Good afternoon or good evening. Uh welcome to the uh listening session for the Blush County Charter Review Commission. I want to thank you all for being out here this evening. Um we're going to start off with a roll call of the members that are present this evening. We've got a full house. >> Mr. Watts
>> here. >> Mr. Clayton >> here. >> Mr. Ingram >> here. >> Mr. Johnson >> here. >> Mr. Lewis, Miss Minzi, >> Mr. Parker, here. >> Mr. Sakenovski
>> here. >> Miss Shriber, Mr. Toland >> here. >> Okay. >> Did she call Amy Munzi? I'm sorry. >> She did. >> She did. >> We counted you. >> Thank you. >> All right. Well, I want to again start off by saying um thank you and and
welcome. Um, we've been doing uh these sessions over the past several weeks around the county. Um, it's nice to actually do one that I could walk to. Um, so welcome to Dand. Uh, glad to to see you all here. Recognize the county chair is also in the audience this evening. So, thank you for for being
here. Um, just want to to offer a couple of of kind of opening remarks and then really get over to the business of why we're here and why you're here and that is providing comments and feedback. Um these are, you know, the start to a
process that'll probably take us around eight months or so to work through as we look at the charter and as we look at, you know, any potential amendments to it that would then ultimately come to um the voters on the ballot next year. Um so again, we appreciate you being here.
There may also be follow-up uh public input sessions like this. You are very welcome to to come to any of our meetings. Um, if you go to the website on the on the county's website, there's a list of all the meeting times and locations and dates. Um, there's also an email address on there that you can send
in any other suggestions that that um, you know, you you may have or you get, you know, from in input from others. So, please um, if you haven't, take the time to do that. That way, we can also make sure that we're getting that in in an electronic format. Um, you can go on and
look at the videos of the prior sessions. Um those are all available on the county's YouTube channel. Um it's riveting, you know, things to to sit and watch if you uh want to want to spend some time doing it. Um but you know, as I've said at some of our prior meetings, you know, we're here to look at the
charter and our charter sets up, you know, this review process once every 10 years. Um you know, and and we've talked a little bit at some of the prior meetings about, you know, what is a charter? What is a charter county versus a non-charter county? So, you know, Valuchia County is one of about half of
the counties in in Florida that has a home rule charter versus being a non-charter county, which means that effectively Valuchia County has all of the authority that's not prohibited by the state constitution or statutes. So, we get flexibility in how we set up the
structure of our government, which is what the charter really is. It's a it's a structural document um that kind of outlines the power and authority that the county government has um within Valuchia County. Now, if you're a non-charter county, um you don't have
that flexibility. You have whatever powers are granted to you in the constitution or in the statutes. So, um, you know, I think the, uh, charter form gives us a lot more flexibility, um, to operate in areas that haven't been pre preempted or reserved to the state,
which kind of is smaller and smaller every year, but still gives you that additional flexibility. Um, we started out at our first organizational meeting, uh, we adopted a set of rules. We've adopted a three-minut time limit for, uh, public comment. If you've been at some of the prior listening sessions,
that's a it's a guideline. Um, we've been pretty pretty open and flexible with that. So if you need time, just ask for it and we'll make sure that you get a chance to say everything that you want to. So with that, if there's no other business from staff, I'm looking for staff. I think we're good. Um, then I
will go ahead. You hearing everything? Okay? Okay, then I'll go ahead and and start off right into speakers. >> Okay. >> Okay. It's plugged in now, so it seems like maybe it'll maybe it should be working.
All right, so we'll turn directly into uh calling up our first speaker, Robert Flity. Come forward and state your name and address for the record and you've got three minutes. Robert Flity, Deltona. Uh pedestrian safety reporting request.
The crisis. Pedestrian fatalities in the United States have surged 48% over the past decade. According to the Governor's Highway Safety Association, Florida ranks as the second deadliest state for pedestrians.
The Deltona Daytona Beach Orman Beach metro area was ranked the deadliest in the nation in Smart Growth America's 2022 dangerous by Design Report. The data exists, but is it accessible? Pedestrian death and injury data is
collected and analyzed by organizations such as GHSA and the University of Florida Geo Plan Center. This data is funded by taxpayers and should be accessible to the public, not siloed
within law enforcement agencies. The proposal. I respectfully request the commission recommend placing the following amendment on the 2026 ballot. Wuchia County shall maintain a publicly
accessible pedestrian safety data portal independent of law enforcement. The portal shall be updated quarterly by a designated data stored who shall have the authority to escalate and correct data errors.
Why data integrity matters. In one Valuchia County case involving both a pedestrian death and an injury, the driver's name was misspelled. In the initial crash report, on the blood sample documentation, in the internal
affairs report, this raises serious concerns. Is accurate data being shared with the oversight agencies? Is any data being shared at all? the ask. I urge this commission to support transparency,
accountability, and public safety by recommending this amendment for the 2026 ballot. Thank you for your time and consideration. Yield. >> Thank you, Mr. Flity. Appreciate you coming out and again to to offer some some thoughts. So,
okay. Next speaker is Robert Sanchez. Again, if you state your name and address for the record, please. >> Robert Sanchez. Edgewater, Florida. Good afternoon, members of the Valuchia County Charter Review Board. My name is Robert Sanchez, and I'm here to propose urgent amendments to our county charter
to protect constitutional rights, ensure due process, and stop county overreach. These changes address systemic abuses I faced. First, county inspections violate the Fourth Amendment. From January 2014 to January 2024, over 6,000 inspections
led to violations, but only one use an inspection warrant as required by Florida statute 933.21. In my case, agents enter my property without consent or a warrant, ignoring county code. I propose amending a charter to mandate annual training for code enforcement agents on
constitutional rights and require a warrant or documented consent before entering private property. Evidence from unauthorized entries must be inadmissible. Second, administrative hearings and I due process and first amendment rights. In my case, a clerk refuse subpoenas for
relevant witnesses, silencing voices that could have spoken for me, a violation of my first amendment right to petition the government for a redress upheld by the Supreme Court and Loman versus the city of Riviera Beach, which ruled that government retaliation against protected speech, even with
probable cause for action, is unconstitutional. The board dismissed my concerns without a continuence and refused to hear my trespass claims, deferring them elsewhere. The charter must require boards to hear constitutional claims like trespass or free speech violations and dismiss cases with prejudice if the
county cannot prove beyond a reasonable doubt that it followed the law. Boards must issue subpoenas and grant continuences when needed. Third, excessive fines violate the eth amendment. My property purchased for 115,000
faces $3 million in leans, a disproportionate penalty. The charter should cap fines or require judicial review for leans exceeding the property's value. Finally, the county attorneys and property appraiser remove 2 and a half
acres from my name, creating an illegal non-conforming lot to place back into my name against the Lucia County Code without a notice or a hearing. an act I believe constitutes felony theft. Okay.
Under Florida law and violates 14th amendment due process. The charter must prohibit title changes without notice of public hearing and consent from all affected parties. These amendments would prevent abuses, reduce litigation, like my 1983 action, and restore trusts.
There also needs to be a better way to inform the citizens about these review hearings that only happen every 10 years. I propose starting two years prior to the next review, the county shall mail out the information with in everyone's tax bill. That'll give every property taxpayer two notices and we'll
get better participation in these hearings. Thank you. I'm available for questions if anybody needs it. >> All right. Thank you, Mr. Sanchez. Appreciate your input. Um, I've said this, I've neglected to say this at the beginning. You won't hear a lot of discussion up here because we haven't been we haven't noticed this meeting is
one where the commission will be taking up the issues to talk about them. We will begin those discussions at our dis at our October 13th meeting. So I invite you to make sure that you're there so you can hear us begin talking about the things we've heard at the listening sessions.
Okay, with that uh Devin Morris. >> Hi, my name is Devin Morris. I live at 13 Boris Avenue here in Dand uh representing my organization Walkable Valuchia. Sorry, I was trying to get close enough so you could hear me. Uh so I wanted to come here today and talk about public transit needs in Valuchia
County. Uh so it's no secret that our public transit and alternate forms of transit are severely lacking in Valuchia. I uh recently learned that the county collects over $80 million a year in impact fees that are ear m ear earmarked excuse me for transportation
and 100% of them go toward road construction. Statistically, road construction is the most dangerous as well as the most expensive form of transportation. Uh so what I'm proposing to you all is to consider codifying a permanent funding source for alternate modes of
transportation including not only things like buses and shuttles but also things like bikeways, bike trails, bike lanes uh within the cities and on county uh lands as well. uh even if it were something as unambitious as a 7030 or 8020 uh revenue split for those
particular impact fees that are already collected, it would mean a massive influx of funding into the votran into our trails programs, our bikeway construction and so forth. So, uh just wanted to come here and and talk about the fact that the reason people don't use these alternate forms of transit is
because they often don't exist or they don't work well. So the votran you commonly hear, why would we expand it? Why would we do uh dedicate funding to it if nobody uses it? But it's putting the cart before the horse. People don't use it because it's unreliable. It's slow. Uh it's not particularly nice to
use. So if we uh were to address these things with funding uh as well as expand our bike network, you would see more people use these alternate transit modes. It would reduce the demand for sprawl development. It would make everybody safer. It would increase quality of life and have a tremendous
economic benefit as well. Thank you. >> Okay. Thank you, Mr. Morris. We appreciate the input. Um we'll make sure to add that to the list when we start our our discussions on the 13th. John Baker, our next speaker, >> John Baker, 245 East Constance Road,
Deberry. My first issue is uh in talking >> I can ask you just >> in in speaking with uh county staff through the years I am of the impression that the county's minimum standards for environmental protection are not being
strictly enforced that uh apparently there's a hesitancy to uh uh contact the cities and and aggressively achieve compliance. So that's my one issue and the other is I in reading
through the charter I did not see anything that addresses resiliency from uh sea level rise and climate change. Thank you. Okay, you talked faster than my note-taking ability, so I appreciate that. Um, but thank you very much. We
appreciate your time and and uh coming out to give us feedback. All right. Uh, Dr. Wendy Anderson, our next speaker. >> Good evening. My name is Wendy Anderson. I live in Dand at 2451 Sleepy Oak Lane. Um, I do thank you for your service on
this commission and uh and recognize that the charter defines the county's core governmental responsibilities. One core responsibility that I believe the county and its cities have is to ensure safe and clean drinking water for
all of our residents. Regardless of the political winds and whims from Washington DC that might alter the regulations embodied in the 1974 Clean Water Act, we our local governments must ensure that our drinking water is in
fact safe. I recommend I I recommend or I propose an amendment for inclusion um of additional language in article 2 section 202.4 of the county charter that provides for minimum standards of environmental protection. I have five
key elements to this one. We shall never privatize the sourcing, treatment and distribution of our potable water supply or the treatment and disposition of our wastewater supply. Water is and always should be a public good in Valuchia
County. Number two, given the indisputable realities of population growth and of saltwater intrusion into our freshwater aquifer, we shall never ban any possible water source for inclusion in our treated potable water
supply. We will need all tools in the toolbox available to us as our water supply becomes increasingly strained. We shall ensure that the cleanest water sources shall be prioritized for personal potable uses and that when those supplies are increasingly
strained, a ban on the supplies used for landscape irrigation shall go into effect. Storm water and reclaimed waste water shall be used instead of instead for landscapes that must be irrigated. Number four, the reuse of gray water for
non-pottable uses such as irrigation and toilet flushing shall be allowed in Valuchia County. And number five, we must not defer to federal leniencies or postponed requirements to clean up known contaminants such as PAS from our
county's water supplies. When we know these contaminants exist and are threatening the health and safety of our residents, we must act swiftly to clean the water supply. I would be happy to meet with each and every one of you to discuss each of these five elements. Um
and and go over the implications for those, but um but in the meantime, those are my contributions. Um, these commitments to clean water in my opinion are core governmental responsibilities and should be denoted in the county charter. Thank you very much.
>> Just for clarification, point three. Was your.3 the use for landscaping being limited once you get to a certain >> Yes. >> Okay. I missed I had one, two, four, and five. I just wanted to make sure I had three >> my notes. >> That'd be great. If you could leave those be fantastic. Okay.
Those are the speakers I have signed up uh for this evening. Is anybody else in the audience that would like to speak? Okay, we appreciate you all being here. Um, any questions from members of the commission? >> Mr. Chair, >> what's what's the chances for us getting
these proposals? We can actually read them and look at them. Um I know all of them have notes and you know if they could present them to us or so like so we can sit down and read them and and really decipher what's what's in them. >> Yeah. So just to um to for our next
agenda. So the October 13th meeting is our next meeting. I've been talking with staff about organizing the materials that have been submitted or the the comments that have been made at all of our prior meetings. So, our next agenda will include a summary um of either the written copies of the written comments
that we've received and a summary of any, you know, spoken comments or anything else that's been um provided at these meetings. That'll make up the the beginning part of our agenda at our next meeting. We'll be going through all those materials, looking at each of the the suggestions that have been offered
or that have been emailed into uh the website um so that we can begin, you know, kind of looking at those, prioritizing how we want to kind of talk through each of those issues. We'll also have a summary of some suggested, you know, kind of housekeeping uh changes
coming from county staff um for, you know, their um recommendations, things we might want to look at in this process. and then we'll open up and have a general discussion about anything that members of the commission also think we might want to look at through the process. So, we'll have all of that
material in our next agenda packet. So, you should be able to have that, you know, a few days in advance of that meeting to start looking through it. Met I think you were looking to make a comment as well. >> I just want So, I was going to ask the
same thing that Ben was just asking to a certain degree. I just wanted to say that I don't attending all the meetings I don't recall anyone turning in any handouts, but if any handouts are turned in, I would really like to have them. That's all I was going to say. >> Yeah. And and I'll make sure that um as
we are putting that those materials together, anything we've received in writing and any of the emails that have come in, we'll get copies of all of that as well as part of our agenda materials for the next meeting. So, Okay. Very good. Yes, sir. Nick. >> Yeah, Mr. Chair. uh just share uh with
the audience so that they have it uh the email address to send any additional or that they can share the email address to their people. >> Yeah. Can we >> I always forget the email address. Give me a second. I'll pull it back up. >> I am but not sure about my mic. Uh, it's
VC Charter Review.org. >> So, just for everybody that's here, VC Charter Reviews.org is the the email that you can use. That'll basically uh if you've got any written comments you'd like to submit, anything else you'd like to send in, any
other thoughts that you come up with after this meeting, if you'll send that in, that's going to be part of what staff is pulling together to summarize for us to begin our discussions starting in the October 13th meeting. So, uh, make sure if you've got anything that's a follow-up or M. Anderson, if you want
to send in a copy of your written comments, then that will get to us in our agenda materials. >> Mr. Chair, also, um, on the website, there's a a link that you can just click on without having to put in the email address. That might be a little bit easier for folks.
>> Yeah, if you uh I think staff has done a really nice job of organizing this online. So, if you go to the the county's web page and if you look for the Charter Review Commission, the homepage for the Charter Review Commission has a series of of drop- down menu items on the right hand side and
the last one that's down there is submit your input. So, if you can't remember the if you're like me and can't remember the email address from meeting to meeting, uh go to that website, click on that button, you'll be able to type in any of the uh input or put your documents in there for us to consider as
well as part of our materials. So, okay. Anybody else? Any other member of the commission have anything that you'd want to raise? Okay. Staff, do you have anything for us before we adjourn? Well, again, I I want to thank you. This is uh our fifth and final of the this
initial round of uh public, you know, listening sessions. Depending on the areas that we start talking about, we may schedule additional follow-up uh meetings to go back out to each of the council districts depending again depending on the areas that we we think we may benefit from some additional
input. So, just keep watch on the agendas, keep watch on that website. Um this I will say I think has been our most well attended um listening session. So, I want to thank all of you for uh coming out tonight. Um you're part of the biggest crowd that we've had. So, thank you for being here. And with that,
we'll stand adjourned.