We're going to start our meeting today with an invocation by Pastor Derek E. Gainey. And for those of you that don't know Pastor Gainey is the husband of Latoya Gainey who manages our county. Anyway, and if everyone would please stand and remain standing for the pletch, thank you. Born to all, let's go to the God in prayer. Most gracious in Almighty God, become now to you boldly as you have provided. First want to say thank you for your goodness and for your mercy toward us. It is in you that we live and move and have our being for without you we can do nothing. Lord God I come to you on behalf of your people as a world of nation, a state, a county, and city. More specifically this a state, a county, and city. More specifically this, a lot of you are county commission and staff. Commissioner Ken Cornel, Commissioner Charles Chestnut, Commissioner Mary Helen Wheeler, Commissioner Mary Alfred, Commissioner Anna Prisya. Lord, we find that it is vital that we keep you on the frontlets of our minds in order to be able to lead, govern, and serve your people. Lord, keep these as they strive to do your will by leading, governing, and serving your people. Help them to remain focused on important matters that affect quality of life for all people and be righteous in their administration. For your word to class when the wicked are in rule the people mourn but when the righteous are in rule, the people rejoice. Lord, we know that not all will be satisfied all the time, but help them to take courage, knowing within themselves after first acknowledging you, knowing assuredly you will direct their paths. Lord, in this meeting today, let the spirit of cooperation be present, even when there is disagreement on issues help them oh God to always be selfless and represent the people righteously Lord bless our first responders and all those who are working around the clock to ensure the safety of residents who will endure Hurricane Milton Lord let your will be done. Finally, oh God, as you taught your disciples to pray, we assimilate and we say our Father who art in heaven, howl, be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. For thine is the fly of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation, one God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. All right, Thank you everyone. We'll call the meeting to order and before we have a motion for approval of the regular and consent agenda, I did want to note that we have a time certain item at 1230, which item is that? It's the presentation. Let me see. it's under action. It's number two, right? I mean, sorry, J1, is that it? Yes. So we will stop public comment or whatever it is that we're doing at 1230 and take that one time certain item and then resume whatever it is that we're doing at that time. Are there any other changes to the agenda? Madam Chair, we've had a request to pull item 8B, sewer line extension outside of urban cluster for Florida Fish and Wildlife Research Lab. We do have staff here and we also may have someone here from the Fish and Wildlife Commission also. So if that when we normally we would hear items pulled from consent at the end of the meeting, but we do have somebody from Fish and Wildlife here that I see. So let's perhaps we can do that as item I-3 or maybe I won, whichever. Is that all right, I won. Yes. Madam Chair, I'd move approval of the agenda and consent agenda, moving consent item 8B. 8B. 8B. Mm-hmm. Yes. 8B to I won before the the Facilities Management Master Space Plan and J-1 times certain 1230. All right. We have a motion to second. Do we have any public comment on the agenda? Seeing none, all in favor of motion signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed, like so? All right. We're going to go to the meeting. I'm going to go to the meeting. I'm going to go to the meeting. I'm going to go to the meeting. I'm going to go to the meeting. I'm going to go to the meeting. I'm going to go to the meeting. I'm going to go to the meeting. I'm going to go to the meeting. I'm going to go to the meeting. I'm going to go to the meeting. Thank you. Good morning, everyone. Madam Chair, commissioners, Jen Grace, Director of Emergency Management. Here with a quick update for Hurricane Milton. So, Elashville County is now under a tropical storm warning. Our county is really divided into, so, north and south as far as impacts at this time, that we are receiving from the weather service. So the southern half of the county we're currently looking at 58 to 73 miles per hour sustained with the possibility of gusts into hurricane strength. And then our northern half of the county we're currently looking at 39 to 57 miles per hour sustained. Our timing on the storm we're we're looking at anywhere from 6 p.m. to midnight on Wednesday and looking at this storm clearing our area somewhere between 2 p.m. and 6 p.m. on Thursday. Our current rainfall predictions, there's two scenarios, there's kind of the higher end and the lower end, so on the lower end of things we're looking at four to six inches of rain and then the higher end scenario is six to eight inches. I do have a meeting with the weather service at 130, so this information could change with the latest forecast update and will certainly put out any updates and information to our forecasted impacts. That is all I have. Thank you. Thank you Jen. Mark. Madam Chair before I move on does anyone have any questions for manager Greiss? You have the great work. Thank you, Jen. I assume you're going to be covering shelters and things like that. Okay. Is the operation EOC? Is it activated at this point? Yes, Madam Chair. We are activated as we speak. Yes. But you're here, thank you. Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God. Slap. Slap. Fortunately, we have Andrew Kaplan and Brett Bostak holding down ESF 14. Madam Chair, we want to remind citizens that we have been in preparations for days and that we still have sandbag locations available throughout the county We have tarps available although they are going very fast. We have given out thousands of tarps and Kudos to Gus Olmos and Josh Proudy and those folks We still have some tarps available at the Archer location and the Levitah Brown location. Please go to a Lachua County Ready or a Lachua County Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or next door for those exact locations and addresses. Madam Chair, in just a little while, we will be opening shelters. We will be opening two general populations pet friendly shelters and one special medical needs shelter. We are opening those today, Madam Chair, because we want to be available for those residents that are evacuating. It's important for our residents to know that you don't need to go to a shelter today. We're not going to be receiving storm impacts today. There will be plenty of time tomorrow to go to a shelter should you need to do so. And we have contingency plans to open as many shelters as are needed. So there is no hurry for local residents to get to a shelter today or tonight. That shelter information will be put out in just a moment. And we want to remind citizens that transportation is not a barrier to getting to shelters. We have the same deal with Uber that we had during Hurricane Helene. And that information will be going out with the shelter locations and give you the code you need. If you need to take advantage of an Uber ride to a shelter. Madam Chair we want to remind folks that you can go to AlachuaReady.com. You can go to the Alachua County Ready. Excuse me Alachua County Ready.com. Thank you Madam Chair. You can go to the County Facebook page, the emergency management Facebook page. You can go to the Instagram pages. Also we have thousands of residents who are getting updates on text messages by texting Alachua to 888-777. We encourage you to stay informed. And also I wanted to have a special shout out to our media here locally. They are doing a fantastic job getting information out on radio, on TV, print, and on their internet sites. And Madam Chair, that's the storm update. Thank you, Mark. Does anyone have any questions for Mark about the storm? Very quickly. Yes. Are we, do we have availability for people who are traveling on the road to the shelter space? Can you pull your mic down? Yes. Do we offer shelter space for people who are traveling through the... Absolutely, Madam Chair. We are a host shelter community. And folks will be able to receive the information on our shelters through the state's resources. OK. And yes, and that's why we're opening the shelters today, primarily, instead of tomorrow. OK, because I know that their gas lines, the gas situation is bad already. And I just want to say that I was just at the Archer site this morning picking up tarps. Tarps, those guys are amazing and wonderful. There were a few left and there's two limit, I think, of two unless I think they've been giving out, if folks say that there's someone who can't get there. They may have been doing some of that. But in any case, the Levitabrown and people and the archer people I can speak to as being very helpful, there are also people from the community who are pitching and young people, kids, youth groups that are also helping to distribute those tarps. So it's been a wonderful opportunity to engage the kids in helping the community as well. And Madam Chair, as long as you're bringing up tarps, just to remind citizens, they are not available at the Equestrian Center anymore. So we don't want folks to waste a trip. It's archer and it is Levitabrown, but we are running out, so if you need tarps, you need to get there quickly. Mark, I've had lots and requests for information about debris pickup. Could we get a quick update for the good of the public on debris pickup? Could we get a quick update for the good of the public on debris pickup? Sure, Madam Chair, we want the public to know that there is no way all of the debris left behind from Hurricane Helene is going to be picked up when this storm hits. Resources around the state and in the Carolinas are being marshal to pick up debris as fast as possible, but we're talking about weeks, not days. And we've had a few people ask if we can come get their debris tomorrow by tomorrow. And you know, the answer to that is no, however, if you want to be proactive about your debris, you can go on to our Facebook page or our electrocountyready.com and you will see the addresses and the times for our collection centers and for Levitabrown Transfer Station. We have waived all restrictions about how much you can bring. We've waived the tipping fees at the transfer station. So if you have a mind to be proactive and have a truck or a trailer and can get your debris to one of those locations it will be accepted. Yes, please, please, if you're transporting debris do so safely there's been a few instances of lots of debris blowing off all over the road so please do so carefully. All right, Commissioner Chestnut, did you have a question? Okay, so we'll move on to our first item, which is our link of service quarterly presentation. Good morning, Madam Chair. Good morning. Good money, Madam Chair. There is a quote from author Michael Lewis about the value of public employees and I quote, it is a calling. They do not need other motivation when what they do is I'm not sure. Is there a music? No, I don't see it. Yeah, don't believe we have it. Yeah, we usually have music. I see your picture. Yeah. Corbin. This is the one. What are they? Stacey. Oh, please. I think you need to start it again. I have no idea what the issue is. I'm going down. I don't get to do it. I could have a tune. Madam chair. Oh, yeah, please, please. We're. We've got help coming. Of course, on the day that we're trying to like move things along is what we have this. There's the seven. Very nice. trying to like move things along is what we have this now you've got to hit the uh there you go Slice not moving. Yeah, it was pleasant. Very nice. Where is he? There he is. I'm going to put it in the middle. All right. Yeah, or any of you are any of you here that are being recognized today? It's stand up. Everyone stand up. Yeah. Thank you all. I think it says a lot for Lachua County that we have so many employees that want to stay with us. In this day and age when so many people go from job to job, we have people that have remained loyal and steadfast to Lachua County. And the quality of the services we provide here I think is a real testament to the fact that we have so much in great and institutional knowledge that is here in Elachua County. So thank you all for being here, thank you for your service and thanks for being great. All right. We are going to try to get our proclamation done here quick. I'm sure I will prove. Okay. We will both proclamation. Okay. We have a motion of second. All in favor of the motion signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? Like sign. All right. Our first proclamation is declaring October 6th, October 12th. This is National 4-8 week and we have Commissioner Prisya providing this one. And if you are here to accept that proclamation, please join Commissioner Prisya at the podium. All right, come on up. All right, I'll read the proclamation first and then I'll say just a couple words. Elatua County, Florida proclamation declaring October 6th through October 12th, 2024 as National 4-H week in Elatua County. Whereas the 4-H program has been positively impacting children's lives since 1909 and has celebrated 115 years of service. Its mission is to create a supportive environment where diverse youth and adults may reach their fullest potential. And 4-H is an organization open to all children ages 5 to 18 years of age. 4-H reaches over 6 million youth nationwide, with Florida having over 200,000 members and adult volunteers. With the Elatro County 4-H program boasting 450 community club members and volunteers, along with thousands participating in schools. And whereas the Elatro County 4-H program is part of the Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences at the University of Florida, and is a program where young people can learn by doing. Through programs such as the Youth Fair and the 4-H Community Clubs, 4-H members participate in projects such as science and technology, photography and creative arts, horticulture, entomology, public speaking, and animal sciences to develop youth leadership, citizenship, and other life skills. And whereas, the Elatro County 4-H members have shown extraordinary leadership abilities by having the largest county membership on the State Executive Board, where they work with youth and adults from across the state to plan and implement statewide programs and maintain a position on the State Council for the past seven terms. And whereas the Electric County Youth have excelled on a club, county, district, state, and national level, with members participating in the State 4-H Legislature, 4-H University, Southern Region Teen Leadership Forum, as well as competed in state contests of the AVN Bull, Entomology, Horse Judology, horse judging, shooting sports, public speaking, creative arts, livestock projects, that's a mouthful, and more. And whereas, Elatio County encourages people this community to take the opportunity to become more aware of this special program and join us in recognizing the unique partnership between our city, county, and our university system. Now, therefore, through the authority vested in me through the Board of County Commissioners, I hereby proclaim October 6th through 12th as National 4-H Week in Alachua County. It's sign sealed and it will be delivered to our wonderful youth over here. And I just wanted to quickly say how proud I am of 4-H. I know that it can be quite the challenge to balance all of the extracurricular activities when you also have school and family obligations and so we're just really proud of you for all of the work that you do and how you represent our community and we hope that you'll continue to do it because our county is investing a lot in thinking about agriculture as an important part of the culture of our community and the economic development of our community and we need the next leaders and that's all of you. So thank you so much for everything you've done. Would you like to come introduce yourself? Good morning commissioners and thank you for your time today to recognize the impacts of 4-H year in Elachua County and during our National 4-H week. My name is Asei Shikunekunya, and I am proud to represent Elatio County 4-H. This year, Florida 4-H has two state council officers from Elatio County serving our state, myself as Vice President and Jared King, who serves as historian. This marks the seventh consecutive year Elatio County has had youth on the state officer team. A testament to the strong leadership development we experienced through 4-H. This year's national 4-H week theme is Beyond Ready. And I could speak at length about the many ways that 4-H helps ready youth for the future. But this year, I want to focus on how we are beyond ready to serve. After the impacts of Hurricane Helene and the impending Milton, we are beyond ready to demonstrate our commitment to service. Our State Office or team has activated floor-to-forage serves, a statewide initiative to collect donations for Hurricane relief and support our neighbors. In the days following Helene, extension offices across the state, including our Elatio County office, have allowed their spaces to be used as collection points. And for a stretch from the panhandle all the way to South Florida have been working tirelessly to gather food, water, hygiene products, and other essentials to support those most affected by these storms. This initiative is especially meaningful to us because it reflects the heart of what forage is about, serving our communities. We are incredibly grateful to you, the Elachio County Board of Commissioners, for your ongoing support of the Forage Program. Your commitment enables us to grow as leaders, take action, and make difference both locally and statewide. Because of your support, we are beyond ready. Ready to serve, to lead, and to create a lasting positive impact. Thank you for for being here. Our next proclamation is for declaring October 2024 is Cybersecurity Awareness Month and we have Commissioner Cornell. Thank you for having me. Before I get to that, I just want to say to Commissioner Priscil, when I got on this 410 years ago, Lee Pickerson taught me a lot about 4H and you Commissioner Priscil have taken that to the next level. So congratulations for all your work. We have, okay, you're here. All right, so with that, the next agenda item is the Electoral County Florida Proclamation declaring October 2024 Cybersecurity Awareness Month in Electoral County Florida. Whereas the Board of County Commissioners of Electoral County recognizes that it has a vital role in identifying, protecting its citizens from and responding to cybersecurity threats that may have significant impact to our individual and collective safety and privacy. And critical infrastructure sectors are increasingly reliant on information systems and technology to support financial services, energy, telecommunications, transportation, utilities, and emergency response systems. And whereas the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, CISA, Cybersecurity Awareness Program, aims to increase individuals and organizations Cybersecurity Awareness and empower them to be more safe and secure online. And this year's Secure Our World Campaign theme will focus on empowering everyone to understand the simple ways to protect ourselves, providing information and resources to help educate and ensure all individuals and organizations make smart decisions whether on the job or at home. And whereas the Board of County Commission of Alastair County, Alastair County Information Security and Telecommunications Department has taken key action steps to improve the Latvian County security posture through the enforcement use of strong passwords, keeping hardware and software updates, security awareness training to help staff recognize and report fishing and the enforcement use of multi-factor authentication. Now, therefore, through the vested me by the Board of County Commission of Elastra County Florida. I do here by Proclaim October 2024 as Cybersecurity Awareness Month in Elastra County Florida. Do they proclaim this eighth day of October? It's signed by our illustrious chair, Chair Mary Alfred and a testitute by our clerk, Jess Erby. And before I turn it over to our Director Kevin Smith, I will say that if you're a Board of County Commissioner, you understand the difficulty sometimes that we have in even getting into our own systems, which at first was so annoying. But after reading about so many governments getting attacked and so many agencies being attacked. I've come to thoroughly appreciate the fact that Elatro County has all of these protections. And it's because of the great work and staff of our director and his staff. So Kevin, you want to say a few words? Thank you very much. Thank you, commissioners. Joining me today, I have Brett McElino, Lauren So Tool and Steve and Brooks from our security team. join me today. I have Brett McElino, Lawrence O'Toole, and Steven Brooks from our security team. Yes, unfortunately, cyber attacks continue to increase. The proclamation mentioned many of the items that we really stress that people really take very seriously to protect their sensitive information and their personal data. Use strong passwords, change them often. Whenever a multifactor authentication is available on any of your systems, your finance systems, banking systems, use it, please. Recognize there is still phishing email attacks occurring. And unfortunately, that is really on the rise following storm situations like we're going through right now. You will get a lot of unscriptuous, unfortunately, contractors, charities looking for money. Be careful who you respond to, check your resources, and just be careful. You'll be safe. And do not please, do not click on links that are associated with emails from people you're not aware of or who you're familiar with. We always use the term think before you click. I'll always keep that in mind, stay safe. And thank you, guys, because you never make us feel stupid either. In all, looking at you as a team, I realize that we're really secure in your hands, and I appreciate that. And I think the county should understand the dangers that we do face in government, particularly this time, not even just for disasters, but in election time. And I appreciate the strength that you all, you know, stick out there for us, you know, that's a strong team and I appreciate you. As someone who believes in pencil and paper, still any racers, you know, to say it. All right. Okay. Thank you. It is time for public comment. We allowed during public comment for you to speak three minutes on an item that is any items that are on the agenda and three minutes for any items off the agenda. Since we are hoping to keep this meeting moving along because staff and all of you, I'm sure also need to get home and do hurricane preparations. I'm hoping that you can if you do have comments that you will keep them brief but we will take comments from folks in the room and then we will move to the phone and see if we have anyone there. So if you would like to speak please come forward and we welcome your comments today. Hi, good afternoon. My name is Mark Van Suspergen. I went to a development review committee last two weeks ago, was on a Tuesday. I'd never been the one. Didn't even know one existed. It was very interesting. It was for a 400 unit apartment complex that's going to be built right next to the Hilton Hotel. And right onto Southwest 20th Avenue, which I never knew that that was actually a county road, which was very surprising. So, did you know that? You did, I guess. Well anyway, but then they didn't really know where the crosswalk was gonna be for the students. It's gonna be like a thousand kids there because it's gonna be, and because they were like, well, I don't know, it's a county road, we don't know where they going to put the crossroad. So there's apparently there's no coordination there. It's just, that's an aside. So they don't know. So the builders, they're from the Crowd Island. They don't really know where the crossroad is going to be put to the side. But anyway, so I asked them, so what kind of a heating are you going to use the regular stuff. And I was like, oh, damn, that's a bummer because here you go, we're on brand new stuff, you could do it the right way. And if you do the math, I asked him, how long is this building going to be around? And they've set them on maybe for about 40 years. That's what they're planning on anyway. So then you do the math. It's about two tons of CO2 per unit per year, you know, 40 years. So it's about 32,000 tons that you can say right off the bat. And so now I was wondering if we know how come that in the review process, they don't have some kind of mechanism to sort of make that happen. And also separately from that, they were looking at a parking garage and have this equation, it's a one-to-one equation. Like for every unit, they got one parking spot. So they have a 400 unit parking garage that they're building there. And apparently it's kind of a guesswork because you don't really know how many, you know, and the changes over time, it depends on where you are and the people that stay there. But anyway, if it was me, I would have gone like, well, we're thinking about doing a 1.5 car per unit. But if you were to maybe put in some on demand how water heaters, maybe we'll use a 1.5 equation or something, some leverage your position that that wasn't done. And even now, even though it seems to be too late, I might even say something like, well, how about a 0.8 car per unit parking garage, if you do this, and that way they can build 20 more units or something like that. So anyway, but it seems like an opportunity is lost. But what it really came down to in the end is that they don't know what the building is rated for. I asked them can the building withstand 115? And they're like what? They don't know. They have no idea what the building can stand. All they know is it's up to code, which brings up to the real story, which we need a map. We need a map. We have maps, thanks. Yeah, no, but this map. Thanks, but have. Thank you. Temperature numbers next to it. Thank you, Mark. OK, do we have any additional public comment today? Please come forward if you'd like to speak. Can you hear me? Yes. Good afternoon, commissioners. My name's Jarelle Degen. I'm just introducing myself because I've applied for the Equity Advisory Board position. And I'd be happy to serve whether that's in the full member capacity or the alternate. And just wanted to share a little bit about myself. So you can see the human attached to the resume and the paperwork. So again, my name's Gerald Deegan. I'm a licensed mental health counselor, and I've been working in the field for about 15 years. I've lived in Gainesville for 25 years, almost. Came here for college and never left. Raising a family here, I have a six-year-old at PK Young and a 16-year-old stepson at Lofton. And personally and professionally, I'm very passionate about social justice, about learning, about health equity, decolonizing in the mental health field, about anti-racism. And those are things that I'm very passionate about. And if those things could serve in some capacity to this board to the members that have already been operating in that board that would just be a privilege for me. So just wanted to let you know a little bit about me and thank you for your consideration. Thank you thank you. Thank you Mr. Egan appreciate that. Do we have any other folks here for public comment? Seeing none, do we have any response to public comment? I would like to respond just very quickly to Mark's suggestions. You know, I don't know if we are actually planning for the future. We're not doing climate planning and that sort of thing. You know, I always advocate for hard summit. So we can deal with some of those building concerns then. That would be a place where I have these discussions because I'm seeing more dinghy fever reports coming in and that's been my thing is forges, green porches so just saying but if we can mark can end up coming to that then maybe you can share some of those ideas there too. Thank you. Mr. Prussi? Yeah I guess I just wanted to bring up that yeah we have the climate action planning process and I think that and the EAR process and I think that having the climate summit and getting community input on our climate action plan and then dovetailing that conversation around EAR with our climate action plan and thinking about how are the ways in which our comprehensive plan and our ULDC are sort of guiding those decisions and looking at things like screen porches, like how we're requiring different types of energy equipment, HVACs, or on demand, or all of those things, and ways in which I think we can also dovetail the conversation around affordable housing and climate readiness, and in incentivizing developers to make better decisions in both regards is something that I think will come up a lot during our EAR conversation. So I just wanted to point that out to everyone in the public who's listening if they're interested in climate and in affordable housing next year coming up. Well, in November, we'll have that climate action plan summit as a start, and then we'll be having lots of deliberations and conversations about how that integrates into our planning documents. So thank you. Yeah, mate. May I follow up with that climate. The summit that we're going to have is going to be restricted to like 125 people and so they're going to open up registration. Meaning that you know people are interested need to register as soon as that comes out too because there's a limited number that we can have at that one gathering. You know, they're going to open. But that one. Goodness, we had our meeting yesterday and I don't know if Steve or anybody. It's not the blunt center on university. No, what day? November 16th. November 16th. But the problem is it's limited in terms of how many people can come and we just need to make sure that you register quickly to get in there. But they're also talking about taking the show on the road and maybe going to some of these other communities as well too. Yeah. Yeah. And just one more side. I am well on demand hot water heaters are a wonderful thing. They also allow people to use as much hot water as they would like. So sometimes they don't end up saving water or as much energy as you might think. So anyway, just moving on from there, it is now 12-12. Do we have... Oh, we didn't go to the phones. Thank you for reminding me. the Okay. All right. We'll move next to our appointments to the Equity Advisory Board. Do we have any other folks that were interested in serving on that board that would like to introduce themselves or speak that are here today? All right. All right. We'll move next to our appointments to the Equity Advisory Board. Do we have any other folks that were interested in serving on that board that would like to introduce themselves or speak. But are here today. Okay, no, I don't see any. I do have a question. Our backup material had four applicants but our voting sheet only has two. Does anybody know why that is? The other two are Monaco, Washington and Jeff Friedman. Can we add them now to the? Yeah, just valid. Put them on the tally sheet. I can't answer that question. Um, can we see it might have been yeah we're checking with who put it on there. Okay I just want to make sure that they didn't withdraw their names or something. Okay and so we need a one full member and one alternate member with a term ending on November 30th 20thth, 28th. So do we just want to do our top two and do that? Okay. All right. So we're going to use the four names. We're going to use the four names. So, Jorrell, Deegan, Frank, White, Monica, Washington, and Frank, I mean, sorry, Jeff Friedman. So, okay. I'll call on each commission for your nominees. Can I start? Wait, commission or whether? Of course. Joriel Degen and Monica Washington. I think I remember those. Thank you. Commissioner Tristan. Degen and Washington. Commissioner Frazier. Degen and Washington. Commissioner Cornell. Commissioner Cornell. Deegan and Washington I'll do Deegan and white Deegan and Washington I would move Deegan for a full member and Washington as an alternative member for the term ending in December 30th, 2028. Thank you. Hey, we have motion to second. All right. All in favor of the motion signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed, like sign? All right. Welcome to the Equity Advisory Board. As usual, we had wonderful folks applying. And if you were not selected, please look at our other advisory boards and also know that you can attend the meetings and as an individual as well. All right, we have 15 minutes. Can we get our facilities? Oh wait, we can take our, we'll take item 8B from the consent agenda. Good morning, Ben Chumley with the Growth Management Department. I'm available to answer any questions on this item or I also have a very short presentation. I can run through. It's about six slides with some maps that may help, I'm prepared to do whatever would help the board. I'd like to see where that is. I don't know. Yeah, we're getting requests for the presentation. Sure. Okay. This is a request for board approval of an extension of sanitary sewer lines outside the urban cluster for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Research Lab on Williston Road just east of 13th Street. Fish and Wildlife is proposing to connect this existing research lab to GRU's sanitary sewer services. The site is located just outside of the urban cluster boundary and the county's comprehensive plan requires that any extension of water or sewer lines outside the urban cluster must be approved by the county commission before that extension can happen. So that requirement is in policy 3.1.5 of the potable water and sanitary sewer element, and it provides that the board's approval may be based on one of four potential findings. So here's kind of a wide view map of the area. The red star on the map is where the existing research lab is located. This is located. This is located just off Williston Road. It's on the northern end of Pains Prairie. The gray shaded areas on this map are City of Gainesville, and the non-gray shaded areas are unincorporated county. And you can see the solid blue line on the map is the county's urban cluster boundary. Here's a little bit more zoomed in, aerial of the site. You can see that it's located kind of diagonally, just across Williston Road from the existing urban cluster boundary. The site is about 9.4 acres. It's owned by the state of Florida. This facility has been operational since the early 1970s. The future land use of the site is preservation and the zoning is C1 which is conservation. So as I said this lab has been an operation since I think 1972. The current development that's on the site includes some staff offices and field equipment storage and the lab itself. This site was approved for a special use permit in 2010 for a government facility in the C1 zoning district and government facilities are considered institutional uses under the county's comprehensive plan. The existing development on the site is served by four septic systems, which we understand will be retired from service if the connection to GRU sewer is approved. And the nearest sewer line is about 0.3 miles to the west of this, and GRU is able to accept the flow from this existing development into their system. And it's also worth noting that the site is currently served by GRU water. So in the comprehensive plan there, as I mentioned, four potential bases for the board to approve an extension like this. Staff believes the most applicable basis in this case is item C, which is that the extension of the facilities would serve a purpose, consistent with the comprehensive plan. In this case, the service of institutional land uses, which is specifically called out in the policy. In addition to the institutional basis, we believe that retiring the existing septic systems in this location would provide an overall public environmental health benefit, especially given the location at the northern end of Pains Prairie. That doesn't quite rise to the level of remedying a public health threat, but it's worth noting, I think, as part of the resolution, and it is included in the resolution. So staff is recommending that the board approve the resolution to allow the extension of sewer lines outside the urban cluster for the fish and wildlife research lab site. And the basis for that approval would be that it meets the standard in 3.1.5C about serving institutional land use is consistent with the comprehensive plan. And I'll be happy to answer any questions. All right, thank you. Commissioner Prithia. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. I pulled this not because I have any problem with it so I'm ready to make the motion to approve it but I did feel that any time we're talking about our urban cluster line I feel it's really important to do so in the public eye and not have it on consent you know it's sort of the foundation of our comprehensive plans so when we're making exceptions to that even if it's in complete accordance with our comprehensive plan, which I fully agree with, staff, and I think they did a great job on this analysis, but I just wanted to make sure we were doing it in the public eye because it's something we've really leaned on for the way in which we manage growth. So I just thought it would be good to do it in the public eye. So with that, I move staff's recommendation to approve the resolution allowing the extension of a sewer line outside the urban cluster. Thank you. Okay, motion of second. Have any further comment to the from the board? Do we have any public comment to the motion? No public comment to the motion? All right, all in favor of the motion signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed, like sign? All right. All in favor of the motion signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed like sign? All right. Motion passes. All right. All right. We have a few minutes now to review our facilities management master plan quarterly update. If we run over into 1230 we will take a pause from that. Can we just do the other one? No, it's time certain at 12.30. They won't be on the phone. Oh. Oh my god, J. Worse time certain at 3.30. Or do it at 2.30. Try to get them. Okay, you can do shoes there, I'll just do this. Good afternoon, everybody. So today I'm going to provide you an update on phase one of your master plan, basically where we are, current timelines, all the stuff that we've been doing, and then to answer any questions that you may have at the end. So reminder, Elf midst of phase one, civil courthouse complex includes the central energy plant, the parking garage, and then court services moving to the new civil courthouse, the Animal Services Facility, Armory, which includes the purchase, which include the purchase renovation and then moving EOC and fire rescue headquarters, and then fire rescue headquarters would be the relocation and the move from EPD where they currently are and growth management. The CEP Plant has been constructed. We will have it on site in December. It's built off site delivered to us. We will be building the structure where it will be housed and the perimeter fencing, the screen wall, and then the utility connections. Hope to start that first part of January and five month process. Hope to have that completed sometime, early part of the summer. And estimated project costs, $6.3 million, all inclusive cost. That's to build the structure, get the plant, make the connections, et cetera. Next on that side is the parking garage. Through consent today, connections, et cetera. Next on that side is the parking garage. Through consent today, we approved the agreement to move forward with that. It is a design build project. So Finfrock has already been hired to do that. They are working through the construction documents. It's not typical to other construction projects because it's a parking garage. It's something they have built many of. The process doesn't take a ton of time to go through. Hope to start construction in February, 10 month process. Hope to complete that sometime, end of 2025. We're shooting for November 2025. SMAID project costs 12.5, complete the project. The big part of the complex is the Civil Courthouse. We are currently in the A&E phase. We are working on construction documents. We hope to have those by February of this year. We are working through a lot of aspects of the complex. They're all the projects are starting to tie together. So you'll notice Parking Garage, CEP, Courthouse, they're all going to start working together. I think originally, one was going to come before the other, but the way time is passing and how things worked out, we're going to do a lot of this stuff together. So we hope to have that completed the day and portion end of this year. Start construction in March and complete November 2026. So about a 20-month construction process. And again, that's going to be working around building a parking garage, getting a CEP in there, and the building itself. Total construction costs, all inclusive, 70 million. Animal Resource Facility. We have awarded the A&E and the construction manager at risk services. We're working on those contracts now. We are working with the University of Florida on the lease agreement as well as the MOU for VETMED. So we start that in, well we started in October. We expect about a 12 month process to go through A&E, make sure we build what we need, start construction in January, 12 month process, hope to finish that by January, 2027. Estimated project costs 27 and a half million. Fire rescue headquarters and emergency ops, this is the armory. We did, we were supposed to receive bids when I built this presentation October 2nd. We had to extend until tomorrow. We're going to extend it again because we're closed. So we hope to get bids in hopefully within a week or so. So we'll know what we're working with there. We hope to start renovations in December. Should take about eight months to renovate it. It is a huge renovation. We're going to work on restrooms, have to add an elevator and some office space, that type stuff, but it's not a huge renovation. So July of 2025 is when we hope to complete that. And we hope to start the relocation of the EOC staff members and fire rescue headquarters in July of 2025. Yeah, it's trying to fly fire. Environmental protection relocation, this would be the move to the existing fire rescue headquarters, where they are housed now. We hope to do that again. We're going to do some renovations that's not not gonna require much to house EPD in there. But we hope to complete that October 2025 in a relocation as soon as we get the renovations complete. We hope to start that relocation. The warehouse, I don't believe this was originally on the phase one. This was acquired after that. So we're working now on developing the master space plan to figure out where and how everything is going to go in there. It is a wonderful space, 61,000 square feet of warehouse space, 12,000 square feet of office space. And there's an ancillary building there that can do vehicle maintenance, two-base. The impact to phase one, facilities is going to move to the warehouse to manage the warehouse. Growth management will then move to the facilities office where facilities currently is. Originally, the plan was to take EPD in growth and move them into the existing fire risk ahead quarters. The space is too tight to have both of them in there. So we're working on master planning now to make sure that we allocate the space to the correct location. Again, allocating space for public health fire rescue and food programming are the three key that we want to make sure we have space in there for and we showed there's quite a bit of space there. Summary of your phase one all the things that we're doing I wanted to include this slide because we included the warehouse as part of phase one now and then the relocation of growth to the facilities building. We hope to have all those moves completed by October of 2025. So EPD, relocation, growth relocation, EOC and Fire Rescue Headquarters. I don't know. Where is the facility's building? Facilities building is next to Fire Rescue Headquarters now. Yeah, but also when I was just making sure I was the right site for the Fire Rescue Headquarters. So timeline, I've included some projects that are part of Phase 1. So I didn't have to duplicate this slide, Armory Parking Garage CEP in 2025 budget Scottish Inn which we'll talk about here in a moment land conservation complex which we'll talk about in a moment in the civil courthouse in 2026 and then animal services completion in 2027. Chair it's 1230. You'd manage to go ahead this is we only have a couple more slides right? I do. I'll roll through them pretty quick. Relocation. Just what I went over. Just kind of give you an idea. We hope to have everybody move 2025 as your phase one. Other projects. Budget and Scottish in. Sunrise Resonance in. You've got to probably familiar with those, we've talked about those a lot, land conservation complex, rural collection center, and hazardous waste collection facility. Budget in is Scottish in, we're working pretty simultaneous. We hope to start construction in January 2025. Both of them should be pretty close together. Completion end of 2025, early part of 2026. There's some grant implications there. We got to meet deadlines. But budget end is going to hard bid now. Scott Ashin will follow within a month. So kind of the same thing. We're wrapping up A&E. We should be done with that here in the next 30 days. Sunrise Residence in, we just recently acquired that. We're working on closing on that. Soon as we are closed, we will start base level repairs. All those items when we brought it forth for the purchase that said immediate action required. Those are the items that we're going to start working on. Again hope to have that completed October 2025. So really busy 2025. Land conservation complex. We are working on A&E phase right now. How our first meeting with City of Gainesville. Reson, the site plan, all that type stuff. Hope to be completed with that June 2025. We'll start construction in the summer, 11 months to get that facility up. March 2026. Hope to complete that. And that's out of the four creeks preserved. I don't have much to report in the Royal Collection Center. We are working, that's the new berry. Gus is working through the property ownership. We're trying to get the property first. Once we do that, we can start moving that project forward. That's why there's no completion time. That will start to toll once we acquire the property itself. And the hazardous waste collection facility at the Eco Loop, kind of the same thing. Waiting on the EPA grant. We're working on that. It's due in December. We hope to receive that. There's a little bit of a shortfall between what our budget is right now, one and a half million and what it's going to take. We had UF help, some consultants with an estimate on what the project will take. The current hazardous waste building is going to become the bulk storage facility. Once this is completed, so I thought that was important to note. And lastly, just some phase two considerations. We plan to come back or I plan to come back in the spring of 25 to talk about phase two, some of the things we need to be thinking about. The administration building itself was going to it, Wilson, the ANX, and then also Admin, IT, Task Collector, and the rest of those departments moving to the Civil Courthouse. So all things that will start to ramp up conversations in the spring of 25. And that concludes my presentation. Thank you, Travis. All right. We do need to move on to our, do we have any important questions? Not important, but boy, there's a lot of questions in there. Yeah. Thank you. And those who go to the next level. That's a good work. Nice presentation. Yeah, nice work, Travis. Thank you. Okay. Yeah. So we're going to go on to our time certain presentation I'm not sure who's managing that Claudia okay. Good afternoon Commissioner Claudia Tuck director of Latino County Community Support Services. Today we are talking to you about homeless outreach across the Latua County. Per your directive in October of last year we were asked to look at homeless outreach in our county to have an assessment done and bring that back to you. We did engage the National Alliance to end homelessness who has been working on that diligently, has been here, has held focus groups met with with providers, done surveys, and they are here today to speak to you. So hopefully they are on the Zoom now and can be brought in. Today we have Steve Sturman and he is with the National Alliance to End Homelessness. All right. Will I be able to share my screen in the presentation? He needs to be able to share a screen. They need to be able to share their screen there on. I can hear them talking. Hello. I can see you now. Thank you so much for having me. I'm going to share my screen and get going. So my name is Dave Sternman. I am a senior technical assistant specialist with the National Alliance to End Homelessness. And for any of you all who don't know us, we are a nonprofit and nonpartisan organization. Our sole mission is to prevent man-of-homelessness in the United States. And we do that work in a really multifaceted way. So all of our work is guided by lived expertise and lived experience of homelessness. But we work to build knowledge using research and data to discover what works to end homelessness, to develop easily accessible information about those solutions. And then based on that information, we work to improve policy through educating opinion leaders and policy makers about what works and then try to build effective policy and support of those solutions. Then, through our capacity building team, and I'm a part of that team, we help communities implement those solutions. We provide training technical assistance and tools to providers and public agencies. And finally, we bring the field together, including policymakers, researchers, practitioners, philanthropy and funders, and advocates to address the key issues in the effort to prevent and homelessness across the country. So I led the analysis of your street outreach programming and I did that through a multi-pronged approach. So first taking a look at quantitative data, that's your point in time counts, your program outcomes, your funding structures, and then layering qualitative data onto that. And we generated qualitative data via stakeholder surveys. We had surveys go out to leadership and providers in your homeless services system. And we also did surveys of people with lived experience of unsheltered homelessness and folks accessing street outreach services. Also completed key informant interviews and two focus groups with providers. And then alongside that, we took a look at literature and evidence research showing what works for effective street outreach practices for ending homelessness and put that alongside your policies at the local level, your continuum of care policies and your street outreach program policies. And from all that, we came away with three main areas of finding. So I'm going to talk to you a little bit about the effectiveness of your current street outreach programming, the need for reliable data on rural homelessness, and the need for relationship building across your COC. And I wanted to kind of kick it off with this quote. And this was from an interview that I did with someone experiencing on sheltered homelessness in the city of Gainesville when I was there on my site visit and they just they put it so succinctly and really got to the core of the issue. They said I was raised in Gainesville they need to take a look at how many people are living in tents, what resources they have and help place us somewhere. I just want a place to live. I just thought that was really powerful and hit me in my heart when we were speaking. So the first set of findings is that you have an excellent street outreach program and I don't think I can say that strongly enough when we looked into how they're operating, they're operating with a high fidelity to evidence-based practices that work for engaging folks who are living on sheltered and for moving folks into housing successfully. They're housing 39% of their program participants directly from the streets and that is higher than we see in almost any high functioning street outreach program across the country. So they're operating efficiently, they're operating high quality services, but they're severely under-resourced. When we put the programming that you have next to the scale of uncheldrared homelessness, that we can see funding levels and staffing levels are just insufficient to meet the needs in your entire COC. that was true just in the city of Gainesville and it became even more true when we sort of looked, looked farther out into the rural counties. There just was no access to street outreach services at all. And even outside of the city of Gainesville and beyond the inner ring of a Latvia county, there was not a lot of access to these services. The next set of findings is really that there's not a lot known about rural homelessness within your COC. And the reason I highlight this is because if we don't know what homelessness looks like and we can't quantify, it's very, very hard to plan and scale services appropriately. So when I was looking at the pit counts and I was talking to service providers and folks who participated in the pit counts, folks generally agreed in the pit counts, folks generally agreed that the rural methodology was not working and that it was not representing that it was missing most folks experiencing homelessness in the rural counties. In addition to that, there was no access to coordinated entry in the rural counties as well. So when you look at coordinated entry data, rural homelessness is not represented there. Providers in those in those counties, we're not even sure how to refer people into the system, even if it was by phone. And then taking a look at HMIS, so the homeless management information system, there was only one rural provider that was using that system at all, and only for a very, very small program that was not reflective of everyone experiencing homelessness in the rural counties. And when I looked for alternate sources of data, the data that's being collected about service needs and economic instability and all the things that might lead us towards data about homelessness, none of those data sources were included consistent information about housing status for folks accessing services. And so I was really not able to quantify what rural homelessness looks like across these counties. The final finding was that there's a deep need for relationship building across the COC. Effective homeless response systems work together and worked in a deeply collaborative way and that requires trust and strong relationships and nearly half of all the service providers that I interviewed described disengaging from or experiencing direct exclusion from COC activities in which they had an interest in participating. The silver lining to all of that is that the moment that you're in now with the transition to a new lead agency, even the folks who were experiencing exclusion or had disengaged, because they didn't kind of see their needs being met, even those folks were ready to reengage. They named this transition to a new lead agency as a key opportunity for restoring those relationships, and they were ready to reengage in the COC and ready to rebuild that trust. So based on those findings based on the research and evidence available about effective street outreach, my team put together a total of 15 recommendations. Those are divided into two categories. One is focused on street outreach. And one is about implementing COC best practices to the system as a whole. So for street outreach, we'd highly recommend developing an effective, efficient and equitable housing focus street outreach strategy. That starts with having the data that you need and using that data to drive your solutions. So being able to quantify unchcheltered homelessness across the COC and establishing and tracking performance metrics for street outreach. So you know what's working, what's not, and you can adjust accordingly. Additionally, you need a shared vision. I need to be able to coordinate services. So we're recommending establishing a subcommittee or working group within the COC that's focused exclusively health homelessness and through that body or through other mechanisms facilitating providers coordination of services for people experiencing on-cheltered homelessness. We also saw a huge mismatch between the scale of services and the scale of on-cheltered homelessness across the region. So we're suggesting scaling for impacts, specifically supporting and scaling your current street outreach programming, and then making sure that you're scaling housing programs and solutions alongside crisis solutions like street outreach and shelter. Finally, in order to appropriately scale, you need to address current gaps in your system that means expanding coordinate entry access to include the rural counties, and making sure that your prioritization through coordinate entry includes housing access for folks living on sheltered and folks living in the rural parts of the county. And finally, we're recommending establishing centralized landlord engagement strategies so that you can maximize the impact of your street outreach and other crisis intervention programs. For COC best practices, the central focus of this needs to be establishing trusting relationships and that can be done by forging system-wise strategies collectively going forward. You need to be cultivating an inclusive COC culture that means actively cultivating COC membership within the rural counties and responding to their stated needs and their context. It means improving engagement of people with lived experience and leveraging their expertise for both generating accurate data and employing evidence-based services for folks who are unsheltered currently. And it also means you need to be able to look at your data and look at it across different demographics. So I requested disaggregated data that the system was unable to provide. And there are huge disparities in who is receiving services and who is succeeding and having positive outcomes in services. So you need to be able to disaggregate your data by race, by gender, by family status, and other features of your homeless population in order to be able to understand how your strategies are working for those different groups. Another key responsibility of the COC is to get the message out about homelessness in your community, what it looks like, and what can solve it. People need to know how to access services when they become homeless, people need to understand what the shape of homelessness looks like in your local region. So we're recommending that the COC engage in continuous strategic communication with stakeholders. That means service providers within your system, service providers adjacent to your homeless services system, and people experiencing homelessness and the public at large in the community in general. We're also recommending making sure that your strategic decisions are driven by data and evidence. We're recommending disaggregating your data so you can understand how your decisions are affecting different people within your system, adopting housing problem solving philosophy and approach across all programs, which is a strategy for reducing inflow into homelessness and ensuring that people spend the least amount of time homeless when they do become homeless. And finally, prioritizing funding for effective and evidence-based programs, which you can only do if you have metrics that are aligned with what evidence shows is most effective for ending homelessness. So I'll stop there and happy to answer any questions that you have about that analysis. Mr. Prisya. First, thank you so much. This is really helpful information. And I think it mirrors what I think anecdotally I've experienced in the community and conversations with people and in just what I see on a day-to-day basis. So thank you for getting it in a report form that's quantifiable and provides us with some good information that allows us to make decisions. And first of all, I guess I want to say a huge thank you to the people that are involved in that street outreach because it's a real testament to say that we're one of not only are we doing an amazing job, yes, exactly. Not only are we doing an amazing job, but we're also benchmark above sort of standards around the country for how that's being done. So kudos to you, because I know that that work is not easy work. It means hours outside normal hours, it means being in uncomfortable places and hot, sweaty, wooded, buggy, all of the things, and interacting with people who have a lot of challenges, mental health challenges, substance abuse challenges as well as just being unhoused and being struggling in their lives. So thank you so much for that work. I guess my first, I have a question and then a comma and I am ready to make it a brief motion if I, if I can. My first question is, does the COC have a current strategic plan? Does any, is, yeah, thank you. Chair Claudia Tuck, we do have representatives from both Grace Marketplace and the room John DeCaramine and from the COC task force for ending homelessness with Jacob Turner. So they might be best to answer. Okay, great, thank you. Jacob, do you want to answer that question for me? Thank you. Good afternoon, Chair, Vice Chair, commissioners. The COC does have an action plan that was created by COC membership and members of the continuum of care. That action plan was last revised, I believe, in March of this year. And as you know, we have a new lead agency that started in July. So we're evaluating that plan that was formed or I should say revised in March to identify areas for improvement as well as we'll make those over the coming months. Okay. So I know the COC doesn't answer to the Board of County Commissioners. I know we're just a participant in the COC, but I do feel some sense of responsibility to supporting you all in that effort. And I guess my motion would be something to the effect of asking that the COC come back to us in the near future, early in the new year, with some recommendations around how they can revise that strategic plan to include community engagement both with stakeholders that are going to that could participate in the COC as well as those with lived experience that could provide you with input per the recommendations also for your strategic communication is I think the story of homelessness in our community is rapidly deteriorating. The conversations, I mean as somebody who's out on the doors three days a week right now, every single door I knock, homelessness is an issue on the tip of their minds and the tip of their tongues. And they want to know what we're doing about it and it's not clear to anyone in our community kind of what's happening. So it doesn't mean that we're not doing a good job clearly we are but we're not doing a very good job of telling our story. How we might implement those committees and sort of engage people in different parts of this work. And then how we might create solid metrics that we could all use because we at the county are starting to adopt metrics and develop dashboards and ways in which we're mapping and creating data that help us with decision-making and prioritizing funding. And so if what you all prioritize as data and metrics can feed into what we're prioritizing as data and metrics, then we're collecting the same data and apples meet apples and we're able to make good decisions about how to support things like street outreach. So those would be the things that I would ask the COC to come forward with when they do a presentation for us and I guess my main motion was just going to be to accept the report and to ask the COC to come back in the spring or late winter with some recommendations based on this report for what they're going to do to adopt some of the recommendations. Or I said, sorry if we're a plan on what they're going to do to adopt some of these recommendations. I believe there's a request for funding as well in the action. Oh, yes. I'm in the action. OK. Well, you're looking at that commissioner Cornell. Yeah, I can call you for now. So thank you for being here. I agree with my colleague. I think to the street outreach group, what amazing work you continue to do, the things that kind of jumped out from me on this report is how can we scale that and do more of that. And then those four counties we have great relationships with, they're all physically constrained. Are those the other four counties that are a part of the COC? That's correct commissioner. Bradford Gilchrist, Levy and Putnam. So, you know, commissioners with the legislation that the state has done, these are four counties that may be really open. I think we should have joint meetings with these four with one agenda item, just one and that's this. I think there's a real opportunity with each of them to share our findings and try to figure out ways that we can collaborate through the CSE. I was actually going to ask you what are you seeking from a Lattuer County after reading this data to help both with our situation within our borders, a Lattuer County? Because I think the rural areas in a Lattuer County are probably pretty similar to these four rural counties. So whatever we can do in our rural areas, I think we can scale out or with them scaling in. So what are you asking this board, and what would you like to see out of your review of the strategic or not strategic, the action plan that was completed March, moving into the spring of 25? Well, thank you for your question commissioner. I think if there's anything that we're asking for is to be able to engage the public and do that right through this body. It's one of the reasons why I felt it was necessary to be here in person today. Because as commissioner Persia noted to, we want all of our neighbors in Alachua County to be part of the collaboration that brings solutions to people experiencing homelessness. And we need to hear from people including your constituents and those in every district to understand specifically what their concerns are but more importantly what their suggestions are. They are the experts in their neighborhoods. They understand the concerns and the challenges that they go through every day and we need to craft our strategies to be aligned with addressing those very issues. Were the experts in bringing solutions to reduce homelessness and ensuring that there's access to affordable housing and the best quality of support services. But our request through this body would be to invite the community and our Alachio County residents to be engaged, join the COC as a community member, participate in our planning committees and meetings so that they have a voice in the decisions that are being brought before you, such as the one today. Okay, so I guess there's a question for Claudia. So Claudia, where does Union County and Marion County fit into the COC? Marion County chair has their own COC, they're not part of the COC. It's a just Mary and county. It is. Okay and what about union? Union county actually is not represented in any COC right now. They are open for being incorporated into another continuum of care that could be requested through HUD but right now they are one of two counties in the state that are not part of the COC. One of two, okay, and what about Columbia County? Columbia is on its own as well. On its own within the county. Leaves, they're under the United Way as the lead. Okay, so I think homelessness is a regional issue because of where we sit with I-75, or we're seeing it, and that's where we see it, and our county. I think I would ask that the maker of the motion maybe direct our staff to plan for these four maybe joint meetings at some point in the coming year. I think when we meet with Marion County, we had talked about Taurus and development, but this could be a second item to see what their COC is doing in coordinating with our COC. I think our job here is really to be a collaborator, to build on the great success that the city is experiencing with what this is reporting and see how we can scale that, but also kind of recognize our role here. We're the primary economic driver of the eight surrounded counties. It's not going away, and we have a big role here. We're the primary economic driver of the eight surrounded counties. It's not going away and we have a big responsibility here. So those are my only comments. I appreciate the report. I appreciate the data and the work, the good work that's being done at grace specifically and within our, within our, our county. Thank you, Ben. Chair. I guess I do have a follow upup question if I can, Ben. I will, actually, the first is it says to list the proposals for street outreach, but we have a successful street outreach partner that we're working with. Is that not a contract that can be renewed? It could be. It would be a coordination between the two parties. Okay. We were just leaving it open. Okay. Well, I mean, given the success that they're having in the way that they're doing the work and the quality of what we just got in terms of report, I would want to stick with what we've got that's working rather than solicit and start all over again from scratch. So I guess I would add to my motion that we work towards some joint meetings with those four counties. But I think ahead of that, if the board is open to it, it sounds like the COC is asking for our help with soliciting engagement. And I think that engagement, I mean, yes, it's broad in the whole community. But I think we have much like we did early on with our homelessness and housing conversations, where you brought stakeholders together to have those dialogues and conversations. I feel like bringing our affordable housing providers that aren't part of the COC and some of our emergency service providers and the disengaged people who have left the COC together to have some dialogue and collaboration with the COC about what are those challenges, what does that look like and maybe helping facilitate that conversation and inviting these rural counties to have that dialogue so that when we do have those meetings with them, we come with some solid ideas and potential actions would be important because like you said, we're a regional hub, so our hospitals need to be involved in that conversation. They're getting a lot of those people in their doors, our meridian and our center receiving facility folks, our police, and those organizations that are providing housing and emergency services I think would be important to engage in like a workshop of sorts ahead of us having those joint meetings if that's okay. So I would expand the motion to help the COC with doing an engagement workshop with the people I just mentioned and any others they see fit in order to support their development of a revised action plan for a lot of county and the surrounding counties and for us to host a joint meeting with the four counties mentioned in the recommendations report to provide an update based on those engagements and the updated action plan for the COC and to extend the contract with our street outreach team in the amount of 350,000 I guess. Is that the request? That's recurring. It's as the recurring annually. I'm confused about the way that the wording is for this funding, but if we have an existing contract and we can renew that existing contract, I believe it's in the amount of 350,000 currently. Chair, yes it is. What we were suggesting was that the contract now be moved to the task force for ending homelessness and I have had conversations with both Mr. DeCarmon and the COC so that they could begin to really do what is recommended in the report and do more coordination of the outreach. There are other funding sources. Some go directly to the COC, so to try and pull it together and then they would contract with grace. I got to say the same provider would be doing the work, but the contract would go through an organization that would allow for more coordination and facilitation. I guess I guess would move that we continue in the amount of 350,000 contract for street outreach and coordination with the COC and grace. Paul, I'm the task right. Okay, I'll second that. So it's three parts. It's the COC coming back to us after doing it's a staff helping with engagement with stakeholders for a workshop and conversations around the action plan. COC coming back to us with that action plan, us meeting with the rural counties to share that those recommendations and that action plan and get input and us to provide the funding in collaboration with Greece that housing, housing, whatever that helped me coalition for housing and homelessness and the COC. It's actually the task force for ending homelessness. Thank you. I see Tommy coming up to fix it. Help me off guard. Tommy Crosby, since I came here, I need to confirm that money was put in the 25 budget. That was a one year budget item last year I believe, but I need to confirm whether that is even in the budget or not I do not think it is but I don't want to say that without knowing for sure correct madam chair He's double checking that for me But you this was started at the request of the city to assist in The funding and so it was only a commitment for one year it hadn't been fully expended We did extend it through December for them to finish expending the funds. Audience assuring me that it was a budget enhancement that you approved. We didn't know where it was going to go to so it was put in a placeholder but that it is in the budget. Okay, okay. We just wanted to make sure because we knew that this was only for the one year. Yeah, I mean, I do, I guess I will say this. I think it's important for us to keep money. And it's like I said, it's not even enough money. And I think, and I'm hearing that out, like our, out just outside of the city of Gainesville, just outside our urbanized area, you know, over out by the mall, over out in our urbanized areas of Jonesville and stuff. We're starting to see the street homelessness issue proliferate out into our rural areas. And so I think we are going to have to look at how we address the budget shortfalls there. I think some of it is collaboration with our rural counties. I hope, but for now, I think I hope that we're committed to at least the 350,000. Okay. Commissioner, Mary Hillen. Thank you. Thank you. I have a quick question regarding the feelings of exclusion from the group. Devious, you brought that up, you know, that there was some folks who were feeling like that they were not included. And what I would just try to understand is that coming from the outlying counties that we sometimes have issues with feeling like that Alachua County is leading the charge and they're not as involved as they feel like they should be because Alachua County is leading the charge on some of these things or you know, where are you seeing the concerns from people who are not participating because they feel like that it's exclusive or they've been excluded? Yeah, I will say it was definitely most pronounced in the rural counties, but it was not exclusively coming from rural providers. I'll lead with the caveat that I didn't speak with government officials in the rural counties. I was speaking with service providers and people who are living outdoors currently. And there was, in the rural counties, there was a sense of being misunderstood and of having tried to kind of communicate their needs and not having them heard. But even within the service provider network in Gainesville, there was a sense that there's a prioritization of folks and shelter over folks who are unsheltered and that that was not in line with what service providers knew to be true about what homelessness looks like in your jurisdiction. And there was a sense of like, the utility in participating in COC meetings and committees and a sense of not being heard or trusted or respected for the expertise that they're bringing. And that was coming from providers, even in Gainesville and across the system. Okay, thank you. I'm with just commissioners. I would just commissioners, I would really like to see that addressed. You know, we're funding, we're funding the operation with this money that to make sure that, you know, all voices are heard and welcome into the solution. And for me, that was the only red flag that I saw from this report that concerned me, was the fact that we were somehow not working better as a community. And that one of the suggestions is that maybe we needed a new subcommittee or new leaders who take someone else taking the lead on it so that that could be addressed. So those are the two things that stuck in my head in terms of the actual workings of this group. So, you know, if there's anybody who wants to make me feel better about that, that'd be great. Commissioner Miller, do you feel that some of that's addressed in the ask for the COC and our staff to work together to have a stakeholder engagement to listen, have a listening sessions. As long as they put an asterisk by that one to just take care of me. No, yeah, I mean, I think that's the whole reason I'm asking for it, so that they can hear those voices that have felt disenfranchised and incorporate those concerns into an action plan that they would bring back to us. We just didn't really go to there, and I just wanted to put it out there as something that I felt like was important and significant that needed to be addressed. You know, because if we don't have everybody on board, you know, we're not going to be able to work together to actually get this heavy lifting done. Thank you. Okay. Thank you, Commissioner Wheeler, Commissioner Cornell. Thank you, Madam Chair. So I would like to hear from John about grace, because I, you know, I agree with you, Commissioner and Prisya, that before we meet with the other four counties, and I think we've directed our staff, the first meeting we need to talk to is the City of Gainesville. And we need to have this discussion in December, and I understand, John, that they have taken kind of a different posture with their last budget cycle than they did the previous year when we got presented with a budget shortfall. Could you just share with me kind of where grace is with the city? Because I have said in the past that it's probably been about five years since we had this grand bargain of the county spending 1.5 million for permanent sport housing and the city spending 1.5 million for emergency shelter. They're spending a lot more than that. I know through other things we're spending a lot more than that. I know through other things. We're spending a lot more than that. We've got three hotels. So we're actually both spending more than a million five. It is a drastic increase from where we were five years ago. But I've also said that with the state legislation, with four others surrounding counties, a part of our CSE, that it is time for kind of a reshadow of what's the next five years kind of look like. Can you share with this board the discussions you've had with the city, what from your perspective, their thoughts are on that, because I know it's kind of a one year contract, as I understand it's not a five year contract, and what you are hoping to see come out of this initial discussion, that joint meeting discussion and then ultimately a discussion with our COC in this board. Yes sir, Madam Chair, members of the Commission, John DeCarmin, Executive Director of Grace. I can speak to the parts that I have some certainty on and there may be others who are better suited to ask about the direction the city is hoping to take. I can tell you that we have just signed a one year contract as you acknowledged for $2.05 million to provide both low barrier emergency shelter services and campus and day services for unsheltered people on the greatest campus that will run until September 30th, 2026. 2025. And we have been in conversation. I believe the city's intent is to work with us to develop a five-year contract. Following that, the hope was just that there could be some answers to some of the financial questions that have popped up with the issues around GRU. And so it did not put us in a position to, we knew if we would be negotiating for that this was not the year to lock in a rate that would would really meet the needs of the community for the next five years and so we I would say mutually agreed that a one year contract in this instance was the appropriate way to handle this and the next contract to be signed at this point our conversations indicate that that's a five year contract. So I would not at all take that as any indication of the city attempting to be signed at this point our conversations indicate that that's a five-year contract. Okay, correct. I would not at all take that as any indication of the city attempting to step away from any homeless services commitments. It was just a prudent, rational economic decision. Yeah, so I need to just publicly, so my colleagues here, me across the street, tell them, thank you, I really appreciate that. That's the leadership that I think exists over there and I think also exists over here and so I am really glad to hear that. Thank you for providing that. So Commissioner Prisiot to your kind of comments. My thought is we have that meeting with the city. Simultaneously we see what happens in November. We then have an opportunity after having a conversation with here's what we're doing in Elatua County. What are you all doing regarding the state legislation? There'll probably be some clarifying legislation in the spring at the at in Tallahassee. And then after that clarifying legislation, I think that's a really good opportunity for us to reach out to Bradford Gilchrist Levy and Putnam and see if union, what union does are, I mean it's an issue they're going to have to deal with too. They're not immune from state law. And then when we meet with Marion County to talk about tourist development, just add this to see what best practices are you doing. Here's what we're doing. How can we kind of work together? So that was the only point. Yeah. I think the timing is important. I think we have to do a lot for county first. Agreed. And in the middle of that all somewhere, I think to Commissioner Wheeler's point, we need to make sure that we're creating a platform that people feel safe and comfortable coming forward to share the reasons why they haven't they either disengaged or haven't engaged with the COC inside our own county. And then and without with our neighbors so. The other thing I did want to say about the city is that there was some conversation at one point about like strategic planning on your campus as a whole John I don't know if that conversation is continued or But you know there it was there was some question about what land is on the campus what land is in whose control if There's space out there to expand homelessness services if there's space out there to expand housing and that sort of thing Is that still underway the dialogue about a strategic plan for your campus, or have you all concluded that work? We have not yet begun that work. We are still looking forward to working with the city, with the county, and with another, probably a convening party to develop that campus master plan, but that work has not yet started. Okay. Well another important piece of the puzzle and the conversation as we continue forward. So all right. Will I? Yeah, I believe we have. Yeah, we did. Okay. All right. Is there any public comment to this motion? Please come forward. Introduce yourself in. Sure. I'll be very brief Jacob Tornor vice president of programs at the Task Force for Ending Homelessness through Claudia and the clerk. I'd like to offer you all a four-page document for you to take back with you today. Given the challenges and the preparations for Hurricane Milton, I just want to thank you all for your hard work, your leadership, for this community, and specifically appreciate Grace Marketplace, their outreach specialists that work so tirelessly, as was mentioned, each and every day, because it truly is a thankless fight for those frontline professionals, and we can't do it without them, so thank you. Thank you for this handout. You have ought to be in club ball and helping that plan. Just the, you know, you know. John DeCarmin, Executive Director of Grace. I wanted to just briefly thank the county for commissioning this report and letting us use the data that we have available and an outside perspective to look and see what programs are working, what lens need improvement. I think that's going to be a very valuable way forward for all of us. And for your willingness to invest in street outreach. We have been before you for the past couple of years and the county has stepped up in previous years to help fund street outreach. We're currently working on a contract. The city has also stepped up to do that as well. But that's the kind of work, especially as your constituents are talking about unsheltered homelessness. When we're talking about people having a problem with homelessness, they're not talking about the people generally who are sleeping in a shelter tonight. Even the people who are sleeping in the Walmart parking lot or the people who are working right now at schools and universities and retail shops around the community, they're talking about the people that they see out on the street. Street outreach is what solves that problem and how we solve that problem. As Dave had noted, this program is, and before I go into that, I also want to make sure Mark Watson could not be here today But I want to commend Mark Watson and the team that he has built with Jerry with Maryette with Casey and with Sebastian That is a small list of names to have taken on a program that is generating in some cases according to this report eight times the outcomes of Similar size community with about one eighth of the staffing that it actually requires. The COC has made great leaps forward in the past four or five months since task force has taken on the new leadership and I want to commend them for that. I want to acknowledge Keanu Johnson's just heroic work managing a coordinated entry system with not all of the pieces that are always needed there and still making that work and driving forward what is a very, very important program for the community. Commissioner Cornell, you had asked about how do we scale this and certainly there is an upper limit to what we can do. As we were wrapping up our outcomes for this year, the county funded outreach program, we had three primary interventions where we were looking at impacting what was going on with people on the street. With in terms of positive placements, that's just helping somebody get someplace other than the street. Whether that's an emergency shelter, a long-term hospital care and nursing home, something like that, something that doesn't necessarily solve their homelessness, but solves the visible component of homelessness. We exceeded by about 15 percent the target for that. When it comes to diversions, rapid resolutions, and limited financial support, the quick things we can do to move people into housing on their own without any further subsidies or any further support, we more than doubled the target for that that we were aiming for 30 people we got 63. When it comes to rapid rehousing and permanent supportive housing, this is the one that we don't for 30 people, we got 63. When it comes to rapid rehousing and permanent supportive housing, this is the one that we don't have control over. We were aiming for 30 people, there were only 16 places available for people. So we can scale this, staffing will make a difference. We started with a four person team that was geographically working on dignity village. I see I have two seconds left, I'll wrap up. That team then expanded to downtown Gainesville. Then that team expanded to a latch of a county by nature of the funding. Now as we get COC funding, we're asking the same four people to provide the same level of service across five counties in North Central Florida. So I wanted to acknowledge the need for permanent support of housing. The county's investment in that is going to be a critical part of what we can do to scale street outreach. Thank you. Thank you, John. All right. Do we have any additional public comment to the site? Oh, hey, Cully. Boo. Cully, Blount. I'm very glad you're working on this. I live like a few blocks from St. Francis. I'm very glad you're working on this. I live like a few blocks from St. Francis. So I see homeless movement all the time that a homeless person had an encampment in the creek right near my house right by the credit union. The other night someone said his campsite on fire. So they're facing a lot of stresses already. I just want to be sure I want to caution you to make sure of exactly what you're joining in with in the partnership with the city and get to the details because I'm concerned about the presentation I saw over there that talked about nighttime and this energy comes a lot out of the downtown redevelopment committee It's really focused on just sweeping the homeless out of downtown The presentation I saw was people in day glow a neon day glow this on night patrol waking people up and I Talk, you know somebody's already under extremely profoundly stressful situations, trying to get rest, and then something day-glow hovers over them and wakes them up. And for a particularly vulnerable person, that's a good way to some kind of Baker Act situation or a police encounter. So just be careful exactly what are the steps happening over the end of your partnering with. Thank you, Cully. Do we have any further public comment? All right seeing none all in favor of Commissioner Cornell just real quick You know, we heard from John that our efforts on permissible housing are right on. And we heard earlier that Scottish budget and sunrise are theoretically coming online by the end of 25. I mean, 16 rooms is not enough. That triples, quadruples, this has to be a real high priority for our staff to get those facilities so that we have more rooms to help with that. And so I hope our staff heard that. I know our departments work collectively all together, but this is a big priority of this commission in 2025, really making substantial move. And so that's a big piece of it. And I just wanted to say that again, because we kind of hurried through that part of the whole presentation to Dosey Doe, but that to me is a big, big piece so that we can expand that street outreach, which this board said was a high priority last year and continues to obviously be a high priority and they are highly functioning group of folks. I'm really grateful for them. So that's all. Mr. Prissy? Yeah, I guess to that point, I mean, I think I'm excited for those projects. And even those aren't enough. And they're taking forever. And it's not necessarily our fault totally, because we're stuck in a pinch point with funding and how that cycle has been. But I think we made that commitment for permanent support of housing many years ago, before I was even on the dius, and we're still not that much further along in terms of more permanent support of housing than we were that five years ago. So I think we do need to think about the ways in which we end that was in this recommendation support that we engage with the landlords. And I think, and those, I'll tell you, I've had lots of conversations with people who are doing, you know, housing support that are outside of the COC that are trying to get people placed that are working just through their own organizations to try to get people in placement. And, you know, some of the questions they have are things like how do they access that landlord, mitigation fund, you know, and of the questions they have are things like how do they access that landlord mitigation fund, you know, and those sorts of things. So I think there are things that we can do and that was in here but not explicitly said. So I guess I would also like for us if it's okay with the seconder for me to add that we come up with a plan when the COC comes back and the staff come back with planning, that they also come back. How can we begin to have more conversations with those landlords and service providers to create opportunities for landlords to step up and provide us with spaces? And what do we need to do to help them feel comfortable doing that? I'm good with that, and it says right here, establish centralized landlord engagement strategies. That's part of that situation. We know who the Section 8 folks are. We know who accepts vouchers. We have to say that we have to say that we have to say that we have. And I agree with you. Recommendations that staff can give us to save the section eight and other support from private landlords on four, 100%. And use and use are existing affordable housing funding to build more if we need to. Yeah, we have a funding source for that now. OK, thank you. All right, and I want to say I normally would have a lot to say about the subject because it's one of the ones that I work on a lot But you guys have done an excellent job of Discussing it and we have a hard hard stop to date three o'clock and we still have a good bit to get through so I I know y'all know how much I care about this so We're gonna take a vote now. I'll unveil with the motion signify by saying aye Aye any opposed like sign all right Thank you for all the folks that are here of the motion signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Aye. All right. Thank you for all the folks that are here. Thank you for your work on this. It is. It's very, very appreciated. And thank you. All right. So we are going to now move on to our, just talking about the sports event center. We have a sports event center. We have a sports event center staff update. And then we have a request for temporary use permit on the sports center also. So we can deal with sports events in our now. Chair, Tommy Crosby, Assistant County Manager. And I do not have a PowerPoint. What I do have is what you have in your background information. Ords of where we've been working for several months now on a review of sports center operations and how it's going. It is early on. We are just concluding the first full year of operations. But we believe that there was enough concern to at least look into the different aspects of the contract, talk with the operator, get information and find out where we need to go and how we're doing. So there are really three components the staff has been reviewing. One of them is the financial component and that's the part we've been kind of working on. It took a little more time to get to. We did a agreed upon procedure with CRI. What we were looking for, we did not do it completely not at what we asked for, what were to verify, complete this of records that the revenues coming in, we're going through the water fall that we call it or through the agreement as revenue should be transmitted down through the sports event center certain bills are being paid and then on the back end what's that net profit look like. I'll remind the board that in the original operating agreement the pro forma did not show the operating the sports event center breaking even for five years. We knew that was a long term commitment. We found an operator who actually this was an unsolicited proposal that was willing to stop loss any losses for that and any overages in the construction during the development phase. That operator has done that. The developer of the development agreement was complied with. The operator is not asked for any assistance with any relief from any of those obligations. So the cash flow has been steady, but we found they got it. Agreed upon procedures was that the operator was paying the bills, making sure they were paid, aesthetically funded any cash needed to be infused has been infused. The disappointing part that we found was that the documentation is pretty weak, record keeping wise. Sierra was unable to get a lot of documentation to support activities. There were a lot of variances in things like deposits for event rentals that then showed up differently on the general ledger that were in the bank statement. Some of those had timing issues, returns of deposits, and different reasons. It doesn't mean it's appropriate or adequate. So that's something, and at the end of our conversation, I'll kind of tell you where we are going forward with some of these things. So the audit procedure revealed a lot of weaknesses and record keeping, a lot of areas of improvement in that regard. Again, none of this puts our dollars at risk. These are the operators dollars. So that's between him and his management team so he's putting in millions of dollars or hundreds of thousands of dollars that's something that he'll have to to work on and figure out how to address having said that and we'll address the totality of what we're looking at the second piece was the performance piece and Jessica's here today if you have questions about that we do get our reports. We would like to see some improvement. Again, we knew going into this. It was going to take some time to get events to return. And what events are working, which ones are not, moving awake from local into what tourism is about. And that's bringing people into the area. You will find in your backup that was provided by tourist development department that over 50% of the events are bringing people from out of the area in. I mean, it is generating revenue, not at the pace that we had that was in the Victus Report originally, but it's still very positive. Several million dollars of new revenue is coming into the county, which impacts not only additional sales tax, which is kind of our piece of that pie. But also the reason we did this was not to generate additional tourist tax or sales tax. This was to generate economic improvement. And we are seeing an economic impact in that community or in Elatua County in general for people coming in. Another is some people here today some hoteliers and etc. that will tell you what a positive impact this is having. We've only have a you know before this we talk about sales tourist development tax. It's nice to talk about how good we do things but that's the ones we have the University of Florida football team and Gator Nationals and maybe the medieval fair, those are huge events that bring people from out of town to stay in hotel rooms. It's been a lot of money. And so that's the bulk of what we get. That's from. So this is a new piece to this equation that is bringing a lot of other off-weekend events if you will. Obviously it's hard to bring in tourists on midweek stuff. It's really a weekend center as far as that component goes. So we found that those are going in the positive direction. Again Jessica can address if there are concerns or things you want to ask about there. Not the pace we had hoped, but definitely in a positive, and we see things picking up. We're partnering with World Masters. We know that US Track and Field is looking at things here. So those are the kind of events we knew would take some time to get. Again, we're just a little over a year of full operations. In the last piece, this is your investment as a facilities maintenance. So of all the things that I monitor on the financial facility side is that we invest $30 million into a large structure. And we want to make sure over time that large structure does not fall in disrepair, it does maintain appropriately, that it's adequate to be, have items replaced. Part of our operating agreement is that contributions will be made to the asset management, long-term coverage, so that when roofing systems need normal replacement air conditioning systems that that can be flooring that can be accomplished within the budget without us contributing more to our asset that is being done as part of the operating agreement has been being made every month so Travis is here from our facilities department they're currently going out quarterly the contracts is, but right now until we get on our feet, we're handing over thousands of pages of warranty information from the developer, from the builder who built it, you know, so that one year builder warranty is come to a close now, so now we're looking at manufacturing stuff. So we want to make sure that's all aligned. If someone needs to get on a roof and look at the roofing system annually to to confirm the warranty on the roof. We want that done. So right now we're going out on a quarterly basis from a facility standpoint. We have one concern that we are being resolved and being handled. And that's the flooring issue. There are some areas of flooring that were put down that have some bubbles in it, but that is being handled through the manufacturer warranty. We've already working on that. So it's not still something coming out of our pocket or not being addressed. It is being addressed the right way. We also held some money back on the final draw to take care of some other issues that we are taking care of. So again, our contribution remains intact. Our investment rate remains intact. What we are doing moving forward, and I think this, my goal as it is within all things we do, including the budget, is to provide some assurance to the board that staff is paying attention, not asleep at the will, and we know what's going on. So the different departments have come together towards development, facilities maintenance, and my financial staff as well as my budget staff have come together, and staff will be working with the operator on improving those areas of reporting and making sure internal controls are put in place to ensure that our dollars are secure. And I think you'll hear from the operator today if you ask, they're on board and supportive but we're trying to accomplish. And the accounting world, its internal control questionnaires, it's building an internal control structure, separation of duties, completeness of transactions, making sure that when a ticket comes through the door, that it's recorded appropriately, deposit it correctly and goes through the contract like it's supposed to. Those are what are missing and I believe it is incumbent upon us to help with that. What we are doing is not their job, they're going to do their job and they're going to implement the controls they need to implement. But I do believe our job is to let them know where we see areas that we want to be reported out in a better format. So we want to be able to say okay track this track event came in last week what did it bring not only in terms of hotel nights economic impact but also what did it bring in terms of ticket sales and session sales? Can you we won't be able to track that through the operating agreement? What did it cost? Ty and these cost these revenues and cost to events as opposed to just going through a general financial statement? We think that's very important. It will help everyone understand which events are being successful which are not. Let me clarify that all events won't necessarily be successful. That is, I mean, they're a bad thing. There are opportunity revenues and opportunity calls that you don't want to lose. If it sits empty, you're not bringing any revenue in. So it may be an event they need to bring in just to get some cash flow coming in, get more recognition for the center, and it may not make a lot of money, but it may be a good time to do it if nothing else is happening. So I wanna clarify that we built this, obviously with a focus on track and field in the spring, we got a grant from the state to put an indoor track in. That was kind of the number one thing we talked about doing in that for the spring time. That commitment has been there. We opened the center early just to do that this year. So track and field indoor is still very much on what we're doing. And now we are seeing more external vendors interested. So the partnership is working. We need to clean things up and I think you can hear that today from others. That's your update. And if you have some questions from me, happy to answer them. Okay, so you wouldn't have any questions? All right, who else is here to speak to this? The operator probably would like to speak to Spain. Please, Spain? It's good to see you. Thank you, Tommy. Let me get you a special mind. We need to get you a special mind. I need to bring a little box I can fit in here. Madam Chair, any comments? And the funny thing is he's 6'8". And the basketball player, UF is 7'9". I stopped by practice and felt short the other day. Yeah, yeah. Now you know how I live my life. Yeah. Yeah. Welcome to my world. 7'9". Madam Chair and commissioners, I just wanted to be here today because obviously there's some disappointment in some of the findings that we came across with the exercise that we jointly went through with the review. Still here is your partner and want to make sure you guys are aware of that and it follows on me to correct some of these things in a reporting work with your staff so there's full transparency. So, but I think Tommy said all the things I think that came out of that and if there's any questions for me or I can add anything to I'll be happy to do so. But we're going to do what we need to do and that can range from, you know, stricter review to, you know, that we have to write people in place. And make sure this is a success for all of us. But if you have any questions for me, let me know. We do have a couple of questions. Commissioner Prisya. Hi. I guess I just want, it's more, it's a little bit of a comment, a little bit of a question, but I guess I appreciate you step forward as a private provider willing to partner with us and brought forward something that I think is making a big impact in our community in a positive way. I think that being a private provider sometimes the level of accountability, the level of transparency, and the level of expectation and reporting can be quite shocking or a little bit of a challenge to swallow. I don't know that we articulated quite the level of detail that was going to be required early on. I guess my question is, does it feel like you understand it now? The lessons learned and you feel like it's going to be not too difficult to implement the controls and the new systems that will be necessary in order to fulfill public records requests and also just maybe a quarterly reporting similar to facilities so that we can keep track of the projects and how they're going. Right, yeah. I mean, obviously when you write an agreement, the public partnership we had, it's not always easy to cover every scenario in an agreement. Then this facility is complex. There's multiple different venues, different things happening in there at the same time. So the oversight of that is more complicated than just a single use. We're going to make some changes. I think obviously in a private sector, it comes at a cost, the more oversight and labor you put on it. We're going to go a 3D exercise with your staff to come up with new ways of have oversight and procedures and you know we're committed to be part of that. So I think after you know almost in the spring of be two years since the early opening we learned a lot and we're going to apply that and move forward. Awesome. Thank you. My only other question, I guess, is with regards to the coordination and marketing, how are you feeling about the two years in about where we are with marketing and communications and response? I know we have, of course, the international event coming in the US track and field, but I'm just sort of from a private sector investment perspective, does it feel like it's on track with regards to how it's performing? Well, I think with sports, the sports component of the facility, I think the large tourism events we have gone through a season of, you know, people calling us to be able to host their events there. So a lot of that, the towards the men, so we rented the third party operators. And this last year we went through and discovered that there was many that ran a great events and tournaments and some to didn't. So the first couple of years will be through some of the ones that we don't want back and we invite the good ones back. So from an advertisement on that, I think it's just we, you know, we have a pipeline of people who have won the opportunity. I think one of the challenges we've been up on is how do we do non-sporting events in there. As the private operator debacks this, I'm dependent on some local revenue from local programming to pay the bills. And if we do all tourism, then that balance is not there. We're building our programs. I think it's, you know, we're close to double our kind of participation in our second year, here, second season. So I think that's going good. But I think the big item that we could advertise more is the non-sport, but how do you fit that into the schedule? And is the facility, it's not a conference center, so it's a little different than a true, you know, meeting space. But we're going to do what we need to do to fill the calendar. This next year is exciting because a lot of things are moving in the right direction. I think 25 is going to be the year where we hopefully go positive. Hope that and then hopefully it just be better from there. So. Well, thank you. Thanks for your continued diligence and your willingness to keep moving forward. I know it's not easy and I know we all have disappointment in the details of the transactions and the reporting but I think overall the performance of the facility from what I'm seeing is delivering on tourism dollars, it's delivering on being a space that we can be proud of and it's delivering on bringing in the types of events and programming that we want. I would love to know ways in which we can get the word out about that in those non-sporting events. So if there's materials or if there's some kind of, you know, marketing stuff that we can share because we're often in spaces between the university and the chamber and others where we can interact with businesses and organizations that may be looking for space, be great to know what facilities are available, how they're available, costs and things like that. So as commissioners, we can help get the word out as well. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Thank you. Commissioner Cornell. Thank you, Madam Chair. Before I get to you, say I want to ask Jessica a couple the backup I thought. Could you give me kind of a summary of, you know, from a bed tax perspective and an economic impact perspective, what are you seeing? Of course. So in your backup was a report that we ran just based on the hotel reporting that's provided by the operator. What we see is they're tracking with improvement in our second year. As you see, they had six months of hotel reporting that we were able to call upon for this. They have done close to 19,000 rooms in that time period. How I calculated the economic impact is just based on a multiplier of what we can anticipate the value of each room. So I think that's a little more reliable than trying to estimate we have 1.8 people per room or someone has two children and two adults in a room. So we use that number of $325 as a multiplier per room. Some of that is the cost of the room. Some of that is the other spending that the visitor would do at retail restaurants, things like that. So to just review. Well, I was just gonna say that I read it correct. That last year, compared to this year, was 8,617 rooms versus 18,957? Correct. I mean, that's a massive improvement and a massive increase from really the first partial year to where we are now shows a huge improvement. Correct. And so even that number of the 18,957 is six months of reporting. So I just got the August numbers and we still have four more months to get. Right. And then how is a Lachua County doing with regards to bed tax receipts compared to prior couple of years. So overall our bed tax receipts are up again. This past year we were at 8.2 million, which was the first time we ever surpassed 8 million. This year we're estimating another increase. I think we're just under eight with 10 months of receipts already. Is it fair to say this will be the best bed tax year ever in Elatua County and last year was the best bed tax year ever in Elatua County? Correct. Okay, thank you, thank you, Jessica. I mean, commissioners, when I look back at kind of step back just for a minute and why did we do this and why did Jolene get to present a fact around the state with regards to what we did? It checks all the boxes. It's like this is really working. And then do have a private partner in Sain who's literally backstopping the operations as he's going through growing pains. I just want to say and I just want to you, thank you for what you're doing. I know you're going through some struggles with your operator that you're working with. And what I would say is, listen to Tommy. I'm an auditor by trade. And when Tommy says, here are some internal controls. And this is, we need Gap Financials. To me, that's what I'm looking for as a county commissioner. Gap Financials, internal controls in place for your benefit, really. And I know we've had a number of discussions about this. I want to publicly just say thank you for, for really being a big part of the county's consolidated record bed tax year last year. And it's looking like another one this year. I appreciate our staff doing quarterly reviews of the facility. Every time I go into it it is beautiful and continues to be beautiful. I know we are celebrating the 50 years of El Outra County Fire Rescue at the end of this month and it's an amazing place to do that. I really appreciate the work that Steve's doing as we kind of look into next year and the world masters and hosting that event. And you said you're going to make some changes so I take you for your word. I appreciate that. And my final, I would be remiss if as an auditor I didn't think April and her team because that's thankless work I can remember going in and trying to do agreed upon procedures and having a client say why do you want to know that and say oh we just want to we have to and so thank you for that work it's identified some areas that I think saying can really make some changes which which will be good for everybody. So that's really all I have, so did you want to comment on? No, thank you, I'm here, I'm not going anywhere. We appreciate you being here. Thank you. Sure partner, thank you. Yeah, and his phone said short time. It's really serious, thanks to your great. Yeah, yeah. Commissioner Wheeler, did you have a copy? Just, what about a big concert event? All it would take would one big name concert in that place. It would help probably get us through the year. We have looked into that and there is, I would say, a significant investment in these we've made into the acoustics. OK. We didn't have those funds when we first built the facility, but we have some folks that are looked at the facility. They kind of give us some ideas of what is needed. So we have looked into it. If you get the right person, everybody's going to be yelling so much. You wouldn't know that the sound wasn't good anyway. You know, I mean, you know, that you put it in anyway. But yeah, no, we you put it in any way? No, we put it into it. Yeah, good. Thank you, because I think it's something that you know, might really save us in a lot of ways too if we can get that address. That would be a good way to fill in on Friday before football again. Exactly, exactly. Exactly. And I don't know when Jessica, I don't know when you have to do another report from Europe, but you guys, what we see in the tourist development council every time we meet is remarkable. So they are ready to share whatever they've got and will blow your head when you're ready. Because the economic growth based on what we're doing in this community is really impressive and they have the data to put it there in plain English and black and white multi-color and just a matter of fact. But you know if you all are ready at some point to get that presentation from her, she's already always ready. Uh, Commissioner, Lizzie, I have to ask a quick question. Is that something that will, like, you have a plan to regulate? You could regularly come to us and do sort of presentations. And since we'll be wrapping up the tourist development and be able to see the total numbers, like we did last time to talk about possibilities, infrastructure grants, other things, is that something that will be done once the full year is complete? Okay, great. Okay. We are getting really close on time, but I did want to ask, was there anyone else here that was hoping to speak today on this item? If so, just come forward briefly. How my name is Adam Anderson, and I'd like to comment on the event center, and I'm Adam Anderson and I'd like to comment on the event center and I'm a hotel year and I'd like to say what a tremendous impact the event center has had on our county and how it's paramount to the infrastructure that we're building as a county. Tommy said earlier how dependent we are on you on UF for tourism and that's slowly but surely going away as we build things in high springs, a latcho, a Jonesville. This will allow us to continue to build things with the bed tax dollars that it generates. We'll be able to possibly use the copper site, build things on the east side. So while it's great for now, it's tremendous for our future. And I haven't seen anything but positive things, as a citizen and as a hotelier from the event center. That's it. Thank you. Thank you Mr. Anderson. I appreciate that. I'm probably the most enthusiastic hotelier in the community. I'm Rebecca Lamb. I'm with the best Western Gateway Grand. I have a picture of my phone of me hugging the event center. Okay, because it's been a game changer. I was here back in 2000 and we had maybe what, 20 some hotels. And the business was being full and during football games, we had to push everything to Lake City and we had to push everything to Lake, you know, O'Cala. But then I come back and there's so much, so many more hotels and not enough business. And I was like, stop building hotels. But then you gave me the event center. And now it's a game changer. I have business in January. Never had business in January. All the way through March and now this incredible event that's coming up in 2025, I could not be more excited. I can't believe how much more business it's brought to my hotel. And I just want to say thank you, thank you, thank you. Keep it coming, that thing is amazing. And I'm so grateful. Can you share your name, please? Rebecca Lamb with the best western gateway grant. I didn't catch it. Thank you. So excited. I can't wait for next season. It's coming. All right. Thank you, Rebecca. Any further comment on this item, please? How are you doing? Dean Lockley, I'm from the townplace sweet hotels. You got another hotel here. I just want to say that as far as the growth over that first year, that first year, I honestly didn't get that many rooms from anything going on. We were a little bit farther away. They weren't that interested. But for next year, I'm already getting January, February, March. I've had more people call about next year's track and field season than I did all of last year of the year before. So it's definitely going to be a growing thing as it goes along. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Lockley. All right. Anyone else? Benjamin Watkins, a bachelor of county resident, and also a hotelier as well. Just want to add on to what my colleagues have said as far as the impact economically and bringing tourism and tourist dollars, tax dollars, into the community. The hotel that I'm at is a little bit farther away, so I don't see the direct impact of folks coming to that facility. As much as I see the impact of the rooms that fill up that side of town push everything that would normally be on that side of town over to the other areas of town that wouldn't normally have that impact. So just because it doesn't necessarily directly impact every single hotel, it does because it is pushing other business and other dollars out into other parts of the town. So with AC Marriott Hotel just across from the university. But yes, couldn't, couldn't be more proud to have that here and to be part of all of the impact that it does bring to Elatio County. So thank you guys. Thank you, thank you Mr. Walters. Okay. Anyone else? All right. Thank you. Well, we will conclude this item then and move on to our public hearings. Our first thank you. Thank you all very much much and thank you all for coming and sharing your thoughts our first public hearing is a request for temporary use permit for outdoor athletic events for the World Master's Championship. Madam Chair this is a Quasadu Digital matter the others are legislative have our Quasadu Digital Statement and then then we will ask for parties and take, um, ex-parte communication. Mount here. Anyone wishing to testify or present evidence during this hearing will be sworn in prior to speaking through the chair. All speakers may ask questions, seek clarification and respond to comments or presentations. Anyone participating or presenting written materials to the commissioners for consideration must ensure that a copy of such materials is provided to the clerk for inclusion in the board's official record of the proceedings. Florida law requires that county commissioners decisions on in a quasi-judicial action be supported by competent substantial evidence presented during this hearing. Competent substantial evidence means that the board's decision is based on enough credible evidence that a reasonable person could agree. Persons presenting opinion or factual testimony must, may rely on factual information in the record to support the testimony. Opinion testimony must be given by persons qualified to give such an opinion. In a moment, the clerk will ask for persons other than staff in the applicant who wish to participate as parties to identify themselves and explain to the board whether they believe their parties. Parties are people who may be more directly or more substantially impacted by the board's decision today than by the public at large. The board grants you party status. You'll be permitted a reasonable opportunity to present testimony and evidence and task questions. Otherwise, you'll be permitted to testify as a member of the public. And I don't believe we have any party requests on this, but we can ask if anyone wants to be considered for party status at the hearing. Okay, Madam Chair. I don't recall if she asked if any of you have had any x-parteig communications. No. No, no. Okay. For any of those that are here as parties that would like to present if you would stand and raise your right hand. One, I'm going to vote for you to do you solemnly swear or affirm that the testimony you're about to give is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Yes. Thank you. Madam Chair, after thorough review of the the backup I'd move staff recommendation Second Madam chair, we do have one minor revision. Okay. I like to show if I can have the overhead With the minor revision with the minor revision that hasn't been chaired yet. We're getting there. The fourth coming. If it doesn't show Madam Chair it is to condition number one, revising the date from the 23rd of March to the 20th. I was going to suggest that Madam Chair moves that recommendation with that revision. Second. Okay. We have a motion in a second. Do we have any other comments? Did you have any further comments? Okay. Do we have any public comment to the motion? Seeing none, all in favor of the motion, signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed, like, sign? Congratulations on 20 years, good presentation. Thank you, little. Okay, I'm not quite there yet, but. Oh, that was bad. That was bad, yeah. Oh, that was bad, I tried. Yeah. All right. Yeah. Yeah. All right. 12. 12. That's also pretty admirable. Thank you. Yes. All right. Yeah. Yeah. All right. We'll move on to our next item, which is an adoption hearing for amendments to the ULD seed landscaping requirements for new developments. Thank you, Madam Chair. Ken Ken McMurry Growth Management Department. This is an adoption hearing for the ordinance for many of the United Land Development Code. The landscaping requirements. Yeah, that's dependent. We haven't made any changes since we have reviewed this. How have we ever happened? Yeah, have there been any changes since we previously reviewed this? There have been some revisions in that time. We've worked with our stakeholders in development community in the intervening time. But I mean, by and large, it's consistent with what you've seen. But I'm happy to go into as little or as little detail as you'd like. Yeah, I would like to know the changes. Yeah, if you could. I didn't notice that there was significant changes. Yeah, if you could review any changes that are of new. Okay, I mean, so this there's, you you know, really nothing here this change, you know, with the sequence of events. This was authorized for advertising this public hearing and it has been properly advertised. The motion was to proceed with the amendments. We've had extensive interaction and feedback from our development community, the public, and we've worked with industry and academic experts. The Landscape Code applies to new development and redevelopment. It's the minimum requirements for landscape design, plant selection, installation, and maintenance in the unincorporated county. And we've organized conceptually these revisions since there are such a number of them in these categories of resilient landscapes urban forests, urban heat island, compact development and process. So I will just briefly touch on the highlights of these. Resilient landscapes, we have a new subsection that covers things like water conservation, encourages ground covers and soil amendments, prohibits turf in certain instances to reduce irrigation and maintenance and damage to trees. We have low impact design techniques required for certain size developments with more than 40 parking spaces. Credit for existing plants have been clarified to try to encourage using existing trees and vegetation rather than planting new and irrigating new plants and plants and vegetation. We've given some flexibility for tree installation sizes to reduce irrigation. We have given some clarity to tree pruning and how that's done. Turfgrass installation, we have a biodegradable netting requirement. For urban forest type issues, we've got requirements for species in genus diversity, for a healthy urban forest, for a new requirement for 75 percent native species, for tree sharps and ground covers. We've incentivized and encouraged edible species and what are called keystone species and given a new definition of that those are the species that tend to be more significant in an ecosystem that a lot of other kinds of species depend on. We've updated our tree list for removing low quality and invasive. And legal bronzing in palms, we've worked extensively with the stakeholders and with the industry experts to put forward a strategy for dealing with this issue that's a real problem with this disease in Florida and the Southeast. That a maximum of 10 percent of the proposed trees can be of these palm species that are on the IFAS list known to be hosts of it, of lethal bronzing diseases, disease, and require that they be inoculated, show proof of inoculation, and have a management plan for ongoing protection. And we think that that's a step forward in addressing this situation. Again, in pre-installation, we've got some flexibility for that. We've given clarity on the minimum sizes for street trees, parking islands, specimen trees, shrubs, requires ever green or non-disguous. Solar facilities, we have flexibility for tree locations surrounding solar facilities in parking areas. Tree canopy coverage, we've worked to try to simplify the provision of that to make it more streamlined and just give a greater emphasis on using trees to shade buildings. To installation, we've got quite a bit of new detail for things like root zone volume and the width and depth of the tree planting areas, the distance from impervious surfaces and buildings, and how to deal with planting trees in constrained areas. We've got some graphics that graphically correspond to the code language in that. And new definitions that correspond for all these components of tree planting root zones and root zone media and root zone volume. We've looked at Gainesville's code and tried to adapt it so that there's some consistency there. Same with street trees, requirements for those in constrained areas. For compact development, again, we've got new allowance, it's both an allowance and requirement to acknowledge that some storm water basins and compact developments need to be walled and geometrically shaped and so forth. And so we've given some criteria of how that can happen and still be an amenity to the development. Buffers may require pedestrian connections and some clarity on landscaping and utilities and how they relate to each other in these constrained areas. And then for process, we've gotten a number of things just to streamline the code, make it kind of in some cases formalize the things that we have been working with our applicants on just so that those requirements are clear in the code. So those are the gist of these revisions and I'm happy to answer any questions on those. Here's the staff recommendation for the adoption of these revisions. Thank you. Thank you for your work on this. I appreciate the detail. Commissioner Prisya. Yeah. I just want to say a big thank you to. I know how much work staff did to make sure that they were doing a lot of outreach to the industry, to people who are affected by this, as well as to the environmental community to have conversations about their concerns. And so I just really appreciate the in-depth work that was done to get these recommendations to a place where they're at least a pill that everyone understands why we need to swallow. And in particular, I really appreciate the work to try to emphasize the goal of trying to protect existing plants and existing landscaping that's there rather than bringing in new because that's been one of the biggest challenges we've seen is sort of this moon scaping of spaces. So if we can get there with incentives, that's great. emphasis on turf-only and needed areas for recreation and for pedestrian needs rather than just having it as sort of a aesthetic choice. My only quick question was around the minimum and the maximum tree sizes. How are those determined? Were those determined based on conversations with nursery men and what we have available in typically it or is it based on the science of establishment what were the criteria used for the minimum maximums on trees? Both the science of establishment and we worked with our stakeholders basically the installers essentially that are that are interacting with these nurseries and they know it's out there in the available in the field so we took all their comments into consideration on that. And we feel like we can still meet our shade requirements with the size of trees given how quickly they establish when they're smaller. We do think that. And that has to do also with the new requirements for the tree planting root zone volumes and those kinds of things that to give them more space and impervious surface and healthy soil. Okay, thank you. Thank you, Commissioner Wheeler. Yes, thank you. I'm glad we got to see the presentation. We have to slow down so that we can give you proper respect for the work that you've done. And thank you. I had a question about the existing landscape plants and giving credit for the ones that are already on site. Is there going to be a distinguished, are you going to distinguish between plants that may be native as opposed to invasive or so is that? Yes. To be specified then maybe somehow, in terms of existing, is there something in there that's going to actually explain that in? Yes, Madam Chair, there is. I see it now, and it's showing me. So it's there. You did the work. It is there. And there's some criteria given for the kinds of things that will be considered, species, approximate opacity, and so forth. So that, again, these are things that we, in some cases, were trying to move toward but didn't have formalized like this in the codes. And now it's written. It's good. That's beautiful. But we always have a requirement to remove invasive species from a site. Thank you. Right. Thank you. All right. We'll convene as the land development regulation commission. I'll look for a motion. Move staff's recommendation and changes to our ULDC landscaping code. I think it's just as consistent with. And that's consistent. Yeah, with our comprehensive plan. Second. Second. So, Madam Chair, I would say that I appreciate all this work that we've done and I look forward to our next discussion with regards to the size of trees andlike sign? All right. That passes. We now reconvene as the Board of the Electric and Commissioners. Now look for a motion. Move the ordinance amendment in the unified land development code and authorize in the chair of signature. All right. We have motion a second. Do we have any public comment? Seeing none. All in favor of the motion signify by saying aye. Aye. Any post- like sign? All right. All right. Well now move on to the community development block grant, second public hearing. I'll just ask. Raulston, is anything changed much from the previous hearing of this? Madam Chair, commissioners, Raulston, Riyadeeka, community support services. So the answer to that question is no. This is the second of two required public hearings to put an application for the Florida Small Cities Community Development Block Grant. The first public hearing you direct the staff to apply for the housing rehab category and so staff has prepared the application so this is just an opportunity for the board and for the public to review the application provide any further feedback before we submit it to the state. Okay does anyone have any questions for Mr. Radhika? No, I know we did also provide feedback to sort of look into the other categories for the future and that's still, I know that's a ways away. When is the next grant cycle? It's usually every year. Okay, great. All right, well, I moved to task recommendations and we move forward with the application for the Community Development Block Grant. Second. Okay, we have a motion and a second for staff's recommendation. Do we have any further comment from the board? Do we have any public comment to the motion? I have just a question based on some of the discussion at the first hearing. If this one doesn't, I don't mean to be droopy, but if this one doesn't hit this time, are you going to still stick dogedly the housing rehab at the next attempt or consider other categories. I think Madam Chair, we already have standing direction to staff to consider the other categories in the future and to explore expanding our application thoughts around, or our issues and priorities around these applications. So I don't think it'll just be rehabbing the future. That was my understanding as well. so thank you. All right. All right. All in favor of the motion signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed like sign? All right. Great. We'll now move on to our fourth public hearing., proposed application for pathways to removing obstacles to housing grant. Yeah, this one. Madam Chair, commissioners, we're all from the community support services. So this is the required public hearing for a latch of kindness to submit an application to HUD's pathways to removing obstacles, housing notice of funding opportunity. So really this is a nationwide competition during the, this is round two actually. So during the first round there were about 175 applications and HUD only awarded 21 grantees throughout the nation. So this is really to help communities identify and remove barriers to housing production and preservation. So we've prepared an application. The application is available on the county's housing website. And the main project that we're looking for this grant for is to provide funding for the renovations at the sunrise in residence to provide permanent support of housing and affordable housing to residents in Elastra County. Okay, Commissioner President. I guess my only question is in the past when we've applied for these grants some of the grants have required that they're not reimbursable grants so we have to wait around for the money to show up and it's really caused a backlog and our ability to get the projects done in a timely fashion. Is that the case with this one? Or are we allowed to expend money and reimburse ourselves? So generally with HUD's competitive grants, it is reimbursement basis. They do allow for advances. If there's fiscal constraints. Great. It's part of the conversation I would think for grantees. Okay, that's fantastic. I just don't want to get us wrapped up in that same thing. We had with CDBG where we were stuck waiting. So thank you. Do we have any other comments from the days? Okay. Do we have any? To staff recommendation. Right. We have a motion to move staff recommendation. Do we have any further comment from the board? Do we have any public comment to the motion? Thank you. Another question. Does the action under this grant specifically look at particular categories of housing, types of housing, affordability, things like that, or is it just any... I mean, housing is being built. We're just not getting the types we need. So is that part of this removing obstacles? All right. Madam Chair, so to respond to that question, so this is a very broad grant and so it's really up to the applicants and the communities to identify those barriers. So that could be one of them is to how to incentivize development of different housing types. And you mentioned earlier this was a competitive grant and that there are now 21 applicants being considered. Is that, did I hear you correctly? No, previous. No, previous. Yeah, and in round one there were 21 grantees awarded. Okay. So for this, this is round two and there'll likely be, I think 30s, what HOD said, they're looking to award 30 grantees and the number of applicants will probably double in this round. OK, so we have a pretty good chance. Cautiously optimistic. Cautiously optimistic, I love that term. OK, all right, thank you. All right, so we have a motion in a second. All in favor of the motion signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed? Like sign. All right, motion passes. All right. It's now time for closing public comment. So anyone of the public that did not speak at the initial public comment, they would like to speak now. We have a public comment. All right. Kelly attorney comment. So Madam Chair, as the board is aware, the board sponsored charter amendment provision asking the voters if the charter should be amended to out large voting for county commissioners has been challenged, this morning the court ruled that the ballot measure will remain on the November ballot. That said, the judge ruled that the board should have used different ballot language. In essence, the judge ruled that to determine if the electors wanted out-large voting, the ballot should have asked the voters if they wanted single member districts. We disagree that voting no on a single member district ballot question would result in illegal amendment of the charter. In his order, the judge states that he is preserving the ballot vote results pending appeal. Upon your approval, the county will appeal that decision. Additionally, I'm asking that you authorize the appointment of special attorneys as selected by the county attorney to assist in this expedited appeal. We're in conversation with the attorneys at Carlton Field and in the resulting contact will be under the County Manager's authority. I do have a motion if you're inclined to go in that direction. My suggestion motion is to direct the county attorney to thank the committee for the recommendation that my suggestion motion is to direct the county attorney to appeal the temporary injunction order from the judicial circuit case number 01224 CA3073 and authorize appointment of special attorneys as selected by the county attorney. We have a motion and a second. Do we have any questions or comments from the board? Commissioner Cornell. Thank you, Madam Chair. Madam Attorney, as I understand it, the judge ruled that the board does have a right to place the question before the voters but basically disagree with our ballot language. That's correct, Madam Chair. And as I understood, when I read the ruling, the judge also ruled that he disallow the request for the supervisor election to inform voters that the referendum is illegal. Is that correct? Yes, Madam Chair. Okay, so basically if we appeal in the higher court agrees with our language, then the referendum would be deemed legal. Is that correct? Yes, Madam Chairam, Chair. If passed by the voters in November. Right. Okay. So, um, Commissioner, just I don't know if you're aware, but in Sarasota County, this exact issue, um, has actually been placed on the ballot by the five Republican County commissioners. Um, and it's just the exact opposite here. It's just a partisan thing. And so that ballot language in Cirrusota County, the at least the beginning of it, seems very, very similar to the language that our attorneys recommended. So it seems perfectly, it's not surprising that it's being challenged here, but it's not being challenged there. And I'll just leave it at that. Yeah. All right. Any further comments? Any public comment to the motion? All right. Seeing none, all in favor of the motion signified by saying, aye. Aye. Any opposed? Lake sign. Mamcha, that's all I have. All right. Thank you. County Manager, comment, do you have anything for us? Yes, Madam Chair. I have an issue regarding considering to be pick up within cities except for Gainesville, Hawthorne and Elachua. We have had a request for assistance by those cities. I have Mr. Olmos here if he could come up and explain what the issue is and what we would be taking on but we are asking if the board wishes to proceed. We will need to enter into our local agreements with the municipalities and to expedite the process. We're asking that you delegate me to be able to sign those agreements. Good afternoon. Go so almost, Solid Waste Director. Just a bit of a recap. As you probably know, we use two companies to take care of the debris management system in the county. We have one that monitors the collection and one that actually does the collection of the debris. A couple of months ago, we were notified by our current monitoring company that they were essentially getting out of the business and they were dropping off, dropping us and dropping many people in the state. So we're not the only ones in this situation. In order to make sure that we kept coverage, we enter into a piggyback agreement with TetraTech, which is the company that provides those services for the city of Gainesville. And at the meantime, we started doing our regular procurement process to get a long-term company in place. And that contract was approved by the board this morning. So we're no longer have a piggyback agreement with anybody. We have properly procured agreements with Tetra Tech and aspirate. The issue with piggyback agreements is the way I understand it is FEMA frowns upon piggyback agreements. They rather people have competitive procure agreement for FEMA reimbursement. I've been told that FEMA hasn't denied a piggyback agreement yet, but there's no guarantee that they will do the reimbursement. And one thing that I'm learning is that with FEMA reimbursement, there's no guarantee about anything. I mean, you're only going to get a reimbursement, you see the check in front of you. That being said, we do the best we can to follow all the guidelines that FEMA puts in front of us. So that's the issue. We, a lateral county we got our two properly procured agreements. No piggybacks were okay. The rest of the municipalities are not in the same situation. So they have piggyback agreements with us. They may, they may not get reimbursed by FEMA. If we take responsibility for the entire county, there's a better possibility, probability that the reimbursement will happen. It's no guarantee, but there's a better probability than using the piggyback agreements. It's a substantial commitment. The current estimate for taking care of the cities, and this is the initial estimate, and it's likely going to go up, we're talking about $1.2 million to take care of the cities and this is the initial estimate and it's likely going to go up. We're talking about $1.2 million to take care of those cities. And as a man here said, we would need to enter in interlocal agreement with all of the cities and spell out how is it going to be done. And there are some nuances that need to be negotiated. You probably hear about the issues with the gated communities. The more you get into those things, the more complicated it gets with FEMA. So that is the bottom line. That if we take care of the cities, the probabilities of everybody getting reimbursed is higher, but it's not guaranteed. And the number is going to be at least $1.2 million or higher that we could potentially no get reimburse for. But we need to do it. Absolutely. No choice. Yes. Yeah. Commissioner or no. Thank you. So as I understand it, Michelle, you need authorization that we help Waldo, mechanopoe archer, high springs, and newberry because Gainesville, Hawthorne, and Alachua are covered. Is that correct? Yeah, Gainesville is covered together on contracts. Hawthorne has requested any assistance. So I'm assuming the damage was minimal and Alachua is doing their own work with their own private hauler. And can we reach out to Hawthorne to ensure that that's true before we can do that? And we can include them and just say in the event that they reach out to us as needed. And I would say that I'm also working with our federal legislative folks, as well as I've spoke to Representative Camich yesterday and so they are going to do what they can to make sure that because we're stepping up to assist that FEMA will make any exceptions that they need to as far as us taking responsibility for municipalities. Yeah, so another area as we've talked about where we represent all the people in the Lachor County. We got to take care of all of our cities and so I would move the recommendation that Lachor County take responsibility and request FEMA reimbursement for those, I guess it's six cities if you include Hawthorne. And if you would check Waldo, you know, just on the list. Waldo, Waldo is included, yes. A brain is it. Waldo McNeoppy Archer high springs a newberry Hawthorne. Perfect. Perfect. And LaCrosse. And LaCrosse. That's the one. LaCrosse. Seven of the nine. Seven of the nine. Yep. Right. That's what you needed. Yep. And we had a second on this? Yeah. OK. We have motion on a second. We have Commissioner Prisidh, do you have a comment? I guess I just want to. I think I did ask, and I think it could be useful for folks. If and when are debris cleaned up folks after this hurricane are able to publish, if they have it like a schedule or priorities or areas of the county like These two weeks were focused in this area these two weeks were focused You know, we're getting a lot of calls a lot of texts a lot of emails about this issue and we are urging everyone to be patient But I think an under being able to give them more than like sometime in the next 30 days They're gonna show up would be helpful to people Because they're I mean obviously with the circuant, it's a whole new thing, but they're just getting really stressed out by I guess staring at branches and trees on their curb. So if there's any ability to ask our providers to publish some kind of schedule, it could be helpful. Yeah, I'm sure my understanding is that the information it's going out, when we know the contractors is going to go there, we're notifying people, but the notification says within two or three weeks. So it's not that specific. And unfortunately, as we all know, Milton is coming tomorrow and that's going to change everybody's plans. And that's one thing that I want to just mention although it's pretty self-explanatory. It doesn't matter if we get a direct hit from Milton or if it goes out, it is going to impact what we're doing here significantly. I think the point of Milton is the winds are going to come from a completely different direction. So wherever we have compromised ground we're going to see trees go down. One question that I've had several people being very concerned because they purchased the paper bags to get rid of their waste end, and now they're all falling apart in the rain. But those are not being required to get rid of waste right now. The bags that are. God waste bags. The relief. Well, yeah, the our contractors are going to pick those up and just I'll take this opportunity to clarify that issue. So if it's loose debris or if it's anything on a paper bag, the, uh, Ashbridge, the contractor, they're going to pick those up because those are going to be used for composing and they're using mechanical devices to kind of just pick stuff up, pick this stuff up. If you're putting leaves or twigs on plastic containers, GFL is picking those up because those are manually being picked up and dumped in the truck. OK, yeah, thank you for that clarification. OK. All right. And motion, we took comments, sorry, public comments, saying none. All in favor of the motion signify by saying I Any opposed like slime all right did you have anything else madam manager? Okay Commission comment Mr. Cornell I'm only comment is I know Janet mentioned we'd have an update at one is there any additional information That's changed that anyone can share with us? Mod does Mark know or does Michelle know? Mark's typing. Mark? Any update from Jens updated 11? Are you aware of? At one? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. A weather change or I am not aware of it. Frankly, Madam Chair, I'm dealing with five different reporters who are calling about the single-member district issue. Oh, man. But I will be happy to forward you all the latest. OK, yeah, Jenna just mentioned she thought she was getting an update on the hurricane at 1. And if there's any significant change, it's just one of us to know about it. If not, then we're fine. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Yeah, I don't see anything on our emergency management page with any updates. So I think where things are pretty much the same. All right. Thank you. Do you have anything, Commissioner Chessett? No, I do not. All right, Commissioner Wheeler. Just new artwork in the room. Yeah, the Laura Pregnian. It's really nice. It's very beautiful. All right, Commissioner Prisya. Nope, just stay safe. Stay safe. I am a text did go out from Clay Electric to expect power outages and to expect them to be for days. We do know that from our power providers that resources are spread then, if we lose power, be prepared for long power outages. That is just, let's hope that it doesn't happen, but do be prepared for long power outages. Please do not be prepared for the hurricane by the end of today. And I hope that everyone stays safe. Please follow the county at Lachua County Ready.com. Please follow our disaster. Our emergency management site on Facebook and all of those things and stay up to date with good quality information about what's going on with the dorm and with FEMA and with everything else because there's all kinds of crazy stuff out there. And yeah, and please introduce yourself to your neighbors and offer to help them if you can. And with all of that, we'll adjourn this meeting. Thank you, everybody.