee County attorney's position and to Mr. Price, we can indicate we have roads all over the county that are the exact same thing. They're dedicated, not accepted. And bluntly, we would take a very pragmatic approach because we don't want to take on the, it has to be brought up to a standard. And that's where the MSBU system was actually originally generated, as Commissioner Dordi will tell you. We had all these areas that wanted the county to take it over, but we had to figure out how to get them up to a county standard. so we assess them to an MSU system that has since funded most of the work that we do for public works. Yeah, there was a discussion about... standards so we assess them to an MSU system that has since funded most of the work that we do for public works. Yeah, there was a discussion about, oh, come here, sure, try it. Go ahead. Okay. Yeah, there was a discussion about the timing of the paving. So, I mean, I would say this to Lee County while your inspection shows you can get another five years of life out of the road, I think is what I heard. Is it going to be more expensive to mobilize and repave that road five years from now or do it while we're already mobilized at today's cost? I mean, that's another perspective to look at. While technically you probably don't need it for another five years, to do it now, I can tell you the net benefit to the taxpayer is going to be much greater by paving it today as one project as opposed to splitting it up and perhaps doing it again in five years. At least that's my... the net benefit to the taxpayer is going to be much greater by paving it today as one project as opposed to splitting it up and perhaps doing it again in five years at least that's my opinion. Commissioner Truex, you recognize that. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Well to Commissioner Hansik's point, if we don't do it this year we have to refund that money because I have to start receiving the benefit and we're at the end of the clock. So that's that part of it. And we can move the line, we can do whatever, you know, to... benefit and we're at the end of the clock. So that's that part of it. And we can move the line, we can do whatever to solve who owns the road, to pay it for it. That's the real question. Does the existing MSPU have to take over paying the entire road, paying for the entire road resurfacing project into the future while there's still access coming out of, you know, the Burkstle River. People took care of that. That is where I'm going up. And I'm not saying they shouldn't have access. I can drive that road, and I'm not paying for it. But that's where we have a question of the residents that live out there have a concern that, you know, hey, We want our side done, but they're going to have to drive on the other side to get out. So I don't know what the answer is, guys, but there's got to be one that we can come to a resolution on. And again, I think the MSTU question, if you guys could do that and see if they maybe would move towards that, you would help to solve that problem. And if they do it voluntarily, it'll make it a lot easier for everybody. Any other comments on this item? Okay. Well, that gets to be your conscious. You recognize. So, this is the same location, but slight twist. So we've all agreed that continuous green tea makes a lot of sense and you know it looks like that's going to be the geometry. But there's hundreds of millions of dollars that are not on the table at this point. Is there Mr.. Price me plan for an interim fix of maybe full signalization just for safety? And I haven't even talked to F.Dot about this, but this is between basically Lee and Charlotte. And that is a troublesome intersection and it would give relief for a lot of folks to not have to make the right to, you know, for safety's sake, the way you have a design, you want them to make a right go make a U-turn with a full boat and trailer and all this other stuff. So, if it's years away, is it worth trying to figure out a signalization that could then still be repurposed without moving too much stuff? You know, your master arms are set up. You're going to put a signal there anyway, just set it up so that it's a full stop both ways to start and then fix it the way you want it to be. Just a question. So I do not believe that there's a safety issue at the intersection today that would warrant our analysis of looking at it as a signal in the interim. The signal was really necessary when you put the intersection in the way it's going to be and you basically are requiring all of the virtual marine traffic to go up to Vincent to make the left go north. So under under current configuration today we think it's safe. We monitor all of our intersections and all of our crash data as it comes in. If it and when it became a safety issue we absolutely would be reaching out and having that joint conversation with Charlie County to talk about what we want to do to address the interim solution. I mean, we're hopeful that we're gonna get grant opportunities, we're gonna be submitting for any kind of grant monies that we could possibly get to help us pay to build a road. But as of right now, $290 million, that's the shortfall. And so would tell you, yeah, it's possible we could put a temporary signal if and when a safety issue came about. And I don't, I think I'm mistaken. I don't mean that it's unsafe. It would make it safer than it currently is. But also, I think I'm more in the thought space of speed dampening. By putting a full signal there, if you're already going to have it set up and you put it in ahead of time, that's going to slow traffic down, which, you know, that's a race way right now. But that's all. I think that's more where I was thinking because if you could put it in now and it's going to stay exactly the same way and just moving some of the light elements on that mass-darm, it's not as big a cost and you're getting benefit out of it earlier. That's all. I would just propose caution that we don't add traffic signals to slow traffic down. Traffic signals are added to address the safety issue and make road safer. Speed is an enforcement issue, largely an enforcement issue. So with speeding is in fact, the major concern out there, I would suggest that our conversations need to be held with the Sheriff's Department of Lee County and the City of Cape Coral Police Department on the Lee County side and Charlotte County on the north side. Thank you. Any other comments on this item, gentlemen? Okay, we're going to move on to public input. Anybody wishing to address the boards during this portion of the meeting must state their name for the record. Remarks on county-related subjects. Shabby's limited to three minutes and shall be addressed to the commission as a body and not to individual members. There will not be any discussion. Anybody from the public wishing to speak, please come forward and be recognized. State your name for the record. You will have three minutes, sir. And where you live. Yeah, from you, my name is Dave Evans. And where you live? I'm from Charlotte County. Thank you, sir. I'm actually the chairman of the MSBU Board funding the pay fee. And I just think it's ludicrous that they say that it's a private road when the largest marina on the West coast of Florida is inside the marina. There's a golf course there. There's restaurants in there. And you have to get permission to go in there. And anybody can drive up and down that road and either come into the in the Bernstorrel lakes where I live or go into the marina with a permit and a pass if you don't actually or not a resident there. But there's no way that can be considered a private road because it's outside of their gates. The roads that are private or the marina are inside the marina. And they pay for those to be paved themselves. This road is outside of that. So I don't see how you can possibly consider the private road. And also they are starting to paving in our neighborhood right now. I was talking to him this morning either tomorrow or the next day they'll be laying paper down. Thank you. Thank you sir. Anybody from the public wishing to speak please come forward you will have three minutes. State your name in the county you're from. My name is Jack Vay and I live in Charlotte County. I'm sort of worried about the two and a half years and the library still isn't open. The cultural center isn't open. Now I've read that the public works isn't open. They've opened some of the parking by the Liveo park but you still can't walk into the Sunseeker. I don't know if the commissioners had a deal where you could park there and walk in and they were unique under deal and won't let you in there. And out of the eight years that I've lived here, I've always been complaining about Charlotte Beach Park because the beach is terrible. Nobody's replaced San there in eight years. So now that you have a joint commission here, maybe Charlotte County could talk to Lee County and find out how they can put millions of tons of sand on all of the beaches in Lee County and you guys can't open up a hundred yards of beach at Charlotte County Beach Park. You can open it up for the boaters to get in and out but you can't take the fence back, bend it at 90 degrees and open up a hundred yards of beach. It is the most populous part of Charlotte County. There's houses all over, people with kids all over, but let's put a fence up so nobody can use the beach. It's ridiculous. Thank you, sir. Anybody wishing to speak? You'll have three minutes. Please come forward, state your name and county you are from. Good afternoon. My name is Edie Johnson. I live in Charlotte County and I live in Burt's Door Lakes, which is the community right across from Burt's Door Marina. I disagree with the gentleman that said that Vincent Road intersection is not dangerous. There's been so many lives taken there and I think something needs to be done as soon as possible. The majority of the Berthesore Marina residents that live there, they don't even go up to that intersection anymore because it's that dangerous. And one of the gentlemen from that spoke early on, those residents come through our neighborhood and all this this traffic is coming through there, and going out, Peppercorn Road to Access Brent Store, going north, they go out Saragosa and Go North, and they also go out the main entrance on Cape Coral to Go North. Those roads, as I was told and heard, they can't accept all all that traffic and they speed down our major roads. We've put up signs for speed limit. There's speed limit in the marina is the same speed limit as it is in our community but it's a race way not only on burnt store marina but in our community. Thank you. Thank Thank you comments ma'am Anybody wishing to speak on a county related item? Please come forward state your name and county you are from Targernaut Lee County. I'm gonna harken back to my previous words this type of Repair and construction on roadways is going to increase our cost dramatically in the future with the stormwater runoff bill that will be going into effect in December. And I understand from engineer friends of mine that if there are any minor modifications and I think they're talking about less than a half an acre modification for your your entire project. Even if you're pre-permitted under the current rules, the new rules will come into play. So I just encourage you all to look at this, in this particular situation, whether you go forward with it or not, look at those rules and see how it would impact something of this particular nature, to see whether that's something you wanna get on on board with and talk to our state legislators to see about modifying and changing. Thank you. Thank you, ma'am. Anybody wishing to speak? Please come forward. We'll have three minutes. Please state your name and the camera. Ellen Kess, Bernurlix. I am very, very disappointed in this whole entire group. There has been sufficient time to discuss and to ruminate over a best solution for Vincent Afton. I cannot believe that we are sitting here this afternoon because this is going on for well over several years. And we are at a point where there is no valent suggestion to move forward. Really, there needs to be a better decision-making. Thank you. I really am. Very disappointed. Thank you for your comments, ma'am. Anybody wishing to speak? Please come forward. You'll have three minutes. State your naming. County, your front. Thank you. Again, Marsha Ellis for the record from Lee County. But I've been hearing from Burt Store Coalition people for a number of years asking for some help and support. With that pinch point, come in from Charlotte County, down to Lee County, people losing their life, people concerned about the over development that now is crashing our housing market. People are losing that big lifetime investment that they have made with this reckless over development that is taking over the area. I will say that we do have a lot of agreements with Charlotte County and one of the things that we haven't really talked about is the amount of biosolids that are composted and applied in Charlotte County. Because those do figure in highly, and those biosolids are contaminated with PFAS. And the PFAS figure into wherever we're finding that that fecal bacteria we're also finding those PFAS that are part of the legacy nutrients that come in when we have these urbanized environments and unfortunately, the tragic application of PFIS contaminated biosolids in our environment, we need to work together because we have the solids from Olga, coming up to Charlotte County to turn into compost that end up on the land, that then washed down into Lee County. We need to get a handle on this. And let me just also say that there is nothing beautiful happening out the waste energy plant. It is not magic. They are burning trash. They are burning plastics. And the more plastics that you're burning, the more that you're releasing dioxins and other toxins into the environment. It is a Title V stationary source of air pollution permit that oftentimes in the nine incinerator communities in Florida, the 60 communities across the United States, only 60, is the top source of air pollution certainly among the top three. So we have to really look at the negative externalities of a highly populated area like Cape Coral being now dumped onto the Bernstor community, who unfortunately is taken on, taken a big hit with these negative externalities in the lack of coordination where they're coming up on the short end of the stick far too often. And we've got a lot of awesome environmental resources there that we need to be speaking out about the Babcock Web Wildlife Area, the Yucca Pins. We need to be able to speak for the environment because the environment doesn't have a voice. The wildlife doesn't have a voice. And the future generations that are going to be faced with decades, decades of incineration, we need to give voice to them because nobody asked Buckingham how they felt about investing $85 million to extend the life of their incinerator. And I'm sure they will be happy to support and share their experience with the Bernsturk community so it's I'm very happy to meet you all. Thank you. Anybody wishing to speak on any county related matter please come forward you will have three minutes please state your name and where you are from which county you're from. My name is Kathy Banson. I'm the Executive Director for the Gasparale Island Prej authority. So during the presentation earlier when we talked about joint efforts, after a hurricane when the island has been under mandatory evacuation, we kind of get left. Sometimes we feel a little bit left out because we're not really sure what role everyone is playing. And we have people come up to the bridge and they look to us because we're there and they say, what are you gonna do, where are we gonna go? We would like to maybe have a more formalized plan from both counties together so we can know what to expect after a story. Thank you for your comments, man. Thank you. Anybody wishing to speak please come forward. You'll have three minutes. Stay true name and which county you're from. Okay, seeing nobody arrives, I'm going to move on to comments. I will start with the administrators table. Any comments? Not for me, thank you. Or me, thank you. Okay. county attorney table any comments? Not for me thank you. Or me thank you. Okay. The county attorney table any comments? Nothing. Okay. Sir. Nothing further thank you. Okay. We're going to start to my left commissioner Duage any comments sir. I just want to thank the folks from Lee County for coming up. I think we saw some things out. I have a little bit of confidence. We're going to work this out so early. Thank you very much. Thank you, Trip. Thank you, sir. Commissioner Malika. So thanks again to both of our teams for all your collaborative efforts over the years. It was an honor to be here today for our first joint meeting and to see everybody up here. And I'm glad to see all the efforts. And good times put on the table today. the Fortleworking together. Thank you, sir. Commissioner Truax. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just want to thank the teams that work together to see all the efforts and good I've put on the table today and look forward to working together. Thank you, sir. Commissioner Truax. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just want to thank the teams that worked together to put all this forward for us today. And I want to thank my colleagues who are coming up. It's good to see some friends from the South coming. Did a visit of Yankees here in Charlton? No, it really is good to be able to talk. I do believe that we are moving forward with some things, even though it may is good to be able to doubt it and talk. I do believe that we are moving forward with some things, even though it may be contrary to comments. We can't make decisions here today. Number one, and number two, we got more work to do with some of these issues. And we're going to continue to work together at O.A.R. and I look forward to the collaborative effort to move forward. So thank you. Thank you, sir. Commissioner Pendergrass. Good morning. Good afternoon. Thank you. Mr. Director, you said Yankees actually remind you have to read Slax in our team. So are Yankees fans are here today. So it's a good rural rest like here today So but again, no, thank you to Charlotte County and everything you guys been a great host I will tell you we've told meetings throughout the county throughout the state and this is a great job You guys don't need put to see that I also want to take the men here in green Sheriff Turex is a Sheriff's Department. know I was one of race here and I've seen Charlotte County grow in the last a lot in the last 40 years and I was gonna tell you I've watched the nightly news everything and see how your counties change so much over the last 10 years and you guys I've been always used Charlotte County as a you know talk about how about Lee County Grotes and where we are now seeing the change of Lee County, how in Charlotte County 30 years ago, first door of Marina, I mean, that's when I was a high school I was from myself and 40 years. So talk about Lee County Brothes and where we are now. I'm seeing the change of Lee County. How short of a county 30 years ago, first tour of Marina, I mean, that's when I was in high school. I was from myself in 40 years ago. My self and commissioner of Greenwell used to go trucking out and we're willing to, you depend. But you know, you see the changes of the county. And I see what your county, you've committed done the last few years. the tragedy with the loss of your short adias this past year in the Sheriff's Department you guys are amazing you see the crime increase you see what happens with growth is your county growth you see what happens to crime and you're having to adjust that so you guys are growing pains but right now you have something Lee County doesn't really have anymore that's a vital resources raw land and you're gonna continue seeing that growth you saw that years ago with Cheney brothers coming in you know right now if you look at and Lee County is for me wanting to build something in a 28 year site along I setting five in Lee County. There's no sites available. There's no laying up. So you guys are the next 30 years will be growing in this whole issue about solid waste. We're going to be dealing with that in Lee County, you're going to be dealing with a lot too because I think there's numbers 24, I think it's be closer by 2036 based on the projections of growth here in South Lafordta is in the county and the state diffused the growth. But it's really good. I think a lot of came out of this meeting. I think we all heard everybody spoke to you. You may leave here not here, which you wanted to hear, but we heard you and we'll be working at the county. We'll be working on some of these issues that we brought up today and I look forward to having another discussion soon. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, I really want to echo the comments of everybody. I really enjoy talking with you all today and certainly appreciate the collegiality and the comments that you all shared. Thank you so much for the good ideas and the hospitality that you showed us. I do want to point out our waste energy plant gets four points that and stars on Google reviews. So very highly reviewed, Google reviews, waste energy plant. The truth is, I love that plant. It's something that I've loved since even before I became a county commissioner. If you, our chambers of commerce have the leadership programs, they'll take you through there. You never see any pollution. There's never been any smoke coming out of that tower. And honestly, I've been a commissioner for 12 years and have not gotten any comments or complaints from the people who live in the neighborhood near to offer of Buckingham. So it's a good idea to think about. I've got a daughter who is 14, a son who is eight. If they live to 90 and 84, they will live to see the year 2,100. And so as I think about that, what are we going to do with the garbage between now and 2100 during their lifetime, right? I'm hoping it's not big mountains of garbage, something that's more sustainable. Thank you guys. Thank you, sir. Appreciate your concert. Yes, thank you, Mr. Chair. Yeah, I saw that movie. It's called Wally. Yeah. Yeah. I want to thank everybody. I want to thank the staff for all the effort. and I want to appreciate the opportunity for you to get together. I think this is a great group. We work extremely well regionally. We meet continuously every year with the MPO, and we have had great success with moving projects forward and working regionally. So I think this was a great effort. I honestly can't remember the last time we met. I think it had to be 10 years ago and I think Commissioner Hammond and Commissioner Pentegrist might be the only two that were here. We met in Lee County, you know, in that room in the building off of Main Street. So, you know, it's been too long and I appreciate the opportunity that we've had to get here and exchange ideas. And I think this is something that we need to do more often. Our communities are going to continue to grow physically, if not spiritually together. And so we need to be engaging on a regular basis. So I hope we can, this isn't just a one off and that we're planning to do this again in six months or at least a year, but as the agenda builds and we have topics to discuss, I think this is just a great opportunity. So thank you. Thank you, sir. Commissioner Greenwell. All right. Thank you, Chairman. First, thanks to Lee County staff for putting all this together and the Charlotte staff for working together and being able to present all of this to us. They're the real heroes. They're the one that work. They work off a hard to get this stuff done. So I can't tell you how much I appreciate all the hard work y'all do. And it's a great opportunity for us all to get together. And I do hope we do it more often because we get to share ideas. We may not always agree, but it's nice to hear different approaches because we're not always right so thank you. Thank you sir. Commissioner Dordy. Thank you Mr. Chairman. Yeah I really appreciate the meeting today I appreciate our management teams and all the work that went into putting the agenda together deciding on what topics we're going to be discussed you know it's we we meet periodically in other forms, floor association and counties, the coalition, other types of the MPO joint meetings. And what I've observed over the years is the relationships that we have. We've developed some great relationships in this region. And we need to use those relationships and work with those and keep those relationships strong. These issues that weren't resolved today will get resolved because we've got good people working on it. And I just would encourage, in the Cheryl Academy management team, that on that one road issue, that you know the clock stick. And so we're going to have to be creative on that because they're not going to be able to develop their funding structure quick enough if they can't even go down that pathway. So we're going to have to find a solution. But that's, you know, we, Hector, you can bring that to us individually and see how we roll that in. But if we got a paving contractor out there right now, I don't think Lee County is going to get an MS to you set up that quickly. So, I mean, I see the county attorney shaking his head. So, bottom line is, I appreciate the meeting, I appreciate the relationships attorney shaking his head. So bottom line is, I appreciate the meeting, appreciate the relationships, and thank you very much. Yeah, thank you, those comments. So when I got elected in 2016, I think it was 2018. It was my very first joint meeting in Lee County downtown. So I don't think it was 10 years ago. It was more like seven or eight years ago. And I remember having that meeting in the end, it's been a long time in between, but we've had to join MPO meetings fairly. I don't think it was 10 years ago, it was more like seven or eight years ago. And I remember having that meeting in the end, it's been a long time in between, but we've had to join MPO meetings fairly regularly. So transportation obviously is a very big issue between the counties and for the whole state for that matter. But yeah, again, I just want to reiterate I want to thank the staff for putting this presentation together. And one thing I would say, I would like to tell the public, thank you for your decorum today, invoicing your opinion, exercising your first amendment rights to express to us how you feel about issues that impact everybody in the county. So I do appreciate that. And one of the things I learned when I got elected is sometimes the wheels turn slow in government, but they turn and it's up to us to turn them in the correct direction when necessary. And we have to navigate all the various statutes, ordinances, policy. You've heard a little bit about that today. Doesn't mean we can't get anything done. It just means we have to work a little bit harder to make things happen. So with that said gentlemen, our agenda is complete and this meeting is adjourned.