I heard a rumor that Yeah. So it does work. Something doesn't coming to play. I'm not even sure test. Check. This is the board of county commissioners regular meeting on August
12th, 2025 in board chambers to various Florida. Good morning. recording in progress. Good morning everyone and welcome to the Lake County Board of County Commissioners meeting this August 12th, 2025. We're going to open the meeting
with an invocation and with us today is Pastor Bobby Row. Um he also is representing Fellowship of Christian Athletes for North Lake County and does a fabulous job with that group and working with our young people. So
welcome Pastor Ro. I'll do the pledge after the prayer. Yes. Let us pray. Lord, we thank you for this day. This is the day that you have made and we choose to be glad and rejoice in this day. We thank you for our leaders that help lead out Lake County. Lord, I
pray that you will continue to give them wisdom, guide them as they make decisions concerning our county. We give you glory, honor, and praises in Jesus' name. Amen. Let us stand for the pledge. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the
United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. Thank you, pastor. All right. Um, moving then to our agenda
update. Uh, Jennifer Barker, our county manager. Do we have any changes to our agenda? Uh, just one thing, Commissioner. Good morning, commissioners. I would like to request that we move tab 5 from the consent agenda to have a vote
immediately following the agenda update. This is so Commissioner Morris can vote remotely. He is currently unable to to attend on person and he should be online. Commissioner Morris, are you there? Yes, ma'am. I'm here.
So, if we could take that vote immediately following the update, I'd appreciate that. All right. Like to make a motion to uh allow Commissioner Morris to vote virtually today. Second. All right. All in favor say I. I. Any opposed? Okay. Commissioner Morris, you
are now a voting member of the board and county commissioners for today's meeting. So, we appreciate you being able to log in and join us. Okay. Um, legislative update. Uh, Chris Cmony with Gray Robinson is going to go over our legislative update. There he
is. Right. I see it up there. Who do I look to for the clicks? Right over there, by the way. Oh, that works even better. Do you want me up here? Good morning everyone. Chris Cardy with Gay Robinson. Great to be here with you all this morning. You're going to see
I'm going to warn you ahead of time a bunch of slides. I'm going to go through many quickly. Uh these are obviously available. So, um a lot of this information, you know, but I just wanted to don't get freaked out when you see a whole bunch of slides up I'm going to move through them quickly and get to the meat of the stuff so we can answer any
questions and give you updates on everything related to y'all. So, uh, with that, I'll start clicking through here. Um, okay, that's a picture of me and Angie, my partner in crime, right behind me, Angie Langley. Uh, we work together on your behalf up in Tallahassee. Uh, we've been doing so for
many years now and we're we're grateful to have that partnership and and many years of success. I'm glad I didn't wear the same suit this year. Okay, so um, we start with the players, right? And so for those in the audience and obviously those who I'm speaking to on the DAS here, it always helps to know who's in the room right
making those decisions up in Tallahassee which helps uh guide us and and and and helps us in how we guide them as far as the decisions they make whether it's appropriations or policy. So um they've you'll see some of those sub subtitles
there. um 120 members, a few um were out in the House due to resignations and then of course the Senate. You had uh an unfortunate passing of one senator and then a few others that switched parties or had open seats based on appointments. So kind of always moving target there.
Um so uh this slide will be updated probably within the next hour as many of you are aware, but I'll start with that. You have the office of governor. Um everyone knows person top left, that's Governor DeSantis. Um his lieutenant governor, it's it's widely expected this morning. He's going to announce that uh
to replace Janette Nunees, who took the FIU job, will be Senator Jay Collins, which will create another opening. Um that's not official, but they areo hosting that announcement at the Green Beret Association. He is a Green Beret. I'm going to do some some calc some political calculus and make that guess there. Uh the governor's team, you can
see their chief of staff, Jason Weda, uh his uh director um for policy and budget, Lita Kelly, and then Mary Cla Hubard, who took over legislative affairs director kind of late in session. Peter Cutterman was his uh legislative affairs director during most session. And of course, the cabinet,
many of these are new faces. Wilton Simpson elected in the last cycle. And then you've got two newly appointed members, James Ummeer, who is the attorney general. Uh he was previous in the role as chief of staff to the governor. and Blazing Golia. This is by a couple weeks old, now the head of Doge
uh in the state of Florida. We'll talk about that later. He's previously a senator. Um but th both those positions there were largely um not largely, they were empty. Uh well, no, excuse me. James was appointed earlier in this year, but uh the CFO office was empty
since mid-Marchch when uh Jimmy Petronis was elected to Congress after he resigned that seat. So, still fairly new in those positions there. And as you can see, especially given the appointments, many close ties there to the governor. Um, so working closely there with him.
On the house, uh, you'll see this is the leadership group there. Danny Perez out of South Florida is the speaker. Lawrence Mccclure is the budget chair. Um, and then you can go through some of the familiar faces there. Sam Garrison, probably the most notable of the rest of them, uh, given that he is the rules chair, but the speaker doesn't. So,
he'll be taking over assuming the Republicans remain control of the House after the 26th election. So, his power will continue to rise as they go through the process next year. And then the Senate, you have Ben Albert, Senate President. He actually announced just yesterday uh that he well, he didn't
make it official, but he made a lot of comments that would reflect that he's going to forego his last two years in the Senate. Based on redistricting, he had some extra years he could use. So, when he's done being Senate President next year, he's in theory going to retire uh from the Senate, but he's Senate President now. Ed Hooper out of
Penllis County is the budget chair. um Kathleen Pasadomo the immediate past president as the rules chair and then the majority leader is Jim Boyd uh notably there is he's expected to be the senate president after Ben Albrin and then uh close to home here Jason Broer is the president prom uh and he's based
out of Semino County but obviously works well and closely with many in your delegation here future leaders I kind of hinted at some of these so I'll put them up there um because of uh term limits in the house and senate the the the folks up there have a decent idea of who's going to be
um their future leaders. And in the House, they actually have a cut off point. It's the end of June uh during that first year where they make the election. So, we've updated that slide as a result. Sam Garrison is who's expected to be next. Following him is Jennifer Kennedy, who's historic for a couple reasons. Surprisingly, the first
presiding officer to come out of PK County. We've had several budget chairs from both chambers, but never presiding officer, and probably more notably, the first female speaker when she takes the gavl. Um there's been three female Senate Presidents, but never a female speaker. And then Mike Rodondo, newly minted, sort of a poorly kept secret up
at the House. They're not supposed to talk about it, but he had one of the what they call red shirt freshman years where he got he was elected in a special election and came in. So this is sort of his second year. Most people expected he would get it and then late June they did. The House Republicans did gather and elect him as the speaker of that
class. In the Senate, you'll see Jim Boyd is set to take over um after Ben Albert and Jay Trumbull following him. Uh, and many believe Tom Leak, although it's never been made official, Tom Leak will be the one that kind of lines up with Mike Rodondo on the Senate side
when he uh rises up many years out. Um, and then here's your local delegation. Uh, you all know them well. I'm sure the folks in audience know them well, so we won't dwell there, but you have Senator Trudeau and of course our three House members, uh, Representatives Jarovski, Gentry, and Cobb. Gentry, and Cobb being
freshman members, uh, in the House. So, unless you were living on a rock politically, you you know about some of the tensions that were leading up to session. So, we have a slide on that and all I'll say and you can read the slide later is after the election and Trump uh
taking office, uh the governor had called a special election largely around immigration, but a few other topics, the House and Senate almost immediately said no thank you. Those weren't their words. I'm being more polite. You can see the quotes up there. Some some some uh tough language was used in the memos when they
said no thanks. So they gave in and then immediately gave out, gave in their own special session to have their own immigration bill which the governor vetoed and they called a a final third special session to get done an immigration package that the governor could sign off on. Not much change
between the original version that the House and Senate had and the one the governor signed a few tweaks, but it was an early signal of kind of the chaos that was to be expected this legislative session. Uh it didn't seem like anyone was getting along up there. Uh so that'll kind of be a theme as we go through here by the numbers. Again,
these slides are available so you can track them later, almost 2,000 bills filed, almost 270 passed, uh 246 signed, 11 vetoed, um and zero awaiting presentation to the governor. They've completed their work, uh including on
the executive side. Uh and then three, this is the first time the governor has done this. Three bills were allowed to uh become law without signature. probably the one that gained the most uh attention was the one regarding non-competes on workers contracts. The governor allowed it to become law or
phasing out uh the non-competes uh but he didn't sign it. So that's something in the constitution allows. This this is the first time Governor DeSantis has allowed a bill to become law that way. Usually he's either approved them or vetoed them. Um we'll see what that does next session if he does something similar.
All right. And you can see sort of on appropriations which guides a lot of the conversation. uh very similar. House filed, Senate filed as far as the number of bills filed for appropriation asks. So here's some of the priority issues in this guide. So some of the things they all agreed on and you can see in that
top slide um there uh there was a few things. Tax cuts. It's since I've been in the process they've always led with a tax package. Um they were generally agreement on cutting the budget. It's just by what much by how much and where. Um and then talking about a regulatory
framework and and putting some efficiencies. This is our Republicans who lead the House and Senate. This is sort of the talking points you've heard for the last 10 years. So those they agreed upon from there. Not much was agreed upon as you probably heard. But let's go ahead and see what they were leading with. Governor property tax
relief was his number one issue. He he kind of anytime he had a chance to speak on it in a press conference, he led with that. They ultimately didn't pass anything as far as a constitutional amendment yet. That's expected this next session. But as you've heard more about Doge, the Doge effort, as you've heard Bla1 and Golier, our CFO talk about
Doge, you've also heard him follow up with property tax relief as needed. That's not a coincidence. Um this is part of the drum beat that's leading towards next session and next election cycle, which we can speak on. Uh illegal immigration, the governor led on that. He ultimately did get a bill passed in the um special session as you've
probably been following with Alligator Alcatres down in South Florida. They've continued to to push on that. And the other thing sort of he's gotten a lot of what he's wanted this governor over his first six years, first six sessions. And so, you know, continuing to lead and then cementing his legacy. He's got two sessions left going into this one. Now
he's only got one that we've we've concluded it. So, sort of a leading a lead of let's continue to be the leader in in the country, right? The first of the 50 states. So, that's sort of his mantra this year. Ben All Britain very big on rural renaissance. Um, and this
was a big uh expensive I say expensive, it was there was a lot of money in the bill, sort of like live local from previous Senate President. Ultimately, it didn't make it to the finish line, but the whole goal was to uh put an infusion of cash in our rural areas of the state and change some regulations. In his words, to make sure that the
rural areas have as just much of an opportunity as the urban areas of our state. This will absolutely be back next session. Um, it got caught up in some of the politics late in session over the tax package. Florida citrus. Uh he he led on that. He's a he's a farmer by background obviously, so he's familiar
with it. And he put about 97 more million dollars in the budget than the previous year towards research into citrus canker and greening and other areas. So he's he is he is going to have part of his legacy of at least trying to do something to keep our citrus industry
alive here in Florida. Um and he put his money where his mouth is. And then empowering members, right? uh you've often heard the expression that the house is sort of a militaristic approach. The speakers, the general and lieutenants and then privates, whereas the Senate you often heard was joked was 40 Somalian warlords. No one's going to
tell any senator, Republican or Democrat, what to do. That sort of had shifted in previous years uh back more to a leadership at the top approach, but President Albert made it clear that his members were going to have all the authority that they needed to have. That he wasn't going to put his thumb on the scales on things too often. And you saw a lot of that play out this session
which kind of led to the chaos and not that's not a that's not a jab. That's just a more of a comment of the facts is when 40 members are not necessarily having their thumb put on the scale of how to vote then they're going to start acting how they want to act. Um which could lead to some chaotic votes. And
then Speaker Perez he wanted a sales tax reduction not in business rent tax which we can talk on but the actual state sales tax. That package was debuted late in session from 6 to 5.25%. uh that ultimately did not make it to the finish line. Uh he was leading with spending cuts. Obviously, the governor
and the speaker or the president joined him on that. Um and ultimately in the budget and then of course targeted repeal of tort reform. If you could say speaker Rener and um President Pasadomo were tough on tort uh are tough on the trial bar, right, with a lot of tort reform. I wouldn't say speaker Perez is
a prot trial bar, but he's certainly a little more open-minded to the idea of some of the reforms in the other direction. And so there was some bills that he had certainly supported and endorsed that was going to peel back some of what was done under Speaker Rener and President Pasadomo. None of those made it to the finish line, but we
expect next year those could come back. And one of those, and we'll talk about it later, notably is sovereign immunity, right? That that that is a constant thing that on your behalf I'm I'm usually worried about up in session because we know it's not been changed for 11 years. And so the drum it's the
clock is ticking, right? A lot of people expect that that could come back and under this leadership structure it could. So the budget uh the one thing they have to pass every year the other bills are I guess ornaments on the Christmas tree. This is the Christmas tree that they actually have to put forward. Uh and so you can see up there
some of the things they agreed upon was cutting the budget. Uh but where they cut um that wasn't necessarily agreed upon. And I that's a joke slide because as you know it took them an extra 45 days to get the budget done. So it took a little while to load that. Um but they did make it to the finish line on day 105. We love a pie chart. So, it was
ultimately a $15.1 billion budget that was passed. You can see where it was going. No surprise there in a state of our size population-wise. Healthcare funding take up a huge chunk. K12 and higher education take up probably the next biggest chunk combined. And then you can add up the others.
Transportation, road funds, a and natural resources, criminal justice, and then here's some of the totals if you want to track it that way. Um, and you can see the percentages. Again, all these slides will be available if you'd like them. Uh Lake County, as you know, we had we our South Lake Public Safety
Complex got a million and survived the veto pen and some others around town. Um from Pico dollars, which is a different pot of money, and I say both easy to get into, but hard to get into, but once you're in, you can do something. But you can see Lake Tech had some workforce education funds. And then Lake Sumpter College, their program fund was right
around 21.8 uh million dollars. So, uh, and there that's not the only appropriations in the county. Just a couple we wanted to put out there for your awareness. Budget highlights, some of the others, and then, um, you know, we can move into some of the policy and I obviously can answer any questions. You can see, uh,
on the K12 FFP per student building, uh, spending up almost 2%. Um, and then pay raises for state employees. Uh, some of the vacant state jobs. Uh, so when you cut the budget, one of the easiest place to look is jobs that haven't been filled. They cut um the actual funding
for 2200 vacant jobs, ones that hadn't been filled. So, you have to lay anyone off. You just no one's going to be hired in those positions. So, the people that are there probably have a little more work in the future. Uh the work plan, which is critical for Lake County, we are at the center of the state's growth and development. Um so, obviously fully
funding the work plan is to our benefit as a lot of the the roads that they are funding come through here or adjacent here. Um so, that's good news. Sidowski trust fund that was fully funded. And that was certainly uh not the case at midway through session and sort of the back and forth between the House and
Senate of what they were going to do. Uh there was some t talk of pulling back on some of the the injection of cash that was there under live local, but ultimately they were able to work around that. I think that's going to be a conversation again this next session. So we're keeping an eye on it. Uh it's not that they don't believe in the the the
funding, but if you're going to cut the budget, they were looking for places to cut. And the Sidowski trust fund and some of the new funding models for it were an easy place to look because it's not tens of millions, it's hundreds of millions. Um and then as you can see, Everglaid funding, uh again, another strong year of funding for that. Um and
then you can see up there, uh 5.2% less or 3.2%, excuse me. My eyes need to work, uh a little better and less funding than the fiscal year 2425. Uh big ticket items. I kind of hit on some of these. Visit Florida got 80 million. Uh rural and family lands
protection program which I know has benefited some property owners here and Lake County. 250 million uh 750 million in the stabilization fund. We'll talk on this. Florida has a stabilization fund. Every year they've been putting what the max is that they can put into that. And what part of the the way they negotiated
the landing plan for the tax plan, the budget, and everything else was they put forward this bill that would be a constitutional amendment that would um increase the amount that you can put into the budget stabilization or that you're required to put in the budget stabilization fund. Um Ed Hooper, the Senate budget chair, as he was
presenting this bill during the kind of extended session days, he he he quipped that he hopes this doesn't pass when it goes to the voters because he doesn't like tying the hands of future legislators. But part of getting the deal done, the sausage made, they had to do that. And this was part of the speaker's push of he he thinks Florida
has a spending problem and he wants to reduce the spend. And one way to do that is to require the increase in what we put in the stabilization fund. The good news is that um and you can I'll go through these and I'll give you the good news that goes with it that they paid down some more state debt and then Hometown Heroes develop uh down payment
assistance program. They put 50 million more in there. is that we as far as unspent reserves were at 12 or 13 billion beyond our budget stabilization fund. To put that in terms that like kind of like quantify that's two hurricanes and another COVID crisis. Um
hopefully neither of those or none of those occur, but the state is flush with unspent cash based on revenue projections and that's the conservative revenue projection. So they certainly did spend way less than they could have and that was by design. Um, but the good news is going into next session and
certainly going into probably our peak hurricane season in Florida these next couple of months, we have the reserves to take care of our state should something like that occur. Um, all right, couple more tax package. You probably heard a lot about this. The big part of that package took almost all of
that 2 billion was the business rent tax elimination. They took it um all the way down from the twoish pennies that it was at down to zero. that will have an effect on local if if the for any county or city that has opt in with a local business rent tax, those go away with it. Uh and then some of the others, the
the back to school sales tax that you hear about frequently, they put most of that into permanent thinking shoes and clothes up to $75 worth. So that is something that's now permanent and that kind of funded the rest of it. And then the others, this is how I I heard a reporter say it and they said it well,
the tax package is always like the Christmas tree where you put the ornaments up there um and see how many stay on, but that you can see some of those hunting and fishing supplies sales tax holiday. Um and then the tool time sales tax holiday. Some of those are there. Uh and then you see some of the others kind of related to our Florida
tourism admission to state parks. And then they did they have what they have what they call sports admission tax exemption for big events and they added an NASCAR event and there the and uh races at the Homestead Miami Speedway sort of to increase demand for those. So
uh few others line item vetos you saw about total of 1.35 billion uh 750 million of that was that ch transfer to the budget stabilization fund. As the governor pointed out the state is more than flush in unspent cash and reserves that are already there. So he didn't
feel like it was necessary. Uh you can't take the politics out of politics. Some of that is a shot at the speaker who those two are not exactly getting along even today. Um that because that was his priority. Um but generally when you take out that 750 it wasn't a terrible budget
or veto season for projects, but it was still when you take it, it was less than what the governor actually proposed in his own budget after he put his vetos in. So the the theme was less is more I guess. So, Tormform, I mentioned some of those um died, but you can see PIP repeal, phantom damages, free kill as
it's called, um for doctors that have a medmau. Um those were all uh either killed in committee or vetoed by the governor. I expect a lot of those will be back. So, pay attention to those next year for those in the business industry. Um local government legislation, I'm sure you guys have been monitoring it
well, but a couple went on put on your radar. Senate Bill 180, which had uh which was themed to do with emergencies. There was uh a piece in there that was uh kind of worked in in the final stages that dealt with and they've done it before, but this one seemed to be a little more aggressive in its approach
where um if a hurricane made landfall anywhere within a 100 miles of that land landfall up through its track. Um you couldn't go back and and put rigorous or aggressive development restrictions or whatnot. They it was done in previous years with more guard rails around the
language of just don't do this. the idea that if if your home gets taken down, you should be allowed to be rebuild it um and not under all these new codes or new restrictions. Uh this one um was a little more aggressive where it was retroactive in effect and basically went back to last year's hurricanes and did
the whole 100 mile radius thing, but it put some restrictions on any kind of de development restrictions or anything that could perceive that would make it more difficult for you to develop your property. It's gotten a lot of headlines in Orange County neighboring over here that had vision 2050. It's getting headlines in
other areas where some whether it's an environmental issue or something else. If a city or county is pushing for something um it was the people who are uh working against it are presentative of well this was not what it was meant to be. I can assure you this is exactly what it was meant to be. Um the people
that were pushing this and and many have come forward bragging on what it was done was meant to slow down any kind of development restrictions whether here in Lake County, Orange County, Simol, wherever in the nearby area. Um there is there are some Republicans though because it was they're in the majority who have expressed that while maybe they
knew what it was meant to do, they they weren't comfortable with how far it's been taken. So I think next year you'll see some momentum to maybe pull that back or certainly don't extend it. Um but it'll go from last hurricanes up through a year through. So if there's no hurricanes this cycle, and let's knock
on wood and hope that there are none just in general. um in theory some of these restrictions will go away and there'll be an opportunity in Tallahassee next year to talk about what is appropriate and not appropriate as far as this. But that was put in there and it was meant to to stifle any kind of uh development restrictions or
regulations. The other one um and you all had opted into Doge but I put it on your radar because it's certainly going to affect your neighbors and it and it is going to be a theme as we go through this um uh the next year is the implementing bill which many of you are familiar with is the bill that goes with the budget. It's good for one year where
you can make changes in law. Um, and then come June 30th or July 1, if you will, of 26, those changes are gone from the books. Um, one thing that was slipped in on the very last day of negotiations of the budget, and when I say last day, the night the final meeting where they said, "We're good to
go. We're done," was a lot of implementing bill language. And one of them was from that bill where it dealt with Florida Doge. And it gave them the authority, which you know, y'all were probably in good standing anyway, so it didn't matter. But it more to radar, the authority to go in and ask for these records that they were getting through
public records. But the key is is they can now charge fines. And so when you see the headlines where Doge was going to Orange County, they're in Orlando today. They were there yesterday. And you see our CFO kind of speaking to reporters. Part of the reason they're able to go in so easily, not just through a public records request, is this authority is now very clearly in
our laws until June 30th of 26 that says they they have right to access all these records and if a local government pushes back in any way, they can be up to a $1,000 day fine. So I think you're going to find all the local governments probably would have cooperated anyways, but now they're going to be extromoted to cooperate because it'll cost them
some money to do so. Um, and I'll touch on that. This is no surprise here. Um the governor has been preaching property tax reduction. He and the speaker had it out during session of what how you go about that. Should it be a state sales tax reduction, property tax reduction? They are going to lead into next session
with a push to have amendment that's going to be on the ballot in November. What that amendment looks like is unclear yet. It could be it could be a very far broad farreaching not just homestead but everything. Um, it could be, you know, more surgical, right? Homestead, but for a certain age and so
many years in our state before that, so it's not just a, you know, a bunch of folks that didn't live here before coming in and taking advantage. It's unclear what that's going to be, but what's going to lead the way is Doge. If you've listened to Blaze and Golia, and I'll start to move on here as I say this, every time he gets in front of the press, he says property taxes are
needed. Property taxes relief is needed. There's no surprise in some ways. I'm sure the report is already written and I'm not saying, you know, be careful I say that, but they've obviously know what they think is the problem, but they are going to come up with a number and that number is going to probably be in the billions and they're going to say because of that waste, we now have to
have property tax relief. What that bill looks like and what that amendment is yet to see. That'll be something the House and Senate will decide upon that they put to the the voters. So, it's coming. Uh so, we should gear up and be ready for that. I know you all are limited in what you can do at from the
dis as far as approaching that but you certainly educate your constituents on what the impacts could be. Uh some not I'll go quickly through these notable bills that passed constitutional amendment reform. Um that was uh you know how you collect the signatures whether they can be out of state or
instate workers and how quickly you can turn them over. It's not the the it's certainly not the good old days many of us experience where when you turn 18 in high school someone hands you and hey you should register to vote. That's not even allowed anymore. So, uh, it's definitely a different ballgame. Fluoride ban, um, and and a bill led by
Senator True now here locally, there was a big a bill. What one thing that was in that bill was, um, a fluoride ban. Many governments across the state were already banning fluoride, but now that's official. Um, state parks, you probably remember last summer there was discussion of putting golfs um, golf a
golf course or pickle balls or even hotels in some of the state parks. it had a large rebuff of both Republicans and Democrats to the governor's plan on that or his team's plan. Um, and so they passed a law there that made it very very clear that that that would not happen and if it did, it would be
heavily vetted by the the the public, right? If you're going to do something like that condo law reform, this is something that since Surfside uh tragedy that the legislature and the governor's office has been each year trying to get their arms around, right? They thought they had a solution and then it turns out that the solution while it would
certainly keep the buildings safe, it was going to make them extremely expensive to live in to for the insurance and the maintenance costs that the that the condo owners would have to make. So, they've made another attempt at it, try to get the costs in line, but keep them safe. I think this is something they'll continue to work on each year. You probably remember they
talked about uh previous sessions they did school t start times, they were shifting them to later uh with the concept of kids need to be sleeping. That will help with their their their development. um they repealed that this year and what it ultimately does is for your school board here locally and others is if they could come up with a
study or with a vote that they've determined that it actually is not going to benefit them in their area, they can they can ignore that law. So, not a full repeal, it's just sort of a permission to say no thank you and we expect many will say no thank you. um Department of Health package. Um notable, uh why I bring it up here is you probably
remember in the the the tail end of COVID, the the legislature passed some bills that um made it clear that businesses and others couldn't um couldn't restrict your entry to that facility based on your vaccination status, certainly on CO and others that was set to lapse. Um sort of like, oh,
we'll push it out a couple years because hopefully it's not an issue. Well, they brought it back. It just didn't make it clear that that that those provisions will stay in place. And then as well of how doctors are treated it that doctors can't discriminate um you as a patient, right? They can't say if you choose that you don't want vaccines, they can't keep
you from going there. And then brownfields, this has been a successful program in Florida where they've been able to rehabilitate Brownfield's properties, but it needs funding. And they were able to put some bills in place that helps keep the funding alive and and keep it in such a way that whether it's here in Lake County or the other 66, if you've got a brownfield,
developers will be motivated to develop that property and take those funds to clean it up. Um here are some bills that did not pass but we expect will be back. Property insurance. Um they are um the legislature and leadership from OIR and others are are are
of the belief that what they did a couple years ago will will start to pay dividends as we go through um insurance cycles. So they they passed on doing anything this year. I think if all those renewals that we're getting are continuing to increase, uh I think
you'll see some movement next session, uh because there is been a drum beat by folks across the state saying you got to continue to do more. Our renewals are coming in and they're higher than they were the previous year, but they're trying to let the market take care of itself. The good news is there are more insurers coming into the market, but they haven't quite seen the rate
reduction yet um yet. Hemp regulation, this is something that you continue to see of kind of loosening the restrictions around hemp regulation that didn't make it there. E-Verify. Um, as you know, in Florida, if you have 25 or less employees, you don't have to do E-Verify. And if you were if you have 25
or more, the employees that you had um were grandfathered in before the law changes. There were some bills that got a little bit of momentum to just make it everify for everybody. Right. Tricky in a state like ours, as we're seeing everything that goes on because it's it's kind of a poorly kept secret that many of our industries and some of our
strongest industries rely on um workers that are maybe not here fully legally. Um, so it's it's a complicated issue in Tallahassee as everyone's trying to balance that, but I expect that bill will be back. Uh, one that got a lot of attention was college and university presidential searches and whether they should have the current system where it
can be in secret and then you announce one candidate left. Uh, my alma mater uh certainly went through that process where University of Florida had one candidate left and then end up not getting approved. that I think because of that situation and how that went down with the board of governors rejecting
that candidate, um I think you're going to see this bill come back next year where they try to put some more transparency around it. And again, it goes to the balance of things. Some people won't put their name into the pool to be considered because they don't want to lose their current job if it's not private. But on the other hand, when it's only one candidate that comes
forward, it kind of feels like maybe the process wasn't as transparent as it should have been. They're trying to figure that out. Gun law changes. There was some push to repeal some of the um Parkland legislation that we that was passed what five six years ago. Um that law did not that that that bill did not
make it to the finish line, but we expect it will be back. A big one that we we worked with and others uh was CRA. There was a big push to eliminate CRAAS in the state of Florida. Um and and not just in name, which was done kind of in previous years where they kind of limited them, but actually take them
out. Um ultimately that bill didn't make it to the finish line, but we expect that will be back. um DBPR deregulation. I promise I'm close to the finish line here, folks. Uh there was a big run by Representative Yaroski here locally. There was a big Dereg bill. Um it was probably, you know, you hear too big to
fail legislation. It's the opposite. If it gets too big, it gets weighed down. That was a big bill. It had a lot. It was very ambitious or aggressive depending on your your viewpoint on it. Um ultimately, it was probably too much in it to keep it get it to the finish line, but I do expect the representative
and the House leadership will want to push for something like that. There was a lot in there that people loved, things that probably need to go by the wayside on regulations, but there were some other parts of it that were that gained a lot of attention uh from different special interest groups that they had problems with it. And then sovereign immunity, I mentioned it, and it's
probably better I best I finish with this is it's been 11 years since Florida increased its caps on sovereign immunity. We're at 200 and 300,000 um whether individual or or multiple. Um it there is a push not just by the trial bar, but I would salt some of the
Republicans and Democrats that aren't trial bar friendly, but but recognize that hey, there's a system in the state and and 2003 300 is not in line with the with what um current rates because of inflation and other things are. Um every year we think they get closer. What's
held this bill back from passing is the the folks that are pushing for it, and I will call that the trial bar friendlies. They want a very big increase, right? they want it to be in the one and two millions and then index it uh and and kind of streamline the process which would be a I don't I'm preaching to the
choir here at least certainly your legal team and others that deal with this that would be a massive hit to your your what how you self-insure and the reinsurance rates and other things that you do what has been pushed by others in the Senate and a few in the House is to just take what would be appropriate if 11 years
you index it to what would be an adjusted probably bring it up to four 500 or 500 600 it would be painful right if you're jumping the caps, but at least it would be something you can manage. That's what's been preached, but because the the side that really wants it has been going for something very aggressive. Um, it's killed it every
year because I don't think the majority of legislators up there, even the ones that are tribal bar friendly are ready to make that big leap. But every year that goes by, I worry that this will be the year that they do it. So, I will I'll encourage you, how however you make those adjustments, that next year could be the year. certainly the leadership in
place between Albritain and Perez that they're willing to have the conversation whereas Rener and Pasadoma were not. Um and I I don't know where this governor would land on that, right? Because it would be considered tribal bar friendly and he's had a pretty good reputation of being anti-trial bar. Um but that's usually in the vein of being pro
business. Local governments are not businesses in his eyes. So I don't know where he'd land on a bill like that. So it's something to pay attention to. We'll obviously continue to advocate on your behalf to at least if it's going to change, make sure it's an appropriate change and not a drastic one. All right.
Uh session dates right around the corner. Um there they gave us a break in September because it took them 105 days to finish this year, but come October 6, that week of they'll be off to the races. Uh and with a couple of backto-backs built in there, uh I have three kids, so fortunately they've given
me the week off of Halloween. I'll be busy then, but the others they'll be very busy. And then in session starts, you could see January uh 13, 2026 and ends March 13, 2026. And the other thing that I hadn't didn't have a chance to update the slides, but I'll I'll touch
on and then answer questions as you've heard a lot redistricting, mid mid dennial, I think they call it, uh redistricting. It was sort of the president was leading with that. the governor started to to mention it and in a surprise move because they're not exactly best friends these days, the speaker released a memo saying he's
going to take a fresh look at it and kind of gave all the proper legal guidance to his members of do not talk about x y and z because if you do you'll be disqualified for participating in the process. Um I think this has some legs. Uh so you know how it will impact Lake County will be interesting, right? Many
people thought a few moons ago central Florida was going to get that extra congressional seat. It kind of moved closer to Tampa. So, it could lead to a new seat in our area or not. Um, we'll have to see where that goes. But, I think it's a very real conversation and the fact that the speaker led with it, that you have our president leading with
it. Um, there's momentum there. So, I think that will take up a lot of the bandwidth in session. And it's the year, if you're going to do it in a year, it's the year to do it because we have the early session. And the whole point of the early sessions before they switched it to every other year was in in um redistricting years, you had that early
session so everyone knew what seats they were running for with enough time right when March finishes. So it'll be very interesting. And then final reminder on that that unlike the House and Senate redistricting maps that don't have to go to approval of the governor, the congressional seats do have to go to the approval of the governor. So it'll be an
interesting little dance there. They're already having trouble finding their notes. Um but now they have to if they're going to do that, they'd have to figure out how to do that. Uh, President Albertton has not weighed in on that. So, that's the big wild card in all of this. Clear the speaker and the governor has expressed interest, but we haven't heard from President Albert. We'll have
to see where all that lands. So, I I condensed a whole lot in some some slides and again, these are all available and we left plenty off. Um, but happy to discuss whatever or take notes or even look a little bit towards 2026. Any questions? That was a good
presentation. It was very thorough. Um, I think, um, I mean, the only thing that just keeps coming to my mind, especially when you talked about the reserves and the state being flushed with cash, is there ever any discussion about changing the way that transportation is
is funded and getting more dollars to the local governments to take care of transportation needs because it's just such a huge issue throughout the state of Florida and especially here where we're feeling the impacts of growth from all over the date as people travel through our county.
It's a it's a it's a fair question and a fair suggestion as you recall. Um it wasn't 10 years ago that uh folks were coming to Tallahassee having to say don't raid the transportation trust fund, right? Um there was folks who the legis some of the legislators
previously, you know, you viewed that because it's funded largely through trusts and some federal dollars. they can't touch the federal, but some of the other trusts, gas tax and other things they can sort of, for lack of better terms, raid and use to fund other parts of the budget. Um, but then they heard from local communities and business
leaders quite frankly, right? Um, because it was affecting everybody of do not raid that trust fund. So now it's been almost 10 years that they haven't touched that thing and and when we had all that extra COVID money from the feds and others, they put money on top of it, right? the moving Florida Forward program. That was a couple years in a
row of that where the governor was was taking federal dollars that came to us through COVID and per repurposing them to move some of the I4 projects and some of the others that affect our region to so instead of taking five to seven years, they'd get done in a year. Um, which is pretty crazy and ambitious, but
it worked. Um, that said, we saw something similar with Sidowski, right? Um, that's a more recent where they were raiding the Sidowski trust fund to help balance other areas or fund pet projects and communities like yours and businesses and others said, "You got to stop raiding that thing. Like, it's
already expensive to live in this state. It's getting more expensive. Why would you even if it's not a massive amount? It's only about $200 $300 million." And in the state of Florida, that's that's minuscule when it comes to our budget. But they were saying just let that do its thing between, you know, affordable housing developers and local communities
that want to have like rent rent rent stabilized, not stabilized, but rent supported communities. Um, and so they eventually got the message and say, "Okay, we're going to stop raiding that." We are flushed with cash now, like you you noted, right? Um, it's partly because of our growth, partly because of inflation. Things cost more,
so our sales tax is develop. I think it's fresh and you heard a little bit of it this session of putting more money in there um into general revenue to support the transportation fund but it but I will say it will take not just our community but many to say the same thing. We would obviously be a
very primary beneficiary of it. I look at vice chairman who serves with our expressway authority. He's well aware of just all the the the traffic that's coming in the future over the next 10 years, the traffic that's here. Um and the need to to support our roads, right? because our commercial trucking industry
comes through our community daily, hourly, minute by the minute. So, there's a lot of reasons to do that. I think it's a fresh conversation to lead with our local delegation and then bleed it up in Tallahassee to say, "Hey, not for nothing, but do we really need 12 billion in reserves, maybe set aside a
billion and have, you know, um even though they don't get along with the governor, set up some fund where the governor can have can kind of direct the DOT secretary to spend some of this like moving Florida forward." It certainly would. I I'm you're preaching to the choir to me because I see it. I live in Orange County. We could use it all over
our community. But we're going to need some folks to kind of right that drum. And it seems like um maybe the conversation should start with how we designate the roads, how we how we fund out of the Department of Transportation,
each district. We have these major projects in Lake County that are technically state roads. State Road 44B in the Mount Dora Eustace area, but it they all go into that one pot of money that then we get if those roads were
pulled out and treated differently, then we would be in a better position to be able to take care of the roads that are really truly local roads. So maybe that's a good place to start and our folks that are so involved in fact, maybe they could help us in getting
other counties involved. But it just seems like um some something's got to give and these projects aren't moving forward. And it's great if they're doing the big ones, you know, the um the turnpike and and all of that I4, but
we're not getting these other state roads taken care of. And so any any u you know advice and counsel you can give us on that along the way to help move that conversation forward. I know. I think as we're and we obviously we have a delegation meeting coming up here soon, but as we're working with our
local delegation, I think it's worth asking them to carry some of that torch, but we also have a great district secretary. He obviously works within the the budget that he has, but you know, expressing to him that, hey, not for nothing, but remind your folks up there that there could be another way to do
this or at least for a couple years while we're flushed with cash, right? Because the one thing in Tallahassee that they they were attempting to do with this budget exercise, right? Because the one thing that I didn't mention is the the push to cut the budget was not based in any kind of need
or necessity um based on the numbers, right? If you look at the you know the the the chart, you know, ours is going way up as far as surplus uh in the state of Florida and the revenue projections each year continue to go up in each month. Um so they you know they didn't have this data to say oh well look we
had a little wobble in our revenue. We got to drop it. The collections are fine. So, but they were worried of a coming storm, right? Either expenses going up, right? Because inflation has not quite got itself in check. There's the tariff issues, right? And no, no one seems to know exactly how the tariffs
are going to fully impact our economy, right? Because right now it's a lot of folks have been cutting costs to kind of keep prices stabilized, but they expect a storm is coming. So, there was partly that, but we're still flushed with cash. So, if we're going into next session, things continue to look like status quo, right? and we can and we have our
revenue projections up and above like it's been going. It's a very fair conversation to say, hey, for these years, let's spend it this way because what I was about to get to is they didn't want to have any recurring spending, right? And trans the beauty of transportation now, well, you got to maintain the roads, but the actual projects themselves are are
non-recurring expenditures, right? Sometimes it takes a couple years, but they're not every single year to build the road. It's built and then you maintain it. So it'd be a very fair conversation to say take 500 million a billion and dedicate it towards whether it's state roads or roads that fit a certain you know dem uh categorization
right they you know check marks whether it's commercial residential what have you think that's a very fair conversation and be a great way to spend the money where they're not doing recurring that puts impact on future budgets if anything they're saving money because the more we can make the flow of commerce and our residents easier it'll
probably increase the state's revenue long term question Yeah. Um I think a quick question, but um thank you. Great presentation. Thank you, Angie. Um appreciate the work, hard work you're doing for us. Absolutely. Um along those lines, um is there anything do you think it's possible uh
just a little more specific here when it comes to transportation, the discussion around dock stamps and not increasing dock stamps is the key key phrase here, but then allowing us locally to to maybe use a little more of that for the road projects. some some very specific
things, maybe some strings attached that would assure those at the state that it's not going to go somewhere else. But is there is that discussion crazy or is it just uh is it possible this year? Sorry, I mean to cut you off. It's not crazy. Uh part of what was going on with Saddowski and the affordable housing
trust fund was that there was discussion when they were cutting of taking some of the dock stamped revenue that to to offset some of the cuts um taking some of that that was already going towards the affordable housing and instead shift it to the road fund and then they could cut in other areas. A lot of that got
scuttled, but it opened up the idea of maybe maybe we can rework how we do this. So, I think that's a fair conversation that probably needs to start with um Chairman Dougen in the House who's the uh ways and means at least I think he'll be right. The House took all their committee assignments off. So, we we don't know exactly who's
going to be who next year, but I think he'll stay in his position. And then, of course, in the Senate, Hooper and their team would be a good place to start, but I think it's a fair conversation say if you're going to look at this, maybe we can look at it in a different way and put all the right guards in there, right? um so that they have some peace
of mind that the money is not going to be misspent. But I think that's a fair conversation to have. All right. Um well, again, thank you. Appreciate it. And we'll hopefully be seeing a lot of you starting in October. You will. Uh and and look, the
invitation is always there, Jennifer, and and many of you join us in Tallahassee. Um you're never bo bugging Angie or I. So come every week or come the weeks that work for your schedule. We'll make it productive for you. Obviously depending on the week and depending on what's going on um you know
it can it can be more chaotic than or not. Uh last session we had a lot of chaotic weeks but um we'll make it very productive for your time not just with our local delegation but with uh the leadership there. And I and I kind of hinted at it but I'll say it again. When you see your local delegation members thank them when you see them because
they they work hard on a lot of our issues up there. Um, you know, when Jennifer or Melanie or other members of your leadership team come to us on this issue or that, you know, kind of because it came up here or because they we we see an amendment to the bill is going to impact um the county. Um the first
people I go see is our delegation members to brief them and say, "You need to know this is what could have impact. We need you to step up. I'm going to go make the rounds." And to their credit, they all step up. They say, "How can we go help?" Right? Because they want to deliver for you all as well. So when you see them, thank them. But we're honored to be a part of your team. Thank you for
uh continuing that partnership and we're looking forward to successful 2026. All right. Thank you very much. Okay. Um moving along everyone to minutes approval. Um Mr. Cooney. Good morning everybody. I have three sets of minutes for your approval.
Move for approval. Second. All right. Um we have a motion. We have a second. All in favor say I. I. U. Mr. M. Got it. 50. Um moving then to citizen question and comment period. We're now entering the public comment portion of the meeting when the public can discuss
items that are on today's agenda with the exception of zoning items. Anyone who has joined the meeting through Zoom using their phone may press star 9 to virtually raise their hands. And anyone participating through Zoom online, please click the raise hand button to let us know that you wish to speak.
Everyone will have three minutes to speak. After three minutes, an alarm will sound letting you know that your time is up. Um, we're going to call first on the cards that we have for those uh in chambers today. Um, so let's see. Let me go through.
Those are all 22. This is open. All right. Um, Gwen John's regarding Fruitland Park funding. If you'll come to the podium. I think now we're waiting until tab 19. I think it's for the infrastructure
sales tax. Oh, this is on infrastructure sales tax. All right. Um yes, let's wait. Thank you for pointing that out. Um okay. Um we've got um Donald J. Peterson.
This is about marijuana. Hello everybody. This is Donald J. Peterson. I'm a governor's candidate for Florida. I want marijuana legalized and I'm going to legalize day one. Okay. We should be selling it now. You're not selling it. Where is all that money
going? Who's selling the marijuana in Lake County? That's what I want to know. And I know who's selling it. Law enforcement. It's called reverse drug stings. And you know what's amazing? They're trafficking marijuana to children. Okay? That's Jeffrey Epstein type stuff that you should look into.
I'm calling a a a independent grand jury for Lake County to see where is this marijuana money. Okay? Now, here's the thing. Tom H. Homeman is the acting ICE director. Uh, act 15% is my plan that God gave me. Alcohol, cannabis, and
tobacco needs a 15% state tax. Okay? And you need to start selling the cannabis now. You're not funding SNAP and Medicaid. Young mothers aren't getting formula. The babies aren't getting formula. Seniors aren't getting extra food that they needed. Now, what you
have to do is give everybody who was getting SNAP $4,800 a year, which is $400 a month. That would encourage people to put back extra food because we're going to war with China. The federal government has no more money. There's no more entitlement or benefits
or or funding for the federal government. None. It's all going to war. So, what we have to do is we have to do state programs. and my program. If I'm um appointed act director, Pam Bondi says I'll have full discretion to
actually uh find uh states and uh counties that refuse to sell the cannabis and I have discretion to put them in jail. Okay? Just like ICE. And why President Trump's uh uh uh idea with marijuana now, he wants to help his image and I do too. I want to help his
image. He needs to legalize marijuana now. But what he's doing it with Terry Cole it, this is my directive on this to deschedu alto together. Okay, we don't need a schedule three because cannabis buds are fruit. Okay, a budding cannabis plant is a fruit tree. There's no reason
for law enforcement saying we're going to go ahead and dishonor the veterans. You have to sell the cannabis now. Now you tax it 15% and you'll get about a billion dollars a year in taxation uh for just for Lake County for alcohol,
cannabis, and tobacco. But you have to tax it and first you have to sell. I've called all the dispensaries. They're happy with it. 15% state tax. Carter note card 21 years old. Wonderful. The medical marijuana thing. Throw that right out the window. Every dispensary
will be required to have a an RN or a doctor to do in-house scripts for medical. And medical's just the medical counter inhouse. But what you have to do is you have to sell the cannabis immediately. And the dispensaries want to do it. 3 ounces a day is what
recreational uh states do. You have to do that. Sell that marijuana and tax it now, please. Okay? And use that money for SNAP and Medicaid. Okay? and feed your people. Okay.
Right. Farmer Banks Hellfrick. Farmer Banks Hellfrick, Clay Road District, South Lake County. Farm tip of the day. Um, actually, I'll give you the one I gave last week. Um, did you know that, uh, peanuts um are legumes related to the bean family? They also grow in
Florida and they grow underground. Um, a chairwoman, uh, commissioners, distinguished guests, uh, I'll begin with a question. What gets you up in the morning? Um, at an early age, many of us wake up, uh, because of adventure or
play, uh, I know for me, it was cartoons. Later in life, we get up for education, to learn, uh, to learn how to get along with others, to go to school. Later on in life, we get up to go to a
job to support a family. Later in life, even farther uh where I am right now, we get up to service others. And there are seven ups to service. Uh the first one, which is the most difficult one, is to
wake up sometimes. Um to dress up, to show up, which is the second most difficult up uh for others. Then there is to uh listen up to speak up and to follow up with others. And then ultimately there is never ever give up
on others. These are the seven ups for service. I am farmer banks. May you all be blessed. Thank you for allowing me to speak. Thank you very much. All right. Uh do we have anyone online? We don't this morning. Okay. Then we're
going to move into clerk of courts consent agenda. Mr. Cooney. Morning. Again, I have five items on my consent agenda for your approval. Move to approve. Second. All right. All in favor say I. I. Any opposed? Commissioner Morris, did you say I? Yes, ma'am. I
Thank you. All right. That's 50. Moving then to board of county commissioners consent agenda tabs 3 through 18. We've already taken on five. Make a motion to approve. Second. All right. Any discussion? All in favor
say I. I. I. Thank you. That passes five to O. Then we're moving into our presentations. Um we're going to begin with tab 19
and um Allison Tesla, director of management and budget will be presenting. Commissioner Parks, if you'll take your second item. Okay. Okay, perfect. Good morning, commissioners. For the record, Allison Tesla, director for the Office of
Management and Budget. Um, today I'm here to present the proposed 5-year project plan for the infrastructure sales tax. Um, here's a little outline of all the topics we'll be covering today. We'll talk about revenue projections. We'll talk about the different categories, the
funding requests, and some of the next steps. Okay, first a little background. Um, the extension of the infrastructure sales tax was approved by voters in November of 2015. Um, the term was from 2018 until 2032 and it's distributed evenly
amongst the county school board and all the municipalities within the county. All right. The referendum included uh public safety, quality of life, public works, and other public infrastructure categories. All right, here is the 5-year revenue
projections. We're using a conservative 3 and a quarter um average increase year-over-year. Um, fiscal year 2026 includes about 1.5 million in carry forward from fiscal year 2025. Um, which represents reserves and unanticipated interest that was earned during the
year. Okay, here's a list of the major projects that are currently in progress that will be carried forward from fiscal year 2025 to 2026 and the FDOT grant match for the upcoming projects we have scheduled.
Okay. Um here's a summary of the five-year plan um by category. In fiscal year 2026, we have 2.6 um of 26.1 million which includes that 1.5 million carry forward. Um in 2027 um we're
projecting about 25.4 million. 2028 is about 27 million. 2029 is 27.8 million. And then 2030 is approximately 27.9 million for a 5-year projection of 134
million. All right, let's get into the 5-year plan for public safety. Um, in 2026, it includes 2 million um in funding for the sheriff's vehicles and equipment, 1.7 million for public safety support
tower and equipment projects, 1.6 6 million for fire and EMS station renovations. It includes 1.2 million for fire apparatus vehicles and equipment, 1.1 million for medical transport vehicles and equipment. Um the total for 2026 is
about 7.6 million and the 5-year total is about 36.6 million. All right, the five-year plan for quality of life. Um, some of the major projects for 2026 includes 1.9 million for South Lake Regional Park, 1 1.5
million for Golden Triangle Regional Park, 1.2 million for East Lake Sports and Community Complex, and about 500,000 for the fairground and event center relocation. There's several projects listed under quality of life, so I'm not going to
talk about every single one. Um, so the the 2026 total for quality of life projects is about $6.6 million and the five-year total is about $45 million. And then the 5-year plan for public
works in 2026 includes about 4.1 million and FDOT grant match. There's 2 million allocated for road resurfacing and improvements. And then we also have funding for intersection improvements, public works equipment, solid waste equipment, and sidewalks.
In 2026, the total funding allocation is about 8.4 million for a total 5-year um projects of 35.8 million. All right. The 5-year plan for other public infrastructure includes 930,000
for capital building construction and renovations. Um that total was a million dollars, but we pulled out the tax collectors HVAC replacements separately um to show them on the plan. Um we also have $150,000 for fleet equipment and
50,000 for IT enhancements. The total funding allocation for 2026 is $1.2 million. Um and the 5-year total is about 6.25 million. And then next we have the five-year plan
for debt service. Um which covers the debt service payments for the road reserfacing, animal shelter, and public safety radios. Um as you'll see, the debt for the public safety radios ex expires in fiscal year 2029. So there's
no totals there. Um in 2026, the total funding is about 2.3 million and the five-year total is about 10.6 million. All right. So, the next steps um on August 26, we'll be having the public hearing for the fiscal year 2026
infrastructure sales tax project plan. And then we'll be holding our public hearings for the budget in September. So, I will turn it over to the board for any discussion. Okay. All right. And this is the card that I have Gwen John's um the speaker card for. So,
before we go there, anyone have questions? Okay. All right. So, um, Gwen, if you want to come forward at this time, either one. I've been sent on behalf of our city manager who is unable to attend today
due to a scheduling conflict. So, I have a script. Um, the city of Futland Park would like to thank Lake County for your continued support with the Northwest Lake Park. You've given us money over the past several years to build two soccer fields, restroom
facilities, build sidewalks, purchase shade structures, and install those. The city has also put in funding for the installation of the shade structures and the engineering for that project as well. We'll be installing all the landscaping throughout the soccer
complex this coming fiscal year. And we're currently finishing up the dog park. It should be completed by midepptember. and we're looking forward to continuing our relationship with you for grant funding to make this a park that everyone can enjoy. Thank you.
Thank you. I appreciate that. Hey Gwen, just real quick though, I have a question because when I was up there for a keep like beautiful event, there was some talk about maybe the baseball fields being changed, some of the the baseball fields being changed into pickle ball courts or something along those lines. Is there any have you heard
any discussion about that? No, I have not heard that. But what I have heard is that they're going to refurbish the baseball and te-ball fields. Okay, great. I know there's a big demand on the pickle ball court side of things. We hear about it.
Okay. All right. Thank you. You're welcome. Chairman, I have a question or two questions. All right. Could you could you go back to the slide where you had the public I think it's like the second or third slide.
Sure. Public works. Did you say I'm sorry? Which one? Public works. It was public. It It was the one that had the public works and the and the um sheriff and all that. Oh, public safety
probably. Slide six maybe. Right there. So, back up one. Sorry. So, public works this year has um 8.4 million and and then or and then next year has 6.7 million.
What is public works doing now that is causing the extra 1.5 million? Um I believe it was based on the grant match that they needed. Okay. For FDOT, can we find out for sure, please? I'm looking at the plan and actually let
me go. You don't have to find out right now on the spot, but you can just email us. So, if if you look here, the very first one, the FDOT grant match is about $4 million and going forward, it's I got you. Two and a half. And that's why there's more there. That makes perfect sense. Now, now this
is going to be a really a curveball and it's really not in your area. More it. Uh last year we we agreed to have a new IT system uh put in place.
The IP phones are not still not working at least in my office. So um I guess this is for Jennifer or Eric or somebody that I just wanted an update on the IP phones, how much we spent, what the contract was for, and if there's any um
payback for the s for the for the non-use of the IP phones. Okay. So, we can get that information together. I don't have it right. No, I'm sure you don't. Yeah, that's a curveball. Justice thought we can get that for you. And that's all. Thank you. All right. Okay. Any any other
questions, discussion? All right. Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate it. Um, now we're moving on to tab 20. Kathleen Dial is going to um present or at least introduce um our speaker. Yes, I'll introduce uh for the
record, Kathleen Dial, executive director of development services. In February of this year, the board engaged uh Kimley Horn as your consultant for the 2050 comprehensive plan update. And as part of that agreement um in the scope of work, we asked for a robust
community outreach um and public outreach communication plan that included an online survey on the county website, an interactive GIS mapping activity that residents could engage with as well as a series of community
workshops. So today, Kimley Horn will present the findings from the community survey and the um community workshops that took place in July. In the future, we'll consider how to use the information shared today in developing the goals, objectives, and policies of
the comprehensive plan. Um but today, they'll share and analyze the results that are hot off the presses for you. So with that, I'll turn it over to Kelly Clipper, vice president with Kimley Horn. Good morning, commissioners. Uh, Madame Chair, uh, Miss Parker, uh, as always,
it's a pleasure to be here. For the record, Kelly Cleer with Kimley Horn and leading our team's efforts on the review and the update of the county's comprehensive plan. As Kathleen said, and hopefully everybody's had a chance to take a look at andor review uh, the public outreach summary that was
provided. Uh what we wanted to do as part of that was to kind of emphasize exactly what we heard, how we did it, and more importantly that this is phase one. As Kathleen said, this uh you know, our our task was to have a very robust public outreach component at the at the
very beginning and as we get closer to the end to one start to listen to the citizens uh of this community. uh as you can see from the the information that was uh compiled and provided to you, you have a very engaged and active community. And we wanted to walk
through, like I said, some of the key uh overtones and findings from this initial outreach survey. Some of it, as you'll see, uh is is going to be fairly well, that's what we expected, but we heard it with such uh intensity and passion uh
that it's definitely something that we were appreciative of, especially when we started reading the comments. One, because we had a significant number of comments and responses both uh online as well as in person, and we'll go through some of the specifics on that, but also the time that the residents spent to
provide us those comments. Uh there was a lot of very heartfelt comments. There was a lot of very detailed comments. It wasn't uh save the lakes. Uh residents gave us specific components and ideas. And that's one of the things that Kathleen and I were talking about. When
we start saying how to best utilize some of this information, it's not as so high level to where we can't understand what they're talking about. But more importantly, they provided that level of detail. So again, this was phase one and wanted to make sure to have this up. This this online survey uh that we
utilized was a web-based uh so it's one of those as we talked about early on, if you could use Google Maps, you could utilize this survey. It was very uh easy to use and userfriendly. It didn't take a lot of time to complete. Uh and as a matter of fact, you know, working with
one of our firmwide uh gentleman, Joe Kafari, who does this all over the country with us. Um this was actually the second highest online response rate that we had, especially for a community of this size and more importantly for a duration of this time frame. The survey
was out there for about 45 days. We had over 1,500 responses. doesn't sound like a lot, but when you start thinking about especially uh Commissioner Parks community outreach events for comprehensive plans or codes or special events, uh you know, usually it's one to
200 responses or maybe if we get lucky, we have 500 or you know, you start to see some of that. So, we had 1500 responses. The the other astounding fact is most of the time we're seeing about 60 to 65% of those that start the survey
complete it. this case we had 88%. So once people got in they finished the survey. Uh that is a huge number to say the least. U the other thing is those 88% everyone answered every question. They didn't skip and go to the next. Uh
comments were received for each of those uh the bullets that we identified. And it wasn't just like you do some of the surveys like when you get the Delta Airlines app it's like how was our flight? 555. Okay just go to the next thing. there was comments attached uh to
each of those components. So what were the overarching themes that we heard throughout the survey itself? Uh Lake County's natural beauty. Again, one of those things of especially when we have a community that's over 33% that's lakes and wetlands and and the swamps and those natural preserved areas. We would
we you know understand and hope to see this as one of the top overarching themes. Preservation kind of ties back into that. Uh so you know as we were hearing some of the comments as far as far as manage growth it was manage the growth and look at the preservation how
can we further enhance and increase that 33%. Uh to to further kind of go back to what uh you have right behind you which is real Florida real close and kind of emulating that uh that brand. Of course uh no survey would be complete without
better roads and maintenance uh protecting water quality and affordability. Those are are things that we continue to see across the state. Uh and this is at all levels. You know, everything from Hardy County, uh it talks about housing affordability. They had challenges with their roadway system
and then some of their open spaces. So, we go from places that are less than 10,000 to a community this size. And it's a lot of the same types of themes that we see from the respondents. Uh you know, water quality is a big issue. uh protecting that drinking water that we have because that's you know one of
those resources that we need to make sure we're protecting. Uh so as we start to kind of balance that preservation of the community and those assets with the water quality and then also looking at the growth that's going on in the county both from a transportation plus housing
plus a jobs and economic component you start to see okay where where where are we seeing some of these trends? Where's the geographic center of a lot of these items? And again, as we started to kind of see some of those themes and results, a lot of it focused in on the growth and development. Of course, a lot of it was
kind of centered on some of the cities uh and those municipal areas, which you don't have control over, but we had residents from the cities participating in this. Why? Because this was open to all residents of Lake County. Uh the the county line, unlike say Virginia, doesn't stop at the cities. It's blended
across and there's a number of activities and things that people see as it's all of Lake County or all of the community, especially when we start looking at parks and roads and things like that. When we looked at the demographics, uh the majority of the respondents have lived here at least 10 years. So we, you
know, we've got a lot of people that have made roots and investments in this community. We had some that were over 20 years. Uh that's that's a huge component because a lot of times we see that it's the newer residents less than 10 that are providing those comments and those because they're the ones that came from
someplace else or seeing something that they liked and want to preserve that. Uh again majority of folks are homeowners. They're residents of this community. They own a home. Uh so again there's that investment level. Um this one you know of course we start looking at how how what was the general age demographic
of those that provided that information? 45. Not unheard of, especially in this community. But the the good thing is when we looked at some of the data, it was across all age groups. Just so happens that most were above that age. But we had young families. We had those
under 20. We had a number of people uh that I'll say those first-time homeowners and first-time families providing comments as well. So at the end of the day, uh you know, we did have the interactive maps. Uh we had a number of comments that people provided not
only the buttons to as far as the maps were concerned and when you looked at those maps of course we had four drop and drag types of icons that dealt with housing and transportation and our open spaces and then also uh the employment and retail and and those those components. of that growth and
development aspect. We wanted to keep it simple, four kind of core topics. Kind of covers a lot of different things and you can see just from this snapshot where people were able to drag that information to on the map. Key themes that came out of uh some of those items, of course, uh there was concerns about
uh the dense development. Uh the residents that expressed concerns like the rural development, they like the single family homes on the larger estate lots. Of course, there's always a give and take when we look at that of what happens then to sprawl versus some of the other things. So, some of the balancing acts uh and making sure that
as we went through these themes, we looked at a couple of things and everything that we looked at with these four topics also had some component about environmental preservation and those impacts. Flooding was a key concern. Storm water was a key concern.
protection of our native habitats across housing and transportation. Uh and then of course all the other topics there was always some of some level of comment attached to that and tied to the specific item transportation. We heard that discussion earlier uh madam chair
as far as how do we tie some of the funding to some of these roads or break out certain uh roads and some of the improvements. uh you know, people are very concerned about what's going on on State Route 44 and 441 and some of the other roads and how do we better manage the traffic and some of those things
that go along with that. Uh access and mobility, you know, like we talked about in some of our uh in-person uh meetings within the community when we asked the question, who drove here, who rode the bus, who rode a bike, who walked? Um,
you know, mobility is a big thing, especially for the residents, and that's one of the things that we applaud the county on because they took the initiative uh previously to do the transit plan to start looking at some of those mobility options as a separate specific type of approach and things
that can be fairly easily implemented and updated through a countywide approach. Conservation areas, recreation, and open space. Uh this is another one that we saw a lot of discussion as far as the preservation of the natural areas and incorporation of those areas into the
park system. People like that mix of active and passive. Uh so that you start to look at how do we better balance some of those items. Uh the wildlife protection again kind of coming out. Uh and then you can even see on that last bullet the opposition to overdevelopment.
the last bullet that or button that we had the icon the employment centers retail and office kind of where do we want and where do we envision seeing those jobs producing types of items. Um so when we started looking at that a lot of people were kind of keying in on the cities they were looking at
redevelopment versus the green field development. Uh we had several comments on uh wellness way and emulating those types of of of endeavors and then also making sure that we're aligning our infrastructure at the same time. Of course, that takes a lot of uh
components including a coordination with the cities. So, then we move to the inperson and I know a lot of you uh took the time to come out and visit with us on those. Uh again, fairly robust uh outreach uh effort on this one. And this is one of those things where we have a
champion like we did in the county that was broadcasting it. They were putting on their on the social media pages. They were talking to different people. A lot of that is was very much evident in instead of just having the standard notice and who shows up. But people said, "Oh, we saw this on Facebook." Uh,
by the way, your Facebook page I really enjoy. I follow it. Uh, it's very informative. I follow a lot. You probably put out more information than a lot of communities. So, kudos to whoever manages that. Uh, plus it's actually pretty funny sometimes with some of that.
Funny. You call that funny, huh? They they they have a good time with the information. It's not dry. Let's put it that way. Okay. All right. Yeah. Funny as in Okay, we we'll leave it at that. Uh so we had the town hall meetings. We had three across the county. We started off with Umatillaa.
Then we went to Leburg and Claremont. Uh all together we had about 103 people between the two. We did have uh a storm coming in one night. So we did cut one a little close uh on that to make sure people could get out uh and not be out
in the bad weather. But regardless, uh, you know, we had a number of activities to where people could instead of just listening to open mic night with somebody up there talking continuously, it was a brief presentation introduction by uh by Kathleen, kind of an overview
of what we're doing and why, and then allowing people to to do what they do best, provide us comments, and we did a lot of listening. uh we did a lot of listening in the form of the activity stations that we had whether it was uh the one word seems pretty
straightforward pretty simple uh we do have to make sure we do ground rules for those of you who are there um I did explain that we had a previous example where somebody said okay Kelly I'm going to give you one word but I'm just going to use 12 uh sheets to give you my sentence um so we didn't have any of
that this time we didn't have people starting to kind of break apart the the stickers and start voting in quarters or halves. Uh so and again a lot of the interaction we had we had a lot of people coming up asking questions. Uh I had a great series of engagement with uh
two uh two physicians that were new to the community. Uh one was actually born um and raised down in South Florida. Another from Central Florida. They attended uh medical school up uh up north. Came back home as they called it. So they were there to say what what can
we as doctors and physicians and the hospital do to be part of this process. Uh that was huge in my opinion because they were like you know we want to we want to stay engaged. We're new to the community. We enjoy it. We've got a vested interest being with the hospital here. So again kind of working through
the various stations. Uh so people could feel free to provide us the comments. They could talk to staff and at the end of the day like I said you can see the various dots. We did have some that were just outside of the county boundaries. Uh but and I'm not going to go through each of these items, but the biggest
thing to think of, especially when we start looking at some of the rankings, the most important things to people and what was most uh I'll say important on their minds, land use, transportation, parks, and recreation. And when you start to kind of dive in, uh those kind
of go back and tie to the online survey results. Where are we building houses? What are we doing from transportation in the roads? And more importantly, how are we blending in our parks and con and consolidating parks with the cities or those active and passive features?
I love when we do the word clouds. We took all the one words and we put it in together. The bigger the word, the more times that it showed up. Um, so we said, you know, what one word describes Lake County today. We didn't edit this to make it look pretty. Why? Because it's
not our job to say you were wrong, citizens. This is what they felt. They said, "Right now, it's congested. It's crowded. It's uncontrolled." Uh, but then you start to see some of the other ones with small and beautiful, friendly, um, and a number of those other things.
So, we did have several positives, but you could see that that was kind of that sentiment. And we start looking at the why, the what's the wise behind some of that. And some of that is just because of I'll say a lack of understanding and lack of knowledge that the county has certain roles and responsibilities as
does the cities as does the state and a lot of times there's that blending that people don't understand oh well that's actually happening in this city that's not something that this board has control over but they see it as all one community. So we also ask another series of
questions. We didn't go uh we didn't for today's uh presentation go through all four of those, but we also just al also ask what does the Lake County need more of? What's the biggest word that you see there? Conservation. One of the next biggest ones parks. And then it's
followed by infrastructure and housing and walkability. So again, people were very committed and and engaged with what do we want to see? What do we want to retain as Lake County? So again, uh hopefully you've had a chance to uh take
a look through the summary report that we prepared and at this point, Madam Chair, commissioners, I'd be happy to answer any questions you may have uh with the phase one survey and and next phases as well. All right, any questions,
Commissioner Parks? Yeah, Kelly, appreciate uh your whole team doing great work on these um these meetings and it's a very important process for us to change our comp plan. I guess it was my question more about the next steps. So, will there be an what are the next steps? There'll be another round. Um one
maybe specific question you mentioned it you had responses in all age groups. My one concern though is are we getting enough from I'll just characterize here but like uh Gen Z you know your 21 year olds through 30 whatever 35 whatever it
is that seems like we're still pretty low on that getting enough data from them um and just anecdotally what I hear is a lot of them feel like they don't they're not even going to go to the meetings because they're just not going to be heard. I know that's not necessarily an excuse,
but it is what it is. So, what is uh is there any plans coming up in the next steps to try to maybe focus on that, but but have more meetings and then what are our next steps, I guess? So, great great question, Commissioner Parks. Um, so round two, we are going
through and doing I'll say that evaluation of the comp plan. We're starting to develop some of those policies. So, we're synthe synthesizing this. So, we will be going back out to the community and uh it's actually I believe at the tail end of
soon as I said that I think I may have lost a page here. Hold on one second. Oh, might have actually put that slide up. Um, so you can see on here what we're going to be doing over the about the next six or so months is kind of
compiling, refining the comprehensive plan, creating that series of edits. Then we're going to be going out to the community very much like we did here with the community outreach, the online and to say did we get it right? Did we hear you? Also, uh Joe, who is our public outreach uh guru as I like to call him, uh we are talking uh actually
later this week about to to get to some of those uh individuals, the Gen Z. Uh we're never going to get the I'll say get them to come in and go, well, this is what we think, but you're not probably going to listen to me anyway. Uh so there's alternative ways we need to get a little bit more creative. So Joe and his team are are looking at that
so that we can propose that as part of our next outreach efforts. No, I appreciate that because really that's who we're almost writing the plan for. They'll be entering the workforce, choosing to to to live here or not. I know we're writing it for people that are here too now, but but for that next
generation. So I appreciate the extra effort in that area. You know, one of the other things, and I've I've briefly mentioned this with staff, and I need to follow up a little bit more with Kathleen on this one. One of the ways that we've been able to get more of the parents and more of the youth involved is, and we've done this
and it's been a huge success, have an art competition across the schools. Have them design the divider pages for each of the topics. Get them involved at that level. Have a presentation here at the bore chambers
recognizing, you know, the 10, 11, 12 individuals from across the county. So, it's going to take a little coordination on our part with Kathleen and more importantly with the school district. The great thing is I'll say you have a great relationship with the school district. Uh, so that truly helps.
Yeah, I think it's a great idea. Um, hold on, we have a couple questions. So, Commissioner Smith, so I had that as two of my bullet points. First of all, thank you for um all the time and effort you put in. I know you've met with each of us and you've done a lot of community outreach.
uh some of my bullet points was since this is a 2050 plan, have we um and you've kind of touched on it just a minute ago, gone to the seniors of the high schools and u the college the college age students here to see if
they're interested. We need to go to them. They're not going to come to us. So, we need to go to them to where they are to u see if we can't get them the survey to have them fill out where they are um either in the high school or in
the college um to see their thought process because as Commissioner Park says, we are this is actually going to be for their future um growing up and then their kids and then hopefully some of them will become of our community
leaders and continue this effort going forward. But I would suggest reaching out to um the school board to see if we can even go to the high schools or present a survey either to 11th and 12th graders or just the 12th graders and
then uh to the LSCC or LL LSSC um president to see if we can't get some uh surveys out to uh all their college students there. Great. Other than that, it's a fantastic presentation.
And I will say Katie McGrder, who can't be here today, is watching, so I know she's taken notes equally as much. Commissioner Sabatini, just isn't there, this is a a question, but also sort of a discussion point. Um, obviously, I think u a comprehensive
plan that controls the the bad growth that's coming in is key, although currently it looks like we're not going to be able to do that because of Senate Bill 180. And I don't want this to happen, but I almost feel like the wisest thing to do is really pump the brakes on this and just pause. Uh not
because what I want, but because of the actual political and legal reality, which is that Senate Bill 180 seizes everything and there's been no firm commitments from anybody in the legislature that they're going to amend it. They're saying maybe, but they're probably not. And then the Department of State just essentially attacked Orange
County's new comp plan, which wasn't even that aggressive. I mean it was just common sense really in my opinion and administratively they said this is null and void we're gonna you know we're fighting against that. So you have this two face front. I don't want to slow
down this process, but I almost feel like we really should because um it's just a waste of time and money if we know that the well-crafted, very communitydriven document we end up with is non-implementable. We have
thousand friends of Florida and other people here that could speak to it and I'm not trying to draw a whole huge discussion because I think obviously we could do that a different different agenda, but we're going to be doing it later in our agenda about Senate Bill 180. So, it's unfortunate. I'm not saying like
that's a good thing. I'm not applauding it, but that's where we're at right now. And I just almost want to the board to consider maybe pausing this whole this whole project just for a little bit because I I just feel like we're going to end up with a product that can't be implemented. So, the adoption portion is pretty far
down the line, though. So, it would seem like I I understand making the point in order to draw attention to the detrimental impacts of Senate Bill 180, but um because the adoption process is so far down the line, why not use this
time in order to work on getting this just right? And so, when we get to the point of adoption, then we'll know what's happened with the bill. Has it been fixed? have there been provisions made for things like comprehensive planning that were required by state law to do within certain time frames. So
that would be one point and and the other point is that um and I I think I led with this when we started this whole conversation about our comp plan and and it goes to the slide the one word slide and the big word congested and overcrowded and all of that. Um, this
comp plan, as much as we'd like to think that it is setting the bar for the whole county, it's only addressing the unincorporated areas of Lake County. We don't have jurisdiction over the cities and municipalities here in Lake County. So, it's kind of a sort of comprehensive
plan for Lake County, but it's only for unincorporated Lake County. And I just feel like we've got to we've got to be able to make that point and message that so people understand that we do have high hopes. We would love it if we actually got all the cities on board and
our comp plan was all one big plan and the JPA's allowed us to do that and everybody got on the same page and worked together so that we did in fact have one plan that covered both municipal areas and unincorporated
areas. Um, and ultimately that that that's my aspiration is that we could actually get to that place. And I applaud Commissioner Parks for working so hard on the JPAF effort. Um, and um, you know, we got to keep keep at it. Um,
but that was one of the reasons why, you know, we started talking about the charter concept, too, delineating where the boundaries of the cities should end and where the rural areas should stay rural. So, I'm just going to keep banging the drum on that because I think
if we can't delineate rural staying rural and where those locations should be, then it's going to be very hard for this to have the full effect that we want it to have into 2050. Yeah. And I'm hoping I'm hoping that this exercise because it's not only it's
not only the unincorporated residents that have responded to this, it's also incorporated residents that that have responded. And I'm hoping that by having this response, we can give it to the um municipality
leadership to say, "Look, this is a concern. We're we've asked you multiple times. We've even taken it to the state to try to help the state help us with this issue." Um I don't think Senate Bill 180 um is
because we have a comprehensive plan currently in Lake County that is pretty solid. Uh the problem is the cities come in and override that comprehensive plan. Um so I I think if we get this information to the cities as well as to
the public, the Lake County, this county commission is doing everything they can to keep our rural area rural. Um we just need more education. And I hope it's my hope that by having a survey
that we can send it out to the city leadership and they can see what we're seeing. Yeah, I love the idea of maybe presenting the results to the cities and maybe Kathleen could help us with that. Um, I know that we have certain parameters of our contract with Kimley
Horn, so we don't want to go outside those parameters, but using this data so that, you know, we're actually giving this information to the cities to take in mind as they're doing their own comprehensive plan amendments or they're considering which annexations to approve
and so forth. So, it's a really good good point. Yeah. Um just I my take on you know your concern which I I think is very valid understandable concern about Senate Bill 180. Had some discussions with our local delegation
specifically about this concern and and um LDRs and things that we're in the middle of doing and talking and have been talking about doing by the way for several years. Um and you know their assurances were were that no no this is not meant to get in the way of that. Um
those are assurances. Uh I think you know to the to along the lines of something that we we've been working on. We have an existing comprehensive plan. I would say you know you could be right that it may turn around and it may be a problem for us. But I do think we need to keep moving forward with the process
at at the very least and um let it fall in their lap. If if that's if that ends up being what happens, then every citizen that's listening and in this room can go and say, uh, why weren't we able to pass a pass a comprehensive plan in some of these LDRs that we've been
working on for years and let them answer those questions. But the discussions I've had with them so far, um, where it wouldn't get in the way, we don't know. But, um, let's, uh, let's at least move forward. And, um, just one other question, too. uh have
have you is there any more thought or contemplation of like an urban growth boundary as maybe some recommendation that you have down the road where I know the cities have to to your point to to at least see and understand it um but
what what's your thoughts on that? I'm a huge proponent of urban growth boundaries uh if they're done in the right in the right way. Uh but that's one of those things that we are currently working through with with staff to be you know what makes the most sense.
Yeah. Okay. It's easy enough to take a big magic marker on a map and just start drawing without having the the analysis there. We're actually wrapping up all of our data and analysis components to further inform uh by the end of this month. So
we'll have some more information to be able to go this is where it makes sense, this is where it doesn't. Okay. Thank you. look forward to the It is interesting too that you know from the survey results people expressed their concern about flooding issues and you know we're in the middle of hurricane season and we had so many
problems last season and that's one of those areas that we apparently cannot address under Senate Bill 180 and you would think it's during the hurricanes where we find out what we need to be doing better in order to
protect people their safety property you know and here. That is one key area that that that bill clearly ties our hands on. But and if I could just say, you know, um I also support continuing for now. I just
think that, you know, it had to be brought up at one point in a discussion. So, you know, hopefully we have good news in a year from now. They tailor it and and Mr. Parks is right. They they made they modified it in a way that allows for some common sense restrictions on combating bad sprawl. But, you know, if it doesn't happen, we
have to revisit it. And then I think also I think I said Department of State responded. I meant to say Department of Commerce who reviews the comp plan. So, thank you. And I do like the idea of maybe possibly trying to do a future amendment to the contract. That way we could use the comp plan as an
instructional document for cities really in many ways to try to guide cities because my belief is that the reason why the cities is sprawl sprawl sprawl without any concept is simply they don't really understand and they're not being told the law surrounding it the policy
surrounding annexations etc. And I can tell you as a former city commissioner, there's several here. Um, your city attorney, city manager, your city staff generally is not, they're not spending a lot of times instructing the city commissioners like, "Hey, here's how everything fits together between county, cities, this that and your tool set and everything else." And so they just go
with rapid annexation and and just high density. And I do think that you know using the comp plan if we end up with some document like a comp plan even whether we adopt it ultimately or not can be definitely used with with the cities as a rubric you know or an instructional tool in some sense.
All right great great discussion. Thank you for the presentation. So we have um a tab tab 21 is a library um services um agenda item and then we're going to move into the landscape ordinance and
wellness way. So, those of you who are here for the landscape ordinance, we're about there. Um, so we've got one agenda item before we start the landscape ordinance discussion. Good morning, chair, commissioners. For the record, I'm George Taylor, the director of the office of library
services, and we're here for the 20 Make sure it's on there. Okay. for the right one. All right. Uh, this is the 2025 impact fee grant applications public hearing. Go. Thank you. All right. So our outline will look at
the background, the application process, our funding requests, uh the recommended funding, the public hearing, and the requested action. And a little bit of background, uh library impact fees are used for growth related capital improvements. They are collected in all municipalities and
unincorporated areas, but Eustaceand Mount Dura do collect and retain their own impact fees. It is collected on residential construction, single family detached of 800 square feet or less, it's $28. 800 and one plus square feet is 239. Mobile homes are 190 and multif
family is either 183 for a dwelling unit or 239 for an active adult community. and our application process. Um, all library impact fees are awarded based on county policy LCC63, which does identify
the application and review process, including these all being vetted by the county attorney's office for legality. A March 1st annual application deadline, the public hearing requirement, which is today, and for eligibility, all the county and municipal libraries that are part of the Lake County Library System
are able to apply. For our 2025 impact fee funding, we have $2.1 million unawudited as of May 1st of this year available for the impact fee awards. Six applications were submitted for library impact fees for a total of
1,147,779 in combined application requests. And we'll move on to the applications. Uh the first one is Futland Park. They're seeking funding for architectural design services to expand its public library by 2,920 square feet to meet the needs of a rapidly growing
population. The expansion will focus on the heavily used children's department and Palm Villa room, both of which are at capacity due to increased demand. And since the library's 2019 construction, population growth, including new subdivisions and a new school, has significantly outpaced projection. And
this request supports the planning phase of an infrastructure expansion directly tied to their new residential development. The second one is the Howie in the hills library expansion. They're requesting design and engineering funds for a major expansion of the Marian Beck Memorial
Library. Uh the town's population is expected to more than quadruple due to approved developments. And the project will provide more space for youth programs, quiet reading areas, technology access, and flexible use. And we'll add about 3,000 square feet.
The next one is from the city of Tavaris, and the library is seeking funding to expand its specialized Florida collection by about 384 titles. The project builds on their 2022 library expansion that created a dedicated space for Florida materials. They've had a
strong patron interest and a 51% rise in new library cards since the addition. This targeted collection enhances cultural and educational engagement. And the new titles will serve the countywide library system and reflect Tavar's role as a central resource for Florida
history, literature, and identity. The Umatillaa Library is seeking $4,000 for their patrondriven acquisition collection. And this will allow when patrons request something that we don't have, they can purchase the item. Uh they're looking specifically at audio,
CD, books on CD, audio books, uh requested by their senior residents and those in rural hours, excuse me, rural areas without internet, reliable internet. And they've had over 145 new homes built in 2024 and more growth anticipated. The collection will benefit
not only local users but also help alleviate hold times for books on CD systemwide. The next application is a systemwide application for a readalong book collection. And this systemwide initiative will purchase about 820
wonderbook/vox readalong books and 21 USB chargers to charge them. Uh, the books have a built-in audio narration, a little MP3 player, so it plays along. You can listen to it on headphones. It goes page by page. They're absolutely fantastic.
Um, these help support early literacy through a multi-ensory reading experience. And circulation of existing titles is high and demand is increasing, especially among young children and English language learners. Last fiscal year, we have 900 of these titles in the
system. And just last fisc school year alone, there were over 10,000 checkouts of these items, which is about 11 checkouts per book. They move like crazy, and parents and children love them. And then the final request is for
$764,500 for a systemwide digital database purchase. And this is a three-year proposal with about $250,000 being spent uh over the next three years per year. Uh there this will be 21
digital databases that address uh critical gaps in education, legal, financial, and technical information. And with only five databases currently available to residents, we lag behind similarsized counties in their offerings. The expansion would support all 16 libraries and provide equitable
access to high demand resources like test prep, legal forms, business tools, and it responds directly to our population growth and helps shifts the li excuse me helps shifts the library into a modern capacity building digital infrastructure. And uh one of the
databases really excited is Chilton's auto repair. This is every single auto auto repair manual created by the Chilton's company. There's usually gigantic books. So we'll have those access to every county resident. So our requested action, as you can see
on the screen, is approval of the following Lake County funding levels. Lake County readalong books at 49,279 for all commission districts. The Lake County Library System databases at 764,500 all commission districts. Approval of
the following municipality funding levels. Futin Park Library expansion at 120,000 commission district 5, Howie and the Hills library expansion at 200,000 commission district 3ar library Florida book collection at 10,000 commission
district 3 and the Umatillaa library material collection at 4,000 for commission district 4 approval of all the interlocal agreements with the municipalities and the fiscal impact is $1,147,779 that commissioner I'll turn over for the public hearing.
All right, this is a public hearing and at this point I don't have speaker cards in the room. Do we have anyone online? All right, we'll bring it back to the board. That's uh for approval. Chairwoman, this this Commissioner
Morris, it's my I'm the leazison for that committee. Could I make the motion to approve? This has been vetted fairly well by our committee. Second. Okay. All right. Appreciate that. And seeing that we don't have any public comment, we've got a motion from the liaison and a second from Commissioner
Parks. So, all in favor say I. I. Any opposed? I. Great. Excellent. Great presentation. I know you guys worked hard to get us to this point and appreciate all of our member libraries and everyone that's involved in the system. Thank you very much.
Okay, moving on then to tab 22. Uh, Kathleen. Hello again. Kathleen Dial, executive director of development services. Um, so before I turn it over to a technical expert to present on the
proposed changes to the wellness way landscape code, I thought it would be helpful to present some background information on the origin of the code as it relates to wellness way and some of the timeline of the development of the code. Um, St. John's Water Management
District in collaboration with the Central Florida Water Initiative have rejected a deficit in future groundwater withdrawals without negatively impacting wetlands, springs, and water bodies. And so, in order to develop sustainable development practices, the city of
Claremont began working on an update to their landscape and irrigation code to reduce irrigation demands. In the state of Florida, about 50 to 60% of a home's water usage of portable water supply is on irrigation. And when that water
supply is reclaimed water, the number goes to 70%. Consultants who assisted with the writing of the code include the outside collaborative life soils in St. John's River Water Management District. The Wnessway intent of development lists
protection of key e regional and ecological resources as one of the five goals. And one of the guiding principles references a green strategy considering balance of development, preservation, energy conservation, and water conservation.
Um, in 2023, the city of Claremont began drafting an updated landscape and irrigation code to reduce irrigation demands. In May on May 10th of 2024, at a wellness way stakeholder meeting, developers and land owners were made aware that a landscape code was
forthcoming. On February 7th of this year, Clmont held a wellness way stakeholder meeting including developers, landowners, their landscape architects, and irrigation specialists to present a draft of the code and listen to feedback. And on July 29th of this year, Claremont approved these
changes to their citywide landscape and irrigation code. Currently, the county has four approved plan unit developments in unincorporated Lake County and Wellness Way. Um, these are the four developments. Most notably, I wanted to pull out the landscape
references within each planned unit development. Um, Ridge View, um, which is mostly built out, does list that development of landscape should be consistent with Florida friendly landscaping practices. And it it lists that their closing document shall
contain educational materials as to Florida friendly and right plant right place as well as fertilizer requirements of techniques. Um the skillfield planned unit development now the lake haven subdivision. Um at the point that this was approved the landscape code was
underway. The draft was underway and that is noted in their approved PUD which references smart irrigation practices, top soil amendments required and notice is given that wellness way specific standards were under development and if adopted would apply
to that development. Since I am not a technical expert in horiculture, we have asked Brooke Mafus to be here today. She serves as the commercial horiculture agent for UFIFUS and she'll present an overview of the changes to the code. Brook specializes in Florida friendly
landscaping principles and urban biodiversity and she'll focus her presentation on the researchbased information from the land grant university system. So I will turn it over to Brooke. Thank you Kathleen. Good morning commissioners. So good to be with you
today. Okay, so I'm going to dive right into the code since Kathleen gave me such a nice introduction, but I am your local county extension agent here and I represent the University of Florida and Lake County. So the very first section of the code that I'll discuss is the irrigation system design. And I'm not
going to get into every single section of the code, but we are going to talk about some major areas. So irrigation plans must be submitted and approved before installation. These plans need to detail the system layout, the zones, equipment, plant species, and turf type.
Irrigation systems must use soil moisture or weatherbased controllers with a rain shut off device. So, soil moisture sensor is what you see in the left photo there. They are sensing devices that are placed in the ground so that it can monitor soil moisture and
it's typically at the turf grass root zone and it allows irrigation to run only when needed. And then weather-based controllers. They are also called evapot transanspiration controllers, but I'm going to call them weather-based controllers just for the sake of this presentation. Uh they adjust irrigation
based on weather and evaporation data. So there was there's been multiple studies with the University of Florida that look at the efficiency and effectiveness of both of these devices, but I'm going to give you a overall review of some of the research regarding
soil moisture sensors and evapo transpiration controllers, the weather-based controllers. So there was a review conducted in 2020 by UFIUS that looked at both the soil moisture sensors and the weather-based controllers. This review looked at 17 studies and they evaluated these devices across different
climates and soil types. And the findings from the studies are summarized here. They had a 51% or they saw that there was a 51% average water savings that occurred when they used these sensing devices in research plot studies. And then when they did single
family home studies, they saw that there was a 30% average water savings again in those homes. So, when using these technologies in Florida, it is important to note that water savings are typically higher in the wet season than they are in the dry season when you're using
these devices. And these devices also must be installed correctly and they have to be put into an appropriate location in the yard to be effective. Now, I'm going to move on to another section of the code that requires compost installation. But first, I want
to back up. Um, we want to talk about the construction soil. Construction activities often leave behind compacted soil, very little biological life, reduced ability to hold water, and low nutrients. And this makes it a very challenging environment for plants to
grow. So, incorporating compost into these degraded soils can increase water retention. It can decrease the need for irrigation and improve the plant health. So the code requires compost installation and compost must meet recognized standards through the US
composting council seal of testing assurance program. And then also receipts must be re retained from when the compost is delivered to the site that shows the US composting council seal of testing assurance. And these receipts will be used during inspection to verify that
this post construction soil standards have been met. So for the research behind the compost application is we actually have quite a few studies with the University of Florida and they looked at turf landscapes and so they found that
irrigation can be reduced when growing turf grass when urban soils are amended with compost. So one of the studies found that they could use 50% of recommended rates. So half the recommended rates 50% can be reduced for the maintenance run times of these
irrigation systems when using this compost 50% reduction in irrigation for the f first two years. I would also like to point out that um they also tried eliminating irrigation and just using the compost but the turf didn't maintain
an acceptable quality but they can still maintain an acceptable quality if we have about half the irrigation. So you've got to have irrigation to maintain an acceptable quality. Um so some things to consider with the compost is we don't know how long the effects are going to last. We don't know the nit
or we don't have a consensus so far around the nitrogen leeching although studies are currently being conducted and they're analyzing uh this very research to look at the nutrient leeching of compost. So this just some food for thought. Now, we just talked about compost benefits for turf grass,
and I wanted to share some results with you from a study that looked at native plants and urban soils with compost amendments. This was the study conducted in Sunbridge that you may have heard of. Uh, in this study, we planted 26 different native plant species in urban area. In the photo on the left, the
native plants were planted in urban only soil, and these are disturbed construction soils, and they were irrigated every single week. In the photo on the right, plants were irrigated only as needed when we saw signs of wilting and the compost amendments were incorporated into the
soil. And that's the again the photo on the right. So they were irrigated only when needed when we saw signs of wilting and compost was incorporated. So we actually found that when we irrigated as needed, we had an 80% water savings in
those landscapes over weekly irrigated plots. And the compost helped maintain a higher quality of the plants of most of the plants I should say. And you'll notice the photo on the right, which again is as needed irrigation with compost. We see more growth and blooms
with 80% water savings. All right, I'll now move on to the landscape design standards. In the landscape design standards section of the code, Florida friendly landscaping principles are discussed and the following standards are specified.
There is a maximum of 25% irrigated turf allowed and again that's irrigated turf. 60% of plants must be the from the Florida friendly or I'm sorry from the Florida Native Plant Society list plant list and 40% may be from the Florida
friendly landscaping plant list. Actually, let me back I think I said that incorrectly there. 60% of plants must be from the Florida Native Plant Society list and 40% may be from the Florida Friendly Landscaping Plant List. Okay, so let's look to see what research
we have that supports this. Uh this is actually a research design that was conducted through the University of Florida EFUS. And in this we looked at a 75% Florida friendly landscape with 25% turf grass. Each landscape was about the
size of a average home lot in Florida, at least one of the smaller lots in Florida. One landscape was planted with 75% irrigated turf grass, and that's the photo that you see in the top there. And this was irrigated with single zone rotor sprinklers. This traditional
landscape had 25% Florida friendly landscape plants such as ground covers and shrubs. And then the other landscape that they looked at was planted with 25% turf grass and 75% Florida friendly landscape plants. And that's the one the photo that you see in the bottom right.
This landscape was irrigated with zoned micro irrigation and smart controllers. And it's a again it's the landscape the photo that you see in the bottom right there. Oh, sorry. I did not give you the u bullets there, but I did discuss that. Okay. So, let's
look at the water use comparison. the Florida friendly design. And again, this is the one that had 75% Florida friendly plants, 25% turf grass. It used 70% less irrigation than traditional turf dominated landscapes. And that was for the 12-month establishment period of
the study. So over the 34 months after the initial establishment period, the Florida friendly design used 84% less water than the traditional landscapes. They found in this study that major water savings were achieved by turning off the micro irrigation to the plant
beds and visually monitoring and turning it on when they saw signs of drought stress. And we also have further information that um discusses expanding landscape plant beds with micro irrigation and the water savings associated with this practice. It's
estimated that if irrigated turf grass is converted to landscape beds with micro irrigation about 15,000 to 32,000 gallons of water could be saved per thousand square feet per year. So that's pretty significant savings. All right,
so I'm going to move on from the 25% turf, 75% Florida friendly landscape and get into the native plants and the non-native plants um research here. So for this research we had this is related to the 60% native plant and 40% Florida
friendly plant requirements. And I'm going to be referencing a metaanalysis study. And a metaanalysis is a study that combines data from multiple studies and they use that data and evaluate that data to look at trends overall trends. So, I'm going to be referencing a study
that was conducted out of Rutgers University and they looked at 165 different studies to address the native versus non-native. So, what they found was the overwhelming evidence that native plants outperform non-native plants in supporting higher
amounts of and diversity of animals. The other key finding is that they have they found that there were limited studies that had mixed results regarding the performance, water use, drought tolerance, and nutrient use of native plants versus non-natives.
So, we can't really say based on this meta analysis that natives use less water and fertilizer than non-natives. Okay. The study also concludes that there has been a lack of studies examining the tolerance and performance of native plants in urban conditions.
And while there is a lack of studies right now evaluating native plants in urban conditions, there are multiple studies that are being conducted. One study here in central Florida, that's the one I referenced earlier that is occurring in the Sunbridge community. So before we move on from these findings, there's some important considerations
with this section of the code with the native versus Florida friendly plants. There in there are Florida friendly plants that are not native that can still provide for pollinator and wildlife benefits. And it's also important that while all plants um whether native or Florida
friendly have to be planted in the right place in order to be successful. And then also, this gets a little confusing, but all native plants are considered Florida friendly, but not all Florida friendly plants are considered
native. So that can get a little confusing. Um, so UFIFAS does not have specific research to describe a certain percentage of native and other Florida friendly plants. All right. So, I did want to mention
this last research study that's um in the works right now. So, I mentioned there have not been a lot of studies on native plants in urban soils, but native plant species have been planted and evaluated in research plots at Sunbridge Community here in Lake Nona in Central Florida. And I've been highly involved
in this research project and currently I'm in uh actually analyzing the data so that we can better make better recommendations regarding native plant performance in the urban soils here in Central Florida. So, those are the sections of the wellness way code that I was asked to highlight for your
presentation. So, I'll end the presentation, turn it back over to board discussion, but I will be available to answer specific questions. Madam Chairman, before you go into board discussion, if I can go ahead and read the title of the ordinance. Okay. And then that way, you're all set for
discussion and public comment. All right. Great. Okay. Okay, this will be an ordinance of the board of county commissioners of Lake County, Florida, regarding the following sections of the Lake County Code, appendix Z, Lane Development Regulations, amending section 1602 entitled Wellness Way Development Standards, Incorporating the New Yard
Pattern Book as an official exhibit, integrating principles consistent with Florida Friendly Landscaping, providing references to official websites for approved plant lists, amending chapter 2 entitled definitions, creating section 16004 to be entitled the New York patent book, providing for severability
inclusion in the code, and providing providing for filing with department of state providing for an effective date. If you choose to approve this today, it'll become ordinance 2025-39. Okay. And um we have several speaker cards. So um before we do that, are there specific questions you want to ask
right now? Board members, you want to go ahead and move right into speaker cards. Okay. Okay. All right. So um I'm just going to go in the order that I just got those. All right. Uh Shane
Gerwig and after Shane will be James Watson. Very good. Thank you, chair, commissioners. I appreciate everyone's efforts on this uh goes through here
today. My name is Shane Gerwig. I am a small business owner in uh unincorporated uh Lake County down in the Claremont area. So I want I wanted to kind of talk about this one specifically as far as a concern. You know, we've had some discussion already about you know how Senate Bill 180 is
going to affect you know land use amendments and different things that we do with with our land development codes and so forth. So as we take a look at this I think that they there's one of the the fractures in this. So, but let me back up just a little bit, you know, before and and Commissioner Parks, you and I had conversations several years
ago whenever I was a Florida building commissioner about trying to take a look at how we can move forward with some irrigation safeguards and some irrigation code to be able to make the a little bit better, conserve a lot of water, and that kind of thing. So, first things I want to to say is I I'm not
here saying that we don't have a water issue, that we don't need to take a look at water conservation with within the South Lake County area. What I am going to say is there's several there's a couple fatal flaws in this particular ordinance. First off is in regards to
Senate Bill 180. With Senate Bill 180, it's going to preempt us from doing a lot of this and adding this information from our land development code to be able to put this in our code right now. So, um, there's some discussion about, well, this doesn't really add additional in inhibitations
because it's revenue neutral. I don't believe that it's, uh, and and my my experience is it's from what I've seen is it's not necessarily going to be revenue neutral because it's going to add a couple thousand dollars to the cost of each house. And even if it was revenue neutral, Senate Bill 180 does not specifically address the the revenue
side of it. It addresses the the uh the restrictive nature of land development codes. And then secondly, as far as a there's concern is beyond that, in my experience as a building official and so forth, there is a statutory provision in 553 that says that if we're going to do
anything that is related to the building code in a nutshell, we don't want to disguise it as a land development code. Irrigation and irrigation systems are covered in the uh Florida building code. As as a matter of fact, the word
irrigation actually appears 160 times within the documents of the Florida Building Code. So therefore, if we're going to amend the way that we do irrigation and that we change irrigation, we need to do it as a Florida building code amendment, we can do it as a local amendment, but that the
that part of the ordinance needs to go through the right process and uh be done as a local amendment to the Florida Building Code. So, so with with that, uh, chair, commissioners, I appreciate everybody's time and I am definitely available if anyone has any questions. Thank you.
All right. Thank you. Um, James Watson and then Sue Eloth. Good morning, commissioners. My name is James Watson. I'm a Florida native and my wife and I moved from Florida from Miami to Houston over 35 years ago. I
founded my design, build landscape construction company, Quality by Design, 32 years ago. Last year, we irrigated and landscaped over 4,000 homes throughout the state from south of Tampa to um up the I-4 corridor to Jacksonville and into Georgia while
always adhering to variable varied municipal codes, ARB guidelines, and budgetary constraints of the builders and the homeowners. As a Florida native, I fully support the goal of conserving water and protecting Florida's natural resources and biodiversity. I am here today because I
only learned about this proposed ordinance three weeks ago. And after reaching out to fellow landscapers, nurserymen, and tree farm owners, I found almost no one um in the industry had heard about this proposed ordinance. After reading the proposed ordinance multiple times, I believe there are
beneficial elements to it, but also significant problems. As written, it's confusing, overly burdensome to landscape and irrigation contractors, and will increase home cost without delivering meaningful environmental gains. I would very much like to share
my thoughts concerning several mandates of this proposed ordinance. However, as we don't have time to discuss all of them, all the issues now, I will leave you with just one ambiguous example. The proposed ordinance says, and I quote, "A maximum of 25% of the
landscape area may be planted with irrigated turf grass. Other areas, I'm sorry, all other areas shall be planted with Florida friendly plants, Florida native plants, or drought tolerant turf grasses that are not irrigated." So,
some people read this to mean you can irrigate plants, just not more turf, which is the way I took it. But then other people came to me and said, "No, no, no. That means other than the 25% turf, you can't irrigate anything. You can't irrigate the plants or anything." That if that's the case, that's going to
be a big problem. But no one really knew what the answer was. So those are two very different interpretations. The ambiguity of this one s sentence is an example of why this proposed ordinance should definitely not be approved today, but rather should be discussed,
clarified, and revised with stakeholders from the industry. This is just one of many unclear provisions. Please refer to the document I sent to all commissioners via email last week that this highlights examples in the proposed ordinance which require further discussion. Given the
lack of awareness within the industry and the need to refine this language, I respectfully request the commission table this proposed ordinance and hold workshops with all stakeholders to craft a version that meets water saving and biodiversity goals without creating
unnecessary cost or confusion. Thank you. Thank you. Um Sue and then after Sue is Cindy Newton. Thank you for let uh allowing me to
speak. I am Sue Egloff from the villages. Uh we have in our membership of FMPS, Florida Native Plant Society, Sumpter Lake and Marian County. And part
of what we do is we maintain the um the entrance of Lake Griffin State Park, which is in Lake. So we are very concerned about what Lake County does as well as Sumpter and Marian. I want to
bring to your attention. We have talked a lot about irrigation which is very very important to also the irrigation is not just the lack of water but it's also considering the maintenance
of our plants without a lot of herbicides, pesticides and fertilizers which are affect affecting our wildlife. And by having turf, it means less Florida native plants. Therefore, that
means less birds, bees, and butterflies. That also decreases your amount of pollinators. So, this isn't a oneshot deal here. We're trying to solve. Um, I implore you to go forward and pass
this. Maybe it's not perfect legislation, but it's a beginning and can be used as a template. And yes, you've emboldened me to go to Sumpter County and see if we
can get some like legislation um to it. So, thank you very much for your time. If you have any questions, please um ask me. Thank you. uh Cindy Newton and then um
Banks Hendrick. Good morning, Cindy Newton, District 4. I'm in support of the amendment. The 2020 regional water supply plan for Central Florida determined that at that time consumption use permits had already
been issued for about 35% more fresh groundwater withdrawals than the Flidian aquafer could safely sustain. The plan stated that fresh groundwater withdrawals could not exceed 760 million gallons per day, including the upper and
the lower aquifers. But conceptual use permits had already been issued for withdrawing over a billion gallons per day. Our lakes and springs health is degrading which affects not only our drinking supply but also our ecoourism.
Increased water conservation is essential to protecting our water resources. Turf grass consumes excessive water and fertilization and this ordinance does limit turf grass. Combo soil based soil enhancement
during construction can significantly help keep landscaping healthy and reduce the water usage of you've already heard. Some of that is improved soil structure and the water retention. um
the poor compacted soil that's left. Adding com compost improves the soil structure by breaking up the comp compacted soil, creating spore spaces that allow water and air to penetrate
more easily. It also increases the water holding capacity. It acts like a sponge, increasing the soil's ability to hold the moisture, especially in our sandy soils. This means you need to you can water less. It also promotes the healthy pl plant
growth. It allows for stronger root system. The healthy soils promotes deeper more extensive roots which makes it resilient to drought. Increased re
uh resilience also uh helps with not having to use as many chemicals. Compost emitted soils also absorb water more efficiently and effectively reducing the runoff
and of course with runoff you have the association of the erosion and sediment loss. This also helps with our recharge of our groundwater. So the increased water holding capacity and healthier plants resulting from the compost lead
directly to a reduced need for supplemental watering especially during our dry periods. So thank you for your time. All right. Um and after
banks then Jean Bennett farmer banks South Lake County um clayro district district. Uh wouldn't it be great if water was infinite? When you look at our planet from thousands of miles away, we are a blue
globe. We are full of water. You would think uh we would have enough water for everything we need. Yet potable, usable, cheap water is not infinite. In fact, it is limited. Just ask residents of Arizona, Utah,
Colorado, Nevada, or even California. They live in the realm of limited water resources every single day. Even if you look closer to home, as in Groveland or Claremont, um just ask somebody in one of those cities what their water bill
is. In fact, earlier this year, Groveland's water bill went up 40%. The outcry from the citizens was immense. Economically, we can allow our citizens to cut back involuntarily on their own because water will become
so expensive they can't afford it. Or we can set a higher priority for our water because water is life. When we feed our lawns more than we feed our kids, it is time for another options. So please support water
conservation before Florida becomes California. I am farmer banks. May you all be blessed. Thank you for allowing me to speak. Right. Jean Bennett and then Tim Salon.
Hi, good morning and thank you for allowing me to speak. My name is Jeannie Bennett and I'm a former permaculture farmer and a rehabilitator of wildlife. So, I'm going to give you a couple facts to kind of fill in what everybody's been talking about. Um, one of the things I
wanted to say is because I'm in support of the bill is about the wildlife that the native uh plants attract. So, wildlife um as we know is uh dependent upon not only the places that they can hide, they can feed their young, they
can um uh uh have nesting sites and things like that. So these Florida native plants rather than the turf is super important because just when since I got here like six months ago, there's been so much of the area that's been devastated, just taken down to build
houses and we all need someplace to live. But these um other native plants and the wildlife is now getting crammed into smaller areas which means that the idea of the old turf, you know, surrounded home is pretty much um not going to be sustainable at this point.
In fact, there's been so much um building that now the bears and uh the the um big cats are actually coming into people's backyards. So um so a couple facts, 97% of all song birds, including song birds, including the seed eating
varieties, feed their babies insect only diet. And the insects need these native plants to not the turf, but uh bigger areas for them to uh provide this in the insect home. so that the insects feed the baby birds. So if they don't have
enough baby bird food for those um for that clutch, then the next year you have less birds. So now you have less birds eating more insects. And so it just keeps snowballing. So my point is the loss of the habitat um needs to be taken
up by the residents and uh the you know community developed places, the parks. And what I'm suggesting is you have like oasises where there's not going to be anything done like um like just a beautiful cordoned off area with some native plants and some trees. It doesn't even have to be shrubs. It can have like
canopies. Um this is a bill for the people as much as for the wildlife because I don't know about you, but I really don't want any more bugs. I want more animals that are eating um and sustaining the habitat in a more balanced way. Uh just a couple more
things. Um, I actually moved here from Hawaii. And you would think that, well, that's more beautiful. Why would you move here? But most most of us think this is very beautiful. And I think it's as beautiful, if not more beautiful, than Hawaii because it hasn't been overdeveloped. I was raised in a place
called Freehill, New Jersey. And about 50 years ago, they realized it was uh so overgrown with suburbs that they were going to have to uh take up the last remaining three or 4% of the land. and the the town actually bought it so that there was green space. It was like
little areas. It wasn't a park. It was just um Oh, okay. Well, thank you very much for what I was able to get across. Thank you, Tim. And then um Paul Owens.
Good morning and thank you. My name is Tim Salin. I've been a resident of Lake County since 1980. Uh, real Florida, real close is a really good slogan and I think it means something to the residents of Lake County. The voice of the people has been very clear. Uh, we have heard just this
morning about the survey that was conducted as part of the comprehensive planning project. We heard earlier last year about the Trust for Public Land polling results and we saw the referendum results of 80% in favor of the of the bond program which shows
overwhelming support and demand for the protection of the natural beauty that exists here in Lake County, preservation of our natural resources, protection of our water resources, and growth management to combat the sprawl and the overdevelopment that people are saying
is causing congestion and crowding. Lake County is facing a severe water crisis. As you know, it is happening right now. We've already spent in the Central Florida Water Initiative region over $347 million on alternative water source
projects, and we will need to spend over a billion dollars to make up for the 98 million gallons per day projected shortfall in groundwater resources by 2045. Somebody's going to have to fund those expenses. That infrastructure needs to be planned for. It's going to result in bonding projects by the county and by
the utilities which will be passed on to the residents. As farmer banks already mentioned, water bills are going up. 200 to30 to $400 a month is not uncommon for Lake County residents to be paying in water. Why? Simply because they moved into a home, a
new home that they thought was properly built and developed that has a landscape that cannot survive with reasonable amounts of irrigation. And in fact, there's no amount of water that will allow that landscape to thrive. These landscapes are constant pain for the residents who are having to
deal with high water bills, replacement cost, headaches, frustrations, uh challenges with their maintenance companies. So, this ordinance is in fact very good and includes very excellent elements which Brooke uh very well presented. The science is clear.
Reducing irrigated turf grass makes a ton of sense. We're not limiting turf. You can go ahead and use bear grass. I was not confused when I read the ordinance. It's very clear. Uh native plants. Yes, water is clearly an urgent issue and native plants I believe will help to reduce water. But that's not the
only issue. In my opinion, the greatest issue of our generation is biodiversity loss. We don't talk about it very much. Some of the speakers here have. And the science is overwhelming, as Brooke pointed out, overwhelming that native plants support biodiversity. And
what could be more real Florida than real native plants? I mean, that has to be our brand. It's not ownorous. Over 22 jurisdictions in Florida already have native plants requirement. This is super common. Um, and native plants are great. They're easy. We grow them. We're one of the
largest producers of plants in the state. We're one of the largest landscape contractors in the county. And, uh, this law works. Don't let um industry groups who didn't get a chance to read the ordinance when you guys have been working on it, advertising it for over a year tell you not to do this. I
hope that we do it now. Thank you. Thank you. Um Paul Owens and then Aaron Smith. Good morning. I'm Paul Owens, president of 1000 Friends of Florida. We're a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that
promotes planning for sustainable development to preserve our environment and quality of life and the economy that depends on both of those. We're a statewide organization, but I'm here today because we see the amendment to
Wellness Way landscape code as a great opportunity to advance sustainable development and address Florida's burgeoning water problem. In a letter I sent to each of you a couple of weeks ago, I referenced some reports 10,000
friends completed with our research partners at the University of Florida. One of those reports, water 2070, found that sticking with the status quo in water use where more than half our portable water irrigates landscaping is
not sustainable. Without changes in our development patterns and landscape practices, we are overextending our water supply, degrading our natural systems, and weakening our agricultural economy. But
if we embrace strategies like the proposal before you today, we can achieve a more resilient and prosperous future. We are proud members of the outside collaborative and as we've heard
its research and field demonstrations have proved that the alternative landscape practices promoted through the proposed code amendment will conserve water and also reduce pollution, enhance
biodiversity and lower maintenance costs without sacrificing community standards for aesthetics and utility. You have an opportunity today not just to promote smarter land and water use in Lake
County and honor your county's motto. You can also distinguish this county as a leader for other communities throughout Florida facing similar challenges related to growth starting with stress on their water supplies. If
you have any hesitation about moving forward, you don't have to look very far back. just last November when 80% of county voters approved the Lake County bond referendum that called for
conservation and sustainable growth. To respect that popular mandate, we urge you to approve this amendment. I'm happy to answer any questions. All right, Aaron Fifth. and then
Katherine D. Young. All right. Good morning. Uh, my name is Aaron Smith. I've been here since 1973. So, and I have been a irrigator. Um, so I did irrigation with my father. We did it in the 80s. We probably did one of your houses if I had to guess. Ron Smith irrigation. Um, since then I have grown
to have a company that our job literally for the state of Florida and we manage daily 35,000 homes to make sure that they are compliant with water use permits. Um, Scoffield is or sorry Scoffield. Well, in this way I am personally responsible for developing
the McKinnon project uh Parkside Trails um oh jeez lake haven Olympus. So I am deeply involved and honestly I'm not prepared. I found out about this last night. Um, so I just want to be clear. Um, one of the biggest things that we do on a maintenance, we save millions of
gallons of water and actually billions. Um, I work with the St. John's Water Rage District. I've I've I'm the consultants for many of these projects. And me, I'm not prepared for this, but I'm just going to jump to the chase. We talk a lot about stuff that is feel good. It's going to work initially. We
have rain sensors. You know, one of the biggest things I do every day is explain to homeowners and residents that you're supposed to have a rain sensor. any rain that you get is not bonus water. So, let's just take for instance, I'm going to be managing 45,000 acres out at uh the wellness way project. One rain
sensor that doesn't work or we sit there in one one night. That's 120 million gallons of water that went down on that property that didn't need to because a rain sensor works. We have a lot of legislation about what it's supposed to do. What about after the fact? Okay. What about a year from now, two years,
three years from now? How many of you have a working rain sensor on your house? Um, man, I'm ser nervous. Okay, so let me cut to the chase. Um, we have a lot of stuff. We we talk about a lot of neat stuff. Um, who's installing the uh smart sensors? Who's installing the soil moisture sensors? In the picture
you show, that's absolutely incorrect installation. Is that our example? Um, you know, there's no incentive. Um, just like James said, um, I actually manage probably 50% of all the homes that he installs that he talks about, the homes for Cherry Lake and all that other
stuff. Anyway, what's the point of all this? Where am I going with all this? Um, I can tell you right now, most of these homes probably going to go to time shares, renters, people that are not there. They don't care. They're just like, "Hey, what's it supposed to be?" One of the things that we do, we make it clear to all people that move in that community because I work for the developers is the homeowner does not
have rights to the water. We define budgets. We we make it clear, this is how much water you get. This is, you know, if you go over that, it's not an option. Um, we do enforce it. It can be enforced and it works and it saves billions of gallons of water. Okay. Um,
what is the turf area? You know what most of the home owners are already knowing? Hey, okay, this is the ordinance. Soon as I'm moving a home, I'm ripping out the backyard and I'm putting down sod. The infrastructure is not set up for that. Is that clear in what you're proposing? Because that's what they're going to do. Okay, I just want to be clear. Homeowners come to
Florida because they want Florida landscape and these homes are not going to sell. I'm sorry. I did this this morning. So anyway, I I propose that you table this and get people that know what they're talking about to put their input like James. Anyway, thank you.
Thank you. Um, Katherine. Okay. All right. Um, do we have anyone online? Is that a no? I think I see a shaking no. Okay. All right. Um Okay. Now we're uh that's that's the end of the speaker cards. So um we're going to bring it
back to the board. Um, and um, I just wanted to say something right out of the gate here because I think that we've gotten a lot of great information today. And I personally am in favor of moving forward with an ordinance for Wellness Way in order to adhere to the
requirements for Wellness Way, which require, I believe, a reduction in efforts to reduce um, water usage and irrigation. Um, and and I I do believe that the you know the the goal of of
promoting biodiversity and I I think these are all really great noble purposes and and missions. Um, but I also what I'm hearing today and what I've learned in reading emails um, in talking with folks is that I don't I don't think we have it where it needs to
be yet. I think we need to make some some tweaks. We need to get some more input. And I think that I mean even like with the last speaker, let let's be practical and figure out how we're going to make sure this continues to work and and does what it's supposed to do. And I I know we've been at it for a long time,
but it but it feels also like a lot of the people that have some really great input are getting here late to the discussion. And I don't know if it's who's, you know, if that's someone's fault or it just happened that way or that's the nature of these things that
once you actually start to get into the implementation side of it, that's when everybody gets interested because everybody's busy running their businesses and living their lives. And so now we've got everyone's attention and this is like such a great time to
get that input and get this right. So, that would be I just feel like that needed to be said right out of the out of the gate just because um I think we're we're close but we're not we're not there as far as getting it where it needs to be. Um so that's my initial my
initial thoughts. So turn it over to whomever wants to speak next. I I'll have I just have a couple comments on history um first of this just to to be clear. Do you think we're there though? Do you think the ordinance is exactly where it needs to be? I mean, I'm I'm well, let me discuss my
historical comments first. So, and then I'll answer your question. Um, so again, just to rehash things with history, and I appreciate everybody that's here today, even whether you're for or against this and having comments and input, well, that's always welcome at whatever point of the process. I want to make that very clear. Um, so again,
Wellness Way, wellness way was something different from the beginning. The intent has always been that this would be something different. I had it, we had it ingrained into us that if Wellness Way was going to be approved and it was going to be the center of where growth
would be channeled in the future, the next generation for Lake County, it would be something very different. It would have a much higher bar, and I use that term, I've been using that term for years, a higher bar of development than what you see not only in other places of
Lake County, but just around Florida in general. Um, if you go to to I know there's been concerns about, you know, not knowing what's going on and and or we weren't part of the process. If you go to slide five, I I'll just show you where I think
part of this is coming from is that I do think you have uh some development. Now, keeping in mind when Wellness Way was started, it was hurry, hurry, hurry. There's big demand. We got to do this now. We got to put the plan in place because there's so much growth that's happening. So, and you've heard me use
the term at times as this term is at times as well. We were almost like building the airplane as we were flying. So, there were code changes, processes that were going on as we were uh implementing wellness way because so much growth and so much demand was generated in that area. We wanted to do
it the right way. If you go to slide five, it's the list of developments, right, that are already up. Yes. And running. Yeah. So I I mean I just I need to Yeah. Keep scroll up.
Scroll up. Erin, go back. You need just need to scroll up. We're almost there. Yeah. All right. There we go. One more there. All right. So uh you take Lake Haven for instance, notices given that wellness
way specific standard standards are under development shall apply if adopted. Okay. We have had we've had wellness way meetings for four to five years in the city of Claremont where 80 people show up could be the city of Claremont,
utilities, public works, utility companies and most but most of them there are developers. So they know that this is we we we've been talking about this. So to the the question of where maybe some of this is coming from. Maybe now there's this
realization that okay, we're getting close and now these are going to be actually implemented and there's some consternation over that. I get it. It's a business. But at the same time, I just needed to make it clear that I I've been letting them know in those discussions,
in those meetings that there is a higher bar. This is not going to be landscaping that's done, you know, and I'm being a little facicious here. I know the landscapers, but a cheap landscape package house. This is going to be something that's going to be very different. There's the wildlife corridor
that's connected to this as well, which is actually part of this project. We're trying to be a corridor compatible community. We've embraced locked our arms around being a wildlife of Florida wildlife quarterable corridor compatible community. Everybody loves what they're doing.
You can clearly see in their recommendations they talk about moving forward to be to make yourself corridor compatible by changing your landscaping, going in a different direction than what the what the norm is, especially in an area like Wellness Way, which was once
part of the Lake Wells Ridge and is now a butting up to and part of the actual pinch point to the wildlife corridor from Shingle Creek into the Green Swamp. Have all these protections and land that's in place. But if you put what's normal and what you see in many other
places of Florida up against that, you're really kind of min you're dimminimizing or minimizing the impact that a wildlife coridor can actually have. So I think it's counter to go against that. So we have to move forward with something. Um the savings are provable and with all due respect I
think that you know maybe there was some implication or insinuation that there's no science behind this. There is great science behind this. There's a lot of I give the outside collaborative a lot of uh credit um putting a hypothesis out that this kind
of landscaping would work. It's been talked about in years in the past. I mean 12 years, 15, 16 years, 20 years. Oh, we should do more landscaping. There's never been a lot of science behind that. Well, kudos to them for stepping up and actually proving it. So you do see this here you see a 50
anywhere from a $50 to $200 per month savings on water use. That's where you that's where you would be making this up. Yes, it costs a little more upfront to do this. There's no argument on that. Um I do have I do recognize the concern
about um you know what could happen. Yes, you get somebody that moves down from up north and you know a couple years that they they might rip out this landscape. Well, I think what what is going to be done and and maybe it
doesn't say this specifically in the or in this ordinance, but I know that it's been mandated in other PUDs that we've done um is essentially and and the the town of Montver is doing this right now. Um is essentially a homeowners manual. So, like you get a manual when you buy
the house with uh it's not just a cut sheet, but it's an actual manual, property owner's manual for the house that says this is why this this is why Wellness Way is special. It's different. This isn't some other place in Florida. This is why you have these requirements.
You have interpretive displays that are set up in the neighborhood uh done quite cheaply actually that explains why uh your neighborhood is different um why this development is different. So, you know, perhaps that is something that um maybe we should have made clear in this
ordinance. I know it's it can be ma it's made clear in the the comprehensive plan and in uh the LDRs for Wellness Way overall. Um but but I think that that is something that could address that concern as well. So, I I would um
I I'm I'm all for moving forward with it. I think it can be I don't think there's I know there's some I know there's some questions about whether um you can plant you can only irrigate the uh 25% you can't irrigate the the other
parts of your landscape and so I know there's some confusion over that I I'm guessing it's out of section 3D but it does say um all other plants you'll be planted with Florida flooding plants Florida native plants or drought tolerant turf grass that is not irrigate so that's referring to the drought tolerant turf grass so you can irrigate
25% of your of your grass. It's just if you have more than 25% grass that can't be irrigated. So, I mean, I I mean, that's how I interpret that seems to be pretty clear to me. Um, so, you know, I'm I'm forward I'm I'm all for moving
forward with it. If um we need to start tweaking and and certainly meet with, you know, interested parties that are in the room to to tweak it again. It's pretty easy to do an ordinance change uh to add to it. Uh maybe we want to add the homeowners manual at that point as well. Um so that that's
Are you not Are you not concerned about the issue raised about the Florida building code versus um you know an irrigation plan being a Florida building code issue versus being an LDR? Is that I just haven't I mean I I I maybe I need more explanation on that. But I haven't heard how this would be contrary to the Florida building code though. No, I
think the question though was that you have to like actually put irrigation in your you have to address it as a building code as opposed to a land development regulation because of the way that it's permitted. Well, I mean, it just seemed like something that needs to be at least fleshed out,
you know, to know whether that's something that's a valid issue. Are are you not worried about Senate Bill 182? I mean, that's No, I'm not I'm not worried about that from my from my previous comments, but I think if you're going to do something that's uh above the building code that you get the local building code for the irrigation. That's what that that's
where that's coming from. This is pretty general. Um, I don't I don't I don't see how that would I don't I'm not sure how I if I fully understand how the building code would apply to that, but because it's I mean it might it might be something if
like if you're going to require um you know some different backflow pre or something like that. Um maybe that's where that building code comes into getting a local building code amendment. Can I just jump in? I feel comfortable
um passing this today because I'm a big believer that you pass something and then if there's an issue, you amend it. So, uh maybe it's substantially complete, maybe it's almost ready to go, but these two gentlemen highlighted two concerns that we could literally amend verbally right now on the spot. We could
I double checked with our council. We could amend them on the spot. I mean, this man brought a ambiguous part of the ordinance. This gentleman brought another one. I mean, we could literally in the record right now just amend those, try to plate, you know, this this issue, fix this issue, and then move
forward. I mean, I feel comfortable just passing this ordinance and then somebody comes up and says, "Hey, this is too burdensome. This is an issue, we amend it again." But I I I just don't see the point just stopping entirely because there seems to be a minor issue. Well, I think stopping is like stop I
stopping is like finite. What I was recommending is before you actually adopt the ordinance, you workshop it, you get some comments, you work on some language that everybody feels comfortable with that still accomplishes the mission but addresses the issue brought up by different industry
stakeholders, which I think it's really important when you're doing when you're adopting an ordinance that impacts um businesses and people who just by virtue of what they do every day, they're experts. birds because they do
it every day. So I just that gives me a lot of um consternation and I would just say in response to that I think that's obviously a very positive strong concern but that for me the issue is this was again like Commissioner Park
said limited uh both in time place years going into this. It's it's a finite part of the county. I think if this was part of the countywide plan you know the whole county was affected I would be taking a little different approach. Not saying I would be against putting an emphasis on native plants countywide,
but because this is really such a hyperfocused, hyperstudied, hyper planned element of the county, I just look at it very differently. And so that's why I feel so confident just going forward with it because it's just a an element that's been again studied,
planned, um lots of input. Uh and again, we're not saying your input doesn't matter. I think I'd feel comfortable taking all the amendments that were brought up today, but I would do that as we continue to move. And keep in mind that three minutes of speaking really isn't adequate for we we
may have honed in on a couple things that were raised. That's that's why I I really feel strongly about a workshop because I think that you got to give them a little bit more time to to flesh out what they think would be um because I do think that we have people
involved that aren't saying don't do anything. They're they've got ideas to offer that could be blended with what's already been worked on. And um I mean I love the idea of the the the kiosk so that people know I'm living in a special place. I told you guys, I think it was the last
meeting, I talked about the fact I'd been to a DVO presentation for like three or four hours on primarily the Lake Wales Ridge and it is an incredibly special place. Um, and there are a lot of um I mean pe people would benefit as
they move into that area um to know more about it and why what they're doing matters and what they're not doing is important too as far as that uh the recharge of that ridge. So, you know, I I and I and I like the homeowners um
manual. I'd like to see what that would look like to to see how manageable it is and would that come out of the county. Would it be attached as an exhibit? You know, those kind of things, how easy it is for people to understand um would be a really important
um part of whether it works or not. Um understanding ramifications. if somebody rips out what they put in what was in their yard initially and if they go do something different that could be part of the notification that's given to to
homeowners as well. So, um I think we can just get this better and we we've got to hear from Commissioner Morris and we've got to hear from Commissioner Smith. So, um Commissioner Morris, you want to go? You want me to go?
Go ahead and go. I'll finish up. So, um I see that there are some good parts in this ordinance. However, I see there are some very bad parts in this ordinance. So much so that it's government overreach in my opinion.
Um I'm all for a workshop. First of all, um the sunshine law does not allow us to talk to each other about this. So, we can't interject our ideas unless we're up here in the sunshine. So, a workshop
is a way that we can do that. Um, we talked about um irrigation a lot. A lot of this was and I and I had a pleasure of um talking to Tim yesterday. Um I'm a big Florida native plant guy.
Every every plant in my yard is a Florida native plant. However, there are some things in this ordinance that I totally disagree with. Um, we were talking most of the conversation today was talking about water and irrigation.
We heard percentages. I don't know, and I'm sure that, and I don't want you to answer now because I think we're going to have a workshop on this. I hope we have a workshop on this. How many gallons does a typical yard currently use today with the rain
sensor? Um, and what does that look like? You know, is it 15 gallons? Is it 10 gallons? I don't know what the answer is, but I'm sure these professionals know what the
answer is. Um, some of the things that I really disagree with is, uh, you're mandating five hedges for every 2,000 square foot of yard. Well, I don't like hedges, but you're
telling me that in order for me to have landscape, I got to put hedges in my yard. And then you've got in here that you have to have a canopy tree in the front and a canopy tree in the back. But a canopy tree has got to be 10 feet from your property line. Minimum of 10 feet,
maximum of 20 feet from your property line. Well, a canopy tree, a canopy tree is an oak tree. So, everybody's going to be planting oak trees. Oak trees have root systems and they're going to push up the sidewalks. I think there's something else we can do there. uh you
you're you're saying that we can only have 25% turf grass irrigated. However, you want to have this ordinance claims to have um bubblers on a on a separate
zone which cost extra money. Uh so there's a lot of things in this ordinance that people may not have read. They may have only saw the good things as Yeah. I mean, it sounds great. 25% turf grass. Where are the kids going to
play? Where are your kids going to play in your backyard? They're not going to run through your hedges. They're going to play in your grass. So, I I would really like to see a workshop to really dive into this
ordinance. There is a lot of good in here. Commissioner Parks, I applaud your your um effort in this. I'm just sorry we can't talk privately on some of our concerns because I mean the law is the law and this is the only way we can do
this. Um I I like that the people come out and spoke. This is exactly what a public workshop is for. I mean this is what a public hearing is for is to get the people's input. And I wholeheartedly believe that we need to
have a workshop to get some of these and and really have a longer conversation on some of these things because I bet you none of us know how many gallons a a typical irrigation system
uses. And when we're talking about gallons of water, we're talking about wellness way. Everybody's talking about water and they're thinking potable water. Wellness way requires reclaimed water.
So, we're putting reclaim water back into the ground. Unless St. John's can issue a permit for a well, well, if if you want to go that route, then have St. John's have these requirements in their permit.
Otherwise, they have to use reclaim water. unless that's been changed. And I'm certainly not a fan of we got to pass the bill just to see what's in the bill. So, I would like to have a u I'd like to have a workshop on this. I
think it's necessary. I think it's needed and I think it's good to have the citizens come out and talk about the good parts of the ordinance and the bad parts of the ordinance. I appreciate that. Um,
and I'm going to call on Commissioner Morse, but I want to I just want to hearken back to something that you may remember um before you were on the board and I I was on the board and there was a big discussion about um requiring Zoya grass. And that got way down the road
before the turf industry actually realized that that whole ordinance was about to be passed. And then the experts came in and they explained about the fact that yes, Zoya works good in some locations and not in others. You got to look at the soil, you got to look at whether shaded, all of those things. And
then the commission actually once they started hearing from the industry, they changed their position and they did something that was much smarter. So I just wanted to bring that up because it stuck with me. Um the fact that, you know, they they started down a road
thinking, okay, this is the best thing out there. This is great. is going to use less water and it's going to but they didn't get all of the information first and and I'm not saying that I mean you obviously are immersed in this and you you have a lot of you know great
experience in it but I also think that there is a lot of good information that we're just learning in hearing and I really want everyone to be able to be a participant in getting you know everything the best it can be and and
the most likely that it will succeed. I think that's a really important part of this is that it needs to be able to ultimately succeed when people are living with their their yards and their um landscape material. Commissioner Morris,
I'm for a workshop. Uh I've heard both sides and I I think a workshop would bring a lot to the table. Uh, I think I think my biggest concern is quite frankly that Wellness Way has been going on for 15 years and all I I
go out there and all I see is housing. And I don't think that's what the anticipated growth was. It was to be commercial. It was to be workforce and and a workforce center. And I know these things take time, but you know, we
need to we need to look at the whole concept down there and see if is did the county do it the best way or would it be better off for somebody else to do it? But that's my personal opinion. We've spent millions of dollars down there already. And I think this is just a
small piece of it. We'll just have to deal with the ordinance and see if we can do it the best way possible. Yeah. Uh and just to your point about the the commercial, there are ratios in place and there are actual projects that
right now um there are owners and um developers that are working on uh implementation of some commercial projects. So it's what often happens in mixeduse development is you see your housing happens first. It's just the
nature of Yeah. and and that the market that that comment, you know, I guess indicates that there's still some lack understanding of wellness way because you're exactly right. It does require the commercial and you talk about overreach. I mean, I'm going to I'm
going to mandate that somebody build, you know, um only x number of dental shops and, you know, right down to some kind of specific commercial. uh you know that's perhaps government overreach for that area but um so that is not the uh
what you're seeing out there now yes is housing and it's all the more reason why we're trying to get ahead of these this ordinance um and get this get this in place as soon as possible. Um I also will point out again that uh so St.
John's River Water Management District has been a part of the process. They were at Wellness Way. So, they're they're they're supportive of this. I mean, they're supportive of the ordinance. Uh, moving forward, I I'm not as experienced as some of the the experts in the room. I will not profess
that I've done 4,000. I have done a lot of landscape design. It's it seems Yeah, I could see a couple of the questions. Um, you know, that could be could require clarification. Um but it's but it's pretty it's pretty
clear for me to follow what is required of uh somebody that's landscaping and wellness way for this. Um and I'll also point out too that you know Claremont um so again to all the expert the com conversation about the experts. So
Claremont has adopted this already. So it's it's it's important well yeah I mean it's important because that we have an agreement with them to do development together in in that area and essentially it kind of acts like a
little JPA in itself. So maybe there maybe maybe there's some way to tweak it a little bit but and and as Commissioner Sabatini said we could probably address some of those today. Um, but you know, go going against and and just dropping it all
together, I know that it doesn't sound like that's what at least one or two of you don't want to do that. Um, I think would be very detrimental to trying to work with the city uh city of Claremont on this. I mean, if I were in their shoes and and then I we see some, you know, that they've totally we've totally changed this.
Um, I would, you know, in their shoes would uh would be pretty uh disappointed to say the least. So, and I don't think it's overreach either because I think we're thinking about the savings, the numbers, uh, you know, that the data that's been presented, um, you asked for that data, it's actually been presented
about savings, uh, water savings. By by no means am I am I suggesting we just scrap this whole thing. I'm just saying that we need to get the professionals in and and really look at it. For another example, uh you have on
here that we have to put compost and it's got to be six inches in the turf. It's got to be rotoilled in. Is that a county employee that makes sure that happens? And if it is, do we have a county employee that can do that? It also in
the ordinance says that the compost has to be some type of certification. And if it's not that certification, then the county's got to certify it. Well, do we have somebody on staff that does that or can do that? And then a
year after installation, we got to go back out and make sure everything's established to. So, so now we are we are making more government instead of less government. So those are the things that I think we need to work on and I think you could reason why I would
like to have I would feel better if we had a workshop and you can address some of these things just by some some of the language in here. Um so that that that burden falls on whoever certifies what's being done and I don't know whether it kind of
looks like every single lot would have a separate irrigation plan or have to be certified. Do we have a mechanism for having a master um or irrigation plan or template that could be used per neighborhood? That seems like that would be a smart thing to incorporate at least
if we need to have language that allows that a template landscape plan. So that well that's what the I mean the the the pattern book is a is an example of what you're looking for in but let's just say I you know 300 lots
and you have eight different models and each you know eight are basically the same. Are you going to have to get every single one sealed and certified? you have well I mean like the town of Mont Verd and some of these other towns
around Florida you you submit a landscape plan and an irrigation plan with your with each individual lot for submitt as far as you know enforcement goes um the certification if you present the certification that you've got the
the soil compass it's not like you have to send somebody out looking at every single load to make sure they've done their whoever's the applicant they've done their they've done what they need to by providing that certification. Who they buy it from will provide will present that certification. It's like
here's my proof and then that's over with. As far as inspection, yeah, you have to you we have to send people we send inspectors out to look at neighborhoods. I mean, that's to make sure they're built according to the PUD. That's already done. So, yeah, you're
going to look to see whether they've landscaped according to their plans, but they're going to be out there looking, checking. I mean, it could be, and I don't know how the staff does it, who does exactly what, but there's inspections of infrastructure, uh, you know, all the little details.
You do walkthroughs, but it sounds like a valid thing that we could learn in a workshop and make sure that we've addressed it so that we're not actually creating more work, but we're making it so that the private sector can actually do the certification. we're not having to do I mean we obviously we have there are certain inspections that have to happen
and there's ways to do them in a in a in a uh costefficient um way on the government side so that you know when you're out there you're doing multiple things at one time from a inspection standpoint but that I I've heard that concern raised so I just want
to make sure that that that's covered and just to to the point about Claremont I mean it could be that we once we work on this that Claremont want actually wants to make the same changes so that we do have exactly the same ordinance, right? I mean, if if they hear those
concerns and they think that they're valid and it makes a lot more sense to have the same plan or ordinance, then maybe they would go back in and and make amendments. Yeah. No, I understand that. Let me let
me something insp with with the landscape plan that you'd stated that they were okay with it. The developers the developers have been sitting in on wellness way meetings for years knowing that we're doing this and looking and actually they actually had a part a hand
in the the one we did the landscape plans for the roads as well which was done last year or two years ago. So, so why don't we do this? Why don't we make it a recommendation instead of a requirement? Because
because right now it's you're telling them what it's going to they're going to do. And at least give the homeowner an option. Well, because if you don't I I support I I mean, just counting here, it's two wanted. I think Commissioner Campion just wants a few
edits and then I mean I definitely don't want to revert the conversation to just an advisory thing. I think it should be Yeah. I mean if you do I mean we could be gone and Wellness Way still be going and somebody's interpretation of real Florida real close and what's
been interpreted for the comprehensive plan and what's interpreted for the wellness way planning more specifically isn't there. It's going to be loose. It's going to provide a that would you talk about problems for staff that would be a nightmare for staff if something's recommended. I mean
so I I think this conversation can go on for another two hours. Um so I would like to make a suggestion. Uh, I'd like to make a motion that we table this ordinance uh until staff can come up with a good
date to have a workshop to fully vet the ordinance with everybody involved. And before we Okay, let's do we have a second? Before I second, I would just say, can we just put a time certain on the the workshop thing because I don't want this to be
uh Yeah, we'll say um no more than two months out. Okay. So, was that Okay. So we have a motion, we have a second, and for discussion, um I feel like anyone who's been a participant and sent emails or come to this meeting or wants to be
involved, what we need to get are is recommended language suggestions as opposed to don't like this, don't like that. What would you propose as an alternative in order to meet the ultimate mission which I think we all agree is um lower the water
usage, keep people's bills, you know, to something that's manageable, but we're also protecting the environment and protecting our aquifer biodiversity um so that we're promoting and Commissioner Parks makes a really valid point because we Wellness Way is right there where the wildlife corridor comes
across and over to Lake Louisa and that's a really really big deal. Um, so I mean these are really important things and I think everybody's agreeing that the real floor Florida real close. We want that to mean something. So bring your suggested language. Spend some time
looking at the irrigation side of this um and make sure that this this this makes financial sense or if there's something that could be done make it um you know more u feasible financially. If if I may add, not only look at the
irrigation side, but look at the requirements on the landscape side as well. Um the hedge requirements for every 2,000 square feet, 25% turf, um where you put your canopy trees, you
look at all that. So look at take this take this ordinance and dissect it. And professionals out there, we're looking for your help. Okay. So we'll get the notices out on our workshop day. I vote on it and Okay, so we're still in discussion.
We got a first, we have a second. Um, that would be workshop and we bring this back in 60 days or we have a workshop within 60 days. Did I understand? I had a workshop. Um, the motion was to have a workshop no more than 60 days out.
So that would put it in the October time frame. I hate to resend or or sooner. I hate to resend my motion, but can we just do the workshop in 30 days? Final hearing in 60. I mean, to me, that's that's Florida legislative session is 60 days. So, it's like I just feel like we're taking way too long.
Melanie, is that doable? Make the notices work. It's doable. Um, however, it'll be a tight time frame. We have a 10-day advertising time for any meeting of the commissioners. Getting your schedules coordinated um might be difficult as
well. And then, in Jennifer's defense, she's preparing for final budget hearings coming up in September. So probably for her timing and jump in if I'm incorrect, Jennifer, she's probably wanting would be more interested in a workshop beginning of October, mid-occtober, so she can get through the
budget process. We still that do that within that the initial motion and second. Nothing's been changed since that initial. Yeah, it's fine. Okay. I mean, I don't want to I mean the budget is got we got to be focused on that. So So we'll schedule the workshop within 60 days. We'll get that input at that
time and then once we know how many comments we have to make, then we can readvertise for a final public hearing on the ordinance. Okay? And if you don't have if you don't have the um ordinance, you can do a public records request. The request, you can
just request it and we'll send you the ordinance as it's written today. It's also online. Okay. Okay. Okay. Um all in favor say I. I. Any opposed? opposed. Okay. Um and I Commissioner Morris, was
that an I? I was an I. Okay. All right. It's four four to one. That passes and we'll have our workshop within 60 days. Thank you everyone. Appreciate your participation and your input. Okay. Let's take a um it's 10 almost 10
after 12. Um can we just take between 5 to 10? We're back in seats within 10 minutes. Okay. It's going to be a long It's a long walk. We just assume he's there. What? We'll assume he's there.
Yeah. Okay. All right. We're going to move on now to tab 23. Uh I'll call on the county manager, Jennifer Barker. Uh yes, thank you, Madam Chair. So, this is uh a proposed purchase agreement
recommending approval of a purchase agreement for property associated with the Brit Road Repair Project. As you are well aware, um, in October when Hurricane Milton made landfall, we had an an enormous amount of rain in that
area, about 15 inches or so down in that East Lake County area. Um, due to the intensity of the storm, it created the wash out on Brit Road. That's a critical connection between north south connection between Wolf Branch Road and State Road 44. Um, we've been working
with the property owner trying to buy the necessary right ofway so we could get the repairs made. It's been a long process. In April, the board did discuss the repair and the reopening of Brit Road and the need for the additional ride ofway. Um, we discussed that we had
been negotiating at that time and that the property owner was willing to sell the ride ofway. So the board approved staff to continue negotiations and then bring back a purchase agreement for consideration and go through the due diligence process. So we have now gone
through the due diligence process. So, the purchase agreement is for $675,000 that includes approximately 2 acres of rideway including a 66 foot wide corridor starting at the western edge of the existing pavement plus an additional
6 acres of conservation property around the natural water body consisting of highly sloped and in environmentally sensitive features. Uh the appraisal was completed and the property was valued in the appraisal at
$351,000. Um there was nothing identified in the phase one environmental that would raise any concern for the county. And with that, I'll turn it over to the board for discussion. Okay. And um ju just a couple things being
that it this is very close to um my neck of the woods. Um, and I happen to use Brit Road quite a bit, just like so many people in Northeast Lake County. And I also use pretty much daily State Road
44B as well. So, since Britt had caved in and became unusable, State Road 44B, as bad as it already was, became worse. So my you know my my position on this is while it's above
appraised value there's a couple considerations one of them being and I think a really important consideration is the impact on state road 44B and the fact that it's already problem this makes it even worse without this road in place um that fact
alone I think could justify uh getting this north south road back intact Um, another consideration, and I hear this almost daily from people um, in Northeast Lake County, they're spending more time on the road because they
either have to go down to 437 to go north south or use 44B. So, they're spending more time on the road and they're spending more money on gas. So, um, I would not recommend ordinarily spending more money on right away than absolutely necessary and what appraised
value is. But I think considering those factors and there's one more factor um and we haven't really talked about it very much but we all know that Mr. broad check hasn't been easy to work with. Um, through the years we have tried to acquire more rideway on Brit Road. It
would be fabulous if Brit Road was wider. Um, and we've tried, but he has never been a willing seller. And a part of the reason he has not been a willing seller because I've heard it from him
many years ago and at various times is that Brit road is a basically a prescriptive roadway. So from his family's perspective they've always believed that that road was never purchased by the public and yet the public used it. Now granted the stat
Florida statutes was used maintenance map procedure was used in order to technically acquire Brit road but that has always been a contention um and um an an issue with um with Mr. Broadcheek.
And so I just feel like that's one more factor here that is very unique is that he felt that and feels that that road was never purchased to begin with. So, it's not as if we're paying for something that we already paid for before. So, I just wanted to put that
out there. Um, I've had to explain to a lot of constituents the facts surrounding this situation because they really don't um that they're very unhappy about the fact that it's taken this long and here we are in August and this happened in October of
last year and why isn't the road even being worked on? and trying to explain to everyone that without a willing seller um it makes it next to impossible unless you're willing to do eminent domain. That's not something that our board wanted to do. And the and the concern was even if we did go down that
road that we would be doing this for several years to even get the rightway. So now we have a willing seller. He's willing to sell. This is the price that he's asked for. Yes, it's above appraised value, but I think in light of the impacts on 44B, the impacts to our
constituents um convenience, money out of pocket, time on the road, um and the fact that if we don't get this right away and we try to build right inside the footprint of where the road had been, um and we go one inch onto his property, then we're probably going to
be in an inverse condemnation suit, which would be very expensive, very expensive. and cost us way more. So again, another reason to support the 675. So I'm just asking for everybody's support so we can move forward and get this road back in place and uh
move to approve. Second. All right, we have a first and second. Do we have any further discussion? Yes, we got a lot of discussion on this. So, um, just so everybody knows that I am
certainly not for this. Uh, it it was appraised for 351,000. He wants 675,000. But that but that's not all. Um, we have to pay his attorney's fees. But
what really gets me, can we can we go to the slide where it shows the parent parcel and the county parcel? pulling that up right now. Second one down. Okay. Scroll scroll down a little bit. So, the the piece in blue would be
I guess this is going to have to do because my my mind is better than this one here that I'm looking at. Can you not scroll down any? No, it's PDF. All right. So you see the parent parcel and you see the county parcels in the
blue, right? Yep. He also wants either 12 dwelling units added to the parent parcel or this is
what really got me or use public land in his open space designation or his or his conservation designation. So he wants to use public land on his property
to claim it as conservation. Now, if you don't think Mr. Broadche is going to sell this property and the minute we do this and get more money, there's going to beund and something homes out here. I I just can't I cannot agree with this.
I cannot agree with the price. I said it eight months ago. We should do imminent imminent domain. I don't like imminent domain, but by golly, this is a lot better than this right here. I can't see how anybody can say using public land
for a private builder to use as conservation area is a good thing no matter who you are. So, I'm a strong no on this and I implore the rest of our commissioners to vote no. I know it's a pain.
Make it a one lane road. Put a stop sign on one end. Put a stop or a red light on one end or a red light on the other end. And when the light turns green, the the green goes and the red stays. And when vice versa, but there there is no way I can justify
paying double the appraised value and using public land as part of a private builder's conservation area. It's crazy. I understand you feel strongly about that, but um but uh I think that you
know if he does uh try to sell the property for development, his remaining property, he's going to have to go through the city of Mount Dora. They would have to authorize however density is allocated. Um and I think his request
was that he would get credit for the conservation area. Um, you know, it's creative, but it's it's not in my mind, it's you you know, you they you move density around in order to create conservation areas often. So,
and that was that was my question. Um, so we're not on the hook to ensure that that's going to happen. He has to still deal with Mount Dora, right? Correct. Ultimately, it would be up to Mount Dora, if the property was to be annexed, which we would assume it would
be, um that Mount Dora would either um approve or not approve either additional 12 units of density on the property on the parent parcel or a recognition of the open space calculation using that
public land. They could say no. They could say no. So, we're not giving him 12 units right now. It it it would ultimately be part of a development agreement. So, why he don't want to go into Mount Door?
He still gives those 12 units. It it's up to Mount Dora if they want to give him those additional 12. If he if he wants to stay in Lake County, does he not get those 12 units? He would get those 12 units in Lake County. In Lake County, he would, but he would still get those extra 12 units, but we
don't have utilities. So that would affect the overall density, Commissioner Smith. So you wouldn't be maximizing your density. So what's crazy is people not being able to get where they need to go and having to go miles and miles away
around this. And uh it it this is this is a a creative solution, but it'll get the road back in place. And I also think it from a safety standpoint, it just adds more time and distance. If if we've got to get to someone with public safety
vehicle, um you got to either go to 437 or 44B. One of those gets shut down, then you're really in a bad spot. So, it just it needs to get reopened. So, so we're going to add more houses. We're going to add more traffic to a
road that can't handle it because we can't get the ride away to make it wider anyway. Anyway, uh don't we have the same issue on down at Lakeshore Drive in Claremont where we couldn't get a bridge? We have to have a bridge to make
it wider to make it safer. And I mean, we have these issues all over. It's unique. This is a really unique Sure. It's unique. It's unique for this area. Claremont's got a unique area. Fruitland Park's got a new unique area. So,
and we're not approving any development today. I just wish that y'all would step back, take a look at this. He is just he's he's trying to take advantage of the citizens of Lake County, and I can't let him I I I just
have a problem with that. I think you make very very strong very good points but at the end of the day I I do think this is a very peculiar situation and the necessity because the offloading and the the traffic issues on a road that's already pretty bad
is unique at the county in my opinion and that's the only reason why I think it makes sense. I think the word you used is perfect peculiar. Yeah. But we've got to look out for the people in this area that need to be able to get from point A to point B and we got to get this done. So we have a
motion. We have a second. Favor say I. I. Any opposed? Absolutely not. Okay. Four. That was 41 in favor of moving forward with this contract um to purchase the rideway and the land to move forward with the Brent Road
reconstruction where the wash out occurred. Okay. Moving ahead to tab 24. Okay, I'm going to ask for Aaron to go ahead and pull up the presentation and help me with advancing the slides. If
you could go ahead. So, this is to provide the board with proposed 2026 legislative priorities that would be presented by the chairman at the legislative delegation. However, this is just for discussion purposes. We're I'm happy to add, delete, anything you would
like to. This is just staff recommendations at this point. Um, if you do want to make some changes, we'll do some uh research and get some um data back to you on the 26th. The delegation meeting is not until the 27th. So, we have time to look at it one more time
before the delegation meeting. Go ahead, Aaron. So, I'm going to give you a little bit of background. We're going to go over the status of the 2025 legislative priorities. However, Chris did a pretty good job this morning to go going over that um proposed 2026 legislative priorities. And finally, the
requested action. So, as you know, each year the board does submit a list of priorities to the Lake County legislative delegation at the public meeting, which is on the 27th. As I mentioned earlier, we do work with our lobbyist, Chris uh Carmony, who
is with Gray Robinson. They um work with us to obtain funding for approved priorities as well as track legislation that could affect the county negatively or positively. Um at times that we do go to Tallahassee to meet with our legislative delegation. Last year,
several key staff members and commissioners did go up to Tallahassee to further our interest. As Chris mentioned earlier, the one project that was funded last year was the South Lake County Public Safety Complex. This is for the Wellness Way
area. This was a public safety complex that would be multi-purpose. It would be used for a fire station in the area. It would be used as a smaller substation for the sheriff in the area. And we were going to we are also planning to build
helports to be used by the sheriff as well as Orlando Health. So this is a true public safety complex. We were awarded $1 million for the design of the project. What was not funded was the Golden Triangle Regional Park East Campus at $500,000, the East Lake Sports
Community Complex at $500,000, and the workforce training and continuing education center, which was the second floor buildout of the Kagan Crossings Library in Four Corners area for $750,000. So proposed for 2026, it was quite a segue we had into this. So Brit Road
Flood Resilience and Culvert upgrade project. So, as we just talked about, we had the 15 inches of rain that fell during Hurricane Milton. It did blow blow wash out a portion of Brit Road. This is the connector, the north, one of the north south connectors from Wolf
Branch to State Road 44. That's a picture to the right of the blown out area. So, we are requesting $2.5 million for design, engineering, and reconstruction of the washed out two-lane roadway with Balks coververts and rip wrap basins at
the culvert inlets and outlets. So, the design would include the uh improve the flood control. It would ann allow for the natural flow of water through the culverts and also uh reduce the velocity of the water. So it enhances storm water
management and re reduce the impacts on the neighboring properties. Next, next we have a judicial center expansion. I think all of you have had a conversation with Judge Baxley. I have as well. We have been notified by the
state that we will be getting at least one new circuit judge. However, there is a real possibility of getting two. Judge Baxley has indicated that they will need additional courtroom space as well as judicial suites to accommodate the additional um staffing that will be
coming with the new judges. Additionally, there's been concern from many members of the public as well as staff that work within the judicial center of the safety of crossing over from the parking garage which is across Sinclair over to the judicial center.
So, we are also looking to design a an elevated pedestrian um enclosed pedestrian walkway over Sinclair to ensure the safety of pedestrians as they cross over Sinclair from the parking garage. So, the legislative funding request would be for $1 million for a
master site plan and architectural design for the expansion of the judicial center as well as the enclosed elevated walkway over Sinclair. Next is the neighborhood lakes gateway center. So the neighborhood lakes park
is over at the um area that com the wakiva trail leads into Lake County from Seminal County and Orange County. It's um it's an entry point into the regional trail system over there. And we are
looking to have parks and trail staff uh collaborate with our library staff and make this a one-stop shop, so to speak. This would be a fullervice county library system or county library, which we need in the East Lake County area. We
also will have uh community gathering spaces, meeting rooms, concession area, and a bicycle repair shop because this would be considered a trail head over the neighborhood lakes area. So, the legislative funding request is $800,000 to fund the design, engineering, and
permitting for the new facility. And that's just renderings that we've come up with. This has not actually been designed at this point. And then transportation funding. We had a lot of conversations about this earlier, the transportation funding conundrum that we find ourselves in with
the rapid growth in the area. So, this is just a basic request. um since we have the rapid growth and we've been working with district five um DOT staff as well as NO to identify and prioritize our most urgent needs for the upgrades
to the transportation system. However, due to the rising construction cost and the limited funding, we're not really making a lot of headway. Commissioner Campion mentioned State Road 44 uhB 441 needs to be expanded in several areas. Um, we have county roads that are
actually state road relievers such as Wellness Way, which is a reliever for Highway 50. So, there's a lot of projects in the pipeline that are being slowed down by the lack of funding being allocated to DOT. So the legislative request would be for the state to
provide DOT with additional financial resources so we could accelerate the vital infrastructure improvements not only on the state roads but on the the county roads that are pro providing relief to the state roads and then that's all we have and we're
open for discussion on that slide. Um, I think it would be helpful to list the roads that are the either state road relievers or state roads um that we're asking
basically for, you know, the state to get caught up on these so that we then can use our annual MO allocations for all of the other local roads. Um, but it would be helpful, I think, if we actually show
how much those projects cost because, you know, they may think, okay, well, we'll give you an allocation for, you know, X million for this. Well, 441 widening from Donnelly to Renegger's is like a $35 million project. 44B is a $28
million project, you know. So, it's like you I think we need to show why it is that if the state doesn't catch up on these, it is absolutely impossible for Lake County to fund these and these are state relievers or state roads and we
can identify those specific roads. Um, public works has these all laid out. We have the cost and we'll put more detail into the actual legislative request that we submit. 19 19 out of 19 out of correct
so I have yeah have question about transportation funding I think this is good like a policy statement that we're putting forward if I had to characterize it is that correct yeah like a law change yeah um and I like the numbers and even
even putting in the number of how much our the cost of materials is going up so that it's right in the document there that that's a challenge that we're facing Um, not saying we should do this, but maybe just to think about this. Um, something I said earlier, do we want to
get specific about some legislative changes that could help us fund? And I mentioned like dock stamps earlier, um, that that if if it were if you were able to use a portion of that for transportation project with guardrails,
I think was the term used, um, for that, could could that be a um, is that something we want to put in this this legislative priority. Doc stamps get everybody worked up. I know they do, but I mean it's but I mean nobody wants to raise taxes either,
though. So, and I'm not I'm not Right. But it sounds like there's there's revenue in the county in the state budget and reserves where you literally aren't saying we're going to create a new funding source. We're going to like focus on getting caught up versus having
a revenue stream. I think maybe important to separate the two. I I understand. I would say this though. Um there's there is what appears to be a lot of money there. Um that's what was the term that that's in reserve or flush with cash or whatever for
but I mean you're splitting it among 67 counties really. What's how much is going to be left for us to improve some of these projects? So if we're able to use to to get to the projects that will never get funded like you said. Oh, maybe we asked for the top 10 growth counties, the top
10 impacted count or whatever number gets us into that group or something like that because I'm just afraid if you if you go down the road. I I I see what you're I understand what you're trying to do. Yeah. I'm just afraid that if you go down that road then it kind of gets lost in the
the the the message of urgency with which we we we need help. We need catchup funding. Okay. Um yeah, and I mean I don't have I mean there's impact fee legislation when we you can't really bring that up.
Um but and you know impact fees are pretty high for transportation at least in the south part of the county. Um so I'm just look I'm just thinking out loud here about um what else even more specifically legislative legislatively that could help us um with the tool with
with the resources that are already there. Not like new taxes or anything like that, but legislatively laws that could could help us fund our roads better. That was the only one that I can think of right now, but we have a couple
weeks. I can bring an updated presentation to the 26 agenda or 26. So, do you understand what I'm asking? I mean, if is there like Chris or somebody that could maybe help us with this? I mean, I I could go into FAC and see what they're doing, but
I don't know if there's some laws that uh that we're just because because it's extensive that some some tweaks to these laws that might allow us to reallocate more to transportation is all I'm asking. And maybe that's the kind of thing that if you could get a a a I was
going to say congressman, but a a legislator to be someone that champions a bill like that versus this being more of a the state of Florida. We need to we need to address the backlog. This is just a statement. This is more
about and and I would even I would change the wording so it we're focusing on basically the backlog of either state roads within our county or or state relievers, you know, or relievers for state roads. But we're making a we're making a statement then this is just a like a
policy general policy statement. It's not going to necessarily be some specific to certain laws. And if you think about it, a lot of our complaints on our on our transportation system is state roads. They complain about 441 all the time, 27 all the time, 44 all the time, 19 all
the time. Those are all state roads. Here we are smack dab in the middle of the state of Florida. Everybody's coming through our county and we got a big transportation we're a big transportation corridor for our um services and goods.
Yeah. So, so one one thing that might be a little specific and maybe we can work this into the comment just in a general sense would be assistance with um more of this intelligent transportation management, you know, managing the signals getting
you're thinking like a planner, Commissioner Parks. We got to like get we got to get across the finish line, but I know that might get across the goal line here. We have that could be helpful. Yeah. Could could um is this a discussion where we can throw out an
idea to have something? Is there any way we can throw out something that that says, "Hey, FEMA, you need to pay us back in less than 10 years." That's federal. Federal. That's federal. Well, this is state. Well, tell the state to tell the federal
talking about all types of FEMA reform issues right now. Everything's on the table. We can we can work on that with our leaves the counties while and the state waits for the money back from FEMA but the state funds the what the counties are owed or something like that
so that we're not the ones they got the money to do it. Yeah. And and I just know that we we haven't been paid back anything much yet. Right. I think we received about $2.5 million so far out of out of about 14 or 15.
Right. Not much. Oh, I mean it doesn't hurt too to highlight this problem if they're really they're working on legislation and that's all been, you know, it's at the forefront will bring to the forefront the fact that we're still waiting for
money from the last storms. FEMA, you know, funding reform or state, I don't know how you would word what we're asking for, but like even on this, is there a state law that we could actually point to to, you know, the the
law where it prescribes how FDOT districts are funded in the NO system? Is that like state statute? Is that an administrative rule or is could is there like a specific like provision we could site that would need
to be we'll have to look at that. We're not sure if there's an actual prescribed allocation of funding through DOT into the different districts. So we could look into it. Okay. So again, what's
the only thing I would suggest is we don't ask for too many things. Keep it simple and give them the backup information. Uh because they're getting inundated with these requests. Yeah. But I think what's really
important, we need to not leave something out that's super super important for us. Um even if it is, we' talked in the past about, oh, it's only five things. Don't overwhelm them. Native plants. Well, as much of a native plant guy as I am, I would not want to put that on a
legislative agenda. Um, but I I think that uh we can't uh leave important stuff off just for that. But, um, we have time. We have What's the time? What's the process on this? Because I'm I mean, we can So, this is I mean, we have plenty of time to change things later. We need to
just get a general outline together for the delegation meeting, which is on the 27th. So I can come back on the 26 which is our next board meeting with some revisions based on discussion today kind of a final approval by the board
but even after that we have until November to actually submit our forms. Okay. But so this is just the initial this is what we're thinking about that the chairman will present at the delegation meeting and if individually we want to give you comments in the next couple weeks we can do that. Yes.
I just I would just say I'm sure everyone's going to throw out great ideas when it comes to policy. If we can just keep it at one, two, or three things and very specific, right? The more specific the better. Hey, change this formula to drop it by 3% to allow
this funding at this level, the better because then not only do you have you can go to local legislative delegation, you go to the chairman because the chairman of that committee, transportation, whatever is going to be like, okay, this is too easy. Like you're asking for a mod of change. I can go to the stakeholders. They're going to look at this and be like, "This isn't an issue." And then it starts moving. If
it's abstract, it won't move. If it's topheavy, it won't move. If there's if you walk in with seven things, they're not going to listen to any of the things. But I will tell you, like if we just have a few policy changes we want, you can get them. Especially if you start early.
I would I would flip the order and put whatever we come up with as transportation is our number one ask because if if we could get that addressed then so many other things fall into place that we're able to take care of and these were in no particular and the other thing is consistency. So
like you it's very hard to get it the first year, right? But if you do it this year and it starts moving, then you turn back around, you're back on them again the next year, it's going to pass in two, three years, it'll pass. And that's the that's the standard for a bill. Two, three, four
years policy bills. So I would whatever we want put. And then by the way, when I say keep the list short, one per silos, one transportation bill, one parks, these two these sets of legislators are never going to talk to each other. So, it's really you should have one in this area, one in that one because they're it's not like
you're walking in and the same person's getting overwhelmed. It's they're really working in completely different areas. But I Yeah, the more specific the better because then you'll know immediately from the legislative chiefs, the I mean the guys who really run things, the staffers who've been there 30 years, like a guy named Eric Miller, he's run
the local government committee for 30 years, he's going to be like, "Yes, this is good or bad." Right? And then you can work with him directly. And if he knows it's good, the chairman's going to say it's good and then it's going to move because they're all it's they're completely relying on staff. No one's going to tell you that. They're never
going to admit that, but the staff runs the show. So, okay. So, I think this is good a good start and we can all kind of work on any other suggestions or ideas. Okay.
Moving ahead then to tab 25. Um, Megan Melanise, emergency management director. Speaking of FEMA funding, good afternoon. How are you guys? Um,
I'm going to be going over a proposed ordinance update uh for our local code related to emergency management. Um, not necessarily related to FEMA funding, but it should help out with that situation for future activations that we might have.
So, the purpose of the presentation is to uh provide a review of the draft ordinance amending emergency management, debris removal and recovery procedures for the Lake County Board of County Commissioners. And before we do that, we're going to do a quick review of the current code, how
it's currently written, and then do an overview of the requested changes and additions. So for the review um currently article six uh emergency management powers and procedures outlines definitions, roles, responsibilities and authorities related to emergency declarations and
restrictions. Uh it outlines prohibitions and restrictions that may be included in emergency orders and outlines delegations of authority and orders of succession for these processes. So the first part is the order of succession for the authority for
declaring a local state of emergency. So the order of succession is the chairman, then it goes to the vice chairman, and then if neither of those people are able to serve in that capacity, it will roll to the commissioner that has served for the longest continual period with precedence given between commissioners
with equal terms of service. Whoever's surname begins with the um earlier letter in the alphabet. And then in the event that the chairman and the vice chairman are incapacitated and no other commissioners are available, that rolls down to the county manager, the assistant county manager
with the longest service, the assistant county manager with the next longest service, and then the county attorney. These are the definitions included in the code for declaration of a local state of emergency. Um that local state of emergency would be for any occurrence
or threat of a natural, biological or technological or man-made um incident which of results in substantial injury, damage or harm to the population of Lake County. So declaration can be made in a couple different instances whether it's for
weather related events or non-weather related events. Um there are some state statutes that guide how we are able to declare those local states of emergency. So, typically they only last seven days and then can be extended in seven-day increments. Um, for non-weather related
events, they may be extended by a majority vote of the board of county commissioners um in 7-day increments for a total duration of not more than 42 days. Um, additional emergency management powers that are included in this code uh
include powers of evacuation, authority to impose restrictions, uh, curfews, and then there are some exemptions um, and other kind of administrative uh, coverage within this code covering evacuation. If there is a
currently in place local state of emergency and upon approval by the board chairman, the emergency management director, myself, has the power and authority to issue an emergency order to direct and compel evacuation if there's a threatened area within the county. So, if we were to see something like extended flooding or other safety issue,
um that would uh be part of that code and authority. Uh the emergency management power to impose restrictions. There are some specific restrictions that are listed within the code that the board chairman is able to impose. Um, for some very quick overview of this
language, this is the language that's actually in the code, but I'm going to give a quick summary of them. Um, so that authority extends to prohibiting public demonstrations from the public right ofway or any public property. Uh, it's prohibiting the sale of gas or
other flammable liquids. It uh would limit water use to cooking, drinking or bathing, prohibit open burning. Also um the ability to regulate use of any waterway and establish no wake zones uh and regulate travel on roadsways with
with some exemptions for folks who are traveling to places of employment um or other places that they need to be. Uh there's also an order where you can impose any other restriction needed as long as that restriction is not prohibited by federal or state law.
Um the authority to issue curfew orders is also included in this code. Um so that uh is covered in terms of being tailored to the smallest geographic area possible and limited in duration and time. Again, that's dictated by primarily through state statute.
And then there are some exemptions to these orders. Um you'll notice highlighted there is a requested addition as part of the ordinance here to include public works or other public employees assigned emergency duties to this list of those who are already exempted from some of these
restrictions. Um just since that makes some more sense. And then spending authority during a local state of emergency. The chairman uh shall have powers and authority to enter into contracts. Right now, the code is written to where those contracts cannot exceed $100,000 without approval
from the board. Um, anything exceeding that amount requires board approval. And then there has to be a copy of the contract provided within 72 hours of execution. Some spending authority can also be delegated to the either the county manager or the county emergency
management director. Um, this also includes spending authority of up to $75,000 for contracts um and incurring costs to the county. And then this there also have to be narrowly tailored orders um especially in related to a non-weather related
emergency. It has to be narrowly tailored to serve a compelling public health or safety purp uh purpose and then that also has to be uh essentially advertised to the public as soon as possible. So typically that gets posted to the county website as soon as it's
ordered and then amendment process is covered. Um uh local state of emergency can be altered or rescended either by issuance of a subsequent emergency order or by a majority vote for the board of county commissioners. And so that is the text of the current code as it's currently
written. Now we're going to go into an overview of the requested changes through the ordinance. The first change that's going to be requested is through is for emergency procurement. So this would increase the authority of the chairman to incur costs from $100,000 to $200,000
and it would increase the authority of the county manager to incur costs from $75,000 to $100,000. This update is needed to be in better alignment with FEMA policy and procedure and it will provide for more streamlined and efficient purchasing during
emergencies. So, this should assist with FEMA PA guidelines, the public assistance guidelines, excuse me. And then for disaster debris removal, we're uh this is an overview of some of what's going to be added to the code through the proposed ordinance.
Uh this will uh outline policies and procedures for disaster generated debris removal. It will describe county authority to remove debris on county-owned property, county-owned roads, and private roads. and we will define the conditions under which the county manager has the authority to
determine that debris removal is necessary. So this is a slide that shows the different conditions um essentially one or more of these conditions must be present in order for the county uh manager to have that authority to decide that debris removal is necessary. So
this is things like emergency services being unable to reach certain areas unless debris is removed. um if debris is expected to cause disease or illness through the proliferation of vectors. Um or if it prevents regular solid waste collection or is damaging the
environment. Um it's essentially one or more of these conditions must be present for that authority to be reached. It's also going to add uh conditions for hazardous trees and limbs, sometimes known as leaner hangers. So things that are leaning or hanging over uh either
private or public property and it outline procedures related to removal of these hazardous trees and limbs resulting from disaster related impacts. It also outlines responsibilities for removal of hazardous trees and limbs that are in danger of falling on a structure or other improved property um
on primary ingress or egress route or on the county rideway. So the ones that didn't quite fall during the storm but are in danger of falling afterward. And then private property debris removal is another addition as part of this. So this will be um adding authority uh when
a determination has been made by the county manager that removal is necessary to eliminate immediate threats to life, public health, safety or to ensure economic recovery of an affected community. Um it will essentially authorize the county to collect debris on private property including gated
communities. Now that may still require right of entry. So, this is going to outline procedures for requiring right of entry forms um and other authorizations from private property owners, including within gated communities prior to the
county entering uh either the county or county contractors entering that private property for disaster generated debris removal operations. There's also additions related to the responsibility of private property owners. So debris will need to be neatly
stacked, piled, or placed um within the three-foot roadside shoulder area uh within either side of the travel lanes of the road. And it will need to be separated into stacks or piles um of the different types of debris. They're very specific debris guidelines related to category A debris removal um FEMA public
assistance reimbursement processes. So they do need to be separated and that part of that is going to be the responsibility of the private property owners. And then going further into that, it also needs to be placed so that it does not block the roadway, traffic signs or signals or storm water structures. Um,
and then any damage that does occur to personal property by county staff or contractors if it's placed improperly would not be the responsibility of the county. Um and then if they do place anything for removal that is not disaster generated debris or is otherwise improper, they would be
responsible within 24 hours of notification that it is improperly placed or is not eligible for pickup that they would need to be removing that uh debris from the roadside. Again, why these updates are needed? Uh this will provide clearer guidelines for
county debris removal operations and provide for faster response and cleanup efforts for both public and private property. So essentially the entirety of the county. Uh and these guidelines are in better alignment with FEMA requirements for category A debris removal uh disaster reimbursement
procedures. So um essentially if we have these uh guidelines in place ahead of time that gets honored by that FEMA reimbursement process. And then the next subject that gets added to the code through this ordinance is going to be related to emergency
temporary repairs. So that'll allow temporary emergency repairs on non-countymaintained public roads with minimal work on private roads when needed to access public roads. Um and it also combine defines conditions for immediate threats and the
responsibilities of private property owners in relation to these roads as well. So for emergency temporary repairs, it defines emergency maintained roads as public roads that are not accepted for routine county maintenance. Uh but for which the county has determined it can
self-perform or contract emergency repairs during or following a declared state of emergency essentially to restore temporary access so that people can get around. And it includes non-countymaintained roads um used for ingress and egress by emergency services, evacuation and those utility
services to get power and other utilities back on as quickly as possible. So this is the guidelines that are included in the ordinance essentially stating that after a declaration of the local state of emergency, county manager is authorized to perform emergency
protective measures. So things like grading or filling, compacting road services, placement of temporary fill material to address flooding or other disaster generated issues uh that occurred from whatever incident may have happened causing the damage to the road.
Um and this also goes into essentially what is deemed uh temporary and what is deemed as an improvement to the property. Um, there can be some questions relating to FEMA public assistance reimbursement as to whether or not the repair was an improvement to the property. This is essentially
stating that if we are using what is modernly available to us to repair a road, then that's not considered an improvement um or an upgrade. So, it's essentially we're going to repair with what's available to us to make, you know, make the quickest work of the
problem. Um and it also will say that we are not required to conduct pre-construction hydraologic and hydraulic studies, H&H studies or environmental rep reviews. Uh as these are this is limited work so that we can do protective measures and restore
immediate access. This is not a major repair. Um and then this is also making sure that this does not imply long-term maintenance of these private roads um or otherwise non-countymaintained roads. Um, and then this is just going over uh,
excellent. I don't know why it's not going. Could you advance for her? Her battery's died. What? Her battery died. Oh, the internet's down in the building. Last night, they kept switching the mic on me. I was like, why the batteries?
Like, that's so weird. Okay, got it. Okay, so this covers uh circumstances where county maintained or emergency maintained roads intersect with a private road or private property and emergency access cannot be restored
without impacting the private infrastructure. It again gives the county the authority to make those incidental repairs or modifications. Um and again it covers the process for getting a right of entry agreement in that instance. Um and then we would document those emergency actions for
additional um you know coverage for mitigation efforts for future grant funding opportunities. Go ahead. So why these updates are needed is that it establishes clear authority to act post- disaster and it'll shield the county from liability and policy ambiguity and again it supports that
eligibility for public assistance, federal highway administration funds and state aid um that's needed uh immediately after these very expensive storm situations. Uh and it aligns with FEMA documentation and procedural expectations and it ensures rapid access for public safety, public works and
utility restoration. and it really just codifies that practices that are already performed by public works post storm. So the requested action today is to recommend approval to advertise an ordinance amending article 6 chapter 2 of Lake County Code entitled emergency
management powers and procedures. So moved. Move to approve. Second with discussion. Okay. We have a first and a second under discussion. Um all right. So this is I think is good because it really uh clarifies who's
doing what and I think there was one slide I don't remember which number it was but where you emphasize that it's in alignment with the category A of FEMA uh debris collection. So, as part of all this, I just think communications will be important, explain to people maybe now, sooner than later before we go into
hurricane season and everything as to this is what you should what you can do, what you can't do because we get all that afterwards and they've already put stuff somewhere, something's happened, then it's too late. So my my only suggestion obviously forward moving
forward but is how do you uh you know properly communicate that to everybody or I think we should. I know it's just to advertise today. That's my only more of a comment than Well, but and I and I do think a lot of
this is so that when you do ask for the money Yeah. Um because we're doing it already like when you can't get to somebody or people are locked they're blocked in their properties. Pine Lakes. We had a bunch of that type of thing happening last storm that you can then show that you
had authority to do what you did in order to get your reimbursement. And that's the message too is that we need to do it a certain way or we don't get the money. Correct. Yeah, that's correct. Okay. Um, we have a motion. We have a second. And all in favor say I.
I. I. Any opposed? I. All right. That passes 5. Thank you, Megan. Appreciate it. Any predictions on what's going to happen next week? No. No. It's early to say that is my official answer.
I see. Beautiful fall white. Well, as Commissioner Park says, be prepared no matter what. Be prepared, right? Um you assume the worst. Okay. Uh moving then ahead to Commissioners um Commissioner Parks. This is on Senate
Bill 180 recommending approval and adoption of a resolution expressing support for the repeal of essentially Senate Bill 180. Yeah. Thank you, Chair. Um, so this is more follow-up discussion from the last meeting. I think I had this on the agenda last time and then it sort of
ties into your agenda item 27. Um, so as I said last time, a couple weeks ago, I'd go talk to our legislative dele delegation and I went and talked with three of them in person about my concerns over 180. Um, so what I was
told was that they would come talk to us in person, um, meaning either here or individually or in a smaller setting with the Senate attorney. And maybe you you know who this is, but uh Commissioner Sabatini assuring us
that what we're not doing specifically with the comp plan and LDR changes, including potentially form-based codes, would be in opposition to 180. Um so I'm not I'm I'm really kind of proposing
that it just be tabled. I I guess we can talk to your item as well, but to to that be table because I I made a I made a commitment to them, you know, that I I wouldn't put the resolution forward until at least they were heard out. They were heard
and who I'm sorry, who was heard out? Um to to to this to Senator Trunau um Yaroski and Rep. Prodowski and Rep Cobb. Okay. I would totally I mean listen we're there's an army of people who are infuriated by this bill and the way this
thing I and I get it but at the end of the day uh everyone's mobilized against it or mobilizing it's terrible it was done in a very backhanded way typical Tallahass they use the geese of hurricane areas in order to sneak it in
there nobody was questioning it every single okay I'll just give you example how sneaky it was every single Democrat voted for this and as you very well No, generally Republicans and Democrats still has divided on issues of growth and home rule. That's a limit test. They all agreed.
They all agreed, right? The reason why the entire Democratic caucus voted for it is nobody even knew this was in there, right? I mean, this is the number one enemy of home rule and and local government and and it was it was party line. It was everybody voted for it. So sneaky. It needs to be repealed. I think
they'll barely modify it maybe, but I would move forward with it. I don't know what those legislators, our local legislators are going to say that is more important than the bill sponsor to Sigley who everyone I know who's spoken to him. Um probably I think he's basically all but
admitted that this is more burdensome and this is the burdensome bill, right? Not not the regulations is trying to address. It's creating more burdens than anything else. Um I think uh I think that he's going to probably modify. I don't think anybody in the delegation even knew what this was. I mean, they
really didn't. It's It all comes down to just a couple sentences in a 40-page bill that create all the issues, but I don't I don't know what they're going to say. I don't predict that they're going to say anything that would affect any of the five commissioners voting to say, "Hey, that generally this is a bad bill. It should be repealed or modified, which
I mean, you can do what you want, but I I I feel very comfortable moving forward with it." I mean, is it because you wanted them to they were going to come to a meeting and explain? Yeah. What I what I interpreted was that they would explain to us in person um
that you know from with the Senate attorney that no, it wouldn't apply to our um 18. I don't I'm not sure I necessarily believe that because of what I've heard even since my meetings last week. Now I've been gone for since the meeting most since mostly
since that meeting. So, I haven't had a chance to talk to them or anything, but I the last where I left it last with them was okay, I would keep this on the agenda until I heard from the Senate attorney and they came and talked to us. You said attorney being the general counsel to the Senate. Yeah, the general counsel.
Really interesting. Yeah, because I doubt that person even really was that. And I know and I they usually do more HR issues. No, no, I mean I'm as much as anybody I This was like a big deal, you know, for for me as a potential problem. So I I I'm with you. Um
I would move to approve respectfully and I totally get it. I mean I just personally I think that this is the least we could do. In fact, the next item I think is more significant. But but I would I would definitely say anybody that says this doesn't affect LDRs and comp plan amendments is is being
a little um duplicious because this is exactly what this is about. And of course, the Department of Commerce, as I mentioned earlier in the meeting, has already issued letters to Orlando, Orange County saying, "Hey, like your whole comp plan is is wrong now because of this bill." So, I don't see where
they're getting that from. Would you be willing to table it two weeks? Sure. Until if it's on the next meeting, I'm fine with that. I just don't want this to be I No, I agree. Um, so if it if it can wait and if I don't get the answer, my answer or they don't don't they don't
come and communicate which they I'm saying they seem to want to do that um then maybe we move forward with this. Yeah. Yeah. If it bumps the next meeting I'll make a you want to make No, you can make it. I'll make a motion to table two more weeks. Second
and Okay. For the purpose of communicating with them and providing them communicating to us. Yes. I'm sorry. Correct. Yes. Okay. All right. All in favor say I. I. Any opposed? I. All right. Was that an I in favor? All right. Yes.
Okay. All right. That was 50 for two weeks. All right. Then that kind of, you know, begs the question on 27. Do we um I mean my my request was jump into the the lawsuit to challenge it. But if we're going to get an explanation that
somehow this is like not going to affect our actual statutory duties and affect our ability to amend the comp plan and address LDRs and so forth. Um then I mean I would suggest table this
for two weeks. Chairman, would you mind if I make a motion that we table this to coincide with Commissioner Parks? Um I don't mind at all. So, I'll make a motion that we table this into uh to coincide with Commissioner Parks. Uh I would second that, but could just
brief discussion on it. I didn't get to go too far into the tab. I did some research to try to find out what the substance of the the lawsuit is because obviously I support taking a legal challenge. I mean, we all have standing. Anybody could do it. And I saw that this lawsuit's gaining all this traction, but
maybe our general counsel can explain. I I don't really understand her legal argument because it hasn't really been published. Maybe that's a strategy. They're kind of hiding it, but to me, I I I don't see the advantage of that is. I I did you see any notes or public comments about what what their strategy
is going to be specifically legally to challenge it. Um they are claiming it's unconstitutional. It violates home room power. Um they're also talking about the retroactive nature of it. So I I do have I thought it was attached to the agenda. I don't have it printed, but I'll get
you a copy of it to look at. Yeah. I just I mean obviously to some degree I would support it. I know that they've already got dozens of cities. They got hundreds of thousand dollars behind this lawsuit. So I just don't know how much what how what we would be helping by putting more
money into it because clearly they they're really well financed. There's so many cities and counties have already signed on. But I also I hate to say it. I just don't feel very um um confident that state court judges of the persuasion that have been appointed recently are gonna are going to override
this bill and declared unconstitutional. Especially our appellent courts probably won't go in that direction either. If they found a way to federally challenge it like they've done with some other things over the years, you got a federal judge. I think you're looking at a different situation. But I I I just don't have a lot of confidence in it.
But, you know, I I need to wait to see what she says. The Yeah, take a look at what what what they put together. I mean, if they've been whittling away at home rule forever, but this just seems like such a blatant violation of what is required by the constitution or
the authority that's given to local governments. So, um so we'll be back on this um when in two weeks. Okay. Um did we call for a vote? All in favor? Say I I um
I I I four. Okay. 5 in favor um of coinciding to tab 26. Coming back tab 28 Commissioner Smith as I'm re recommending the appointment of Commissioner Smith as a canvasing board primary member and
Commissioner Morris as the alternate canvasing board member for the 2026 election cycle. Um do we have a motion? So moved. Do we have a second for those two appointments? Second, but primary
one question on it. Is this this year or next year? It says 26. It's the election cycle in 26. Oh, because there's no races only municipal this year, which Okay. 2020 sounds good. All right. All in favor say I. I. Any Okay, that's 50. Appreciate your service
in that regard. Um, Commissioner Parks, this is uh the item to fill four uh vacant ATL large positions on the public lands and trails acquisition advisory committee who have experience in one or more of the following areas: biology,
botany, zoology, development of recreational facilities, including trails, andor knowledge of local history. Okay. And there we we everyone has the narrowed down list and we're looking for
four appointments total. I move to uh approve uh AJ row. I think they're all I mean these are all good names to me. So are you um and I'm just curious on AJ
you're you're you're going off of the local history part, right? Uh yeah. Yeah. I mean, obviously because well, he I mean, I primarily see him at just the history events. He's at every single history event. 100%. He is a history guy and he is a longtime
resident and his family are longtime residents of of Lake County. So, that there there definitely is that, you know, and he and I also know personally that he um so, you know, I like AJ. AJ's a friend of mine. Been a friend of mine for a long time,
but he's nowhere near as qualified as the other people on this list. That's very straightforward. Well, all right. So, for the for the for the history for the for the history spot, right? I mean, for the local knowledge,
local knowledge, he's all over it. But but this is the parks and trails and we have people who have this is public lands. This is public lands and acquisition and it does include knowledge of local but there are some people that are on there that have that local knowledge
and it's for it's four people. So I mean we can just go through them one by one. You seem to have studied the list a little more than I have. I mean there's a lot of names. What so what are the Can you What are the categories here? I I I would say just let staff pick them. This is our
Okay. Well, since we're all I mean it sounds somewhat like um we we better get on the record here. Um, all of the the um people that are from district four on this list, uh, Bill Miller, Tim Kylie, and Steve Crawford
have great expertise. Um, so I, you know, there, so if somebody said, "Okay, you got three out of district four who have great expertise and meet these qualifications. You got to pick one, Leslie." That's hard. That's really hard. But they're
all at large, of course. So, we don't really I mean, no, I'm just saying though, if somebody told me you had to narrow that down that this is like these are really good. Uh they have great qualifications. Um also, I know from district 5, I met
with Donna Bosald the other day. Uh great credentials. Um and she's in the Futland Park area, had moved here from Monroe County. We heard from her when we had discussion about DTFW. I asked her I asked her to apply. I
spoke with her and she brings a lot of knowledge in uh from the Marone County area. Um I just have a a question. Um is there any way to put I don't know if you have it on the screen or if you want to just repeat the three the four categories that are open just
so we kind of generally try to maybe more biology, botany. Well, no, because I thought I thought I thought there was All we've appointed is for the five district representatives. Yeah, but there's so it could be any one of the following
biology, botney, zoology, development of recreational facilities including trails and or local history. So those are individual categories of biology botney. They could have one or any or more of those. Okay. All right. Because I mean just
personally, you know, I know Steve Crawford is very wellqualified. Um he worked for the water authority. He was he was a fish and wildlife, right? Fisheries for years and years and then he worked for the um water authority as
a biologist. Yeah, I think he has a masters if I remember from his application. Sounds like everybody wants him. So we can put him down and that gives us three more spots, right? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, so you kind of by process of elimination. Yeah. Um you
know that that so AJ is very good. Uh there's there's no doubt. I mean from local knowledge um you also have sort of in that category uh Rebecca Mendoza and then um I like Donna Bosel
and Donna as well. But um well she she's not she's new though. She's new to the county, right? She's got great experience. But yeah, she's a land planner. She has a lot of background in public land acquisition, all of the things that
um I mean a lot of these and she was in a tough area in Monroe County. Can you imagine what she had to do in Monroe County to get things through? That's that's why I wanted her. I think she'd be very good. Isn't Rebecca Mendoza the one that came
to the Ferndale meeting when we were having that Ferndale? I don't think she was at that meeting. What Rebecca has done, she's lived in Claremont all her life. Um they have a pretty decent amount of land um in what's Mo what used to be called
Mohawk, the historical location of South Flake County near Mola. uh and they she has um kept that as a historical aspect of the house and the the rail station that used to be there. But then her property she manages in cooperation
through a state program. They she voluntarily um dedicated it as a as a preserve, if you will, never to be built on. And so she she's in cooperation with the state, but she actually manages. So she's got like hands-on management experience through the through the private aspect,
if you if you will. Okay. Daniel White House, another really great one. Yeah. Yeah. And he's right. Exactly. Has been super instrumental in following, you know, parks, trails. Um, you know, I know from the trails
aspect, that's a Yeah. strong area for him. He isn't he a cyclist? Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And uh we just need at least one good old boy on there. That's fine. For AJ, it can't be all botonists like with master's degrees. You got to have a
good old boy. I like AJ. Well, he is a lawyer, too. That, you know, for whatever that's worth, good or bad, but I think it does help from standpoint against him. Well, you're you know, when you're trying to Thank you. Um on behalf of AJ. Um,
I'm I'm okay with AJ. It's just that, you know, you're you're taking X amount of money and you're trying to make it go as far as it can go and creativity is going to be, I think, really important for this committee in order to get that money to go as far as
it can possibly go. I will say one more thing about AJ. it. So people talk about conservation in the abstract and then personal and and with him he purchased a bunch of other property right around where he lives in Yalaha by the lake and he's like you
know different parcels and he's trying to create some conservation of his own will and I just think that that it's a it's like a personal commitment. I see the personal commitment how important it is to him. Several generations obviously his children I think still live here and
so it's generation generation generation. I just think it's good to have that one person on the board who's who looks at it that way in a personal way. So, I gotta put a plug in for Tim Kylie. He's on the CRA board out in Sarrento. And again, I don't know why y'all are still fighting for him. He's we've already
said he's okay. So, let's No, this is Tim Kylie. I just wanted to mention Tim. He's he's a uh uh this is a guy that comes to the meetings, has read every single thing in advance. you know, he goes the extra mile to be up to speed
on everything. Um, I think his background I go look, but I I think So, who do you want to kick off? Steve Crawford, Donald, or Daniel White House? I don't want to kick anybody off. I just want to, you know, what a good
kicking them off. It's Well, yeah, it's a good island. I do think they're on the island. I do think there's agreement on Crawford. Is that safe to say? Yes. On Steve Crawford. The one I've seen the most consensus on is Steve Crawford
and then Donna Bo to a degree. Don Yeah. Then Donna, AJ, and Tim Kylie. Yeah. So you could do that's Crawford Bozald. Um either AJ or Mendoza for your local and then Daniel White House. Just putting that out there
as a possibility. And I'm AJ or Rebecca are are either either one is good in that spot for the local knowledge based on what the board has said in my my opinions. I think that my four would
be Steve, Donna, Tim, and AJ. Those would be my four. That's a good slate. Is that a motion? Uh, I hope I don't want to be forcing. I know other people have strong opinions, but I would move to approve Steve Crawford, Donna Balsold, uh, Tim Kylie,
and AJ Row. So, I would go with Steve Crawford, Donna Bosold, AJ Row, and Daniel. No, I'm just Dem. Okay. I mean, yeah. So, that's a second. Well, if that's a
second, then yeah, you can't do them individually because I was thinking second. So, we at least have a motion on the table. Um, we can keep I'm happy to amend it. Do them individually. All right. Hold on. I want to get
We can do it individually if you guys want. We clarify the current motion just to make sure. Yes, ma'am. It's Steve Crawford, Donna Bosold, Tim Kylie, AJ Row. And I think that, you know, Daniel would
be great, but I also think that Tim and Daniel will bring very similar things to the table. So, I I can tell you there's not a bad candidate on There isn't. And a lot of people that aren't on this short list are great candidates, too. So, I mean, we just had
a really really good um group. Yeah. And I think some they'll still come to the meetings and hear out maybe help in some other capacity, but they just want the final vote on the advisory board. Well, I'm comfortable with that. Does anybody want to see one removed and one
added from that list? You I was just gonna I was just proposing Daniel White House and maybe that's the Tim in the Tim Kylie. Who would you kick off the island? The island person. You have to have I don't want to be put in that. But no,
the Tim I guess it would be the Tim Kylie spot, but I I'm trying to find I'm fine with that's what you want to do. That puts three lawyers on the board though. AJ, Gavin, and and and Daniel. You don't want to be too a lawyer. Yes. Oh boy.
He's IP lawyer though. There ought to be like a limitation. Should have put that in the ordinance. Well, you do bring that is a compelling argument against attorneys. Um, in what's Tim's profession? Okay. I That's what I'm trying. I don't know why I cannot
I mean, anybody know? Oh, I thought he's an architect. He's a shoot. Right. Hold on. Is it in here in the packet? It is. We got somebody coming. Hold on.
Angela, I think we are trying to figure out what Tim Kylie's profession is. So Tim Kylie was actually uh Angela Herald, operations director of parks and trails facilities and all the things. Um that he was actually an additional candidate that came in after we redid
the ordinance. So he is in the back the backup packet that was Oh, he's not in here. That's why he's not in the booklet because he came in after we did the booklet, but we can do that. It is in the agenda packet. I can It's in the agenda packet. Okay. I can't
pull up my iPad. It's in the agenda packet. Can somebody pull it up in Oh, you can't. Thank you. I'm working on it. I don't know if you have it in that big I'm fine. I'm fine with either Daniel or I want I think it's really important to hear See, we can
compare real quick. I'll quit looking because I know it's not in here. No, we updated everything after the change of the ordinance. Yeah, it should be in It could be in yours. Which one you want? So good.
Tim Kylie. Kylie. Thank you. All right. Tim Kylie, civil engineering, AutoCAD certified, Lake Tech, Santa Fe College, Gainesville, University of South Florida, Sarasota campus, BA in finance and marketing. Um,
he is a he's a real estate agent. Um, explain your vision. As bad as realtor, right? I'm just I'm just kidding. I don't know any of the realtors we've appointed so far. So, I know that's not a bad person.
Got to have one, but it's really hard to read the writing. This is in this is in the digital in the book in the book. It's in your not in the binder in the agenda
packet. We had extended the due date. So these were he was an additional What's his age? Oh yeah. We don't want to be too We don't want to go to the protected categories. I'm going to guess that he's 38.
Okay. Explain your vision for public lands. Would you like me to read that out to everybody? His vision for public lands and trails. The Doratav Trail railto trail is going to be or has the potential to be a main artery for East
Lake County and interconnect our communities and neighborhoods. planning for locations that offer accommodations, for example, restrooms and eeries. I think it's essential ex essential for it to get to its full potential. Lake County has an opportunity to do it
right. Having a corridor available to provide a trail and path that interconnects the golden triangle. It is a unique opportunity that other towns and municipalities would love to have. I hope to be a part of the greater vision to make this a cornerstone of county.
Okay. Okay. Can you pull Can someone pull up Daniel White House? Yeah. Daniel White House has a BS in computer science, an MBA, and a jurist doctor. He is um with strategic solutions legal law
firm. Um his explain your vision. He said, "My hobbies often compel me to serve in ways that can help make a difference for our community, and the public lands initiative is a perfect perfect example of that. I recently heard Commissioner
Smith. They say that if the county is going to acquire property, he believed that property should be useful to the county's residents. I couldn't agree more with that sentiment and want to do my part to help see that vision to fruition. Our county's commitment to connecting and growing trails is rooted
in the understanding that trails increase the value to our community and in turn make Lake County an attractive place to live, work, and play. As an avid user of our parks and trails, I see a myriad uses of our parks and trails, including those who use trails to travel
to and from work. I see youth sporting groups learning to work together as teams and gaining the competitive spirit. I see the tourism of our our county generates by drawing participants from across the country. By enhancing our public lands, we are enhancing the
attractiveness for our existing residents and many future visitors. So, they both seem to have a passion for trails and interconnectivity. Yeah. See, that was my only um I guess than what everybody else was talking about was um Crawford. I had Crawford,
Bosold at at least at this point in the meeting. Crawford, um, Bos, Bosold, Donna, AJ, and Daniel White House. I'm fine with that because I think
they're all good. And AJ is my preference. So that this is also fine as an alternate motion. And who made the motion? Sean. So if you wanted to restate it, I'll second it. Say it again if you don't mind. Well, we had a no. You would have to amend your motion. We have a motion and
a second on the floor. Oh, I move to amend my own motion to replace it with these four names. And what were the names, Sean? Crawford, Bosel, AJ, and White House. I'll second that. All right. Well, I I had the second, but the second agrees.
Okay. Okay. But the first Seems like that's four votes right there. So, all right. Was there anything else we wanted to change or No. All right. All in favor say I. I. Any opposed? I Okay, that that passes. We have filled
the committee. Um we have excellent um participants and Commissioner Parks is the liaison. So you have your work cut out for you. Fun begins. Yeah. Yep.
I appreciate that. Thank you. So I guess you will work with the county manager and the county attorney and determine next steps as far as right your committee is going to take on we'll we'll start establishing the meetings and start coming up with
criteria. Okay. All right. Um moving on then to reports. County attorney, county manager, nothing today. Commissioner Sabatini. Um, I always remember something right after
I say nothing. So, let me just give me one second. I'm trying to think if there was anything this week that I wanted to make mention of. Um, nope, nothing. Sorry. I just I I do it every time. So, Commissioner Parks. All right. Two things. Um, so one, if um, Kathleen, you could just put up the
Wellness Way website. I'm not sure that you may know about this already, maybe not. I'm not sure. But this is officially live, correct? Um, so it's up and it had some input from the public as well as stakeholders and shaping the look and feel of this
website. Um, it will change over time, but it is it is something that you can now direct people towards. It has some information even about like um you do you want to I don't know if you want to go through it real quick, but it's just that you can see the tabs. It does have obviously obvious maps
um what we're trying to focus on. Um it does see the industrial industrial side of it as well. Those areas um it does have questions about uh MSTU that are answered there. I think that's a actual tab. Correct.
It has an FAQ FAQ frequently asked questions. Okay. Um so I I just wanted to say thank you for putting it together. Um and it it certainly it's not just me. I mean, if you all have any input on it, want to
add to it or change something, by all means, it is it will be changed from time to time as these kinds of things do. And you see our our lead now is uh working with Kathleen uh on a regular basis to uh start looking for those
sites for economic development. So, just wanted to point that out. Um let's see. I was going to ask, has everybody had a chance to kind of see too what's happening with I mean I know you're 100% up to speed on the Lake Orange
connector and um and then the um Sawrass Boulevard, what's going on Sawrass Bay Boulevard um just as far as you know issues that are having to get worked out with Orange County and some of the timing there. But it appears to me that
when those road issues get worked out, that will play a big part in some of the commercial type activity coming on board. Absolutely. Yeah, that road and the 516 of course when that intersection's done. So, so I just wanted to point that out.
And then number two, um since it's come up at the last couple meetings, um about uh the need to for communications um particularly around I think the last meeting was BMAP BAS basin management action plan and you know what's um we
got to do a lot more education on that I think was the comment that I heard and even in particular about some of what we're trying to the culture if you will that we're the real Florida real close that we're promoting. Um, I know communications is stretched right now.
Um, they are stretched. So, what I'm proposing is is that, and I know Commissioner Smith has done board shorts for a while, um, but I think in light of the resources that we have, not necessarily that we stop doing that, but
I think we need to focus on doing some more, um, presentations, more um, productions, three minute video clips if you will, to start educating people on the basin management action plan. Um, fertilizer ordinance. We had done that for a while.
I haven't seen that come up recently. It's only so much you can do. I know you're limited, but I just think in in that particular time, I think we need to in this particular time, I think we need to um sort of focus on that. So, um I do
like the commissioner reports individually. I think those are important that we do on a periodic basis, but I think just from a standpoint, that's just my opinion of what we need to do moving forward. Okay. Um,
more discussion or just food? No, I'm just just food for thought. Yeah, I mean because I I mean they're they're you know they they'll need direction on that. The staff would need direction on that, but and may maybe there's nothing to talk about right now, but No, I think we discussed that the last time that we would be working on PSAs when I think we were talking about it
with in um conjunction with the distributed waste that we would start working on some PSAs. So, I'll work with communications on that. Yeah. And again, my concern is I mean, I know that, you know, you do the the board shorts and they're they're good, but it's just a
matter of how much you can put out there and how much they can do with resources. And if we're going to really take this head on, you know, um there's a lot of information to get out there. Uh what what it's basically a matter of time and what resources they can do. So,
yeah, I'm sure my boards will not interfere with any PSA. I was talking about horses and goats and llamas. No, I understand and that's good. I mean, I think some of that there's a role with the with the chambers, you know, can do things like that. But, I mean, it's a matter of time and
resources so that you know what they have to do. I kind Sorry, I got I kind of lost this lost picture of this whole thing because I zoomed out for a minute. I'm sorry. So, are we making like a social media policy? Is that what's going on? No, no social media policy. No, this is just uh direction on where we go with uh
communications being that they have limited resources. Um why they more communication the better. I think all five commissioners if they want to do 50 videos a week, they should. And I think we should budget for that because I don't think commissioners have their voices heard enough on
issues. I think if you had a ask the average person like county, what do you what's this commissioner think? Most people don't know. So I think utilizing to the maximum degree as much of our communication outbread as we possibly can on behalf of all five commissioners individually is is I totally support
that. I wouldn't want to reel it in or limit it in any way. Uh you know I mean no matter who's the chair or the vice chair or just one member I think I think everyone benefits when people know where the commissioner stand on different No totally agree I'm not saying that the commissioner reports that that I think
you do as many as you want. And I totally agree with you actually on that. If Jennifer thinks that they can keep doing board shorts and then do all everything that we talked about at the last two meetings with BMAP, you know, a like a real series on that, like a dedicated,
not month in month out, but pretty regular on some of these things, then then if you she says she can do it, you can do it. But well, maybe we need to alter the budgets, budget season. But I I I totally support all any commissioner wants to spend more of their own time in
front of the camera trying to, you know, highlight certain things. I wish I had more time to do it. So, you know, obviously I wouldn't support limiting that in any way because I just don't think the community sees enough of their commissioners. They really don't even most people don't even know who the
commissioners are. Let's be real. And then on these particular issues where we wish people had more information and awareness, um there's so many opportunities that I think that we we are missing. And so I I'm in favor of more resources
in that regard. I don't really know exactly what the you know what the ask Yeah. is. No, I mean I think the the ask is you know can can you do that? Can you now that we've talked about educating on BMAPs that was the la that
was one of the last big issues or if it's about if whatever is passed in a landscape code or another issue you know do you do you have the resource to be able to do that and continue to do board shorts and then all of our reports and if you're good
with that then then great but so if we don't have the resources and the board wants to continue to do everything I am happy to go out and secure a contract to bring in additional resources if not additional staffing. I'm happy to do whatever the board needs. Okay.
Well, look, we we created that position for the water authority for like a social media person, but I mean, sorry, I hate to be super anecdotal, but I I mean, I don't know what they're doing. I don't see many Lake County water authority social media at all. I don't see videos. I don't see anything. Maybe just pull that back out of there and put
it in here and have them just do on comp plan stuff and amendments and baps and and native plants and like just paying for that though. Okay. They're they yeah part of their budget they they did request that position but that could actually
position under some of the same subject matter what commissioner parks actually you could team up on some of the subject matter utilize that communications over there for the beam apps and all that because that's all water quality it falls right in line with the lake county water authority I could yes we can work work on that
yeah again I hate to be anecdotal but like we created a whole position and I just like don't see that much water authority and stuff at all. In fact, to be honest, I've seen almost nothing. So, I just feel like if you put somebody in charge and it's your full-time job, like they're going to make the water authority all over Facebook, Twitter,
this that community, you know, really aggressively pushing a chamber of commerce meetings. This I'm just not saying that at all. The position the position I don't think has been filled yet. It was just April. It was just approved in April. I don't think that we filled it yet, have we?
We we have not filled the position yet. What's the salary? Just curious. I'm not trying to sharp yet. If you don't know, it's fine. Yeah, off the top of my head. I believe it's around 45. But um the as far as the word authority graphics and things, we're doing design
for them already. Uh we're expanding on that and hope to once we can fill that position. Um we're also looking at the social media side of things. We have gotten control over that uh old Facebook page to begin doing that. And right now we're working on a comp's plan just to make sure that we're aligned and and
really forwarding the uh word authority water authorities objectives. I think the position was just approved in April. Is that correct? Correct. Okay. So it's out and it's posted. We just haven't filled it yet. That would explain why you haven't seen the impacts of it. Okay. Yeah. And I'm again so I I just wanted
to make sure because to do a serious campaign year in and year out for instance I'm just bring keep bringing this one up because it's the last one. V maps sound like people didn't know what that was or how it applies. That's not like a not to be picky here, but you can't you can't just do like one and
then maybe six months later another one or not even. It's a regular campaign. And so I was just thinking, do you have the resources for video clips? I there's a lot of production that goes into that. Um and if there's going to be more issues that'll come up besides the BMPs,
U BAPs, I'm sorry. Then that's my question. and versus the situation we're in now. And and that's something that we're looking at uh as the board knows, we're in the process of the uh communications planning. Uh ensuring that alignment and
looking at all of our key messages and things that we have to kind of reinforce. Um we'll have more insight as we continue with that research. But if it's the will of the board, if there's something that you would like to see that I can evaluate as part of that with
the video um and and the resources available, that's definitely something we can look into. Yeah. And that's an that's so it would be more than currently what we're doing. Yes. Yeah. Okay. That's my that's the question. So
Okay. All right. Any more on your report? Um no, that's it. Okay. Thanks. Um Commissioner Smith, I'm good right now. Yes. All right. You're good so far. Okay, Commissioner Morris.
Uh, thank you for allowing me to uh sit here in the Keys and vote. I appreciate it. Did you say you're in a boat? No, I'm just kidding. Okay. I could have been, but I'm waiting on the meeting to be over. The boat's ready to go. All right.
Well, thank thank you for participating. This was an important meeting to have everybody uh voting and involved and participating. Okay. All right. Any anything else to add on your report? Um okay. Speaking of
votes, yes, Sunday I went to Silver Glenn and I was able to go out with Marine Patrol and actually be at Silver Glenn Run and see what's going on out there. I've been reading a lot of social media posts. I've been hearing a lot. Um
anyway, we're hoping soon to once we were working with the sheriff um and his team and um and and we're going to hopefully soon have something to bring back for everyone to take a look at. Um so it's a it's a there's a real problem
and I think we've got a solution. It's going to take a lot of effort on the part of the Marine Patrol, but I think that they're um one of the one of the keys here is trying to have Marian County uh have the same ordinance. Um but we're looking to the sheriff to work
on that part of it and uh his team. So, we'll we'll have something soon. We'll be looking at the sandbar as well, trying to figure out exactly how do you describe the sandbar? I mean, I know you there probably a lot of ways to describe it, but how do you put a legal
description on its location? Um, so how it's hard to describe the impact that it has on the residents that are there. Oh, yeah. I I have heard a lot about that and I've sat in their living rooms many times. Yeah. So, I mean, you can hear it on land, you can hear it. It's it's
impacting a lot of people. Um, so that will be coming back too for everyone to consider. Um, let's see. Tomorrow I'm going to be at the Lake 100 doing a presentation with the homeless mitigation advisory committee. um that the Lake 100 was gracious enough to let
us use their umbrella to have this advisory committee so we wouldn't have to try to do this, you know, as as a county um committee per se, but our goal is to present information to the business community um not just the Lake
100, but at this particular event, Lake 100 members um looking for ways to partner with the private sector to address housing needs and you know, everything from participation, volunteerism, supporting organizations that are doing great work out there. Um,
and there's just a lot of great information. But it's it's uh it's it's pretty amazing and sad that we have probably around anywhere from 2400 to 3,000 people in Lake County who are homeless. about is if I remember the
statistics correctly about 700 that are living in places that are not fit for for human habitation. Um the rest of that number would be children and families that are literally moving from, you know, friends and neighbors, cars, camping, whatever they can come up with
as a way to, you know, have a place to to live and stay. Um and these are kids that are going to our schools. So, um, what we want to highlight are the the groups that are out there that are doing great work and where we have gaps and how, um, together as the public and
private sector, we can try to help cut that number down. Um, and I think that those are the key things I wanted to tell you about. At the next meeting, I'm going to try to make an agenda item on the Wakivo Kala Greenway. um and a
request that we had to assist with sending letters out to property owners in that area. And I think this could really dovetail nicely with the public lands acquisition committee. um because there are uh state dollars to purchase lands or conservation easements in that
Wakivo Cala Greenway and um and the I we were asked by the friends of Wakiva uh to team up um on a like letter head or a joint letter just to you know give credibility to the fact that um there you know there are public dollars. it
wouldn't be county dollars, but but these dollars are available and would you consider selling your property and if so or selling a conservation easement. Um here's who you need to contact or if they reach out to you, you know, we're very supportive. So, I'd
like to bring that back and to see if we can get the board, you know, blessing on that. Um and that's it for my report. So, I'll send it over to Commissioner Smith. So, it's quite amazing that um today that our library uh mentioned it um
we had a request for DVDs um because what's a DVD? It's a digital video device. He's not going to know what you're going to say next. So, but anyway, the reason why that's important is if you go back a couple of
more generations, that's the national day today. Today is National Vinyl Record Day. That's all. That's all I have. Awesome. All right. Very cool. All right. Well, thank you everyone. Great meeting and uh we stand
adjourned.