now let's see you know question for you i don't know
got up back i'll call it
it's all relative oh god oh god she's holding
I've been lucky do you have Good afternoon and welcome to the Escambia County Tourist Development Council uh meeting today is
April 15th hope you got your tax returns in uh it is a little bit after 3 o'clock apologize for the late but if um Danielle will you would please call the role james Reeves here ashley Hoffberger here shirley Cronley here david Bayer here matish Patel should be on teams um Charles Bayer here Jennifer Bayer here Brad Molenex here and Jason Nicholson here thank you we do have a
quorum uh so the meeting is officially called to to order um was this meeting properly advertised yes in the Pensacola News Journal on April 11th great thank you um all right first item on the agenda is uh public forum uh we have a lot of people here today but I only have one person signed up to speak at public forum uh and that's uh James Sipkins yes
I have people signed up to speak to other subjects but for public forum um and Tom I got your your text earlier um unfortunately public because we have a full house and a full agenda we can't do a presentation unless you want to wait until the end of the the meeting we'll be happy to take a presentation but we need to get through the agenda items otherwise we have to limit the public forum to 3 minutes understood thanks
for review you need to give them the essence of it near three minutes or so okay yeah commodore Sam all right well thank you all for hearing me this afternoon my name is James Simkins i'm commodor at the Pensacola Yach Club and I'm coming here today to request uh funding participation for our 2025 sailing and riata program and as you will see later on in the presentations uh we have a number of events which draw regional and national participation and so we are seeking uh funds up
to $129,000 uh and this will be covering five to seven of our larger events this year we actually have a program every year with multiple events um but this year we have some that we and we'll have more next year as well that we think are worthy of consideration for public participation um for the full year we'll have 31 and a half total event days we have another 20 and a half event days remaining um and between uh participants their family uh and other persons attending that event
we expect that for 2025 we'll have under just 4,000 heads and beds for all these events combin events combined for the events remaining this year uh that will be just over 3,100 uh heads and beds so we are seeking assistance that will cover expenses including event insurance publicity and marketing for these events uh temporary infrastructure to support large crowds on site uh support for race management uh participant food uh swag and handouts uh as well as entertainment for some of the larger events we have a long history of actually providing
uh events in Pensacola Bay since 1920 so over 100 years doing these events we've gotten more and more sophisticated if anybody remembers in 2018 we actually hosted a youth riata that attracted nearly a thousand total visitors over 14 days that generated calculated revenue of over $1.5 million for Pensacola sports that event alone actually we brought the American Magic Leadership Team for a kickoff event with that one event that set off a series of chain of events this town was able to take advantage of that led to American Magic being installed here on base on the bay today
so we would like to grow in soph sophistication and scope and so that's why we are seeking these funds any questions thank you so much and are there any questions mr reeves and if you would please uh everyone when you speak make sure your microphone's on and you speak into it thank you do I have it now i hear you yes sir um I just want to kind of emphasize American magic has been the catalyst for this but give us an idea of the 52s how many people are on those
boats and how many people do they bring with them each boat or the total of the boats that come and this the these are some of these people can have already come but there are more coming like this oh am I now alive there we go hot mic so the GL52s which you've seen in the bay uh for the past few months and most recently this weekend each one of those boats has a total of 15
crew and you can expect about a one and a quarter one and a half person multiplier on top of that so we're talking about a few hundred people uh just for that event that ran four total days probably in terms of event nights uh more on the shoulders we had one of the boats from San Diego here all the way from mid December till now um I'm sure making a spectacle to themselves in Palifox Street all this time so that gives you an idea of the economic benefit we've had youth for Godas uh we just had a great one this past weekend that brought uh 75 children and their families uh and filled the bay and participants as far away
as Switzerland California Wisconsin New York etc so a very good draw and it only grows from there councilman thank you Mr chairman um just a quick question so it's not a lot of money i mean a lot of their requests are much bigger than this have you gotten funding from TDC before for events or for any of your activities this will be a first for us okay um is there more do they not need to fill out like a request like
these other entities okay they do and they they have submitted one to the county this past week uh not in time for it to become an agenda item okay uh to be distributed at the meeting okay usually due by April 1st right typically aren't they typically due by like April 1st for the requests for Yes to get into the annual budget process okay yes so did they did you all submit one to get within the annual process before April 1st no no no we're new to this process so we are learning okay thank you thank you
any other comments or questions is this something that would go through us or through Pensacola Sports or both what does that look like well it's a request for tourist development tax um and they've come to us so if if we want to direct them to Pensacola Sports I guess we could uh but they're here today yeah mr mr chairman if I may the discussion on that with Ray Palmer was that they have other funds that they could help us in reimbursement but it's it's um certainly well well helped uh we had that in 2018
uh but that was I think right around uh $2,500 uh with within this dynamic the number of events that we've had done this year historically we do multiple national North American and World Championships we've already had one of each uh that's not in this request we have several coming but as um some of the board members have seen we've got a very full slate coming in six and 27 but this is just for this end of the year and frankly we have not done well with press in that uh we had a fantastic marketing person who sadly passed and so we don't have the luxury of
1,800 hours of free work from Talbot Wilson which Mr reeves knows quite well so in that the dynamic that Commodore mentioned to try to do this better to get people more engaged and involved and we take the brand around so it's people obviously from Switzerland around kids' past event uh we think we can do better wonderful thank you y Councilman thank you Mr chairman um I think it would just be helpful to see like what your other sources of revenue are and I guess with the document that we need with your request that's what we really need
to see before we can make any decisions so be helpful to see that thank you we look forward to you taking a look at that we submitted that in the last few days okay thank you wonderful great we appreciate your time yep any other questions or comments so will this come back on at the next agenda then for us to vote on if if they are submitting the application to the county for us then yes we will put it Okay on the next regular meeting okay thank you great thank you and Tom since you did speak I'll need you to fill out a form and get it
to Danielle please thank you uh I don't have anyone else signed up for public form is there anyone here from the general public who would wish to speak today do anything tourism related see no one jump uh this is a full house i don't think we've ever had this many people at our meetings before so welcome everyone uh next item of business is review and approval of uh board meeting minutes uh you have the February 18th 2025 meeting minutes and the February 13 2025
special meeting minutes they were distributed in the packet i move for approval of both sets so we have a motion from Mr reeves a second from Councilwoman Breer are there any changes it's Councilman thank you Mr chairman um as I read over these minutes especially the ones from the special meeting it reminded me of when I was in college and I worked for the student newspaper and we talked about uh what a news story was versus what an editorial was and if you editorialize too much
then it becomes not a news story anymore and I really think our minutes need to kind of give the facts of what we did and if you look at the special meeting under the let's see the General Chappie James Foundation Memorial Plaza uh under like the fifth paragraph it says there's a sentence in there it says the TDC initially recommended a funding allocation of $750,000 which was subsequently rescended amid mounting skepticism over whether the project would serve
to attract the intended tourist traffic um I think that's a little bit of editorializing um I think our minutes you know when I when I became a city councilman I used to read the minutes and think well there's not much information in here why is there so little information it's because most of it's caught on the video and so if somebody wants all the details of what we do as a council they go watch the video if they want to see what we voted on um not necessarily while the discussion was um they would go to the video to see that my problem with this is that there's
just bits and pieces of what we said in there there's no motion listed in here for what our original motion was there is a substitute motion to send the letter uh Commissioner Ashley Hoffberger did but there's no initial motion before that so we're not even capturing the action that we're taking in these minutes so for that reason I will not be supporting these minutes and I will vote against these until we get these correct thank you thank you any other comments objections um will we have a motion and a second if there no other objections
um please show them adopted show me show me as a voter no please as well since we do have one uh objection go ahead and take the vote i'm sorry i said is that objection to both sets or just one just the well I would imagine it' be both i've only read the second one in detail to find these particular issues but if I'm sure that the first one is written similarly i just think we need to be more succinct in what we So the answer is you object to both yes
all right if there are no other objections then please show them adopted and I will get with staff to talk about the minutes thank you for that feedback uh next item on the agenda is status of funds available uh Stephan Hall you're hiding in the back um good afternoon council members my name is Jeremy Paglegan i am a senior budget analyst with
the Escami County Budget Office i'm here today to present the status of the TDD funds through March 2025 i believe the clerk's office has already provided you with a detailed breakdown of the expenditures as of the end of March 2025 FY25 collections including interest total 7,429,52 this compares to 7,587,04 in collections through March 2024 reflecting a decrease of approximately
$157,52 year-over-year to give you a clearer picture the total collections for FY25 through March represent 36.24% of the annual TDT budget which is set at $20.5 million on the expense side total expenditures through March 2025 amount to approximately $8.14 million finally the current TDT cash balance stands at $28.6 million through March 2025 thank you any questions or comments
thank you Jeremy all right moving on to the next uh section of our agenda uh requests the first item is the WF football stadium and we have uh Dave Scott and Dr martha Saunders here uh and some other speakers but they're here to present do you guys want to present and then have your your speakers or how do you want to It's probably best to speak let's do that present first great they might change their mind i don't know right well good afternoon uh I have read a lot about this group but I've never
been before you so thank you for uh hearing our proposal today and we look forward to sharing it with you uh building on the record growth of the past decade WF is proposing a stadium construction plan that represents a transformative investment for the University of West Florida and Escambia County the multi-use outdoor facility located on the WF campus will significantly enhance the
athletic department's capacity to serve students the broader campus community and Escambia County this facility will be a community asset that can serve as a venue to host band competitions outdoor concerts high school football games as well as other community events over a five-year period WF athletics has driven nearly $250 million in total economic output while the university drives
approximately 1.4 4 billion dollar every year our growth brings people to this community for both short-term stays in many of our hotels and longer stays as many of our students will become part of your workforce wf's athletic director Dave Scott is here to present the project i also have with me Howard Ready our vice president for university advancement who is
overseeing the fundraising for the project and Jeffrey Gerlick the university's controller who will answer any questions you may have about the funding model thank you for your time thank you as Dr saunders said it's an honor to be here today to present on the multi-use football stadium facility i'll go through some of the highlights from the application and then uh we can have speakers and questions at that point the Hall Center economic impact showed
over a 5-year period the football program had a total economic impact of 23.3 million along with the facility's construction would be over $124 million the initial program goals and baseline listed we were conservative we're trying to project the future after re reviewing our data we identified a way to uh adjust our baseline to include the spectators uh through using a program we also feel that this upped it to two 10,219 room nights that our goal of 20% to 12,263 is
still conservative but one we can achieve if you see u a slide here that shows just one game's visitors that came to football on a junior day we had a a couple that came from Naples a young man that was looking to go to school here had never been to Pensacola Florida before and had come to one of the games so it's able to attract visitors from all over the state in the Midwest the football stadium overview was increased capacity from 3,800 which is what we have now in a temporary facility that we have to re and set up most of the of the facility
internet restrooms the whole bit to move to around a 7500 seat facility that we um will grow and and the one of the program goals was to go to 40% was just to really 6,000 we think we can achieve more than that as we continue to grow as a university and as our athletic program grows um the multi-use stadium as Dr saunders has mentioned could be used for classics it could be used for bowl games that division 2 are starting to happen uh it could also be used for suites and clubs and conferences and events that might happen on campus or from the community
one of the things that we hope to do with the stadium is create a visitor center that would also attract for orientations people coming to campus create that central spot the front porch for the university that would also become a great opportunity for people to visit Pensacola this this presents a naming opportunity potential in this construction process media marketing opportunities uh we could do visit Pensacola advertisements from during our flowport broadcast uh as well as placing in prominent places on the athletic website video board PSAs and boilerplate
press releases that go along with the stadium construction the stadium budget is approximately 45 million which is 25 million of an internal institutional loan $10 million private gift and $10 million of fundraising what we're asking for is roughly 4% of the total project cost we feel like the stadium will be a transformational project not only for the community but for our our university as we continue to grow along with the potential at the improvements at the John R jones Park we think this will do a lot for development of NM Road we hope you will support your
university as we continue to plan for intentional growth and add to tourism in our area thank you thank you both uh do you guys want to hear from the speakers before we have discussion yes all right we have uh four speakers signed up uh I will start with Dr judy Bence our former university president welcome and Judy before you you start I I do want to recognize our former mayor and
uh House Majority Leader Jerry May Garden welcome thank you for being here today thank you Chair Bear and I appreciate uh speaking before uh the council this afternoon i think I want to tell you that being the mother of football at the University of West Florida nothing draws people like football from the season we started to today with a national championship in the middle
i have I've been at the was at the university for 40 years and I have never seen anything as transformational as football i am from Panama City i'm a Northwest Fidian i knew that football would be good but I never knew it would be this good for the university for the community for enrollment i was astounded at alumni the first few years who came back who had not been here in 30 years alumni in wheelchairs making their last trip to the university this is a reason football is a
reason for people to come back to the university we have tens of thousands of alumni and almost all of them like football um they bring their families they bring their friends they bring their kids and we know other the it it's it's just amazing to see it was amazing it still is when I look around the stadium the the field that we have now and I see people streaming in all walks of life all races all economic classes everybody has a common ground in football
so I think the stadium is the next level you have seen us fill up the baseball stadium you've seen us fill up the uh breachers that we have now and it is the next stage in growth facilities matter they matter to getting good football players they matter to people coming to see the game they matter to their parents when they're deciding on where their their uh uh players want to uh where they want to go it is very important in the next step of growth to the University of
West Florida and there is nothing that will draw people like football and a big stadium says you're serious i appreciate your help it will make a big difference and you will have some skin in our game and we will deliver thank you thank you Dr vince uh next speaker is Dick Appleard thank you Chairman Bear and commission members today I'd like to share a few stories of the heroes in our community and how you might be added to that list i'm Dick Appleard longtime
supporter of WF played basketball out there back when shorts were short um and I was one of the early supporters of the WF football as a boy I had the pleasure of going out with President Crosby out to see the campus it was in the middle of nowhere i couldn't it was a road trip to go out to the university it tells you how the community has grown to where the university is um there were heroes at that time judge Crosby Vince Wibbs Pat Groner and many others were heroes that helped
to make that vision come true years later that we were a two-year university when I went there and uh during the 80s um freshmen were added and the university became a four-year institution and if you follow the uh enrollment it just skyrocketed after we became a four-year university partially because we had great presidents I might add but our community heroes at that time were in the legislature and in the community to see that we were expanded to fouryear today I'm
here to support the WF football stadium but not my first stadium to promote in Pensacola about 20 years ago some new heroes came along named Stutter and O Sullivan Federman Whibs and others they challenged the Pensacola to invest in a community maritime park and baseball stadium there were a lot of people out there that doubted it would the ch would the stadium change our community would people would it revitalize our downtown Pensacola the answer was yes and so was the vote to build the stadium and we all enjoy it to this day in
2012 our hero just spoke Judy Bins formed the team to put together the uh football a lot of people doubted that she is the hero along with Darren who's a big supporter of it we have football and we have proven that stadiums do attract visitors fans families teams and students who stay at local hotels and eat at local restaurants but stadiums need heroes we have evidence that ballparks and stadiums change communities look at what happened in downtown Pensacola after the the Maritime Park
was built look at how it attracted business and and people and uh the community investment in tourism tax dollars has many different choices you can choose advertising you can choose events and you can choose a product a product like a stadium is something for real forever and it continues to draw uh and use those tax dollars properly in the future when we all cheer the WF National Football Championship there will be heroes on the field but there will be other heroes in the community
those who had the vision to see how a stadium on the WF campus could impact the community the university the visitors the teams and you all could be part of that team thank you uh next speaker is Dave Cleveland good afternoon Mr chairman good afternoon council members is uh my name is Dave Cleveland i'm a partner in High Point Hotel Corporation owner and operator
i don't know if your microphone's still on or if you'll just lift it up uh thank you my name is Dave Cleveland i'm partner in High Point Hotel Corporation owner and operator of several hotels in the Pensacola area however I come before you today wearing two hats uh first I am speaking to you as a friend and supporter of the university and second I'm coming to you as a fellow hoteler and bet tax collector having spent 20 years of service at WF with 10 years on the foundation board followed by 10 years on the board of trustees it was my pleasure to have a front
row seat as the university's growth continued over those many years uh it grew in um uh stature numbers and every metric imaginable all the while U WF's impact on our local economy continued to grow commensurately during my tenure on the BO it was also my great pleasure to serve on the football feasibility committee it was my pleasure to witness the birth of the program and its rapid rise to national prominence prominence and championship contention wf football is a fantastic
addition to the university as well as the entire Pensacola area and its impact both culturally and economically is undeniable however my unique perspective on this proposal lies in my day job as a local hoteler and tourism development tax collector as a local hotel operator I've seen firsthand the impact that WF has on our economy and more specifically on our industry i know from my own experience and I know several of you share that same experience that the university is generating substantial levels of room nights not only in the football
program but across all sports and across all academic departments and aspects of the campus i also know from previous discussions uh with many of you uh that the litm litmus test for approval of a grant such as this is the documentation of generated room nights that can show that the bed tax investment will grow the economic pie and cause bed tax collections to continue to rise i also know that in many cases the applicant doesn't or perhaps can't provide that
documentation in this case however you have heard the WF has documented well over 10,000 room nights annually annually just to the football program a number that will undoubtedly grow exponentially when the stadium is completed seating capacity has expanded and an energized and everexpanding alumni and fan base continues to be attracted to the games put simply more people in more seats will undoubtedly lead to more heads and beds for these reasons as an ardent WS supporter but
perhaps more importantly as a fellow hotel year and tax collector I wholeheartedly support this proposed grant and urge each of you to do the same your approval will provide for a sound investment of TDC dollars that will reap direct benefits to the industry for many years to come thank you for your time and attention thank you all right uh and our last speaker is uh Daryl Gooden uh yes sir my name is Daryl Good thank you uh Mr chairman for inviting us this afternoon really
appreciate it and uh I'm a lifelong resident of Pensacola and I actually graduated from UWF back in 1973 so uh I look around here there's probably some of y'all might have not even been born at that time but uh way back in those days we was kind of really out in the woods out there and uh nobody really knew university was out there and we always had a dream when I was going to school there and someday we would get a football program and it just went on and went on we never did we never did and then about 12 years ago when Dr bins uh came up with really the push to put a
a program together out there i was jumped right in as one of the original founders out there and you know really been pushing the program since then and uh it's you know most of what I was going to say has already been said tonight but you know we from a startup football team from the very beginning to winning the national championship in 2019 we really set an NCAA record for the the you know the such a small length of time from going from a startup to a to a national champion so
uh we we got a good program going out there and we just need to keep it going and uh you know right now we in a we call it a temporary stadium out there pretty much and uh but we've been had sellout crowds since the very beginning out there and uh in a new in a new stadium right now it would increase our ability to to grow our visitors and get them to come here and it enchants our uh game day environment with uh not only the uh opponents and our visiting fans but also
the students out there so here again we're all about putting heads in beds just like you are and uh really I just wanted to talk today to let you know that uh you know we've you know we've raised quite a bit out there to get it going and and uh I'm actually the uh uh I'm actually the investor that put up the $10 million as a gift and I just wanted y'all to know that I am fully in on this because I've got a lot of money invested in it myself you know matter of fact I think I got
all my savings and my life savings invested in it so I'm really in so if y'all will join us and and uh and help us out and put up some money I'll watch your money just like I watch my own and uh anyway I thank y'all for letting me uh come you know come talk to the to the board today and and if you can help us out be greatly appreciated thanks thank you so much and thank you for your generosity now you better keep winning those national championships
all right um we that is our last uh speaker that is signed up to speak to the subject if there's anyone else here who wishes to speak to the to the subject uh you may come up but we need you to fill out a form seeing no one jump uh open this up for discussion so their request is for uh $2 million and the packet has been presented open up for discussion council members down here oh I'm sorry first I forget more people behind
me we're always the one who wants to talk she was first and I'll go councilwoman thank you thank you um I actually think this is one of the most stable investments we can make um I think that all of us should be incredibly proud of UWF and there's no doubt that we see it year after year bringing more and more people i'm a proud graduate um my son's a proud graduate my daughter is there now my sister graduated my brother graduated in 74 just so you know so he came over when it was a two-year also
and we've been proud of it the entire time we've been proud of it watching and I remember my dad's big complaint about me getting a degree there was that if you don't have a school that has a football team then people won't know what your degree is worth and I know that sounds silly but the truth is that football alerts everybody to your school and it's not that it's all about football but it does bring that national spotlight and I think we are we're seeing the testament to what has happened uh with your vision and bringing it forward and I think that the fact that we're
only being asked for 2 million out of a out of a $45 million build goes to show that um we're just partners in this in a kind of incremental way but I think that I am fully in supporting this tonight thank you thank you Councilman thank you Mr chairman i got a I have a few comments um first of all I want to thank uh Mr gooden um as someone who heads a a nonprofit I you know we're always looking for people who are willing to give money and that's a massive amount of money that it's
uh it's great we really appreciate you stepping forward you as a graduate of the university you know I came to UWF in 1988 one of my fraternity brothers is out here sitting on the second row uh we were in the same pledge class and uh Sigma Epsilon fraternity i think our house was near where Chick-fil-A is now i like to say Chick-fil-A there's been other things that have gone come and gone but it's pretty much stayed um but that area has grown so much and it's it's because of the university so much has been driven by what's happening out there um when I came to
UWF I was uh a 17-year-old freshman i didn't turn 18 until I'd been there about a week in classes i never I went to orientation the I think a couple days before I started class i had no idea what to expect when I got there um just to give you a little background I had applied to several universities i was not the best student uh my SAT scores were not great and so I looked for like universities that I felt like I could excel in and one of my one of my criteria was that I was
a very nerdy uh kid in high school and one of the they used to have these college books they don't have those anymore you could put in criteria and look and see what was you know where you wanted to go and one of the criteria was the female to male ratio and as a very nerdy kid I was looking for a school that had more females than males so I'd have a chance of having a date so that was one of my criteria in addition to I wanted to study marine biology which of all the colleges I applied to UNCC Wilmington was one of the others Old Dominion University and Virginia
was another that was my home state i didn't want to go there anyway um I came down from Virginia and UWF had a mobile marine biology lab which when I got on campus never moved um it had broken down and did not move but I I learned some great things and switched my major a couple times uh end end up getting two degrees out there but we had to rally around soccer and I love soccer all three of my boys played soccer but is not something that draws in a large crowd of people football does um I was
a student when Martha Saunders made her first it's Martha Saunders part one or uh 1.0 when she was an extraordinary faculty member out there and I was the chair of the academic committee when we gave her the distinguished teaching award so you can imagine that I was quite excited to see her come back to the university uh for someone that had meant so much to the students out there um and you know I can say the same for her predecessor for Judy Bence um you know I had helped Judy early on when I was lobbying uh because I also served as a lobbyist for the University of West Florida
to help get money for archaeology which is also a very another valuable program we have out there at the university so much that happens in our city we can relate to the university and now with the addition of football I I think that we're drawing people back just like was mentioned alumni are coming back to do that they didn't we used to have the homecoming thing for soccer we just didn't get a lot of people um funny thing is when I worked there uh I worked for Morris Marks who preceded uh Judy and I guess Kavanaaugh was in between there um Dr kavanaaugh but when I worked for Morris he
was very academic he was not very as community focused as I would have liked to him him to have been and I feel like since that time Dr kavanagh may been a little too community focused but I feel like with Judy and now with Martha we've got the right blend and I always used to tell people that Judy was someone that you could that was fine having a beer with you because I went to the homecoming the homecoming at the soccer field and Judy was drinking a beer i never saw Morris Marks drink a beer anywhere i was just like "This is so cool i can have a beer with the president." So
um I feel like the groundwork has been laid in in such a great way despite what our governor thinks about our university we have an incredible university and everyone in here is a student i've had three students three of my all three of our boys have gone to the University of West Florida i've got one who's graduated he's working for the federal government now every day he comes in might not have a job so um that's kind of depressing but he he you know is using his degree the other two I've got a musical theater major who has pretty much done everything he possibly can in
musical theater he's on student government uh you know in full disclosure I was student government president like Jerry May Garden our former mayor so we share that in common i I kind of bled blue and green for a long time it's probably still in there if you uh if you were to dig deep enough um but I I just feel like this particular again my uh fellow council members said that this is a it's a very small portion of the total budget and I wish that the university didn't have to take out a $25 million I think it's $25 million loan i you know but I I think it's very fiscally conservative
you'd only ask us for 2 million um I would have probably you know I'd be willing to go higher depending on on the amount that we have available um but I think this particular project with the need we have for venue space the need we have for special event space uh whatever it happens to be concert space um tournament space I you know having recently gone over to Tallahassee and had an event at their stadium which obviously is much much bigger much much more expensive and this is
not going to be that stadium but they can we can have events there and I think the idea of having like a welcome uh center area there that welcomes you into the university I think is just incredible um so I I am obviously very much in support of this uh and you know again um I think that this university university has been transformative i'm so glad it it located in Escambia County one of the things I did when I was uh a student out there working and I already mentioned the Voyager earlier um but when I wrote articles I wrote about the history of the university
and how it got to Escambia County and there was possibility it could have gone somewhere else and I'm I think we are just so fortunate and it has shown recently in what has happened in the news uh and thankfully uh the chairman of our board of trustees resigning has g we've given that a message that this university is important to us and I strongly strongly support this $2 million um appropriation thank you thank you Councilman Charlie um I agree i strongly support this um I
think the university has done an excellent job in the football program um I was excited when uh it was mentioned that this would also be a community um place that maybe high school events can go on and so forth um it will be a great addition to our community and I praise you for um thinking so big Dr benz and Dr saunders for you carrying it out so uh go Argos
mr reeves i move we approve the request second we have a motion from Mr reeves a second from Councilman Bayer is there any further discussion Jason chairman um just a a couple of points that I I just wanted to illustrate first I want to applaud uh the university for your growth trajectory um I moved to Pensacola I think in the the mid 80s and it's just been on a skyrocket
uh trajectory it's outstanding to watch uh I applaud Dr benz Dr saunders and the leadership team for the work that you've done to get us here i just want to point out in the proposal that uh from from football ticket sales alone we're looking at in 2028 post construction $1.6 million in accommodation taxable accommodations that's uh about $84,000 annually in tourism development tax collections and that's not inconsequential that's real dollars that replenishes the funds
and um uh my fellow council members have heard me say before there there needs to be some component thereof where we're replacing that leading indicator of tourism development tax um in addition to the $2 million there's an ask to the community partners what What is that number what is the the amount of the ask good afternoon council members stephan Hall management budget services with the board of county commissioners that additional ask is $5 million five million and what's the total cost of construction for the football stadium
we're estimating 45 million right now but with everything that's going on got it thank you that's probably And uh in the current scenar scenario and understanding that it's it's in a temporary format right now and probably not as conducive as a fully built out uh state-of-the-art facility how often does the stadium u hit capacity during the football season presently you might as well stay up there um we have about 3,800 seats uh last year we averaged about 4,500 people so Oh wow um
our problem is we don't have enough seats yeah yeah understood thank you and uh last question if uh there were open windows in the the athletic schedule in the football field um or the football stadium as it were could Escambia County or the Pensacola Sports Association book into that space yes sir great thank you thank you Mr chairman thank you any other comments questions i I just have a couple of remarks uh and I'll make them quick because I know we have a lot of things to
cover but I just want to thank the university for the work they're doing um I believe in the university and I support what you guys are doing uh I love this project uh I thank Mr gooden for his his generosity to help uh make a big huge gift to this university and this project uh so keep doing what you're doing at the university thank you for everybody who's here today representing the university um and go Argos uh so we do have a motion if there's no and a second if there's
no other comments uh do you have a comment i do have a comment yes sir so um I pose this question to the council so you have um 3.5 million in your public facility reserves um there is one roughly almost 2 million in the first two pennies um and you also have 1.5 in the fourth cent um my recommendation to council would be to use the fourth cent with the difference coming from the
first two cents do you think we could vote on the motion and then decide which pennies to use i I do think that is cogent to the conversation yes well we do obviously we have the funds available to fun i'm willing to make another motion right after that okay uh so there's a motion and a second no further discussion uh call for the vote danielle if you would
please call the role james Reeves yes ashley Hoffberger yes shirley Cronley yes david Bayer yes charles Bayer yes jennifer Breer yes brad Mullenex yes and Jason Nicholson yes mr chairman is hold on one moment please is Tish on the line is No he currently is not he is not okay all right so the motion carries unanimously thank you um
Mr reeves you have the floor i move that We take the money from wherever the you know the excheer suggests wherever we got it do we need a motion for that or we just good okay thank you all right and I know we have a speaker with the next the next item who has to leave pretty quickly
um Michael do you The next item is John R jones Stadium Complex do you want We're in good shape she can speak at the end we're good okay okay great thank you for consideration though of course thank you sure we got everybody here if y'all want to wait just like two seconds for the Absolutely i couldn't figure out where the lights were coming and going from and it's this really is this in your district right outside literally across the street
all right you good all right thank you and thank you for allowing me the time to speak today i submitted this presentation in advance and hope you may have had time to review it in advance of today's meeting um and in an in an effort to stay concise I'm not going to read the the presentation verbatim um we do have a couple guest speakers with us with the lacrosse along with Northeast Pensacola baseball and one is the head coach at Catholic High School lacrosse and she's got a big playoff game uh this evening so we're going to make sure we get her out of here by 4:00 so
I will try to expedite a little bit uh also with us is Miss Laura McCullers from Pensacola Sports to answer any questions about sports tourism or economic impact along with Stephan Hall Mr money so again and this is a tough act to follow tough act to follow uh Dr saunders taught me in 1998 at University of West Florida before I went to work at Pensacola Sports for Miss Kronley uh she was an excellent public relations teacher and uh I kind of bleed blue and green as well Mr bear so I'm a graduate of 1998 so again John R jones is an existing facility on NineM Road and
if you Adam you'll start thumbing through this um sports tourism has not slumped and I'll use some baseball terms it has not went in a in a slump sports tourism has stood the test of time you'll see in the chart even when the economy has slumped sports tourism has stayed the course folks will go see their families and kids and grandchildrens play sports uh that is a proven fact across the state across the country um in addition to that sports organizers and families
are trending towards spending more money per event per trip as they travel uh again these are derived from sports ETA tourism economics uh and a lot of groups that Mr ray Palmer visits and does research that Miss Miss McCullers has pulled these numbers from again families are traveling for sports tourism to see their kids grandkids compete treating as at vacations but also sports organizers and and the visitors are spending more in each at each town they go
to in addition in addition to the economy jobs are created if you'll if you'll thumb through this you'll see jobs created across the country by sports tourism sector uh again not only is it creating economic impact to the said location that the event is held in it's it is a job producer as well why Florida if you'll turn to the map and thumb through this Florida is the number one state
in the country for sports tourism that's not myth that's fact why Florida some of the obvious i'm gonna ask the question why Florida why Florida water beaches southern hospitality and awesome venues and in addition to the awesome venues across the state of Florida you can participate in sports 12 months out of the year 12 months out of the year you can host sporting events here where I nothing against North and the Northeast and where it's freezing but you can't do that in every place
that's why Florida you keep going Adam to the next chart spreadsheet that shows statistics stewardism statistics each one of these sports has grown and actually going back to participation levels precoid levels you'll see baseball flag football tackle football cheerleading softball lacrosse alike these are all sports that can be hosted at John RJ sports facility on 9mm mile road we can
host all of these we've already doing some of them but we can certainly enhance this at the John R jones facility project details project details the existing facility has 18 baseball fields softball fields collection 18 call it 18 diamonds along with two rectangular multi-use fields and a football field all suitable for ranging from sports as I just mentioned on the previous page from five and six-year-olds all the way up to adult senior leagues won't forget the adult seniors because we have adult softball kickball flag football and various sports um in prior
studies maybe other locations weren't exactly convenient this is a very convenient location located in the center of NM Road hub of Pensacola uh as the prior uh prior presentation talked about WF WF used to be in a place 9 Mi Road it used to be Cranford's Barbecue and Hardies Hardies when I went there now it's a hub of activity you've got plenty of egress and ingress into the facility very safe uh 23 hotel properties within seven miles of John R jones i want to make sure you
hear that 23 hotel properties within 7 miles and as folks that I've grown up here you're basically 25 minutes from anywhere Pensacola Beach included pensacola Beach approximately 25 minutes depending on how how you catch the traffic uh you're 15 minutes from the Pensacola International Airport and a ton of restaurants and retail nearby we have already put over $2 million in the last three years into upgrading the light system at this ballpark and the total facility to LED which
is a big factor in these tournaments and it also decreases overall cost and the parking there's ample parking and with the new design there will be additional parking with upgraded parking other facility details first and foremost we're not searching for a piece of land we already have the property it's our ballpark it's Escambia Countyy's ballpark we own it we're not looking for a study to go out and find a piece of property it's a proven location artificial turf conversions um why would it be so beneficial so artificial turf pro provides a a a consistent surface to
play on when you're playing tournament baseball tournament lacrosse or going out of town to compete you want to know you're competing on a consistent surface that doesn't have a lot of transition time between games but when you're traveling as a family you want to get your games in for what you've paid for you don't want to be at the facility till midnight with rain delays and so forth this artificial turf product provides a consistent play field to field of surface but it also provides a high level of high level of certainty you're going to get your games
in when you're traveling out of town spending a lot of money on food and hotel to get your games in again the and from my perspective it's less maintenance i'm not going to sit here and tell you there's not going to be games during the week there will be games during the week but with this surface you still have a a consistent service for recreation baseball lacrosse football but the same level of competition fields on the weekends with less maintenance frankly less maintenance in the same level of turf same level of competition turf and it's a consistent and safe i left this out in
the presentation the other part of that is it's a safe safe field of play in a baseball yard you don't have a lot of bad hops that catch you in the jaw and in lacrosse you're not creating divots in the field like you might have in on natural surface you have a consistent level so it's a safer level of play as well flipping through um a prior speaker said the basic litmus test is heads and beds laura and the team from Pensacola Sports has provided several pages of what it would look like from a two-day baseball tournament to a four or fiveday baseball tournament um to a two
and one day lacrosse event it's the return on the investment i know your committee has to judge this laura Ray Palmer and the folks from Pensacola Sports could go on and on about providing you return on investment heads and beds this is a fact that we that they have p pulled many different studies from and I will say in the travel sports world you have a lot of two-day tournaments that travel on Friday night Friday afternoon hit the road and play Saturday and Sunday that's during
the school year most likely during the school year but then come summertime you have a lot of options to run four and five day tournaments so some of this is based on four or five day tournaments but we have identified 51 uh 51 tournament dates some a collection of uh summer tournaments when folks are out of school and then some during the school year which we would be working with our local nonprofit groups that are are running recreation sports and we've identified those potential dates again that goes back to the artificial turf easy to do very hard to do when you're dealing with
clay and grass and fertilizer and mowing much easier to do when you're dealing with artificial turf staying competitive um and I'll briefly go through this we wanted to include some of our competitors to our east and west daphne Gulf Shores Orange Beach Dothan Alabama Panama City Sarah just completed a brand new turf uh facility fort Walton Beach has upgraded um these are all our these are competition to us these are folks that have invested in the turf facility
um I'm not going to sit here and say anything bad about Dothan Alabama and peanut peanut country over in Dothan um or Daphne but I feel that we present southern hospitality beaches and a whole lot of natural resources to be ultra competitive with them and Adam Reed and I our deputy director were speaking if this happens and we be bring this to fruition and fruition and have 20 artificial fields we will be the largest turf facility offering the most amount of fields in this
entire region not even close and I've listed our competitors here and I believe with that option of having the largest facility with hospitality industry and retail industry we certainly can make a big deal and uh to steal another another term it can be a big gamecher again we've put a lot of economic impact return on investment charts in here um project budget adam if you'll flip to the project budget this is a working estimation um we have done the research of about what it
would cost per turf field that's based on the length of the baseball fields uh you had to start somewhere so we've taken the length of the baseball fields and the square footage of the the existing baseball fields and obviously we know the distance of the football fields and we've worked with vendors to get that estimated cost thus the the number one ticket item being the artificial turfing of the fields at $20 million the other cost are aesthetics upgrades to concessions um and facade work and sidewalk landscaping work but the number one ticket item being the
turf fields that's not a number we just dreamt up that is based on experience research with others that have done it across this region and talking to vendors that do this service based on square footage field lengths and so forth um the one thing I want to point out too this is a one-time ask the parks and recreation budget has the we're already taking care of the facility on an annual bas annual basis on maintenance and utility costs and so forth with that said a lot of these
costs are going to go down fertilizer irrigation mowing cost um we've already put the LED lights in so those those costs are already coming down with LEDs but a lot of our annual costs will go down but this is a one-time request to TDC this will not be something I would be coming back for asking for down the road i wanted to make sure I pointed that out um we've we've we've got plenty of support for this with event organizers from 2D Sports which is a baseball event organizing group UTSA which does several sports um the hotel industry we have several supporting letters um I
believe the folks from WF a few might still be here but University of West Florida they used to do a huge softball event called the Spring Fling miss Kronley and I probably have worked on it a long time ago they used to bring in 80 90 teams per week for four weeks straight to run women's college softball from spring break teams from the Northeast and Midwest they haven't done that in years this is the type facility that can facilitate that and it doesn't conflict with nighttime events because it's all during the morning and daytime again Dave Scott and I have talked about this along with Mr llewellyn the athletic director that supports this project
as well from Pensacola State College um so that I don't make her late for her lacrosse game and her big playoff game tonight I would like to introduce Miss Lee Froch which is a director with Five Flags Lacrosse which runs a local lacrosse program at this facility to say a few words followed by Mr buck which is the president of Northeast Pensacola baseball just to say a few words in support as well right thank you welcome coach and good luck tonight thank you hi everybody thank you so much
for allowing us to speak to you today on behalf of for lacrosse um as Michael said I'm Lee Froch and this is my counterpart Mark Hollis we started our program uh we're in our eighth year of running a youth lacrosse program in Pensacola um we started it so that we could help feed the high schools and um with kids that have been playing lacrosse going up from kindergarten to 8th grade and um but what I wanted to share today was to talk about the growth of lacrosse and the events that are taking
place right now so you guys all have a better understanding of how we can support how making improvements to John R jones would um ultimately help Pensacola and grow tourism um currently we have the Northern Gulf Lacrosse League which is stretches from Louisiana all the way to 38 the 3A area there are nine clubs in this league we come together in the spring and in the fall and we play in events each club has about um it's kindergarten to eighth grade we all have probably about 8 to
10 teams in the club it's boys and girls and we travel and when we when we what we do is we come together on the weekends and we all play in the same location so when we host an event all nine clubs are coming that's bringing in roughly 100 to 150 families per club coming into Pensacola which is great we had an event uh the beginning of March and I hosted the event it was a success and um being able to play on turf you know allows us not to sweat before you know depending on whether or
not the rain is coming and we don't want to have to cancel an event um you know due to the weather that could you know that could be going on in the area the other thing about Pensacola is that it's central it's a central location for all of these clubs so all of the families do love coming here because they don't have to travel as far when I have 38 families traveling all the way to Mobile for you know one or two day event they'd prefer to come here and they'd prefer to be able to stay in hotel rooms here in addition to um our events there are other events that are taking place in
the lacrosse world but they're not taking place here because of not having a facility that has turf fields just this past weekend at the public sports park there was the Southwestern Lacrosse League Regional Championships for women's lacrosse that took place there were 12 college teams that came and played at that facility all weekend long would have been an awesome opportunity for them to come to Pensacola i have a friend that coaches uh one of the teams and she was super bummed not to come here in addition to that there's a there's a boys tournament that is being
hosted by a local lacrosse company here they're going to Mobile because we don't have a the the turf facility that they want to be able to use um in addition I was aware that NIA men's lacrosse hosted a national championship here for two years and this year they're going to another location because they wanted a turf facility so these are just a couple of examples but there are I've I've traveled all over u with my daughter and my son who have played for club teams we've traveled
everywhere and it's pretty awesome when you go to these other locations but those locations don't have what Pensacola has and I know that if if it's built I I know it it'll come for sure uh to be able to have these teams whether they're college whether it's youth whether it's high school um to have that ability to come here would be pretty incredible for Pensacola thanks thank you thank you you and go Crusaders tonight um if I could introduce Mr buck president
of the Youth Association of Northeast Pensacola otherwise known as NEP Baseball welcome Mr buck good evening council uh thank you for taking the time today to hear us and and entertain our proposal uh my name is John Buck i am the I serve as the president of Northeast Pensacola baseball and softball otherwise Y&P youth association northeast Pensacola at John RJ Jones Junior Park located on Nar Road uh sorry my notes are on my phone so if you see
me looking at my phone I'm not uh texting and talking uh during my time coaching my children and traveling to various locations uh throughout the southern part of the United States I have noticed that Pensacola is missing one main thing in you sports and that is turf turf at these complexes I have traveled or I'm sorry most of these complexes I have travel to all have turf i've gone from Vieiera Beach to
Kansas City Kansas with youth baseball and I've Oh my gosh I can't read sorry this is horrible you need my glasses cuz I can't see i might need them yeah actually um look at there we got the same eyes uh a good conversation starter when you go to these events is people always ask where you're from and probably say Pensacola Florida and they always ask "Man that's such a nice area do y'all have a complex like
this down there?" And sadly I'm like "No we don't." Um to talk about what um Coach Lee just talked about with the the Panama City location just this past weekend while having that lacrosse going on at the same park UTSA baseball hosted 150 teams at that same location that is an organiz that is an organization that I work closely with here at NEP our biggest tournament to date has been 55 teams so it's a drastic difference this is an organization
that's based out of Clearwater Florida they travel from here to Katy Texas love the area want to be here want to help us grow and I think they even wrote a letter in support of it uh Michael touched about the safety of the product as a parent I want my kids to feel safe playing i want to feel like my kids safe playing it enhances that experience why turf i'll go back to what was just brought up earlier wf football field it's not grass it's turf there's a reason for
that teams from our area leave Pensacola to go and play at these places specifically to play on turf so teams from other areas that don't have turf also look at that as well not only would we be keeping local teams local spending money at our local restaurants but we would be bringing in teams to stay at our hotels visit our beaches take
in what Pensacola has to offer eat at our restaurants and support our retail stores michael that we already have this complex all we're doing is enhancing it there's no reason to go buy more land when we have it it's there the youth wreck program is thriving it can only get better and will only get better with the upgrades to our facilities it's a facility that has been there for I think 30 35 years now and I'm not sure there has been much updating since
um if you build it they will come and that place to do it is at John R jones Junior Park thank you you're good thank you i appreciate that uh Mr buck uh he did steal my line but I had stolen the line from a great move baseball movie as well build it they will come um so that was kind of the goen line today but again as Ray Palmer and the folks have put on there Mr nelson Mandela sports
has the power to change the world we truly believe that um it's been referenced just in kind of in closing before uh answer questions when you get a rain delay as we all in Florida know afternoon thunderstorms in the summertime are about two or 3 PM it seems every afternoon on Nine Mile Road wouldn't you say Adam and so when you get a heavy thunderstorm 30 45 minutes when you've got clay Georgia southern clay on your infields and I know you know baseball as well it can end your day and
send people to the house okay but if you've got turf it sit around as long as it's not lightning you're playing in 15 or 20 minutes later that's just how it is um so in the tournament world you want to know you have the opportunity to get your games in and that is a huge huge factor when it comes to softball baseball and not maybe not as much lacrosse because you can play on wet fields but you can't baseball softball doesn't play in mud so again those afternoon Florida thunderstorms it's a big deal to have turf in that regard again uh Laura McCullers is here from Pensacola Sports
to answer any of the return on investment sports economic impact type questions and uh Mr stefan Hall if there's any questions about how to possibly finance this or so forth but what I'd like to respectfully request in closing before getting with them is uh support of this support of this request that I've made on behalf of the parks and recreation department um to the board of county commissioners respectfully and uh again I've got our team here with Adam Reed Mark Humphre and Mr miss McCullers and Stephan Hall to answer any questions if needed great
thank you Michael um so this is a $25 million request uh you saw the budget um and uh with that I'll open it up for discussion i have start with Councilman Bear thank you Mr chairman uh just a couple questions so the turf I saw all the letters and I appreciate seeing the support um the synthetic turf how long does that last my question it depends on the use but you're looking at about 12 to 15 years respectfully and that depends on the use but you don't have to replace the whole
thing you're replacing just the top level you're not going in underneath per se because obviously you have a base of hard surface sand rubber it would be just basically just the I'll call it the rug portion of this percentage of the cost would that be the just the top part do you have any idea adam and I talked about it it's what was it about 40% let's say let's say if it was a million dollars a field but it's not because T-ball fields aren't as expensive as the bigger fields about 40% of the first okay um but I will say that that would be part of my parks and recreation
planning over a 10 to 15 year old period down the road you wouldn't have to do anything to it other than the vacuuming it and so forth for the 10 to 12 15 years and again you would have to monitor it some be based on how much you play on it which we'd be playing a lot on it um and then obviously the sun wear and tear and so forth but that would be something that I would build into my budget over that time frame okay um and I do like the fact that we wouldn't have to fertilize it and mow it and all that stuff that's definitely positive absolutely irrigation costs go away yep
um wear and tear on that type maintenance cost absolutely goes away okay and then like tournament wise what are you all currently doing and what kind of projection do you have as far as increase in that i don't know if I saw that exactly there were some numbers provided on how many we could accommodate based on um I want to say most of the tournaments that are being done now if they have 40 to 50 tournaments 40 or 50 teams per tournament could certainly be increased up to the 70 or 80 type teams and then Laura has the roster the average number
um per roster on a baseball team same type stuff we did with lacrosse to compare about average how many are on each tournament roster and then again we identified how many dates would be available and this isn't gospel it was just based on um open weekends throughout the year and then based on the summertime usage where recreation sports is over in the May time frame and it's wide open through the summer to have those four and five day weeks four or five day tournaments okay but as far as
what I'm just trying to get at is by making this investment what percentage increase could we possibly see in the number of tournaments number of teams do we have any idea on that i'm going to I'm going to turn that to uh maybe Mr buck or Miss McCull to answer that um so currently um my main partner at the park is UTSA Sports um and I think we've had six tournaments scheduled with them this year completing three already with three more to come and then a following World Series which is
a week-long event it started as a three-day event and has grown to a five-day event now and that's just with one organization so you're looking at you know we got letters of support from 2D which is another baseball softball organization ncs um is another group that I partner with with softball so 2D and UTSA are just two groups and you probably could look at 15 to 20 tournaments a year um just from those groups the numbers I gave you with the five or six that's just the spring they
ran five last fall right so you you could go from from that number to almost every other weekend with a major size tournament here with 80 plus teams in it okay thank you yes sir yeah it's just a really big number 25 million and I'm just trying to wrap my head around the the investment from TDT funds it's just and it's interesting to me to have the county have staff from the county asking us it's just it's interesting so um I yield to other questions thank you thank you Shirley this is
for Stefan how would we pay for it with this ask thank you good afternoon again council members so um this would be something that uh obviously you know I've provided status of reserves for everybody we don't have 25 million in reserves um however this would be something that we would uh consider as part of the bonding uh which we had discussed previously another uh uh sports facility
uh this is not technically uh a a a building of a facility but but ultimately an eligible uh capital investment if you will with tourist development tax dollars that has been validated um we've even had conversations with our bond council uh regarding this type of project um but the way we pay for it is through a bonding mechanism so would that be bonding the fifth cent because I think we only have $104 million that we can bond out of the fifth cent and the
basin are still out there as well so um the pennies that would be used for the bonding would be the first two pennies as it related to the Bay Center and the fifth penny uh which would be the Bay Center if the if ultimately whatever the board ultimately approves either it's all Bay Center or it's Bay Center and the sports project um but those three pennies are the ones that would be used for the financing of the project okay and that's that $104 million chunk okay
comments councilwoman okay yes thank you so much okay so I have on my screen here it shows how your screen but you don't have your name on your screen no I do not so I don't know all I can do is turn the slide on here councilwoman you have the floor thank you um okay first off I I think we all understand how outrageous um sports tourism is and the amount of money that parents will pay to travel do do travel
sports that's not really a question i'm really more interested in your safety um statements so I appreciate not doing fertilizer i think that's a safety issue for kids but these artificial turfs are pifas and phah's and phalates and they're being banned in communities all around the country because of their impact on on people and their their degradation into the soil
etc um I don't actually know how to come to terms with that one how to balance that one out i don't know that I would feel comfortable i mean I try to keep you know we've got a whole thing going on at the airport because of PIFAs like we don't want exposure to this stuff yet we know this is what it's built with and we know that the Florida sun is going to degra degrade that even quicker and so that's going to be more airborne more exposure for the kids etc and then the heat islands that are formed on this kind of plastic that um makes it an extreme heat also which is also an issue in
Florida so I'm hung up on you guys claiming it more safe when I would be very hesitant for my kids to be on the surface so I can't get frankly because I'm not the expert in the chemical part of it but what I will say much of the turf product that they're manufacturing now they're making where it's it's cooler because of the Florida sun Texas sun they had this problem out in the state of Texas with high school football where they put these turf fields in and it became you couldn't practice on them in August and September so a lot of the turf product now is how they get to
that point again I'm not the expert in how that gets to that point but they're ma making them where they're more heat tolerable and there's a cooling mechanism in that um I don't know if it was the public sports complex but one of the more recent uh turf projects in this region went with that product and it's much more I frankly I'm not the expert on the chemical part of how that works but that is something that if we got to that point we would certainly take that up upon the design to make sure it was in a safe safe manner so I certainly want to would not want to put any
kids or adults at risk at being on this but we would do much more as far as making sure that was safe what I was talking about is the safety component is the turned ankles that you get from little divots and so forth um the bad hops you get from baseball that are part of the game but at the same time when you're playing six games on a baseball diamond in one day that that's that's literally impossible to defend without having a smooth surface that was the safety component and I respect your opinion of what of of the chemicals or I shouldn't say chemicals but the environment
part of that i respect it totally that's something we'd have to dig deeper into but I was referring more to the safety and frankly the heat part is something we did take into account that the a lot of the current new product is very heat tolerant because of the Southeast when they're putting all these complexes in they're taking that into account okay um I think right now that's what's hanging me up is because aside from the money money is kind of big but I am concerned about um I I think the experts out there the research out there says that we have not seen what the
long-term effects on kids playing on this over years is and I I think that we have to be mindful and have a good answer to that personally that's me thank you very much thank you Brad did you have comments yes sir thank you um I'm just trying to go through the numbers and may maybe give you some clarity with this i see that for baseball for example a range of 40 teams play off on a two-day tournament and 80 teams um what is the sweet spot there we've had 55 and I know 80 is the max but
sometimes and and maybe this is not the case but sometimes yes we could get 80 teams but really we don't have the staff or whatever whatever to support that so where do we think we would land comfortably again in my in my honest opinion we could accommodate 60 to 80 teams at any weekend very comfortably because in talking about staffing these type of events you actually need less staffing when it comes to the turf because let's say the field's clay right now with Mr buck's
events and that we support these events we're providing manpower out there to drag the fields chalk the fields between the games that type of level of service goes away per se if that makes sense there's no in between field maintenance to transition so 80 teams we're very comfortable with running those that that type of a tournament maxed capacity because the manpower you have to supply not is not necessarily more actually with this type product it becomes less is there any and as far as tra I didn't mean to run but as far as we ran these type numbers because we're comfortable
that the facility would would have that many people in a safe compatible manner as well is there any data on a facility with the same number of fields and what they average i I do not have that data but that is something that that we can gather um we do know that some of our neighbors um Daphne for example in Panama City they do um hold tournaments with 80 to 120 teams in a weekend and we can get that that kind of data um fairly easily
Jason uh thank you Mr chairman um I'm a hotel year uh I I believe in youth sports i believe that they're uh well I I don't believe I know for a fact that they are a major demand generator particularly along communities u of the Gulf Coast when if you can imagine there's a youth sports director in Indianapolis Indiana in the middle of January that wants to book a traveling tournament where are they going to look um that's a rhetorical question they're they're
probably not going to look in their own backyard because their backyard is frozen so they're going to look at our competition and right now our competition is Bay County Daphne Orange Beach and Gulf Shores uh even over to Dothan uh my my own son is in a a traveling lacrosse team in fact Coach Hollis is is one of his coaches uh we were in another youth sports facility this weekend um that I would rate as the the least desirable of all those youth sports facilities that we travel
to um and the unfortunate fact of the matter is Escambia County is number two and and number two only because uh we have great access in Jones Park we have three primary entrances tons of parking um great lighting uh ample fields 18 uh diamonds and and uh two convertible fields that I believe each of those convertible fields will make four fields so a sum total of seven playable fields
for lacrosse soccer any field sports i would I would suggest that the the the sports that we realize today isn't the potential what we need to ascertain are those um tournaments that we don't see that are going to our competition and how can we reel those back in um glad that you pointed out Daphne and Bay County as uh examples of a key data point i would add Baldwin County Alabama
my own experience operating hotels in Baldwin County was that when UTSA showed up for the first summer tournament in the early 2000s hotel in the middle of the summer I might add hotel years were initially very off-put by the fact that we would host uh you sports events in the middle of the summer what we found is that you sports created market compression that allowed us to yield the remaining hotel inventory higher so that is to say as an example we were
u successful at a at a $200 ADR before UTSA showed up but because consumed so much of the market and created market compression on that static supply of hotel rooms the remaining hotel rooms were sold at a higher rate that induced a higher market value and a higher return on back bed tax i I echo uh Mr roads in that the transit time from Jones to anywhere in Escambia County is pretty short you can jump right on 110 shoot down Scenic you can be downtown or on Pensacola Beach and they
can all come back uh up to Nine Mile Road where there's excellent infrastructure uh and to echo uh what Mr rh said there are 23 hotels just within that close proximity um I believe that that we have an opportunity to turn Jones Park into a an example for all youth sports to aspire to and for us to have a waiting list at some point of youth sports that want to come to the Scambia County to
play a tournament here i will say that my son and his teammates uh always cherish the opportunity to go play at uh the the turf field in Gulf Breeze so if you want to see an example of what an awesome turf field is just drive across the bridge go to Shoreline Park and there's one right there uh I believe this is an outstanding uh improvement to a key demand generator for Escambia County tourism that will realize u a significant payback thank you thank you i love the project as well i just
had a few questions on the sizes of it you said that Bay County and Daphne were already hosting tournament tournaments with 80 teams and I noticed that we're looking at putting in almost double the number of fields that they have is is it maybe overkill or can we cut back on the number of fields or what is your recommendation if you ask one more time are you asking would we cut back on the number i would I I would suggest the number of 80 we could increase we just provided those those that level of 80 teams we could realize a higher number of that for sure the reason I think you
have to do them all because let's just say there's a 70 team tournament there may be different age groups that you're playing uh on said weekend where you need let's say 11 and 12 year old fields are totally full but the T-ball fields or the 14 and 15 year old age group distance is not full so I would definitely recommend doing all the fields because you don't know what age groups that you were play i will say this is a little bit of a sidebar we would part of the project would be let's say if we did all the fields you would have temporary fencing on ordered so you would have a
large field to play 14-year-olds on and this is kind of getting in the baseball aspect but you would have temporary fencing up or available to create shorter field distances as well so that you could have you could have as many as 12 12 year old fields if you needed with creating shorter distances with turf you can't do that on on natural grass and clay because you're distinct clay lines and grass lines are already identified um the other thing that was noted about lacrosse um yes you could have six to seven full-size lacrosse fields but younger age groups of
lacrosse play on smaller distances our outfields of the softball fields are fully si will be sized to the level you could put lacrosse fields on those outfields as well so you could have up to 10 or 12 lacrosse fields for a bigger lacrosse tournament if need be and we certainly feel we would be able to market to that as well so yes you will have the I'll call them the football fields and multi-use fields but when we were putting the project together and the the study together the outfields of the softball fields are compatible to put lacrosse fields on as
well again if they're turf not if they have clay and then a grass mesh so I'm sorry that was a long-winded answer but I think doing all of them allow you to market to a different all the age groups okay thank you Mr reeves uh let me ask is this $25 million does that do the whole job i'm very comfortable that does the whole drop turf fields all the fields i feel that
covers and it also covers a lot of the landscape aesthetics that would be remodeled in this project as well and the benefit of if you would stay up there I have a couple more questions please yes sir um the the benefit of not having to cut the grass and water and so forth do you have any kind of idea about what kind of saving that is per Absolutely uh we
ran the numbers on earlier today and over time looking at we're spending approximately $150 to $200,000 a year when it comes to irrigation mowing uh mowing is a big the biggest the biggest number frankly irrigation repairs um I'll call it dirt and sand for clay ball fields and fertilizer type cost but the biggest cost would be mowing and irrigation and you would be planning to replace these fields as part of your operation into the future correct sir i have an annual budget for
that type but from the operation that we've had so far we haven't had any money set aside for this kind of capital investment no sir but but moving forward if this were to come to fruition I would be going to the county commission asking for additional to down the road in 10 to 12 years if what I was telling Mr fair is you're asking us to fund the full 25 million that would be our request to the TDC via BCC and for a one time yes sir so did you ask the county commission
for anything not at this point you didn't ask them for the money and they said come to us um how about the sports association do they have any funding in this uh in the presentation if in the marketing they have committed to $10,000 for marketing for year one to help promote should this come to fruition to help promote in the marketing world for tournament organizers to help attract um you know or and again there's a page on that that Rey had provided along with Laura okay well
I'm going to ask the master of the excheer if I don't want you to have a conflict now on this answer but our normal operations if we take 25 million here and 2 million there 9.5 million there how will that affect our normal operations as far as promotion and the other things we do
council uh council member so the way that uh I had thought through the financing mechanism or the bonding mechanism um and the use of the pennies it was to keep Visit Pensacola whole um Pensacola Sports Hole our unified budget uh whole as well as um the the allocations that we give to each of our partner agencies now certainly if if we keep having more and more folks come and ask yeah that that may be an issue but ultimately
uh Visit Pensacola um and our unified budget folks that is the main driver of the TDT revenue that we do receive through those marketing and advertising efforts um that would remain the same they were basically be more or less static or level as far as their funding let me ask you this to me you know 25 million now if we said "Oh let's go with a 12.5 million plan."
Well the other 12.5 would be 18 by the time you got to that point but it seems to me the simplest thing is this board could commit to $5 million a year and you could or the county commission could go down to the friendly bank and borrow $25 million and pay it back $5 million a year
and it wouldn't have so much effect on us and I appreciate what you said but it's really not fair to all those other people out here in the world that are waiting to come ask us for money in other words we've got enough right now but if other people ask we're not going to be able to be as generous generous with them so my question to you would would it make logical sense u understanding
you rep represent a commission and what have you but I mean why wouldn't we just borrow that money uh and it would seem I mean even if we said we'll we'll give you the 5 million a year plus interest on 25 on 25 million uh um wouldn't that make more sense than just hitting this up for 25 million
all at once well I think that's a certainly a a a good idea it's a you know something to to share with the board um you know see if the board thinks that that's uh a good idea i mean that's certainly something you mean this board or the other board my my my my bosses so um I mean if that's something that council uh would prefer or maybe uh maybe provide as an option um certainly something to talk about thank you i appreciate that the that that conversation thank you
Councilman are we to the comment can we make comments now i think everybody's asked their questions everybody else um and I was waiting to to make comments similar to my fellow council member over here council and council um I I'm concerned about the the the synthetic turf as well um you know I know that some of the stuff I've seen as far as the little pieces coming loose and ending up everywhere in people's uniforms probably in their bodies um as the head of a environmental nonprofit I feel like it's kind of incumbent upon me to have concerns
about that i'm also concerned you know you want to have wire pooling there but the wire's got to go somewhere so we're talking about putting in relatively impervious surface 20 fields worth um and that wire is going to have to go somewhere and so I'm concerned about that as well um the 25 million you know when I was on council previous on city council previously I remember when we did the sales tax reauthorization and then we borrowed so that we could spend it all as fast as we could you know spend it and then we ended up paying debt service a lot of debt service near the end because
we spent so much in the beginning we had very little left at the end of that cycle um there's a push right now in the legislature to have us do that reauthorization every eight years and I don't really have a problem with that going back to the people and asking them if it's okay and they need to be the ones that judge how we spend the money um not us really and so uh I think to take on this amount to bond it out you know I think there's a lot of things we could do with money that we you know bond out that we this may not be the best one i mean we're talking about really what I've
heard is three sports baseball softball and lacrosse that's all I've heard to this point um I'm sure there's other things that could take place on those fields but it's a huge investment and just because we can bond it out doesn't mean it's like free money i mean we still have to pay the debt on that and uh so I'm just not I realize we're just an advisory board ashley and and her fellow commissioners can do whatever they want um this is a request from the county so I feel like the commissioners can make the decision as to how they want to do it but I did hear it could be
lumped in with the Bay Center and um I think there definitely needs to be improvements at the Bay Center and probably look at that whole area down there and I think to mix this in with that and I think doesn't make a lot of sense to me so right now I'm not really supportive of this um we don't have the money we'd have to bond it so it's just not something that I feel like is a top priority uh we've got other things going on um but you know ultimately we're just an advisory board so that's the way I feel about it thank you thank you i I just want to say this that I wasn't talking about
any bonding whatsoever i'm just talking about going down to the bank borrow the money and pay it back when you got the full faith and credit of this board you know you could count on us to repay you're going to sign on that with the county commission's help count Commissioner did you have a comment i would just like to see maybe like a scaledback plan that we would be able to work into the
bonding with the Bay Center i think $25 million with what we also want to put in the Bay Center because we have to make the two of those work together um because there is only so much money there and I think everybody agrees the Bay Center was a huge priority um I think this is great i think it will add a lot of hotel rooms so just knowing what our other options would be especially when it's twice the size of neighboring communities and places that we're competing against councilwoman and I do think we need to know more about the environmental impact
particularly on the children um you know it's one thing when someone my age exposes themselves to something regularly but when you're talking about that from small up and you have accumulation of of um these kinds of chemicals that we know are in there not the ones we don't know but the the PIFAs the PAH's i mean we need to have some data on that to um be sure and it really doesn't matter that other places do it it's like just because the Joneses do doesn't mean I want to
expose even if my kids playing somewhere else but I still want to know what we're doing before we make that the regular exposure for our children i mean I I need that kind of information i have to admit thank you thank you just um on the on the proposal uh the presentation just one um clerical correction under the tournament potential for the play easy baseball and softball events the uh TDT collections are actually the the accommodations revenue is actually listed as
the TDT collection so if one edit to that would be to to uh discount that to 5% of what the TDT the accommodations revenue is yeah thanks for pulling that up yeah there we go so uh 15,000 by 1578 average daily rate is $2.3 million and we we tax at a 5% rate so it's $119,000 still not not a small number um what I might recommend is that um Mr roads you work with uh Pensacola
Sports Association to create a market study to identify the annual economic impact of uh youth sport or any uh tournament events tourism based tournament events tourism being defined as folks that come in town for one or more nights um on an annual basis uh and and then uh let's analyze that toward the ask to to determine the value uh I still truly believe in this uh request youth sports are a major demand generator for the hotels that that I operate um and it's in in all counties
I should say and six in Florida specifically and including Baldwin County um Escambia County would do well to uh improve its its presentation to the uh youports travelers thank you thank you so I have a couple comments um first I I don't know that I would have used the the saying the baseball saying build it and they will come although I will address that i normally used to say when my son played baseball uh there's no crying in baseball there you go i think that's
my favorite baseball quote fair enough um but I do believe uh you know with a community you have to have the assets to draw the the tourists here uh there's the advertising like we talked about earlier there's different avenues uh and building a community that is attractive to those and having the assets for those folks the travelers to utilize is important um I think this is clearly an authorized use of the the tax absolutely um I my son played baseball thank god he quit and
started playing lacrosse because he enjoys it much more um he played at Bill Bond over off of Summit we had you know Clay Fields there uh we they always got beat by NEP i can't imagine how much better NEP is going to be when they have Clay when they have these turf fields um but uh Coach Hollis was my son's lacrosse coach he's playing for Catholic High School they have the district championships tomorrow night that's right uh for boys um but I I think this is a
great project uh for our community i think we have for years in the tourism industry that the TDC have talked about sports uh tourism we've we've had uh Pensacola Sports do multiple um sports tourism economic impact studies uh they all come back and show that you make the investment into into sports tourism you will get the return um the data that is in this report shows that there
will be a return and so when we talk about making that that investment upfront uh obviously this is a $25 million request it is a large request uh but it shows a return uh and although if it's bonded and other based on today's collection it may freeze other outside agency um appropriation but also maybe block out the opportunity for others to come and request money uh if it's
generating a return it's not going to we're going to be paying off the bond and we're going to be growing every penny that we're collecting because we're increasing tourism uh and so uh I I don't believe that'll happen i believe we need to make these investments in these types of projects the Bay Center is also an important project that's not going to freeze out tourism that's going to grow tourism and so we're going to continue to be able to to generate additional revenue uh additional tourist development tax to continue to reinvest into our community into these assets and more and
and also the the marketing of these assets and so I I you know and I don't know anything about the uh the environmental issues related to these products i I I'm I'm ignorant of of those points i I do have uh a house at Pensacola Beach and it has a sideyard and rather than putting in grass I put in the artificial turf and I I specifically put in the type of turf that does not get hot in the summer because I want to use my beach house in the summer and I want to be able to stand in
the yard uh and and it does work um I I don't know about the health issues related to it um I mean I have a little bit of a cough that's constant but I don't think that has anything to do with it um but anyway I I all jokes aside I think this is a great project um I'm in support of it uh I think we do it today um we do it all today uh we get that return much faster um if we do it partially today and then partially you know three five years from now it's going to cost us twice
as much due to the rest of it and it's going to be that much longer till we get the return uh on that investment and so today I'm I'm I'm in support of this um so I don't know if anybody else has any other comments or questions uh but we've had pretty good long debate um so if there is interest in a motion at this time we would entertain a motion mr chairman I move that uh we allocate to Escambia County $25 million for the uh improvement to the Jones uh youth sports facility thank you so we have a motion from Mr nichols i second that
thank you and we have a second for Miss Connley is there any further debate or discussion mr reeves why do we want to spend 25 million just all at one time when we could do it five million a year and still have other money to spend on other things i mean I'm not against the 25 million i just don't understand why we would want to spend it out of this year's budget and
leave ourselves i I don't think we're taking out of the the operating budget for the year i think we're talking about bonding uh to get going to the bank through a bond you think we're talking about what i don't believe we're talking about taking $25 million out of our annual operating budget and wipe out all those appropriations said something else we've The county has been talking about issuing a bond to pay for it and the center and putting this together yeah so we
have $104 million that we can bond from the first third and fifth is that right tell us where the money's coming from Stephan first two pennies and the fifth cent um so what I and maybe this will help council so I think um if there's support for the project um we will work through whatever the the financing is ultimately the board of county commissioners must approve any type of uh financial instrument um well they have to approve this also correct correct so um so so
that may help help you i am under the impression there is a lot of momentum behind this from the board obviously I'm only one of five but I think a lot of people are very excited about this it's just a question of how do we balance the spending with the base center spending correct so just knowing that all of that's going to have to come from the same pot so one of those projects is going to have to be scaled back to some degree and there may be some some other financial options that we have and we just need to work through all that right so are we saying that we're going to
have how this plays into the financing is that going to come back to us or are we going to I I think if it affects our our annual operating budget the appropriations to the outside agencies etc I think that we would need to come it would need to come back to speak to our to our group because we do the annual budgeting i'm really not talking about our operations this year i'm talking about you know to take this big a hit on on our kitty if
for no other reason i I just delight to have the flexibility that we have enough money in the kitty for everybody that wants to get in the kitty you know so uh let me ask you are you telling us what are you telling us about the financing so so basically where where we are with this we know we've got uh two two large TDT project
requests if you will so um roughly somewhere around that hund00 million is is what what we can bond and it it may be that uh we would need to also use some additional another funding source if you will to make everything happen depending on whatever uh the TDC recommends and whatever my board ultimately approves um as far as scale which which things ultimately are are decided to be the most important uh between all of the projects that we have um but again as far as
uh operations if you will the debt service payment would come out of the annual TDT budget but it would be designed in such a way because right now none of the fifth cent is being spent uh toward operations or annual the annual TDT budget so 100% of that would be used for debt service uh the pennies I believe are last year generated roughly 4.4 4 million per penny um we're running right about that you said we're in favor of the 25 million but take it out of the fifth cent
so the first two pennies can certainly be used uh I also believe the fourth cent could be used if we needed to but but right now we're only talking the first two pennies and the fifth cent so it would be some portion uh of the first two cents ultimately used toward the bonding the first two pennies were were approved by voter referendum uh of uh Escambia the Escambia County public voted for that and the first two pennies were completely pledged for the Bay Center at that time i I won't prong it any longer i'm in favor of going forward whatever way we can
okay so I'll call for a vote okay well I was gonna ask if there's any other comments one thing before I go because I know I won't have a chance yes if you have to scale back if you'd consider while you're researching the chemicals not doing at least the T-ball fields so that they're not accumulating from so young maybe I mean those guys probably don't have to play in the rain right just a thought with us I have Tim Dave with envir with our environmental
director with me behind me but again we would definitely take that into account absolutely thank chairman um and um so just what I'd like to point out and it's something to be done through the specs um there are turf products that are certified POS free um EPA just recently lowered um their standards or increased their standards uh lowered what what it takes for a bad exposure so I think that's a lot of this we can take care of it through procurement and make sure
we have a safe product out there thanks thank you Councilman thank you thank you Mr chairman and it's not surprising the EPA would lower its standards given the current administration um they probably don't care about PEOS at all but it's a big situation we're dealing with in the state of Florida um you know municipalities may get sued over POS probably not in the current administration but sometime in the future it could happen um I'm not going to support this not because I don't support youth sports hope you understand that um I just I I think that the without having a clear picture of where we're going with the Bay
Center right now that's just more critical to I think the city at this point um not that city residents won't enjoy what's happening up there um at this particular facility but it is more focused on the county at large and I just want to make sure there's plenty of funding there to do whatever we're going to do with the Bay Center hopefully encompassing the grassy field that we used to call a tech park which has never been a tech park the hotel down there um and I just think it's kind of premature to to go ahead and do this for $25 million for these sports so I won't
be supporting it today thank you thank you all right there's a motion and a second uh if there's no further discussion I will call for the vote if you would please call the role james Reeves you want to start at the other end tonight jason Nicholson yes brad Molenex no jennifer Bayer Charles Bayer no uh David Bayer yes shirley Croley yes ashley Hoffberger yes and James Reeves
i I think the motion carried what was the final vote is it five to three 53 53 motion carries thank you thank you Michael and team it's good to see you coach thank you all right uh next item on the agenda is beach reourishment oh I thought the muscle was coming up to the microphone but she just walked by mike
Burns is here welcome and we have a few speakers thank you And if you don't mind I'm going to Thank you David great to see you this afternoon yes I see too i'm going to actually have to pass the gavl for a moment because I need to take a bathroom break i can understand thank you i can understand uh once again welcome uh well thank for having us the beach Pensacola Beach i'm Mike Burns i'm the executive director of the Santa Rosa Island Authority and I appreciate the opportunity to speak to many of you tonight i've chatted uh Jennifer on the phone uh Jason and I in the past
and of course Ashley and Jim about this particular project as well as uh David the one thing that we need to realize and come to understand is that Pensacola Beach is more than a mere premier destination it is the economic engine of Escambia County let there be no doubt as Denzel Washington said in the movie Remember the Titans Pensacola Beach is the economic engine for Escambia County
thanks again for having us here today let you know a little bit about our project and what's going on uh beach reourishment is going to begin on November 1st 25 2025 uh the window for beach reourishment is between November 1st through Memorial Day of uh 2026 um during that time period we hope to put 1.8 8 million cubic yards of sand on Pensacola Beach to protect the beach
to protect the infrastructure to protect the homes to protect the core and protect the tourism value for Pensacola Beach we'll do our bid openings later this week from our different contractors we have multiple contractors that are going to be uh bidding on this process and so later this week we'll know where we stand um the two economic values on Pensacola Beach and beach reourishment we have to know that it attracts tourists and it protects the residents that's what beach
reourishment does it attracts tourists and it protects the residents but even more it protects the infrastructure on Pensacola Beach the sand is infrastructure and it protects the infrastructure florida Power and Light just in the last year or so has put $28 million invested into Pensacola Beach Santa Rose Island Authority to protect their infrastructure in hardening the lines on Pensacola
Beach i got to thank JT Young and David Peyton who serves on our board for making sure that Florida Power and Light um has invested this money to protect the infrastructure on Pensacola Beach also here today uh Jeremy Johnson who's our chairman of the board for the Santa Rosa Island Authority he is fully supportive of the beach reourishment project on the beach along with other people we have here we have members of the Pensacola Beach Chamber of Commerce they stepped away from whatever they had to do today to come down and speak to you if necessary to let you know how
much they support beach reourishment on Pensacola Beach and I don't really have to tell you guys this because I Jason I know you understand this that US tourism generates more money more economic output than all of the commercial and business um investments when it comes to um major manufacturing countries in the United States that's more than Tesla that's more than McDonald
Douglas that's more than Boeing you that's more than caterpillar you add it all together tourism is what we do right in the United States and it's definitely what we do right on Pensacola Beach and Jason knows this because there are over 8,000 jobs and people that are employed on Pensacola Beach and it's free is the largest employer on Pensacola Beach and when you look at that over $287 million
$287 million is produced in revenue and salaries on people who work on Pensacola Beach of that 500 million goes to the gross regional product on Pensacola Beach and then when you think about how much money is collected in taxes from Pensacola Beach over $131 million are collected in federal state and local taxes from the revenue that comes off of Pensacola Beach now you've all got a copy
of our presentation because I know Danielle has sent it to every one of you one of the things that you that you you really get when you get beach reourishment on Pensacola Beach and everywhere else is become if you don't do beach reourishment your beaches are going to become narrower and your tourism is going to suffer it's going to go down you guys know this as a TDC board walton County is experiencing this right now their TDC collections are down 12% 12% because they have not done beach
reourishment in the last couple of years and I got that information from one of my buddies who serves on the board at TDC in Walton County they don't they have to go through a whole another process to get their beach reourished compared to us because they have private beach which we don't have we have public beach which is 8.1 miles of beach on Pensacola Beach that we hope to reourish starting November 1st the mayor of Miami Beach when beach reourishment first came out back in the late 70s said that his beach was just nothing but a bunch of breakwater beaches with
debtridden hotels because they didn't reourish the beach pensacola Beach and the Santa Rosa Island Authority hope to continue to make Pensacola Beach the economic engine for Escambia County if you could see how much money is invested in Pensacola Beach and what'll be invested when we do the beach renews just like the mayor of Miami and this was quoted in Time magazine the money spent on beach reourishment in one year came back five times in revenue five times in revenue so when
beaches are large what happens more tourists come to enjoy the beaches and what happens it protects the infrastructure on the beach you guys many of you were here back in Hurricane Opel that happened in the late 90s early 2000 jennifer I know you were and Panama City Beach lost 471 structures 471 structures because they had not done beach reourishment they started implementing beach
reourishment and in a recent hurricane Hurricane Michael a category five hurricane that hit Panama City Beach they didn't lose any structures no damage to Panama City Beach now the other thing that happened is Panama City was back and open for doing business within months after Hurricane Michael hit that beach they were ranked the number one beach destination in the United States along
with Huntington Beach after Hurricane Michael because they did beach reourishment and they kept their beach thriving like I said earlier 12% in TDC dollars shortfall in Walton County because they did not do beach reourishment you've got the calculations i think it's on page 13 it shows you what we're asking for we put together along with the county $13.4 million the Santa Rosa Island
Authority has come forward with $10.1 million so we got skin in the game by no means we have skin in the game and in the process the last time that um the island authority came to the TDC and came to the county we paid back $8.5 million and have saved $10.1 million if we had that money we probably wouldn't even be coming to you right now to ask for money but we have $13.4 million
plus $13.4 million from the state of Florida on a grant that comes up to 26.8 million and David and I have chatted many times and he knows that the original numbers were much lower because the cost of sand was much lower at $17 a cubic uh yard the cost of the sand would have brought the cost of beach reourishment to $30.4 million we'd be short about $3 million but the cost of sand has gone up
sand is now 20 $20 a cubic yard at 1.8 and that's where you get the $36 million that's the difference in the number that's where the shortfall comes in and that's why we're here today to ask you for the $9.2 2 million which will every penny of it will be spent for sand that goes along the Gulf front to protect the tourism to protect the residents and to protect the infrastructure on Pensacola Beach it's the most worthwhile investment you can make and you can
guarantee that if you put sand on that beach it's going to put dollars in your pocket for the TDC i appreciate and welcome any questions that you may have if I can't answer them I'll get you the answer to those questions but I appreciate your time and diligence and listening today i know it's late in the afternoon it's nice to be the leadoff hitter you know you don't get to see all the pitches but you know what i don't mind being eight and nine in the lineup either just as long as I get a chance to swing the bat so thank you again for letting me come and present in front of
you today thank you Michael you're welcome i'll be available for any questions if anybody has any we do have uh some public speakers on this uh and so don't go far but uh Patrick Garrett is our first speaker welcome please introduce yourself hey good evening council i'm Patrick Garrett i'm here speaking on behalf of just my experience as a public adjuster and ability consultant i spent 30 years working hurricanes and damages throughout
the southeast i started my career here in 1995 30 years ago this year uh I worked for a lot of great businessmen and women in the community condos hotels municipalities throughout my career being from Tampa Florida I've watched erosion i've handled claims down there i've watched the beaches as a young man erode and not have the protection they put up bulkheads they try to maintain the beach um and it's just devastating with insurance it's it's difficult we know what
FEMA does and we've seen the FEMA crisis that's happened in our country and you've seen these storms that have come through Haleem and recently from um Milton flood only protects the footprint of the building it doesn't protect your out buildings your pools your parking lots etc and the downtime that it creates is astronomical sometimes you don't even rebuild especially with the coastal lines they have improved in the uh federal and the state regulations they're not
going to let people rebuild and with the 50% rule that's gone into effect in Penllis County that was arbitrarily sent out to every homeowner there were people out there that were at retirement age that had a million-doll property it was built in 1975 it was on a canal and now they're facing to spend 8 $900,000 to rebuild the property and they got $200,000 in insurance money so I've seen the people that the reason why I came here in 1995 was hurricanes i've got to walk all the
beaches throughout the state of Florida Miami St augustine all the Gulf of America and I've walked these beautiful beaches looking at damages not sitting on the beach enjoying the sun or your beautiful areas to fish and hang out now I do I own I'm a property owner here i'm paying taxes i relocated here almost two years ago office in Tampa office in Pensacola um the loss of business and the purpose of the beach you know is to have people come here and you have beautiful beaches
i grew up going to Clearwater Beach i've watched them constantly renourish those beaches there and they you can't it used to take 45 minutes to get from my home to Clearwater Beach now it takes an hour and a half there's that many people that have just lo relocated or come and visit that area it's a destination this is a hidden jewel here and this is beautiful i just think the the line of defense in a storm is the water the water coming in that wall of water
the further it has to travel the less devastation it's going to do the cross is still there on Fort Pickings 1995 it didn't move and it didn't move in Ivan and it didn't didn't move in Sally either that just goes to show whatever you've been doing you've been doing it right from my eyes from my perspective I like the squeaky sand i didn't know there was squeaky sand growing up as a Central Florida boy but uh you know if you don't reourish it and you don't spend the money now you can make me a lot of money later when they're all so vulnerable and I come
up here and work your claims but I just want to give you my perspective appreciate it thank you sir all right our next speaker is Ray Kessler ray did I pronounce that apologize thank you thank you yes I'm Ray Kesler i am chairman of the board for the Pensacola Beach Chamber of Commerce representing 300 business members and I advocate for using tourist de development
tax funds to invest in long-term stability sustainability and protection for Pensacola Beach we are facing the very real consequences of beach erosion caused by hurricanes tropical storms and rising tides the process of renourishing our beach is extensive labor intensive cost and costly it involves offshore dredging and compatible sand pumping and shaping that sand onto our shoreline and the vital planting of sea oats to stabilize stabilize and protect our dunes from further
erosion but this is not simply an environmental initiative it's an economic imperative pensacola Beach is not just a destination it's a beacon of our region it draws millions of visitors each year underpins our tourism economy and serves as a stage for the major sporting events music festivals family vacations weddings and so much more our beach supports a thriving network of hotels restaurants small businesses and vacation rentals it protects homes businesses
and the Gulf Islands national seashore and critical wildlife hab habitats especially for the species that depend on this environment to reproduce and thrive its preservation is as much about ecological balance as it is about economic resilience and let me be clear and like Mike said without Pensacola Beach there is no tourism engine for Escambia County it's not just the beachgoers or beachfront residents who benefit everyone does from hotel workers in the
city to restaurant owners and neighboring towns this beach is our common ground and in every community common areas are shared and maintained collectively and Pensacola Beach is no different it's everyone's beach it deserves everyone's investment to date a disproportionate share of responsibility for beach maintenance has fallen on the shoulders of the beach residents and the Santa Rosa Island Authority that model is neither fair nor sustainable tourism development dollars
must play a foundational role in protecting the very thing that makes tourism possible we believe that reinvesting tourism development tax funds into the nourishment restoration and protection of Pensacola Beach is not just the right thing to do it's the most strategic cost effective use of these funds it aligns directly with the mission of this committee to grow support and sustain tourism if we fail to act now we we risk losing our losing our crown jewel the cost
of inaction will be far greater and loss of loss revenue declining tourism eroding infrastructure and irreversible environmental damage let's be forward thinking let's lead with vision let's invest in preserving the resource that brings people here keeps them coming back empowers our economy year after year thank you for your time and your commitment to protecting the future of Pensacola Beach and by extension the future of tourism in Escambia County thank you thank you
all right our next speaker is uh Charlene Powell charlene sorry welcome good afternoon Mr chairman esteemed members of the council thank you i'm Charlene Powell i currently reside at 525 Fort Pickins Road on Pensacola Beach i'm a two-time resident of the
beach uh my husband and I resided there from 2010 to 2015 and unfortunately our jobs took us away for a while but now in retirement I have returned and built a home but I come to speak to you today not as a resident but as a tourist for as the first time I ever visited Pensacola Beach was in September of 1978 i came as a 22year-old young lady who wanted to go to the beach i wanted to
lay on the beach and enjoy the sun it was the first time I'd ever visited Pensacola Beach although for many years my family went to Myrtle Beach we went to Jacksonville we went to San Diego but for some reason Pensacola Beach got in my blood and I come to you today as a tourist spending all those years every year returning to Pensacola Beach and not
because there was a family here or because I had athletics because I loved that beach and as a result of that bringing more people here as tourists and family members and friends and I probably stayed in every hotel on the beach over that 30 to 40 year period and we do have great restaurants we have the finest hotels we have friendly people but it is that white sand
that continues to bring people to our beach every year and it is very important and vital to the economy of our beach to renourish that and to bring it back to where it should be every year you know even during the oil spill of 2010 we had tourists on our beach and we had tourists who not only were wanting to go in the water when they couldn't but they helped pick up those oil pods in the evenings there were lot of our tourists at the hotels that we
were staying with who volunteered to do that because they love this beach we must preserve enhance for our future generations our natural resources on our beach i ask this council to support the reourishment efforts for the tourists who come here every year for those tourists who enjoy the beach with their children who build sand castles for the tourists who get to watch turtles hatch on that beautiful beach and for those tourists
who even learn how to surf in our waters so thank you for your your efforts on behalf of our tourist development council and thank you for supporting this reourishment project thank you we have one last speaker is Rhonda Dorfman welcome thank you thank you good afternoon council members thank you for the opportunity
to speak to you today um Ronda Dorfman i represent the Pensacola Beach Advocates we have over 200 lease holders in our organization i'm also president of the fund club the Pensacola Beach Woman's Club we just gave away $30,000 to some organizations so we're happy we can help um our organization educates about and supports eco-friendly tourism over 60% of the beach is preserved for conservation recreation for public use and
100% of our beaches are accessible to the public as you know the beaches are owned by the county pensacola Beach lease holders do not own any rights from the dunes to the mean high water line visitors to Pensacola Beach have increased to the point where 12 days last season we had more cars and more people on the beach on any given day than on a Blue Angels weekend clearly the number one reason people visit Pensacola is for our beautiful beaches to glimpse the sight of the sugary white
sand to enjoy lunch with a beautiful view to bask in the sun for their hard-earned week's vacation pensacola Beach is the reason our beautiful city has become known to so many it would only be appropriate that tourist development tax funds be used for beach nourishment in fact both the UWF football request and the Jon Jones complex are so desirable for people to come here because we are
close to the beach you want to go to Birmingham or do you want to come to Pensacola without our beaches Pensacola would just be any other city in the panhandle or as someone earlier said Dothan Alabama please we really would appreciate funding the beach nourishment project thank you thank you uh and that's our final um public speaker and so uh this
request for beach reourishment from the island authority is for $9.2 million uh so I'll open up for discussion i see a hand councilman Bear thank you Mr chairman um this probably a question for our financial person um I'm just wondering where um this amount would come from would this be bonded i mean this makes a lot more sense to bond to me i This is definitely an economic driver um but let him answer that question first
council council um so the first three pennies of TDT can be used for beach reourishment so ultimately uh within existing resources that's where um that would come from currently we do have $2 million set aside for beach reourishment um if council wanted to do any additional dollars out of the first three pennies you would have to wave your reserve policy um to to do something additionally um previously how beach reourishment was done
uh between the resources the island authority had state uh the county did a loan from our local option sales tax to the island authority where they repaid us over a number of years uh to complete the the last time uh the beach was reourished that was my other question was um have we used funds from TDT before for beach reourishment doesn't sound like we have not that I'm aware of okay but it is allowable correct okay we have in our annual our annual budget
we we set aside a half a million dollars each year that we've done for the last four years to have the $2 million that Okay so it's just money we just kind of rolled over and added to every year we we put it in a restricted fund uh each year through the budget okay thank you Councilman i'm almost scared to go down this road but as Mr burns and I spoke um I actually have some environmental questions about this process so we're dredging three to four miles off in that one
trench yes ma'am we have we have a uh sand box you know that's off the uh coast of Pensacola Beach and that's where the sand comes from and we use a hopper dredger to bring that sand up onto the beach and then a process where that could use either a mile or up to two miles worth of pipe that pumps the sand up on the beach depending on how much pipe we use depends on how quickly we can um uh complete the project and shorten the length of I I think I've been here present for every
iteration of refurbishing the beach i I don't know that I agree with the reourishment as the um but refurbish maybe okay so in 2002 2003 you refurbished I believe that's correct reourished it is reourished yes ma'am i'll use your word it's called nourishment reour i just don't I don't think it's nourishing so I understand your your concern but then in 2005 2006 Ivan hits and you have to do it right away again so that's not even two full years before it had
to be done again so we did it 2002 3 20056 then we made the 10-year gap from 2015 to 16 that's correct so and now we're at 10 again that's correct okay so between the 2002 to 2000 uh 2003 to 2005 that I'm guessing that was Opal Aaron Aaron Opal it could have been No no no that was that was 90s that was I don't even know what that was excuse me so if I'm not mistaken after Ivan FEMA covered that because we had just done it we got some
FEMA money it's not really about who covered but that's Yeah Ivan was 2004 and so 56 would have been the Ivan i was just trying to think of what 20023 was that's just probably the after I guess our expert is walking up to the microphone i know but so maybe from 95 to 2002 that would have been the Aeron Opal that they did then prior to that it had never been nourished so that's what had happened is just over time it had slow erosion uh back towards the development
um that's where you know Sans Sushi had almost gone into the Gulf where I remember that's the 2002 right 2003 that was the initial state before we started beach nourishment so when just since you're here y don't go far Tim um yeah um when Frederick hit because I'm going to go way back all right so you can't build on dunes right you couldn't remove dunes for Well I can't say that in the 70s for certain i mean we were also driving dune buggies and and
other things at the beach in the 70s so 70 so it's was Yeah frederick okay so because I looked back at this after you and I spoke and you can in you can in aerial pictures see where the buildings literally moved up over the entire dune line once the dune got flattened so we we moved 120 feet closer to the water from pre those storms to post so we've we moved out 120 ft and then we're asking to continue to put in essentially the same and without the dune line and I'm kind of also
perplexed that we don't have dune redment no it's we we have dune nourishment every one of the beach nourishment projects where the island authority just completed a dune restoration project okay the county is doing another dune restoration project next year as well so we we have a very active program to make sure the dunes stay as healthy as possible so then the other thing is what we do to the fishing community by um essentially killing off all the small creatures on the uh
on the shoreline and in the trench that so like if you look at Gulf Shores after theirs like they're doing the whole fishing community they send out messages you can't count on getting fish where you used to you're going to have to go out and find new areas because changes the whole thing and then you you pompo as an example is no longer in those areas so well the fish are still there it's what happens with nourishment when you in when you advance it basically what happens is you lose your first breakwater and it takes mother nature about two years to kind of reshape and then you know the
surfers start to get happy again because we start to get a surf break again uh because mother nature will reorganize it back to how it wants to be we just we we can't construct it in that way so some people say too I think some of it is saying that that we haven't studied it long enough to really understand what we're like some of the fishermen think we're probably doing more damage than that right well it's so it's I haven't personally heard that but the microorganisms and everything else do recover very very rapidly okay one more interesting question here the more we do Okay so
those trenches take about a decade to heal is what the research says when we're when we're trenching that out out there three or four miles so just to kind of correct are you talking about the borrow site yes the sand yeah so the borrow site itself isn't a trench okay borrow sites are selected it's flat they're they're typically actually a ridge okay so we're not doing a group we we usually do go 8 10 feet below so it does end up a little lower but those areas are selected um as as high
ridges that are they don't have hard bottom they don't they're typically um I would call it more devoid of life that typically get valued those so but we're using the same one aren't we what's that aren't we using the same location each and every time we've used the same one but it's not going deeper so imagine you know we have and I forgot the size that we've permitted but we start in one area and we're working across it so it's this isn't a hole that's getting deeper and deeper and
deeper u this ultimately is going to be an area that once it's fully excavated um will barely be a blip you know as a fisherman goes by he'll he'll he'll notice a gradual decline and then a gradual increase back it's okay one more kind of interesting question here but when we extend this out so we start going towards the second sandbar sometimes completing it all the way second sandbar sort of removing that second sandbar for a while there right well it's it depending on where you
are the the two tails of the project so you know just the the nature of the beach nourishment is it gets built out as a rectangle and as it ages so they go to each state park essentially and do it on the state park build out straight and then as over time when it erodess it forms essentially kind of like a bell curve so the two tails erode and you know thankfully Casino Beach happens to be generally in the middle so that tends to be the fattest and happiest over time do we when we do shorten that and or change the second sandb bar do the waves not hit the shore even harder and
then thus have um this is the surfers telling me this okay and then you have the you have the waves hitting the shore faster and harder so you've got more of a um a tide pulling you back out in those areas is that not Well so what ends up happening is it it does reshape the whole area um for purposes of FEMA we survey out um to the - 24 contour so over time we can actually see where all this sand is so when when we fill it out while mother nature's rearranging it it does shallow it
up further offshore and so you'll if for like in cases of hurricane you'll those waves will start interacting with uh the bottom earlier than they did say in 1970 which will start causing those waves to crash okay and um the 1.8 million cubic feet of stadium so if you've been to Wahoo Stadium it's 342 feet to left field fence 400 to center field 335 to the right field corner that's all measured from home plate so if you measure from the dune line what we do for the 8.1 miles is we
go out 300 ft so from the dune line to the water is 300 ft that's your ballpark from 8.1 on the east end which would be the Gulf Islands National Seashore to the west end which would be the entrance to Fort Pickicket you're going to build a wall or fence 300 ft from the D line all the way out so that's what you got to hit the ball to get out the part and like the gentleman said what you do with the second sandbar is the sand comes past the second sandbar so the sand that comes
off the beach gets returned to the second sandbar as a surfer the second sandbar breaks really good right now it's going to continue to break because what's going to happen is any sand that comes from the beach is going to be gathered and collected on the second sandbar the second sandbar acts as the first fence or first uh breaker of protection then you get to the beach and now you have 300 feet from the beach to the dune line so you're soloing down the wave twice before it hits the beach so
you're saying right now we're at how many feet from the dune line well uh as as a super surfer right now let's say you're 150 feet from the dune line to the water because we've lost about 500 excuse me 50% of our sand that sand is on the second sandbar right now so what we're going to do now not in all places but what we want to do is maximize it so that we have 300 feet from the dune line to the water line so let's say in the middle where we're at the core we're at 200 feet and on
the edges we're at 150 ft so we're only going to go out 100 ft in the core let's say behind uh uh Jason's Hotel the u the Hilton we go out 100 feet there but on the end Fort Pickins on the on the right and um on the left G Island we may have to go out 150 ft 200 feet cuz it's not it's not all universal but that's what we want to accomplish is 300 feet from home plate to the water the dune line to the water 300 feet and the dune line is on the property that's where the
property line ends at the dune line to the water so that's where it's all public beach all the way down thank you yes ma'am thank you Mr reed or commissioner chairman so essentially you're ensuring that there's at least 300 ft of public beach accessible to the community and to tourists yes ma'am okay thank you outside of the national park mr reeves could I ask a question of you sir
my personal environments environmentalists told me that if we plant it planted palm trees along the beach that that would keep us in a better position as as opposed to not doing anything except just pumping the beach back is there any truth to that so it's just generally speaking I
wouldn't recommend putting palm trees out on the beach you know well any kind of vegetation yeah so the areas that you want to stabilize for example the dune areas or areas you think are important for wildlife you know putting native grasses out or other native you know appropriate native plants for that region of the beach is absolutely recommended so and so we always just you know when we're planning beaches one of the things we're trying to do is make sure we got enough vegetated area for dune protection wildlife and then also balancing that with the needs the
recreation the recreational beach uh in between that and the water so we we we actively manage our vegetation to try to maximize benefits for both well it would just make sense if that was what you're telling me we have to have more room for sunbathers and swimmers and stuff well we need to make sure we have enough for the tourists that come but we we absolutely have a very active but at some point it becomes more economically feasible to try to keep some of the beach that
we have instead of just keep refurbishing well it I'm just trying to help you okay and Jim just to your point that's what we just did with the vegetation um program that we just finished the ve vegetation renourishment so what we did and that was at the um we had to do that by the in October 1st so we started at the national park and we worked our way down to Fort Pickins reourishing
by planting on Pensacola Beach we lost a good portion of those plants unfortunately because we had record snow and vegetation that you plant on the beach doesn't necessarily acclimate to snow so we have another project that's coming up with Purto K and uh what will happen with those plants that aren't utilized on Purto K those plants will be used on Pensacola Beach so we do have enough to continue to do the the planting reourishment on Pensacola Beach and that'll start
later this year as well we try and do that after hurricane season yes sir yes sir on the 8.1 yes sir thank you any other comments Councilman Bear thank you Mr chairman um so we have $2 million and you know in my mind this is definitely something um that has a huge economic impact on
our community um you know I walked out i went my my wife and I took our middle son went and walked the beach starting at Casino Beach and walked east no sorry west and there's a portion down there that where there's like a big drop off there's like a little cliff of sand down there um and it's clear that you know some parts are much worse than others you did mention that since Casino Beach's in the middle it kind of doesn't have as much of an effect it's like the pier the pier gathers the
sand and that's worse jennifer knows and we we've got a moving target it's always shifting you know that's the great thing about barrier islands and why you probably shouldn't build on them but we have built on it um I I'm not as much I guess inclined for protecting residents because I think residents assume a lot of risk by building out there um I did my master's thesis on the National Flood Insurance Program back in gosh that was 94 1994 i remember what my conclusion was was that it was probably that wasn't really sustainable um and you know right now we're facing issues
with you know maybe there won't be a subsidy it's going to be really tough for people to get insurance especially when citizens is saying that you have to have flood insurance so you know I I feel like the residents have to assume some of the risk i know that they are paying more for things like insurance out there um but I also know this is a huge economic driver and when I was a child I came out here I was not old enough to know what was going on but my parents told me I thought that the the sand was snow you know and it's I really would have liked to have gotten out there and seen actual snow on the sand but the fact that killed the plants is not a good thing so
um I I really think this is something that's necessary um and I also think it would be a better target for bonding than baseball fields really i mean I think um that that project benefited a limited group of people this one benefits a huge number uh there's no doubt that the beach is a huge economic driver um and if we want to maintain it we've got to renourish it i know it's there are definitely environmental impacts uh from doing this um but it's one of those things
you kind of have to weigh the the impacts of not doing it um and I know we've set aside 2 million i'd love to see that go up so I' I'd like to see some ways that we could increase that 2 million and I'm not exactly sure where to go from here on that particular aspect thank you thank you you guys have any comments questions because I'm not going to support it even though I'm torn to support it okay and I'm going to tell you I'm going to be real honest here if I support it I can't go home to my husband
we want you to be able to go home years and he lived on that beach when we met and um you need to be able to go home i don't disagree I just want to be real clear here i don't des disagree with the economic driver i get all that but I am I'm still and I pulled it up last night i've got it for you i'm going to send it to you tomorrow i appreciate that we moved over the dune line we did we we I mean I you can see where we did it you know and so we when those dunes went flat we fully moved over them 120 feet and that troubles me i know that we can't back people up now but we
put ourselves in a pretty precarious position and um and I I get this and I am concerned you know I don't know if we really do this every 10 years or every five years but the trend says we're going to have to do it more and more often because it's going to go away faster and the research says that the more you do it the more you have to do it it's one of those perpetuating that's what the research says so if you do it you got to do it more because it will cause a hit a stronger hit on the shore and it comes back and so now you're into a a perpetual cycle so I hope that we
start looking at something more sustaining going forward and I hope that you all know that I want all the businesses to stay there and everything to be good but I have to be able to eat tonight thanks i think um Angelina's doing a special tonight on their two for Tuesdays that's a you call your Mel would be more than happy I'm sure to have you down at Angelina's tonight i would say we could get out there and go pompo fishing but they're probably already going to sleep now uh catch our own dinner uh any other comments i I had a question for Stephan i know you said
we would have to drop our reserves can you give us how much is in reserves and how much we would have to go down and then an anticipated timeline for refilling that reserve oh and if not that's okay so I'm not sure if I fully understand but what I would say right now um as part of the annual budget process for the TDT we set aside 500 uh,000 so maybe that's 750,000 going forward um or maybe it's a million ultimately the the council can can make that decision with our
future budgets um uh that would also require us amending our TD TDT reserve policy um but as far as the ask today um if if council wants to um allocate more than the 2 million that that is currently set aside um I would recommend waving your reserve policy right now we have 4.2 two million or a little more than that in our marketing reserve again the first three pennies are the pennies that you would have to use for TDT uh toward beach nourishment
um there is and of course you can't use all that uh 4.2 so I apologize for that you have to subtract out 518,000 um there is In the special event reserve we've got roughly 93,000 in the third cent we've got 575,000 so we could come up with with a number for instance if if council wanted to contribute
an additional 2 million or something like that again you'd have to wave your policy thank you did you say Oh I'm sorry David did you say last um the last time there was funding that um I mean we know we got the two million so that's so now we're looking for seven too last time the uh board of county commissioners or the uh they borrow money was borrowed out of the um local
option sales tax and then as over a period of time it was paid back by Sriia and if you hadn't had to paid it back you wouldn't have to ask us today and I understand that but is that an option that could I mean since we don't have as much money to be able to do it um is that an option council member of Of course that's an option um and for our commissioner I know um Commissioner did you want to speak to U yes absolutely so unfortunately we can't just use LOST dollars because that wasn't
part of what the community voted on for the use we do have to vote on renewing LOST in 2026 so we are going to add the wording to fund beach nourishment with the next funding that comes from LOST my ask to the board would be that we would loan the money interest free this time because for some reason the last time they did it Escambia County charged SR SR interest on that loan as well which I don't think is a good community partner i mean it's beach residents and it drives our tourism
so I don't know why that was voted that way but it would be my ass that we would not do that and that is certainly uh doable i I I've also I've talked with Tim about looking at restore dollars uh to help offset some of the additional cost of this project um there have been some committed restore projects that have never moved forward former commissioners and we know how that all works when there's a former commissioner sometimes the the those projects get decommitted uh and so I don't
know what funds might be available um from Restore so generally speaking no one's been successful um getting restore dollars towards beach nourishment for this type of beach nourishment well u there is you know there is monies that are controlled by the board the pot one um that the board um could potentially put towards it um one of the kind of challenges is is from the
moment that the board decides that they want to do project X with pots it takes us at least a year to actually obtain the dollars um and just with the Treasury rules we're not it's highly uh discouraged for us to try to go build a project until we get that grant from them because if they happen to throw a federal condition on it we didn't anticipate with purchasing it's then fully ineligible so it's you know with with a lot of planning and a year to 18 months lead time it's
possible the board could consider it so if there are some out of pot one some projects that have encumbered some of those dollars but they have not been spent for that project and you don't see that project moving forward in the commission I don't know what the process needs to be if they have to vote to kill that project and free up those funds can those do those funds for beach reourishment purposes does the county need to go back to through the process of requesting those funds
that they just freed up to have them available for beach so there's a fully public process the board actually just started it I don't know two months ago now is what it feels like um but the the board proposes projects it it has a public comment period um we we send the request to treasury they process it and once that plan is approved for that expenditure then we can work to pull down a grant which takes about eight months or so um so even and and we have had some with change
of board we've had rearrangement of priorities but it's it's still a you know a 12 plus month process from the day the board says we would like to do this so with the just with the timing of this project it would be very difficult to try to right bring those funds to bear if the county were to borrow the island authority to borrow money from the county during the application of restore dollars to pay for this if the county uh was successful at getting the restore dollars for
this project could it be used to reimburse pay off the loan helped pay off that loan so it's possible as long as we procure it as a federal project and not as a state local project and they've actually they've already procured it um it's basically what happens with with restore dollars if you award a project that doesn't have all of their special conditions in it um then it is completely not eligible for restore funding so it's just it's a it's more of a timing issue right so um so another
question about the and maybe this is for Mike the the state match dollars is 50% of the project is it 50% of the total project or what you've already committed the 13.4 i mean if there's So there's a possibility so there's a possibility that number can go up that number can go up to 15 million 195 that's the maximum that's the max so right now we're at 134 okay so if we get the number to get
us to that amount it's possible that that match from the state goes up to 15195 if you add those two numbers together that puts me at 30.4 okay still short about $5.5 million $5.6 $6 million but it's possible that it goes up to 151.95 on a match that's the cap on the match i can only I only can
get what I have okay right so okay that's why my number right now is 134 when do you find out about the 15 when I get to when I get to the 15 when I get to 15195 I can ask them to increase the amount to 15195 so of the 13.4 you're saying that includes Escambia Countyy's 3.3 million that's correct there should What is the 3.3 million is that the TDT 2 million no sir does not include the TDC uh 2 million what that is is prior money that may have been allocated by Commissioner Bender and
really it goes back to and you've you've probably heard Tom Jardine when he comes up here and talks about $3.5 million that that that um the beach never got back from FEMA money now there was a and and Stephan may be able to speak to this but at one point um the beach was included with uh Escambia County in order to get match FEMA dollars and so that money was $3.5 million when that money came back from FEMA that money went into the general budget that money never came back to the
beach even though that was for um beach damage beach cleanup whatever it was but that helped the county get to their matching dollars so that money's already in the county so maybe that's what that 3.33 is but I know they got 3.5 because of of a hurricane claim from from the island authority i think it's probably either a combination of that or money that Commissioner Bender may have set aside at some point for for projects that he had and that's earmarked for this beach that's
correct okay that's correct so with the 2 million that we already have in reserve plus your 13.4 that gets you over your 15 that's going to get me right to the number that's correct that'll get me to 152 154 so the 9.2 is shrinking already it's coming down like that because you know we want the beach to increase versus shrinking because that means everybody here increases as well so that that's the main purpose is we put 42 to 45% of the TDT dollars comes from from the beach so
uh we appreciate any you you guys put the pennies in they'll they'll add up the dollars so we appreciate that so is that state match a guarantee up to the 15 if you have 15 okay so you don't have to go ask for it i don't have to ask for it okay and like in the governor's budget this year is um $und00 million for beach reourishment last year it was $50 million so it went up another 50 but you have to take in effect where all those dollars are going to go they're not going to go the Gulf
they're going to go the Gulf Coast they're just not going to go to to us they're going to go along uh Fort Myers Naples Tampa and over there because of the destruction from those recent storms okay so your $9.2 $2 million request we already have the two million you'll get the match from the two two million from the state so now you're down to a delta of 5.2 correct okay is there a portion any portion of that that the island authority is willing to uh borrow from
the county we haven't had any conversation about barring any money you and I chatted about barn early on i'd prefer you not have to exactly and I appreciate that because you know come back i mean that that's what happened last time yeah and I wasn't here last time i was working for Governor Chris last time and u during the oil spill you know every day we were here Pensacola Beach because it's important to the people of Scambi County and um I I thought really this Mike Burns on this you know the people that generate the money you going to make the people that generate
the money have to borrow the money from you and then pay it back with interest because we borrowed I think it was like 8 8.0 8.5 and then we paid back 7% interest on top of that money that That's ridiculous that's ridiculous for the people that generate the money to have to borrow the money so everybody else can make money shame on Grover for having to make you do that making you guys do that fortunately we have a much better commissioner now in that district so um we're willing to work with
you because I know you're willing to work with us but we need that money because that money is going to uh as they say it's going to make all the boats rise all the boats throughout the county are going to rise and fall based on what happens at Pensacola Beach and so we appreciate you and uh we appreciate working with you and we look forward to options and I'm sorry took up so taking up so much time no that's okay it's important thank you so I I think at this point we have we've already
committed two million which gets a match of two so the delta is the $5.2 million of his request uh from the island authority if there's uh interest on this board to appropriate any additional or recommend to the county commission to appropriate any additional funding on top on top of what we're already committing out of that 5.2 um then I guess at this time we can entertain a motion mr chair I just uh have one question on the 5.2 u maybe this uh question is both for Mike and Stefan um I is it
possible to reach out to a commercial lender and collateralize a pledge of I'm just throwing out a number a million dollars a year for five plus years from TDC collections future collections it may be i think that would be more of a question for Stephan to answer i mean I think that's what Jim was asking anyway couldn't you go to the bar bank on on one of the other issues and borrow the money on that uh so I I think maybe that's an option you know um but I don't I don't know if
I I'm the one to answer that question Mr hall and I'm not a banker so it's a legitimate question if we can collateralize future so projections it's more advantageous from from my perspective not to do that the county has no issue with using some of our cash to to pay for this they can certainly pay us back without interest over if it's five years six years whatever whatever uh the board agrees to um if you go to a bank clearly you're going to pay market it's also going to affect uh the county's
credit ratings and things like that so Oh yeah understood yeah and just a quick comment I'll be brief Mr chairman you know um regardless of how you feel about construction on barrier islands um I have my own personal opinions that I won't u at this council meeting um but we've bitten that apple that that Pandora's box is open and we can't close it now we can't move the commercial buildings we are a tourism economy and our number one demand generator is the beach the sand that we sell so uh with that in mind uh I uh would like to make a motion and it's it's going to
be three parts if we can do that so I move that we uh allocate to the St rose Island Authority for beach renourishment the $2 million in the current fund balance that we further um change our uh reserve policy from $500,000 a year to $1 million a year for beach reourishment um under the formula that uh $1 million a year for 10 years will get us a $10 million fund and
in 10 years we might need $10 million for a beach renourishment so uh change our reserve policy from $500,000 to a million a year and pledge that million dollars a year to back to the county commission for a loan that they would make for the $5.2 million delta to get to the number that Pensacola Beach needs stand Island authority needs to u successfully reourish the beaches i can clarify if needed i'll second that so we have a motion uh and a second any debate or discussion
will you repeat the third part please the the third part would be to um pledge to the county commission from the TDC um a million dollars a year from the improved beach renourishment account from $500,000 to a million a year pledge that million a year back to the county commission for the loan that they render for the beach renourishment until 5.2 2 million is satisfied until until the um the the loan from the county commission is repaid paid up and then then this
this board this council would or the TDC would begin collecting that $1 million reserve again uh to use for future beach nourishment so the third portion is of the million so I understand it the million dollars that we're increasing from a half a million to a million dollars a year uh the reserve policy uh and rather than reserving it for the future 10 years uh immediately paying off each
year the loan from the island authority that's correct yes so Mr chairman do you understand it i believe I do yes okay will explain it to me okay so the motion was three part I I want to relate it back to the 9.2 million somehow but okay so of the 9.2 million two of it has already been committed by this council and in reserves uh and with that 2 million it gets an additional $2 million match
from the state so it reduces correct and so it reduces the 9.2 2 down to 5.2 that the delta that they need and so the motion was uh if the island authority borrows the $5.2 million from the county uh interest free interest free according to our commissioner i said I was going to ask i'm only one of five but I believe there's probably enough energy behind that that we can make it happen you
need to come to that meeting and speak yes ma'am okay i'm sorry keep going so interest free loan then the 2 million is allocated immediately that's part one of his motion part two was change amend our reserve policy from uh reserving a half a million dollars per year for to a million uh and then part three was using that million dollars that we put in reserve to pay back the county loan rather than the island authority paying it back so the island authorities not
going to come out of pocket any more than they have on hand correct so it's loan to the island authority correct that's correct Mr rees that's my motion so in effect what that does is in 10 years when we're back here discussing uh beach reourishment if we've only put $1 million a year into reserves we spent 5.2 paying off the debt we will have 4.8 in reserves great um did you know
about the policy that if this meeting went after six o'clock the chairman bought everybody dinner i I did not know that well it's a new policy you can put it on my IPC account number one so there is a motion and a second is there any further debate or discussion hearing none uh hearing none we call the role james Reeves yes ashley Hoffberger yes shirley
Cronley yes david Bearer bearer yeah David Bear yeah charles Bearer yes jennifer Breer brad Mullenex yes jason Nicholson yes i thought you said you were going to vote no jason just I'm just kidding i think I said I wouldn't share my personal opinions all right well motion uh carries thank you thank you thank you very much thank you Jason
thank you uh and thanks to the speakers who who came today also uh so last item on the well I'm sorry it's not the last item on the agenda next item on the agenda uh Pensacola Beach Gateway Project uh with this I will turn it over to our commissioner to my right thank you i believe we have a video to be played cmr was gonna play a video somebody gonna play a video for David back there give me a second there i'm getting Okay awesome one moment um so I'll go
over where we're going to pull the money for this from um state funding it has not been vetoed yet and we are hopeful it will come through for $1.5 million um TD has or TDC has already committed $600,000 that was the money that we were going to use for the changing stations that we reallocated to this um district 4 is committing $1.1 million from our LOST pot and then I am asking for today that we do $2.5 million and then we're going to pull $1.3 million from
toll revenue so that would totally fund the project and this is what it would look like and this is the entrance onto the beach so we would be demolishing the dilapidated toll booth that does not house anyone and the beautiful arch that you're going to see would actually house the toll reading equipment for the tags so we would be able to still do the toll by plates
and the completion of this would be before next summer and without any lane closure so by summer of 2026 we could have a beautiful entrance to Pensacola Beach and we would suffer no lane closures so the piece the landscaping the fencing that you're seeing the palm trees the turtle friendly lighting they are estimating between seven and $7.5 million
so as you can see it's much more inviting much more welcoming and a much better piece than the current toll plaza that we have do we have any more of that money from the 11 rinky you know they had a certain amount of money that they're spend on landscaping and what have you i have I have talked to Robert Rinky and he is excited to get this going and then we would
like to use some of that money to continue the landscaping down um we are also working on a traffic management plan and a parking feasibility study i.e how do we put a parking garage in Casino Beach parking lot and then how would we effectively get people on and off the beach with that um so once that comes back we'll be evaluating how to implement that and at that point I think would be the time to talk additional landscaping on the beach did you get your answer
how much does a parking garage cost we're not there yet i don't I don't about $35,000 per car that is accurate how much actually is about 35,000 to $55,000 per car depending on I mean it is outrageous at the beginning of CO it was about $19,000 a car and it is skyrocketed to up to at times 55,000 per car west Florida Hospital spent $42,000 per parking spot they also put it
up in less than six months months which I think is a huge accomplishment but that is a different project this specifically is for the toll plaza the entrance to Pensacola Beach i want to give the beach residents something that they can be proud of when they pass into their neighborhood and I want to give our tourists something that says "Welcome to our community we are happy you're here thank you for vacationing with us please continue to spend your dollars in Escambia County we love you please come back next year." So can we take this out of the fifth cent we can take it out of the fifth cent absolutely we can yes have Have we taken each been out of the fifth since
how many heads is this going to put in beds we have not used anything out of the fifth cent the the the roughly 10 million for the the base center capital immediate capital improvements which were over four years and we have two two next year and one more year after that of what we've been reserving correct yeah uh and current balance of the fifth cent is 8.8 million it's 8.8 and what do
we have another 3 million commitment or are we done with the base center commitment so the previous commitment I believe there's a little over three million left but again so there's the allocation that'll be in next year's budget and then one more so because it was it was four years but we're bringing in four and a half to five million each year oh I'm sorry i misunderstood yes each penny is bringing in 4.4 4.5 million per year sorry so there is my move i moved that we approved the two and a half million taking it from the fifth
cention from the fifth cent and 500,000 from the interest on the fifth cent before you do that can I ask one question uh well we have a motion do we need a Can I second it since it's my project sure you second yes yeah okay we have a motion second i just want to know that the people will know that they're going to get assessed a toll here since it doesn't say it yes yes we can
put up like toll toll plaza ahead um one of the things that we're running into now and I know it because I've had friends that call me and they say "Hey I just got to your beach and I stopped at the toll booth but there was no one to hand my dollar to i don't know what to do." So I want to get away from that yeah let can I ask there is a sign on it by the way the X check yes sir the master of the X checker question yes sir what is the accumul accumulated interest on the fifth cent
i don't want to speak for Madame Clerk uh but she does not show it to me that way i suppose I could figure it out um I don't have that information in front of me right now um but I can run and grab my computer and perhaps Well how long have we had the fifth s uh maybe three it happened right before I came back here from the city so three and a half years something like that three four years 21 21 21 you don't think we have two and a half million do you
in interest perhaps but we've been spending it on the base center so we've drawn down so it's not earning interest but it is earning interest probably the last couple years at five plus percent i just want to get the sense of the board so did anybody second my We did yes there was a second so so the motion is 2 million from the fifth cent and a half a million from the interest of the fifth cent yep but we don't know whether or not there's a half
a million dollars in the interest but we think it can happen so why don't we take the two and a half million and exhaust all the interest and the rest of it from the fifth amendment oo I like that i like that better i withdraw my motion and reframe it in that sense and I second how do you do it well great great conversation so um we don't have interest until the clerk posts
those interests so um if it is ultimately the will of the council to do the two and a half from the fifth cent then we can move forward with that well there's a motion to exhaust the interest first and then the remainder from the fifth you can do it and they will never know it i mean it goes to fund 108 anyway so okay so there's a motion a second any further discussion debate hearing none
uh call for the vote if you would please call the role james Reeves yes ashley Hoffberger yes shirley Cronley yes david Bayer yes charles Bayer yes jennifer Breer yes brad Molenex yes and Jason Nicholson yes motion carries thank you thank you Commissioner thank you Mr reeves for your creative motion i just think that I appreciate the attendance of
this board for the you know the longer we meet we make less per hour you know but anything times zero is still zero i I just think it's great that everybody's engaged and uh and to the people who have waited in the audience right they'd like to go to the dinner with us yes
all right we have uh Thank you we have other business um and Councilman Bear I did put this on your name i know you asked questions about why I did that but you had requested that we bring it back so I'd just turn it over to you yeah I'd like to withdraw it thank you okay all right well then the discussion of the letter of the Florida Department of Revenue sending the Chappie James to the Department of Revenue has been withdrawn is there any other interest in having that discussion
if not are we I'm just curious where we are i guess we can't do it so I guess we can give an update on where we are on that um so well and and maybe the commissioner can address it but so we made the we sent the letter to the county commission uh they discussed it at one of their county uh commission meetings uh and um made no changes they had a long discussion uh concerns about possibly finding other funding sources for it uh but at the end of the meeting there was no
action taken um to change their position uh they are some of the conversation was about what is the city's plan to do with it because before they allocate any funds they want to make sure that uh it's still going to move forward um and obviously you guys have discussed it the the mayor has talked about it in his press conferences about maybe move it to Maritime Park maybe change the scope of the project without the big concrete slab uh and so at this point I believe the county
commission decided it's sort of not really in their their it's not on their plate to move it forward it's sort of out there waiting for others to move before they even make a decision whether they want to continue to fund it or not at that uh that amount so thank you 750,000 uh we the county commission currently has 750,000 of tourist development tax committed
to this project even after we they didn't make any changes after we sent the letter but but they instead of springing forward after you sent the letter they decided to just kind of squat forward correctly squat just wait and see yes sir but they didn't rescend their they didn't but they didn't spring forward they just kind of swapped on it but you know there have
been some others bru issues raised concerning other funding that has already been received and uh I would think the county commission would want to see some clarification of that yes before so it may not We may not ever have to send a letter right right i know I understand the city
was talking about possibly because of the cont with in the stewardship agreement gives the city the opportunity to audit that the organization's finances and I don't know if the city's taken any action to initiate that or request for documents um I don't know if either one of you want to speak to that not really okay i understood well I I know I have concerns about some of their financing i I looked up their their tax return number one they don't they haven't done one for last year uh but
the prior year they showed a $100,000 loan from their board chair uh on their tax return because it was a um related party transaction and they had checked the box that that was uh done without board or any committee approval and it was done without a written uh agreement in place so we don't from a public perspective no one knows what the terms of that loan are uh because there's no written agreement it was not approved by a board it was not approved by
a committee uh that's the boxes they checked on their tax return so I have even greater concern uh not above and beyond whether or not they will actually have all the funds to complete the project and where those funds are coming from but why they needed to take a loan who uh if how the chairman of the organization could unilaterally commit the organization the charity to debt uh and whether or not it's paying what type of interest it's paying and he's getting personal
uh gain from that even if he donates that back that's a tax deduction for him uh which again is a personal gain so uh I I think there's ethical issues involved in that as well but you know that's obviously that's not for us but I think it I think that's something that we also have to discuss and and we think I believe the county commission and the city council should consider in their funding i will say that I I think that there's never been a full um nothing has been shared to explain what took us from 500,000 to a million a million to two and
plus like we keep being told that it's more and more but we really have never seen a breakdown of the cost and I think that's critical well and the other thing again you two could speak more clearly to this probably but I think the main concern is you know you build a monument and then the city gets to maintain it that's that's true a real concern there's no way the city any of us that
this does not reflect us it's the you know the entrance into the city so if that's where it is thank you that's as much as I know as an update uh I'm okay at this point because they're not I don't believe the county commission is is actually taking any steps to spend the money uh and so I think a wait and see is a good approach from us
all right thank you any other comments about this are you sure Councilman all right uh hearing none whoa sorry uh we get to the end of the agenda closing remarks mr reeves would you like to start well I appreciate everybody's patience especially the master of the X Checker he's been here from beginning to end um at any rate I just wanted
to see if anybody added up how much money we spent since 3:00 and we loan some of it we loaned some of it go ahead i think that's the quickest in Well maybe not any of us but definitely the quickest I've ever spent money um thank you guys so much for approving so many projects i'm really excited
about the trajectory of our community especially Pensacola Beach we've made huge strides in making sure that we have a beautiful entrance and that we're preserving the beach tonight so thank you so much for that thank you um I think we did we uh improved Escambia County and the beach uh today for some projects forthcoming that's going to create tourism in our area and good night to everyone thank you Councilman Bear thank you Mr chair um just to go back to the minutes
um I really think our minutes need to be a factual accounting of what we do here the the ones from our special meeting clearly we're not did not mention the motion that led to uh Ashley's um or sorry commissioner or what do I call council member council member and this this body uh her substitute motion um I think it's a real issue and I've been on other boards where this has happened where there's been a lot of just narrative in there um that's not what the minutes should be they should be capture action and those did definitely did not capture
the action that was taken um and I withdrew my item because I felt like we weren't really in the position to do anything plus looking at the hour um but I I still you know I I believe that they have to spend the money that's what you said Mr chairman before we can really before the department of revenue will act anyway so we still have a little bit of wait and see and I I don't think that the council members city council members really know what the mayor is going to do at this point you know I asked him the question in the last council meeting about or in one of the
council meetings about the Chappie James Plaza and that's when he dropped the possibility of putting it into the veterans veterans memorial park which I don't think anyone had talked about before and after talking to one of the board members for the Chappie James Plaza they were not very that person in particular thought that was not a good idea um I think part of their issue is the person that's been the mouthpiece for them for quite a while um and I think if that person wasn't the mouthpiece they might get a better reception and so you know I'm hopeful something
works there as a veteran I think it's important to recognize military heroes and I think Chaffie James is definitely one of those people we need to recognize and again it really just goes back to the source of funding um you know we've heard projects today or tonight it's tonight pretty much um that really had a strong impact in economic development uh that one or tourism devel tourist development um that one clearly in my mind is not and so we look at limited resource we've talked about the how finite our resources are in here we've had to look at reserves and
what we do with those um I think we just need to be very cautious with the people's money um and make sure that we're getting the most impact for the dollars we spend in this particular body and ultimately we're just recommending to the county commission but you know if if the county commission chooses to spend something spend dollars on something we don't think is appropriate for these I think we have the you know the duty to go to the Florida Department of Revenue and if we get to that point we will but tonight was not the night thank you thank you i just want to say uh thanks Mr reeves for speaking into the microphone because tonight
I could actually hear you a very interesting conversation and I do appreciate I mean I've heard things about this board in the past just saying that it was not fully um awake and everyone wasn't here that kind of stuff and um and I would have to say that we are we we come from different places we've got different ideas but we are all here working on it and I am proud of this board thank you thank you just briefly want to say thank you for all the people that presented very passionate
right and it's good to hear that energy and that focus for what they're trying to get done thank you Jason and u I'd also like to thank Mr reeves for hanging in there with us we appreciate your leadership and I'll echo uh Councilman Breer's uh comments that I appreciate the robust nature of the discussion and debate that we have and I appreciate further um you illustrating the safety concerns that might be present in turf and I think we saw a bit of a pivot at the dis there to go
with a non-PAS uh solution so thank you that's something that was not even uh on my radar um I think the the number we discussed tonight and recommended for allocation is 36.7 and that's a lot of money and uh I think the level of debate uh equaled the level of uh recommendation so thank you all have you considered go Argos have you considered changing the time of the meeting
where the two council people have a conflict did you guys have a conflict today what's that they did not did you have a conflict today um no for council you said you had some council meetings sometimes when we called no actually before when I was on this board I heard that the staff was or the people on the board were not always here that it was not fully vetted that you know there were decisions being made with it without everyone here and I have only witnessed a very
attentive board and I'm proud of that that's all i haven't And I didn't have any issues anywhere else so you like these 3:00 to 6:30 meetings just for the sports people my grandsons like baseball i move we adjourn well I have some closing remarks Mr reeves and I' I've written a speech now I I want to thank uh this council tonight for this lively discussion and I think
we had some really great projects uh on our agenda that we funded um and I think we're we uh I appreciate all of the applicants of bringing those forward to us um those are wise investments I believe into the future of our tourism uh and uh although I know our governor was in town today uh and had some unkind words to talk about our university uh I'm proud of our university and I'm proud of what uh they're doing in our community and I'm proud that they came to
us today to ask us to help invest in their future and I'm glad that we did so thank you for that he really did have some unkind words and I'm sorry he did that he says there liberal program i want to go out and see one i want to see them too i want to see them too uh and with that uh that concludes my comments uh and this meeting is now adjourned thank you we choose this