So order if I can as a start get a motion to adopt our agenda. Second. Okay, we have a motion to second. Is there any community input to the agenda? Hearing none, all in favor say aye. All right. Any opposed? Okay. We have an agenda and next up is similarly approval of our minutes from the December meeting. Second. Any comments to the motion? Question. Yes. Just like, new to all these boards. So this is a joint board. We don't have to have a motion from the city and the county. We're all together. No, we're all together one. And this is this board, even though we make like recommendations to our individual board. So we aren't like making decisions on behalf of either of those boards. So it's more just informational and coordination purposes and then joint policy direction to our staff still work together and things like that. I'll take that. Thanks so much. Absolutely. Maybe a motion and a second. Are there any community comments to the minutes? Hearing none, all in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed, like sign? OK, next up is election of our chair and vice chair. Last year, I believe Casey Willetz was our chair. We usually rotate. I'm moving to Prisya's chair. Okay. All right. That's seven seconds. I got it. All right. Okay. Okay. Any comments to that? Hearing none, I'll accept. All in favor of electing me as chair. Say aye. Aye. Any pose like sign. Thanks all. Yeah, you're so bomb-ed, right? I know, really. At least this meeting is great though. We always talk about important and important things that are happening and mostly positive things or things that are helping move things in a positive direction. So happy to serve. All right, next up is our business discussion items. We need a vice chair. All right, we need to move a vice chair for the city. You were so excited. I know, I think there we got. We need to move the heavy vice. Second. Yes, I know. Okay. We will motion in a second to elect James Engle's vice chair. All in favor, oh, any comments? Okay, all in favor say aye. Aye. Any post-excite. Do you accept the nomination? I don't just accept, I demand. I'm joking. All right. It's lunchy today. All right, we have a chair and a vice chair. We are now ready to move on to our business. So before we do that, can I mention the interlocal that governs this group. Absolutely. So it is set to sunset this year. So if you choose to continue this board we'll need to start working on updating that. And if we do that we might want to take the opportunity, might want to change language just based on the current political climate. you know, potentially, you know, there is a resiliency office at the city and the county, so maybe replace climate with resiliency or any other changes that you might want to make to this. And perhaps that could be on your June agenda. Why don't we plan to send it out to all the members for review? And then everyone come with any comments or questions, maybe ask your staff with any comments or questions you have and then come prepared with any edits to our June meeting. That sounds great because then that gives us time. In August you do elect the members of the citizen climate action committee, advisory committee. You see, yes. So if we were to change things up we would just want to know in June what direction we're taking so I think that gives us plenty of time. Okay. Do you need a motion for that do you suppose? I don't think so to just not put it on the agenda for next month. Thank you. Okay great. Thank you. Okay so if everyone do your homework review those things. Okay next up. up, a lot of county resiliency updates. I think you can use the arrows to go. Like the county is going to take this one on first. Yeah, I'll start. Steve Hausten, I'm the county's environmental protection department director. I'm going to give an update on what we're doing in resiliency in terms of we have a new office in our environmental department I'll talk about that give some progress on our climate action plan and an update on the citizen climate advisory committee activities so I'll kind of go over that first. We've been reviewing the first draft of the climate action plan chapters we've been submitting three chapters each month to the Citizen Climate Advisory Committee for there. We view and comments and to give citizens a chance to provide comments. So in January, we submitted the natural resources, the water resources and the waste chapters to them. In February, we submitted the energy, the flooding, and the land use and transportation chapter. This past month, we did heat and health and ag and food security. In April, I don't have that up there, but this month, we're going to be releasing the introductory section, which should basically give us the complete aspect of the report and also go through terminology, which I think is a good time to kind of clean up any discrepancies between the chapters since they were written and drafted by a lot of different staff members. We just want to get all that terminology in order as well. Also, what we're going to do is we're going to introduce the only chapter we haven't drafted which is the Green Industry chapter. That chapter is going to take a lot of coordination with the community. You know people that are in the industry and really we've started that collaboration with, but it's going to take probably several months to get that input. That chapter will probably not be included in what the board might adopt this fall. In terms of industry, are you including, like, the Chamber of Commerce, the Builders Association, and those kinds of folks? Yes, we've talked with the Chamber recently. We've brought it up at the builders. We're going to continue to reach out to that. Excellent. Okay. Are there any other questions about this update? Oh, I have a little more. Yeah. In terms of the planning for the release of the chapter, we have selected two tentative dates for that release, and we're looking at November 8th, which is exactly basically a year from this previous one, in November 15th. A little bit of history. Two years ago, we did a carnival event out at at Custodawilla And so it was that kind of a style. This past year, we did a summit where we were inside all the whole day. And we did a lot of presentations and talks and group discussions. This year, we're kind of the idea is to combine both of those into what we call a festival style. So it'll be a morning with keynotes and probably a commissioner discussions about the chapters, maybe a ceremonial adoption of it as well and have that aspect in the morning and then have more of an outdoor event in the afternoon for that event. So that would, we're thinking that would be at the extension office. So we were down south. The first year we were right downtown Gainesville and that would be out west. In 2026, the idea we're thinking is to do four small dispersed events. So each year we're trying to use different styles to reach as many of the community as possible. So this year we're looking at November 8th to the 15th. We're hoping to lock those dates in. I don't know if any of you have a preference on those. We did a little bit of homework. There's no home football games on either of those dates, that's always important because of not only where people are, but traffic issues and things like that. The 15th is the arts festival. That's, that is always a challenging weekend as well. So, the 8th is Veterans Day weekend. Is that the Veterans Day or the Monday the Monday following that? No. I wouldn't do the ARP's festival. That's why we're shooting probably the eighth. That was a really good week last this past year. So that would probably be the one we were targeted. We do know that the extension office has both of those days free. So we just need to let them know which one we'll use. So we'll probably tentatively start scheduling that November 8th and if we see any roadblocks then we'll get back to this board and get back to the county commission on that. And as in terms of how we're moving along with the Climate action plan, we are, you know, with the information we've received over the last three to four months, we are putting that information all back into the chapters. We're going to give a presentation in June to this board as to what those chapters now look like and that'll give an opportunity for additional feedback. So we're kind of doing two steps of reviews of the chapters and then bring a final check, you know, climate action plan with all the chapters in the fall for the board. This board. This board in the County Commission. Okay. Yeah. So can I just ask for for our sakes? I think some of the challenges that those are pretty like dense content wise and so if we can get them email to this board ahead so they can read them and come prepared to have a conversation as opposed to getting them you know with the agenda the day of and then or like three days in advance and being expected to be kind of up to day if we can get them earlier. Like once they've gotten through the process or whenever it makes they've gotten to the stage that they're ready for us to be able to review them if we could get them to the boards so they have time to read and make comment. That would be helpful. Thank you. Okay. So this is these are These are the chapters. I already listed these off. The green jobs I highlighted just because that is the one chapter we don't have completed and we're still getting a lot of feedback for that. And if anyone watching or is interested in on where to find these chapters, if you go to a county website on the Environmental Protection page, there's a Climate Initiatives button. That's also a QR code, which will take it to this page. OK, so there it is. We can just follow up to this. So all there. So we can send you that. That'd be great. So we continually update those chapters. We will be submitting the introductory chapter, I think on Friday or Monday of this. So, all of it will be available. What's currently there hasn't had the updates from the input from the board, the citizen climate advisor can be yet. Those are the versions that they saw. Okay, so. Mr. Alford, did you have a question did. Um, on the green jobs chapter, are you also discussing green jobs training? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I thought you were. I just didn't know if we wanted to. That is a part of that. It's just include that. Because we do, we have a lot of interaction on that area and that will be part of that was a specific question I got from a young person. Okay. If they would be able, if that would be a resource for them to learn more about where to go to be get green jobs training. Michelle. Michelle Wheeler. The blue green alliance still a thing. Blue, you know I know. Blue green alliance. Do you all? No, no, and years, this is, I think I've heard it from labor, and that's why I was wondering with this labor working with environmentalists to try to merge responses to issues from the environment. Yeah, it's not something I've heard recently either. Okay, I just didn't know if that was... It may have morphed into other names now too. It's something else, yeah. Yeah, that's... Yeah. Okay, um, I was trying to go... I would say if you'd reach out to the builders on that, probably we should reach out to the trades as well. I don't know if we do a lot of training in the areas. Yeah, I definitely have noticed that we often talk to the real estate agents on the developer, like the, you know, the, developer, sorry, the developer and builders associations, but bringing the trades in, especially in these kind of contexts, but really in all the contexts where we're having conversations, sometimes they can give really good input in terms of the nuts and bolts of something. Like when we were having trouble finding contractors for the energy efficiency upgrades program, like had the trades been plugged in, they may have had good contractors that they know that they work with, etc., etc. So I think adding them to the our list of stakeholders for these sorts of things is a good idea. Any other comments or questions on this? Well, I was just looking it it up here too and it says the Alliance unifies labor unions and environmental organizations into a powerful force to fight climate change, protect health. So it must still be doing something and looks like there's a base out of Washington. So I don't know if it's anything, the Blue Agreen Alliance Foundation, if it's something that we're trying to encourage, and we've got a chapter for it, I don't know it would be worth kind of looking to see how that might influence some of what we're doing that something. Okay. Foundation sometimes means money, so that's good. Yeah. Okay. Any other? OK. A couple other things. All right. So I guess my final slide is just an update on the fact that we do now have a resiliency office in our department. It's currently made up of two individuals. Dr. Betsy Wiley and Jenison Kip, that's he's coming over from the manager's office in seeds. we hired Geneson Kip in February. And so probably at this point, can I both of them come up, Geneson can introduce herself. Geneson was actually our chair of our Citizen Climate Advisory Committee. So one thing while they're coming on up here, I do wanna update that aspect is they've, you know, they have Barry Jacobson is now the chair of the committee and John Nix is now the vice chair for his last year, this is his last year on the board. And with that we are going to be adding a youth member to the board, both this board and the kind of ask that we bring a youth member on board. So we're bringing back the resolution to the County Commissioners in May. It'll add a youth member. We're going to retain nine voting members. So the youth member will be one of those voting members. And so we're going to, we have three members that their time expires this year. We're going to only fill two of those and then bring in the youth members. So we're going to retain nine voting members and one of them will always be a youth member component. What is the definition of youth like what up to age 24 or up to 18 or what is it? 16 to 21. 16 to 21. 16 to 21. Okay. So when they hit 22, they have to be off the board. So it's one of those things if they're 21, when they're selected, they're gonna stay on for that single year. But they could apply again as an adult, right? Yes, as an adult. As an adult member, yes. Yeah. Yeah. You bet, T. Jones, anyone to say if he works? Yeah, I'm just going to. As an adult member, yes. Yeah. Betsy, Jonas, anyone to say a few words, sir? Yeah, I was just going to say hi and real quickly and introduce myself. So I met most of you, but my name's Jenison Kip Cersei. But I use Kip in my work life. And yeah, I came on in February. Super excited to be in this position. As Steve said, I was the chair of the CCAC. So I came in ready to just hit the ground running, but I'm still learning the ropes of working with the local government. So I'm really happy to be here. And my background, my technical training, my degrees, are in environmental science, environmental engineering, and environmental economics. So I often tell people I'm really a pollinator across disciplines. I have areas of expertise in a lot of different environmental focus areas. But for this particular job, I feel like I'm doing a lot of reaching out and reaching from within, working with the staff on trying to synthesize and put this written document into a truly living climate action plan which will tie to a dashboard. So all of these updates need to be in writing at this point, but our big focus for the next climate. And the in Climate Advisory Committee meeting this month is going to be looking at the green jobs and industries and workforce development chapter, like you said, and then also just taking a bigger step back and getting feedback from the CCAC on the synthesis and how we actually take this and move it to a platform that enables that ongoing dialogue and feedback. And I see it as a way to really keep jumping on opportunities to leverage all of the programs that the county's already doing in the city and our partners, all the municipalities in the county to jump on those and elevate and expand where we're doing things well. And then jump on funding opportunities that will help us put new programs in place. So yeah, I'm just really excited to be here and happy to take on this responsibility to work with everybody else to help move this forward. Because when I introduced myself to people out in the community, we read a Chamber of Commerce Leadership Gainesville program last week, I think it was a week ago Wednesday. You know the first question is like how do you do how do you do this in today's climate? And so looking at you know to this board for leadership and all of the you know the commissioners at the city and county. Yeah and, well, we focused on the work that needs to be done, and everybody's still doing the good work, and we just, you know, move forward, as best we can. So anyway, I just am excited to do it, to be here, and thank you. So I'm glad you're well prepared. I'm trying. But I'm in good hands. Like, I'm really excited excited. Prior to this, I was 19 years at the University of Florida working around the state on urban land development issues. And so, like, one thing that I'm very fortunate about is that I've had the chance to work with Steven and Stacy and Betsy, you know, in the past. But the transition away from a statewide focus and even I was working on national climate issues as well. Higher but I'm really fortunate and this is what I've wanted to do for a while to be able to focus locally so I'm excited to be here. I've wanted to. I've asked anyone who has questions. I'm most of the updates because I'm still new. I'm still so new. But we have updates on some of our activities with the resiliency office that that's used to provide. Sure. I'll just give some really quick updates. The Elatio County Energy Efficiency Program has moved into the full program, which means that we are open to see a Gainesville renters. We are the only program in the area that's open to renters for these amounts. It's up to $15,000 for energy efficiency improvements. So please spread the word. We currently have 20 signed agreements with nine different landlords. Yes, yes. 13 of them have moved all the way to closed out. And we have had our very first ones come all the way through the year and they are in compliance still with the affordability agreement. That's fantastic. Are you showing energy savings? We, yes. Yeah, of about, I think, 14.6 kilowatts is what we are neutral. 14% 14.6 tons of carbon-avoided per household over the seven years. And yeah, over $2,000 of savings is projected for those units over that time. So, you hold the households? That's the average. Wow. Yeah. That's very good. That's a significant, that's a number that changes lives. That's what I was after. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. The average lease amount is just over $1,000. So it's, we're really working with units in affordable areas. The average length of the affordability commitment is 6.8 years, which means the vast majority of landlords are taking the whole seven years. And on average, we're granting a little over $13,000 per unit. Fantastic. Question heavy. It's also expanded the number of units. So we were originally just doing the smaller units, now we're able to do some of the more multi-family, like larger unit locations. That's right. So any landlord of any size is able to apply to the program, we have a cap on eight units per landlord, and that's how we're sort of making sure it goes to a lot of different areas, but it doesn't matter how big or how many units or where those units are. So it could be a big apartment complex they're just limited to eight units? Right, and to clarify, it doesn't matter where they are as long as they're in a lot of that. I love right now. Is it possible that we might go beyond the eight units at some point? It's possible. Yeah, but right now we seem to be full steam ahead. So we're operating at very close to staff capacity. If that changes, we can examine. OK, excellent. Thank you. A couple of other quick updates. The ECIP Revolving Fund has enough funds in it now to begin to plan a new solar installation project. And because some solar projects are qualifying currently for Emplition Reduction Act rebates, each of our current solar projects are receiving a basically 30% discount in federal rebates. Were we able to connect the dots with Santa Fe College? I did have a conversation with their president, and they are very excited about being a part of this program and having a solar installation there that could double as both a program for this, but also as workforce development so that they could use it for actual teaching purposes. So I was just wondering if we managed to connect those dots? Or? Yeah, I have been in communication with Danielle Dorley, who's the, but I'm a separate title, with sustainability and energy. You need to try and believe. She's new to the position, but I did let her know what she did speak to her team, and they are definitely, they're on board now with a project. We're looking at potential grant opportunities that could help us put something like that up still. We have an application sitting there for the Community's Change Grant with the EPA, but it's been on pause, so we're not sure where the someone's at. Just to jump ahead a little bit, the DOE for this partnership, the DOE in-rock community sleep has been working great. I'd like to move the slide. Did you use the slide? Oh, no, it's just an expollit. We have received technical assistance from NREL to create the best specifications for solar installation in our facilities management building, and they're currently doing a similar analysis on the civil courthouse which has already been constructed to be solar ready. New funding environment, we have a climate adaptation plan grant to the state that Geneson is going to be spearheading. We've got a couple more opportunities floating floating down including some disaster recovery funds that we're looking into. So even though the funding environment has changed, there are still opportunities for pursuing them. We're also looking at opportunities to bring in funding for local residents. Solar for all funding isn't something that we managed through the county, but it is something that our local contractors can know about. It's great funding. If you're very low at come and then some non-profit green banks such as the solar energy loan fund are can offer some low interest loans and they look at ability to pay rather than credit scores. So we're exploring some options to bring energy efficiency weather station and solar to the community. You look like you have a really nice written summary of all of those. Is that something you can do? Yes, I can. You can go in the minutes. I can go in the minutes. That would be fine. Yeah, that would be fine. I just wanted to. It was just a lot of details. Thank you. That's good. And that's a press. Okay, thank you all so much. Are there any other questions for them? Welcome, Janice-Sin. And thank you all for all the hard work. I know it's been a, you've been sort of having to adapt and shift gears a little bit here, but we really appreciate that you are on it and that you're already in that mode of thinking about the ways in which we can continue to do this good work in a new environment. So thank you. Thank you. Hey, next up the Gainesville Resiliency Update and their Chief Climate Officer or Resiliency Officer. Not sure. Resilience. Okay. So good afternoon. Danzoo Chief Resiliency Officers for the City of Gainesville. So since the adoption of City's first ever resiliency plan in January this year, staff have been focusing on its implementation. So I'm happy to provide an update on the following three aspects, projects, activities, and partnerships. So for the projects, in the past three months, we've been working on the comments from the US Green Building Council for our preliminary submission for getting our city lead certified. And we are in the final phase to submit for final submission this month. So last year, it's a little bit background here. And last year, Gainesville as one of the 12 cities in the nation got selected for the leadership program nationwide and lead stand for leadership in energy and environmental design. Secondly, which is the greenhouse gas emission inventory. We presented this one to the City Commission last week and it consists of two aspects, the government emission and the community emission. So for the government emission, we see reduction in terms of the employee commune, solid waste treatment, and purchase electricity. And then similarly for the community inventory, we see huge reduction in terms of the solid waste, 55% from 2019 to 2023, largely due to the effort on the zero waste ordinance implementation and on The purchase electricity's we also see a huge reduction, which is 32% and waste water treatment also declined by 11% so for the So for the overall greenhouse gas emission inventory summary, purchase electricity and mobile combustion contribute the most in terms of the local government emissions. So 36% and 28% respectively. And the community emission, similarly, the mobile combustion and purchase electricity contribute to the majority of the emissions there. Can you talk about other fuels briefly? Yes, so other fuels, for that one, actually we do see an increase in other fuels. So that's largely due to the usage outside of the city boundary, but the production is in Gainesville because of the power plan. But what did you you define perched electricity versus other fuels? Yeah, so perched electricity, for example, are the power usage for the lighting and HVAC system, things like that. And other fuels are involved into other activities, like other fuels, for instance, other activities. Like agriculture activities could be those. So we do see what are those made like what is another fuel like for tractors or yes, so for tractor, those are on the mobile combustion. And then other fuels is meaning for other activities, like agriculture activity, which gains what we don't have a large amount of agriculture activities. But then this is all due to the increase of populations and miles traveled. I just have the beable question. I mean, beable combustion speaking primarily to car. I think for this one can see better. So on the on this one here, that we see other fuel increased by 65%. We just want to understand exactly what that is. Like what are the fuels and what are the sources? Like you're saying agriculture and you're using agriculture, but agriculture is not a lot of agriculture in Gainesville. And and and their tractors, which would be one of their primary sources of energy would be Use diesel so those on being our mobile combustion and most of them are animal eggs So they don't have like methane from their cows propane use or Yes, so So basically the other fuels are all other activities that accept the transportation. The typical sense they know. Oh, it's not just fuels. Fules is like a word, but you're meeting other carbon-producing activities. Exactly. It's everything. It's et cetera. I've got you. It's the other bucket. Right. That makes for someone. It's all other activities. Yes. OK. Thank you. That's helpful. Yeah. I think fuel is maybe not the right word to use, but that might be the challenge there. Because we're thinking of fuels as like things you pump. Okay, so for the next one is the reason the community engagement activities. So City staff hosted and participated in a variety of community engagement events. So one of the highlight here is involvement with a group of two-year-old into a tree planting activities. So since the adoption of the resiliency plan, we also launched the resiliency community academy, which each month we focus on a different chapter of the resiliency plan. In January, our focus was on energy where we toured the Vowelmass plan at Dear Haven Renewable, which is the largest Vowelmass plan in the nation. And February, our focus was on water, where we had a side visit to the Kanapa wastewater facility, as well as the Sweetwater Wetland Park. March, the focus was on the waste, because that's a theme for that whole month. We had a happy hours, we had a tour to the waste facility. And then this month, the focus is on sustainability and innovative technology. So finally, the partnerships. City staff has been invited to speak at various national and state conferences and events. University of Florida and Santa Fe students and faculty have also been involved into the plan implementation through gas lectures and research projects. So in addition, staff has also been involved into the innovative industry leaders conversation like with NVIDIA, Siemens, and Autodesk to advancing urban resiliency. One last thing. We'd love to invite you to our upcoming Earth Day celebration next Tuesday, 10am at MLK Center. So the event will be featured mayor's proclamation award recognition for community award and city staff award as well as children's art contest. And then finally the tree giveaway. We prepare hundreds of trees for that event. So with that, we'd love to see you at the event and feel free to spread the word. Thank you so much. For your resiliency academy, is there a capacity in that? Like how many people can register and how it's monthly? So is it anybody can come to any month or is it you register for the whole thing and then you go through the academy like you have to go to all of them or how does it work? Yeah, so people can RSVP for the ones that they can make it and then we will each month will have a different folks. Okay, we have an email list that we sent out. That's fantastic. Thank you for putting that together. And for the Earth Day celebration is the tree giveaway for Gatesville resident, only ears it for whoever shows up or whoever shows up, very nice. Just since. day celebration is the tree giveaway for gateful resident familiar is it for whoever shows up or whoever shows up very nice just since other people want to be watching so so far we prepared about a 200 trees and we're trying to get more trees for that event very nice commissioner Engel did you have a question okay all right well thank you so much for all your efforts all right we are We are moving on to our final business, which is a Lachor County's Resilient Landscaping Initiative update. You'll be stuck with me. All right. So I'm Stacy Greco with the Environmental Protection Department, and I'm going to give an update on our resilient landscaping. I've got Ilyana Bardee's name on this because really she's been taking over a lot of these programs and has really been doing a lot of great work but isn't here today. So I'm going to cover a lot. I'm going to first just real quickly why landscaping, why do we do so much with landscaping, and I'll go over a few of our codes and some of our efforts that we're hoping to move into. So why landscaping is, our landscapes can really impact our water. So our intensely managed landscapes, and I'm always really careful that it's not grass. Grass can be a great ground cover. It's all in how you manage something. So really what we're trying to shift is away from those highly maintained chemically intensive landscapes and that's what our efforts are for. So these intensely managed landscapes can use a lot of water. The fertilizers can contribute to water pollution. We also know it's harming pollinators through the use of the pesticides and the removal of critical habitat like leaf litter. Really important for the birds and for butterflies and such. And also it contributes to the carbon emissions through all of the chemicals, the mowing, the blowing, and I would say adds noise pollution too. But so at the county we have a three-prong approach so we're really doing education. We're also doing financial incentives through grants and then also regulation. Yes really quickly this slide if we can somehow incorporate this into our website with easy to link, like for these different programs when you're having them, because I often am going there trying to find these things to point people to and I have a really hard time finding them. It's a great idea. So just like, it would help a lot for navigation of the our water, our yards, your yard or whatever it is. Yes, and we are doing a redesign of the My Art Our Water site, which is the landing point because we've just been kind of growing so much that we now need to reorganize it. So hopefully that will help that would be great. Yes, thank you. Just how you can interact with these different pieces, you know what you're looking for is really helpful. Thank you, I appreciate it. So our fertilizer code, we have the most protective in the state of Florida. And all of these codes I'm talking about today do apply within the municipalities also. So it's not just unincorporated, a Lachua County. So fertilizer with nitrogen is only allowed, march through June. So we're in one of those allowed periods right now and this is the most common time that people use fertilizer. So we're actually this is when we do our heaviest marketing encouraging people to skip the fertilizer and try to shift their landscapes. We've got a couple billboards out right now in social media. Yeah. I've seen some yard signs and say well, yard signs but little signs this big stuck in the ground to say fertilize while you can. Is that you guys? Well exactly I just thought it was an interesting take on the fertilized now while you can. It was an interesting take on the regulation. That's really interesting. I haven't seen one. If you see another one, we snap a picture for me. I took a picture if I find it else then date. Okay. Yes. So that's why even though we're in the band right now, you know, we really do focus the message and on like you'll notice our billboard that's up right now, I don't it doesn't have the ban information on it because we don't want to be reminding people that oh the ban is coming so Yeah, we are having actually a lot of success with that campaign. Do I have it here? Yes. So we're also doing outreach and we have pushed the needle when we started this 55% said they actually didn't fertilize. It's now all the way up to 68% and it might even be higher now. I have not been able to fit a survey in. I might try to do that this year. So we really are pushing the needle. It was originally grant funded, but now we continue this with our stormwater assessment funds and through the Gainesville Clean Water Partnership. So we do appreciate that partnership there. The messaging has been seen over 22 million times. So, yes, we're really pushing it out there. So it is out there right now. So you might see it. So when we talk about irrigating our yards, sometimes it's really hard to conceptualize just how much water it is. But on average, whenever a system, an irrigation system is turned on, it uses about a thousand gallons a day, which is equivalent to spending eight hours in the shower, doing 37 loads of laundry. So that really puts it in perspective for people and it shows, you know, this adds up to a lot of money. We were talking about saving on utility bills. So really reducing that water use. It does also add up. Can I ask, have we ever coordinated with GRU to send this infographic out in with their bills? Not this exact one. We do work with GRU on some of their water conservation, and they have some of their own own messaging but I do think some of these would lend itself people really lend themselves with the elegant. Yes, even at the cost there, like this year's, you know, in 2025, that would save you $X because they can say exactly what $991 gallons of water would cost the homeowner. So yeah, thanks suggestion. So we focus a lot on irrigation. And one is just enforcing the restrictions. This is when you can use irrigation. Right now we enforce the water management districts ones. We would like to do once a week year round. We are still preemptive from that. The water management district is opening up their rule at some point this year. at that point we will engage with them to see if we can let them give us as a local government the authority to do something more protective than theirs. And we have a new QR code for reporting water waste. We used to have see-click fix, I don't know if anyone remembers that and and that was a great platform for people reporting issues. So now we have that. We'll be marketing that out to folks also. I'll let you take that picture. So our irrigation design standards, this is how irrigation is installed. So new systems and retrofits. Some of you might remember 2016, that's when it went into effect and unincorporated and then in 2019 it extended to the municipalities and then last year, actually 2023, we just did a major overhaul where now it limits permanent irrigation to 50% of the permeable area. So what it's really doing, it's pushing into using temporary irrigation. So you might see more hose and sprinklers out. And it is, you know, we're really looking forward to once we have enough data to then try to do another analysis and see if we're really pushing the needle there. But we are seeing changes in the development patterns, more unirrigated and just different landscaping choices. Another thing we did in 2023, we added commercial irrigation, registration and maintenance. And that is because our commercial systems, you have more trucks and more activity happening there that you end up with these leaks. And you often have someone that's paying the bill might live in New Jersey and has no idea that a $600 a month water bill is insane for the small parcel and it's hard for us sometimes when we see geysers like this to talk to the right people you know we we have to really run around and figure out who do we talk to you know if we go into publics it's not necessarily the public's employees it's whoever the property manager is so with that, we required that all commercial systems be registered with the county. We had a real soft approach at first. We are starting to get the word out more and do more enforcement. So this is even like city on property should be registered, common areas and subdivisions. So how we can get the word out to them. And it requires some annual documentation that they are checking the systems annually because as staff whenever we are out we find at least two leaks on every single system so we're wanting to really force them to be maintaining the systems. Irrigation two nubs is when we go out and run a system and And it's amazing what fine this is voluntary. This is you know we really try to limit this to our high water users because it's very staff intensive. So this is just some stats showing from 42 tune ups. For so example on that we found 126 leaks. So that really shows you you know what we're finding out there and we were able to voluntarily change their timers a lot. And then we actually analyzed this with the H2O Saves program. And it was an average saving of 176 gallons a day. So again, that would show up on a bill, on a utility bill. We were able to use this data to then get funding. So we have a grant from Cawani, and it's for our irrigation level up program. And this is one of those programs that is kind of nested on our website because we really it is for high water users So it's one of those tricky ones where we really are looking at data and then really trying to invite people to participate Because that's where we get the water savings. Yes So if we have somebody that writes us and says my water bill is out of control, and what is you guys doing? Then we would send them to you, and then you would point them towards us, as opposed to us linking it from the website. I mean, you could do either, but if you send it to us, then we can, if that's not the right program for them, we might be able to find other things. So we're happy to do that. So people can get a 50% rebate up to 2000 for residential, 8,000 for commercial. And I will say that this could even happen on you know city properties. We're trying to figure out right now if we can do this on county properties since it's our grant. We're not sure we're trying to figure that out. So, OKAMIC is about to participate and we're super excited about that. It's really good for... So irrigation typically gets put in, these people want their plants to live live when it's getting established but then it's old and it doesn't need to be out there because the plants are established so we're really trying to get this for people to be removing and capping heads that don't need to be on anymore and a lot of cool new technology out there for like leak detection and also this one is also for soil amendments which I'll talk about in a minute. Last year we just updated our landscaping code and that is just unincorporated in the Lachua County and we limited irrigated turf to functional areas and this is just on commercial and common areas this is not on residential lots. No turf in parking lot islands. We have a list of alternative ground covers. It's really hard to manage those. And we're really trying to encourage that temporary irrigation and soil amendments. So soil amendments is you know improving the soil health and that decreases the need for fertilizer irrigation and pesticides, which does correlate to savings. We currently through that level-up program are providing 50% rebates, and we do have a build-or-repe- couple builders now that are interested in that. So we're really excited to see how that goes, because we really think that that is the of the future. And when we updated the landscaping code, we discussed making that a requirement on new construction, even residential. Once we have a local supplier available. And there is a supplier that is getting close to being ready in the city of Newberry. You can dress an existing landscape. Correct My dad did that million years ago. Yes, so top dressing is a popular thing. We don't have the rebate for that right now because it's I think it's focused on new construction there. But I will say top dressing is one thing that some of the companies are recommending as an alternative to using fertilizers, especially during the ban. And, and, and irrigation. Correct, it can reduce it. Yeah, because it increases the soil, the moisture holding capacity. We also have our Florida friendly landscaping code. This is countywide, so it applies within the municipality. And this is one of our fully voluntary. It's really for homeowners that want to make changes, but their HOAs are prohibiting them. It doesn't say people can do whatever they want. You still need to follow the rules of your HOA. And I used to say that every single case had been solved just by education. We have a great extension agent. So going out, looking at the property, providing recommendations, and every case up until last year, we came to something that worked for the homeowner in the HOA. We did have one case last year where we actually went to the special magistrate and we won that case. So the HOA paid a fine to us. Sure they paid a lot more to their lawyer. And we are now trying to figure out how do we work locally with the HOAs now that we have that precedent of that case. And that case was they were really over pruning trees because they wanted this little bit of turf to survive. There wasn't enough sunlight. So we were able to determine that cutting down trees to create sunlight for turf was not Florida friendly so that was that was a big win for us. We do a lot of education on this code and we are actually doing some social media on it right now so you might see that right now where we're trying to get the word out to homeowners so that they know that we're a resource because that one that went to the special magistrate, that happened to be someone that had jury duty and they ran into our extension agent and just chatting. They found out, oh, call the county. They'll help you. And then finally we did, we had a grant where still we still, we're about wrapping it up, where we did research space to figure out how do we get people to manage their landscapes less intensively? How do we get them to be okay with something that was traditionally a weed? So I called it our decriminalized weeds campaign and we market tested some really fun and creative ideas. That idea did not market test well. This is kind of the direction that it took. And we do on the eye naturalness, we do a bioblitz where we ask people to go out in their yard and see what type of critters they're seeing out there. Does it have to be weeds? Could it just be flowers? Well, we're trying to make that word weeds not as much of a negative word. And that's that works. I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think I think of a negative word. That's that works. I think it'd be criminalized weeds, legalized weeds. Decriminalized weeds. We had, we had, we had, we had, we had a very small group of people that would be able to do that. We had some really fun materials and we market tested them and a lot of people just felt it was inappropriate for the county to be. So maybe I'll give those ideas to a nonprofit and they can do better with it. We do at the county have an administrative procedure that prohibits the county from doing permanent irrigation except on our athletic fields or edibles and our irrigation systems must be inspected every year if they do have one. And we encourage the use of native landscaping and we discourage the use of fertilizers and pesticides. So that's kind of softer language than the prohibiting. The city of Gainesville is part of B City, USA, and that's pretty exciting. We've been going to some of those meetings to learn more about it. It's a program that recognizes pollinator conservation. I believe the city's working on developing an integrated pest management plan, which then they could try to decrease the pesticide use. And I think that B-City also offers resources that if anyone ever wants to adopt an ordinance for private property that that's one thing that they offer. Our outreach specialist that left us last year she went and now works with this program so that's been fun to learn about. So in closing just kind of opportunities that we're keeping an eye out for is once a week irrigation restrictions again we would need the water management district to allow us to do that potentially requiring soil amendments in new construction when we have a local source. There's been some discussion of interest you know the county we do have our no irrigation. That is something that the city we'd be happy to share. Any of that information in our level up funding to upgrade any irrigation systems or disable some. That is a resource for the city. So if there's any interest there, please reach out. And then the county considering joining the B City designation. And I'm trying to get an inventory started of all of our facilities like where are we using herbicides and all of that? Yes. When you say the city could adopt a no-irrigation policy, I remember from before your irrigation policies were extended to municipalities. So the days of the week definitely apply and the way that new irrigation is installed does apply to the city. So definitely not for city properties themselves. Like right now we have one that our buildings are not gonna install irrigation any longer. So it's like for your own facilities. And it's part of our effort to really try to leave by example. So when we removed irrigation out here, we had signs out for a little bit, really letting the public know what we were doing. So the Florida friendly landscape, they used to have signage that they would put out for Florida friendly yards. Have we looked at doing any sort of bee-friendly pollinator friendly, no-mo and no-mo march, whatever? If we thought about doing any signage or making that available to folks that are trying to manage their laws less intensively, sort of a way to let their neighbors know they're not just ignoring their their law and they're trying to do something. Yes, we had signs as part of turf swap when we had that rebate program. We did run into issues that a lot of the neighborhoods that we were in did not allow the signs because of the HOAs and then the Springs Institute does have springs-friendly yards and we were like helping them promote that for a little bit too And if that Bell still has and they now have flags because of the rule like Most are allowed to have decorative flags, but they're not allowed to have signs. So they've gone to a decorative flag that hangs in your garden and it's got pretty flowers on it and it says Florida friendly landscape or something like that on it. So that's an option. And those are ones that go through that whole certification process. It's quite hard for some people because of the invasives, you know, having to remove that. But it is a good idea, right? So letting people know, like, you know, there's a potential. I'm not even going my yard, you know. I probably need those. I definitely do. And I think that the, and I think there has been effort, I think there's been research, you know, what would that be for Florida? Because really, we might be more Nomo May, you know, try to make it go that much further because you know, I think that's been research, you know, what would that be for Florida? Because really, we might be more NOMO-may, you know, try to make it go that much further because, you know, the NOMO March was really in the Northeast. Yeah. Yeah. It was, I think one of the things I really got my wife to do it was, we were able to take like the forging class and like how many of the weeds were edible medicinal medicinal and all these kind of things for the people. Quick seeing those weeds and seeing these neat little natural resources. Now there's like cucumber weed, my salad and all sorts of stuff that we get back. So there are herbs now. Exactly. Weeds are herbs. Right, maybe we need to like highlight some of you know and have you know have kind of like your little fact sheet on them. But more so. Yeah, it's something extension could do. It would be like edible wheat and edible wheat's workshop for sure. And there's a number of people in the community, Susan Maranowski and the herb shop that's downtown, a thousand leaves. They also do workshops and might be interested in partnering. appreciate all feedback. So thank you any other questions or comments. Oh, thank you I got a quick question. Have we done anything more or any of our groups done anything more with the backyard parks idea You know, are we Promoting that or Talking about it. I think maybe the garden club. maybe the women's. Yeah, I know Doug Tellamy, who I think started that came, the extension office brought him last year, and there was presentations there. I've looked at it a few times, but I don't think we've done any broad stuff. Do you know of any? I think we have, we've got to recognize as a reference in our climate. Okay. Okay. For those who want to do something to their yards. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. If there are no other questions then we will next open the meeting up to any public comment. Anybody having a comment for us? Do I come on for us? You want to share? You can just come over here to this mic so everyone can hear you. Just let us know your name and then Can I, can you talk to you guys? Sure, and if you can just skip one to one of our staff so they can include it in the minutes as well. Thank you. And I'll just, these were very quickly done today. today. There's just some pictures and info in office speaking a little bit. All right, if you want to just grab your seat. So since you're the only one today, we'll give a little leeway but normally we can try to limit comments to about three minutes or so. Yes ma'am, I will do my best to follow the rules. First thank you guys for being here. I actually had never heard of this before and just sitting through your meeting and seeing what you guys are doing, what your programs are. It's actually very enlightening and I thank you guys for existing as well as for hearing me. I'm'm Doug Clish. I actually live in Levy County 1.5 miles into Levy County from the Elatio County line. I lived in Elatio County for years. I was a Elatio County deputy for 10 years. The first page you'll see on this map here is basically the Levy County Elatio County line and there's a red drawing that is a proposed 100 acre sand mine to dig to 52 feet of elevation which is 20 feet below our seasonal high water table. I've learned a lot recently about datums and how to do elevation versus depth and you see that in disclosure there's a little house icon there that Google Maps put, whether I want it there or not. That is my home on that line. One thing I'm concerned for, one of the big things we have is that next, and I apologize, this is completely out of order, it's how I came up with my printer and I had to run out the door. Those little hearts indicate, go for tortoise burrows. Go for tortoise burrows and go for tortoises that have been sighted there on this, on, we're reminding. The next page is a picture of some of those active burrows that we've seen. This is without doing a real survey. This is just if you walk out there, I mean in the lower left picture there's a hunting blind less than 20 feet from one of these. It's easier to just go for tortoise hole than it is to see the hunting blind. One of the next picture is actually well, well seen that these are two extremely old go for tortoise actually fighting over their territory in here because they're making their area for their breeding, whatever. Where we get into some water stuff, which is honestly my biggest concern, these are pictures of exposed lime rock where a sinkhole has caved in and brought rock out to the surface so we know that rocks are nearby, rock is what filters are water. On the application permit for this mine, it's hard to see in this picture and I apologize extra time. You can actually see it on the top of graphic map where this single is. As I've said with water, you know, I actually heard today and it was awesome. I appreciate Mr. Reckhoff fitting in here. My yard, our water. What we do out here, you know, I learned in elementary school. If it gets down to the aquifer, it goes hundreds of miles, we all share the water and, you know, we don't own water, we borrow it. It's a, I see a lot of concern here of we're digging below water tables. We're possibly opening up holes that go into aquifer A lot of counties are really close. You guys will be affected by this. The next page is a partial disclosure and partial show things The map above is provided that Swiss to show wells that are nearby You see a couple of red dots that I added. You'll see where There are points that say this is a potential well location. They're up to 100 feet off. The red dot on this side is where my water well sits. It's less than 120 feet from the side of their buffer and from the deepest part of this hole that will be deep in the ground. My neighbor is that other red one. That green dot is where these kids play. And where they get thirsty, they go walk over to the well house. It's 10 feet away. They turn on the hose and they drink from that water. And it's not just my kids. Like I said, it's all connected. And so it's very impactful for us personally. And that's my disclosure of, I probably wouldn't be talking to you today if it didn't affect my kids. That's how I came to know you guys. And I want to make that absolutely clear. But we do see that it is a community concern. Another concern, there's a much bigger, better version of it in their packet. But this shows right here where the property is, and this shows that they want 80% of their trucks coming into Elatio County. And so that's more diesel exhaust, more crashes, more spills. I feel it's very effective. And so I thank you guys for allowing me to talk. I've said I really felt that this, it's more than us just in Levy County that are affected. And yes, ma'am. Thank you. Commissioner Alfred. I would point out where the landfill is on that also. It's been the, I believe this green area through here is actually the Elachua County landfill. This is C&D. Thank you. Any other questions from the commission for him? Okay. I do very quickly. Bronson, people have been meeting right in Bronson, I think, and a lot of folks from Archer have been going to those meetings too. Yes, we're in interesting parts about where this 20% mark is which is the hearing traffic. I think that's actually where Archer officially ends and Bronson starts in Levy County. My address is Archer, I live in Levy County, but I have an Archer address. It's actually a confusing part for us because people see some of these notifications. They got archer, that's over in a Lachua County. And, well, no, there's a couple hundred of us that live in archer of Levy County. We have been, we've been trying to get people from anybody affected with these notices, as sure of you guys now it's sometimes difficult for a resident to even know that it's close by or what it is. Thank you very much we appreciate your comments. Thank you guys so much. Thank you. I have a part for you I live in our chair. And I don't know if our staff have any responses in terms of if we know about this project if we have any if we've become parties to this or put any input into it. I know that in the past we've offered up as the county and we've offered up our support for, you know, the governments that are having to review these applications, etc. etc. Yeah, Madam Chair, Steve, I'll start in front of the protection again. Yeah, we've been in communication with Levy. We did find out today that the application has been delayed, so it is not going to be heard on April 22nd. We don't know when it's getting rescheduled. So we're trying to find that out. I'm also in the process of trying to get all the application material. It's too large to send. My email, so we're just working on how to be able to receive that information. I'll go pick it up. I'll pick it have that will then evaluate and see what we can do to see what concerns we would have. Okay, thank you very much. Madam Chair, I spoke with Doug's, the commissioner who has just been recently elected to that commission there. And what he's asking is if if they need some help with information could they contact our staff to do some of that work I don't I mean just know that that might be a possibility that he would you know that he could perhaps be speaking with some of us because it is in such close proximity to our line. Okay, we'll be on the lookout for that. Okay, just thank you. Okay, thank you very much. Are there any member comments for the board? Just out of curiosity, are there what it comes to issues like this? Do we have any local agreements that cover any of these multi-county issues like that? Or was it just kind of us informally reaching out to other counties? So we don't have any set interlocal agreements with the other counties on issues, but when we've come across these sort of development issues that are of regional impact, like there was another mine, that was the other thing that was a limestone mine, in that instance, we sent them a formal letter, a share letter offering our support and saying that if they needed to use our attorneys or our environmental protection staff or any other staff to kind of review or consider questions about the permit applications that we would be happy to help. And in some cases, we've been able to kind of become parties to an application because it has regional impact. It's not just gonna happen in Levy County, it's to impact water elsewhere. And then we've been able to have direct kind of information flows and been able to be a part of the permit application process. So I'm not sure if that's the case here, if we can apply for party status, if it's that kind of a permit, but definitely something that I'm sure will bring up. But Tuesday's meeting and be able to have a conversation about. So, all right. We've brought you that, but that's the best thing. But no formal interlocals with other counties that I know of. Other than for things like hazardous waste and stuff like that, like we do support a lot of the region with hazardous waste and gas and oil, like mitigation and things like that. I imagine the water management is tricky, but that's something to say. Yeah. thanks. Any other member comments generally speaking? All right. Oh, I have a quick question. Were we going to add somebody from the outlying community to come into this board? Because I think we had Byron Williams for a while. And he left the board. So we were talking about maybe somebody from Hawthorne or- Fletcher. Maybe interested. He just got elected for a lot of work. Sure. Sure. Show us the seat pattern, Elf. If that seat is vacant. The seat is vacant. What we've done, we've tried different things in the past. Occasionally we've sent a letter to all the city managers asking for applications. We've had minimal success there. Sometimes we've just asked the members to talk to their colleagues in the other local governments to see if there's a champion, someone that makes sense to be on the board. So I think there's options that seat is vacant so it is available. Okay. I can certainly have some conversations when I have meetings with other elected officials from the municipalities coming up and if you all want to do the same and then if we have interest they can apply. Okay. We can bring it up to the table. And they just apply by emailing you and then you'll help them with the process. Sure. And typically we haven't, the only time we've done like official application was when we sent the letter out to everybody. I gotcha. you had multiple people to decide between and then I think when we found when we did it just the networking way, you know, someone was identified and then they came to this board and then you voted them on. Well also, I don't know if the city members, if you all are at League of Cities meetings or at other meetings with other municipalities, if you don't mind mentioning it, that would be great. But I'm happy to talk to anyone about, you know, the time commitments and all of that. That's however I can help. When you say you send it out to everybody, do you send it out to commission, the city commission, individual city commissioners? I believe we sent it to city managers. Okay. And maybe we also did the chair of their boards also. Okay. I'd have to look back. So maybe some of that information didn't get out. Yes. It's possible. Right. I will say that for all of the municipal conversations that we've had, I have been asked by all of the mayors that we please do make sure that the local officials are copied because some of them have challenges with their management staff being overwhelmed because they're small cities and they do many tasks and so they've just asked that for things that are of an import where they we need their representation or we're asking for the representation for them to be copied. Okay our next meeting date is June 2nd I believe we will not have a meeting in July. Correct. And I think the next one is in August. I think the next one is in August. So other than that, are there any comments? If not, we are adjourned. Thank you. And that's August 4th. August 4th. Okay. Okay. Thank you all. Thank you. and