Okay, top of the morning to everybody. It is April 22nd and I'd like to go ahead and call the Board of County Commission's meeting to order. Our chair, Commissioner Chestnut, is not available this morning. He might be back this evening, so I'm going to pinch it as the vice chair. Before we get started, we are blessed to have the Reverend Dr. Marie Herring here to give the invocation from Days, Frings, Missionary Baptist Church. If everybody could join me in standing for the invocation and then we will follow that with the pledge of allegiance. Dr. Herring, you will recognize, good morning. Chairman Chesnut and our vice here, Cornell and the other commissioners. I omble to thank you for the opportunity. Let us pray. O God, I help in ages past, I hope for years to come, the shelter from the stormy blast in our eternal home. O Lord, I pray you guide us always as we attempt to navigate our lives, satisfy the needs that need to be met this day, strengthen us as we make tough decisions. I pray that we will be like a well-warded garden, like a spring whose waters never fail. I pray we will be fruitful. May we have meaningful discussions that will help us to build each other up and glorify your name. Help us to share things that will benefit all of us and will enhance the lives of the people of the communities of a lot of our county. Help us to deal with the different challenges that we're facing in our communities. Bless each of our commissioners with wisdom and knowledge. It's in your name today. Amen. Amen. Thank you. Congratulations to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic of Michigan which it stands in one nation under God, in the visible ability and justice for all. OK, all right, so the first item on the agenda is to actually adopt the agenda. We've had a request from the manager to go ahead and flip items J1-2 with K2. I think that probably makes a lot of sense. So are there any other changes commissioners on the agenda? And if not, I'll entertain a motion. As requested. That motion in a second. Is there anyone from the public that wish to speak to the agenda motion? Mr. Blatt, you recognize this on regular and consent. Yes, sir. I want to ask you to pay more attention to item number two on consent. Your attorney for the surtax board. I certainly agree they need to have one, but this is your last time, your last chance for your body and us to viewing and attending public to get somewhat of an audition from these lawyers before they're on the clock. I think we should let them portray their work and show their metal now before you have to start paying them on the clock. Thank you for the spot.unt. So I think Madam Attorney, that's just kind of moving from the original firm to her new firm, is that correct? It's the same attorney. Yeah. Madam Attorney. Yeah. So Mr. Chair, this is the same attorney. She's just moving to a different firm. And we need to have the contract with the firm, but it has a specific attorney in the contract. Okay, thank you. All right. Commissioner, does any other discussion mind on the same? I guess I did have a question. I don't want to move it from the agenda but I did have a question on consent item. It was the sorry I'm writing it things got moved a little bit. It's for the underground utilities construction, not a true, which number that is anymore. I'm going to find it there per cure minute. Item D, item 7D, procurement. Yes, the under, item D, yes. I had asked for just an understanding of the accounts that that money was moving to and from. It was just an increase I think in order for us to be able to do some of the work with the Quart House under an existing contract, but I was wanting to make sure that was actually moving from capital I never got the answer to that question and there's no accounts listed I'm Andrew do you have the answer to that?. The councilor. The councilor. The councilor. The councilor. The councilor. The councilor. The councilor. The councilor. The councilor. The councilor. The councilor. The councilor. The councilor. The Tommy could explain the budget shifting. Okay, seconder okay with that. All right, any other discussions? Seeing none, all those are favour say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That motion is unanimous. Okay, we are often running within the agenda. So first item is the announcement, and Mr. Sexton, you are recommended. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Happy Earth Day, Mr. Chair, commissioners, staff. It's not too late if you haven't made Earth Day plans to do some of the wonderful events that are available in our community. If you go to the allatuaacounty.us webpage, you'll see Earth Day is in the spotlight, and if you click on that, it will show you the cornucopia of events available in this amazing community of ours. So if you don't have any plans, this is a good planning tool. Also, Mr. Chair, we want to let folks know that there is a meeting coming up of the MTPO and we want public participation. If you go to any of our social media sites, Facebook, X, Nextdoor or Instagram, you will see this notification and above the notification the image is a link to a tool where you can participate in the planning for our transportation needs in the future. So we encourage you to do that. And finally, Mr. Chair, there was a editorial recently about legal notices. I don't know if you all saw it. It was in one of our local papers. And the story it told was interesting, but it left out a great deal of information. It was comparing our website with the website of this publication and showing that more people were seeing legal notices on their website than on our website. And if you take that at face value, that is probably true. I'm not questioning those numbers, but what the story left out was the other things that we're doing to push legal notices out. We have four social media sites, Channel 12, our newsletter, and a banner on the homepage of the website. And I asked my staff this morning to take the last 10 legal notices that we've pushed out through all of those efforts. And the impressions and views of just those four was over 45,000 impressions. People are seeing legal notices in a very proactive way when they scroll on their social media. For the first time ever, our legal notices are finding them rather than them having to find our legal notices. So I just want to let you know that that mechanism is working beautifully and it's reaching out to, I think, more people than have ever viewed our legal notices. We have interactions, we have shares. So it's working very well. And I just wanted to clear that up since that part was left out of the story. And Mr. Chair, those are the announcements. Okay, thank you, Mr. Sexton. Commissioner, is there any questions? Nothing? I saw Tommy walk in. Do you want to move 70 and just handle this one real quick? Good for you. Yeah, let's go ahead and do move that 70 first amendment and a dendum agreement for the underground utility. Recommended action is to approve and authorize the chair to execute the Dendom agreement with the utility service of Gainesville not to exceed 4 million annually. Mr. Crossbeid just need an explanation on that if you could. Sure, so we have an annual agreement with utility contractors of Gainesville. Their primary focus right now is the courthouse. And the work they're doing on the underground, the courthouse. If you remember, we picked every kind of method or dandit originally that he could think of. So phase one, the courthouse complex has three phases. Associated costs with USI on this part. As phase one's going to be $900,000 for the CEP, the air conditioning stuff. The parking garage is about $1.8 million that they're gonna be working on and then phase two is the courthouse and connecting the underground and there's some sidewalks at the cities requiring some things, so all that would be phase three. So I'll be under the $4 million that we have under contract, but's how we're breaking out most of us going to this project there will also be some efforts at Side work at the Cusco Willa fire station as well, and so that will have some cost to it It's about $460,000 but all of it will be under the $4 million All of that's coming out of our CIP budget or right all those are projects that we're in our CIP budget most of it's going to be debt issue okay for the for the courthouse. And Travis, it's in an email on April 17th. So it's pretty comprehensive. That's all right. We didn't reference the exact agenda item. What should have helped. But thank you.. Mr. Chair, move staff recommendation. Yeah. A motion at a second. Any discussion? Any public discussion? Back to the board. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? As unanimous. Thank you, Tommy. Thank you, Commissioner, for the question. All right. Next up, we have the approval of three amazing recognitions. Can I get a second to approve the three recognition any discussion any public discussion back to the board all those in favor say aye aye I pose motion is unanimous Okay, so the first one is the presentation of a proclamation recognizing May 4th through May 10th as corrections Detention employees appreciation week. We've got some amazing folks from the sheriff's office here if If you want to join Commissioner Prisya and be reckoned. Welcome. Thank you all so much for being here. So I get the honor of honoring people who don't get honored very often. And I really appreciate this sheriff and his staff and the approach they've been taking at the jail to try to think about ways we can reduce recidivism and really think differently about our jail operations. So thank you for all the work you've been doing. Declaring May 4th through May 10th, 2025, as corrections detention employees appreciation week in Elatio County. Whereas each and every day, the Elatio County Sheriff's Office detention employees provide a vital services for citizens of this county and are responsible for the care, custody and control of approximately 800 inmates each day. being conservative these days. Whereas these men and women are responsible for the care, custody, and control of approximately 800 inmates each day. That's being conservative these days. Whereas these men and women are responsible for the inmates held at the Elatio County Department of the Jail, directly supervising the incarceration rehabilitation of the offenders and whereas corrections detention employees protect inmates from violence and encourage them to develop skills and attitudes that can help them become productive members of society upon release. And whereas we acknowledge that corrections and attention employees provide an invaluable service to our community and receive little recognition for their efforts. And whereas the week of May 4th through May 10th has been proclaimed national corrections and detention employees appreciation week. And whereas we invite all Alachro County citizens to recognize these individuals for their commitment to the safety of our community. Now forth through the authority vested in me by the Board of County Commissioners of Alachro County, Florida, I do here by proclaim the week of May 4th through May 10th as correction detention employs appreciation week in Alachro County, Florida. And it is signed by our illustrious chair and our clerk, Jess Erby, and it has the seal and everything. Thank you. Applause. Thank you. Thank you, Mary. Good evening. I just want to say that I'm happy to be a part of such a group. Since becoming sheriff, I've had the opportunity to walk the jail on numerous occasions. And I tell you, the men and women in that facility that takes so much. We come and share if I've had the opportunity to walk the jail on numerous occasions. And I tell you, the men and women in that facility that takes so much pride in what they do, just like the guys on the road, is just awesome to see what they do in that jail. And also, we've been working very closely with the reentry program to cut down on recidivism and just the professionalism that they provide and the willingness to do the job is just awesome. Thank you. I just want to say that I want to thank all the officers, the men and women at the jail. They do a tremendous job every day. Despite all of our challenges, they stick with it, they work hard and they give us their all. And we couldn't do this without them. We wouldn't be here without them. So I owe all the credit to them. Thank you. Thank you, Major. Sheriff, thank you. I will say that, you know, there's 10 counties where the County Commission actually runs the jail, but we are fortunate to have such an amazing sheriff, major under Sheriff and staff at the jail that really works closely with this commission to like you said, reduce recidivism and run the jail. And so I thank you for your work. I apologize. I am Sheriff Scott. Yes, we made the key she runs the jail and that's under Sheriff Cruz. Yes. okay, thank you, Sheriff. Get around the floor. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, next up we have a presentation of a proclamation recognizing today April 22nd as Earth Day. I know Mark mentioned that during the announcements. It's a special day for me in that. This is my 30, what is it? My 30, gosh, what did I get engaged? 36th anniversary of my engagement, 1989 had to do that math. So, Earth Day is always a special day for me and Commissioner Alfred, let's do it. It's interesting. I had just turned nine years old when the first Earth Day was celebrated. And I remember it. And I think that that may be one of the reasons I became an environmental engineer was I grew up with this new, at the time very new focus on the environment and the focus on making the environment healthy for the people that lived in it. I don't know if any of you remember the late 60s, early 70s when rivers rivers caught on fire due to pollution. And the world was, you know, we had entire towns, love canal, for instance, being evacuated due to pollution. And the world has changed to be a better place. So I am very honored today to read this proclamation, declaring April 22nd, 2025, as Earth Day in Elatua County, Florida. Whereas this year marks the 55th anniversary of Earth Day, which was enacted in 1970 to advocate for a cleaner environment. And whereas Earth Day has become a worldwide event and has highlighted some of the most critical environmental issues on the world stage. And whereas loss of biodiversity, climate change, and air and water pollution continue to threaten life support systems globally and locally. And whereas it has understood there are challenges as well as opportunities ahead for working together for a greener and cleaner future. whereas local governments are at the forefront of tackling these issues through innovation, creativity and action. And whereas Earth Day is an annual reminder of the constant need for environmental activism, stewardship, and a time for a renewed commitment towards a more sustainable future. Now therefore, through the authority vested in me by the Board of County Commissioners of Elatra County, Florida, I do hereby proclaim Tuesday, April 22nd, 2025 as Earth Day in Elatra County, Florida. Dolly proclaimed this 22nd day of April, 2025, and signed by all the appropriate people. And I handing this to you, Steve. There we go. And would any of you all like to say for this? Thank you, Commission Officer. Good morning everyone and happy Earth Day. I'm Steve Haasett, the county's Environmental Protection Department Director. And first and foremost, I'd like to thank the Chair and the County Commission for really your unwavering commitment to our department and our environmental protection programs. Without your leadership, we wouldn't be here. And I think this community would be having a lot more challenges with the environmental issues we're facing today. Earth is a great Day is a great opportunity to celebrate together, this incredible planet we live on, and to renew our commitment to protecting the sensitive water and natural resources that make a lot of your county so special. And again, none of this would be able to take place with the support of the community, the citizens, and our commission, and our county management. So thank you again for that. I would like to take a few moments to recognize some of my colleagues. I've got Andy Christman, our Lane Conservation Program Manager. We have protected 36,000 acres in our lots of county since the program started in 2000. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm Manager and we want to remind you all that this month is Water Conservation Month and Springs Protection Month. So our Water Resources team is dedicated to make sure we all have clean water and water resources in this county. And then Betsy Riley, she is our Sustainability Manager. So as we're protecting our water and water resources in this county. And then Betsy Riley, she is our sustainability manager. So as we're protecting our water and natural resources, we are also looking to make sure we're all doing the best we can to protect this planet and do what we can through sustainable practices. So I just wanted to recognize all three of them. I did want to mention, Mark, section mentioned earlier, that there's been Earth Day events happening all month but there are still three events this week and this weekend that I'd like to mention. The first is on Saturday, April 26th at Lincoln Middle School. We have a tree planting event. We'll be planting 25 trees that starts at 9 a.m. on April 26th and Lacey Holt's birth or arborist will be leading that event. Also on this Saturday we have a field trip to Barr Hammock from 9 to 11 on Sunday at Turkey Creek Preserve from 9 to 11 and these will be led by our land conservation staff. We also have a field trip in coordination with the Elatra-a-bond society at Longleaf Flatwood's Reserve, starting at 8 a.m. on Sunday. This will be led by one of our local naturalist, Michael Drummond, who used to also be one of our senior planners in our department. And if you've never been in the field with Michael, it's really something to be seen. He can tell you about everything you see out there. So I really encourage anyone to come do one of those three field trips. And then finally we have our... You have that one, you have that one, you have that one. We have our saving myelachua. It's an archandas we do every year. It's our 12th year in a row. We've had over 600 students submit artwork this year. And so we will be recognizing them this evening at a ceremony starting at 5 o'clock. And the room is usually full. It's a great event. And it's something very special for our students to be able to get that recognition and to meet our commissioners. So that event is this evening at five. For the first time this year, we're going to display all of our artwork, not just the winners, but all the other 615 pieces of art at the Laney Kua Monastery School, which is just down the street at 636 North East first street and that will be Thursday and Friday night from 5 to 7 and Saturday from 9 to 10 to 5 p.m. So I encourage you all to come out and see this work. It's incredible. It really shows how much the students care about the environment and the artwork is just absolutely phenomenal. Every year we create a calendar from selections from that artwork and we will provide that free to anyone who's interested in a calendar every year. So that's a great event that'll be this evening. And again, if you can't make it tonight, come in to the monastery school later this week and see the artwork. Thank that, Steve. We got Commissioner Prisya. I just want to say thank you. I don't't think our sometimes I think our community doesn't realize that we're one of the few counties across the state that actually has an environmental protection department and that's in part a testament to our community to our voters for caring so much about these issues and continually voting for wild spaces public places for helping support us as we develop better regulations and programs that support water conservation and so it's a testament to all of us that we even have this program and I just want to thank everybody because I know you have so many people that are tirelessly working in the field to make these things possible and just want to say thank you to the community and to all of you for your work. Thank you, Commissioner Wheeler. Yes, and just very quickly too. It's not just in our county that these folks work. We have people reaching across county lines for their help as well. So the expertise that we have in our county is recognized by folks around us who actually call and say, can you help us? And they do. Thank you all. Amen. All right. Thank you, Steve. Thank you again. And if anyone does have questions about environmental issues, we can be reached at 352-264-6800. Thank you. OK. All right. Thank you. The last proclamation is going to be with Commissioner Wheeler, which is a proclamation recognizing April as child abuse prevention month in Elatua County. And we've got some amazing folks that are working daily and tirelessly for that. Yes, we do. And many of those were with us yesterday. The children's trust met yesterday with the Board of County Commissioners and the room was full. This community definitely cares about the children of Elatua County. And we had to bring in extra chairs to accommodate all the folks that came to have input into this. So I want to thank you all for that work that I heard about a lot of you for the first time, but also for the work that you're continuing to do. As a retired school teacher, I know how important it is that we make sure that our children are protected in this community and I I know there are a lot of agencies. Maybe you all could share when one of you come up here where those locations are in the community. But to share also, Chief Theos has okayed a baby box for us. The first one in the county for, and it's going to be at the new fire station out at Tech City between Alachoy and Gainesville. So we're really excited about that. So Alachoy County Florida, a proclamation declaring April as Child Abuse Prevention Month in Alachoy County Florida, whereas Alachoy County's rate for child abuse and neglect is 4.46 per 1,000 children compared to the state rate of 4.15 per 1,000 children. And whereas child abuse and neglect cause significant trauma to the abused child in society, inflicting upon children's serious illness and injury, resulting in physical, intellectual, and emotional impairment or death. And whereas abused and neglected children are a much greater risk of becoming abusive and neglectful parents, and whereas prevention services can reduce the cost society must bear in dealing with the results of child abuse and neglect, and can help children and families avoid the overburdened and expensive social welfare and criminal justice systems. And whereas children deserve the opportunity to grow and thrive in healthful environments, free from threats of violence and harm, and whereas during the month of April, public and private sector agencies, childcare professionals, child advocates, and residents will increase the public's awareness of child abuse and neglect prevention. Now therefore, through the authority vested in me by the Board of County Commissioners of Alantra County, Florida, I do hereby proclaim April is Child Abuse Prevention Month in Alantra County, Florida. Dolly proclaimed this 22nd day of April, April AD 2025 and it's signed by our chair Chess Nutt and then tested to by Jess Irby and I would like to present it to you as The lead person here since you're the first in the line and have you introduced this team? Good morning Thank you commissioners My name is Kathy Winfrey. I am the Program Manager of UF Healthy Families Program and I'm also the chair of this Latvia County Child Abuse Prevention Task Force. I would like to thank the commissioners for your support during Child Abuse Prevention Month. Throughout Child Abuse Prevention Month the task force and our partners are building a narrative of hope for the children and families throughout collaboration and the creation of prevention. Together, our powerful network of prevention advocates and practitioners throughout Florida are ready to provide families with what they need before they are in crisis. We know we can't do this alone. We all have a role to play as healthy partners in our communities. Each year organizations around Florida gathered to plant pinwheels that symbolize a commitment to supporting families and protecting children. You may have seen the pinwheels that we planted this year, 960 pinwheels that we got got some brand new pinwheels this year that are planted in front of UF Health Hospital. It is a reminder that we all can play a part in helping children grow up happy and healthy. The work done across the state to strengthen families is gaining greater momentum every day. The child welfare system is vast and we are are thankful for every social worker, law enforcement officer, guardian ad-lietum, counselor, and thousands of others in the system who wake up each day with the dedication to helping others in their hearts. Such as the group that we have right here, I'll go ahead and introduce them. So we have Brianna from partnership for strong Families. And I'm sorry. Janine from Partnership for Strong Families. We have Xavier White from Early Learning Coalition. Stephanie Cox is from UF Child Protection Team. And so is Alexis also from Child Protection Team. This is just smattering of the Elatura County Child Abuse Prevention Task Force. We probably have representatives from I would say about 25 different agencies throughout Elatura County. Just some of them were able to make it here today. And I just want to put out there you do not have to be a representative of a child-focused agency to join us. Any citizen that's concerned about the welfare of our children is welcome to be a member of our task force. I just wanna close with saying that children who are raised in safe, stable, and nurturing relationships and environments are more academically and financially successful and grow up to be protective contributing members of their community. Can we get a picture? Yes. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. You're welcome. You're welcome. Thank you. I'm very sure. You're welcome. Thank you. I'm very, very sure. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Thank you so much. All right. So next up we have recognition of leadership awards. We're going to pause before we do that and open it up for our 12 o'clock. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Thank you so much. All right. So next up we have recognition of leadership awards. We're gonna pause before we do that and open it up for our 12 o'clock public comment. We like to give citizens an opportunity to speak directly to us on anything that is not on the agenda. So we'll go ahead and start public comment. And Mr. Connish, you are recognized. Mr. Sherjim Connish, I'm supposed to be working on my farm this afternoon. May I address the item regulating agritourism? Okay. Some of us have in the private sector have been working hard in the field and I've created a rare, long-leaf pine wire grass ecosystem and as such IMA farm recognize as such by the property appraiser. So I want to explain to you why your ordinance is illegal and I want to read you the definition of agritorism. Agritorism activity means any agricultural related activity consistent with a bona fide farm, livestock, operation, ranch or in a working forest, which allows members of the public, of the general public, for recreational, entertainment, or educational purposes, to view or enjoy activities including farming, ranching, historical, cultural, civic, ceremony, or educational purposes, to view and enjoy activities including farming, ranching, or harvest your own activities and attractions. So there's just sweeping definition of agritourism which is incorporated by reference into our right to farm law which is absolute in terms, and which finds you absolutely. The legislature finds that agricultural production is a major contributor to the economy of the state, that agricultural lands constitute a unique and irreplaceable resource of statewide importance, that the continuation of agricultural activities preserves the landscape environmental resources of the state contributes to the increase increase of tourism, including agritorism, and furthers the economic self-sufficient issue of the people of the state of Florida, and that the encouragement development, improvement, and preservation of agricultural result in a general public benefit to the health and wear filler welfare of the people of the state, sir. And I think you would agree with this, and this merges into your promotion of resource space recreation. Your problem, sir, is that you have been preempted from regulating anything on any farm subject to state of Florida, best management practices promulgated by the state, couple of different agencies. There's 10 farms, civil culture is one of them. And what's important to recognize is this arbitrary requirement that your timber farm be at least 10 acres has been tossed out by the courts because there's no basis for it. So there's no minimum to be a tree farmer, although I've gotten more than enough. Limitation on duplication of governmental regulation. A local government may not adopt any ordinance regulation or a policy to prohibit restrict regulator. Otherwise, the limit, the activity of a bona fide farm operation on land class for the agricultural. By definition, agritourism is part of the farm operation and you cannot regulate it. And why would you want to to serve anybody from doing what I've done? Thank you, Mr. Council. Your comments on J1 for later today. These are your comments. I'm sorry. These are the comments on J1 for later today. So that's a J9? Yeah. Can I go to general public comment? Yeah, you want three minutes for general public comment? If you'll let me. Yeah, go ahead. OK, this budget time. And I'm telling you that if you think that the authority is going to continue to ignore service level losses by GRU. You're mistaken because in the city charter, and I can't find it, any service level agreement loss with anybody, including hand or hand, with the solar feed and tariff, must be recognized, identified, quantified, and included in the of funds, and they're not doing it. So, your free fire hydrants, SLA laws, not paying for street lights, SLA laws, collection of utility tax and local sales tax, free of charge, SLA losses, and there's probably more. And G Groupcom is losing money because the city, the county, and the school board aren't paying for it. You picked up the trunk radio system for $3 million less than it was owed on it, because you didn't want to pay for the system you demanded in the name of public safety. So what's going to happen eventually is they're going to catch up with all this. And you're going to have to pay for what you get from GRU, which is really required by the bond covenants. You know, to take more money than the utility makes and to have all these indirect transfers is the reason GRU is on the verge of bankruptcy. It is unsustainable to do this to a utility that has been mismanaged on top of being and plunder. And it's only a matter of time before the bond holders and the legislature really come down and say enough, because if GRU fails and the city gains will dissolve, in the Constitution, the legislature has to protect the creditors. The legislature is going to be on a hook for two billion dollars. If this house the cars failed. Now I know it's partisan. I know it's personal, but the numbers don't lie and you're a CPA. Thanks. Thank you, Ms. Connish. Okay, next speaker please. Anyone else in the chamber before we go to the phones? Come on up Mark. Yeah. Interesting Mr. Cohnish. Wow, I just learned a bunch. Wow, it's amazing. You can set Mark's time. Okay, you're, you're recognized. Go ahead Mark. And Suspergund. The entire GRU underwriting for the purchase of the the biomass plant was based on a dollar ninety-nine per million BTUs. You know that? That's the fundamental assumption in the whole financing scheme. It was actually cheap at the time, but then seventy percent of time it actually was above three dollars. So hence you have the, anyway. It turns out it would have been much, much better off just keeping the contract with American renewables. Isn't that amazing? Would have had no debt. It would actually made more money because the price of natural gas went above $3 per BTU, anyway. So anyway, that was interesting. So this comes back to H-rays in the end. So the monkey goes through various phases. And sometimes it gets into pointing fingers at other monkeys, like you're a bad monkey. You're a bad monkey. You know where I call it close. You know where I'm going to suit? Maybe a monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey. And it just really, really gets consumed with just looking at the other monkeys. You know where I'm going to write color clothes. You know where I'm going to suit. Maybe, maybe, maybe, monkey, monkey, monkey, monkey. And it just really, really gets consumed with just like looking at the other monkeys and it sort of loses the fact of the fact that, you know, we're just one species out of many. And this is the, I think, the year in which we have the fewest amount of bees ever know it in spring. But we're not, you know, so if you zoom out and see what happens to other species, it's very busy like pointing, but that usually goes away after a while. It takes about a decade or something. And then we kind of go through a phase. We've done this before. Anyway, so white thing on top, white thing on the bottom, this thing goes away. And the entire circulatory system, you know, all of a sudden slows down, and the amount of fluids that are like normally in this part of the circle, like we'll travel down or we'll travel up, we could have a spring that's from the Yucatan or we could have a fall that's from Virginia. And what happens to the trees and the plants, they're gonna be like, oh shoot, wait a minute, that's not in my playbook, and they're gonna be looking around for the page that's got the right DNA set up to match what they're experiencing, and they're not going to find it. So basically the change, the sudden change that we're going to experience once this thing is gone is going to be, you know, beyond whatever the normal patterns that these plants are used to. So you're going to see a faltering, like a sudden faltering, not just here locally in the whole Northern Hemisphere. And soon, like a year after that, you're going to see all these other creators, whether it's worms or birds or squirrels or whatever, that are dependent on these little things that actually live in these ecosystems. They're going to falter as well, because they're not used to it either. So you're gonna see a sudden dramatic a change in the way that our ecosystems function. That's gonna freak out, the humans as well. Comes back to H2As. We get all the H2As together, in every six months, have a party, do a barbecue, whatever. And get to the know, and get to the point where, you know, at one point, you know, we have something like called cucumber alley or tomato lane. You got five years to get going that direction. Thank you, Mark. Yeah. Okay, thank you. All right, next speaker please. All right, well, go ahead and close fellow comment on the chambers and move to the phones, Mark. on the line. Mr. Chair, we'll go ahead and close fellow comment and chambers and move to the phones mark. Do we have anyone on the line? Mr. Chair we have no collars this morning. Okay, we'll go ahead and close public comment. Thank you Mark All right moving back to our agenda. We are at the recognition of the 2025 Leadership Academy graduates and we're to recognize and congratulate the 2025 leadership academy. And what I'll say is, you hear this commission talk oftentimes about the importance of our employees and how they are truly the public servants of a Lachua County. And this morning we're going to recognize those folks that have gone through leadership training, and it's so nice to see many familiar faces in the audience. Hello. Good morning. Good morning. Jack Cornell commissioners. At least a cast training manager here. I am excited to acknowledge our 2024 leadership academy participants. I want to talk a little bit about what we go through in this academy. I did give you agenda. I think a couple meetings or a while ago back. But this is very much a people skills growing human skills. You know that kind of stuff. That is the big focus. So we talk about trust and humility, teamwork, working with people's strengths, different conflict styles, organizational change, and how to manage that, and then working with people different than you is really a major theme, of self and others how we affect each other and that type of thing. So this large group is just completed. So we're going to call a little bit of the dough. I'm going to make a little bit of the dough. I'm going to make a little bit of the dough. I'm going to make a little bit of the dough. I'm going to make a little bit of the dough. I'm going to make a little bit of the dough. I'm going to make a little bit of the dough. I'm going to make a little bit of the dough. I'm going to make a little. I'm going to add some salt. I'm going to add some salt. I'm going to add the I'm going to put it on the top. I'm going to put it on the top. I'm going to put it on the top. I'm going to put it on the top. I'm going to put it on the top. I'm going to put it on the top. I'm going to put it on the top. I'm going to put it on the top. I'm going to put it on the top. I'm going to put it on the top. I'm going to put it on the top. I'm going to put it on the top. I'm going to put it on the top. you and There is a white one. I'm going to have to go. I'm going to have to go. I'm going to have to go. I'm going to have to go. I'm going to have to go. I'm going to have to go. I'm going to have to go. I'm going to have to go. I'm going to have to go. I'm going to have to go. I'm going to have to go. I'm going to have down and take a picture, but who from the Leadership Academy wants to come up to this topodium and say how great the class was and what I meant to them. Come on. Come on. It's not one single. That's one meter. Oh, there she is. There she is. Thank you. So, all right. OK, there. Look at you. Go ahead. Give her some more. I think we'd all like to say a huge thank you to Alicia Cash, our fearless leader of our fear ship academy. It was a tough road for our last session. We got canceled due to our hurricane and then we got canceled due to what the only cold front we had in the Lachel County in how many years. But Alicia pushed through. I think we've all learned a lot about what it means to be a member of a team, what it means to think about ourselves as leaders and strengths and our own conflict and work. And I think, I mean, I personally would say I had had a lot of personal go through the program. So thank you, everyone. I'm going to give you when the employees take advantage of them. We have seven people that started 2025 so we're super set or 27. 27 people that started 225 so we're in that right now and I'll be back in about two months to present all Alicia ODT to you so we'll see you again soon. Thank you. Okay, thank you so much. All right, that moves us now to our presentations. And the first one is the Continuum of Care Strategic Action Plan. The recommended action is to hear the presentation. And we've got. We have a good time out there. Come here, Otterie. Good day. Thank you for being here. Take care. All right. See you, Eric. Good afternoon, Chair, commissioners. Happy to be here this morning, along with Jacob Tornor, who is the Vice President of Programs with Task Force Rending Homelessness, our homeless continuum of care locally keys to home. If you'll remember in October of 2024, you passed a three-part motion relative to follow up from the National Alliance to and homelessness review of our outreach. The first one was accomplished with the budget, with the funding of the street outreach team, and funds were provided to the homeless continuum of care for that, and they subsequently contracted with grace. The other two items, Mr. Turner, will be presenting to you today. One is an update on the continuum of care's response to the action items in the National Alliance report. Additionally, an update on what has been done to engage the outlying counties in the continuum of care. Those who have been disengaged both internal and external to a Lachua County and provide an update on the strategic action plan for the continuum. So with that, Mr. Dwayne. Welcome. Thank you, Claudia. Thank you, Mr. Chair, commissioners. It's great to be back before you today. As Claudia mentioned, Jacob Toner, I serve as the Vice President of Programs at the Task Force Rending Homelessness. And I'm going to start today by just touching on a little bit of background and for any member of the public may not be be aware of what the continuum of care is. There are over 400 continuums of cares in the United States. They are designated by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and in the state of Florida as well by the Department of Children and Families. Our organization serves as the lead agency and has done so since July 1st of this past year. But when I was before you in October, one of the things I mentioned was that we were eager to dive into the COC strategic plan and to engage with stakeholders in the revisions of that. So we'll talk a little bit about what those revisions look like today, but also some of the previously set goals that we were able to achieve, as well as the status of recommendations from the National Alliance. I did want to just highlight our continuum of care board as our strategic plan is essentially determined by these members who workshop these items and discuss them at length and then determine whether or not they should be part of the strategic plan. And one thing I'd like to note and I'm very thankful for is that for the first in the history I could determine, we have representation from all outlying counties now on the COC board. And there was a lot of work that went into working with our neighboring county managers, and so I just wanna thank them as well as the chairs of their commissions for making those appointments very swiftly. We are also funding a number of agencies, not just in Elatua County, but also in surrounding areas. This year, the continuum of care budget increased from just over a million dollars to nearly $3 million dollars that's expected to continue in the next year as we've already received formal notice from HUD under the new administration that we've been awarded, as well as have received early indications from the state. Of course, there's ongoing items in the legislator now, as you may know, but based on the performance that our community has performed, has experienced this past year, there will be an increase in state funding as well for the upcoming fiscal year. That's unusual. We're also able to recruit some new member agencies, as well as, I believe, one agency in particular, That was unusual. We're also able to recruit some new member agencies as well as, I believe, one agency in particular that was disconnected from the continuum of care after previously being connected and they are now back and engaged. But over 20 organizations as well as individual advocates are active members of the continuum of care. And so some of the recent goals that were accomplished based on goals that were set on the previous strategic action plan include increasing community education. So we have implemented a communications plan that includes things such as social media updates, email newsletters, among other engagement and education opportunities. We have also provided training to organizations and have worked with agencies such as the Florida Housing Coalition to bring them into this community and to work with the local organizations on providing them best practices and training. We've also made it a priority to be engaged with our rural communities. As I mentioned, we now have representation from all of them and we're also participating in those communities as well in their meetings. Our governance charter was recently revamped and approved by our membership and has allowed for additional support and representation on the board, including a legal representation seat as well as health And very importantly, our data quality has improved. HUD looks at data quality just like the school system grades students, so A's, B's, C's, D's, and it's a percentage scale. And so I'm proud to report that as of this month, all of our subcontractor organizations are in the A range, achieving at least 90 percent, most of them higher than that. And last, I did wanna note from the last slide, our point in time count in January of 2025 was an overwhelming success, and that was thanks to many of you all, including the Alachua County Fire Department, who was very active in that event. So the recommendations that were made to this community from the National Alliance to Ending Homelessness were quite expansive. There were a number of things that they looked at and a number of recommendations they made. This first screen talks about the first eight of those recommendations and we have implemented six of the eight. The additional two which includes scaling housing programs. Alongside Crisis Center Venture is in progress and we plan to be able to implement that further as additional funding comes in over the upcoming fiscal year As well as a centralized landlord engagement strategy, which is essentially what we're going to be working on over the coming month rolling out a landlord recruitment campaign And I will note we're starting with veterans. We've already had some successful initiatives as well as one that's taking place tomorrow to engage the veteran and landlord community in helping us achieve an end to veteran homelessness. We've also, on this slide, implemented five of the seven recommendations, the two that are outstanding include disaggregating data to address existing disparities, quite a broad recommendation but something that we are working on, as well as adopting housing problem solving philosophy across all programs, which has been adopted and you'll see that in the strategic plan objectives. Did want to just highlight the process for gathering input. It was a very detailed process, and we did our best to ensure that all of the stakeholders could be engaged through this process to the extent they were interested in that. So we did host three community town halls, two of them here in Alachua County, one of them Putnam County. We had attendance from over 75 individuals combined at our town halls. That was very helpful for us to hear from the community, not just from the people we talk to and work with every day, but from those who, for some of them, it was the first time they ever heard what a continuum of care was. We also, I wanna thank each and every one of you for the time and the meaningful discussions that I was able to have with you in Claudia as the insight and recommendations you gave were incredibly important for this process. Our general membership provided feedback. We engaged with our local sheriff's office and fire departments and our community medicine programs, as well as an in-depth workshop by a member actually of the state council on homelessness who came down and facilitated a workshop for our COC board on strategic planning, governance and improvements and an additional workshop to further refine those items. So now I'll go through the strategies and then happy to take any questions that you may have. The strategies are broken down into actionable items and things that will essentially either one, make a reduction in homelessness in this community or two while by doing that improving the quality of life for everyone, not just those experiencing homelessness. And so the first objective that the leadership council decided on was to ensure that all service providers consistently implement housing focus best practices. And one of the things that the COC is doing to implement this and carry this out is to provide training, as well as monitoring for compliance on the housing first philosophy. Essentially a philosophy that recognizes that someone without a home needs a safe place to sleep to access those higher levels of motivation and work on things that will help them regain total stability. The next objective is to work on moving residents out of encampments and into housing. One of the things we're doing to carry this out is actually revising the outreach strategy, so really looking at what's being done now and what gaps exist and what opportunities are there for us to enhance the level of outreach, but also the skill of the outreach staff, things like motivational interviewing and other ways that they can better empower individuals to take that step out of the encampment, as well as something we heard loud and clear is that there should be a community safety plan for the outreach services, and so that will be part of our outreach plan. We are also encouraging community-wide planning and one of the things we're looking at and plan to expand discussions on is a funders council, something that our COC membership felt was important was to ensure that one, there's not a duplication of efforts, but two, that if there are opportunities to leverage resources from one another that we're making sure that we're aware of each and every one of those opportunities. So we'll be looking to collaborate more with the Community Foundation and of course with the United Wave North Central Florida to explore that. Also expanding the use of the Homeless Management Information System that is the federally required system for documenting and tracking homeless services that I had mentioned a little earlier that our data quality had improved on. And so one of the things we are looking at is to see who's not currently using the HMIS and what agencies or organizations could benefit from using it, not just them as an organization, but more so the people that they're serving as they could be connected to resources through that system. Also on that same note, enhancing the governance and improvements of our data, we are currently exploring a vendor transition to identify if there is an opportunity to improve the systems infrastructure. Right now, it's operating on, let's just say, ancient windows platform. If you want to use that as an example and we're trying to modernize that into the latest Apple iOS technology. And also to ensure that we have participation in the evaluation of our data and performance by community members and our committee. And then expanding COC membership, we're really looking to ensure that there's a diverse group of stakeholders that are part of this effort because homelessness impacts everyone from our business owners to our hospitals and jails to our daycares and schools and so we are recruiting additional members to join our efforts outside of just those traditional entities that you would imagine. The council also decided on a strategy and an objective for providing housing and out ring services in a consistent manner. Essentially, what this means is that as the COC, we are developing and will be implementing written standards for how services are performed and carried out in the community so that a family who seeks services from one agency doesn't have a less of an experience than they do if they were to go to another agency, but that everyone's following the same standards, at least at a minimum, and the resources are accessible as well in an equal manner. We're also looking at how we can expand alternative housing models. One of the things here specifically is to identify where there may be opportunities to develop additional housing. We know that Claudia's department does a great job of this already, with a number of things already in the pipeline. So we just want to add to that and see how we can support those efforts as the COC. Specifically, we are going to look at implementing a roommate matching tool. You know, we see it so successful with our young population of students. And shared housing really is one of the most effective solutions to reducing homelessness because, well, with one unit, you may be able to house two to three people, depending on the number of bedrooms versus just one unit. And with the housing stock that we have, this is something we believe is essential to being able to reduce the population. So we'll be doing shared housing through a roommate matching program. We're also looking at providing ongoing education to prevent at-risk people from losing their housing. We have done a good job in this community of preventing recidivism of people falling back into homelessness and that's really all credit due to the service providers who are doing that work every day. But we want to continue to reduce that amount of recidivism and specifically look at what skills and resources do these individuals need to be sustaining in their house and to remain stable there. And then looking under objective 5C is to improve our landlord relationships. One of the things we're doing to help us do that and kind of take ownership of that is looking at hiring a housing liaison position on the COC staff so that there's a constant effort in that area. We also know that we cannot house every single person today if they were to come to us. So we need to have alternatives such as diversion and diverting people from our homeless response system which has been a tremendous success, dozens of diversions have taken place here in the last year. And so we are going to look at with additional funding coming to the COC in the upcoming year, how we may be able to prioritize diversion activities, not only because it's really one of the most cost effective measures to addressing homelessness, but it's also a least traumatic experience for the person who has to go through it. And then expanding prevention options and developing standards for prevention. April is for housing month and an alarming trend that we continue to see grow is people who are forced out of their housing without access to an adequate amount of legal representation. Oftentimes, what that means is that they are not afforded the rights that they would likely be informed that they had if they had access to an adequate legal representation. And so we're looking at how we can expand prevention options so that people don't have to fall into homelessness, but also so that they can stay where they are and not have to move around. Very importantly, and I just met with one of our local hospitals here last week is looking to see how we can assist with the discharge planning process. We want to ensure that hospital systems are enabled to not discharge people into homelessness. That's a challenge for them because they have a very specific business objective. They also have insurance requirements and funding requirements. Our continuum of care does not have a shelter bed for every single person who needs one today as we know there are hundreds of people experiencing homelessness. However, there are ways that we have been successful and will continue to implement processes for allowing the discharge planning social workers at our hospitals, not just our local hospital like HCA or UF, but also with our state hospital and the longer care facilities. So that when somebody is approaching a date of discharge, there is coordination taking place between that entity and either the continuum of care as us or one of our local providers to ensure that there's a warm facilitation of discharge. And that hopefully that person's discharged to a place that they can sleep not on the streets. Also very similarly with our jail system, I wanna thank the sheriff shortly after him coming into office, we held a great meeting. Claudia was a part of that as well with leadership from the sheriff's office and COC staff to ensure that we are enhancing the way that people are discharged from our jails. We all talked a lot about recidivism here today in the correction system. And oftentimes that takes place because people commit quality of life crimes after they've been released and they need something to eat or they need some clothes to go out and be able to interview for a job. And so what we're working on is a way that the staff in the jails have access to COC staff, COC partners who are already going into the jails to work with people who are approaching discharge and release and ensure that they're connected to housing options. Very similarly with our foster care system, we'd like to address that and with the school system. We know that the McKinney-Vento Act charges the school districts with ensuring that students have access to equal education and educational stability, but that can only come if that child has a safe place to lay their head at night. And so we are working with our school districts and the school social workers to better ensure that students and families, when they're identified, is being homeless when they sign up through that school board system for homeless assistance, that it's not just the education component being addressed, but that that school social worker has access to get them into some of the other resources needed for stability, like housing, food, and healthcare. And then last, on this slide, I did want to just mention, prioritizing services for for for veterans household was an objective set. Specifically, we are aiming to achieve a functional zero for veteran homelessness by 2026, which effectively means that if a veteran was to become homeless in our community, that there are resources available for them to rapidly exit homelessness. And we are at a place funding-wise in this community where that's possible. What's missing right now is just the coordination and so we look forward to being able to help with that. And then last, looking at creating family-centric services, I talked a little bit already about how we aim to work better with the school districts, but also to ensure that the program serving individuals are aligned with the needs of students and the children in these households. You know, we do have certain providers who are better at serving adults because that's what they tailor their services to. And we have service providers who are very family oriented and what we want to ensure is that there's never a family being served by a provider that's not able to meet the needs of all of those kids and family members in the household. And then the last objective looks at increasing the outreach and education for mainstream benefits across the COC. The county's Department of Community Support Services actually recently has already hired and has a source specialist, which is going to make a huge impact. So thank you all for enabling that. But we also want to look at within our COC staff and funded agencies where we can expand SOAR processing so that people aren't waiting three years to get their social security out. And we see the same person panhandling for three years while they're waiting on that. So thank you again for allowing me to come before you today. How about to take any questions? OK, Mr. Nguyen. We have some. We got Commissioner Prisya and then Commissioner Wheeler. Thank you. Thank you so much. I can tell there's a lot of work that's been done since the last time we talked. So thank you for all of your hard work. A couple of comments, questions, I guess. One comment, I guess, and this is probably something that is already in the works, but just would be remiss if I didn't mention it. I think our new contractor, the release reentry, that's working on reentry, having them at the table for the continuum of care, I think is really critical. You mentioned, I think, in 5B, 6A, B70, all in that area, you sort of talked about sort of that prevention of housing and you mentioned the jails and I think you were seeing a lot of that. More than ever, there's sort of the cycle basically, the people coming out of our jail are basically going right to grace and then they're recommitting crimes and they're getting addicted to drugs or they're getting off of their medications and a mental health scenario and so they're just cycling back into the system and back into our jail and we're really trying to think about ways to prevent that. So ideas from the continuum of care about how we could develop housing specific to re-entry programming and help create that wraparound service so they like much like the mental health facilities you were talking about. They don't fall into homelessness and have to be on a list to get back into housing, but they could sort of have that support from the get-go. So I wanted to mention that, and I wondered if you all have already started those conversations or thought about, you know, the idea of having dedicated reentry housing. We have started those conversations. Thank you for bringing it up. Releastery entry is one of our new continuum of care. They actually presented to our membership at our last meeting and they will be part of this process as they're already going into the jails and meeting with people waiting for discharge. That's great. That's fantastic. Another thing I'm excited about the housing liaison, I think that's great. Any support that you need for that landlord recruitment process that you're working on or ways in which I can personally support you or this board can support you and having the conversations with the landlords and the development, you know, I think the Builders Association and the Realist State Association and the Landlords Association, like all those groups to help them understand their role in this, I'm there, I'm all game. I think that's a great idea to have that housing liaison so they feel a little more comfortable having somebody that they can actually reach out to if they want to access things like the landlord recovery funds and stuff like that. And just understanding better what it means to be this kind of landlord. Because I think it's just new for people, so it's scary. You mentioned kids and families, and I wondered if you all were working with the family resource centers and connected with the work that the partnership with strong families is doing and the children's rest is doing with those family resource centers and how those two things are dovetailing. Thank you for your question, Commissioner. We have not engaged much on that, but I appreciate the idea because we will. Yeah, I think that's a really, we're starting to think about ways we can invest in that and all this sort of connecting all the dots in one place and having those be sort of potentially centralized hubs for where families know to come to a trusted space to find the resources and get navigated to the things that they need. So I think that would be really helpful. I think that's all that I have for now. Just thank you for all the work. I can see a big improvement in the way that we're moving. Oh, one last thing I said I wanted to say is I have noticed a change and not for the better I'll say in terms of kind of the amount of homelessness and encampments in and around grace again. It feels like we're getting kind of dignity village 2.0 but not necessarily done on purpose. It's not like where dignity was like set up but it just seems it's sort of happening as a result of having not having not enough shelter beds and I wondered if there's been any conversation with grace about sort of that idea of the strategic planning that we talked about a couple years ago and where that stands and I'm also I've heard a little bit of concern around some of the shelter beds there not being part of the overall programming components that are there, meaning that people are just there for 30 days in and out. They're not part of an overall program that's providing the wraparound supports, which is increasing some of the challenging situations that are on that campus, and I'm wondering if you all have been having conversations about that. Thank you for your question, Commissioner. We have engaged in discussions on that and we regularly speak with them specifically around the work of the outreach teams that are funded to do this work in Elatua County and areas right along Waldo and all in that general vicinity being addressed as a priority. Okay, so is there is there thoughts on a solution or is it sort of just a work in progress? I would say it's a work in progress. Ultimately, we know that if we're going to eliminate visible homelessness, there has to be an adequate level of housing stock to move those people into that's affordable. And I think some of the other things we talked about here today like the landlord initiative and working with families and some of the other areas that will allow us to move people through the pipeline will ultimately contribute to a reduction in visible homelessness. Yeah, I mean, I not that I just want visible homelessness to be. I know that that's a small portion of our overall homeless population, but I do think it's a challenging one because many of those people have been homeless for a long period of time and have other kind of complicating factors. So I guess I would just push for that conversation and the strategic planning process for the Grace Campus or other spaces where we can continue to build permanent supportive housing or transitional housing. I know we don't, I love transitional housing, but any housing sheltering that provides support for those individuals to get the wraparound services they need to get successfully off the streets. I would love to hear. I know we had the project that Mary championed around the tiny homes and things like that and there was discussion about the possibility of stuff like that on the Grace Campus or near the Grace Campus and that's all kind of gone silent. So I'd love to hear more at another time but thank you so much for all the work. Thank you, Commissioner Wheeler and Commissioner Alfred. Yes, I have a question. On our calendar, these meetings come up regularly. And I didn't know if that was an invitation for us. Is anybody on this board working with this group? Claudia is representing. So I didn't know because those meetings were on our calendar if we were invite, if that was an invitation to join those meetings, you know, or just for an FYI. So. Thank you for the question, Commissioner. You're all more than welcome to attend our meetings. We would encourage it, but I do want to note this board has appointed Claudia to represent the commission on the COC, and she does a wonderful job of that. I'm sure she does. And I'm relieved to know that that makes me not feel guilty anymore because when I see him come up and I don't show up, then I feel like I'm neglecting my duties. And you were talking about working with the schools through their social workers. I tell you what, our social, there's probably maybe one. And we really cut back on the number of social workers we have in the schools and they're really overwhelmed. So, you know, there are anything you guys can do, you know, to cushion some of that work for them will be great because I know that there are a lot of those kids in the schools that are homeless. And so it's, you know, as long as you reach out to them, they know that you're out in the community. Hopefully just a phone call would be all it would require from them to you to pass that along because I do know that they're really struggling in the schools to take care of the needs that are there. But no, I'm Claudia, did you tell them about the building over there on 8th and well, no, that's got all those rooms in that. It's there, just saying there's lots of have you been in there? But haven't you Claudia did you go in there to look? The possibility of how many people you could put in those rooms is amazing. So you know and I know that it's something there's beginning to be some talk about dividing that property up into pieces so that somebody doesn't have to buy the whole thing that could buy pieces. So you know, just tell him about that one. Okay. Thank you. Mr. Chair. Thank you, Commissioner. Thank you for the presentation. It was extremely useful. I sit on a housing solution task force that you may have heard about that includes the Chamber of Commerce, the Community Foundation, there's representatives from realtors, builders, developers, apartment owners, pretty much all of the stakeholders, including folks that have struggled to find affordable housing. And we created, it's not often that I get to share something from the day as to someone else, but I shared this with our commission today, which is the infographic that that group has created and it was just released to the public for the first time last Friday. So I'm happy to share this infographic with you. It talks about the realities of attainable housing in our community. And I know this is all preaching to the choir that you guys are well aware of this. But I was real proud of the way that this information was presented by the chamber and how it emphasizes the fact that so many of the people that run our community, that make our community work, are also the people that are the most housing challenged right now. And that shortage of housing works all the way down and it really affects your ability in the continuum of care to be able to provide housing. When we can't find housing for firefighters and police officers and teachers and nurses, it's hard to find housing for everyone else as well. But I just wanted to share that with you. I shared it with the rest of the commission up here. And we have our work cut out for us. If we're going to make housing the priority that it needs to be, we've got our work cut out for us because the expense and the availability is really astronomical. The expense is high and the availability is low and I want to thank you for the work you're doing because I know it's a real labor of love and it's not easy right now to do what you're doing so thank you. Thank you a lot. Thank, commissioners. So let me first talk to my colleagues. Commissioners really Mary and Anna, you know, four years ago, we did a strategic plan and you two specifically really put housing first and foremost and and what I will say to both of you as a as a person serving in my third term The second term is kind of the magic starts to happen, because you start to see the things that you brought actually coming out of the ground. For me, it was fire stations being built and other things. But this presentation today, I'm just really blown away, Jacob. I mean, I'm really blown away from where we were 10 years ago when I first got on this commission. And I think it really starts with the governor's speech. And the fact that you're able to bring in, you know, four physically constrained counties, leave you put in a Bradford and Gilchrist, actually to the table, where they're actually part of the conversation I think is incredibly great not just locally but from a statewide perspective you know those counties have a voice they they have a voice with our legislature and to know that that what we're doing in Elastra County with our partners that really need to help is really important so So I thank you for that. I'm blown away that the subcontractors all got a grades and with your efforts on landlord recruitment, Mary has been working on that since she's got on this commission. This is incredible by the way. This is great as a realtor. I deal a lot with first time home buyers and people looking housing and many of these, the firefighters and the teachers are having a lot of trouble. And I know you're at another level actually below that. So I really appreciate that work. The nine strategies where the service providers are all focused on housing best practices is to me critical. The fact that you're getting the homeless management information system in place where they're having to utilize that and we're all utilizing that. Commissioner Prisya said something yesterday that I just couldn't stop thinking about last night, which is aligning the arrows in the same direction. I mean, that's what this is. That's what the continuum of care and all the people that are working on this aligning. And we haven't always aligned the arrows in the same direction. I know me as a commissioner across the street and here, we haven't always been on the same page, but through your work, the governance of your work and really the bringing the stakeholders all to the table with an alignment of the arrows of housing. We have to get people out of encampments in the housing. We have to do that. And I think our goals now is really to come up with some policies to create more housing where there wasn't housing allowed in the past because the economy's calling for it. We have to figure out at the local level how to allow people to get into houses. And I think the roommate model that you're talking about is amazing. I mean, I'm seeing young people in their 20s right now can't afford a house. And so they're looking up to, you know, they're collaborating to rent. And so it's great. I'm here to just congratulate you you know I think your actions are attracting state and federal resources because it's data driven and it's working there's still so much work to do but I feel like for the first time I'll say this commissioners in 11 years hearing I feel like like I felt yesterday that we are moving in the right direction and we're aligning the era. So thank you Jacob for this report and I'll go back to Commissioner for that. I'm just going to remember in this graphic Mary thank you for this made me remember something and that is you know we're getting ready to have a conversation at the beginning of May about our infrastructure surtax for affordable housing and I would really hope that members of the continuum of care could be there. So I hope that they know about that meeting, if you could let them know about that meeting. But I think that, you know, as we're talking about this, you know, that money is meant for workforce housing, right? But workforce housing means it solves some of these issues and they're not competing with the same housing that we're all trying to compete with. And so I think to the extent that you're having those conversations with the landlords that we're thinking trying to compete with. And so I think to the extent that you're having those conversations with the landlords that we're thinking about the builder and developer community and like how we engage them, I think these conversations can be dovetailed. We have funding to build housing. We have money. We have $56 million in a bucket. That's going to be there for people to build a four right over a decade, which we could on. You know. Yeah, we could. And you know, it's great that we actually haven't spent it because I think we're actually becoming ready now because we have a model strategic plan. Yeah, but yeah, I exactly. Well, we have so many people, and the folks coming out of jail, we have career source and we have all of these workforce programs that help support them to get the certifications they need, to get them back into the workforce and thinking about those things. If we can dovetail reentry programs with this infrastructure surtax with builders that care and your RAP support services from these organizations that provide that RAP around support, I think we could get there and we could use these funds in a really creative way. So I just want to point that out because it was something that I wanted to say earlier and forgot and that you reminded me when you were talking about sort of pointing the arrows in the same direction. You know, that's another tool in our toolbox for thinking about the ways in which we addressed these issues where our frontline workers are often those that are challenged the most with homelessness or being on the verge of homelessness. Thanks. Anything else? Thank you all so much for your time in your comments. I appreciate it. Okay,, there's no action, but let's see. Is there anyone from the public that wishes to speak to this item? Okay. We are concluded. Thank you. Claudia, thank you so much. Okay. Next up, we have item two on our presentations. Report on Collector Road segments, not currently included in the Transportation Capital Improvement Plan. The recommended action is to move to continue the implementation of the Transportation Capital Improvement Program, TCEIP, as approved on May 23, 2023. And we'll have Mr. Sex and giving this presentation. Improv is my forte. What you took acting classes at an earlier age. He was the heck of an actor. Mm-hmm. Thank you, Mark. Good afternoon. My name is Brian Kaufman, and I'm the Assistant Public Works Director. And today I have with me Stewart Cullen, who is our Transportation Program Manager. So you may notice, Ramones not here today. I'm standing in for him. He had a family emergency. He needed to do it, 10, 2. And it took two of us. Two of us had to come for Ramon because it takes two of us to do what he does. But we'd like to run through this short presentation. I know Ramon provided you a lot of background information too. So we'd be happy to try to answer any questions we can on that. Commissioner Cornel, you mentioned about seeing the fruits of your labor, you know, coming on the commission and seeing something happen. And I know y'all are probably very proud of this. You know, the capital improvement program that, with that infrastructure surtax that y'all were able to get the voters to pass. All that is huge. You know, the funding that that has provided, $250 million over 10 years that we are putting into the infrastructure of the community. It's just amazing. And we're excited to be part of that to see what we're able to do and bring improvements to the community. But unfortunately, we didn't have enough money to do all the road segments. And one of the reasons why we segment the road back when they did the original study, we look at parts of the road because not all the road is bad. Take for example, one road, one county road, well maybe not all of that is bad. So we break it down into segments and we look at it on the condition of that particular segment. And the program that we ran, the consultants ran, basically tried to optimize our money. If you remember, when we did this a couple of years ago, they really tried to optimize our money. And so not all segments would get it would get an achievement, but it tried to optimize our money that we had available. But if you wanted to do additional, there was a lot left out because of you know there's only so much funding. 41 collector roads representing 65 segments were not included in the TCIP, which represents $185 million. Of the collector roads that were included in the TCIP, 61 segments were included, which represents 216 million. And we had just talked about 250 million total. Well 216 million went to collector roads because collector roads are so important to our community. That's the main transportation corridor so that everybody is traveling. The other thing while we're talking about road segments is by improving road segments throughout the entire county, everybody is benefiting. If we focus on one road in particular, you know, there's less people that will benefit from that. So that's another important part of why we break roads in the segments, not only for optimizing our finances, but also overall trying to bring lift to the entire county. 27 contiguous road segments so of those roads that we have that we are doing work on, there's 27 contiguous segments that are not included if we are able to do that and complete the entire road at one time, what cost us $91 million in addition? What kind of brought this about is I think you all had some questions on a recent project that came before you. It's 53rd Avenue. Well, no, no, I'm getting ahead of myself. 234, 234. Can I go 234 down to Mika Nopin? We did a bid on that, and it came in actually under budget. And we were very excited about that. One and a half million dollars under budget. And so I think the question was, well, can we just use that to continue on a pay, pay additional on that road? And, and that is an option. But what we're suggesting is that we kind of stick with the plan because I'll, I'm going to show you a couple projects that are coming up. Northeast, Northwest, 53rd Avenue. And you get many of y'all are familiar with that road. It's one of our really main corridors going over toward the airport, Waldo Road from town. Now that one currently, it just came back in, the bids have just come back in and we're $300,000 over on that project. We're doing a signal construction at Parker Road in Southwest 24th, and that's $800,000 over budget currently. Parker Road Extension, that's another project that we're working on, is currently $1.5 million over budget. We don't have the final estimates on it yet, but it's looking like it's going to be high. Now, when we do these and we send them out for bid, we do rework these sometimes and try to get the numbers down. For instance, 53rd, that's why I was thinking that and jumped to it quickly, was when it first came in about six months ago, it was about $2 million over budget. So we really had to crank down on that and get down to what we really had to need to repay that road. So we had some extra turn lanes in there trying to improve safety in certain spots. As some turn lanes, we had to take some of those out and we had to reduce some of the milling that we were going to do to get the project as low as we could. But we're still 300,000 over on that budget. So what we're asking for you to consider is, is stick with the plan. Y'all have seen this plan before. It our our web map that we've shared with the public and and so they know what projects are coming in and what year and We've gotten a lot of good feedback from that they really like it because now they can look ahead They can look like why don't I'm not gonna get any of this year, but five years from now. I'm gonna get my section of road paid Well, what we would like you to consider is staying with our plan that we have now because we know some of these projects are going to come in high. We come in under, we have places we need that money and this is just a small example of what we're dealing with. But we were very appreciative of the program and the voter support that we've got for this program. We're making a big difference in the community. 23rd Avenue. A lot of smiles on that one. It's a miracle. Oh yes. Oh yes. And in talking to our risk management department. I was asking him about about 234. You know, what do y'all hear from 234? And he goes, what where's that at? Because he had, I say he, John Clements, he hasn't got a whole lot of claims received claims from from car damage on that road. He said, he said 23rd Avenue, he said, oh my gosh, we were paying claims for damages on that road. He says, but now it's like it's just disappeared. He said, now I've got other roads, you know, 235, 235A. He said, those are where we, you know, and we strive to keep those potholes filled so we can reduce any damages, but what they can open up overnight. One good rain and heavy truck traffic and boom, they're right out there. All right. Thank you. It's a compliment. I'd like to move to continue the implementation of the TCIP program as we approved it on March 23rd, 2023. Again with the plan. Again with the plan. Yeah. Motion in a couple of seconds. Any other discussion? You know, I will say that statewide, and even nationally, I continuously hear about the amazing staff we have with Ramon and Brian Stewart, John, I mean, really the whole team, even at our small meeting in Waldo, you know, Brian was up there solving problems that are not in the budget, but solving the problems. And I just want to, from the day I tell you all how much we appreciate you, we know, or at least I know, I think we all know that there's going to come a time when you say, okay've been doing this now for five years or four years we've got a couple adjustments we'd like to bring to us and I'm waiting for that I think it'll probably be in the next year or two but I agree with the motion let's stick with the plan and keep keep doing good work on both sides and all sides of the county north-south east and west you know that North East, 53rd Street is one that's desperately needed. That's signal at Parker Road and 24th. I got an email on the East or Sunday, another accent was there. So I'm really glad to see where that is. I texted Ramon. He's away, dealing with family, and responded back to the citizen within an hour. And we just really grateful for all the work that you guys are doing. Thank you. All right, any other discussion? Any public discussion on this item? Back to the board. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any pose? Motion carries. Thank you, Brian. Thank you, Stuart. Thank you, permission Thank you permission appreciate all your inputs to it Okay next item is action items so we have the first one which is the request to advertise County initiated amendments to the unified land development code for floating solar We're switching J2. Yes. Oh, J. You switched the foot you want under a weekend. The public hearing for the art code. Oh, we're doing the public hearing for the art code first. Okay. We can do that. We want to switch it again. That's not how you switched it. You switched to it too. So actually this one was coming first, but Gina's will be quick. Okay. Let's do do genus first which is the updates to chapter 29 art in public places. Recommendation is to adopt the proposed ordinance to men chapter 29. I'll try to execute the ordinance. We already heard all this. I don't think there's been any substantive changes. No, there hasn't. I would move to adopt the proposed ordinance. Second. Secretary Nguyen, the logic code. Not by the chair, it's not in it. Second. Promotion a second. Thank you for the presentation. It was very good. Is there any public discussion? Seeing none, let's bring it back to the board. All those in favor say aye. Aye. All those opposed. Emotion is unanimous. You are right, Madam Andrew. That was quick. All right, next we move now to I think what I was introducing, is that right? Yes, okay. Which is a request to advertise the county initiated amendments to the Unified Land Development Code for... All right, next we move now to I think what I was introducing is that right? Yes, okay Which is the request to advertise the county initiated amendments to the unified land development code for floating solar agritors them small scale comprehensive plan amendment cat files resurfacing roads recommended action is to hear this that presentation Approved the request to advertise the amendments for the ULDC for the first of two required public hearings I'm confused. What do we just pass the art? J2 on the original K2 Oh the K2 okay, I got confused all right We'll deal with this one and then we'll go into the tree protection. Public hearing. We've got a bunch of people here. Yeah, I think that's what that's right. A bunch of people like seven. Is this? Yesterday was a bunch of people. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. There's just one that just one that I see. Mark's going to be doing this presentation as well. Yeah, sorry. We're doing an interpretive dance. Yeah. I want to see any further dance. Water's always going to say, oh, goodie. I had never heard of water solver're floating so we're never. Yeah. So we're trying to locate that presentation. Okay, your pardon. We need a five minute recess. Are we good? You're going to do a five minute recess, Mr. Chair. Yeah, let's do a five minute recess. We'll reconvene at one 13. you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you you We convene and we are on the unified land development code request to advertise. I'm a planner in growth management. This presentation request to advertise for county and issue amendments to the unified land development code will be presented by growth management and public works. There are two segments to this presentation. I will be presenting the proposed changes to the home-based businesses, the floating solar facilities, small-scale comprehensive plan amendment, and agritourism subjects. Lilwani, a civil engineer from public works, will discuss the submission of computer-aided design files and also resurfacing improvements of existing roadway connections. So in the home-based business, this section is a minor update for something that was missed back in our 2023 update, just to remove rural and then to reference the correct section within the farm machinery and lawn and garden equipment repair section. The next couple, this is a floating solar, this is called flotovaltéic, these are just a couple images of what that would look like, one is a schematic of a floating solar and then there's a developed site in Miami on the right. to statute 163-3-4-4-4-4-4-4-4-4 type of energy. Established criteria for addressing the land use compatibility provided standards for buffers and landscaping, and it also defined what these floating solar facilities would be. So the consideration staff propose expanding the existing solar facilities code in our utility section to include floating solar, because the statute limits the requirements to the same buffer and landscaping requirements of other permitted solar facilities, so on land. And the definition below just specifies that the floating solar is a solar facility on wastewater treatment ponds, abandoned limerock, mine areas, storm water treatment ponds, reclaim water ponds. So we're just expanding the definition to match what the statute requires. Another update for legislative reasons, this became law in 2023. This is just a comply with state statute. Now they have increased the small scale comprehensive plan amendments from the use of 10 to 50 acres. And the agritorism staff is proposing to establish certain standards for consistent application to address substantial offside impacts from agritorism activities considering public health safety and welfare of the community. These are the considerations. So in section 404.09, acknowledges that agritourism and ecotourism activities are permitted as an accessory use to an ongoing agricultural farm or other agricultural use, like for a red stront or a tasting room or BNBs. This section provided a few standards for those parts of a farm dedicated to agritourism, like having direct access to a public road and site alterations requiring building permits, but does not address substantial offsite impacts. So the proposed standards consider substantial offsite impacts from light trespass, parking, make sure that's on sites, so it doesn't go into our right of way, and also traffic during specific time frames during peak weekday hours. I also, we did discuss noise control because of amplified sound potential, but we do have an administrative code, chapter 110, that sets those sounds and that is enforced by our sheriff. So we didn't add that specifically to this consideration. Additionally, within section 404.675, we have updated the restaurant section. You are currently allowed as an accessory to agritourism operations and agricultural zoning. And ARB, our land development code allows limited uses for say, produce stands, farmers, markets, and mobile food trucks, staff proposed expanding to allow restaurants and ARB, which is the agricultural rural business zoning, if it's accessory to an agritourism operation. I would like to now invite Lilith Lawani, our civil engineer from public works, to present the next two slides. Thank you, Angelin. This is Lalit Lawani, a large county public works civil engineer. The next two slides are submission of CAD files. Historically, public works has always received drawings and files on paper. We are going through a system of changing everything to digitizing into a program called Cossidy Works. And we're enhancing our program by having all of the roadway and the stormwater facilities of the things that we manage in the future to be able to part, be able to have in that system. And the goal is we get public record requests, we sit in the walk-in into our office and ask for this information that we have to find those files and then against them. So our process now is this particular code will actually ask for in the future did we get the system that we get these files electronically including the CAD files so we can provide those information. Historically, the files that you see in the pictures on your right, we have about six or seven panels like these, which you will see later on in the year. We have asked for budget for scanning these, all of these, so we'll have that electronically. So then the future, we can provide that information more efficiently to the public. Yeah, Christopher, is he? I guess my only question about this is, how is this going to affect or impact like an individual? Are these all like the kinds of files that you're expecting CAD? It's a software that all the engineers use and most of the firm consulting firms use for different things. But if you were an individual that was submitting an application for yourself, I think about the application when we had the driveway situation. It was like a non-conforming. They needed a long driveway to get back to the end of their property and they needed to submit a file. Are they going to be required to have CAD as well? Like how is that going to work? I just want to make sure that we're not creating a situation for public that would be difficult. Sure. This is not for a single family owner. homeowners, this would be for the engineering committee that's coming in for development projects, they already have these in CAD and so they'll be submitting those tools. And we'll put that in our system and then provide PDFs in the future to anybody that requires. OK, so individuals could, if in other situations wouldn't be over required to have CAD drawings for basic projects that they're getting permitted. Okay, thank you. Mr. Wheeler? Very, would you also keep back up like that or is it all going to be digitized? We will follow the rule. The state has regulations in terms of record retention. And so we will keep the files that are required for those systems. I see that, but the ones that are, you're going to have coming in digitally. You also have those paper files too. Would you keep a paper backup at all or is it all going to be right there on that? The future is going to be electronic. We still get the paper files because we still have some of the paper files that we use. We're going to be using those and then digitizing them. And that's in the fall that's a project for next year. Got you, but then would you keep the paper or get rid of it? Get rid of it. Is that right? Okay. I just get real nervous when everything goes into this thing and these things go down. So I just didn't know if it was being important at all to keep the paper for that. It's not a business I know. So that's why I'm asking. Yes. The goal is to have everything electronically. And we have good knowledge lake system in our IT department. Everything would go into that program that we can store it and we can retrieve it when needed. OK. So that is our goal for next year. OK. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Okay. All right, the next one is the resurfacing of existing roadway. Currently in our code, we have, anytime there is a driveway connection on one side of the roadway, essentially, it says, you can see my pointer here, you could do a one-line widening. So it's a center-line widening, but if it's only on the one-side widening, we get a project product that looks like that. Essentially, it's not completely resurfaced. The proposed core will make it more clearer that any project that comes in will require full size widening and you will see a product like this on the bottom left. So that's what we are projecting. It will prevent longitudinal cracking and will have a better product. And then also like in the TCIP program, you heard that when we connect to those, we will leave the ones that have already been resurfaced, it would be easier to connect to those to that, but the portion that's already been done. That's it. If you have any questions. Mr. Chair, I just may have a follow-up. Yeah, go ahead, Commissioner Wheeler. I'm still back to the paper thing. As people are putting these things into the computer, are they putting it in from papers that they have already got down somewhere or is it all being done on the computer? And the reason I ask this is because we are susceptible to storms, hurricanes, you know, where our electric goes out. The grid goes out. And so I didn't know if someone who is in the middle of a project would lose the information that we would have here, do they have backup in their own as they are designing a project? Mr. Chair, if I understand it correctly, they do have backup, they submit it to us, and we also have our own backup. But I mean in paper, is that the people who are designing these programs that are going to be in up on that computer, do they start in paper? No. Or the, no, they start in, in on electronics. They start in electronically. Yeah, this is all, AutoGAD program is, is all through the design. They're all on paper, on digitally. OK, I just, we depend so much on the electronics here, but we are also susceptible to storms and outages too. So I just. Commissioner Alvarez and Commissioner Prisya. Yeah, I just, I wanted to share with Commissioner Wheeler before I asked my question. In our office, we have backup. So if the power does go out, we have a machine that would continue to run our computer system for a period of time to make sure that we saved anything we were working on. Everything was done electronically, everything was saved electronically, everything submitted electronically. Our printer got dusty because we stopped our big printer because we rarely printed things out. Saves us a ton of money and having things available electronically, they're also backed up in the cloud, they're backed up in a lot of places. And yeah, it's a risk, but if it fails, it's going to fail like monstrously because that's how everybody's operating these days. That's just pretty much the way things are working. Nobody prints things out hardly at all anymore except for old folks like us that like to hold a piece of paper. Wait, and I realize that when I'm asking the questions, I realize that, you know, that I date myself. Even on jobs, even on jobs, people are holding iPads and zooming in on plans they're not you know but my question actually goes is going back to the previous presentation not yours so I can wait. Do I have motion? Actually do we need the motion? The motion is to up. I move that we. Yeah. Do we need the motion? The motion is to, I move that we... Where is the available glass? Yeah, average. I move that we take staff's recommendation and approve for request to advertise the amendments for the YLDC. You got it. Got a motion. And a second to advertise the amendment to the YLC for the first attempt. And I do have a question about the agritourism and the limiting of restaurants to 20 seats. I was curious what the reasoning was behind 20 seats. That was part of what's currently in the code. I did not address or analyze why 20 seats. I would assume it's just a sort operation. Just state it more. Is that the state code? No, I didn't look into where the 20 seat. Just does it seem financially feasible to run a restaurant with only 20 seats unless you're charging an awful lot of money. Actually not too bad. We look into it. I mean, you know, the farm is much bigger than that. You start to get large-scale, you need large-scale parking. And things like that. I think in these smaller agribusiness spaces that are considering it to be sort of accessory to something else. So more like a cafe or, I guess, you know, like a, you know, I've been to some that were but I've also been to some agritourism places that are much larger. I think about milders as well. It's probably a little bit bigger than 20C because of the outdoor, but it's not that much bigger. Is it really no? That's more than 20. Anyway, I'm just curious because it just seemed like arbitrary numbers. I was wondering if there was some reason for it. I could certainly look into it and see if there's any statute related to it or if it was just something that I didn't know the other. I didn't know if there was an analysis. I didn't know if there was an analysis. I didn't know if there was an analysis. I didn't know if there was an analysis. I didn't know if there was an analysis. I didn't know if there was an analysis. No, it's not. Like Commissioner Prizius said, it's mostly because I would assume, because it's an accessory to a larger operation, but it does limit. Yeah, I'm just curious. Okay. I had another question to go with the restaurant, just a little. because it's an accessory to a larger operation. But it does limit. I'm just curious. I had another question to go with the restaurant. Who would supervise, are they going to be under the same scrutiny than any other restaurant who would be overseeing the quality? My understanding, they would have to, if they're serving food, they would have to go by state requirements inspections and things of that nature. I'm not the next but I can certainly find out specifics for you. That's okay. I just wanted to make sure that if we don't address it here, then the people who are opening restaurants would have to. Okay, got it. Yes. Okay, good. I'm good. My only question is what water body have we got in a request on the water solar? We have not, but it because it's a requirement of state statute that we add this into our code. There weren't I mean I didn't do an analysis of where it could be possible but but yes that's correct. Any other items? All right is there any? We got a motion on the floor to request to advertise any public discussion. Seeing none bring it back to the board. All those in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That motion is unanimous. Okay. Thank you. All right. Congratulations on the leadership. Appreciate it. Thank you. All right. All right. 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 6 comprehensive plan of amendment for tree protection and open space 25, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 6. Comprehensive Plan Amendment for Tree Protection and Open Space, 25-0, 0, 0, 0. Recommended action is to direct staff to transmit application Z25-0, 6 to the land, to the state land planning agency for review. Mr. Dawson, you're recognized. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Chris Dawson, Principal Planter development services at Elacha County Growth Management. This is a transmittal hearing for our comprehensive plan amendment. This was heard by the planning commission last month and they recommended that you transmit it. I'll talk a little bit more about their recommendation as we get into it. So this really, this comprehensive plan amendment is designed to kind of support the board's discussions over the last six to months to a year so regarding trees and new development especially. And the boards had several workshops you've all been there obviously so I don't want to belabor that point except to say that as we sort of worked through the implementation language and the land development regulations we sort of identified these needs in our conference of plan to support where the board was going. And so that's really the point of this conference plan amendment is to identify some language in the conference of plan that can help support the policy goals of the board. There's a lot of text on the screen right now and I'm not going to read all of it, but I just want to say that our comprehensive plan does currently have policies regarding tree protection and we're not proposing really to remove or eliminate those policies. The policies themselves are good and they support the way that we deal with trees in our land development regulations today, but they really aren't sort of enough to get us to that sort of next level of tree protection that the board has been discussing. So while these policies are here in our conference of plan, we felt that it was important to identify some additional policies to provide that additional protection. So really, I'm going to kind of go through each of these individual policies that we're proposing to either modify or create if I can and just sort of identify why those work. So the first one is really policy 3.1.1. This policy exists in our comprehensive plan currently. This is in the Conservation and Open Space element. And this policy identifies conservation areas that we, as a Latria County, throw our development process, identify and regulate. So those are things historically like wetlands and surface waters. Those are the things we think of as conservation areas. But really, to do what the board's been talking about, we felt it was important to add these particular categories of trees in there as well. And so this is simply adding this last category, champion trees and landmark live folks. We'll get into those in a little bit. And so, while that didn't work exactly like I wanted, that's too bad. I'm trying new technologies and then they don't work out like you want. In addition to that, we've created a new objective 4.1.1 and some policies that go along with that. And that's to describe the protection for champion lot trees and landmark live-oaks. And this is really similar to the way we do it with all of our other natural area or conservation areas that we've identified Where we have that that list in 3.1.1, but then we also have these additional things and so the goal here the objective is to protect and conserve champion trees and landmark live-oaks we defer the definition of those landmark live-oaks the land development regulations, because it's a little bit easier to make changes if we need to in the LDRs. We identify it as a category here, but we'll define what the specifics of a landmark live Oak are in the ULDC. And we identify that the land development regulations shall have standards, shall protect the canopy area, identify the reasons why we wanna protect these, that they provide for public enjoyment, that they provide for habitat, and that the reasons to protect these is important. In policy 5.2.2, we're going to identify that champion trees and landmark live-oaks do not require permanent protection. That's important because most of our natural areas are kind of fixed, those conservation areas. So, you know, a wetland doesn't move, it doesn't disappear once you preserve it. It's pretty much fixed in place. Same thing with a, you know, a significant geologic feature or a sinkhole maybe. Those don't move around. They don't certainly all of a sudden fill in and they're no longer a significant geologic feature. But trees do something different, which is that they have a life cycle. And so, with any tree, even over the space of, you know, a very long time, it's possible that a tree dies to get hit by lightning. There's a number of different things that can happen to a tree. And so, while we will identify the location of those trees on a development plan, and we'll talk about that in the land development regulations, and they will be protected by open space, and that is the regulation, we're not going to say the same thing like that tree has to exist forever and ever and ever, and it has a CMA that goes along with it. It'll have protections in the development plan that are established, but it won't be the same thing as sort of like a wetland, which has a conservation management area and has particular protections that go along with it in that way. We can talk about it a little bit. Policy 5.2.3, and again, I'll click through to that, but it really is just an accepting out of that sort of normal standard that anything that's a conservation area has that conservation management plan. I'm going to have to redo my presentation now. I really thought it was super cool. And it's not. I was wondering why it was the way it was actually. Well, I thought it was super cool and I actually thought I had gone through it and done it and I apparently I didn't. So. You're doing great. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I appreciate that. that policy 5.2.3 will remove the prescriptive requirement about the location of open space. And we needed to do this because right now in our land development regulations and in our comp plan, we are very specific about how we designate open space in development. We say it shall be one piece of continuous land at the periphery of the development to allow for connections. And while all those things may still be true, that it's important to connect those open spaces. If we want to be able to designate these individual trees as open space, that's sort of inconsistent with the idea that it has to be on the periphery and in one piece. So while we'll still look for those connections and if you don't have these big trees that require open space, that's still a good way to look for open space, sort of removing this prescriptive requirement in the comprehensive plan and we've used this language minimize the the fragmentation of open space areas to sort of get to that level where we can provide for open space for these trees that provides for that additional sort of protection long term if that makes sense. Mike Barley, roll over on his grave when he had this tree. I do, I do, I mean if you want to talk about that right now, I do want to say that's a, I mean that's an issue, right? I mean I get it. I want to protect the trees. The trees are really important. A tree all by itself is not going to serve the surface, the purposes that you're trying. Like when you read that book about liveoaks, the reason that that liveoaks is a keystone species is because it's in an ecosystem. And that ecosystem is allowing all of the animals and the creatures, and it's within that contact. When you protect a tree all by itself on a tree island or in a round about in a development it's not the same as protecting the whole ecosystem and so the reason that we have that sort of open spaces contiguous and connected to other open spaces was to create those corridors and create those ecosystems that we are trying to protect to have larger amounts of functional ecosystems within the context of our urbanizing area. And so it does worry me that we're now taking that out and replacing it with these islands of random. Seattle, we did that way. I read it as minimize the fragmentation of open space areas. Still allows for us to have continuous open space. It's just it was required before because it wasn't happening when I remember this wording being put in and we also added show us the the lot next to it that isn't on the development plan so that we could connect these continuous open spaces. So I think this still gets us there. I think staff should hear that we still want to connect open spaces, but in those instances where we're preserving heritage vibeaux, it doesn't become such a requirement, a hard requirement actually, where staff is having to make a choice, are you gonna remove this 100 year old heritage tree, or are we gonna connect continuous space? And now it's saying the tree gets priority. That's what it's doing, it's changing it. It's prioritizing the tree over the open space on the periphery that connects to other open space. That's what it's doing. I think it just allows for discussion, actually, at the staff level, because it's minimizing. Well, how would staff interpret it? I guess that's a question. Because I agree with Commissioner Pizzi. I don't want to lose our open space because we're saving one tree. I think, well, how would staff interpret it? I guess that's a question. Because I agree with Commissioner Pizzia. I don't want to lose our open space because we're saving one tree. But I do want us to start considering those heritage trees as part of the open space. They create open space. It's just like by making that tree part of our conservation or conservation areas, and then making it, I mean, it's already counting as open space, right? But now, with one of those close relationships, it's going to be counting towards that. So once they meet that goal, like, and then making it, I mean, it's already counting as open space, right? But now what's one of those conservation areas that's going to be counting towards that. So once they meet that goal, if they only have 10%. They still have to minimize the fragmentation. They still have to minimize the fragmentation. So they can't fragmented like what you're saying. They can only have to meet 10, if they are doing the 10% open space in their tree and they've got three trees in the midst of their development and they're protecting those three trees. They're not like any open space on the outlying area. Correct, and I believe as a commissioner that that's what we should do. We should protect those spaces and maybe not connect that open space to the next lot, because that creates the open space on that property. But we're still saying minimize the fragmentation. We're not saying don't connect open spaces. We're saying minimize not connecting open spaces. Is that not taking up the same space that a sinkhole would? I mean, you would have to develop around the sinkhole. So these are good questions and good discussion. I'm glad you're having it. So we've kind of tried to take the discussions that you've had in the past and figure out how we get there. If the goal is to allow trees to be counted towards open space, then this is the way that we kind of need to go to get there because trees don't only grow where they're connected to other open spaces. They kind of grow wherever they are. So I think that's what we were trying to do with this. The idea of keeping certainly A but then B and C as well is that, okay, so let's say you have one of these trees that we need to protect. that could be, and you didn't have any of the other conservation areas, that could be the root of your open space. So you are protecting more around that tree and creating that bigger area. So you don't necessarily have just a tree island. But I think to Commissioner Wheeler's question, where there are other conservation resources. So if your site is 20% wetlands and requires a buffer, your open space isn't just 10%, it's more than that because you've got to put all of that conservation area in open space. And that would be the same thing with, so if you had that, and then you have one of these landmark live-oaks or champion tree outside of your, you will still have to preserve that tree as open space. You may not have additional area around it in that case. You'll have whatever the code defines as the amount that you have to preserve around the tree. So I don't know that either one of those arguments is completely correct. There is still the opportunity to connect either off site or on site. And you'll also be potentially preserving some islands on site sometimes. It's going to be site-specific. There's no sort of one generalized answer to exactly how that's gonna play out on every site. I guess, I'll just, if I can just conclude by saying, I think that one of the things that concerns me, the most about that sort of idea, right, is just this idea that we're taking a tree and making it like the center piece and then not thinking about the ecosystems that they're, and I hear what you're saying by having the augment required the conservationary. So if that tree is the protection then they're trying to give them the opportunity to create green space around it. But that may not be the best green space. It might be the best green space for the developer because now they have to save that anyway. So now they have to create open space there. Anyway, so they might as well just make their open space there. But that may mean that they actually have much higher quality like ecosystem or much higher quality like more different trees in another part of their property that they're now cutting down because they are trying to protect that tree and then create some open space around it so that they can like meet their criteria and check the box, right? And so that's the part that makes me concerned is sort of the fact that we're sort of like shifting gears a little bit from this idea of ecosystem protection and connectivity for the sake of a tree. And I do want to protect the trees. Don't get me wrong. I just want to make sure that we're not like robbing Peter to pay Paul and so to speak. And I do think this kind of, I see where you're trying to thread the needle about both, and I appreciate that. And I do think this kind of, I see where you're trying to thread the needle about both. And I appreciate that. And I think at the end of the day, I know the developers want to do the right thing and an ideal world and maximize the protections of their natural resources as well as have maximum building space. But at the end of the day, they're going to do what's right for their maximizing their profit for the development, and it's our job to figure out how do we protect the ecosystem services that are there. And I'm just worried that we're trading out one for the other. OK, let's go to commit. Thank you, Commissioner Alperen and Commissioner Wheeler, and then I want to respond. Yeah, just briefly. I feel like we have seen cases where the best place the best open space on a piece of property wasn't on the periphery. And I think that, you know, by having some flexibility here to allow the developer to work with our staff to identify what the best places to create open space art and how to incorporate that into a community so that it becomes an amenity for the community and an amenity for maintaining the good parts of a piece of property. I think I like this. I think I would like to see how this works. I think it's going to give us the flexibility that we need to save more trees in that are possibly even the better trees because it's really frustrating when I've seen really beautiful parts of a piece of property be sacrificed to save something on the periphery just because it's connected to something else that isn't great on the periphery because they all just happen to be on the periphery. And I can think of one specific development where it was old agricultural land that ended up being, that it'd become up grown up with, I hate with, with, I hate to say trash trees, but, you know, with whatever was out there while, you know, we were fussing about these oak trees that were in the middle of the property that could have been the open space. Had they not been right smack in the middle of the land? So anyway, I'm really interested to hear what our visitors have to say today because I think that, I'm curious to know what their interpretation is of this. Thank you, Commissioner Wheeler. And just to move along with what you're saying too is to capitalize on the natural feature of the land which is that tree. You know what people like to build around the lake or by a creek or river or something. This is what we have is these live oaks that people would use as a way to, a developer could capitalize on building around that tree, the park that's Sealand Park, the Sealand Tree over there, as an attraction, you know, people go to see that big old tree. So I just think that it would be a way to actually capitalize on that feature. Okay, thank you, Commissioner. So, Commissioner Prisya, I mean, I remember this argument with Mike. Mike and I, not just Mike, but Mike really argued for this, his idea, which was a great idea. His idea was this is a way, by putting it on the periphery and connecting it with other open space To have developers essentially create parks at parks Through the open space and I and and I was with them on all of this wording actually and I I think it was me that actually said At every land development show us the parcel adjacent and what that open space is or what it could be so that we can kind of see the future or see what we're connecting to. And I wanted to try that. But to Commissioner Wheeler's point, what I've seen over the last five or six years is exactly what you said, which is we're clearing out the periphery or for the open space and not protecting the heritage trees when if we had not had those seven words or eight words, the developers could have said, let's save those live folks, that will be our open space. It's not on the periphery, but it's the best, those are the best trees on the lot. So let's go with that. And so I think we kind of have tried it. and now we get to kind of try this with the developers help, saying minimize the fragmentation. So to the extent you can connect it, that's great. But if you can't, let's create that park on that property, where those heritage trees are. Back to you. And then we'll be back. Yeah, I guess I just want to, I hear you. I think staff have done a good job of finding a common ground that still allows us to minimize fragmentation of open spaces because it's not just about creating the parks. It's also about creating corridors for wildlife and for ecosystems to thrive. And I mean, unfortunately, most of these spaces aren't very well managed anyway. I want to get into the hands of each of ways they just become like sort of forgotten lands often on the you know anyway so there's a lot of challenges with most of these spaces aren't very well managed anyway. I want to get into the hands of each of ways where they just become like sort of forgotten lands often on the, you know, anyway. So there's a lot of challenges with invasive species, et cetera, et cetera. But I do, I just want to, I just don't want to, you know, create, get rid of one problem and create another. And I am aware that, you know, a lot of times, especially in our high and dry areas, which is where developers want to build the most, we have one big live oak in the middle of a farm field. And then we have the peripheral areas that the farmer never developed that are the forested areas, that they never cut down, that they never had farm fields, right? And those are the forests that maybe have some of the best species of other trees. They might not be the biggest trees or the fanciest trees, but they might have a suite of a lot of different species of trees. And then you've got this one big beautiful live oak in the center, right? And I just am like not wanting to rob Peter to pay Paul. So I'm just thinking strategically and creatively. And I think this does that, but I just want to, I guess I want to be mindful as we're watching and seeing how these play out. What the reality is of it. You know, the developers are hearing us and you all are hearing us and so I think we'll, you know, this is a lesson in practice. I don't know. play out what the reality is of it. And the developers are hearing us and you all are hearing us. And so I think this is a lesson in practice. OK, Chris, keep going. Yeah, Mr. Chair, I think it's a great discussion. We're not taking out the idea of connectivity. We're just kind of modifying it. I think the other thing is that the comp plan isn't the best place to put hardened fast standards in my mind most of the time. Some things, yes, but a lot of times no. And so I think as we sort of move through the land development regulations that implement these policies, which you guys will hear in just a few minutes, that may be an area where we can look for some additional language to clarify exactly what the boards are doing's where we do it. Give it a high level here and then get into the details on that. Yeah, the policy 5.2.5, which exists in our comprehensive plan. Today is, I'm just clarifying some language in here that was written a little bit oddly before so it doesn't really change anything except to say that we're going to preserve anything that's one of the conservation areas conservation resources listed not initial policy or significant habitat which we also define that's not a conservation resource in our comp plan but it is has that same level of significant habitat. And then we're just in C here, just updating the language to be consistent with what we use in the rest of the comp plan in the code. And then we've updated the definition, the last thing of champion trees in our comp plan. Some of these names have changed and where we keep these things. It's just cleaning it up to be consistent with the way things are today. So there's no change in that. It's just. So this would capture to Commissioner Prisius Point, other heritage trees that are clumped in the forest? No. Champion trees are individuals. So I'd like to see a lot of, for example, as a coach champion now, not a champion anymore. As sad, we find new big trees all the time, and then our champions go away. Champion trees are specific individuals that have been identified as being the biggest in a, yeah, of their species in a particular locale. We have a bunch of those in a lot of county, by the way, I was surprised at how many are identified. I went and looked at some lists and was pretty surprised myself. So Mr. Chair, that really summarizes the changes that are proposed with this comp plan amendment. They're pretty small, but we felt like they were really necessary in order to sort of move towards what the board was desiring with tree protection. With that, I'd answer any additional questions that the board might have. Again, our recommendation is to transmit the amendment to the state land planning agency for VIO. Well, the planning commission had a pretty lengthy discussion on this. I will say that their recommendation was to transmit, but they also recommended that the board look at additional species that might be eligible for protection rather than just landmark live oaks. Staff discussed that. We didn't really have a way to go on that based on what the board had previously discussed, but if the board were interested in protections for other species, we certainly could look at how that language would work. And that could be a compliment amendment at a later date. It could be we could change that when we come back for a dumpster and I think without much trouble. OK, Commissioner Wheeler? Check out the magnolias. That's someone get pretty big. Now the question, if you could go back to 5.2.3, there, right there, B, we talk about pocket parks. But what I'm realizing with all the developments that we have coming into our area that children really don't have any playground areas. You know we have playgrounds that are set up but I didn't know if that's something this board would think about when we have communities being developed away from parks that they would set aside a certain amount of land for a playground for children. We were trying to get it so that kids could walk to a park within a certain distance. But if we are building these communities, it seems to me that it wouldn't be asking too much to have them consider an area set aside as a playground for kids because that's where they interact with each other to learn who they are in the community. Do you guys not anything at all about that? You have it. Yeah, I have a question. You're asking me, Commissioner? Well, I'm asking if I'm not, if I think we have a sort of thing. Is the pocket park supposed to take care of that as a playground? I think our park master plan, which shows where the deficiencies are and where we're focusing our efforts are, you know, that's that doesn't necessarily have to say. Well, I think our open. Is it a big lay ground? No, I don't think it does. And not in the complex. That's what I'm trying to understand. Yeah, and I think our open space is meant to kind of guide that. Okay, because a pocket park is different. It is. Well, I think this may be not the spot. Either, I mean, we will be doing the EAR and so when we're doing that, maybe we can look at the recreation component. Well, and it's really so. I just want you to think about that. I mean, I think it's something to add to the list when we're thinking about EAR to highlight where we're addressing recreation and at certain scales of development. Maybe it does make sense, you know. I think probably depends on the development. There's a small residential building, maybe a lot to ask a developer to like carve out a playground. But there may be certain things that you can do. What made me think of that is moving the village from the University of Florida where they're housing and kids there and that they are moving them to these apartment complexes Where there is space and those complexes that they put something like that, but there's no requirement to so I don't know if it's something that you could require or not require But it would be something we could certainly suggest as We are building for families So Mr. Chair we'll say that certainly within our multifamily zoning districts, when those are developed for the multifamily standards to require, I think it's 5%. I'm pretty sure it's 5% a developed recreation area for those multifamily developments. Now that doesn't apply in TNTs and TOTs, so maybe there's some work to do there. I think the other part is that, to the extent that one of these is not very large, we do have a park's impact fee and a development that provides a public park, not a private park, but a public park would be eligible for impact fee credit for that kind of thing. Thank you. Yeah, that covers it. Okay. Thanks. I have a motion to transmit. I have a motion on the second. No, I'm waiting on a motion. Okay. I move that we ask staff to transmit applications, the 25-000000006, to state land planning agency for review Second motion a second. Okay. Do we want to address the additional species or do we want to give staff any direction on that? Like see what I guess We can talk to our arborist. Yes I said it in the last meeting and and you were like oh soaks, and so I let it go. But I feel like we should have standards of landmarks for all of the important species that we have. I mean, we have so many different species. Oaks are really critical, but there's lots of species that are really critical in our ecosystems. And it depends on the ecosystem. I mean, if you're in a wetland, you're not going to have an oak. You're going to have magnolias and laurels and other trees, so it really just depends, you know. Yep. Mr. Chair, just, and this is probably more of a conversation, not that that language wouldn't need to be changed if we wanted to go in that direction for the comprehensive plan. I guess I did want to just bring it back to the fact that there's sort of a twofold regulation of trees. We definitely are giving these landmark live-oaks this special consideration here, that they're being treated as conservation management areas. We still have the existing canopy preservation. So that is where we feel like we're getting to that diversity, you know, to the extent that there's additional canopy leftover after their landmark live-oaks. And I think on most sites that we have, that's the case. I don't have all of that data there for you. But that can't be. That's where we standards for the other species of trees are being considered. Okay, with that for now. Okay, guys, don't have another heart attack out there. We're just doing live books. We're not going to add six more trees today. Okay. All right, we have a motion and a second. Let's go ahead and open it up to the public. Now is your time to speak to us about that. If you could just introduce yourself. We'll give you a three minutes green light, yellow light red light, you know, the plan, and thank you for being here, Clay. Thank you, commissioners. I'm Clay Swagger. I'm a local land planner. I just want to make a couple comments. So like the thank staff for bringing this open space compliment amendment forward in conjunction with the tree ordinances that are next on the agenda. I think they go hand in hand, they need to work together. If you do want to not the other, it creates major problems and lack of developability of suitable hands, I would say. So thank you for that. I do think it allows some more flexibility in design. And as staff has said, there are many other layers of regulations. You know, you ask about a sinkhole. Those are protected in 406. Wetlands are in, you know, so there's a lot of different layers of protection. So I think you're going to get the product that you're looking for ultimately. And most projects come to you for you to decide that. I did have one specific question. It's related to existing projects. You know, there's a comp plan language now about what's open space and what it can be and what it should be. If a project already has an open space approval as part of a PDP or a PDE, and for example, there's a landmark tree that is not in that area. I just would like confirmation that those open space areas will be respected based on the approvals and the development order that was issued just on behalf of several folks who are interested. Thank you. I will address that. I see it as a second bullet in the next item. We haven't put a date yet. Yeah, Mr. Chair, it is specifically addressed in the proposed land development regulations. I think in terms of the comp plan, the way that we would look at that is that the comp plan says that the LDRs shall establish some standards. And so in that aspect, we would defer to what's in the land development regulations for protecting those already approved developments. That sounds good. Anyone else on this item? Okay, it's running back to the board. All the VFCI. Aye. Any opposed? Emotion is unanimous. All right, off to the main event, which is the request to advertise a county initiative amendments to the unified land development code for trees and native vegetation and open space. 25.00299. The recommended action is to hear to SAP presentation and approve the request to advertise the county initiated amendments to the ULDC for a public hearing. Okay Mr. Bearish welcome. Good afternoon Mr. Chair. This is Christine Bearish and the Development Review Manager with Growth Management and before we get started today I wanted to introduce you to our newest senior forester Andrew Kneglio is here I think some of you may know Ms. Hong transferred over to EPD she helped us with this update Andrew's gonna be tasked with implementing this update so both of them work together and so he's here for the entire Andrew. Not for cool tree questions. And yeah, he's fulfilling both jobs right now. So yeah, he's pretty busy. Good move, Jessica. Good move. So yes, I'm here before you for the amendments for tree code and open space code. So I'm glad that I could follow the comp plan language. And I think some of the things we talk about next might help also address some of your questions. So you're familiar with our multiple workshops that we had. And this is just that kind of list that rounded out what we talked about in January. With the exception of number nine, I think, was kind of added later when we had some concerns about how to measure a multi-trunk tree and what do we consider a multi-trunk tree. So we've also included that. But before I get started here, I just kind of want to give you a little overview here. So we did like a complete replacement of the tree code all the way up to the tree tables. So that's why what you saw in your backup had no strike through an underline. We also reorganized it. We found that like the, you know, maybe what you did for development was a very clear compared to what you do for single family or residential permitting. So we reorganized that. We also added our definitions to the beginnings. So the definitions are in the tree code as well as in chapter 410. And we're codifying that tree rating methodology that we've been using so that it's really easy for outsiders to refer to. It's something that we can point to when people question what the forester does, and it's really important for the hierarchy, the landmark live-oaks, and our mitigation requirements. So first, I'm gonna talk about probably the most important issue to the stakeholders, which Clay just brought up, which is having some provision in here that would sort of exempt or grandfather in the existing preliminary approvals. So we have that provision. We've done this for our open space code when we made those changes with the last plant update. We've done this for a water quality code as well. And what this would do is that it would allow everyone to proceed with the preliminary development plan that they've already had approved. And that means the preservation areas, the 60-inch trees that were shown. This means that Leanne Mark Liveoaks wouldn't be required to be saved now. So if there's 45-inch trees that were shown in a developed area, they'd still continue to move forward. At final though, they would be allowed to propose impacts and enjoy some of the mitigation benefits and things that come out of this amendment process. So maybe perhaps if they chose to incorporate a 45-inch tree into something they they could because now we might allow impacts for some extra trees. So like there was a not so long ago which I think precipitated some of this conversation in their way to develop or they said well there's a lot of the trees that we show that we're cutting down but we're actually protecting them or they may not get cut down but we just don't want to show them because we would have to mitigate them so in this instance some some of those may get protected maybe be able to share some of the benefits that are. Yeah, I think so. I, some of those may get protected. They may be able to share some of the benefits that are. Yeah, I think so. I think some of the provisions we have in here about impacts and how much you can impact and what's really important to the sport and the stakeholders as well is not sanctioning every single impact for mitigation like we were doing before. So I would hope that this is also going to encourage or allow people to incorporate more into their design because those would be like extra trees, which we'll talk about in a minute. So we'll start with the definitions. Just as staff, we kind of struggled a little bit at the beginning, like reviewing our existing code of what's a regulated tree and what's a heritage tree and when do you need a permit or not? So we just started with the beginning with what the regulated trees are and having the definitions there, I think also help all of us understand it. I think the help the citizens understand it. So now we have like abundant species, champion trees here at the trees, all at the beginning, as well as this really important part of how to measure a tree, as well as clarifying what we're gonna do with the multi-trunk trees. And it's pretty clear to me, you know, if it basically, if it's two separate trees, below six inches, it's two separate trees. And all other cases, we're gonna consider it one tree. We had a lot of debate about this at one of our stakeholder workshops, and there's apparently a lot of different methods that professionals can use to assess the size of these trees. But we wanted to stick with this very simple one that is easy for me to follow as well as a surveyor or citizen. So this might mean though other sites that may be thought these are multi-trunk trees or separate trees that we would consider that one tree. So which means it might trip that landmark live oak oak threshold. And then let's talk about the lambark live oak. So you directed us to reduce that number from 60 inches to 45 inches. You wanted us to focus on live oaks, the highest rated, highest quality live oaks. So now we have a definition. So lambark live oak is a 45 livoque, and it's rated four and above. That also means though, before you would see 60 inch trees, it could be any species. We probably were protecting trees that maybe were an average rating. But this is going to have that clear distinction of these are going to be the highest rated, the highest quality livoques. We've also added a tree protection zone definition. That's going to help inform how close and what impacts you can do, but we've also that calculation is easier to follow them what we were dealing with before. It's like one foot for every inch of radius. I can picture it, I can do it, I think anyone else could. So we've added that. And I think Chris talked about the planning commission and that they wanted us to have like Liam Mark categories for all the trees. Not on this time frame. This is we're going to go with the workshop. If you guys would like us to come back and explore that I think that might need to be a different update or delay this update. Okay, let's see here. So let's talk about the landmark live oak removal process. Typically, you see these requests for the 60-inch tree removals as part of preliminary development plans that exceed the thresholds in chapter 402. You don't see anything that would normally be heard by DRC. But I want to let you know the DRC is not approving removal of 60 industries. That doesn't happen. Most of the 60-inch live-oaks on a preliminary development plan you have seen because those projects do trip those specials. But right now, you know, removal for a residential lot doesn't come before you. That's just the tree permitting process. We would like to bring all of them before the board. And the criteria to request that removal of a 45 inch live-o-graded foreign above would be the same for development or residential with the only differences with development we would allow a specific public purpose. So for the residential process, it's the same criteria. I mean, I think it needs to be something that they can't work around. Similar to kind of what we were thinking for the 60 industries, you know, show us that you can't work around it. Bring that your reasons to the board. A lot of times people just want to remove them because they're scared of it. A lot of times it isn't some necessary thing. It's just they don't like it. But those conversations will come here. And we'll make recommendations based on their information. This requires us to have some amendments for your powers and duties. So removal of landmark live-oaks for residential lots is gonna be amended in chapter 401. We've also included a change to the notice requirements in table 402-121 to make it clear that like a single family, a lot doesn't need to do workshops and mail outs. It'll just come before you guys. So the other thing I wanted to point out is I don't have a fee yet. I wanted to see how much time does this take for staff before we ask for a fee for this type of an application. So for now we will just charge the typical tree permit fee, help the citizen get on a board agenda, make a presentation to you guys, we will do all of that work just for the $90 fee. And I just wanted to point out, I asked Andrew to give me some data from 2024 for trees that were removed through the tree removal permit process that were 40, he found between 46 and 61 inches, we had a total of eight that removed. Three were for new home construction, and one those homes was for disabled veteran. We needed a certain size house and accessible path around his home. Four were causing damage to a home, and one was for a livestock operation. So that's about how many we've had in the past year. And this is a 53 inch tree in someone's front yard, currently So next let's talk about the hierarchy and this sort of relates to what you're talking about with Mr. Dawson in the previous item. This hierarchy now prioritizes the best of the best trees regardless of what other resources are on the property. And so, you know, conjunction with the locational criteria changes, you know, the trees will inform that open space, which I'll talk about in just a second. But it's going to be based on other champion trees, my Mark Leiboges, heritage and specimen trees rated four and above, then conservation management resources, and existing natural groupings creating qualifying open space. I think that would cover maybe extra trees, perhaps extra trees around a very big tree. What I hope we would get out of this is less of those individual trees in the middle of a basin and a common green or a couple pockets of common greens in a development. I have seen a lot of applications where the open space and periphery wasn't always the best trees and that's where you see the impacts around the tree because they're trying to get the density, they're trying to meet that locational criteria and save a 60-inch tree. So I would hope too that we can still find some overlap there where the tree preservation requirements are also the open space requirements. And so let's talk about the open space amendments which are also part of the request to advertise today. So it's getting rid of all those occasional criteria, so we'll give us some flexibility. What it does not do though is this doesn't put any kind of limit on the open space. So if 10% open space is required, but there are many of these landmark live-oaks, you know, if the open space amount will be whatever the open space amount is, there's no maximum that we have currently in this regulation. And you know, as Chris mentioned as well, we're not going to have permanent protection. These will be open space areas in a development, common areas if it's commercial, probably some common areas for subdivision like maintained by the HOA. I'm also hoping too that some of the changes we're going to talk about with impacts will allow people to do things near the trees and enjoy those open space areas like have pathways or playground or things like that and not get dinged for mitigation for saving a group of trees in a development. And then this is just in the exceptions again we had sort of limitations on how many, you know, whether or not you could have your open space areas separated. So we've removed that. And also there's that in F here that's another one of those exception provisions that would grandfather and all the existing preliminaries so they can move forward with the open space they already have approved. So let's talk about impacts. Go back. Sure. What is staff proposing for the bottom XXX of 2025? It's similar to what I talked about in the first slide for the applicability section of tree preservation. Developments that already have a valid preliminary before the adoption of this code will get to proceed with the open space they showed on their preliminary development plan. We actually have this in the code already. It's just a different date from when we did that comp plan update for the adjacent on the periphery provision. So that date would be when this is adopted? Yeah, yeah. We're just changing the date. The language is pretty much the same, except for the date. But if you've already got a preliminary, your grandfather did. Yeah, and that's why we wanted to include something similar for tree preservation. So we have a lot of preliminaries out there that, you know, follow different rules and want to make sure that they can proceed with what we approved. And what are you looking for as far as the date if this passes for the public hearing? Oh, I think we're right now, depending on what changes you as- And what are you looking for as far as the date if this passes for the public hearing? Oh, I think we're right now depending on what changes you ask us to make. We're shooting for, I think the second in June. It's after June, teen, Thwiken, whatever that. Second meeting in June? Yes. That's what we, we, we, I think that's also to also include time frames needed for the comp plan update, for transmittal process and everything, because we want to come back for adoption when you're also going to hear the comp plan as well. Okay, so impacts. So the amount of impact will be based on whether the tree is included in that required minimum percent of preservation. So like you're 5%, you're 10 10%, or your 20%. Those areas are going to be called the primary protection area. No more than 50% of the impact of the drip liner TPC will be allowed. Champion trees, landmark live oaks inherited red oaks will need to have TPC protection. The protection of all the other trees will be based on drip line. So we'll use this circle if it's a landmark livoque or herodid red oak, they've got to follow the different calculation and the TPC requirements. Management techniques may be required. Minification will not be required. So this is one change that is different because before we didn't let anyone go anywhere in the drip line of trees in those preservation areas. Then for trees that are saved beyond that minimum preservation, so any the extra trees, you'll be allowed to impact up to 75% of the drip line of each individual tree.% of the drip line of each individual tree and if The drip line that's a big compromise, but the 75% is not allowed for any of the landmark live-oaks heritage red oaks Our champion trees. So it's just the other trees and this is the extra trees And for impacts between 15 75% we 75%, we will charge mitigation for that. Was this discussed a lot at the workshop? No. This was a little saproposed. This came from staff. And everybody liked it and said, yes, that's great. I don't recall there being much comments on this particular topic. I got excited about this slide and there was no applause. Well, I got it. You can ask them. Yeah, I mean, from my perspective, commissioners, if we come off of where we're going, then I'm going back to this. And I'm saying, well, that's too much sense. Right. Because that's the big compromise. Right, but this is just the extra trees, remember? So, you know, at least I'm hoping it would incentivize saving some extra trees because now you're not going to get dinged for mitigation because you saved an extra tree. You know, it's a drip line. you know, a lot of times we're using that two times a dynamic or for everything. So it's pretty clear what you can do in what location and how we'll evaluate it. And the other thing I wanted to point out about this is we've had a lot of situations where we find what's going on the edge of property. When branches overhang from the adjacent property over a lot or where multi-family buildings being constructed, we have conflicts. And so we want to have some, oh sorry this was the management technique, someone to the next slide here. Where you get onto that next slide. Yeah. I just have a question for our forester. I guess I'm just interested when we get into that 75%. I mean like you said, these are the extra trees, right? And so, and we are trying to create maximum flexibility so that they protect more trees. But I mean, once you get into 75% of the drip line being impacted, are you at risk to making that tree compromised? Because I mean, what I don't want is that developers are saving trees so they only have to pay 50% mitigation. And then it dies. And then the homeowner homeowners left with this dying tree That's now a hurricane hazard that we're gonna have to clean up So you know there's those pieces that I think about Mr. Chair of Andrew I would say that It really depends a lot on the impacts that they're proposing And you know we evaluate that and make recommendations. But I would expect especially a lot of folks are very strong and able to withstand quite a bit. And just to really depend upon what they're proposing. Well, it was a trail or something like that. That is probably fine. If they're talking about a parking lot, you might be a different story. Okay. Thank you. So it's case by case. And Christine, just to follow up on that, right now, we don't allow any tripline impacts, correct? For your preservation trees. And extra trees, we would charge 50% mitigation if you impacted it. Even that. 90 minutes. OK. And everybody in the audience understands the current that we're talking about. OK, so I want to make sure. Yeah. And I do. I'm glad that you asked Andrew those questions, because all of this will be case by case, his professional judgment. They are consultants proposing things. I think the management techniques are also going to help that's something we didn't really have in our code, but I found in other codes of maybe it's just what we do to take care of the tree during the change that is also important, you know, our monitoring. And even that, I don't want to be too specific about. I want us to have options that can be worked out between their consultants and our foresters during plan review. Great. Okay. Okay. And then let's talk about root plates. The only time we'll allow impacts to the root plate is for a pedestrian network or ADA accessible routes. And then we'll charge you mitigation for that unless you use an elevated structure. So like there's some raised boardwalks and things that are out there that can be done. And then this is where I was starting to talk about the off-site trees. I'm sorry I was on the wrong side. We found that you know like when it's a neighbor is next to something that's going vertical we find trees that overhang and then there's problems with pruning. I just want to note in the code that we're gonna you take a little bit closer look at that vertical and horizontal clearance and probably do more work during review, more site visits during review to figure out whether or not a pruning prescription should be required as a condition of final that we can approve and take a look at. And that it's not just anyone with a chain scot that's going to buzz off the lens that RJs and two where homes are going to go, that they actually have to use qualified arborists to do the work as well. Hey, before you get to next slide, Contrapper. I've been very impressed with the Hill Village Center's management of their oak trees. I don't know if you've been out to look at that, but they use a loose brick system over their tree roots so that they can pull those bricks up and reorganize them to allow the tree roots to develop and they can still maintain ADA compliance with their sidewalks. It's high maintenance, but it's what they've chosen to do. Is that something that would be considered a raised pedestrian walkway? And if so, is that something we should consider? Since it has worked very well for them out there. I don't know if I've even explored that type of a method. I was only looking at the raised walkways that kind of look like little mini bridges and things. I don't know what that is, but we can look into it and see if we need to make a mention of it. So like it's a removable brick that allows maintenance of the roots. Yep. Okay. We can look it up and if we want to add that. Yeah, I would recommend going out there and looking at what they've got out there. They've those trees over 20 years ago and some of those oak trees are good size now and are very healthy and the sidewalks are very functional. Yeah, okay. Yeah, we can look into that. I think this was just, you know, obviously the root plate is the most important critical part. And so that's why it just really needs to be really important is this pedestrian network, ADA accessibility type of a route. Then that also is important. And it also allows moisture to see bento. It's got a lot of things to look at. So. OK, we'll look into that then. They move. Would they be a trip hazard? No, they take the bricks up and they do root maintenance. They bring in more dirt. They do whatever they need to do to maintain them. Okay. Yeah. All right, so let's talk about this is going back to residential. We talked about the process for landmark live-oaks, which is now in the residential lot section. So it's very clear if anyone needs to remove a live-oak that is 45 inches and rated four and above. They'll need to come to the board. We also added some clarification. I found that like our mitigation application was kind of relied on the forest or to have some discretion. And so now we've clarified that for new home construction, what your mitigation would be based on the rating, you know, whether it's going to be half mitigation or one for one. And then we also were having some issues with, you know, when trees are damaging property, what, you know, is it up to the forester to decide if it's damaged enough to justify removal? So we have a very clear demarcation line of 10 feet around structures. And that's your pools, your ADU, your house, not your driveway. Entry wants to make that clear in the record that driveways not a structure. Get a lot of requests to take trees out for crack drive waste. So that would not, you know, it would be your structures and the things that can't be repaired as easily. So we've clarified that. And then we have some other amendments that I haven't taken the time to put into slides because they're kind of a little bit smaller changes, but they're in your backup. The tree rating table is now in our code, and we have five categories. Three and above requires full mitigation. Two is one for one, and I think one is, you know, no mitigation. We have an option in here to inspect some sites without a tree survey. This is sort of like, you know, sometimes there are smaller projects. Maybe it's an addition to a church, you know, that maybe has a couple trees near that location. Andrew's using GPS. He has, you know, an app he's working with. Maybe he could catalog those trees and those ratings and those locations. So it's just an option, you know, I don't want, you know, the developers to come in and point to that. We still want surveys. we still need to be cognizant of how much time it take for staff to do that for someone. So I think it would be up to the director. I don't have to be based on the site conditions. And. still want surveys, we still need to be cognizant of how much time it take for staff to do that for someone. So I think it would be up to the director. I don't have to be based on the site conditions and how busy he is and if it's just a handful of trees or not. We're going to exempt the rural subdivisions that are less than nine lots and the family home subdivisions from the preservation requirements. I found a lot of times we're making a lot of comments about that back and forth for lots that tend to be large, not contain a lot of trees. It existing bonafide egg pursuits, it just seems like tree removal should be handled through the tree permitting process. In most cases these large lots don't even want to take out trees or the fence line trees or the one tree that they had. It's just a lot of work to show these shading and things and all over their plans. So we're gonna exempt them and handle any potential future removal through tree permitting. Now, if it's heavily wooded and they're wanting to like clear a lot, then I think that's a different situation. I think we would need to go in and evaluate what's there and figure out what we think you could take down. We have a code enforcement penalty section which we didn't have before, we're hoping that will make it a little bit clearer on our NOVs. And also when I was pointing out our notice requirements for single family homes when they want to remove landmark live oak, we've added wetland impacts for single family as well in our notice requirements, because right now, if someone has to impact a wetland and they're just trying to build their house or get their access to their property, they currently have to still also go through neighborhood workshop and mail outs and all of that. So we're gonna amend that too for EPD while we make this change. So the same thing, so similar thing, they're gonna come before you, you're still going to make that decision. They just have to do those extra steps, like a preliminary development plan would have to go through. And then I know. same thing, so similar thing. They're going to come before you. You're still going to make that decision. They just have to do those extra steps, like a preliminary development plan would have to go through. And then I know you're aware we've got the climate action plan in process, and there's a lot of other wonderful ideas that are going to come out of that. We're not addressing those with this code update, and this is just kind of a little summary of more topics to come before you and the next year or so. And then we did some outreach. We've been maintaining a list of interested citizens. Anyone that reaches out to you that you send to us, we keep that list. That's also why you have Matthew Hurst comments in your backup. We did a workshop at the Builders Association on March 27. Most of their concerns, I think we've been able to clarify in this code, the number one thing that came out of that was the applicability of their existing PDs. That's been really important. And then we also presented at E-PAC and they had a lot of really wonderful questions. They were mostly in support, but they still wanna take a look at it at their next meeting and come before you officially to support this at our adoption hearing. And then I also just kind of turned out to be great timing. Mary Zoka from She's Our Water Quality Engineer was coordinating a quarterly meeting, I think, for the Northeast Florida chapter of the Association of Environmental Professionals I was able to give them a real short five-slide presentation of this. That also went well. We had some interest in just taking a look at what we're doing. So I sent our draft codes to that group as well so they can see what we're up to. And with that our recommendation is to approve the request to advertise the Unified Land Development Code for Chapter 406, Article 2, Chapter 407, Article 5, 40102 for powers and duties, and 40212 for public notice, as well as our definitions in Chapter 10. That concludes our presentation. Okay. Thank you, Ms. Farrish. All right. staff recommendation. Okay. I motion. Second. I motion. Second. All right. Let's have a. All right, commissioners. Move staff recommendation. Okay, motion. Second. Yeah, motion, second. All right, let's have a first round of discussion, then let's open it up to the public, and then we'll have another round of discussion. Or we can just open it up to the public. All right, let's open it up to the public. All right, so if you're here for this item and not for commission comments, which follows the item. Come on up introduce yourself get three minutes We love to hear from all of you or a group of you. Thank you The first one up Welcome, mr. Schleich. Thank you Clay Swagger. I appreciate the chance to be here speak again Myself and my firm and other design professionals in the community have been really involved in this process, you know, back to the workshops that we had with you all and with the Builders Association. So we appreciate the chance to give the input. I want to make a couple comments, a couple suggestions, and then just a clarification question if I may. And I'm very glad to see their folks here from our building and real estate community that are interested in what you're doing here at the county. And I think the goal for them and I think for us when we bring projects is try to make sure that the rules make sense that they're fair and that they don't add undue costs and burdens to projects. And it's a very complicated puzzle that you all have to grapple with just as we do. I did want to make a couple recommendations for you all to consider if you don't mind. Overhead, please. It's on the overhead. First of all, I will say we are supportive. I say we, everyone I've spoken to about the modified mitigation requirements. I think those are essential in order to preserve more trees and protect and save more trees than what the regulations call for now, which is the goal. And so reducing the mitigation requirements is going to be the tool to make that happen so I'm very supportive of that. As you all are aware of as the County Commission there are a lot of groups locally they're promoting housing, affordable housing, inclusionary housing, you've got regulations coming. I just have a couple suggestions to consider, if you would consider section 40615 regarding mitigation that potentially, there should be some modifications to that. The first is related to projects that provide affordable housing at the level, at the level or in excess of the level of what your inclusionary housing requirements will provide to have a reduced mitigation for heritage trees on those projects. You've got inclusionary housing coming forward and it's only going to move the needle a little. It's a good start. You know, it's more than most communities, but if there are developers and builders that come forward, they're going to propose more voluntarily that that's an incentive that might help bring those bring those efforts forward. And the second is number five, just a request that there not be mitigation for abundant species trees that of any size. Right now you don't require it for water oches, loral oaks and so forth that are smaller but the larger ones you do. But from what I understand not being an expert those are not trees that you really want. They're lower quality. Anybody not speaking that wants to give their time to Clay? Raise your hand. Okay thanks Patrice. Go ahead Clay finish. Thank you very much. I'll be very brief. Sorry, I'm just carrying on. So you got any objection? Okay. Thank you. The last thing is it's specific to a project and it's just, you know, not to be too repetitive, but the existing approved projects. And it's the same thing I mentioned previously. Specifically, and I think I got the clarification I was looking for in general about exemptions, but there was a project, a newberry village that received a PDP, and that actually had some conditions of approval that you all approved related to specific trees and it stated that certain impacts can occur and it cited a code, a county code citation that will now be overridden and replaced. And so we would just like interpretation just for our own piece of mind that that condition will continue to apply at final development plan even if that particular code section is overridden that that would be respected in that particular case. It's a very micro situation but this seems like a good time to to ask. Jeff, you got that? Thanks. Clay, if you would mind, could you give your comments to the clerk so she could get copies to us. I like both of those suggestions. Next speaker, please. Sergio. Good afternoon, Sergio Reyes, you're a consultant. Two points, just clarification, and more logistic than anything else. The measure of the trees, how you measure and you define as one, three or two trees. You read that section and there is a six inches of our ground. If the tree is split, it's two trees. And then four feet below, also the same scene. The question is how the people they actually locate the trees, how they define it. Right is very stencer to what the surveyor, so the people they locate in the tree, it takes some time to do it and their project that we got thousands of trees that we had to locate. So we had to identify the tree, locate the tree, measure the tree and tag the tree. That's the process for any tree. And a project, you know, the 30 acres for the acres, is pretty reasonable that you're going to locate 1000 trees. Okay, so you can imagine the amount of time they take. And now they have to measure six inches below the ground and measure for 50 lbs and determine all two, three cents. So you've got to be a better way to define that. But we can go ahead logistically to work better. We can continue working with the staff and be glad to resolve that issue. It's actually logistically. We don't have a problem with the definition, it's how we do it. And the second point that I wanna make is existing impacts and trees. We got a couple of projects that we know that they, They large trees and you guys probably saw it and talking about one of the projects spring here, we already got the approval of the trees that we had to maintain. So, not those trees are impacted today, several impacted today. They have roads around the trees because they were there. Now, we got there and removed that road, for example, or whatever is there, we're going to be paying mitigation because we're impacted. If we deliver that loan, well, it's no where we are planning to do, right? The impact. I'm not talking about the debtor. The impact of the debtor. So again, how we can deal with existing impacts and trees. adjacent trees, I think, and a Christian talk a little bit about Jason Trees adjacent trees, they cannot be coming to the project. So it's more the logistic how we can deal with that scene. So we got a nucleification in the code. Thank you. Thank you, Sergio. Adam, welcome. Come on up. Hello, Adam Gerskame, a realtor. And I want to give you a little bit of background with me. I work a lot in nonprofits, so here seeing both sides of things and, of course, loving trees. I'm serving as the chair of the Housing Solution Task Force, the Community Foundation, and hope to be bringing you some further suggestions and solutions, because we all know we have lots of issues, and it's always how do we solve them. And I wanted to start with an article I read this morning that really summarizes where we are with housing. U.S. housing supplies still lagging demand. The U.S. remains millions of homes short as prices stay high in construction lags, leaving many home buyers priced out of the market. And we see in this community that we have housing struggles here. And I believe Commissioner Alfred shared and I was on the committee that created that graphic at the chamber. And so the reason for that, yes, was to paint the picture of where we're at in housing, because we hear lots of things and yet we don't always have data that's easy to digest. And the result is we have a housing crisis. I'm a realtor. I work with people all day every day. We cannot find them housing and the housing we can get more and more expensive. My plea to the board is to look at all policies, whether it's what's in front of you for trees or others. And look at the impact and the cost associated, because ultimately who bears the cost, the home buyer, or ultimately a tenant if it's an investment property, I love trees. I want us to continue to protect trees and to make a Lattva County continue to be strong in nature. But I also want us to look at trees and look at mitigation costs and potentially look at a carve out for affordable housing and maybe even expand that. The city's version really would be very limiting and probably the players and that might be in HDC or Habitat, that's great. But what if a private developer wanted to do it and not going to do 100% affordable housing carve out for that exemption? So I think that's important. And just really, and again, as that graphic shows, we're having problems with even workforce housing. You know, we have teachers and nurses and police officers and firefighters. They cannot find housing. And the study I heard last week was in 2030. This community will have 10,000, almost 10,000 shortfall in units for housing. So there's a direct correlation between regulation and cost, and then the net result of we cannot house people. So I just cannot say that enough. Thank you for your time. And thank you for the focus on housing, and it will always be my mission to promote workforce attainable and affordable housing. Thank you. Thank you, Adam. Next week, please. Jeff, Barry? Who's going to make it? Jeff's first. Good afternoon. Hello, sir. I am a realtor. I do sit on the board of NHTC, but I'm really want to focus in more, as my role in this community is a dad. And the concern of the children that are coming up, you know, we have people that are struggling to buy houses, but we have children that we want to keep in our community and housing is a big issue. And there's a lot of things that affect the cost of housing. And we know that. This is something that will also affect the cost of housing. And if there's anything that we can consider do for specific projects or separate things like NHTC does, I would urge you to take that and consider. cost of housing and if there's anything that we can consider or do for specific projects or things like NHTC does I would urge you to take that in consideration because we know with tariffs and everything else the cost of housing is not going down and anything we can do in this community to help mitigate that would be greatly appreciated as you're considering these things. Thanks so. Thanks so. Thank you. Thanks, Speaker, please. Good afternoon commissioners. My name is Andre Parkschmann. I'm actually the executive director at NHDC. You've heard a name a couple times mentioned today. And so what I actually want to do is just quickly ask, or just quickly bring to your attention the affordable housing portion. When I walked in here first, we were talking about the COC. One thing that I loved was just here in the passion coming out from the board in regards to the COC and wanting to ensure that affordable housing is just really protected in how we're dealing with the homeless population. I can tell you right now, the person that has to make a lot of these executive decisions when it comes to affordable housing. When it comes to my market rate housing, we do market rate housing that simple. The cost goes up, what do we do? We simply just put it back onto the end user, unfortunately. And that's whatever your developer does. The end users are going to be the one who'd have to pay for it. housing is a little bit different, right? So affordable housing now, I have to sit back and say, OK, we can't necessarily put it on the end user, because at the end of the night, it's supposed to be affordable housing. We have the county, we have the city, we have the federal, asking, we need more affordable housing. How do we do that? Well, we need to sit back and figure out How am I able to do the burden? Now lots of times it comes back to organizations like NHCC Habitat saying, okay, do we take it on our end with what we do considers being profit? Because keep in mind the little bit of profit we do make is going towards sustaining what we're currently doing as well with the building. And so that is something that I do want to just ask the commission to start thinking about is, are we able to put something together where maybe we're able to sit down with the county and just really look at a lot of the different taxing things that are out there, if you will, when it comes to affordable housing. Because at the end of the night, I just left the conference where we had over 240 individuals such as myself. And the one thing that came out of that is that affordable housing, building affordable housing is no longer affordable for agencies like ourselves to do. And that is one of the saddest thing because you folks can ask agencies like us help us develop affordable housing. And we were doing the best to try to do, but it is getting such a challenge out there. So I'm going to continue to want to meet with each and every one of you and just find out how are we able to continue as a county with the city to keep these things affordable. And so I just wanted to introduce myself to those who I've not met and just again say that I do want to continue to work with the commission and with the county to again try to maintain these affordable, keep maintain them as affordable as possible. possible. Thank you folks. Thank you, Ms. Parkland. Thanks for what you do. Next speaker please. My Heather. Heather Swanson, I'm a realtor. I've been here for 21 years. And I did come here because I like the community. I just want to appreciate the fact that you guys are manipulating or changing the plan to be more open about the open spaces to include the trees because it doesn't do any good just to have a border around stuff and have inside being. Sometimes that's what we have to do, especially for affordable. We have to put that mass numbers in there. But when we have the opportunity to manipulate and change how that open space works, I think that's going to be a positive influence for future. So I appreciate that. But as what we've just had the last two, we have to do what we can to mitigate for that affordable housing. We are having that crisis and people are leaving here to get jobs other places because we can't afford to live here. So please take that into consideration about what benefits and stuff you can do for those that are building those affordable housing and for those that are wanting to stay because if you price them out of being able to improve their, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, flexibility. One of the things that I'm currently spending a lot of time in Oakmont and I'm seeing some of the things that are done there, there are opportunities sometimes that we don't take advantage of and I'm concerned that we might walk ourselves into planning limitations that would allow us, would not allow us to take advantage of what we see in our ground. You know when I walk land and you start to visit things and you start to understand it and you get a feel for it and sometimes it's not all the beginning and sometimes there's something that you don't know and so somewhere there needs to be some flexibility. And the second thing is that I wanted to speak about in my three minutes is sometimes we have unintended consequences. In Huntington, I've planted probably about a half a mile on both sides of the road of live-oaks. And I'm finding that I went through there a month or so ago, and the live-oaks are doing very well, thank you, and they are growing. And there's a brick wall on either side of it. And at some point, there's going to be a concern about the roots going into the brick walls. And that's one of my concerns that you're going to start. And we need to have some flexibility for that. The third thing I'm worried about is that some people are going to start coming in and when you're designing your rules as you or finalize them, I'm concerned that people are going to become preemptive in their removal of trees. And I don't know what to do with it. I don't think there's much we can do, but think about it. And sometimes there's limitations. And Monterey, which I built a house for someone in the mid 70s, and they wanted to keep a live oak that was five feet from the house. The live oak, I checked it the other day. The live oak is still there. It doesn't have all of the live oak, but it's big. And it's close. And we worked with the county foresters. We worked with county foresters for decades. And we value them. And there are things that we will be dealing with that are hard to understand what they are yet. They haven't manifest themselves. And so I'm trying to give within realms of it needs to be more flexible than what we have. Somehow there needs to be those releases. There needs to be some kind of, yeah, I wish I would have known, if I would have thought about this, I would have done something about it. And maybe you can build that into what you're working on. Thank you very much. Thanks, Barry. Next speaker, please. Hi, Mark Robinson, a realtor as well and on public policy with the local association. I want to thank you for taking this up. You have super supportive of trees. Also very concerned about affordability, workforce housing. So I would support the suggestion to build in some mitigation, to not make it burdensome to develop for affordable housing. That's it. Thanks, Mark. Thanks. Great. I'll show you the realtors. They don't wait till the like because when they're done with their point, they just stop. Yeah, it's awesome. Thank you. Next speaker, anyone else? Okay. Let's bring it back to the board. Commissioners, Commissioner Prasya and then Commissioner Weather. Oh, so I guess I'll say first thank you. Thanks for showing up. Welcome to the conversation. We've been having conversations about affordable housing crisis. It's least since I've been on the board, probably before that. And we've done a lot of kind of pushing on that issue. We have a study from the Florida Housing Coalition that makes a lot of recommendations for inclusionary housing efforts in our comprehensive plan and I think we'll be having more of those conversations about how those get included during our EAR process so please come back. We also now have infrastructure surtax. We have $56 million in a bucket to work with developers and builders to incorporate affordable housing into their projects. So come on down. Share with us your ideas and your projects. I just want to be careful. And I will say that I feel like it's a false dichotomy when developers show up and we're talking about trees to say affordable housing, affordable housing, protect affordable housing. Because at the end of the day, those two things are not opposites and they are not meant to compete against each other. Protecting environmental quality and protecting shade and open space for people who live in affordable communities is just as important as for rich people who live in fancy communities. And so we have to find ways that we can do both. And I hear you, and I think we tried in this, at least I was pushing for that flexibility, like how do we incorporate the idea of protections, but also allow for more flexibility so that you all can be creative in the ways that you put together that open space and that shade in those spaces. And so I hope that this accomplishes both, allowance of protections for trees and for open space and the ability for you all to come up with different ways of doing it. I like the idea of the potential shift in some of the mitigation for affordable housing, but I would like a minute to sort of think about what that really, what the impacts of that are and for staff to bring that back and sort of so we could kind of look at that. But I do think it's something worth exploring, especially for the additional tree stuff that we're talking about. I hear you on the abundant trees, but you know some of those abundant trees are literally the abundant trees of the trees that are everywhere. And if we just wave all mitigation where those trees were essentially waving all mitigation period, we're just saying like forget it because those are the trees that we're going to have the most of. And oftentimes, they're the trees that are providing shade in our urbanized areas. So while some of them aren't the best trees in the world, and if they're at their terminal life, maybe there's things about that, about age and the quality. We have this very standardized set of criteria for grading trees now, so maybe we could talk about the greater trees, because I think we already have that in there, right? That if it's below a certain number, you don't have to mitigate for it at all anyway. So, anyway, I appreciate everybody coming out. I hope you'll stay engaged in the conversation and help us come up with strategies to incorporate affordable housing, but also recognize the importance of protecting our environment. Thanks. Thank you, Mr. Commissioner Wheeler and the Commissioner Halford. Yes, thank you very much. Yeah, Mr. Ruttenberg, I agree flexibility is what we're looking for too in terms of actually building. We're looking for builders who will give us some flexibility in terms of size and style of homes that we can have built. Not everybody needs a three or four bedroom home. And if we're talking about building a development around one of these large trees, if we could get some flexibility in the size of the homes that are going in that compound. I agree with Commissioner Pritzia that the trees are one of the things that will help reduce with the reduction costs for homes because they do help keep it cooler in the winter time. I'm in summer time, sorry, in the summer time, and protect the home when rain and that sort of thing too. So there are protections that come along with these trees in your yard. But in terms of looking for homes that are more affordable, what we're talking about anymore are homes that are in the lower 300,000s, and that's considered an affordable home. And we're looking for something in the low 200,200 and low, low 200, okay, mid 200s, but something that will relate to what it is that we're trying to do. And if we could find the builders, we have property right now. We're looking for a builder to come work with us on. But we need homes that are modest, not flamboyant. Just modest, good homes that keep people dry and when it rains and warm when it's cold. And that's basically what we need. And so if you all know of anybody like that, we should send them our way. But the trees we feel like are going to be an amenity that everybody should be able to enjoy, not just the folks that can afford the $300,000 homes in the community, because people don't need be living in a waste desert land where there's no green cover and protection. Thank you Mr. Chair. Thank you Commissioner Wheeler, Commissioner Alfred. Thank you. I wanted to tell Clay thank you for these recommendations. I actually support them both but I I guess I would like to refer them to staff to bring them back for the adoption hearing with their comments. I specifically, I'd like the idea of the reduced mitigation requirements for affordable housing. And I like the elimination and mitigation requirements for abundant species regardless of size for affordable housing. I think both of those for affordable housing make a lot of sense. But I consider it affordable. When you when we're talking we're talking affordable housing. Yeah, the way we defined it in our code. The way we defined it in our code. Yeah. OK. I would like it to be for attainable housing, which is what we refer to in this document. But I don't know how we would talk about changing a lot of things if we were to do that. But I think we start with affordable housing right now and see what staff has to say about. Did you have a chance to look at these before our meeting today? No. I did not, but I think we could probably stay on the same timeframe and figure out a way to incorporate some of that. I think that would be for the land clearing mitigation for an affordable housing project. And Jeff and I were just even looking at with the implications of some of this for single family home like residential lots maybe even having a provision in there because I was wondering are we are we doing inch for inch for abundant species and lots I don't think we are but I want to cross reference the mitigation table with the draft I have before you today. So I don't think that that would you know delay anything. Okay. OK. I think that's fairly straightforward, especially since he's given us something to work with. It's a work from. Yeah, I'm good. Yeah. OK, so I guess it's my turn. So first of all, thank you all for being here. Clay and Sergio are for my real to friends are awesome with regards to working with staff, and I appreciate the kind of them leaning in. You don't have every engineering firm guys at all these workshops here, and they're donating their time, they're entering the expertise, and it shows, and I just wanted to thank you guys for that. So that's point one. Adam, Jeff, Mr. Parseman, Heather, Mark, all talking about affordable housing, which is amazing that you all are focused in on that and helping with us. We had a large presentation on the continuum of care, which is homelessness, but really workforce housing is what we deal with virtually every day. And this Commissioner Alfred shared this atom with us before the meeting even started. And we are trying to find homes for teachers and police officers and nurses and firefighters. And so the fact that y'all have spent the time leaned in and provided this for our community, I can't thank you enough. Like Commissioner Prisya said, we are leaning in on this item and your voice we need because it's important because you're on the ground floor. And we are putting things in place to where this commission wants to help the developers and builders that are willing to help us from a public policy standpoint. And over 10 years, we'll have $56 million. And so we haven't spent any of that yet. We actually have developed the Affordable Housing Trust Fund because we didn't have a solid plan yet. We just haven't spent that money yet. That's bad that we haven't spent it. It's really good because if we have more stakeholders involved now, we can spend it more wisely. And can leverage those dollars for those that want to participate in this public policy issue and help them build affordable housing that isn't unaffordable to them because they have to make a profit as well or maybe they're part of a non-profit. So please continue that discussion with us as we move into affordable housing. When it comes to trees, I despise water oaks, me personally. And so I agree with actually the comments here that if we could help folks remove water oaks or not mitigate water oaks as a way to kind of preserve live oaks, it's like I don't dislike trees, water o roads, but they are costly. They don't live as long and this commission is ready to compromise on that. I like these two suggestions. I like reducing mitigation for affordable housing. It gets kind of as Commissioner Prisya said, yes, I'm going to use this a lot. I'm going to seal this. Getting all the arrows put in the same direction. Can I keep sealing that? Okay, I can. So last night Commissioner Prisya said, at a Children's Trust County Commission joint meeting, if you didn't watch it, check it out. There was our whole community there basically talking about kids. There was not less than 75 people squeezed into great night, two and a half hours. And we talked about how we're going to try to change literacy and how we're going to try to invest in family resource centers in places that can help move the dial on literacy. Commissioner Prinsia said, I feel like we as a community have all the arrows pointed in the same direction to solve this literacy issue, especially for our young African-American kids who one in three is reading a grade level and two of three or not. I feel like we're at the same place with the continuum of care and affordable housing. We're getting you all, the whole community, with all of our arrows focused in the same direction. And that is so gratifying, being in my third term, to see that. And, Brad, I want to thank you for your leadership. As a president of Gakor, you are kind of from, I love all our presidents of Gakor, but Brad, you more than anyone have been reaching out. And seeing all you hear today actually says a lot about CACOR. So Clay, I wanna say to my staff, let's look at these. Let's meet with us. I'm ready to take these compromises and move forward with affordable housing. And I'm ready to make sure that we protect the trees that we need to protect so that we are not like Orlando and South Florida and I don't mind saying it you know we aren't we are not them we are a Lachua County it's in our logo it adds value to the properties by protecting these trees it adds value to the neighborhood to the developments and so I'm glad that we're moving in the same direction and if we can use this opportunity to bring in affordable housing as a way to get everyone on the same page, heck, I'm all for that. I'm all for that. And so I'm really happy with how this meeting is going. So with that, I'm ready to support the motion. Any other discussion? I just want to ask you and the group that you have here, what you consider affordable. I really, I know we keep talking about percentages of AMI and all that. But you all know what's on the market and you know what people can afford and can't afford. So how do we define affordable housing? Mr. Chair, so Jeff Hayes, the growth management director. The way in our inclusionary ordinances which will be coming back the second meeting of May for adoption for the comprehensive plan affordable was defined as 80% AMI. So that's how we've defined the work for those. I know that part, but as people who are out in the field trying to find homes for people, I'm just trying to understand what that number is, the number. And we can actually get, yeah, that actually, that median income actually does correspond to the 30% number for the percentage of income for a home, and maybe Commissioner Prissy has it in front of her. Yeah, it's $48,550 for a single family income and I think it's 55,520 for a two person household. So it's essentially a salary for like a single income earner that would be like a teacher or... That's not what I'm asking. I'm asking what is in the market now that realtors would consider. No, but we've got realtors out here. So why don't we, um, let's finish so we're not on a four-wise thing. We'll get to four-wise thing. But if the realtors want to talk at public comment, which we're about to have after this, you can, uh, we'd love to, Commissioner Wheeler, we'd love to hear when you say someone's affordable to me, it's under 250. That, okay, That's what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying. of the year when you say someone's affordable to me, it's under 250. That's what I'm looking at. That's a number. And that's what I'm saying. Those are mostly town homes and condos. OK. Or very small houses. So that's the number I use. I don't know. I see heads nodding to Adam. Actually, Adam, come up. Just talk to Commissioner Wheeler. Answer a question. I would appreciate it because we keep talking for synergies, but in terms of what's actually on the market, not only just in Gainesville, but in the last week County. Very, very livable, very, very little. It's very tough to find anything single family under 250,000 that's livable and safe today. Typically, those would require quite a bit of money to rehabilitate roofs, water heaters, air conditioners. So that's very tough. The median price home is somewhere about $365. And so then when you do that backward calculation, you know, it's tough and it really becomes tough and that's why we gave that graphic to show. Right in the middle here, $27 an hour. A simple thing to do is just multiply that by 2000, it's 2018, but so $27 an hour is someone that makes $54,000 a year, $2,000 times $27 an hour. And I will say we can certainly provide data at a future date. We have lots and lots of data. We have multiple listing data, and we can provide that as an association to help the conversation. Thank you, Adam. And thank you, and I appreciate that. Are you all talking also to developers? I mean, you know, so that you can tell them what it is needed in the community. Hold on, Jeff. Commissioner Prisya. I just want to say we are having this conversation again. We're talking about our affordable housing infrastructure service tax coming up the first meeting in May. So please come back. But I think that the other thing is that we have the Schumberg Center for Housing Studies here in Elakua County and they produce a lot of the data that you use to create. coming up the first meeting in May, so please come back. But I think that the other thing is, is that we have the Schumberg Center for Housing Studies here in Alachua County, and they produce a lot of the data that you use to create this. And, you know, they've got a lot of information on our gaps in housing and where we really, really need housing. And our affordable housing advisor committee asked our staff to include that data and information in that meeting. I think it will answer a lot of your questions, not necessarily what do we consider affordable as but where are the gaps in housing? We've got somehow... in that meeting. So I think it will answer a lot of your questions, like not necessarily what do we consider affordable as but like where are the gaps in housing? Like, you know, we've got some housing where we've got eight houses for every person looking. We have other places where we have eight people looking for every house we've got. So, you know, thinking about those things and rental versus for purchase too. So I think we'll get some of that information at that meeting too. Okay. Thank you, Chris. Thank you. Okay, Jeff, you're recognized. I'm sorry. Mr. Chair, yeah, I just wanted to speak to one other issue that one of the speakers on brought up and that we do have and very few, there's the one that is front of mind for me that was relatively recent. Some approvals of projects that had specific conditions, that reference specific codes on individual trees. I would like a chance if it's okay with the motion maker codes on individual trees. I would like a chance if it's okay with the motion maker and the seconder to look at that, those conditions actually go through what would control. If these would be changes to the language we can look at it out, I'm not sure there will or won't be, but I just wanna think that when we come back that we've looked at that issue and make sure at least we have something that's clear in the code. So we transmit today and then we look at that for adoption when we come back. Yeah, we have another Yeah, very good with that too. Thank you. Okay any further discussion on this item Okay, all those favor say aye any pose. Okay, that motion is unanimous. Thank you all Now before you go commissioners Tonight we have a second open public at 5.30. We're gonna have 500,000 kids in this room. At 5.30, so we can waive our rules and have a second open public comment now, if you'd like, how do y'all feel about that? Yes, because I don't think it's listed here. We usually do a second public comment that there's not an evening meeting, but we're recessing to have the evening meeting, but we can waive our rules and have our second public comment now. No, we passed that with Gina before. Oh, that's right. I forgot. So do you want to waive our rules? Yeah, let's do it. Let's have, because we have people we want to hear from. We got a motion to waive the rules. We got a second. So we're gonna have our second open public comment not at 5.30 but have it right now if you want to say and give it some All those are favor say aye. Aye. Any pose? Okay, those rules have been waived, so we're going to open it up to, and you don't have to, but if just if you want, if you'd like to come forward, please thanks for being here. All y'all, thanks for being here. Thanks, Clay, thanks Barry. This is an opportunity now for you all to come forward. If you'd like to give us three minutes of public comment on anything that you'd like to speak to your commission about. It's great to have you. Adam, welcome back. Yes, so I just, and I mentioned it- We'd like to give us three minutes of public comment on anything that you'd like to speak to your commission about. It's great to have you. Adam, welcome back. Yes, I just, and I mentioned it earlier, but just want to reiterate, we're certainly working on a lot of this on the private side. And I know sometimes we don't intersect, but I agree. Finally, all the arrows seem to be pointing in the same direction that we have a problem and we're fixing it. So as I mentioned, the Community Foundation has a task force that I'm chairing called Housing Solutions Task Force. Very much so. How do we create solutions and not just continue to talk problems? Housing first for children is a group that many folks involved with the Children's Trust are on that group discussing if children are unstable housed. how can we expect them to perform in school? So there's a lot of work being done on the private side and my ears are purking up about financial opportunities and where do we suggest solutions? A lot of that data was from Schimberger United Way. We have been discussing a lot with Florida Housing Coalition and all of their solutions, so I can just assure you, there's a lot of work being done on the private side of things, discussing housing gaps, discussing types of housing, building materials. We are meeting monthly and bringing in speakers and what is the magic answer and there's not one. But there's lots of little things. So I can tell you that I will be more and more engaged and more and more bringing solutions to you and in my resource for, you know, I've spent a long time, yes, selling real estate, but I was on the board for Family Promise of Gainesville for almost 10 years and I was president. So I have seen all the different issues on the housing ladder and know that there will be solutions we just all have to lean in. So I want to thank you again, and like I said, I truly want to be a resource and really assure you that even though we may not interact directly, there's a lot of work that is being done. Let me brag on Adams for just a second. So Adams has a relationship with the Gakka, his executive director. They know each other very well. That's his mom. She's been a Gekka for 15 years. Adam, it's the former president of Gakka and an awesome realtor and just an awesome human being. So Adam, thank you for that information. All right, anyone else? Come on forward. I'd like to actually bring a little bit of context to kind of your questions as far as like as a affordable home builder. what are we selling homes for? Let's start off. Roughly right now today we end up doing a three-bedroom can end up being building out for 180 to let's say 205 somewhere to that is to that. We try to stay at about 2.30 to 250. The problem that occurs now is when we are looking at the cost to build affordable housing. So, that gap, let's say we finished off at 205, selling ideally, love to be able to sell it at 235 to 50 stain well below market rate. Sometimes the $20,000, $30,000 below market rate. Now, the other thing that helps with that is when we also go ahead and we also have additional ship funds or additional funds to help the end user get into there. That's what really helps. But it's a subsidized. It's when we have the subsidized. I'm with everyone as far as with the tree conversation that goes. So I'm not necessarily saying, okay, let's bypass the tree's conversation. It's how do we help subsidize when we do have the mitigated tree? What is out there to help us? Because at the end of the night, it's the end user that is going to end up suffering. And when we're talking about affordable housing on our end as developers, it's hard to get other individual, other contractors. That's the key. Getting the other contractors to come in that want to partner with an affordable developer because they're used to a percentage. Now what we're finding is we're lucky where we're having good conversations with contractors that are really doing it out of their heart. Yes, they're gonna get it percentage, but they also do recognize they can go elsewhere and make a lot more off of this bill. But in order for us to keep it that way, they're doing us a lot of favor. And a lot of times that really is the case. Because we're habitat, myself, rebuild, we'll tell you all the time. We're having issues with contractors because they look at this and they're just saying, yeah, I get the affordable concept. I understand that, but no. So that is one of the reasons why you end up hearing the affordable conversation on the developers and of everything. So thank you folks. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. Next speaker please. Welcome back Mark. Mark Robinson. Yeah. Commissioner Prisya, thank you. What I was trying to say, not one or the other, I know it's balanced. And I appreciate you guys being here and trying to find that. One thing that came to mind when you're talking about what's affordable. I know there are a lot of good organizations here working with families, homeowners, and renters even to try to bring where they're living up to a standard that needs to be. It's terrible. We did some things trying to get rid of some slums and some slum lords and say, hey, you have to, it can't be open. You have to have insulation. But if funds can be available to help your community, whether it's A.C.A. and Leap, and these programs to bring that $140,000 home into a livable state. Because there are plenty of places out there that people just drive by. Like no, no, no, no. They don't have 50 or $100,000 to bring it back. But that could be helpful. We have homes that just aren't really considered livable. Yeah, they're not safe. Yeah, thanks, Mark. Thanks. Anyone else? Come on up, Heather. Yeah, I guess I have their response. And again, I guess I fall in the same category with all about it's a subsidy or grant programs or things like that to help because that we do have. I mean, I buy houses. I flip. I usually try to help make my neighborhood better. I haven't done it because the cost of materials, cost of labor, cost of insurance, the HOA. I mean, yeah, you can get a 200,000 townhouse, but with the HOA, Condo Association on it, it's not affordable anymore. So there's different things like that that anything we can help the front end overlays on building codes, things, I mean, not relax because that's why people like it here, but things to help those do it to make it a worthwhile event for them. And I think we do have builders and people that are willing to do this. It's just when I don't want to work for free. You don't want to work for free. I have to put food on the table for my family. So when you sit there and say, well, do this, without this, you can't do it every time. So if you do those incentives and help people along the way, our community is that outreach that are willing to do so. It's just you got to help them along the way to get it. Thank you. So thank you. Okay, anyone else? It's just you got to help them along the way to get it. Thank you. So thank you. OK, anyone else? It's Riley. Hey, I'm Brent Riley. I'm a realtor, but lived here since 71. My parents came here, so I've been here a long time. So I'm quite clarification more than anything. That 56 million that you were talking about over 10 years. What does that go to? What is it purchasing of land? Is it helping for grants? I mean, how does that help the lower income people make affordable housing or find affordable housing? Yes, we'll answer that. Okay. Do you want to go sit back down? You're going to answer that? Yeah, yeah, and let's have other comments. Yeah, we answered all of them. I'll go back. Okay. Thank you. Anyone else? Anyone else? Do you have anything? Yeah, yeah, and once we have other comments, yeah, we answer it all. I'll go back. OK. Yeah, yeah. Thank you. Anyone else? Anyone else? Joy, you got anything? No? You can all say anything. OK. Thanks for being there, Joy. Yeah, Joy Gnanser. OK, we're going close public comment. All right. Commissioner Prisiot. Got a list? I do. Okay. So I guess I, for someone who's, I mean, I just, I do want to say thank you for leaning in and thank you for all the work you're doing, you know, creating this, thinking about housing, getting together, putting your brains together, and your collective wisdom around our housing stock is really powerful and so I really appreciate it. I think invite us to the table. I've come a couple of times, I think, and done some presentations to your group, but we have all the things that you're talking about. We have an Energy Efficiency Fund for landlords. It's actually a grant program that Mary Alfred introduced. It's up to 15. It's up to 15. presentations to your group, but we have all the things that you're talking about. We have an energy efficiency fund for landlords. It's actually a grant program that Mary Alfred introduced. It's up to $15,000 worth of renovations per unit for up to eight units to do renovations for energy efficiency in Newerames. And as long as you're committing to keeping that housing affordable, that money is a grant. You don't have to pay back. So we've got, we've increased chip prices so that we people can use a higher home price, you know, because to pay back. So we've increased chip prices so that we people can use a higher home price because we're realizing that costs are more. We have the infrastructure surtax that money is meant. I mean, that's what the policy conversation is the first week in May, which is why I'm saying come back and be a part of it. But the reality is it's potentially for workforce housing is gap financing for projects. So if you want to build housing that has 80% and 50% AMI housing and you need to somehow to make that difference up So that it makes the project pencil like that's what this funding is supposed to be for from my perspective now That's a conversation we all have to have up here But really it's meant to be funding and my perspective And so you have four of us perspective to. So get more housing stock. Like, let's get more units built. And let's get more units in diversified places across our community. Because the other thing is we're really frustrated with this, the concentration of affordable housing in one place, right? Because we need the people who work at bass pro shops to also be able to afford to live at celebration point. We need the people who are work, the nurses at the hospital to also be able to work next to Spring Hill. Not just the people who are the doctors and the lawyers, right? So we need housing that's affordable to spurs across our community. And the more we can integrate varieties of housing into neighborhoods that are off we're going to be. So we're trying to figure out how do we incentivize more of that in our community with this funding. I guess the last thing I want to say, and this is getting a little political, so just forgive me, but the number one way that you can fix issues around some of that affordability is by electing the kind of people who care about affordability in our community and in our country, and who are going to think differently about the way that we treat our workers, the way that we treat our supply chains, the way that we treat our workers, the way that we treat our supply chains, the way that we treat our partners for those supply chains, whether they be here in our country or internationally. And so, it's just, you know, we cannot regulate out or deregulate out greed. We just can't. And so, it is going to take those people who are willing to say, you know what, we need affordable housing and so I'm willing to not make as much percentage because once upon a time that kind of money, making that kind of money on real estate wasn't even possible but over time as things have got realities of changed about what people's expectations are about what kind of money they're going to make on a project. And it's really hard to dial that back. But I think if we can bring the subsidies and we can bring the incentives and we can bring the deregulation where it's appropriate, and you all can bring the people who are willing to maybe have a little bit more of a modest profit on a project. I think it was where we could meet in the middle and come up with some really, really awesome projects and be kind of a show piece for the rest of our state about how we can do this right. Thank you. Also, thank you, Commissioner. And, um, Commissioner, one picture that kind of stood in my mind today that we saw during the continuum of care is, remember that picture where they had those smaller houses? Yep. And this is what Commissioner Alfred really has been talking about. Why does it take 300,000 to build a house? You can build a house for 60,000. And that goes back to us working with our staff, getting input from these experts of how can we streamline really the regulations and the requirements on these smaller houses that are widely dispersed and equally dispersed. And I'll tell you a conversation I had with Herman Kanoff this weekend. Herman was there yesterday. He's the child at the Zuckerberg. He's like, you know, I'm buying a house on Amazon for $30,000 and I said, what? And he pulled it up. It had a $10,000 coupon. So it's actually 1999. Yeah, but you got to go through all the processes. You know you got to go through all the processes. It's got to meet Florida code. And it's got to meet a lot of Florida code. And I think what Heather is saying and what we've all been saying is technology is moving so fast that we need to take advantage of that and our regs when it comes to affordable housing. Maybe we need to figure out how can we do that with technology and regulations and partners in private industry so that we can build similar to your initiative that we're doing at the economy lodge. But that we can kind of open it up to the private sector. I'm not saying we're grab a bunch of people ordering houses for all Amazon for 19,000. But the point though is that that competition means that we ought to be able to figure out how to locally do something similar to that so that when you ask a question, what's affordable? I don't say 250,000 or 200,000. What's is $75,000, which is what it was 25 years ago. And the only way to do that is to technology and stream line regulations for that specific purpose. So I'm excited about the arrow being pointed in the right direction. Thank you all for being here and leaning in. And have you seen Mary's design for cottages? Yes. Have you? Yeah. I think they're wonderful. Thank you all for being here leaning in. And have you seen Mary's design for cottages? Yes. I think they're wonderful. I did too. All right, let's, you all want to do attorney in commission comments or do you all hold that law for tonight? All right, are there any attorney comments? Chair, I do not have any. Check that off. Any manager comments? Mr. Chair, I do not have any. OK, let's do commission comments and we'll join Mary Hill just have one quick one that their folks going around the neighborhood. They're storm chasers trying to repair people's roots They're from out of area coming in to the community Because that hails for me. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes Yes, so. Yes, so just be aware. I would say use our local folks. Send them on the road. Use our local people instead of the people coming from Jacksonville. And then we can have votes sweep the roads when they're going by, because I've noticed a lot of them are starting to use our right away and sticking their signs in the right away, especially along 34th Street, 39th Street, 16th Avenue, I've seen a lot of those signs in the right of ways. Yeah, and actually write down the number two in the picture. Kim McCall and say, hey, where are you from? Okay, do you have anything? I do. I just wanted to ask if you all would be okay for us to send a letter to our representative KAMAC since she sits on the Agricultural Committee asking her to consider restoring funding for the local food purchasing program and the local food school lunch program. Both of them were cut as a result of the freezes at the federal government and all of the both of them were helping both our food bank and our school district and our local farmers providing fresh, healthy, nutritious food to our communities. And right now they're all frozen and people have had to cut employees and cut contracts with local farmers to buy produce for those who are most vulnerable in our community. So I was just asking if we could write a letter requesting that she support restoration of those funding programs in the farm bill. That was second, Dan. Motion in a second. Any discussion? Any public discussion? a discussion a public discussion thumbs up Cut thumbs up from realtors all back to the board all those in favor say aye. Hi all those good job All right, anything else? Okay, I was gonna discuss this but it came up earlier in the meeting So I don't need to discuss it now, but I want to thank Adam for really leading the charge on this and to the To the chamber for for taking this off seriously and thank you guys for looking at it and feel free to share this with your networks because I think it's a useful document. Okay, thank you. I, that, you could glue. I could. I just have one thing. So we talked about redistricting and redrawing the maps and I don't. Yeah and I don't think we've got any movement on that and so I was hoping that we could direct our staff to maybe take a look at that even though we are at large based on the election I really the thing that I remember in the motion is that we were going to ask that we balance the districts by population and by demographics for each of the five districts. And I want to make sure that we still want to do that. And if we do that, we direct staff to bring us back at least begin to bring us back some maps in the next 60 to 90 days, if you guys are okay with that. I thought we were waiting on them. I thought that's what it is. Mr. Chair, yes, we have been working on that. The only thing I would say is, and we've been working on that with the supervisor elections, and we're actually primed to come back at the second meeting in May with proposals that we've worked with the supervisor elections, the only thing I would say is the primary guidance that we were working under was still dealing with trying to eliminate or reduce the number of split precincts. More so than keeping not not not focusing on the demographic and population element, that's definitely still got to be part of it. But that was not the driving force of what we've been doing because that but potentially resulted in much more significant changes in districts. So, which I'm fine with now we have a pie, and it's cut in the five places. And I think we should change all that and line it up with demographics and population. Because yours right now is all out of whack. Yeah, mine's really. In all different ways. And line up with precincts. Is that the direction that we gave? That's the direction I thought we gave. But I guess I mean, I did focus on the precinct splits because that was a really big problem in the most recent election. It was a real challenge and kind of my- Can we give some clarifying direction? Mm-hmm. Uh, I mean, I- You want to move? This is looking at Jeff. Jeff's looking at Missy. I'm looking at Sol. That's a lot of things. Has the devil make the motion, kid? Yeah, I can pass the gavel, make the motion. So I would move the we asked staff to move. I would move the we asked staff to bring back redistricting, aligning the precincts to the best of our ability with supervisor election and also making sure that the population and the demographics mirror the population and the populations are equal and that the demographics mirror the demographic civil rights or county as best we can in each of the five districts. Mr. Chair, if you don't mind, we can certainly look at all three of those things, trying to do all those three of those things is going to be nearly impossible. And as soon as you do it and get this adopted, precincts are going to change, not that they're proposing to change them right now, but they always change. We're going to have a little bit of least demographics. you and I believe we were looking at the precincts. The supervisor had been looking at the precincts and we had been using the information they had so that would be a little different. I don't know. Can you still do that? And Mr. Chair, what I would say is we were working under a more relatively limited scope than it sounds like what you're talking about. I know. OK. I want to give you all a new direction. OK. Then that's fine. We'll take whatever direction we get. I will say that the limited scope we were working under, and I don't know if Sylvia wants to chime in. But any of the actual statutory constraints around redistricting, we felt comfortable that we were not going to be getting into regarding demographics. And there are some statutory constraints that we would have to be able to defend any new districts that we draw if they are significantly different. In my opinion. Yeah, so imagine. Oh, I see what you're saying. No, I see what you're saying. What I'm talking about, like, you know, I mean, at least I'm not talking about you having a completely redraw. completely redraw. I may have heard you say I don't think the pie is the right way to go but I don't know that that pie needs to be completely redrawn. I just think that if boundaries are shifted and things are organized more properly, you'll see a better balance of demographics and population. I don't think they're focused on that. And I think that's kind of the point. We have this year to do it. I'm not in any rush. We have plenty of time. Anybody changes when you do it any year, but... Oh, I thought we had to do it in five years. Yeah, only odd years, so 2025. So Mr. Chair, that change in the statute. I think there's no restriction on which years they can happen. The statute says population, a balanced population. It talks about numbers. but it doesn't talk demographics. It doesn't. Staff has brought you in the past a number of maps. This last time was the first time I think I have seen only one map, Comfort for adoption. But the statute was, we were at the end of an odd year. The statute still said odd years and that was the year that the demographic information from the census came late. So I don't know if staff can draw you maps that are consistent with the multiple maps that are consistent with the statutory requirement of a balanced population and still look at these other things. Under the map I'm thinking of Jeff. Every one of us would have individuals that are on the eastern side of the county in that district drawn. Right. And Mr. Chair, and I will need to discuss with you attorneys office. There's some more, I believe there's some case law as well in terms of drawing districts specifically allowing certain demographic groups to be able to have the ability to elect a member of a certain demographic group. So let's look at, we can come back. We're at large though. We're at large. Could the motion just reference the facts best practices for redistricting? Because I think they address a lot of this. It could, but it needs to be, I mean, it's I'm specifically talking about mirroring in every five district the demographics of a lot for county since we're at large. In case there ever is a case where we move back to single member, we will now mirror the county's demographics. It's best you can. As best you can, sure, of course, it's not going to be perfect, but it should at least be population wise. And there are a number of demographics that currently aren't represented because they don't vote. Hispanic is at the top of my list is thinking about. And that was what I thought our direction was. Lining up precincts for sure, but I thought it was also lining up the demographics of the county, which is at large Is demographics going to be an issue? Miss miss Dave this chair what I could say is we can take that direction and come back to you and even by the the May meeting even on the the threshold we were on we can bring you back what we were working on Yeah, I mean, we can bring back a further discussion of the issues. I think that's great. The point I'm making, though, commissioners, is if you look at other districts around the state and you look at how they're drawn, hards is a nice pie. It's five. Every other county, it's not drawn that way. And so this is our powers to draw the districts. and it's never been an issue. It's never been an issue. What's about us? This is our power to draw the districts. And it's never been an issue. It's never been an issue. I'm over-districts, and it became a real issue because it wasn't a balanced class. What's about us? No, it's not. People that showed up in our race versus the number of people that showed up. And I guess that's voting population versus regular population. But the day it's also just like, it's just like it's not fair representation when you think about overall like we had 70% of our population that said we want at large voting. We're going to have that in the next election. But if there's ever a case where that doesn't happen again, let's get the district strong correctly so that it's correct. That's my only point. OK, so I made the motion. Seconded. Any public discussion? All those in favor? You're supposed to say. You're supposed to say. You're the hell. Any further discussion? All those in favor? You're supposed to say. You're supposed to say. You're the... Any further discussion? All those in favor of the motion signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? Like sign? Motion carries. Do you have a gamble about it? You may. OK. We're adjourned. OK. Thank you.