##VIDEO ID:9-my15W7AGA## n oh a he he he welcome to the vucha County council meeting the meeting will begin in 10 minutes he he w w a a w a welcome to the vucha County council meeting the meeting will begin in 5 minutes a he w oh h welcome to the vucha County council meeting the meeting will begin in minutes is a fire marshall here oh shocks is he happy okay all right it is uh 4:00 and we will call this uh special meeting January 14th of luia County Council to order at 4: this is a one item special meeting um you'll be given a time to speak and um I'm going to ask you to only speak on this item because it's going to be a a long night I don't know how many of you signed up to speak but I'm assuming just looking at numbers that there's probably at least four um let me just tell you how the meeting's going going to go um uh we'll have a pledge of allegiance uh first um there's not an invocation we'll do the roll call and then we will um uh let me back up even though there's not an invocation I've asked somebody from faith in the back just to pray continually for us um and then we will uh we will hear a presentation from staff the council will ask questions no no debate at that time just ask questions clarifying points then we will hear from you from the public um and then the council will debate after we've heard uh from you I want to say one other thing quickly about your speaking time um we are neighbors here some of us have different ideas and different understandings but we're neighbors and I'm just going to ask that you um each of us treat each other like neighbors with respect for different ideas and that way we'll come out with the very best possible outcome so um don't boo each other um give everybody the same respect that that you want for yourself everybody will have a a chance to give their point of view um let's do it respectfully and and um that'll just set a much better groundwork for coming out with some uh productive Solutions today so if you would uh stand with me for the Pledge of Allegiance i al of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible withy and justice for all what a great sound to hear that many people um we should have them sing don't not ruin it uh chissa would you call the role Please Mr Dy here Mr Johansson here Mr Kent here Mr Reinhardt here Mr Robbins here Mr Santiago here Mr Brower here we have a Full House full Das um Quorum um one item and I believe that oh there you are that uh Ben Bartlett will start us off uh with a presentation from County staff you know that the issue the item is a moratorium uh for solutions for flooding good afternoon Mr chair Council Ben Barlett I the uh Public Works director and just give it a second for oh I forgot to click so um obviously as you mentioned we're here today to discuss uh uh a countywide moratorium on uh development um part of the presentation that I'm going to be giving today it's going to be myself Mr Irvin and uh uh Pao Mr sorya from our legal department uh but I'm going to start off today talking a little bit about why we're seeing some of the flooding um that we've seen recently and and it's important to understand the why because that goes towards the solutions and and having an understanding of what's causing the flooding and and I'm going to be very clear I'm talking about flooding I know you know storm water management is is a big part of flooding but you know there's multiple variables that go into why we flood and storm water management is one of those but you can have uh flooding that doesn't involve storm water systems at all it could be riverine flooding Where the River comes up and floods properties without any rain that's a possibility as well so um first thing I'm going to talk about is you know something that we've experienced recently is large volume rain events and um this graph right here indicates uh some of the large volume events that we've seen in vucha County going all the way back into the 1900s um you know I I've been out and about and and and and and during both Ian and Milton and have spoken to numerous homeowners that have experienced flooding and one of the common things uh that I hear is I've never seen this type of flooding before I mean we've had hurricanes I've never seen I've lived here for 20 years and I haven't seen water this high and those folks are right and a large part of that reason is because of the two events Ian and Milton were extreme rain events 18 20 plus inches of rain what this graph shows is uh the red line represents uh 11 in of rain an 11in rain event I use that as kind of the Del lator because your flood planes based on 11 in of rain a lot most of your storm water systems are designed to handle an 11in rain event there's not a storm water system in this County that is designed to handle a rain event greater than 11 in in 24 hours so if you look at the type of events we've had if you go back to the previous Century um we've had three events um of note two of them have approached that 11in number and one of them exceeded it considerably back in the 20s 1920s that is um this Century since 2000 we've had multiple storm events but we've experienced some really extreme rain events and we've experienced four of those rain events that have exceeded that 11in number that that number that I've mentioned that is is important for what we designed to and as well as what the flood plane determinations are based on so as you can see we're seeing an increased amount in these uh occurrences and unless you experienced tropical storm Fay unless you were in DeBerry Orange City or Deltona in 2008 um you haven't seen a rain event that's exceeded 15 inches of rain in vucha County you'd have to go back a 100 years so when people say I haven't seen this much water in my house that's a good reason why because frankly we haven't had these level of rain events in vucha County um up until recently another uh part of the rain kind of function of flooding is your average rainfall over your your annual average rainfall so on this gra on this uh slide I have graphed uh the average annual rainfall in the DeLand area the red line represents roughly 55 Ines of rain which is the average annual rainfall amount and starting back in 2000 you see a pattern of uh couple High years and a low year couple High years and a low year and what you see there is you get some high average ual rainfall and then you get a year where it's low or two years where it's low allows that recovery period in the groundwater table and so on and then beginning in about 06 through about 2016 you see multiple years of below average rainfall and some that are right around the number and then one in '08 that was high that was tropical storm Fay so really for about a decade we had below average rainfall uh in vucha county and I know this is Delan but this is these numbers are are very similar throughout the county and then beginning in 20177 you can see the numbers jump uh into the 60s we've uh since that time we've experienced two years that are roughly average but the majority of those years have been uh exceeding the average with 70 plus inches of rain this year so the average rainfall what does that cause well it affects the groundwater table that recovery not having those down years where the groundwater can recover what we see is an elevated groundwater table and this graph represents um flow out of Blue Springs the flow out of Blue Springs is measured because were required the state requires a minimum flow level out of Blue Springs to protect uh mainly the manatees but other uh animals that live in that area and what you can see is it fluctuates um but we're on an uptrend and and there's a better graph that kind of shows a little better that red line represents the minimum flow it was uh like in a 140 area it's actually since bumped up to 155 but as you can see the flow out of Blue Springs which is indicative of the amount of groundwater has um was low for that period that I described in the previous decade and has started to climb as we've seen uh increased annual rainfall amounts so obviously you know it's pretty common sense to think that the rainfall the amount of rainfall the large rainfall events that's something that can cause uh flooding it can cause flooding that we haven't seen before it can cause standing water over time but there's other factors involved and contribute to the flooding so on the west side of valuch County we have a lot of what we call closed basins these are essentially bowls caused by natural topography where there's no outfall either the bowl fills up and eventually spills over or it never spills over and it just stays and so this particular uh Loc is puer Pond down in uh Orange City area it's actually in an unincorporated area of Orange City we have a uh this council's a approved a project recently to put in uh a force Main and a pump station to to move some water out of here because we've seen issues with this particular location specifically as it relates to closed basins and so a lot of folks say well we've had hurricanes you know we've had hurricanes and I didn't flood and I get it you're right but not all hurricanes are the same you know everything we see on the news is cat one cat 2 is based on wind speed but there's other factors from hurricanes there's the amount of rainfall um unfortunately we know that there's other uh things that hurricanes can affect wave damage hurricane Nicole for instance was a powerful storm in terms of waves not as powerful in Wind we see the same thing with rain so hurricane Irma a few years ago 6 Ines of rain over 24 hours that's an approximation of what puer pond would look like we've seen some water over the road after that storm um but you know it for the most part stayed within that area 18 Ines of rain same location that's what happens that's a closed Basin a bowl if you will jumping up the amount of rain that you see in that location from 6 in to 18 in all of the water in this it's roughly a 10 acre Basin flows to that location and fills up that's a aerial photo of what it looked like after Hurricane Milton so the Topography of the area you're in that affects how your area reacts during these large rain events so on the east side of the county you have to deal with tidal impacts in the engineering world we call it the tail water if there's a uh if you have a development or whatever and your development discharges to a canal or a river that's the tail water and the tail water condition is important um in the past in some areas uh when there's a storm and they model the storm they assume a free flowing uh tail water condition where the water can just leave what we're seeing in these storm events particularly in Hurricane Ian and to a certain extent in Milton was the tail Waters were up because of the tides the tides come up it impacts the Halifax River it impacts the tamoka river it impacts Spruce Creek turble Creek all those tributaries all those mosquito control canals on the east side of the county they either come up they flow in the opposite direction sometimes or but long story short it's no longer a free flowing condition uh your storm water it runs off more slowly it basically creates a temporary closed Basin until the tides can cycle through that's why in a lot of the areas on the east side you saw flooding after Ian you saw flooding after Milton and within 24 to 48 hours it had completely flushed out that's the opposite of what you see on the west side and en Clos based where the water falls stages up and it stays because it has nowhere to go and in this kind of situation you can even see flooding uh that where the tides back flow through a storm water system and you can see uh what we call Sunny Day flooding that's a problem uh you see in in a lot of coastal communities finally you know we're here today to talk about a moratorium moratorium is a tool in the toolbox that pertains to development and we have seen some observed issues with development first and formost uh we've seen Pond failures we've seen uh this picture is an example of a pond in along long orange Camp um in Dand that failed during Milton it was a catastrophic failure it it breached the burm and the entire contents of the pond washed out and washed into a road um so that is something that we've observed uh seasonal high water elevations so as I mentioned before we went through a period of uh dry times and when engineers and and uh Geotech geotechnical Engineers go out and they try to determine what the seasonal high water elevation is if you do it during a dry time you might get a little bit of a depressed number or a number that's lower than what we would see in in in a rainy season and that kind of sets your water level for your development when you're designing storm water ponds and if you set that too low you could end up with a situation where uh during uh High average rain years and and during storm events that that water is too high and the storm water systems don't function these are uh observations that we have seen I mentioned the tail water um if the engineer assumes a tail water elevation that isn't correct or isn't applicable in the storm storm event that can cause issues with their storm water system and then events that exceed exceed the design storm in vucha County um if you're in an open Basin you have to design to what we call the 25y year 24-hour storm event which is an 8in rain event if you're in a closed Basin you have to design to roughly an 11in rain event but as I mentioned before we've just experienced two storms that significantly exceeded those type of design uh storm events so what does your storm water system do when you when it encounters a storm event that dramatically exceeds the design level and so is there measures for uh if the pond fills up is the water going to Crest the the the pond and cause a blowout because it starts washing away the burm these are things that we've we've observed and things that need to be accounted for and then um finally you know a lot of the flooding we've seen we have a lot of uh Legacy exist existing Parcels with vested rights in other words uh for whatever reason those those Parcels have been deemed that they are capable of being built on by single family homes and they exist in areas where there's a flood plane they exist in areas that are designated as Wetlands or they're adjacent to other low-lying lots that when they come in to build in order to build to our current standards they have to raise up either because they have a septic system that has to be so uh far above the the seasonal high water table or because they have to have their finished floor elevation above a certain level either the crown of the road or the flood plane and so that creates you got an existing parcel that's lower with a house on it and then now a vacant parcel that they're going to build up that creates some issues from a storm water standpoint that we've observed and and we've discussed um extensively so let's talk about Solutions so I've kind of talked about the why and the things that we've seen and and let's talk about you know anytime something like this happens people want to know why did this happen and then what are you going to do about it so we've this Council has funded almost $8 million in in Watershed and Basin analysis those are going to identify um potential Solutions do some pre-engineering and kind of give us the road map to address a lot of the flooding issues that we've seen it's going to come uh with recommendations of capital projects uh where we add additional storage volume pump stations might be an option title gates to address the title issues on the east side and then um we're also looking at acquisition and demolition if there are properties that are frankly um indefensible um there's no good engineering solution or the cost benefit of the engineering solution versus the acquisition is such that it makes the acquisition the recommended solution we're looking at that and then uh code changes and design standards I'm going to let clay talk about those here in a second but you know we've Council has directed staff to work with enra on code changes for storm water and low impact development standards which uh I'm going to pass over to Clay and let him discuss good afternoon clay Urban director of growth and Resource Management um I'm GNA kind of give you an overview of how storm water is first of all permitted in the State of Florida but before I do that I have to kind of give an overarching concept that is prevalent in both federal state Regional localized laws as far storm water and it's tied to a Doctrine that's been established by qua the drainage rights Doctrine and basically it's really simple I live on top of the hill water's going to hit the top of my property it's going to flow and I have the right to allow my rainwater from my property to flow on to the adjacent property owners and so on and so on and so on and so therefore it's allowed the situation such that I cannot prevent my neighbor from drink draining on my property and my neighbor cannot prevent me from draining on their property so why I bring that up it's a critical Concept in all of the storm water regulations that we have to implement and it's tied to pre and post-development conditions so when you see a design professional coming in front of you and talking about how he's looked at the pre-development condition and the flow and the quantity is the same in the post condition what he is saying to you is that if it's vacant land I've looked at how big it is I've looked at how much rainwater falls on it I looked at the topography I know where it's going I know how much is Flowing out of there and when you come in and develop it I have to design it so during that event that same amount comes off my property that is the basic premise from what you see at the state level and at the regional level and I bring that up because we do have that um there are requirements at the state the Florida Department of Environmental Protection D have storm water requirements it's contained in uh chapter uh 40 of Florida Administrative Code tied to Florida statute section 373 the Water Management District has been authorized to implement regulations within the St John's riverwater Management District there's five water management districts in the State of Florida these started off as drainage control organizations for draining the swamps of Florida now what you have is that you have true Water Management organizations that look at how the water needs to flow to maintain the natural flow that is set up for our lakes and our groundwater the interesting fact is that permitting from them wasn't districtwide until 1983 three so up until 1983 there was no St John's River Water Management requirement for all of St John's River Water Management District area and so at that time Valia County had approximately 270,000 people living here so that means that there were areas that were built and constructed prior to the establishment of any storm water regulation and this kind of ties into that statement that Ben made in his presentation about vested Lots we have areas such as Daytona Park states which were developed previously before we had storm water standards so they don't have roads in some areas they don't have storm water facilities so that's where we have concerns from a regulatory perspective how can we make it better so we don't have that and realize that prior to these storm water regulations basically you pushed the water off your property you ditched it you put a canal in you piped it to wherever the lowest part was off of your property or the nearest body of water so that's why you see the State of Florida came forward and put together the rules and regulations that the D and the Water Management District enforce but Valia County said we want something else we want minimum environmental standards and part of those is going to be storm water because we see that impacting the environment and our built environment we have to do something about it so we establish it with all of our others and as part of that it says we're going to come up with these minimum standards they're contained in chapter 50 of our code of ordinances they are for new development or major Redevelopment they're again focusing on that predevelopment and post-development condition we have to coordinate with St John's River Water Management District for these they if you come in and develop land in valua county or any of the Cities you still have to get a St John's River Water Management District environmental resource permit and whatever the local government requires there are some exemptions they are tied primarily to existing developments agricultural uses and those types of things and so one of the requirements that we had from our minimum environmental standards was that all of our cities had to comply when this was originally put in place that was in 1988 we actually only had 14 cities Delona wasn't around neither was DeBry so all 14 cities in 1988 complied we made amendments back in 1995 and now I can tell you this much from my own personal research I've seen that all 16 cities have minimum environmental standards for storm water that are consistent with chapter 50's storm water regulations so they are in compliance with that requirement what you're seeing there is that some of the Cities such as new smrna beach actually have some standards that are in excess of what our minimum standards are and what we're hearing from you as our leaders is how do you make sure that these storm water regulations are doing their job how do we ensure that we're protecting our existing residents from the potential impacts that would occur with new development what we have are these minimum standards and again we cannot go and enforce our standards in them and paa will get into to the issues of that later on what we have for this particular set of regulations is the ability if someone doesn't meet our minimum standards we can take them to court to mandate them to implement them what our regulations look at are basically if it's under a th000 square F feet of new impervious we're going to handle it as a staff level and basically address the first inch of rainwater that falls on it that's for a very small project I want you to understand 1,000 square ft of impervious we do have additional standards within our own code for the unincorporated area such that if you are in one of these closed basins and um Ben and I and all the other engineers and planners use that term basically a closed Basin is a bowl it's a naturally occurring area where the topography has a low point and is surrounded by a bunch of H high points such that the water doesn't naturally flow out and so that's where we go from our normal standard which is a 25e 24-hour storm event and raise it up to a 100-year event um unfortunately we've been using these terms and it it is confusing to the public what is a 25-year storm event well it's B it's a way for us to identify a duration an amount of rain that can occur so as Ben referenced 11 in has been the Hallmark for a 100-year storm that doesn't mean that you're going to get one of these storms once in a hundred years it means the percentage that it could occur is one in a 100 you could have three years in a row where you have 100e storms we just saw it happen here in beluche County so we realize that we have to make some changes two years ago you gave staff direction to come up with low impact development standards we've gone through an exhaustive method of Outreach and Analysis and have finally made it through the environmental natural resource advisory committee in planning and Land Development regulation and have a set of ordinances for that and it's pending to come to y'all in that we are integrating some of the Technologies where instead of putting a pipe in the ground instead of putting a sale that's only 5T wide and channeling water to a storm water Pond let's look at how we can condense and and make development smaller on a property and utilize the natural features there to provide for natural storm water protection as well as filtration and Improvement of the overall environment um those will be coming to you again there's a couple different options on as how is that's going to affect we also have over the last seven months gone through the environmental and natural resource advisory committee with changes to our own storm water regulations that we have in chapter 72 and part of that is really focusing on the technical aspects of what your staff reviews when a developer or their engineer comes in and submits an application when an engineer prepares a storm water plan they have to look at the topography they have to look at the soils they have to look at the vegetation all of that is factored into how they can identify all that rain landing on that with more impervious area can be held treated and released so it equals what it was before development and so we have identifi that we want to see additional analysis of the geology in other words soil borings we want more soil borings we're going to see what we can do in regards to estimation of tail water you heard Ben was talking about that we've talked about whether or not the location of the pond um the references that Ben had in his presentation of the failers showed a pond it was on the side of a of a development and it wasn't properly constructed and it washed out we're making sure that's not going to happen again we're looking at estimation of groundwater table we're saying that we want to see more information about it updated information and when you think you've established what you believe is the maximum groundwater we want to tack on 6 in more as a safety Factor so again those are just a summary of the changes that are coming your way to address some of the concerns we've heard from you and the residents of beluch County right now I believe we have a tenative date of February 11th for for a potential meeting to review both of those standards at the same time because that's going to take a little bit of time to go through the details to make sure everybody understands where we're coming from with those and it also gives you the opportunity to give us clarity as far as what the options are if that comes through that's again we're looking to see to try and get these things through as quickly as possible so you could have by the end of March or April all the rules and regulations for liid and the updated storm water completed and so that's where we are in regards to how we will treat future development as it goes forward in belush county and again these are standards that are part of the unincorporated areas regulations uh the environmental natural resource advisory committee will be taking up chapter 50 which is our countywide standards seeing if those changes that were identified for chapter 72 would be applicable or if there's even more standards that need to be addressed thank you paa will now address the issue of regarding moratoria all right thank you Mr chair members of council Paulo Soria senior assistant County attorney so this meeting is about a moratorium proposed moratorium so let's you know drill down to Basics what's a moratorium it's a pause in the in the uh processing acceptance or issuance of uh orders permits Conference of plan changes essentially um any changes relating to to land use uh you know it is based on a local government's police Power Authority to issue those development orders development permits and building permits so so what's what's your police power um it's your ability to let is late it is your ability to limit an individual right so um as a charter County we have inherent police power granted by the Florida Constitution a municipality also has police power um under their home rule Authority that's granted by the statute uh so you know when uh the county legislates and and the the cities legislate sometimes those come into conflict um and you know there is a whole set of laws and processes of how to um kind of deal with that but going back normally development orders and development permits which is what your moratorium Powers based off of you they must be issued if they meet you know all criteria so the moratorium basically says okay let's let's put a pause on that as a legislative policy so it is a planning tool as been stated um it's a legitimate planning tool that can be used to keep the status quo while a local government is processing a change to its rules and regul ation um it's a legislative act by a governing body and what that means is that you have to act in a rational manner you have to you have to find a rational basis you can't be arbitrary you can't be capricious in developing implementing or enforcing the moratorium so the fundamental question of a moratorium is you know it needs to be reasonable both in scope and duration we'll get to the scope um and and duration but but just talking quickly about the duration there's no hard set rule of how long a moratorium can last um you know it's there's been a bunch of cases you know just kind of looking at the the fact byf specificness of a moratorium um and you know the one thing we can say is that there's no hard rule there is a moratorium is not a per se taking you know that automatically subjects you to uh a taking you know a taking analysis it can be but you have to go through a fact specific analysis under the prevailing uh Federal and uh US Constitution and state law however we live in Florida Florida is a property rights state um and one of the key features is the Burj Harris act so the Burj Harris property rights act um directly addresses moratoriums they consider it a temporary impact and what it says is that you can do a tempor impact but if your temporary impact lasts for more than one year you may be subject to Burj Harris liability so what that means is you can do it just you should be prepared to pay for it um and that's kind of the the prevailing feature of the Burj Harris Act is that it is it is a a supplement um I almost said complement but that's not correct a supplement to the normal kind of Fifth Amendment take King's jurist Prudence of where the government acts and deprives a property of all economic value the Burj Harris act says hey I don't need all economic value I just need to show that the government action has enormously burdened a reasonable investment back expectations which is a lesser standard so when we talk about reasonable scope this is that that kind of means where you're applying it and how you're applying it so this is this is the question of of where you're applying it so when we go back to the inherent police power you know the the county has inherent power because we are a charter County and what does that mean it means that under article 1g of the uh article 8 section 1g of the Florida Constitution um a charter County can determine uh you know which ordinance prevails whether it's in the uh when there's a conflict between a County ordinance and a city ordinance and our Charter says hey we have two situations where a County ordinance will prevail one is the unified Beach code under section 205 um so the county rules to beach anything you know seaword of the line of permanent vegetation or the seaw wall or its approaches the County's rules apply um and it also says when the county sets minimum environmental standards under Section 202.4 those will prevail over a conflicting um uh Municipal ordinance uh otherwise you know the section 1305 of the charter says that hey in the in in the event of a conflict between a city and a county the city ordinance prevails so those are the only two situations unified Beach code minimum environmental standards um right okay sorry so and going on the third bullet point so the the Constitution says okay the charter says the charter County power is limited to determining which ordinance prevails in the event of conflict what it doesn't do and what what it doesn't say is the charter does not transfer services or authority to issue orders or permits from a municipality to a county what does that mean it means that the county doesn't command Deere the police power of municipality we don't issue permits for them we don't issue building permits for them we don't plat for them we don't you know we don't set their zoning we don't set their comprehensive plan or land use so going back to the first Slide the moratorium power is based off of the police power to issue permits here the language of our own um and minimum environmental standards is limited in nature it is the power to set a standard and to have those municipalities comply with that standard um through their own ordinances it is not the power to start issuing permits on behalf of or in lie of a municipality so going through the minimum environmental standards we've looked at some cases that that uh kind of mentioned the minimum environmental standards so fundamentally what it says is that that the County Council uh it shall establish minimum standards procedures and requirements that shall apply within all the Incorporated and unincorporated areas of uchia County it prevails when in Conflict however municipalities may be more restrictive as clay pointed out in terms of storm water new Mna beach has a more restrictive uh storm water regulation than the minimum environmental standards once again 202.4 is not a transfer of service or enforcement Authority so we have at least one case from the 11th circuit that basically is said hey even though it's got a charter-based authority to minimum to set minimum standards the county does not possess control over the actual day-to-day enforcement measures so what does that mean that means again we don't have the standard police Power Authority to issue permits you know under our minimum environmental standards um the 202.4 is not a preemption of all land use or of or Zone Authority it's not a preemption of all of all the de uh development permits or a preemption of the building permits so we have another case it's you know that kind of points to the fact that the charter 202.4 Authority is is limited um here you know the you know we have the fifth circuit saying okay the the when the County's ordinances Prevail in terms of minimum environmental standards it prevails when it sets the minimum standards for protecting the environment by prohibiting or regulating air or water pollution or destruction of the resources of the county so you know this case is is thing you have to set a standard first set a standard that standard prevails um the issue with the the the the moratorium is the moratorium doesn't set a standard it's it is it's based off of the the ability to issue um orders and permits and the standard legislative you know uh police power to limit rights so you know when we looked at it um you know our opinion is that the current Charter language scope and Authority does not support moratorium in the cities you you can definitely do it in the unincorporated areas um of the county you have a clear police power um you're you're the only entity that issues permits um and ches and has Supreme L use Authority there so that's very much Clear however um the charter does not support the issuance of a moratorium in the unincorporated cities in the Incorporated municipalities sorry so going to a reasonable duration I've already kind of um uh talked about this when you do a moratorium or if you would like to do a moratorium um there's no federal hards set rule on how long a moratorium La it will last um before you know we get um called in for this is a this is a takings violation uh but once again we're in Florida so the Florida berj Harris act um is more restrictive than the federal standard it says uh any uh a temporary impact to property that exceeds one year uh can be an enor burden and can be a basis for property rights um and be uh property rights violation and be a basis for liability so that is kind of clear which is why you you see moratoriums not last more than one year here in the State of Florida for example edgewater's most recent moratorium lasted one year they're aware of the same everyone is aware of the same kind of one-year limitation law for the establishment of a moratorium um going back to reasonable scope uh a good moratorium if you would want to uh um proposed one will have a strong relationship and ration a rational Nexus between the application of the proposed moratorium and the public health safety and Welfare objective so what do what does that mean it means that when you are applying the moratorium what functions you're suspending should be limited in nature and only limited to that necessary to carry out the public purpose and the purpose of the moratorium in other words narrow applicability that's what the courts are looking for in terms of um moratorium that will withstand um a kind of you know uh impermissible taking or due process violation um can't be arbitrary when we're talking about reasonable scope so when you start including or excluding things from the moratorium that could potentially be subject to tal challenge so what a good example so here's here's a kind of a case where they set a moratorium based on the lack of AD adequate public water supply and they applied it to town homes and Condominiums and mul family they excluded um uh things like car washes and laundromats which are you know large users and consumers of water and the court said what are you doing um that is completely arbitrary there is no rational distinction of why you are excluding these you know consumptive uses um from your moratorium so they kind of failed that moratorium on that account so and once again one of the reasonal uh things about this the scope is vested rights determinations that is shorthand for um Equitable stopple which is another short hand for fairness um that is always a case and always a defense to a moratorium where you know a a property has relied um and detrimentally relied um by the expenditure of funds on the County's existing rules and regulations we're stopping them at the last minuted when they have expended you know a lot of funds so you know a vested rights determination in a moratorium um is kind of a a safety valve it allows for um the narrow applicability and it allows for you know the um uh avoidance of some some litigation in some lawsuits so uh for example edgewater's moratorium has a vested rights determination section uh to account for for you know this part it's kind of good practice when you're establishing moratoriums um so that is the uh yeah presentation uh if you have any questions um on the legal side uh I'm here Clay's here to answer any questions on the planning and then of course we'll answer any questions on the uh Public Works and Engineering side councilman Johansson uh first one is for Ben you you mentioned uh that water should basically flow the same after after I'll call it a subdivision after something is built uh and and you mentioned it it should be able to flow into the property as well as out of the property is that correct yes so you know in a pre-development condition the the when a storm occurs the water falls on that property it behaves in a certain manner it flows off maybe some of it's retained some of it percolates there's a certain amount of water that flows off during that storm event and there's and it flows off at a certain rate so our requirements require that in the post-development condition that that is um replicated in other words during that same storm event the water flows off at the same rate now I will say that the state focuses on the rate county has a slightly stricter standard where we say that not only does the rate have to not exceed but the volume of water that flows off has to be the same but also the state doesn't want you to restrict so if a certain amount of water flows off in the pre-development condition they don't want you to restrict that flow in the post-development condition because there could be Wetlands there could be other things Downstream that need that water for their viability iang got it so can can you explain to me um if if we raise the grade of a of a subdivision I keep on picking on subdivisions but any um um development how how water that used to flow into that property before it went out how it flows in So yeah so it is a requirement it has to be engineered so a lot of times what you'll see is if there's water coming from an offsite parcel they'll engineer way for that water to go around even if they're raising the site that's something that the engineer has to account for so so it doesn't have to go on the property it can go around the the it doesn't have to go on the port of the yeah it doesn't have to go on the port of part of the property that was raised right but it has to go has to has to continue it has to continue where it's got to go all right um uh the next one I think is clay I think I have one for each of you you mentioned that that we are we are planning to go forward um to make sure that that um that subdivisions have uh adequate storm water basically or or uh I think the the pond blowout was was the excuse or the or the or the the scenario do we have any plans to ensure that that the existing development has uh adequate storm water retention and and any other areas where we've seen weaknesses for a for a Milton type event that's really an Enforcement issue right and that's where St John's uh and the local government that permitting the devel velopment do have some rights under code enforcement procedures that if a uh homeowners association is uh somehow in violation of the permit that was issued for that because um a permit travels with the land so you may have a developer come in get the permit initially from us in the water management districts once the development is completed a homeowners association is uh created to oversee the common area and the drainage and so that's the group that we can go after as far as trying to make them retroactively bring it into compliance with new regulations no that is not uh feasible because they were vested under the existing regulations uh in our presentation we talked about major Redevelopment we that's typically seen with commercial developments and those types of things that's where we can go in and utilize the means to have improvements for the storm water for those so long story made even longer yes we can if there's a Redevelopment otherwise we're utilizing code enforcement and and do do we to your knowledge do we do we actively do that we have not had one and I'm aware of I've been here since 2016 I've not had any complaints against homeowners associations for the violation of projects within unincorporated for their Incorporated I actually believe in Port Orange we we had one where we had to go back so I appreciate it um I guess this is Paulo I I know you can answer it maybe clay can but I'll give you each one um does does the Bert J Harris act apply to property that that allows um the future land use element that that applies to the property in other words um can we can we say we love your agricultural property but but we're going to we're going to not allow you to build whatever Urban medium int Umi or or uhi on that property if it's got a flu of that an element uh if you're talking about changing the land use from agricultural to Urban whatever the future land use authorized for that is oh reverse that okay so so so the answer is if you're changing from Urban to agricultural um and you are making that change yes that could be subject to a berj Harris uh act it is a legislative act it's a government action um depending upon their reasonable investment back to expectations as in did they have an expectation to develop in an urban Manner and then a local government came in and suddenly says you have to develop an agricultural on an agricultural basis yes that is a that is a uh po potentially subject to bur Harris and and and and then I will ask because I hear Whispering the vice versa if if I have property that that is light fellow but I have um an expectation that I can I can build homes on it uh is is that something that that so uh changing it from agricultural to um a higher land use intensity generally no reasonable investment back expectations so you know what reason do you have that the local government is going to take a legislative act which is you know your most differential and the most uh discretion that you have and you know up land use your your property there's very it's it is not a reasonable investment back to expectations to have that kind of expectation so you know never say never but that is a a a kind of a good case of they don't it would not be a bir J Harris um uh violation if you decided not to change the future land used to Grant additional density okay thank you councilman Reinhardt thank you chair um first question is for Ben Ben I'm going to get real basic here you you hit on something it just and there's a couple and I'll probably have more questions later but during The observed issues for developments and whatnot you hit on something uh with respect to the pond failures how do you prevent that well um one thing that we looked at in in in in enra has recommended and and staff agrees with is the location of the pond so in that particular Pond it was on the edge of the development it had a large elevation difference a burm essentially between where the pond was and the lower area adjacent to it and um so one way to prevent that is to locate it in the center of the development um and when that's not possible kind of draws in correct and and it's there's not a a burm there's you know it's land all around um the the other option is to reinforce that burm if it's not feasible to locate it in you can do a clay core you could do a retaining wall there's multiple options to ensure that the the burm where you basically have water on one side and air on the other doesn't give way is there anything in the regulation that that would stipulate going to that pond in the middle of the development whether or not it would be impervious or it would uh like soil around it as opposed to a parking lot things of that nature does that well I mean from an overflow standpoint you know and that's kind of what we talked about is yeah because it does overlow it's going right on exceed the design you know event and what we saw during Milton were uh you know we had a lot of rain prior to Milton which filled up a lot of these ponds they didn't have time to cover and then you get the big rainstorm so in instances where you would be concerned about an overflow and and that's really taking a look at okay what happens when you when you exceed the design event do do you design the pond so that if it does exceed it maybe there's a portion of it that's a little low and you reinforce that with either concrete or or something like that you see that in ponds The Dot likes to use that as as one of their overflow wears you'll see little concrete wears and things like that there's multiple ways to do it but in other words it's important that the design engineer think about what would happen in an event that exceeds the design standard and and basically um design that pond so that it's a controlled failure if you will versus a catastrophic failure like I like i' said and then either you or clay could probably answer this I'm I'm curious because I was listening to that and one incident uh everybody you know has a district everybody has something going on in their District that's significant to flooding and and I'm thinking about well we had a town hall down there at one area area uh where you're talking about uh City developments things that are happening in certain municipalities that butt up next to either another municipality or the county unincorporated and we know exactly what we're talking about where they're uh um complying with regulations that that they have to to build to build these new developments but the older developments that are lower if you will and I I'm probably using the wrong terminology adjacent adjacent but are essentially lower and so that water has to go downhill and it's impacting them in a negative way and we talked about some some solutions possibly for that could you hit on that for a little bit yeah I mean one one option I think clay mentioned it in the storm water standards is some of these standards could uh be part of become part of the environmental minimum standards which means that the cities would have to adhere to those standards as well how do you fix the ones that are already in play um well clay mentioned through code enfor if if there is a failure and it's negatively impacting and it's through something like that it would be through a code enforcement process um so they may have to go around they would have to take a look at what's going on or it might you know fundamentally if it's between two private property owners it might end up being a civil lawsuit as well okay and then the last question for now um you mentioned the storm water standards that exceed ours in new samna what are they doing different and it goes to Clay thank you there's a couple different things they've done they've identified within the flood plane some additional requirements in regards to the storm duration so they're going to a 100-year storm event for 72 hours instead of 24 hours duration uh in regards to the discharge in other words the rate of water coming from my site going off the site they have to provide retention equal to 110% of the volume so therefore they're putting in basically a safety factor of 10% into the volume of their ponds so that that way it it can discharge at can handle that potential slight increase St a little bit easier so hearing that and this is the last one I promise um if I'm all about not re worrying about recreating the wheel you know if we can learn from others uh we're not significant unfortunately to flooding uh at least the State of Florida I mean we're all we're a very low state to begin with but there are other areas like and and you can't compare apples oranges I get that but as far as New Orleans and their flooding can we learn from situations that they went and apply them to our own to help prevent some of that your environmental natural resource advisory committee asked for that very analysis at the last meeting they did okay right now we we're developing a matrix which was talking about all 16 cities and how they comply with chapter 50 and if they have anything above and beyond they're also asking that we do an analysis of how other surrounding counties are addressing their storm water thank you very much yeah just on that note there's you know he talked about the extra Pond volume in those large of storm events so we do something similar we do it in a different way we require an additional foot of what we call freeboard which is additional volume at the top of the pond achieves a similar thing adds volume to the pond for those times when the pond is either gets back toback storms where it can't recover or that higher storm event so there's multiple ways to skin the cat if you will and and and part of that analysis that enr's looking at I'm glad to see that enra asked for that that's good thank you councilman Santiago thank you Mr chairman can somebody share an update on um what efforts and progress or what's going on with um St John's River Management on relief opportunities for placing more water in the river particularly you know Westside county has opportunities for that if are we making progress there or you just give an update um I think that's a we've identified as that that as an issue that we want to discuss with St John's Water Management District staff and and basically the premise is is when you have uh an event and it raises the river above a certain flood stage there are homes that are inundated at that point properties and the St John's riverwater Management District in the past has been reluctant to allow uh pumping or additional water to be put into the St John's river um you've heard that discussed multiple times here I've seen them actually write it into permits where folks have I say folks where or agencies have received a permit to pump to the river however there are stipulations that when the river is at a certain level they're not allowed to pump um and so you know there's I can see both sides of the argument on there um one side is you know after Ian we had multiple folks come in from Stone Island and object to water being discharged into the river near them um but then when you you know there's the also the argument that you know in terms of the St John's river is big and the amount of water going in maybe not so much so that's a long that's a discussion that I've ex spoken to my counterparts at the Water Management District about to answer your question as far as progress we haven't made any progress but I'm hopeful that you know through discussions moving forward that we can come to some kind of compromise because what we saw during Milton was the only option in some places was to pump to the river and de Barry you know filled up there borrow pit um it would have been nice to have I'm sure they would have appreciated an option to to let some of that water out to the river or in city has a pump that pumps of the river they're in the process of acquiring a borrow pit for similar purpose so it's a need and I I'll just make this as an ask that you don't have to answer today I prefer you don't answer it today but I want to say it for the public record um I realize you're working with your counterparts on the St John's river wanted management but if you can get with George and he can get with us what support do you need uh from us as a body to get you to help move that forward understood um my second question I think is still in your lines we've talked um some about you know um development and and things of that nature that how they're affected but I think I've been here 35 years um and even some of the previous storms I'll talk in particular the I forgot the terminology but the the the the gravitational flow from the land through Lake Helen that goes into Deltona that affects a lot of that third area of Deltona that's in The Courtland Boulevard uh region over there that has historically FL flooded also when we have these big events um it can you give any update right now as to where we're working towards to either partner with in particularly I'm asking for this and I'm sure there are other areas in the county but in particular what are we doing if for Public Works types of events to mitigate that I think you know I'll speak for Deltona um if we can capture that water before it starts going into the uh that Teresa basin and send it elsewhere is is there talks about that do you need anything from us to continue that or start that no I think a lot a lot of those issues you know will be addressed when we look at the at the at the Basin analysis and and those there's a Nexus of like three basins that the council's approved studied for right in that area um Lake Helen we've spoken to them about you know storm Water Analysis of their area they experienced some flooding so I think you know part of that is you know there's a lot of historical you know things that have gone on in those areas and we know that there's flooding in in certain types of events and then this the analysis and the modeling will take a look okay during a certain event this is what happens this is where we seen the flooding and then that's where we develop the capital projects to identify what we can do to either during those events reroute the water hold the water or or identify locations where we just maybe say Hey you know it's going to happen whether whether we do you know whatever engineering solution we come up with so so the Basin study will help us out with that's ongoing um and this may or may not be for you clay but I think it might be you when we talk about the ponds that are being developed now in some of these new subdivisions um do we have ponds that are either uh uh recharged or refilled by aquafer or Wells or by um reclaimed water to maintain a certain level for Aesthetics purposes in any other communities in the unincorporated area I'm not aware of any I do know in Delan there's multiple um neighborhoods that have a a system where they can either move water through different ponds or purchase reclaimed water to augment my understanding of those systems is that they the irrigation systems for those neighborhoods pull the water out of the storm water ponds so um they um they augment it when the levels get too low and uh with either reclaimed water that they purchase or or other means and this may be a clear question now as a followup to um what Ben just said when so for example Community we have communities in the land that may utilize that system to maintain water levels for Aesthetics or for for M uh irrigation when a project like that comes in um and they're going to do um storm water Pond or these ponds that they built so where do they take that level from uh to determine is it now whatever they're going to keep the water permanently for Aesthetics or for irrigation or do we require them how is that analysis made let me clarify we do not have any rules in unincorporated valua County that require the developers of residential projects to accept reuse water into their storm water ponds the ReUse is provided where it is feasible through a pipe system it's being utilized as an alternative water supply as part of our consumptive use permit so that we're not utilizing portable water to water people's Lawns the issue you're referencing is pertaining to a specific development within the land and uh again the design of the ponds themselves have a height the critical point is that the water is pumped in during times of drought BEC from the reclaim system into the storm water ponds because if you have a drought your storm water Pond's going to drop and so therefore you won't have sufficient water there available for the irrigation system so you're going to see that the levels of the pond are based on the storm water permit that was there as part of it and that the only time that they should be pulling it in is when there's a def deficit in the amount of water that they need to meet their irrigation needs at that point it's basically a Code Enforcement issue whether there violation or that's again you know that's happened in the city of D land I you know I'm not real up to speed on what their regulatory aspects of it were um but yes sir I would say that that's basically a situation where the city would need to go in there and identify what's going on from that perspective what I will say and is the my understanding is the reclaim water aspect of it is goes through a meter so they track how much yeah because they have to pay for it um clay could could that practice uh or eliminating that practice capability be a chapter 50 modification I have to tell you I'm not really aware of that being done in many areas the the I actually have the opposite situation uh back in the early 2000s candidly if we were having this discussion it wouldn't be about storm water it' be about the drought we were in and that the city of PT orange mandated all residential developments to use their storm water Pond as an alternative water supply to the reclaim water because they were running out out of reclaim water before it could hit Cypress Head and other developments west of 95 so they had to utilize the ponds that's an acceptable practice in regards to trying to utilize storm water ponds as reclaimed holding tanks for lack of a better term uh that's not really an acceptable practice I would say uh I'd have to check with my colleagues in the cities but we can investigate that and we'll bring that up to the environmental natural resource advisory committee thank you um and then I clay back to you sorry um I lik some of the commentary you made regarding um the the groundwater table uh and some of the recommendations that may be coming forward to us and I think you use the words seasonal level seasonal high seasonal high and let me ask you this scenario if this could play out um I'm going to do a subdivision I just see just just say on this side right for lack of a better description and my seasonal level could be 68 or 58 whatever right on this and then I did the borings I did the samples and I determine that's what it is I come three years later or two years later and now I'm going to do this side mhm all right and depending on when I did that test it could now be 60 is that a potential that that could be affect the design even though they they might be somewhat let's say level could that affect the requirements of this property versus dis development I see Ben looking for the real engineer up in the corner uh but uh there he comes yes the fact is is that previous studies do influence what we accept and Tad will be able to explain in Greater detail good evening Tad kbear County engineer uh with regard to the seasonal high it's not something that's supposed to fluctuate that often so you know if you're only talking about a period of two years uh unless there's something ibly unusual that has happened that should not fluctuate that much uh for the most part when a developer does do their storm water they would go ahead if they think they've got a multiphase they would go ahead and do the borings all at one time across a site especially if they're going to connect the ponds if the ponds are going to be separated from each other then all you really care about is the seasonal high at that particular location if the ponds are tied together whether it's being pumped or otherwise then you would potentially want to make sure that they all match uh or you go back and you have done one after a certain period of time and it does change then you make adjustments based on that but does does it make S I'm not an engineer so I'm just throwing ideas does it make sense to have a regional I just use the word Regional because I know the county varies but um we'll just use Basin I'll use that word a basin minimum groundwater table it's still requiring the test for the latest but to have a base FL uh number is that practice no I wouldn't say that's practical I mean you'll get a wide variety of elevation differences uh across a small area in some cases which is why one of the recommendations that enra made was that we get more borings in a pond location because you can get quite a bit of variety if for one section you hit uh a confining layer it may hold water in a certain area and then you come 50 60 feet over to the left and there's no clay layer nothing to confine and hold that water above it it may drop off we see that uh on a fairly regular basis um in small areas of dant so uh you know good example would be uh everybody's familiar with Taylor Road in that area east of uh Blue Lake over to Martin Luther King uh a lot of water gets held up there at grade or above grade above ground uh that you go down to the corner of Blue Lake and Orange Camp we've got a storm water Pond that sits about 15 ft lower than an area just to the east by about 300 ft the area ft uh east of there is at 56 with water in it and our pond is down at 43 and it doesn't have any water in it so it doesn't take a lot to vary quite a bit um so no I wouldn't recommend that that said the uh uh USGS did a soil survey for the pretty much the entire United States to include vucha County where they identified soil types and some of that was based on samples where they go out and do some borings some of that was based on Aerials and the vegetation in those locations uh and they did go ahead and establish very basic elevations for those now granted those studies were done in 1950 uh but it does give you some kind of feel for where water tables might be at and that would be as much as we would need I wouldn't recommend doing anything wasting money on County's time to go do that um and when we get this is is there any other outside peer review or is the peer review just internal when we received this information uh just our staff reviews the uh and the Water Management District has to issue a permit as well we don't review uh that portion of it we get uh get our submittal as a part of an application and and move through up okay thank you Tad yes sir um Ben you talked a little bit about the tailwater effect I know this is Monday morning quarterbacking right um I didn't pick the winner yesterday by the way but you neither okay um but is if we did not have uh the the high tide at that time is it safe to say that things would have been possibly different on the east side because that tailwater situation would not have played a factor is that fair statement yeah and I thinking you can almost take a look at the different storms um the the tide situation for Milton was not near as severe as it was for for um uh Ian and you saw less flooding and you had relatively similar rain amounts sort of I I hate to use the word but I'm using the movie like The Perfect Storm kind of happened with with how wind direction tides and and you know fuchia county is unique We have basically one way in and one way out for the water uh along the Halifax and that's Pon Inlet and um it creates a unique situation there in all those um Inland tributaries we talked a little bit about a couple Pond failures I think that will reference um what is the Tale on these designs um do we determine on a pond failure if it was a design era uh and you know and also do these Engineers come with any Eno insurance and how long is that tail for that Eno typically I know it could be different by policy but Li uh I'll be honest I don't know exactly what the time frame is on the insurance fortunately I never had to worry about that aspect of it but uh they are responsible as the professional engineer signing and sealing those drawings if there is an issue due to uh their design there's a problem uh that said you know storm water design is not just one particular the person you have a geotechnical engineer that does the borings and as a part of that they generally also set your seasonal high seasonal high is uh also equates to your Des design normal water level and uh it sets your elevation on everything you do after that in terms of your development because you have to have everything above the water level your parking area or your roads your homes your businesses all of that so if that were wrong then the geotechnical engineer would be responsible either way they're Professional Engineers along Ong that course that are responsible for different aspects of the design and they and their insurance companies would be responsible for that element now that said there's a contractor that builds that design and if they did not properly build something consistent with that design then they would be responsible but there are responsible parties throughout that uh should Rectify those particular situations and I know typically when a development comes in we require them to do at least some public um infrastructure stuff I believe the there's a bond that's posted for a year afterwards is that correct if they are performing work within the County's right of way itself then yes that is correct uh we don't uh we don't post it for a time frame afterwards it's usually for the work while it occurs and then there's a maintenance Bond may be required in certain instances to make sure that you know they didn't do a poor job that you know materials may come apart they've got to repair those aspects but yes sir and I I I would ask I mean we don't have to have this answer right now Mr chair U but I would ask that staff can get to us to the next as we're dealing with these requirement development standards to consider through our legal department um if we can adopt um some Eno uh significant time frame or or tail if we can require it as one of our standards got me what I'm saying am I suggesting yes but I said at least have that as a topic of discussion if it's possible if there's a market place even for it we don't want to place it out of the market then nothing gets done but I don't know those answers until you we research sure we would need to research what uh the state requires uh Engineers are like a lot of different uh professions were uh regulated at the state level by the Board of Professional Engineers and they have set requirements and uh I would double check that and then uh also we could double check what the insurance requirements are sure get that back to you and then um Polo thank you T sir po am I am I understanding your slide uh one -4 can we pull that up I think it's 1 d uh tell me when minimum ADV okay yeah so in in in layman's terms your last bullet point there says what the charter language does not support a moratorium in the cities okay so it's it's it's the legal Department's opinion that we don't have the right or the police powers to do that is that correct yes thank you um iar I think I'm done Mr chair if you just give me a latitude for a couple more seconds sure thank you Mr chair I'm done councilman Kent thank you chairman my questions will be for Mr Irving and Mr Bartlett both of you if you could uh if you could come up and um while you're walking up I'll just say to Mr Santiago I'm very very pleased to hear you talk about and and kind of feel the temperature of Staff as far as reaching out to the St John's River Water Management District about us being able to put some water in that in that River and I get it I totally get it whenever it's cresting and and it's flooding not to be able to do that but we have had a fine group of people in here 5 days ago talk about it was day 91 so now it's day 96 that they've not been able to get in their homes and I think that's one of the core purposes of government is that we could help move that along to get that water where it needs to go so our people can start living again but anyway thank you for for bringing that up I appreciate it and George if you if you haven't picked up what I'm laying down that's two in support of that there may be more when the others speak um clay and Ben my questions are going to be more about containment on property okay because what you say sounds great and then you see it in real life and I love the um bar graphs you know showing change over time and I appreciate that you you posted that not only to us and our agenda because we had time to go over and look at it but for our public as well to take a look so we've had a guy I've never met him his name's JC he sits over here a lot I've never met him before but he he's over there he comes up here and and tells us testimony about how he can't get into his driveway with his young family and and the water and then I'm going to talk to you about here in West Western part of the county and I live over by the beach clay you know where I live we're not far from each other on the western part of the county we see these pictures of these homes next to these these developments next to these rural homes and they're four six feet taller than their homes and yes my question's coming because my daughter who I've got to drive the loop to get to her house there's a development that took place up there and I called staff and said I'm been driving to my daughter's house for 2 months and there's water coming over this road that I've lived here since I was born in 75 I've never seen this ever and then I'm going to bring it back to my house clay where I live at the end of Magnolia Drive where there used to be Peninsula Medical Center and then Advent bought that hospital and then they had an insurance claim and the hospital came down and they're putting 15 homes there which I'm great with I don't have a problem with the homes coming at the end of my street my concern is is that the fill dirt they've brought in is at least four to 6 feet taller than the homes that have been there and my my buddy the sharies who live in that first house on Valencia their home was built in the 1920s and they've owned it since 1979 the water that was in their yard and when I'm looking at the the maps I'm sorry the graphs we have here and looking at Milton in 2024 and looking at Ian in 2022 they didn't have near the water in 2022 that they had in 2024 in their yard and I mean they were inches maybe centimeters from flooding it inside their home so here's my question I know my colleagues are like finally the question what kind of assurances do we can we as a County government elected leaders Implement and feel good about and say okay preconstruction the water that flowed flowed off it's x amount and now post construction the same amounts coming off even though your property is now six feet taller than your neighbors and there's water now going over a road that this guy who's 49 years old has never seen in his life ever happen driving that road all the time and out west where JC lives the pictures he shared with us from the different storms what assurances can we as a County Implement so that I will feel better if I ever approve any developments going forward that truly the water on their property is going to stay on their property the critical question is the design standard amen so right now we have a 25-year 24-hour storm event I'm sorry for having to speak in that I hear folks upset with that but the simple fact that's what the state of Florida has adopted that's what we have implemented and I'll defer to Pal Pao on this whether or not there are certain Provisions in state law that any kind of conflict between a local government and the state the state prevails so when we sit there and look at some of our standards we have to be cognizant of that the simple fact is that an 18 20in rainstorm is greater than a 100e storm event it's a 500e storm event and there's not a system that can be designed or put into our regulations that will prevent that from happening then again I also want to point out is that in my earlier conversation I was talking about if this was 20 plus years ago we would not be talking about flooding we would be talking about drought and the complete lack of groundwater and so what you've seen is in the first 25 years of this Century we've got record amounts of rain that is influencing the groundwater table and then adding to that King's Tides coming in so in those coastal areas such as up in the loop uh portions of uh Riverside Drive in Holly Hill you have sunny day flooding not because of rain events but because we had a king's tide and it went up the storm water pipe and it went out the inlet that's on that road thank you clay and I I appreciate the comment about you know when you and you look at that bar graph if you can throw that up there the large volume rain events 1922 to 2024 when you look at that bar graph it definitely the first 80 years of that bar graph it's certainly a lot drier than the past 25 years have been I mean it's that that speaks volumes you know nope back where you were you had it on the right one there you go um that speaks volumes and Clay I'm glad you mentioned about how dry it was because it makes everybody that has lived here a long time about 1998 the firestorms of 98 and all 67 counties in Florida were on fire out of control I get that but that's that's not why these these These Fine people are here today they're here because um and I heard you say clay it's about design standards here's my only beef with any of what I've heard today is looking at that bar graph I'm thinking back of 2008 with Fay and let's come closer with 2022 Ian and I'm going to use my street I'm just going to talk about because I I bought my home in 2002 and uh you know it's it's no surprise anybody out there I love my parents I bought a house one street away from my parents so I grew up in a house and I bought a house one street away um I really ventured out far but the sharies at the end of that street Ian it said had 20 inches of rain Milton had 18 inches and and I'm just telling you they did not have the water that they have now and and the only real difference that I see is that there are now 15 homes coming in and the homes aren't even there by the way this is this just the the site work has been done the field dirt is in there and now there's that problem that's the only issue I have with what I've heard go ahead Ben yes sir so with respect to that um you know we're a big County and one thing we saw during these storm events is you know you had different amounts of rain in different areas so the 20 in during Ian was new Suna we had extensive flooding in those areas Edgewater um the 18 inches number I got is because Dand and um and DeBerry in Orange City recorded that at their Wastewater Plant since this chart was was originally made um I've spoken to my uh counterpart at the city of Oren Beach they actually recorded 23 in of rain right in Orman so I think um specific to the orand area and based on some observations there was definitely I don't think they got the 20 Ines during Ian and I think they definitely got more during Milton so w with respect to that I'm I'm not denying on that that's fair and I I accept that thank you um clay and uh and Ben my my last question is is because I love that new samna has higher standards with storm water than the county and I hate it at the same time so I love it for them and I hate it for the county well how much time would it take if this Council uh said so to make some changes to our storm water to go to a minimum of what new Suna has if we decided to do that uh we've already gone through one process looking at chapter 72 those are the standards that apply to valua County and unincorporated uh chapter 50 is coming through the environmental natural resource advisory committee and as we referenced Mr Reinhardt that is part of the analysis so we will make sure that if there are standards that are being implemented by any of the cities that we feel are applicable we will identify them we will still have that Matrix available for when it finally gets in front of the council uh the reason why this is coming forward is chapter 72 is easier to amend than chapter 50 plain and simple uh the time requirements and uh coordination aspects for doing a County wide environmental standard is longer than a standard code change for chapter 72 we did not want to delay getting chapter 72 so what we can do is this we can proceed through uh the environmental natural resource advisory committee get their feedback on what needs to be done with chapter 50 if we see that there's recommended changes from that particular uh group we will also uh look at potential changes to chapter 72 that correlate to those recommended changes so we will be able to get the preliminary changes done quickly and then if there's any long-term changes associated with 50 we will follow up as quick as possible realistically um it's going to take a couple passes through the environmental resource advisory committee and then chapter 50 we were required to send notices to all 16 cities give them a reasonable time I believe it's 30 days to review provide comments and then we have to go through public hearings at the planning and Land Development regulation Commission and here in front of the County Council so best scenario 90 to 120 worst case scenario 180 thank you um Mr Irvin Mr Barlett thank you for your professionalism and the answers to the questions chairman I'm all done for now thank you councilman Dempsey um Tad if I could steal you away from clay and Ben real quick um my understanding is that on some of these uh subdivisions over there off the Taylor Road uh there's storm water retention some of them are lined and some of them are not with various types of pond liners is that correct the sections near Taylor I don't believe are the ponds that are lined in Victoria Park are down south of Orange Camp so there's the uh I think they call it Lake Victoria in the Commons which is the the largest one and that one uh is lined and receives direct uh discharge from the city's reclaim line when they get low and then the storm water Pond immediately adjacent to Martin Luther King on the west side in the Hills section next to their entrance off of Martin Luther King that's lined as well okay and it's my understanding that lining a pond especially with PVC is quite expensive is that correct correct okay and the durability of it's maybe 20 to 30 years is that right uh I actually thought it was uh around 40 to 50 years but I haven't uh haven't looked up the liner specs in a while so I may be off and would clay lining it be nearly as expensive uh it's probably more expensive but you don't have the life cycle cost you don't have to ever go in and replace it as long as it's installed correctly then it's fine these are the costs for by the uh developer correct correct all right so I guess the million-dollar question for me is could you tell me what benefit is there from lined storm water Retention Ponds versus just unlined ponds that just percolate uh well I can tell you the reason for both of those two being lined was more Aesthetics okay uh as much as anything but there was a secondary especially on L Victoria it being the large enough Pond that they could go ahead and directly pull irrigation water from that facility so that that's a primary that's a secondary aspect of of that particular Pond okay Mr irin talked about you know our design standards and maybe adjusting our design standards do you think if we lived in a world where all future subdivisions were required to have lined ponds storm water Retention Ponds I know it's I know I saw you your eyes go up and I'm sure the cost Factor would be a huge increase but what what effect do you think that would have on flooding adjoining properties if all storm water Retention Ponds on future developments are required to be lined uh well that was actually the reason my my eyes went up was because it would actually create more flooding okay would be my expectation on adjacent properties what the uh the liner does is it it keeps the water in that pond from percolating out and becoming groundwater in the surrounding areas which is um trying to mimic what uh what happens if you had something or what was the the situation before development occurred so you know when uh when you have a vacant piece of property an undeveloped piece of property rain falls on it it does one of two things it either percolates into into the ground or it runs off and when you develop it more generally runs off than it previously did so your storm water Pond is the method by which you retain that water on your site that difference between the original amount of runoff and the post amount of runoff and you turn that back into groundwater the same as would have occurred in the previous if you cut off that ability for that water to percolate into the ground the only way to get rid of it is to go ahead and allow flow out onto adjacent Properties or into an adjacent storm water system is there a way to do a controlled release kind of like they do with dams where if the lined Pond had some sort of controlled release mechanism so we could slowly let it percolate into the ground instead of just all percolating like an online Pond you could do a uh a multi-tier system where you have a certain section that wasn't lined and then control that aspect of it certainly you probably could come with something along those lines you know if you're immediately adjacent to uh an existing stream or uh wet ditch if not the river or a lake then you could do uh a controlled discharge directly into that in some way shavee or form but you think that would be a benefit for the county to be able to regulate some of this flooding after these big rain events I think there's certainly a benefit to that aspect of one of the things that hadn't been allowed in the past uh because there was no good way way to control it was uh a pre-release of storm water so uh you know as we've seen with uh the size of the storms that we're talking about 18 15 anything above 11 is is a large large storm and uh our systems are not designed at that level they haven't been the whole time uh even back when most of our canals were mosquito control canals and just trying to regulate water level and uh ground um so with the system set up that way they did not allow for you to do a regular discharge of water outside of coming through a storm water system and everything was designed so that it could operate autonomously nobody was necessary to be there you didn't have to raise wears or levels or anything along those lines um now we've made obviously uh good rides and different types of things where we can go ahead and uh put a computer in charge of those types of elements and control those aspects of it there's actually a group out there that uh has set up a program whereby they actually have a computer system that is tied into the internet it goes over to the uh weather.com or Noah or any of those others that uh are tied into the weather system it sees that tomorrow there's a 3-in storm expected it'll start a release of water to create the volume before a storm the uh reason it's a problem after the storm is when you get an 18-inch storm the pump sizes become ridiculously large and there isn't enough room to accommodate that but a pre-release when the water levels in the streams and the ditches are already at a lower elevation assuming we haven't had multiple storms in a row you can do something like that uh the Water Management District previously not been allowing that because there was nobody to be in control and uh the systems were not good enough to allow for autonomous control now they are and they are willing to allow those types of things so our rules don't contemplate that because the Water Management District rules had never previously allowed it now that's something that certainly should be considered in a lot of these areas that are flood prone the best way to avoid a flood is to release as much water and get it out of there in the first place when you don't have a large glut of it coming at one time okay so thank you thank you sorry for the long explanation no thank you very informative um can I ask for Ben real quick as well thank you Ben um is it is it fair to say that the this proposed moratorium is not going to really solve the problems down there on Taylor Road Lake herie and all these Miller Road Miller Lake I mean what I would speak to any stopping of any construction is if we got the same storm you know this summer you would have the same issues okay um obviously a moratorium isn't going to fix um the issues that have already occurred um so I mean that's safe to say so is it is it fair to say you and I have had a few discussions and um is it fair to say the quickest fix to the existing problems um would be potentially uh strategic land Acquisitions and demolition um you know I mentioned at your town hall that we we that's a last resort because you're basically removing people from their homes and you're eliminating uh the housing so what I would say is um an engineered solution would be the preferred you know but you get into a cost benefit analysis situation where the cost of an engineered solution or an engineered solution can't guarantee that they won't flood then you move to the next step which would be acquisition and Demolition and um you know there's multiple uh funding sources and and and stuff like that for after a storm event but it's something that we approach cautiously because you're you're asking somebody to to give up their home and to move and uh it's really about you know can we guarantee or there's no guarantees in life but can can we you know an engineered solution be cost effective and prevent flooding and uh ultimately the only way to guarantee that a structure doesn't flood is to acquire and demolish it if it's in an indefensible area right it's fair to say that a lot of these repetitively flooded homeowners are probably more than willing now after the last two storms to sell than they were maybe three or four years ago I I mean yeah I can't speak to all of their mindset but I I would that's the general um you know consensus that we're seeing from a lot of folks we've talked to the cities I've talked to City staff extensively about we know there's going to be a tremendous amount of money coming available through Elevate Florida and through FEMA for acquisition and those kinds of projects so they're out um you know speaking to folks and trying to get people who would be willing to participate in those kinds of programs there's always you know in in the in the history of those programs has been is like through FEMA through the federal program is um they will reimburse the homeowner for 75% of the value of their house in the past when the county has participated in those Pro uh projects to acquire homes the county has uh supplemented the additional 25% to make the homeowner uh whole in terms of the value of their house and what they're receiving for it um but you know again that's a policy decision each of the municipalities in the county do you know if the County's been proactive in getting that type of information out to the repetitively flooded property yes yeah I've spoken to multiple homeowners about it we've you know talked to folks you know in the process of doing post storm uh triage we've talked to folks and gotten their contact information I've encouraged the cities to do the same I know there cities uh South Daytona is going door too to speak to people and and so it's going to be a a a massive communication effort to let these folks know what's what opportunities are available in terms of funding if they're interested in that and then last um you know we spent several million dollars on getting these Watershed and Basin studies done um do you think once we have the results of those studies that we'll know better which areas may be better suited for land acquisition 100% 100% some of them will be more suited for land acquisition for an engineered solution and some of them will be uh uh recommended for acquisition because they're indefensible but either way that's the goal of these uh analysis is to to identify those locations just spitball and do you think that a lot of these land Acquisitions may end up on the West Side these closed BAS in areas that are prone to flooding typically it's been my experience that you know closed basins um tend to lend themselves to that kind of work because you know the only option for removing water from a closed Basin is to pump it out or to create additional storage if you're in a basin um for existing for example the one I uh used as an example um you know the only option is to pump I mean there's a house adjacent to it that I know has flooded in previous storms going back to 04 and 08 phase so um that's a home that that you know we would look at as approaching and see all right that's all I have thank you Ben appreciate it councilman Robbins thank you chairman uh clay you're up I appreciate uh everyone's Clarity in terms of our our jurisdiction first and foremost it's kind of such a baseline a foundation of of where we obviously go from here um real thing real quick what I want to clarify um for myself and for the for the public on on what is required who requires it and then what does that kind of leave us with for this fill and build style development who mandates that or regulates that within our FL because I know that doesn't happen everywhere I know it does happen in our FL our flood plane areas in in areas that are obviously um where it's needed who controls that is that the state is that the federal mandate that we have to follow okay first first and foremost our in our comprehensive plan in Our Land Development regulations we have uh separate flood plane management regulations and the number one goal is to prevent development within the hundred-year flood plane um there are situations where you cannot prevent it because it would result in a taking of the property that's why we've put in minimum standards to address that those minimum standards are based on requirements that we see from the Federal Emergency Management agency FEMA as well as the department of uh State of Florida through their uh Department of Emergency Management and I believe Department of State where there's certain minimum elevations above the base flood elevations also and I think you heard Tad referenced it earlier in his discussion once you've got your groundwater level established everything plays off of that your placement of your utilities your placement of your streets then we have as far as a uh from the Florida building code and from our own regulations an additional foot above the center line of a road for a single family home so all of these are building on it so you do have some federal standards and state standards as they apply to flood planes then there's just good engineering practices that apply across the state as they apply to utilities roads and placement of homes within so subdivisions or uh for commercial development if I heard you correctly earlier and thank you clay for for that explanation you said if we do not follow some of the state and federal regulations just like um there was a comparison made to the city and the county earlier uh with a different discussion but if we don't follow those regulation uh I I heard someone say it might there was a conflict between the state ands back to that uh higher level of government I will ceremonially punt over to Pal follow our attorney so that way he can clarify that situation sure so chapter 373 is is about storm water um well surface water Provisions so it's it's very explicit um the the 373 414 is a statutory citation it says you know in the event of a conflict between uh uh environmental resource permit issued by the Water Management District um and a local government um if they can't reconcile Water Management District permit prevails okay so we can be more restrictive um you know we can we can but we have to regulate uh to the extent where we're not causing someone to violate their state permit because if we do they have to comply with the state permit understood thank you Paulo uh clay real quick getting back uh through our minimum standards do we have the authority to for instance require liners um stop pumping or enforce the snow pumping uh during for U during the wet season I mean that would Common Sense would tell us not to pump during the wet season for purposes remember remember we as a water man as a storm water entity we have a utility we are subject to the St John's River Water Management District so they are the ones who are telling Ben and his crew over in public works whether they can or cannot pump into the St John's river and other areas and he's coming over to help clarify it so any movement of water um pretty much is regulated by the St John's Water Management District after a storm event um the Water Management District um we can request emergency uh uh permits essentially it's it's a notification but um we we if we're going to start pumping water from one location to other we have to notify the Water Management District and they have to give us approval so if we started pumping or moving water um even outside of a storm event they still have to give their approval what I was getting at and I've been out to JC's place and I you know we all feel for these situations but there's it's a lot more complicated than just stopping the water or whatever but what I want to ensure is that we're not adding insult to injury if can we make a regulation to say to the city hey you will not pump during our wet season June to November so that adjoining you know if there is seepage if there is Overflow that they maintain that capacity is that something within are you talking about augmenting their Retention Ponds with either reclaim water or correct I mean can we do that through environmental stand I guess it could be done as part of the environmental standards I would defer to p and Clay on that but um um as far as that would be the only mechanism you would have to dictate anything like that to the city I'm just trying to think of other insurances that we can cuz things do slip through the cracks and that'll lead me into my next question all right and I think uh councilman sanago asked earlier with regard to the level that uh they're allowed to pump to in these situations where they're using an artificial Source whether it's reclaimed water or if they're bringing water in uh uh via their own pump from below ground the Water Management District does not allow them to go above that season high water level that's used as the designed normal water level so they're not negatively impacting the volume in that pond so restricting that while it would create a little bit more volume it's not um they're not losing the design volume that they're supposed to have even if they do pump in there not advocating for it in any way shape or form but understood just letting you know Paul this may be a question for you is it within our power if this board elects to to add additional checks and balances like a water Zar to make sure that everybody is doing what they're supposed to be doing and it's not negatively affecting members in the counties member in the cities vice versa do we have that power that can work ultimately uh with the cities and help enforce and create an additional checks and balance for our people well uh so for our minimum environmental standards you know you set a standard that the cities must amend their ordinances to comply with so you know after doing the uh required comment period and the um the consultation once you set that standards cities must you know uh must amend their ordinances to comply if they don't um our Provisions say okay we can go in and um file an injunction or sue the cities um to start compliance so that's the way our minimum environmental standards work um I don't think you need a an independent um Authority because that's that's how the minimum environmental standards are supposed to work is that you know the county sets the minimum standards everyone has to comply with it including the county but how do we know they are complying with it what what can what explanation can we give our people that those standards are being complied with is there a piece of paper is that a pinky promise uh I'm not I'm not trying to be a wise guy but people have a lot of questions because right now for it from uh our staff's perspective we are able to get access to all their codes specifically it's available on municode.com anyone from the public can go in there look for the storm water design standards that they have look at the requirements in regards to permitting and all of those things those are what we look at when we're going through to make sure sure that the provisions of what's in chapter 50 are carried over and their respective ordinances so if something pops out we are reactive um in other words in in well I mean right now un if we get words that uh say um a city in valuch county is going to strike all of their storm water standards and are not going to really care about storm water anymore they would still have to comply with the St John's standards right but at the same point in time we could take them to court and say you cannot do that you have to put in place the equivalent of what we have as a minimum in chapter 50 now they can defer to us I can tell you two cities right now just simply say we will enforce the minimum environmental standards for storm water established by vucha county and and our our standards just in your your training and experience in over last 30 years are our standards in vucha County I know the answer because I looked but are they higher than a lot of the state and federal standards uh requirements when it comes to chapter 50 chapter 72 chapter 50 exceeds some of the minimum requirements of St John's River Water Management District now I do have to say that there's going to be qualitative measures that the state just mandated so water quality of storm water will have uh a direct impact on the quantity Associated that may change how that looks come December 2025 thank you Kay and last thing is um might be good for the the county manager but we'll start with Ben Ben do we have a list of projects um a lot of times we get we get pegged with with not doing enough not um uh Forward Thinking or um projects not being completed or abandoned do we have a list of the we've spent man hours um list of projects that we completed list of projects in the hopper the studies that we're waiting on do we have a a list that we can show the public or or read tonight uh to let them know that we are yeah I have a list of the things we've done the Last 5 Years I can go back and pull what we've done in response to previous flooding events but I definitely have a list ready I mean we spent tens of millions of dollars on storm water projects um we've been very successful at getting grants um you know to uh supplement the money that the county utilizes from the storm Water Utility Fund um we spend 5 to $6 million a year on maintenance Alone um so yeah I I can I can have that posted um anytime you want it's ready to go I'm be happy to if we can somehow I don't know if we just need Council consensus to do that I want to step on day-to-day operations but if we can get that visible and transparent uh for our public let them know hey we're not sitting on our thumbs here yeah and I and I would also note that you know it's part of the larger Capital project schedule that comes before you a couple times a year all of those past project SCH capital projects which includes storm water projects but other road projects and the like so that's already available but I can definitely nail it down to just the storm water stuff and last question I promise do we know the majority of the flooding cases that we're seeing are they repetitive are they in flood planes are they bu bodies of water um do do we know if any of those answers yeah Clay's uh staff has put together uh we call it a heat map but it's uh essentially a uh a map of just the unincorporated area of where we've had claims from the national flood insurance program um we can't because of rules associate we can't relias specific information but we can do bubbles and kind of show and what what I've seen from that is you have a a for Ian for instance you had a large section of flooding in in the new samna Corbin Park area which we know you also had a lot of flooding along the St John's river um which makes sense it's staged up to the highest point it's ever been recorded um you've had flooded uh areas I've seen a lot of areas that flooded where they were older um you know homes built prior to storm water standards where you might have houses below the road and things like that in pretty rural areas is and then we've seen a lot of uh with Milton seen a lot of flooding in closed basins we've seen flooding along uh the tamoka river especially up in orand and so it varies um but you know in in in each situation is different and each situation like I outlined in my presentation is can be a result of of of a mult multiple factors or or one factor if you you live next to the river so um you know that's why it's important when we look at these areas as to really try to evaluate why did it happen and what's the best solution for it and and only reason I ask is you know obviously some places flood some places we having that moratorium discussion if a place is in flooding you know why so uh thank you Ben thank you staff uh for your information thank you I'll try and make this uh quick I thought listening to questions would eliminate some it's uh it's given a few more and some places clay let me start with you on the you said on February 11th um uh you will be bringing forward uh to the council meeting um the new uh Li low impact development proposal from enra yes sir if I'm trying to figure out uh time how much time it's going to take to accomplish some of these things if we uh approved it as is how long would it take before you brought it back to uh is it two meetings two readings well it's a it's already an ordinance form and I'll I believe it's two readings so it um I don't believe yeah the comp plan so we there's a Associated comp plan Amendment that's going along with it so that we'll have to go through the Department of Commerce but that's relatively 30 to 60 days you can still proceed with the uh Amendment to the ordinance subject to the adoption approval from the Department of Commerce at the state okay and then you mentioned the storm water update but we also talked about chapter 72 and chapter 50 what what's coming to us chapter 72 is coming to you on the 11th uh that St those standards that were uh recommended for approval by the environmental natural resource uh advisory committee are going to your planning Land Development regulation Commission on Thursday we will take be able to take their recommendations craft an ordinance and have it available for February 11th if youall agree with it there then it could be and that one does not require a comp plan Amendment it just requires two readings and the council could um uh upgrade it even more make it more um restrictive I'll let him to clarify on what is considered a substantial deviation from the who who's him Paulo sorry so um I believe that it depends upon we have to work with the scope of what we've noticed and advertised um uh so right now it is it's um four elements yeah so it's the the what you need to submit for your storm water um and then some of the design aspects so that's what Curr what is currently um advertised so additional borings and then for the design aspect of the storm water Pond um I think location of where it is and some uh what what it's made out of essentially the critical question is if those the scope of the changes if they are uh so far beyond that we would have to read vertise if they're generally consistent and are able to be tied that they're consistent with the advertising that went out we should be able to hold the hearing right so uh once again legal answer yes and no depends upon what you're requesting to change as long as you're within the scope of what's been advertised you can reduce it you can um increase it um but anything outside of that scope we'd have to read advertise it again okay stay right there the the both of you because it'll be quicker just to go back and forth uh Paulo you also said um uh on the moratorium it doesn't Set uh standards um you would mention that we needed to be prepared to pay um that means prepared to pay if we went over a 12-month period yes and it's not an automatic we go over 12 months and we have to pay it could be defended yes the uh in Lake Tahoe the moratorium was extended several times it ended up going 32 months it actually took six years as it wound through the court system they don't have a Bert J Harris act out there then um how so if we went and I would hope that we don't need it um but if it went over 12 months um it would we could come back and and update it for a certain period of time because of something else that we wanted to accomplish uh yes um it it's what what is what the berj Harris Act is saying is once you go over that 12 months you lose a protection and then you really need to justify your moratorium it needs to be um all those things that I mentioned needs to be you know the the minimum necessary you know it needs to be a reasonable scope um and any increasing duration also needs to be reasonable in relation to that um that's still not a uh determination that we won't face any liability um but you know it is it is the act telling local governments once you go past this you know you need to be very careful of what you do um in terms of a moratorium or a temporary impact um once again this is kind of a fact specific analysis it it depends upon the scope of the moratorium okay um the question was asked um I think it was of Ben but I I'll ask you two I think by Don that would the moratorium uh stop the flooding uh I think he said it at JC's um it it it wouldn't I don't believe it would but do either of you uh believe that if we had the purpose of the moratorium is to to increase standards set standards that would uh prevent future uh flooding so while it won't end any current flooding anywhere it could prevent another homeowner from losing their house do you do you believe um that's true or that's a possibility well the purpose of a moratorium is to keep the status quo while you go through right code changes so the moratorium itself doesn't amend the code um doesn't set a standard it's saying everything stays the same everything stays the same everything stays the same we have another rain event everything stays the same um the the purpose of the moratorium is is you know what changes are you go are are you going to produce you know while you you know keep the status quo everywhere so you know from a legal standpoint I can't answer your question um but the moratorium itself doesn't do um doesn't increase standards or change standards it doesn't all it does is it says status quo everything freezes in that's right it it pauses everything in place and and seems like it would prevent further damage until we make the changes that we need I'm I'm interested in the uh Mr Santiago's questioning on retention Pond it was it was um I thought it was very good spot on um and I don't know maybe uh Tad you had said um you just talked about raising the water level that was it St John's Wood determines how much uh water can be in a retention Pond you concerned about water in a retention Pond increasing when uh the water with regard to uh bringing in a uh offsite water is that what you're referring to I'm trying to make sure I understand what you're asking yeah pumping in from or or buying uh reclaimed water the uh designed normal water level which is the seasonal high is established by the geotechnical engineer it would be reviewed by the Water Management District and then uh the expectation would be the municipality whether it's in the unincorporated County and the county would review it or the city would review it but yes they would review that ele that elevation and uh confirm it or have the Geotech provide further evidence to support his or make a modification to it if we're keeping uh retention ponds full is it raising the water table in the surrounding area if we're keeping them full you mean artificially keeping them full or they're just naturally filling up if we're keeping them full then yes they could have an effect on the adjacent groundwater table on the surrounding water table okay is it kept above the designed normal water level season High yes sir okay so if they were bringing in more reclaimed water for example uh above that designed normal water level then yes assuming it's not lined and the water can percolate into the ground then it would have a negative effect on that groundw condition okay well you negative effect did you want to add something I would just say it you know I I think what you're asking is when you fill up a retention Pond above the normal water level or the designed normal water level um you know could that affect the groundwater level yes because you're artificially increasing the the water level in that pond right um but there would be no reason to do that because the water level above the or the elevation above the normal water level is your storage volume and your treatment volume for rain events so you'd be eating into the storage that you need and are required to have for your for the rain events so in terms of would the Water Management District let you do that under the way you operate that pond would be in violation of your permit right who we've already established that nobody's policing that if if that rule is being um violated or if uh like at Lake Wham iset if Crest wind is not carrying out the um requirements for their storm water system who who's supposed to check on that well the local municipality uh like clay alluded to for so we're talking about two different things one is the operation and maintenance of an existing storm water system if um the local municipality uh finds out that it's being operated in violation of their permit or the St John's Water Management District finds out there are ramifications and enforcement from both of those agencies in terms of the neighborhood you reference which is under construction um there are multiple agencies primarily the local municipality but also the D um has jurisdiction if there are illicit discharges Point discharges that are occurring from a site um if there's illegal um groundwater you know dewatering occurring without a permit those are all um violations of their permit and you could issue a stop work order and and and make sure that they're doing that but to answer your question the the local agency who issued the permits would be the one most likely uh responsible and available to enforce that action have you ever seen that happen yeah yeah yeah we've issued stop Fork orders um for violations of the of projects where they're in uh they're not keeping up their uh required um stuff for mpds and things like that you two are probably the ones for this uh LPGA Canal empties into the Halifax River um your conversation on tail water that that's that's a problem if if it's high tide water's going to rush back in if money was no object and we put a gate there to put prevent the tide from coming in it's going to create ramifications Downstream I'm I'm assuming Upstream yeah um well now Upstream um would have been Downstream if it wasn't high tide is there a way to deal with that adding retention areas um yeah you you'd have two primary options if you're trying to block the tide from coming back in on you so you can stop the tide on like a sunny day event and that way you're not getting that back flow into the system which might cause some flooding there if you're getting tidal influences and a rain event by putting up that gate you've essentially eliminated the outfall at that point and now you created a closed Basin so your options for that would be increase the amount of uh storage volume that you have to hold that water in the canal or adjacent to the canal or retention area somewhere where you can store that water that's falling from the sky such that that once the tide recedes and you open the gate it'll let out the other option is pumps um basically you pump over the the tide wall the tide gate and then or some combination thereof it basically comes a a giant differential equation you've got water coming in you got volume you got pump going out you got tide Gates it's it's a big time engineering exercise but but but money no object you can I mean big pumps New Orleans pumps chire land things like that the the size Basin that you're talking about you know creating a pond as Ben said you'd be digging out a large area uh you know smaller Basin where you've got smaller amounts of water coming to it that might be a viable even consideration but in this case you'd be digging out such a large area and your pumps would be ridiculously large did say money was going I got that but their space is the other option so well speaking of money being no option in in basins would the will the Basin study uh tell us what properties need to be bought um will it re recommend buying certain properties because they're repeatedly flooded so what the Basin studies what the analysis is going to do is they're going to model they're going to go out and they're going to look at that Basin and they're going to look at the topography and the terrain and how things how the water flows and they're basically going to model certain size storm events so they're going to model an 11in rain event they're going to model a 20in rain event if we ask them to and at that point it becomes a risk assessment so you could end up with an analysis that says during an 11inch rain event you've got four homes that are going to flood most likely um there's not really a good engineering solution or the cost to put in big pumps or something like that would outweigh the cost it would be to acquire the property in a 20in rain event you're going to have 25 30 homes that are going to flood because you got a lot more water falling in that area and so at that point you know you're starting to get into the discussion of costs and benefits and you know it becomes a decision point on policy and to a certain extent of what do we want to protect from do we want to protect from the 11in storm the 20in storm and that's what the study's going to tell us ultimately okay you know we're going to have to decide the route the course of action yeah we have to decide it but the Basin study will indicate if if it thinks that's a necessity well it'll it'll tell you what's going to happen in a certain event okay all right um part part of the way to think about it is that it'll be very similar to what you see on a flood plane map obviously the elevations will be different we'll have a little bit better information than they used when they created that flun playay map but you'll see which homes are deep into that territory and which ones are on the periphery of that uh water elevation and then it's really just as Ben said it's kind of a cost benefit analysis does it makes sense to try and put pipes and pump this section out or are these pipe homes so far underwater that you'll never be able to catch up it'll give you the tool to make that decision do I buy homes or do I do something else okay but it won't specifically tell you hey buy this house okay this might be you and Clay uh could be either of you um agriculture Cal lands are treated a little bit differently in some cases can agricultural land um dig a pond and fill in low areas without a permit through remember if you're going for Bonafide agriculture you have to file the uh Department Of Agricultural um minimum b or excuse me uh best management practices so it would would be tied to the specific type of Agriculture so for example aquaculture and you wanted to dig out ponds there could be exemptions allowed and that would be basically handled through the d uh under the Right to Farm Act uh which is adopted by the state of florid the Z the County zoning regulations and Land Development regulations do not apply the only thing that does apply is our flood plane management so if they are operating within the flood plane we can come in and talk to them about the elevation of say their Farm structures to make sure they're out of the flood Hazard but for the most part depending on the type of Agriculture they can get exemptions for some of the impacts to flood Plaines Wetlands Etc I'm actually just talking about D land on a farm that's that stays wet you can't use it so you you dig a pond somewhere else and bring that fill and and raise it up so for example like you're bu doing a pasture you're yeah yes you are uh exempt from some those regulations however when the land if it is ever uh brought forward for development the Water Management District looks back to 1986 to determine if there were Wetlands on site and if they were impacted and whoever's doing the development at that time would have to be responsible for um mitigating for those prior impacts what if that process um of filling in that low area displaced water to the neighboring farm and and eliminated some of their pastures that's La that's again that's according to state law what they would have to deal with is on that they again they have to use best management practices which would include do not flood thy neighbor but if they do what recourse do they have and then it's basically a civil lawsuit or the Water Management District correct okay actually de Ben Ben you're still over there um we're approaching um when we approach as we approach hurricane season um do you have in your hand a comprehensive storm water plan in including maintenance that you know where you're going to put water um if you're needed where you can pump to where you can let it run um what I would say to that is do I have a plan written down that's going to tell me um where I'm going to be able to pump water to during a hurricane no because every Storm's different um you know what what is available um in one storm might not be available in the other what I do know and what I have access to is our GIS system and our understanding of where um we know areas that can we move water to um uh County property for instance um if we own County property city property um those kinds of things and we also know using our uh lar data and to topography if we have flooding going on in this area I can look at the surrounding area and I can see well where is a possibility if it's private property we can reach out to the private property owner um I am uh familiar and have access to uh the systems from the cities and the state to understand where they could possibly move water water so it it would be like creating a plan when you don't know what's going to happen because every storm every storm is different and so you know a lot of times we know where areas flood um they've flooded before and um we know uh there's a chance that we might have to pump water out of there I mean the Orange City Hospital is a perfect example that hospital is flooded before um got the call for assistance from the city I know that there is a location near there where we can move water it's on private property we immediately reached out to the property owner they gave permission and we started pumping operations so um it it it would be difficult to come up with a plan a comprehensive plan where you can say if this then this because the reality is every storm is different Mr Kent touched on it you know the difference in the rainfall amounts between Orman and the two storms and the difference and the tides in new samna and things like that so um we have a plan to go out and address post storm issues you know as far as clearing the roads identifying areas that are flooded identifying roads that are flooded getting them on the map and then we start our triage from that point forward but um it's it's a difficult situation in any storm event especially when flooding is concerned so we're what you just said is we're starting you're starting in new every time even we've had repeated hurricanes that show us where we're going to flood yeah I mean no I'm not saying we're starting from scratch what I'm saying is is that you could have a situation for instance um I'll use Miller Lake as an example it's flooded um I believe in 04 and it flooded um again in '08 and it flooded again in Milton uh and those previous two times they were able to pump to locations um that were dry and in this particular storm those locations weren't dry they were uh potentially inundating other properties in homes so that wasn't an option so but we also know that the dot has a a pump system that can move the water down to DeBerry and eventually when DeBerry system was able to accommodate that water we were able to move it so it's not that we don't know that those areas aren't going to flood what I'm trying to say is during different storm events there's a chance that the areas that we identified um in previous storm events aren't available okay uh councilman Dempsey okay where' Paulo go there he is hi behind clay um Paulo If we could pull up slide 1-22 um you copy that 1-22 oh I'm sorry Charter um Paulo it seems like a common theme here that I've heard over the last couple of years is that when a city annexes in from the county that we lose a lot of our control and that basically the city can do a lot more yes that's I'm sorry that's yes that's that's the way that our current situation is set up you know you have two home rule authorities um with are are are two areas where the county ordinances Prevail is one the beach and two whenever we set minimum environmental standards okay so um I mean under the the supremacy clause of the Constitution gives a hierarchy you know the federal law takes precedent over the state law and then the state law takes precedent over County ordinances yes okay it seems like that's all been the discussion but then it seems like when you go down the chain of command federal state county Municipal it seems like it's Topsy Turvy at the bottom that it seems like the municipalities have a lot more power than the counties when you get to the bottom two rungs of the ladder is that a fair analysis so it's there it's two independent sources of authority so you know both counties and municipalities are political subdivisions and creatures of the state all ultimately we both derived our police Power Authority from the state of Florida so you know in a non-charter county um you know once you cross over that Municipal line the the municipals the the city's laws Prevail okay um in in a charter County the charter has to specify which ordinances will will prevail in the city okay and then we have a charter review coming up now I mean this year and I guess next year correct so I I know Danny and I believe Jeff were talking about you know it it seems frustrating that we don't have a a water Zar or somebody who can go around and police a county agent waters are who can go around and police these subdivisions that are improperly pumping water that's contributing to the the the flooding problem isn't it within our purview especially with the the charter that we're we can change that that we could actually create a position of water Zar or create whatever type of rules we want that the cities have to follow yes yes so that's that's within the charter Authority um the one thing that you can't do without a dual referendum is transfer powers from the municipality to the county but you can you can amend the charter such that you know um uh for example the the discussion on the rural boundary Amendment right so that is that is all about the supremacy of the county land use and the County zoning regardless of what the uh municipality has zoned to in addition it touches upon um uh the having to go through a county process for voluntary annexation so so yes right there so I mean one of the discussions coming up is rural boundary and and it's a hot potato topic it's coming down the pike I guess in a few months but could we also have a discussion about in the charter review discussions and put it on the referendum I mean that we have a water Zar or that we have some way of enforcing these Municipal subdivisions that they're following guidelines yeah you you can create um a County permitting system that's countywide uh you just you just can't under the existing Charter language um you know take the municipalities home rule power um you can what you it would it would take a charter amendment to basically Grant the the county additional power but it's completely doable which would have to go through referendum yes okay all right thank you councilman Robbins thank you chairman clay or maybe even poo would a moratorium stop any current development that's already been approved or zonings that are already entitled to certain things in unincorporated valua uh I I hate punting to Pao but I I'd recommend that what you see is that typically anything that is already in the process in other words has an approved subdivision has an approved site plan and is in the process of building permit those would be ones that would be Equitable as stoppable from that issue they've already complied with our rules our regulations and now it's just following through I'll let him clarify that a little bit more so most moratoriums will have um that very last bullet point the vested right determination so that's like I said it's about Equitable a stopple it's about um someone who has detrimentally relied upon the existing rules and regulations um and has expended of a lot of funds money time and effort um and essentially that is is always a defense against the moratorium um which is why you know it depends upon what application and where it is in the process um you know once you once you drill down to the building permit level um unless it's you know you need additional justification to start um stopping the issuance of building permits and um you know already vested or already exit built subdivisions because uh a building permit's a building permit um you know you have consumers that you're affecting you have uh Builders who who you're affecting more so than just the raw development of land thank you Paulo uh clay couple more um what is our current growth rate in the average annual growth rate has been about 1.6 1.7% per year countywide uh County as a total okay what is it in on since we since we only have jurisdiction for this in unincorporated valua what's our growth rate in unincorporated we're relatively flat um number-wise is it half a percent I I don't know off the top of my head I can just tell you that the the the majority of the population is shifted to the cities and so right now I would say that we're s we're set at around maybe uh F .5% somewhere around there are you familiar with the result in the moratorium um I know new Suna Beach hired an outside firm to review their storm water and if you go to their page uh and they actually have a really great interactive page here you'll see all of their areas are just like you and and Ben had had explained they're all by water all the places that are are flooding are by bodies of water or tidal influence do you know the result of their um well Jones Edmond was the engineer that was hired by the city new smna beach to address the concerns that relatively to development what what was their comparison or the outcome yeah the finding that they indicated in their report that aside from you you would not have to you could take the development out and it would still flood okay um CU Matt brought up a very wise um suggestion of of looking at what other places have done so we don't have to spend these unnecessary monies on studies where we already know the answers to uh and that's what I'm trying to drill down and and and pinpoint so thank you clay um also too do we have anybody from our economic side in uh at the staff level if we did a a moratorium in unincorporated valua what would be the economic impacts uh as a result of that do we know uh we don't have our economic development team in Chambers uh council members but I did ask that question of our team and uh what they provided uh for unincorporated valua County was a compilation of what the total permitted value of new construction was over the last calendar year calendar year 2024 uh the total permitted value residential and Commercial development combined was uh 249 m625 worth of new development with an assessed value of about 212 million um in adorm tax value of about 3.9 million they estimate construction employment uh based on the full calendar year of 24 at 1548 jobs would be lost or affected just okay that's the effect of uh one year's worth of development now of of that Revenue would some of that Revenue can that be applied to storm water improvements uh or is that money that would be counting on to address some of these um issues that were already what I don't want to do is is or what I want to see is if we're going to cut our throats or not or if we're counting on this money to fix some of these issues that we well it could be you haven't chosen for it to be it's your general fund is what she speaking about there and you also have the storm water utility now the storm water utility is not measured there but that is paid by a dwelling unit so as you add more dwelling units then obviously you are uh getting more uh revenue from the storm water utility but you could also choose you know your general fund is your most uh flexible fund and you could choose uh money to come out of there but I only caution that as we've talked about in the past the vast majority goes into things like public uh safety and uh and goes into the court system judicial system and other things so um but yeah that would be available so from what understanding you know especially with amendment 10 some of this this Revenue could or is being depended on to um to fund our First Responders to fund other entities within the county so exactly exactly uh do we have any data I know that a recent report came out and this Council voted on um we had a surplus of 1,800 affordable units that leads me to believe there's a downtick in the housing market do we have any data showing that this is naturally working itself out economically you know supply and demand is working I think clay can are are are we trying what are you seeing as far as maybe permitting activity through the valuch county building Department we are seeing a reduction in the amount of permits we are receiving but it's still an increase overall so in other words the rate of increase of permits has slowed but we're still seeing uh more and more people coming in is that for new construction clay yes sir okay um the and again I'd like to caution on the findings from the uh uh the the shimberg center who is the basis for us to be able to identify that there was a surplus that's for one calendar year um and it could change tomorrow it could change come December um and it's again looking at primarily 80 to 120% of uh Ami annual median income uh so what you need to look at is that next year it could be a def different but do we have um subdivisions lined up waiting to be built as we speak is there are we ready to break I mean or is this Market working itself out I hear mixed things I'm just trying to establish that right now there you know we were looking over the last TW 23 and 24 as far as permitting and what you see the majority of our subdivision activity were for two lot subdivisions um there's roughly 900 Plus Homes that have been processed through the subdivision process um of which about 40 of them are associated with these old two lot splits someone coming in they have a 10 acre track in not thousands and thousands and tens of thousands of homes well again you're looking at roughly about a thousand homes over a two-year period have gone through as far as overall development plans got it thank you clay so much councilman Kent yes my question is for Mr casbeer so on the east side how much the support any support help I mean you know since you know we're anything's to me anything's on the table the idea of you know we have Pon Inlet and we have matanzas Inlet what what if what if the county and the state and the FEDS put an inlet near Highbridge what kind of what kind of help with flooding getting water off the east side uh into the Halifax and not to mention the benefits of cleaning up the Halifax with having a wonderful Inlet right there can you can you share some information on that if you have any and if not that's okay we we can look at no that's fine most of this would be speculation we haven't looked at it specifically uh overall uh and I would caution about making large changes to the historic flow of certain areas uh obviously Lake Jessup comes to mind when the corpe of Engineers try to straighten out the St John or the uh St John's river they cut off the flow in there and it changed that that environment beyond what people think so uh something of that size would require something like the core of engineers to come in and provide that type of support and uh now uh most of the time anytime you get more mixing overall the better you're going to have much better water quality you're going to have much better storm water flow overall but there are a lot of potential unintended consequences that come with those types of things I I I heard speculation and I heard U possible better storm water flow and water quality and I know some elected leaders in orand are are asking these same questions uh thank you councilman Reinhardt thank you chair um to hit on that you just hit on a group the Army Corps of Engineers and I was going to use this question later but Daytona Beach is involved with a study with the Army Corp of Engineers for Midtown which floods all the time I mean it was built in a basin it was built in a in a you in a bowl I think was the best term that was used and they're looking at possible ways to help them are we working with them to learn and I think I know the answer to learn uh what they're doing that could benefit us in other areas I mean not everything is Cookie Cutter not every area is the same but you know some Basics yeah we've actually had and I say we I said myself personally but also staff had had multiple meetings with the folks working on the Army Corps study the actual Army Corps staff and um to answer your question yeah uh yes we we are you know eagerly anticipating what they come forward with as a solution and recommendation I can tell you what they're doing because they they've asked for data from us because the uh a lot of the um uh water bodies the canals that uh are affected by Nova Canal are County maintained and we do have data and including some past studies where that area has been modeled um including uh some of the uh areas around the airport so we've provided that data and what they're doing is they are modeling just like we talked about with our own uh Basin analysis they are modeling the area trying to see what how things react in different storm events and then they can see well what if I take this flow away and rerouted or what if I store some water over here so they're essentially doing you know what we're going to be doing in a lot of our studies and Analysis of our basins and then they're going to see how the area reacts they're going to put in in the model certain types of solutions and see how so we don't have to recreate the wheel we can learn what they're doing yeah I mean because we all know that the issues that Midtown face are you know similar to what Holly Hill faces South pona and and down the line along that entire Nova Canal that being said um when we talk there's been a couple discussions about uh the water are or person to oversee when we make changes to our standards and hopefully we'll make some changes to our standards that are currently like we discussed um and I I know there's mun code that's out there and the way we review that how often do we review mun code Muni code to uh determine if we if they're making the changes like we have made in other words they're following what we're doing or vice versa how often are we reviewing those M codes to see the comparison well in the last nine years that I've worked here responsible last nine years we've only amended the chapter 50 m uh standards once once and they they followed through it was the beaches and dune standards and so there was no real need for them to amend their code because that's solely our responsibility okay all right so if a city does an update to their immunity code in any way do we look at do we see that how often do we review that so could that be a function of that Zar and I'm going to get to another thing and just hypothetical I don't have to answer that um the other thing uh Ben had hit on Canal and we know a lot of flooding uh was believed to have happened as a result of uh some of the damage to either the canals or uh previous storms when canals weren't cleaned out not ours or could have been ours I don't know but there I found out a lot of information about canals in the last couple years and not knowing what was City what was County what was State uh and maybe that's something that that Zar could do because it impacts from water as well so I'm just curious if you have oversight over that cuz right now what we're relying on is a lot of times citizens report they they call a councilman they call a City Commissioner hey we've noticed that there's trash or debris or a bed sitting in the in the uh Canal uh and it usually we in turn call our public works or they do the same and then it's cleaned out if that was something that was done on a more regular basis would that help prevent that hey this is an area that needs to be cleaned out a little more frequently yeah I mean obviously maintenance is an important aspect of whether your system functions or not I can speak to what we do I mean we do regular inspections of all of our canals um to make sure that they're flowing uh free of absortion um and then you know we base and I talked about it when we were talking about the storm water utility you know it's an inspe inspection based system with some routine maintenance and then some maintenance based on those inspections so there are some canals that you know need a a cleaning every six years and there's some canals that need a cleaning every six months and so I can speak to what we do uh with regards to your point though there are other canals and other drainage uh uh you know assets that um are not the responsibility of valuch County that might be the responsibility of the state or they impact ours correct in the in the uh the Nova Canal study is a perfect example they're looking at an area that's where the flooding is really you know result of the Nova Canal which is a DOT asset but the water from the Nova Canal leaves through two County assets Reed Canal and and part of that Army Corps study corre correct so you know they it touches everybody so there's not one entity that maintains all of them the the chairman had asked a question was a good question with respect to uh properties that we see flood traditionally every storm and um and I I understand every storm is different uh ground that was not saturated before uh is saturated for this storm it could have been that you know we received so many inches of rain prior to the storm like we saw with with recent storms um have we looked at anything we're constantly looking at at I saw Brad burall walk in a little while ago we're constantly looking at properties for the for acquisition for uh preservation and whatnot uh do we look at any of that and say you know what that's a good piece of property next to the orang city hospital I know that the owner was willing to allow us to pump water there but what if there's a different owner next storm and uh Minds change you know what I don't want you pump my water there so we're not going to allow that have we and I know that it's all incumbent upon the seller wanting to sell because we're not going to be able to acquire it unless they're willing to sell uh have we looked at that like you know this is a huge piece of property that we could use for that for retention so yes to answer your question yes we budget a certain amount of money in the storm water fund every year for property acquisition position uh I know multiple properties that we have acquired they're typically smaller um Lots you know we talked about the uh like the D the DPE Lots or the West Highlands Lots you know we're aware back you know at Roden Bridge we knew where there were lots that were low where water naturally drained and uh if we saw them come up for sale or we were able to contact the owner we would acquire those lots and sometimes we got them for three four $5,000 which is you know a good deal at the time so from that standpoint yes we're always on the lookout for property now I will say we work with Brad's staff and and when he CU one could lot tie with the other we're aware of the you know the list of approved properties and we've discussed um hey you know that's a good that's a good place to put some water Lake Moore is a good example that was acquired by the city of Dand that's where we're pumping you know that's where we pumped water off of Taylor Road so yeah to answer your question yes that thought came to mind when the lake Miller discussion was occurring too whether or not there were any properties and I know that that there is one specific piece of property out there that they've asked about purchas and the individual won't won't allow it but I didn't know if we're continuing to you know squeaky will so to speak okay uh in regards to acquisition of lands within the flood plane yes sir uh you may have heard the State of Florida is utilizing the Elevate Florida uh basically uh what you have right now is a a grant program run by FEMA that with repetitive loss properties properties within the 100-year flood plane that have filed multiple of claims within the last 10 years um typically it's 75% paid by FEMA 25% paid by the property owner to either Elevate the home to meet the minimum finished floor elevation in the flood plane or to vacate and make it into open space conservation the Elevate Florida program is coming in and helping out with property owners who want to get out by possibly offering that match being paid for them also that's something that Ben's crew has identified as a potential option as well for our efforts to secure some of these properties in the flood plane the other aspect and Brad's probably running down here right now is that we do have a small lot acquisition program through valua forever they've been targeted in specific Antiquated subdivisions Cape Atlantic Estates and uh West Highlands where we can go in and where we can buy strategically some of these lots to prevent them from being developed and utilize them for open space for uh since you mentioned that I saw Brad run down literally thank you uh Danny Robbins you want to wrap this up absolutely uh chairman I don't see anyone else up here uh but real quick right before we get into public comment I just uh getting ready to make a motion now that we've established a solid jurisdictional foundation I'd like to make a motion to require just our public speakers uh require them just for this uh meeting to provide their address so we know if they're in a city and a or a municipality or if they're in unincorporated County that way we can address um and and triage these issues and pinpoint uh where where these um problems are actually existing so that's the motion is there a second on the motion to require speakers to give their address a question before second if I may Mr chair certain did you say City or full address I'm sorry did you say City or their full address U their their address and if it's within the city or if it's within unincorporated County that way we can direct and allocate our resource pinpoint where some of these issues are I think it would be beneficial for us to know give us a better idea of how to address some of these issues give us a path forward County issue we know that we have to deal with it I don't have a problem with that I I'll second that um one second okay we have a motion to require speakers to give their address motion by Danny Robbins second by David Santiago I'll just say I I will oppose that as I always do for for matters of safety but I think what you could do is when you come up tell us what city you're in and and tell us if you're in unincorporated valua or a municipality um so I think you know that but any other uh comments or questions before I call for the vote it would just be for us chairman that way we can verify and our staff can verify it uh the information so it's all public information anyway I understand um uh all in favor of requiring the speakers to give their full address say I I all those opposed by like sign I and it's four to uh three just walk in Carissa would you call the roll quickly Mr Dempsey Mr Johansson is this for full address pardon me this is for uh the speakers full address yes sir pardon me no no no general area yes not full address Mr Kent no Mr Reinhardt no Mr Robbins we lost already so it don't matter I'll say no but I'll I can also amend amend the motion to just say City or or County to make this easier thank you chairman Mr Santiago I don't know what just happened there he said no but he'll amend the motion um so always ask him to say their City he said they could just say their city but it's always the vote on the first motion is the same if somebody wants to make a new motion they can let's just get through this then no make a new motion Mr Brower no okay so when I call your name please come up you have three minutes to speak if you can do it less there's quite a few of you that want to speak and tell us what City you're from so that the your representative up here does know where you're from if you know what district you're in tell us District One Two Three or if you're in unincorporated valua most of you know if you're in unincorporated volucia or not because you're of your tax bill Carissa green Mr Brower and County Council I did just want to let you know that we have approximately 87 88 speakers um that are have signed up to speak Mr and they I wanted to make a suggestion Mr chairman if I may um obviously if we have 86 87 speakers that means we're going to be hearing from speakers for 4.4 hours from now so if you're number 85 go home take a nap uh and come back in 4.3 hours obviously I'm being funny um but I I wanted to recommend Mr chair in the interest of getting through every speaker because I noticed the room is thinned out already if we would entertain reducing that time to 1 minute per speaker which means we'll be in out of here while Rumblings okay he it look sounds like the audience don't like it hey have a seat I withdraw my comments get comfortable okay like I said if you can do it less cuz what what he says is right there's 87 people but you've listened to us for three hours now it's our turn um just be uh succinct and um and remember what I said at the at the beginning for for all of us don't if somebody says something you don't like don't don't boo them they have a constitutional right to have an opinion um okay we've got a lot of people downstairs as well I'm going to call uh both because it takes longer for the downstairs people to come up but the I think the first person that must have I don't know what time you got here but it's Michelle Delaney and then Allison root if you want to come up from downstairs Mr Brower I did just want to point out for the people in Chambers as well as downstairs if you take a peek up at these screens over here um the next three people will be um shown on the screen that way they can start to make their way up from the CH the Rotunda or the tck training room good that's it okay ready Michelle we are ready where are you from I'm from Orange County I'm from Orlando but I work in valua every day so so thank you for the opportunity to speak today as we continue to navigate the challenges of managing growth and maintaining a high quality of life in fuchia County okay it is essential that we remain focused on both the immediate and long-term needs of our community we are all aware that fuchia county is currently at a Crossroads in terms of growth and development recently as you know we are here as a significant discussion about possibility of implementing a moratorium on building in response to Growing concerns about storm water management and the potential strain on our infrastructure yes this is a complex issue as we just heard but one that must be addressed with careful consideration and thoughtful Solutions I personally have never been one to throw the baby out with bath water so let's first review the facts in your local budget for Valia County you allocated approximately $10.9 million on your budget roughly $3.2 million was used for employee related costs approximately 2.2 million was directed towards operations on Capital Improvements you spent $2,995 these allocations highlight a critical imbalance while significant funds have been earmarked for Staffing and day-to-day operations which are crucial only a small portion has been directed towards the long-term infrastructure improvements and capital investments in storm water systems as a result we are facing a growing gap between the infrastructure we have and the infrastructure we need to support the continued development of our community this is particularly an important given that the increasing frequency of severe weather events and the strain that rap development can place on our storm water systems so what can we do about it today all my clients are in the construction industry and we're talking about Solutions here ladies and gentlemen not drastic steps first and foremost it's it's essential to strike a balance while a moratorium on new development say may seem like a solution it is critical to recognize that growth is inevitable people love Florida and we want them to love Valia County we need to be proactive in finding ways to manage that growth in a way that ensures the long-term sustainability of our storm water systems and overall infrastructure here are a few suggestions that could help address these concerned reallocation of funds for Capital Improvements we need to prioritize storm water infrastructure thank you thank you thank you for your comments we appreciate has it already been three minutes yes it has wow um Alison Roots thank you for letting me speak oh where do you see a list okay so the people that are downstairs are going to wait for three hours we can't interpers any of them John Nicholson you are next Mr Brower um the public speaking numbers one through 62 or we have them as being in Chambers when they signed up so right I understand that John Nicholson you'll be followed by um Frank srino John Nicholson Daytona Beach side um I have three uh Concepts comparing apples to app and oranges to oranges I also have don't throw the baby out with the bath water and the third is Do no harm I've been to about three or 4 thousand City and County Commission meetings Rob Merill often says water stays on the property I've heard it a million times and yet today I hear that water that flows onto the property is allowed to flow off the property so if we have as we've also seen on the chart 18 inches of rain if 18 inches of rain flows onto the property do we say that two inches of rain flows off or is it logical to say that if 18 in flow on then 18 inches flow off which would account for the flooding because if you're at the bottom you know what they say about the low man on the total pole you get the water now in apples to apples are you absolutely positive sure that it is not the excessive rain that is causing the flooding you are absolutely positive that it's the development and not the excessive rain that's causing the flooding you have to be sure of that secondly I used to walk the beach and in uh 198 1998 Hurricane Floyd came through and I walked by the old berad property it had a 25 foot Sand Dune all of a sudden the Sand Dune went away and there was a seaw wall why would anybody build a seaw wall 25 ft under a sand dune my neighbor said well we haven't had a hurricane in 26 years back then the seaw wall was at sea level that's what's happening now we're going through drought and rain we had two decades of drought now we're going through rain and contrary to what some of you may think Mr Johansson you cannot control the weather this Council has to deal with the weather that's you're given to so if it's flooding it's flooding do what you can um I would ask that uh you send Ben on a road show to these different cities to show what he has to each and every city because most of the people if they will go to their nearest city hall to see this I think they need to see it thank you Frank seino followed by Mike D Frank seino unincorporated Valia County District 4 and we flooded when the Nova Road Canal crested council members I'm encouraged to see our community come together and collectively identify flooding as an issue unfortunately we have jumped to a conclusion without any factual basis to support it it is reckless and irresponsible for any of our local government me uh officials to place blame and propose irreparable harm to an industry responsible for building the very locations that every single individual here will Retreat to when this meeting concludes a far more productive approach would be to engage all sectors of our community collectively identify the real causes of flooding and work to together to affect the needed change construction is a vital component to our local economy as you will continue to hear today if you question construction's importance let me bring you back to the beginning of the pandemic when everything in the county was shutting down everything in the country was shutting down Governor DeSantis signed not one but two executive orders designating construction as an essential service we just witnessed the 2024 elections to its conclusion and interestingly enough both presidential candidates identified the national housing shortage as a priority and proposed policies to help increase the production of housing it wasn't just a campaign issue as President Biden also recognized housing's importance by making it a key theme in his last State of the Union Address and I truly believe we will hear it again when president-elect Trump delivers his next State of the Union Address I was proud to see Valia County featured in the November 2024 issue of Florida trend magazine the caption read the greater Daytona region is rising in prominence as a Crossroads Place to do both business and live in the heart of Central Florida if you've been a resident of Luchia County long enough you know how hard we've worked to get to this point the work does not end here as we continue to attract Commerce and Industry we need to be mindful of where those that required work force will need to live these issues go hand inand and we can't lose sight of that my final thought is if you move forward with this proposed moratorium and you dismiss tens of thousands of our licensed local professional residents in the construction industry who will you call who will the remaining residents call when the next disaster strikes in the county needs to be made whole again I hope you are not planning on relying on the unscrupulous and unlicensed individuals who swoop in from out of state after a disaster and pray on our most vulnerable citizens at their most desperate hour thank you Mike disher Town manager of Pon Inlet and you will be followed by Nicole Burgess thank you very much Council for calling this meeting we really appreciate the opportunity to be here and to listen to the Fine presentations and uh from your county staff and your insightful questions I'm here today just to share a little bit about Pon Inlet as we talk about the the potential of a moratorium I just want to share that ponna is a little bit different from some of the other communities that we've been uh discussing or heting in the news namely that we're almost built out you know we have about 150 vacant residential lots in the entire Place uh 14 commercial Parcels that are vacant the last subdivision we had was in 2020 and the one before that was 2002 so it's a little different situation in that we have a lot of residential uh properties that were built actually before for these new storm water standards um so that's our main challenge is trying to retrofit those areas and deal with the transition between the newer homes that have to meet the new standards sitting side by side with the V uh the the existing properties that were developed before those standards now we've been working a lot toward that uh since 2020 we uh Council issued a moratorium I'm sorry not a moratorium a resolution pardon me uh that declared that uh flooding and resiliency were major issues that needed to be addressed in the community since then we've embarked on major planning efforts we did a vulnerability assessment in conjunction with the regional planning Council we've done a watershed master plan which is actually not only a modeling of uh sea level rise and storm surge to out to the year 2100 but also is going to help us improve our our flood insurance rating we're going from a class five to maybe four or three that's going Tolo improve the flood insurance for all of our residents so really just want to make sure that uh we are on the the same page as you guys as you move forward with these these new initiatives and new regulations we're looking into those as well we got a long list of projects that came out of our Watershed master plan uh we just we looking for funding at this point you know to plan and design those and get them constructed but we want to partner with you and share the information that we've gathered to date and work toward you with these new improved standards so thank you thank you will done Nicole followed by John Joslin Nicole burges Daytona Beach today my daughter's 20th birthday she and her two roommates were living in my home when it flooded for the second time in 2 years when my children were young I used to say talking about a problem without talking about a solution is whining so each of my points today are solutions to the direct public comments raised at the November 19th city council meeting to the developers I can give you resources that show that low impact development saves you the developers money as is as it it is less expensive to use existing topography waterways and preserve natural vegetation rather than creating traditional storm Water Management Systems in having to plant new Landscaping to the Realtors who are concerned about home sales my husband is a real estate photographer and our livelihood depends on your livelihood market trends are showing the slow of Statewide housing market due to skyrocketing Insurance costs and repeated flooding keeping existing homes above water helps you on behalf of the contractors subcontractors and Tradesmen concerned about loss wages I can point you to the building industry Relief Fund additionally I would like to ask Belia County to assist homeowners paired with uh uh various assistance like drywallers roofers Carpenters painters and the like so that we can help rebuild our homes that are still needing repair and to the council M council members who ask for more studies I would like to remind you that we have completed studies such as the 2015 308 page Valia County integrated flood plane management plan and the 2020 599 Page valua County multi-jurisdictional local mitigation strategy which talks about environmental impact considerations feasibility of implementation and benefit cost ratio I would like to personally thank Mr Johansson Mr Brower and Mr Kent for the time that he spent with myself and the faith group in discussing solution oriented oriented strategies um and um to Mr Santiago that any time that we wait trying to come up with decisions and put together new plans only impacts existing uh individuals in your community a moratorium is not the best solution we already have actions that can be taken today I'm asking you gentlemen to be an example of how government can work but I'm also asking to demonstrate efficiency Mother Nature will not wait she does not care whether it's Tuesday or Flag Day or my daughter's birthday the combined damage to personal and Commercial properties from hurricanes Ian and Nicole and Milton total 94.9 million decide today that building on Wetlands is part of the problem maintaining natural topography and natural vegetation is part of the solution optional low impact development is part of the problem mandatory bo low impact development is part of the solution and if you'll excuse me I'm going to go celebrate my daughter's birthday thank you thank you uh John jlin is not here so we'll move to Pat jlin who is next and then you'll be followed by JC figurado I did not put down what I wanted to say because I wasn't sure after listening to all of you guys I think I agree with the lady from that spoke last we've got all the studies we need now we need to put our little feet to work because I was at the state meeting last week and every city except for the city of D land and the City of Daytona came in with goals and what they needed we didn't but I didn't see any of you guys there either Mr Mr Brower was there but I didn't speak very well there at that meeting I think we just need to get moving because hurricane season is barreling down on us and we're still holding water thank you Mr Kent and thank you Mr Dempsey for being helping us thank you JC figuro how you going my name is JC figuro I'm district one um I brought a uh couple of pictures here there's some models that I made we got them okay um so like she said we have a lot of this data that we need the question is do we really have somebody that can understand it and put it to use right so can you can you go to the other one we can go to this back to this one so this is what I made my driveway this morning right my wife looked at me like what the hell I was doing out there at the shovel in a gallon of water but what I did here is the concrete okay this is what's happening in all these Wetlands when we're digging these ponds you are building up well what we're doing is we're allowing to be built up and in the top one in the top left that's a pond and all those rocks are houses to dress it up I put a half gallon of water in that and then I built this other one and I sprinkled 3/4 of a gallon of water on that one and what I'm showing here is that when we dig into the water in these wet areas which is happening all over the county the water that we're storing in these ponds from rain is FASTT tracking it to the water table which is seeping out and it's flooding the surrounding areas this model can be built on a much better scale uh you know it was done quick but what you're seeing in the top left is the water seeping through the sand that all of these Retention Ponds are built out of right so when you were talking about earlier you know how do we make sure the water stays in it we can't it's not happening the water is fast tracking out wet soil and the reason we're seeing all this spread further and this is why moratorium or some type of Regulation change in rules needs to be put in place is because the the when soil gets wet water moves through it a lot quicker when it's dry it meets resistance when it gets wet it FASTT tracks it so at this point what we need to do is put this in place and stop this from affecting all of the developments um west of us Ben Oaks the country club all that was built on natural topography which is now starting to hold water so so I got asked earlier I said well it's water it's rain water it deserves to go in the ground and and perk like everything else it does so maybe we need to look at some type of underground uh kind of drain field system under common areas uh under roadways in these developments but something needs to be done to control the rainwater and it be released into the water table at some sort of Natural State um also I definitely think uh if you guys can update the chapter 50 to eliminate the cities and uh other municipalities from bringing in uh reclaimed water and deep water wells to fill their ponds that would be great that should not be allowed thank you thank you uh Jorge figorito thank you very much thank you for your time uh I want to First compliment you all on the way you're working together last time I was here you all were like fighting and all that and thank you for working together to try and figure this out first thing I'd like to say I've come in here and I've been pretty hard on this board I I'm sorry uh but um I meant what I said back then but I think you all really really get this I think you understand and thank you for understanding by the way I'm in Dand district one um Mr Dempsey's area um so thank you what I don't think unfortunately I don't think staff gets it and you all are relying on staff to answer your questions and and it's really when you deal with professionals especially Professional Engineers which I did my entire career if you don't ask the right precise question the exact question that you want answered you're going to get answers are going to lead you astray and they not going to uh satisfy what you need to know so please be very careful with that the other thing about staff is they're good at dragging their feet running the clock out okay so you need to push them you need to push them hard um I saw data up there I saw rainfall data um I have a PhD I can use data if I wanted to spend a lot of time on this I bet I can make the data look uh incredibly different what the staff is refusing I think subconsciously maybe consciously to accept is that development has had a significant impact on the flooding okay it has all this talk about the Hurricanes yes of course nobody's going to survive a 20-inch storm event it's not going to happen but it wouldn't be as bad if we didn't have this development where's the problem the problem is in the the guidelines and the the requirements for the drainage and storm management okay we have a flawed process in place every development that you approved going forward is going to be built four to 6 to 8T above the others it's going to have the same problem J just pointed out I'm sorry to the developers they're not to blame they're only following what is approved and what is required by the Professional Engineers and the professional water people okay if they told them to put the houses on their sides and put elephant ears on them they would do it right that they deserve to be working but what's the ACT I forget what Einstein said doing the same thing over and over again you get the same result right okay that's why you need some sort of pause or something because if you keep allowing the developments to be built with the same specifications that the professionals have placed you're going to get the same result and instead of hundreds of people you're going to get hundreds more thousands because all of the existing development is going to be overwhelmed by the higher development and the flawed um design I think there's a flawed design that's being built out there and uh and so but listen but thank you because I really think you all get it and uh I know it's and you all are victims thank you cities have taken advantage of you thank you Pamela Pamela terer you'll be followed by Nathan uh rear my husband and I live on East Taylor Road and in the unincorporated part of of Dand District 1 after our home flooded in the last hurricane we were out of our home for over 2 and a half months we missed Thanksgiving we barely made it back in for Christmas leaving no time for any family visits or celebrations that's family time we will never get back I trust you got to visit and make memories with your family and that you had a delightful holiday because we did not I'm here asking you today for moratorium to on building to address the issues of flooding in our County before the next hurricane comes and floods us which is probably will happen and it's just a short time away every single time it rains I get anxiety I have repeatedly asked for something to be done about the retention Pond located beside our home that regularly overflows onto our property and causes a large body of water on our land I ask for a burm to be put around it or at least do something I don't even know how that's legal but anyway that's another story I ask our ditches remain full of water I ask for those to be dug out nothing we get nothing how are you going to protect us from the water that floods us our area in the next hurricane or in the even in the next rainy season because this happens to us in the rainy season before the hurricane it did that all I hear is study study study and I can appreciate knowing all the facts but it's time now to address the flooding issue by taking some real steps that we can see whether or not the moratorium is the answer please is there some way to appeal to you to take these significant first steps to address the flooding people like me we're still suffering over this issue and we need help now without your help we can see no path forward we feel hopeless please do the right thing and move forward with either the motorum or steps to begin addressing these flooding issues in the county thank you thank you and you are Nathan tell us last name Nathan richar uh Danny Robbins District 3 fuan Incorporated ladies and gentlemen I stand here before you today to address a critical issue that affects all of us in fucha County flooding as we've seen in recent months flooding is not just an inconvenience it's a significant threat to the safety stability and well-being of our community from the devastation of homes and businesses to the emotional toll it takes on families this problem cannot be ignored any longer yet I want to proposed the solution does not line a moratorium on building as some may suggest but a proactive strategic approach approach to address Flooding at its core rather than halting growth we should focus on developing and implementing solutions to make our community more resilient safe and prepared for the challenges ahead one such solution is the adoption of a flooding mitigation fund a deic a dedicated funding mechanism aimed at financing the repair and mitigation of flooding risks throughout vucha County this fund will not only help protect existing homes and businesses but would also ensure that our growth remains responsible and sustainable for years to come the key to making this Fund in reality is fun finding a flex flexible and sustainable funding mechanism we have a range of options that can be tailored to our community's needs for example a sales tax could provide a steady steady stream of Revenue to support critical flooding mitigation projects this would be a broad-based approach ensuring that everyone who benefits from our infrastructure contributes to its upkeep and improvements another option would be a dedicated millage which would create a stable long-term funding source specifically earmarked for flooding mitigation efforts this would ensure that resources are cons consistently available year after year for much needed infrastructure repairs and upgrades a special assessment could also be implemented in the areas most affected by flooding with funds being used for localized flooding mitigation solutions that directly benefit those neighborhoods additionally we must explore grants from state federal and private sources these grants could help support large more complex mitigation projects from improved Drainage Systems to flood barriers and storm water management technology IES by securing Grant funds we can stretch our resources further and maximize the impact of the flooding mitigation fund by implementing one more of these funding mechanism we'll be able to address flooding risk ahead of protecting our homes our infrastructure and our quality of life more importantly we'll be able to continue our growth and community in a way that is safe stable and resilient this is not about halting development it's about ensuring that we build we do we do with so foresight responsibility and care for the future the answer is to answer to flooding isn't to freeze progress but to embrace smarter more effective ways to manage our growth while safeguarding against the very risk of flooding together we can create Bela County that is not only prepared for challenges of today but the one stands in a model for responsibility resilience growth let's invest in solutions that protect our homes families and Futures thank you thank you for your comments uh Elliot Meadows Allison root and Cindy Harris hey everybody I'm Elliot Meadows 590 Lake wiet Drive d'an Florida I want to thank each and every one of you guys for um putting yourselves out here and uh putting your making your opinions known also want to thank all the people um that spoke before and showed the charts um I spoke with Miss Joselyn here earlier and her and I talked she's got flooding issues I'm a builder however I live on Lake winam AET so we're dealing with the crestwind stuff so like I said before I'm on both Ides I own many many houses in Holly Hill Daytona Port Orange new samna Edgewater three of my houses flooded so I understand and I respect and appreciate every one of you guys that's going through issues because I'm going through the same exact issues but I can't get flooded and then also lose my job and I know that Miss Joselyn and also miss Buress were talking about well listen Elliot just do some repairs on some houses and you're going to be fine and yeah that may be true but at the same time I've been working for 25 years to be a builder it's my career it's what I've chosen to do with my life and it's how I affect my community and I help my family and I help my friends and so to just say hey stop it's not appropriate it's not right I wouldn't ask any of you guys to stop your careers because of some other issue that if I actually stop my career today it's not going to affect the flooding issue now I wanted to I want to bring up one really really interesting thing because all of the houses that I own personally that flooded were all from the 60s and from the 50s and from the 40s and so the point that was made that in the last hundred years I I think it was I think I forget who it was but they made it that the last hundred years I think it was uh um the attorney but um we didn't have the rainfall in the last 100 years that we've had in this first 25 years of this Century so if you just look at those totals I think it's pretty obvious what's going on the older houses that did not have the the rules and regulations that we build with today those houses are the ones that are all flooding you're not hearing about the houses in Victoria Hills flooding you're not hearing about the houses that are in Spruce Creek flying flooding it's not happening it's the ones that were built before the rules and regulations were in place so you know we're using the fact that you know hey let's stop the builders the builders are the ones that are doing it but in fact it was the fact that we were allowed to build without regulations in the 30s 40s 50s 60s and just finally in the ' 80s they said hey guys hold on wait a minute you have to put your house above the road oh you do okay cool well so now what we we're looking at is FEMA is actually going to make all of these houses get torn down you heard these guys mention the Elevate Florida situation well if you spend more than 60% of last year's taxable value of your building in a 5-year period they will make you elevate that house or tear it down so guess what if you used the save our homes act and you didn't have to pay an elevated rate taxes to save this little old lady's house for the last 20 years guess what she has a smaller building value and now they're going to tear down her house let's not do it guys is Allison root in the room and Cindy Harris good evening chair and council members my name is Allison root and I live in the city of Deltona I represent today the blua building industry Association which is located in Holly Hill um today I want to address the storm water issues facing our County while I recognize the devastation some residents have experienced I urge you to consider that a moratorium on construction could have serious consequences for both our County and local economy according to an American Community survey the seventh congressional district of Florida which includes the southern part of our County ranks in the top 10 nationally for construction industry employment with over 20,000 residents in residential construction this represents many families who depend on new construction for their financial stability moreover we must consider the impact on our local governments I know there was some data given earlier for 2024 but um in 2023 I sent you guys a uh email with the economic study that we actually paid to have done um and with the average permit price here in valua County um constructing just 100 single family homes in vucha County generates over 5.3 in million taxes in taxes and other Revenue permit fees impact fees all the fees that coincide with that um and that's just in the first year of construction in 2023 valua County issued over 2,000 permits so for every hundred homes it's 5.3 million in revenue and you did over 2,000 permits that's a lot of Revenue so without that Revenue are we running a risk um for budget cuts on any kind of programs that you guys offer staff Cuts I don't know um and would or would it lead to an increase in our taxes as valuch County residents so it's just points we all need to consider before we make take such a huge jump um additionally we need to think about how a moratorium on school impact fees would affect our school board um we've had ongoing concerns all over the county about overcrowding in schools and cutting off a key Revenue source for them for building with only the worsen the problem the current 2024 25 school year budget includes $10 million in revenue generated from new constructions you're ultimately putting a moratorium on building new schools as well because they're losing their funding um these are vital questions we must address before making a drastic decision to Halt construction while storm water retention is essential there are solutions that won't cripp our economy or our local government other counties in Florida have faced similar challenges and overcome them and the vbi is eager to work with you to share successful strategies that can be implemented here we have many ideas to help mitigate storm water issues without incurring extra taxpayer costs or lengthy delays um so I hope to hear from you soon thank you um Mary Spain followed by Bella Schwarz followed by Michael McGee good evening Cindy Harris and I'm an unincorporated New samna Beach I'm in District three three Danny Robbins District I had the pleasure of hosting a neighborhood meeting at my house last week with Danny Robbins and Ben Bartlett and it was very interesting I learned that I live 22 feet above sea level and that's pretty pretty cool isn't it logic would tell you 22 ft you wouldn't flood right well my neighborhood's in a man-made bowl and we flood um pretty bad can you go to the next page please this was my house after Ian in 2022 and the next page this was my yard after a thunder stor last September and the next page nope there we go this was a picture after mton every storm my neighborhood floods like this all because of a man-made Bowl so Mr Kent I get it every time there's construction everything's elevated and elevated and elevated so I'm not here to really talk about the moratorium I'm talking about Solutions because building Cod are getting stricter and worse because Florida is nothing but Wetlands there are solutions out there but we're one Community vucha we all need to work together and a very brilliant engineer which every single one of you knows um AJ from sea level development came to my house and actually talked to my neighborhood and he had a brilliant idea it's called sand plugs where you go and you aate your n your yard with sand plugs this is an idea that you can probably throw into the development instead of these ponds Retention Ponds which don't retain anything they do that on golf courses they aate the golf courses so that they stay green they don't retain water and I just want to tell the council I'm so glad you guys are working together tonight this has been a very interesting meeting and the Public's really looking to you to help and I just want you to keep that in the back of your head remember that we're looking for you we need your guidance so thank you for this evening oh and one more thing new runer storm water study won't be finished until spring of 2026 okay just so you know thanks thank you Mary Spain Bella Schwarz Michael McGee good evening Mary Spain I am a resident of Spruce Creek Flyin son of a gun my community was established 56 years ago that's a long time in that time we have had seen our share of hurricanes however the last two years resulted in never before flooding this was an established Community it caused road damage and the closing of our main entrance on Taylor Road diverting 1598 homes and businesses onto Airport Road that in and of itself is called flooding this direct result of previous County commissions allowing the use of large swats of land without adequate planning causing severe strain on damage to Spruce Creek St John's river canals tributaries all over over all of them overreaching their limits every single one I urge you the elected Commissioners to vote now on a oneyear moratorium no new County building to identify areas and just to the identify areas of flooding correct the current disaster areas one year is not a long time when you guys are looking at the next hurricane also it's known as your mess this time you can't put it on anybody else's shoulders anymore this would permit St John's uh River Water Maintenance District to report its findings to you vucha County to correct its different deficiencies plan for the next fish years and don't worry about about the uh Verge Harris I'm sure you can get around that with all the problems that have experienced it appears to me that you need to act now not later not tomorrow thank you thank you Bella Schwarz you'll be file file followed by Michael McGee and then Alexa Schwarz Bella here good afternoon councilman and chair oh oh can I restart the time please yeah just go oh good afternoon councilman and chair what wonderful people you represent here in vucha the folks here are kind and ambitious And when they see an issue in their Community they do what they can to help with the solution I know this because just a few days ago I began a petition to end development in this County I shared it with everyone I knew and spread out through my high school I'm currently 16 and I tend to land High what I originally anticipated to be small petition turned into viral Beacon of Hope containing over 2,000 signatures I repeat 2,000 signatures from the youth and even the locals I've sent this to all of you by email and while spreading this petition I did not encounter a single person who opposed a building moratorium in fact so many of my classmates who had been victims of the flooding even when tell me spread this petition further one boy explained to me with sadness that he couldn't even access his home which had been his family for Generations here from this petition I've come to learn and realize three things one that the people of Lucia deeply care about the overdevelopment but have felt helpless against fighting it two that the only reason overdevelopment could have possibly continued this long is due solely to Greed and three that teenagers are more powerful than I ever thought they could be the youth is not a powerless group we may not have the money or the spots in government or even be a voting age but teenagers are still the most powerful group because we are the future of this County and we are hoping that each one of you represent your constituents accurately by ending development inia everyone let me see a show of hands who here wants the development to stop please vote accordingly thank you thank you Michael McGee followed by Alexa Schwarz is Michael here okay Alexis Alexa Schwarz followed by uh Raquel Levy good afternoon councilman my name is Alexa and I am 17 attending D land High School I am here today to speak in favor of the building moratorium here in Valia County I was born and raised in Valia having spent the first half of my childhood in Orman by the Sea and I missed the way that my Beach town was I remember when the last Green Space on Granada was bulldozed in order to build a Wawa that was a very sad day a place that used to be filled with so many oak trees and Wildlife has now been replaced with concrete and more cars the second half of my childhood was spent in the land where I have enjoyed many activities in nature including kaying biking and I even got certified for scuba at our local Springs whether east side or west side Nature has been the anchor to some of my happiest childhood memories and as we go into the future I would like for my children to experience those same childhood memories however with every tree that falls I realize becomes less and less likely I am ask I am asking all of you here today to restore our faith in the nature of vuia and to vote for a moratorium here in vucha account thank you Raquel Levy Levy sorry Frank mohar and Teresa Krauss hello good afternoon and congratulations on your re-election Mr Brower thank you um so Bella schwar started a petition um for a moratorium here in Valia and she was hoping to get about 100 signatures and come in here and talk to you guys she got well over 2,000 without much effort and most of those signatures came from her high school so it speaks as to what the Youth of Valia wants and I believe that it's a moratorium my name is forel Levy and I'm a local attorney uh here and I'm not a constitutional lawyer I don't know I'm not a government lawyer I'm actually a personal injury lawyer but I do know that our founding fathers wanted property right rights to be protected however the rights of each individual ends where the rights of their neighbor begins so if we're going to look at property rights with the highest level of constitutional scrutiny Mr dumy I'm sure would understand this even better than I would it's required to have a strict scrutiny standard which is the high highest standard Allowed by law and a strict scrutiny standard calls for a compelling governmental interest to restrict that right which means we acknowledge many conservatives for conservation acknowledge that property rights are very very important but when you have compelling interest to put a temporary restriction on those rights for the greater public good and that interest is compelling I think we should notice that because here we're having flooding we're having contaminated water we're having more car accidents and we're killing the future of our children with every tree that falls the future belongs to them and many of us here grew up in Valia and had a beautiful wonderful childhood you know people are coming here what are they coming here for before are they coming here to see the subdivisions more subdivisions people saying you know we need our jobs well what are they going to do when the last tree falls and there's no more else to clear in the name of greed tearing down the environment is not survival it is pure unadulterated greed that is what it is thank you please vote in favor of the moratorium thank you for your comments Frank Mo mohar Teresa Krauss and David Robinson good afternoon or should I say good evening at this point chamber members uh my name is Frank molar appreciate the opportunity to speak before you tonight I've been a resident of Valia County since 1977 for the last 30 years I've donated hundreds if not thousands of hours of my time on multiple boards throughout our community I love this community I'm passionate about it I'm passionate about working with leaders in our community to move our community forward in a positive direction my heart goes out to the residents that have experienced flooding over the past three hurricane Seasons I personally was living in W Wilber by the Sea and I F saw my whole backyard wash away in many of my neighbors homes fall in the ocean it's we've seen Devastation and hurricanes like we've never seen before over the last three years this area has been hit by five hurricanes and sustained just under 16t of rainfall these ex stream weather events over overwhelmed our infrastructure and it's imperative that we do a better job to prepare for such catastrophic events in the future clay touched on the D the D just made a major changes to our development code which I'm sure all of you are aware of for new developments for residential and Commercial which will substantially inre Inc storage water on sites putting moratorium torium on development is not the answer this would be Financial suicide not only for the county but all for for the cities as well over half the workforce in blushia County would be negative negatively impacted and thousands of jobs would be lost nearly 10 years ago I stood before this Council I didn't have any gray hair at all and presented a a recommendations from the Beachside Redevelopment committee that was appointed by this County this report took over a year of weekly meetings and collaboration of multiple citizens and Community leaders including myself and commissioner Kent to my knowledge the county never implemented any of these recommendations citing a lack of resources fuchia county has multiple issues that need to be addressed fuchia County faces unique challenges according to Florida Trend fuchia county is one of the slowest growing counties in the state that's great I would urge this Council to focus on proactive Solutions such as improving drainage in low-lying areas cleaning out and maintaining retention streams addressing blight throughout the community working with Daytona Beach and other cities for positive changes continue attracting highp paying jobs to retain our talented youth the number one export in our community has been our children with because of the lack of high-paying jobs all of these initiatives require resources but they also demand vision and cooperation and most importantly leadership by working together we can create positive change and improve the quality of life for All valua County residents let's avoid division in our community instead take meaningful steps forward in a positive direction thank you thank you for your comments Teresa Krauss followed by David Robinson followed by Doug Bell hi good evening County chair Jeff Brower and District 5 representative David Santiago we are 10-year residents of Glenn Abbey in DeBry Florida I'm here to request flood compensation and formal investigation and new plan to prevent future flooding of the Deber Plantation Basin and our property when we purchased the property we were told that there was a $17 million installation of drains and pump to prevent flooding after 20 08 after three hurricanes in which our past owner was flooded on the evening of October 9th Pine Valley Court pumps were working and there was no flooding on the morning of October 10th the electricity went off at 3:30 in the morning I looked out my back and front door and window there was no standing water when I woke up at 700 a.m. the electricity was still off my backyard and front yard was flooded inches above each door water was seeping in our house and I tried to keep it dry with towels blankets and sewer water came up through our master bath shower drains the floods Waters consisted of fresh sewer and gasoline at 9:15 a.m. our neighbors rescued my disabled husband me and our one-year-old pumpy along with our important paperwork and pictures outside of our bay window with canoes we drove to the Orange City hotel and they did not have electricity so we stayed with friends the outside of our house flooded over 15 in and inside up to a half a foot of water depending on the room we were without power for over 3 days everything everything that was on the floor was destroyed including my grandparents heirloom dining room set all of our appliances inside and out were flooded my vehicle was total due to the flooding our flood insurance settled the claim and paid 25% of the total adjuster estimates FEMA paid a minimal amount for the miscellaneous food Etc but the remaining claims were denied I had to speak to a counselor daily to cope with the the events in the aftermath I met with a debber city manager and engineer to discuss our property they shared the Miller Lake Basin in Orange City was pumping their water into the Deber Plantation basin without communicating with the city officials as part of the belusa county $133 million award I'm requesting to be compensated with the 75% of the flood adjusters estimates and the $50 for our loss of contents I expect a formal investigation and a new plan to prevent future flooding of my home at the very least I expect that the county will pay for the purchase and cost of in a of a Hydra barrier underground pump and I will be scheduling a one-onone for your comments uh David Robinson followed by Doug Bell followed by Dennis Shepley good evening my name is David Robinson and I am the director of advocacy for the Daytona Regional Chamber of Commerce on behalf of the Chamber of Commerce board of directors representing a membership of over 900 businesses in the Daytona Regional area we appreciate the opportunity to speak today we understand the difficulty of the discussion today when we speak as a chamber of commerce it's important we base our position on data and facts we do believe that those who have experienced flooding need attention attention excuse me and need it immediately however it is important to remember that a temporary prohibition on development through a moratorium will have significant economic consequences for our region impacting even those who are not experiencing flooding a Mortor will hinder economic growth disrupt ongoing projects and create uncertainty for businesses and developers well beyond a Time certain moratorium the Florida Golf Coast University study that we referenced in our Communications with you all notes that recovery from a government imposed moratorium will last up to two years after a moratorium is lifted we are not threatening that jobs will be lost it is a fact and has been substantiated to result in major employment loss for not only those in the construction and development industry before a wide range of industries that service new and expanded business and residential growth we acknowledge that some areas of valua County face challenges with flooding some attributed to historic weather events and some due to aging infrastructure we urge the County Council to engage with key stakeholders and finding solutions that address growth challenges without stifling progress we support the solutions that vCard has offered as a collaborative approach to balance development and infrastructure needs we ask you today to not support a countywide moratorium and focus on Solutions that provide a clear path forward that benefits the country businesses excuse me the county the businesses and residents alike thank you for your time Doug Bell followed by Dennis Shepley followed by Connie Colby just want to say that this is a combination of something I've been trying to propagate for the last over two years and I bumped heads with Mr Robbins on this on Facebook a couple times on 202.4 I have been Adit promoter of that as the importance that impis in in the cities to I want to say we would but not be here today if it we're not if storm water and the intent of storm water ordinance has been followed which is that the quantity of storm water retained after development shall approximate existing pre-development conditions and precautions will be taken to prevent erosion sedimentation and flooding and I can tell you I can testified to this that the city oh I'm I'm I'm Doug Bell in in on Hazen Road in North West Land in the Incorporated unincorporated section and danan came and put a subdivision right next to me the they did not follow these uh these kinds of uh the law or the ordinances over here I can testify to that because it used to be I was not flooded I'm flooded right now and they was flooded back in 2004 from three three hurricanes and that the reason that happens is because they put all that uh grass buildings and everything and a higher pavement that was 40 acres back around there all some of that comes down and has fled me I remained flooded I was I was flooded for 2 years in 2004 so I'm a testament to that and I can tell you I have ter my property a little bit before all this because I wanted to keep the water high so it would percolate down and that's a good storage area anyways so anyways the other thing that's that's that's on my mind and that's really really important to me is five times I have I approached different ways to try to find out where the where the these municipalities have submitted their compliance with this uh section of chapter 50 all the all of chapter 50 and I have yet to find any place according to what the the code says it says thereafter the County Council shall review set ordinances for compliance with this Division and after said review informed the municipality as to whether or not the municipal ordinance is in compliance with this Division I would like to see those that paperwork back then this was this should have been done in 1997 I would like to see that that public and I've talked to this this man's office there's a couple other places I've gone I've talked to the Forester he went back to his records he couldn't find it so it's someplace there and that would be proof as to whether these municipalities have complied I don't think they have Delan did Edgewater did but are they in implementing it and following the the directive on there obviously we are not cuz we're here today and a lot of people have been flooded my sister was flooded but not due to this uh particular thing and I was flooded because they didn't do it so anyways I would I request this counil to have the the uh the admin administrative part to show us these documents where they have submitted these things to you not to you here but back in 1997 I would love to have those documents be made public so we can see what's going on thank you so much by thank you uh jennis Shepley followed by Connie Colby followed by Tony Deno good evening Dennis Shepley uh Red Robin Drive Port Orange District 3 onc corporate evolucia um I I believe in growth in development I really do I'm a contractor I made a living duing as many other people do however I also believe a moratorium should be put in place not for the reasons that everybody really is going against here but for the reasons that we had to listen to for two hours ahead of this meeting I listened to Kay Irving and Benjamin Bartlett which I think they left we had to listen to two hours of testimony of they had the answers for everything but I've come to the conclusion especially my own particular incidents they do nothing they don't review the proper plans they're supposed to they don't file through and inflict the codes that they're supposed to and this is a major problem we have all the rules in place to protect us so we could have growth in development as long as they applied the codes enforce code enforcement and reviewed the proper plans they failed to do so and as we heard for two hours they have the answers for everything we have had all the codes they did all the investigations they were very well polished they sounded very good but they're not they're not implying what they know and that's a problem whether they're underst staffed or they don't do it I don't know but I've been to this growth and development office about a hundred times in the past year because of my problem and nobody's been there and I came at all sorts different times morning afternoon evening nobody's there I don't know where they go what they do but they're not at work and that's a problem uh I could speak for hours of my problems I don't want to waste any more time we've listened to so much testimony we obviously there's a problem we have to do it we have to imply it whether you're formal Auditorium or not it doesn't matter we need them to inflict the rules that they're supposed to thank you thank you Connie Colby followed by Tony Deno followed by Wendy Anderson um good evening good night whatever it is now um Connie Colby I'm in District Four Troy's District um and we did some talking last night too um the picture that I've put up um is a picture that shows so much of what's going on in our area this is at the corner of Williamson Avenue and Williams excuse me Williamson Boulevard and H Avenue in Daytona Beach um as you can see this was taken about two weeks ago the amount of fill that they've put at this property is almost up to the top of the fence today we passed by this property on the way here today the dirt is up to the top of the fence and there were two trucks sitting on top of it um the problem with this too is that it encompasses three different areas it's a point where Daytona Beach Orman Beach and the City of Daytona all come together there's some County property in involved there as well so anything that you perceive to do needs to be addressing multiple areas where they come together boundaries um and how they interact with one another is there some way of making sure that if they're going to put all that dirt there it's going to affect us as well the east side of that property backs up to property that goes down to Clyde Morris which is all Orman Beach um there's um a nursing home along there on Clyde Morris and there's a senior development there Aberdine that's behind that as well and the whole area from there down into Daytona they could call apartment row lots of fill along mostly all fill there I don't hear anybody talking about stopping building on Wetlands at all tonight I think that should be totally outlawed and also the mitigation banks that they're using for fill um any property that needs that I think we don't need at this point um as far as moving forward and it seems like it would be a good time to take a break um some of the things that were talked about earlier were reasons why um they don't really know what's going on why there's so much fil so much um excuse me so much flooding and yet it they still want to continue building well if you don't know what's going on why should you keep building maybe you need to take a break and find out why it's flooding before you build more um the money that you're going to lose okay we're still going to need that tax money to build more schools fire trucks um emergency vehicles thank you thank you very very much Tony Deno you're ready Wendy Anderson followed by Dana mol my name is Tony denzo and I'm the immediate past president of the valua building industry Association which I reference as the VB moving forward I'm also the owner and president of luxury Builders Incorporated which has operated in fuchia County over the past 45 years sir chair and fellow councilmen I want to thank you all for your time today and ser to our vucha County I also want to express empathy on behalf of all vbi members and staff to the stormwater victims many of our members their families or loved ones can relate to the issues which our area storm water has created the leaders at vbi have been working hard to find the right solutions to help mitigate these issues one key way to address the flooding issue and create long-term Solutions is by establishing a storm water Roundtable this Roundtable would utilize the expertise of our local mitigation strategy team and existing advisory boards bringing together professionals government officials and Community leaders to openly discuss funding policy and strategies to combat this flooding this collaborative approach would allow us to draw on a wide range of insights creating a shared vision for how we can protect our infrastructure improve drainage systems and and mitigate future storm water risks the role of this Roundtable be critical it'll provide a space for continuous Dialogue on how we can improve storm water management policies and ensure that funding is allocated efficiently and effectively by establishing this advisory role we can stay ahead of potential issues ensuring that storm water infrastructure is maintained improved and adapted to meet the needs of a growing Community this initiative isn't just about talking it's about taking action by working together we can find Innovative practical solutions that address both the immediate needs and long-term planning required to protect our County from future flooding we're not asking for a halt to progress but for a collective commitment to thoughtful and sustainable growth we can have both we can build a stronger more resilient vucha County and ensure that we are safeguarding our community against the increasing threats posed by flooding let's make this a turning point not just for our infastructure but for our future this this round table could also be part of the um waterers are that everybody was talking about because I don't think it would be it would be wise to put it on one person I think it needs to be collaborative with everybody government and the public and all the professionals thank you thank you Wendy Anderson followed by Dana M followed by James Clark Dr Wendy Anderson I live in unincorporated Delan District 1 um thank you for having this meeting tonight um it's really great to see everybody um really putting their their hearts and Minds into into this conversation I personally you all know all the things I represent uh or all the things I'm affiliated with I'm speaking only for myself tonight um I am neutral on the moratorium um but like everybody in this room I want Solutions and I want them today um it is true that total ual rainfall has increased climate scientists tell us this is our new normal for the rest of your lifetime the rest of our children's lifetime this is our new normal and we do need new development codes and design plan uh design and planning strategies U to address that it is also true that we have more impervious surface than ever before and um and so you know I could say a lot more about that but I'm going to jump forward um I want to add one more layer to this wicked problem um it isn't just that we have flooding on the surface and that our and that our surficial aquifer is saturated it's that we are continuing to deplete our deep aquifer our drinking water supply our so sorts of aquifer for this for this County and and part of that is that um we have built so much on our drier Uplands which is where the aquafer gets recharged okay so we have the Collision of the of these realities more rain and more impervious surface and we now need new Land Development codes to deal with these our real predicament is how can we continue building and how can we retrofit what we already have to facilitate moving water from the surface back into the deep aquifer a world-renowned landscape architect um kanjan Yu this past week used the phrase sponge cities to talk about how urban areas could and should be built to facilitate storm water absorption and aquafer recharge that notion is basically low impact development as I and so many others have advocated for for so long um D's new storm water rules which were referenced a few speakers back now give credit for low impact development strategies that's really good news also we do not want to discharge we do not want to expedite discharge to the river for all the reasons that have already been explained we want that water in our County deep below our County do not send it to the River where it's just going to flow to the ocean environmentalists typically um Champion Urban infill over sprawl um I want to pick up on something that Mr Dempsey said earlier that we really need our cities to be buying up undeveloped land within City boundaries to to have storm water storage areas during during the the flood events we were looking for places to pump the water you have to have places to put the water um and we ALS also need to to expedite the purchase of of homes that have have regularly flooded I had so much more to say and I I totally lost it so okay thank you James Clark followed by David Hill followed by Tom rutage good evening commission our Council uh old habits are hard to break sorry U Mr chair thank you very much um I don't know why aam's Razer comes to mind but it really does here because sometimes we um just really totally bypass the most obvious issues that we have um and I would like to introduce um some more elements here that we think about as we move forward um I have to say that uh at first glance I'm really really for moratorium but I'm more neutral because I am more solution oriented than I am um slash and burn or I try to be these days in my term as a City Commissioner I was constantly sad by watching the development how development raised my city in the four years that I sat vegetation gone bad development policy I watched as developers came in and I don't blame developers developers are the kids commission are the parents I blame the parents because we allowed La lack standards to um we didn't police ourselves we didn't we lost $10 million on one development deal walked out of our city because of a technicality $10 million 10 m million dollars walked out so I don't blame the kids I blame the parents we need to talk more also um Dr Anderson brought it up it's one of my things about flooding that I didn't hear uh from staff also and that was the impervious surfaces and if our Council or anyone here is um interested Miami Dade commission has um made that a top priority and if you tune in June uh or January 21st from 10 to 12 um they have just um are passing an ordinance is going to require alternate um methods to take care or mitigate some of these impervious surfaces so we really need to talk about that we do need to talk about building standards because we talk a lot about minimum standards I think that's kind of slack on our part how can we shine how can we do better we need to be talking about that so I want us to talk about that um I want us to also um dispel some myths first of all that um you know yeah money comes in for the school board but school board's way of figuring out how many kids you can cram into a building is flawed I want to talk about Bert Harris that is so skewed and it's used as weaponized to the point of nausea so we need to stop with that because Bert Harris was initially introduced to protect ranchers okay and farmers and by the way what happened is speculators bought up all their property so now it protects them so unintended consequences I hope as we move forward here that we do have more input um from Staffing I hope to see more neutrality from Staffing as far as what's good and what's bad for us um because I know that in Deltona we changed we had to hear both sides and I want to hear why we should have a moratorium and why we should not but I didn't hear that you know um I want developers to make money I want to keep people employed but we need to protect our residents um and we do have a lot to unpack here and I hope yall remember some of these things moving forward thank you thank you uh James Clark followed by David Hill followed by Thomas rutage pardon me James Clark that's not you James Clark is no longer here David Hill Thomas rutage followed by Tammy wak hello dve Hill Miller Road Orange City uh district one unincorporated uh in the county thanks for letting me talk today I support a moratorium I don't think it's going to take you a year I I think you already know what the problems are I think you're already working on Solutions and you could do this quicker than a house could start and be finished so I support that I also wanted to let you know today I was at the uh St John's Water Management board meeting uh their staff gave a presentation on my community and the solutions and the things that they're doing the board was very interested they were asking for State funding they were asking questions I think they were they said that they are ready willing and a and wanting to work with the county or the cities to solve this problem I got the impression that they were very eager to help now I think is a good time to get the city of theberry the city of Orange City and the county in there come up with the solution and I think they're prepared to present it so I just want to say I I'm a Salesman I could sense from the questions from the board which they've never asked questions of us or the staff that they're eager to help so I think now is the time to get with St John's put a solution together and make it happen thank you for your time good good news Thomas rutage followed by Tammy wak followed by Donna Pippen good evening my name is Thomas rutage wiber by SE District 2 unincorporated County thank you for your service to our community uh you've heard about the human cost uh to the flooding um I'm a little bit concerned about the staff function you guys don't run the county the staff does and so over the years since this is the hottest topic on the planet you guys should have been brought solutions to flooding for years this should have been at the top of the list for years and something tells me that that hasn't been happening I don't know why but they run they run it y'all make the policy based on the ideas that come before you is a policy decision anyway I I would ask that you do your best to maybe see what's going on with that um what we learned from the staff tonight is that we have inadequate standards that we get a certain amount of rainfall and it's a lot more than that well that's the new normal that's what the standard has to be we can see that there's been at least one municipality that has decided to adopt that standard okay that's a good idea because that is the new normal we can say well the standard is but that ain't working okay um one thing about a moratorium is is that will Fast Track the best mines in the county to get this going when you stop everything that's going to make everything move at the speed of light the best minds are going to come together you're going to find the solutions you can do the carve outs the carve outs will happen fast you'll be able to still do things but the real problems will be addressed and will be addressed quickly and hopefully with minimal impact your community um now the legal we talked about this Bert J Harris thing I was the mayor of Pon Inlet we were sued by a developer uh we had a moratorium before my time there that lasted for 3 years uh for water front development and we won and we won big we won the takings we won the Bert J Harris if you do it right you don't have to worry about that that's fine and let's talk about the political side of this um we're in a new era of C citizen involvement in val County in in the last election cycle the old system was sadly beaten by citizen activism this is only the beginning um there will be no more special interest candidates selected by the compl and automatically fill in the council seats those days are gone we will continue to follow the money and vote accordingly and I'm telling you we have an army behind us this is only the beginning I would ask you to support this moratorium to Fast Track the solutions because that's what we're talking about is fast tracking solution and that only comes with economic pain thank you Tammy wnc Donna Donna pepen and Gina Holt hi good evening um I've never done this before so please stand with me on this um my name is Timmy wnc I live in vucha county for 52 years we purchased our 61y old home 20 years ago in Norman Beach and yes it is a 60-year-old home um that has never flooded before for until since 2017 the same year that the wetlands for Margaritaville was being developed on our home flooded with 6 to 12 Ines of brackish sewer water and then again three more times within the past two years if you research the past four hurricanes you will realize each storm had a maximum sustained wind speed equivalent to that of a tropical storm with only a couple of wind gusts reaching category one speeds when passing over valua County and with each storm the flood waters were taking longer and longer to recede and the amount of sewer leakage is getting progressively worse God forbid an actual category one hits our area with a full speed head on it is very obvious that decimation of our area's wetlands and bringing in Phill with overdeveloping are caus are the main cause of flooding in volia County I understand many developers and construction workers are against this moratorium but honestly too many residents have been have lost absolutely everything due to these flooding events their homes their life Investments have lost value due to flooding and trying to find someone reputable to repair our flooded homes is extremely difficult leaving many of these residents displaced or living in mold and bacterial investment invested homes infested homes without any other option some residents are using their life life savings or going into debt just trying to repair their homes only to flood again unless drastic measures are taken to prevent the flooding atrocities from reoccurring our family has been displaced from living in our home four times due to flooding and most recently we have been living in an RV on a driveway for over 3 months awaiting for our nfip insurance claim that has yet to be paid for us to even start to begin repairing our home I implore well we have only lived in our home for nine months after repairing it from the 2022 floods wow I implore each of you in this Council to stand up for the many families whose lives have been horribly and irreversibly impacted by overdevelopment please approve this moratorium to Halt further development while practices are put into place to prevent future flooding of homes in valua County I agree with Mr ruffled rutage we do need to FastTrack this and the only way to do that is with the moratorium and I appreciate you for bringing this up and everybody else who has come forward to say anything about it thank you thank you Donna Donna Pippen Gina Holt Ken Goldberg hi my name is Donna pepen and I'm in district one in the county over by Blue Lake I'm on blue like terce um I want to say congratulations to Jeff for for winning um I feel honesty and integrity one over money and manipulation and the people spoke loud and clear and I'm really happy that you were able to bring this topic up and not let it go a lot of people have been talking about the flooding and I live near a lake but I haven't I didn't have any problems with the flooding um I want to speak about other things with development I think we need at least 6 months for a moratorium because you know where I live I can wait for two or three lights over by Kepler and uh 44 before I can get through that and there's already going to be more developments and it's going to be hard to even get on um I4 so there's the problem not just of the flooding but there's problems with needing New Roads the schools are getting crowded so those are other things that during that moratorium I think that you all ought to look at um so the the other thing that I wanted to bring up which you will be hearing a lot more about in the future um I was at the Deltona meeting because I knew they were going to be speaking about the um the past which is the forever chemicals the land has been tested and we are very high um this is going to be and now all cities are going to have to be tested and the only thing that the main thing that takes them out is osmosis which is would be a huge expense for the city and when you have new developments we still are using fertilizer on The Lawns we are still adding chemicals to the water which we drink and then there's the problem of the aquafer as Wendy Anderson brought up you know are we going to deplete the water I can remember I've been here 45 years and um right in this area in vucha county and I can remember there was a point where we were talking about saltwater intrusion maybe it was in the 80s or 90s but it was people were very worried about it like oh what are we going to do there's salt water and TR are we going to you know make water from the ocean so all of these problems need to be looked at so I think that you do need six months moratorium to look at them all and see where are you going to take people for the young people that were here the 16 and 17 year olds you know what what is their future thank you thank you Gina Holt followed by Ken Goldberg followed by James Mather good evening I'm Gina hold I live in District 3 unincorporated Edgewater I am a native Floridian I am a 30-year resident of valuch County and I don't have anything to say because Wendy Anderson stole all my points um one thing that I I I'm fascinated by the discussion and the staff presentations I learned a lot tonight I'm really glad I came one thing I did not hear discussed in any way was how these elevated developments displace the water that may have stood there for centuries that is not something that I've heard any engineer address in their calculations so you take five acres you rape and scrape it you fill it with clay that does not percolate you cover it with impervious surfaces there's no way for the water to um to be there anymore and and if you displace that water where does it go it goes on to the neighbors I would like an answer to that question how is the displacement of the water calculated in any of these engineering um also uh for years I was a residential appraiser I know that developments charge a whole lot of money for those conservation views and those those lake views they charge extra money they don't want those Retention Ponds to go dry dry they want to keep them full if they are full how can they possibly hold all the water that falls from the sky that's in this calculation um it it just doesn't work in my mind uh so more impervious surfaces more displacement of the water um more irresponsible unsustainable development if not a moratorium what then you guys have always had the power to say know make these developers shrink their developments I'm reading in Bell they've got 8,000 houses some developer wants to build that's insane I would hope that this County would never permit anything like that but why do these developments have to be so big if they weren't so big they wouldn't ruin so much land and flood so many neighbors so there is a lot of ways that you could control and manage development without a moratorium but you have failed to do do that and at this point I think all moratorium is going to do is pause it to give you time to catch up and I'm in favor of that and I thank you for your hard work thank you Ken Goldberg James ma Patrick fiser Ken Goldberg Delan Florida in district one with Don as my council member Don go um is he gone every now and then we need a bathroom well we all we all knew that listen since the last meeting uh I just want to thank the staff for using that time wisely I think they uh clay Irvin and the rest of them did a really good job you know I think they did a fine job and thank you all for you know maintaining decorum throughout this uh proceeding on the Das here listen I'm a builder and a contractor I've been here 28 years I'm a small businessman and I think all the builders that are here all the contractors that are here they're they're all small businessmen I don't see any like major DR Horton development uh Representatives here um I came up in the business building homes for big and medium-sized Builders though I I have worked on big developments was in celebration for almost 3 years I was up here in vic park for two with the St Joe company I work for Masterpiece homes Bob he's gone now um I've been on my own now for nearly 15 years I only build maybe one to three Custom Homes a year I do a lot of commercial Renovations and things like that nobody in this industry that's here builds homes and businesses for people wanting them to flood and nobody here is greedy everybody here is just trying to make a living not a killing we are in the business of hopes and dreams folks that's what we do for our clients and in particular the American dream of home ownership and with that the security and stability that brings to our fellow human creatures in our communities now we live in a place people are trying to move to in a big way that's a lot better than living somewhere where everybody's trying to leave the economy is good here and it's growing let's keep it that way but we can and we will do better I'm confident of that it's possible to both manage storm water and provide for more housing opportunities for valua residents it's complicated it's challenging and requires thoughtful Solutions moratorium is not a thoughtful solution and will hurt our economy in very bad ways it will unleash chaos we all have contracts with customers that have time limits best people in the business are right here here before you let's work together thank you James Mather Patrick fiser Roger bolard good evening Council uh James Mather um in ponon Florida um thank you for being here tonight uh I don't envy your position one bit you're faced with uh with thousands of jobs throughout the county and uh at the same time uh have to face your constituents that have gone through a catastrophic event uh a couple times over the past uh few years so I I don't envy your decision I don't end what you're going through right now um but a building moratorium benefits nobody uh those that flooded last fall are still going to flood if we don't build any more homes for the next year uh people are going to lose their jobs and um and it's going to further increase home prices because you're going to limit the amount of homes that are available and that are on the market it's an overall loss for the county and for the economy of the county your Workforce is going to be forced to leave to go find work somewhere else you're going to you're going to lose good Workforce if you put a moratorium in effect over the next year it's not a good situation um for each home that you're trying to save and we want to save every home but for each home you're trying to save you're going to upend other people's lives through those job losses and through having to leave the county it's a real real situation it's not an easy choice and I hate that you have to make that choice um you know every new home permit that's submitted requires the owner to sign uh a notorized affidavit that understands that their responsibility or that they're responsible for the water that they're displacing in building that home uh they have to do that either by retaining their own water or they have to do it by directing that water to a storm system it's not the Builder's responsibility it's the homeowner responsibility to make sure that gets done that's scrutinized by the county and it's something that's in place and it's done on every new home that's built throughout the county um every new home that's built is built several feet higher than the homes that that we're working through that were built 40 and 50 years ago that's because things change over over the course of of the last 40 and 50 years uh FEMA maps are updated every 10 plus years because things are changing so things definitely have to change Solutions have to come into place but a moratorium and putting people out of work is not going to fix the situation and it's not going to stop the same homes that were flooded from being flooded again so don't don't add to the problem and disrupt more lives let's find a way to fix the ones that have been disrupted Patrick Fischer Roger bolard and Shelley Stewart thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight uh I'm from city of Edgewater District 3 I support a moratorium as overdevelopment has reached a critical point we've already seen the results of unchecked development these are real risks impacting real families and homes it's true chapter 50 of the County's code does set clear storm water management standards yet these standards don't appear to be enforced consistently leading directly to flooding crisis we face today the fact that flooding continues to worsen proves that compliance has neither been achieved or enforced and or your minimum standards are inadequate and dated this Council has the authority and the responsibility to act chairman Brower has already proposed a rural boundary Amendment and now a development moratorium both steps in the right direction but those efforts haven't received the necessary support nevertheless you must take action strengthen the comp plan update the minimum standards I think fil and Bill development practices should be limited preferably banned there are more Sustainable Building methods like stem wall construction hold developers accountable to meet these highers standards second require developers to contribute more towards flood mitigation and infrastructure improvements through impact fees development must pay for itself taxpayers shouldn't bear this burden Implement stronger environmental ordinances to protect our wetlands and flood planes these natural features are our best defense against flooding and preserving them is essential long term fourth expand land conservation programs to protect undeveloped areas in flood prone zones we don't need programs to elevate rebuild or purchase our Homes Florida law allows these actions Counties have broad home rule authority to protect public health safety and Welfare property rights cannot come at the expense of and of the welfare of existing residents responsible development is necessary it's our homes families and our safety that are on the line strengthen the regulations enforce compliance and Implement policies that won't leave our homes underwater every time it rains a moratorium is not to stop growth but a pause to ensure future growth is sustainable and responsible thank you thank you is Roger Bullard not here notice Roger Bullard Shelly Stewart followed by Paula Akerson hello councilman thank you so much for your time tonight and I I agree with Mr Mather I don't en your position at all um my name is Shelley Stewart I'm in District 3 I'm not a builder I run a title agency in town so we handle residential existing home closings as well as new Builder closings I am here with the VB but I just want to say that I do every day see the impact that buying a new home and new home ownership makes to people and their families um so I'm I'm here for in favor of solutions and not a moratorium and I just want to say as we go through before I get started is I'm hearing a lot of this anti-b Builder anti-development but what I'm not hearing is what about the apartment complexes there are more people in a per capita square footage put in an apartment building that are impacting our roads and all of that and I don't hear anything about apartments and I I just had to make that point my goal here today though is really just to put the light and focus on the financial impact of moratory would have on our County the National Association of home builders conducted a study in 2024 on the metro metro area impact of Home Building in the valuan County area by income jobs and taxes and and excuse me taxes generated which can be provided to you I'm not going to focus in on the tax impact and the impact fees and all of that because that's already been addressed I'm going to focus more on uh the re the general not the General Revenue to the county and to the cities but to that of the jobs and wages that would be lost in the county the uh study was broken down into three phases and phase one was just the initial jobs that were created by new home construction in phase two it was the ripple effect which causes or impacts the uh profits for local area residents and uh earnings on new construction period spent within a year after construction and then the third phase was the subs subsequent years following the new construction the survey is based upon 100 homes so again taking out the the government side the local income that would be lost per 100 homes wow is $21 million in the first year uh local business owners 7 million local wages and salaries 14 million and the jobs lost 263 phase two local income 10 million uh local business owners income 2.3 million local wages lost 8 million I'm going to hurry because I only have 36 seconds left uh so I just want you to focus more on the jobs lost we cannot afford to lose these jobs in this County it would be Financial Devastation to Valia County it would cause mortgage foreclosures people to leave the area loss of uh income to to families and I have 18 seconds left on that I'm going to say thank you for your time thank you Paula aters followed by Katherine pante followed by Katherine Le son good evening we're finally getting to the end can you hear me we can hear you now I'm such a quiet little thing I want to talk to you guys about seeing this Council have more power over the cities and the reason I want to see that happen is my kids have lost their home twice they live in Port Orange and they live near Spruce Creek that city has had issues back in starting it I'll I'll just go up to start at 2004 at 2004 Spruce Creek flooded and the main subdivision that I'm going to talk to you about is the woods in 2006 finally FEA FEA and the city agreed to put down eight homes so they destroyed eight homes all over that subdivision and those empty lots still sit there empty because they didn't plan how they were going to use a drain fill by buying those homes so fast forward to 22 they didn't open the drain fills they hadn't worked on the problem that's been there all this time so again subdivision failed and it flooded so let's go to 24 but let's jump back in 22 they decided that they would put in their budget to work on Spruce quak in 25 three years out so 24 comes along and it floods again they didn't even have the sense to fix their tiger dams that they had because they were they were busted so again it has flooded so if we were to have another storm this year those kids are going to lose their home again so I really would like to see this Council I don't know can you change your Charter and add get more power to force the bad players which is the city of Port Orange to do what they need to do to fix a flooding issue which impacted a whole lot of people down there thank you thank you Katherine pante followed by Katherine levenson followed by Bob Fitz Simmons Bob's gone Katherine pante protected I am here in support of a moratorium Public Safety and public health is what necessitates the need for this moratorium during Hurricane I Bia Sheriff's marinan responded to over a thousand call for high water rescues during recent storm Milton 200 high water rescues a total of five Lucha County residents drowned during Hurricane Ian residents are also flooding during typical rainstorms our most at risk and vulnerable populations include flooding events that are becoming more dangerous the more we build are the elderly disabled and children hurricane Ian was a wakeup call and no elected official in our County or the 16 cities heed that warning to pause development and come up with real solutions for flooding in fact just the opposite the develop machine continued with a green light from our elected leaders to the detriment of Public Safety and public health the enaction of our elected leaders to include both County and City staff amounts to negligence malfeasant and dereliction and their duty to serve the best interest of Public Safety public health and limit the damage to property during storms irresponsible overdevelopment has changed our terrain you allowed Wetlands to be filled in paved over creating the man-made flooding we now experience building in a flood plane to grow the County's tax pace is pure greed at the expense of existing residents residents have homes they can't live in rent or sell have to pay property tax on this is driving people into bankruptcy and homelessness vCard a local organization made up of developers and land use attorneys wants to offer solutions to flooding in the wow of a moratorium one of their approaches is to Institute a sales tax dedicated millage as well as special assessments that's rich tax the residents more to fix the problems they created with the help of our elected officials last night at a community meeting held by District 4 councilman a resident asked how long it would take for the county to implement Solutions he replied realistically years government moves slow at least this was an honest reply this necessitates the more urgent need to implement a moratorium now we can't continue building at Mock speed for three more years while government drags its feet and development creates more dangerous flash flooding conditions currently we are number one in the state and seventh in the country for flood risk this statistic does not make vucha County a desirable place to put down roots or incentive for new business to come here we have a legal basis for a moratorium under 2024 and 206 of our county code as well as Florida State Statute 252 valua residents do not deserve the delay deny and gaslighting tactics coming from councilmen Santiago Robins Johansson and Reinhardt we do not have time for stalling our in action Our Lives mean more than the millions in Revenue developers will make it is time for valua County to put his Regents first by creating a safe vibrant healthy Community where do we start by Saving and not Paving what's left of our green spaces every moment we are making decisions between right action or wrong action you are tasked with making a decision on a man-made rule of vested property rights or doing the morally responsible thing of protecting the lives of Luchia County residents thank you Catherine levenson followed by Doug wnel followed by Suzanne Shyer I don't know how to follow that that was so quick anyway Katherine levenson I am in unincorporated baloa outside of Orange City they claim us but no they don't I take that back they disavow us we claim them on our address but they tell us we don't belong to them so they won't help us at all thank you to you guys who have helped us I'm district one with you but both of you have come out and help and I really really appreciate that today I also was at the uh St John water management meeting and they are very interested in helping us they're going to send you guys letters and they want to stop what's going on in Miller Lake at least that'll stop our flooding my home was built in 2018 so it's not an old home it's brand new so I don't know why why you guys think that it has to be an old home to flood because that's not true 2018 and it's a beautiful home I don't want to lose it I don't so the thing is is that we've got to work together and if it takes slowing down and I mean slowing down for six months at least stopping the building figuring out what is the rules what rules should we have what do we got to do to stop the flooding to stop this craziness I don't care about people moving in that's great I would like to have you know people moving in and more businesses and all that that's great but we have to fix our problem now you cannot Hemorrhage and then try to keep going and still you're going to bleed out and die you have to actually stop the bleeding and there's only one way to do that and to pause pause make some rules fix what's going on fix it figure out what the problem is and then start over because we can do that we can do that as a group we can all do it together I know we can so please think about that thank you thank you for your comments Doug wsel Suzanne Shyer and joy Brinley who I think left so good morning yeah not yet but it's close Doug wnel Orman by the Sea let me start by saying that the flooding situation is terrible and the builders do have empathy for what people are going through with the water it's devastating for the affected and solutions are absolutely necessary however the proposed moratorium unfairly targets a vital industry homeb building everyone lives in one it contributes significantly to our economy and Community Development let's not forget this is America property rights are fundamental I wish the attorney was here if the goal is to stop home building in certain areas then the solution is clear buy the land and preserve it the issue isn't new construction it's not it's the unprecedented amount of rainfall and more importantly the neglect of our storm water infrastructure over the years Clogg canals and drainage ditches stand as evidence of years of insufficient maintenance is it the city is it the county is it the state who's responsible I can see the finger pointing now by the way I thought staff did an excellent job presenting people who didn't know anything about construction and development should have learned a lot of how this how everything is processed flooding issues won't be solved by halting Home Building they'll be solved by addressing the root causes and implementing long-term infrastructure Solutions the people affected by the floods want communication and and the thing if you go to your website it's not user friendly I would think if you put a little window that says flooding updates on the front page of your website and then update it with information would be incredible people are in the dark they don't think anything's being done went to a meeting last night with Mr Kent I talked about the $108 million already allocated to mitigate flooding and the people in there kept turning and looking at each other going what they did not know that and that came from the transform 36 funds 386 pardon me funds um you know I had to search seeing what is happening with the flooding and you need to make just a central location it'd be great if people could put in their emails and you would feed them force feed them some information okay in conclusion I you I urge you to reconsider the moratorium focus on collaboration maintenance and infrastructure improvements instead of targeting an industry that always has been a quarterstone of alucha County thank you thank you Suzanne Shyer joy brenley joy brenley asked to be removed okay uh then Peggy Abbot who I think is also left go ahead Suzanne Shyer uh Suzanne Shyer Dre green Belia District 4 Orman Beach what are the County's short and long-term flooding Solutions and what is the plan flood victims do not have time for debate studies new committees and future years of gridlock a mere heavy rain can flood residents again today here is our list of solutions vucha county is lacking in storm water storage capacity utilize vucha County only land for storm water not valua forever land I'm referring to the other land the county owns it's already an inventory so utilize it for storm water stop allowing mitigation banking paying to fill in Wetlands never worked let's respect the wetlands and stop building on them have the county lobbyist Lobby for funding to specifically purchase land for storm water storage listening to Ben Bartlet there is nowhere to pump the water so free up areas and this requires funding for Pur purching land buy out residents who are willing to sell turn their property into storm water storage change the comprehensive plan to require low impact development the keyword require how can valua County teach lid in 2018 and we're now in 2025 with nothing required this is slow even by government bureaucracy standards that this council is accustomed to building higher than the neighborhoods and flooding them is unacceptable require and enforce all storm water to be retained by the land owner the charter Review Committee has its work cut out for it since minimum environmental standards are not upheld in cities failures are all visible get the charter reviewed sooner purchase vacuum trucks and any other equipment needed for repairing neglected and aging Drainage Systems hire skilled Workforce who could be the water Zars to operate specialized equipment to clean out canals in areas that are difficult to reach reach work with the cities to help them with their canals ditches ponds and pipes 133 million was awarded to vucha county in Hurricane Milton Disaster Recovery funds but this won't be enough to solve the problems do needs such as this meet fiscally conservative standards they do not to us yet here we are with enormous funding needs some of these Solutions can happen right now tonight the goal is to stop flooding valua with short and long-term Solutions since some council members stated in November and December they are not voting for a moratorium we're all here tonight to learn what the council and staff's plan of action is thank you for your time thank you is Peggy Abbott here thought I saw her leave Carla black followed by Robert forner followed by Kathy Turner and while Carla is coming down I will say if there's anybody downstairs in the Rotunda there's plenty of seats up here nobody down there they've all gone uh Carla black unincorporated vucha County resident of 37 years District 1 Don Dempsey State Farm is a headline in every media platform as it drops 1600 homeowners in Pacific Palisades not a typical location for fire risks in the summer of 2023 State Farm named climate change and the greater intensity and increasing risk of property Devastation caused by fire is the reason if an insurance giant can have the ability to predict the Pacific Palisades fire a little over a year in advance of it becoming reality and take action to protect its interest then there is every reason for our citizens and local elected representatives to use the same type of data to protect our residents interest our properties and our way of life why am I speaking about Pacific Palisades because Florida's Insurance Giants did the exact same thing they reviewed the data regarding Florida's increased risk of negative impacts of climate change the greater risk and intensity of hurricanes and named storms The increased risk of flooding in locations that had not flooded previously the likelihood of locations that will succumb to climate disaster and many of them dropped out of our state dropped out of our County dropped our residence based on Logistics or doubled and tripled the rates vucha county is the most flood prone county in the state of Florida insurers were well aware of this before it became a headline and they have been protecting their interests it's simple business sense they took action and did what many would call Extreme Measures to feel secure by the same token our residents deserve actions to secure their interests and it makes business sense to preserve the beauty people come around the world that come from around the world to see the beauty here in vucha County to enjoy it considering there is data telling insurers we are at Great risk I am asking you for a building moratorium to take the time to implement preventative measures with our cities to stop the fill and build development over Watershed for low impact development plan and to upgrade our storm water management we can do this look at Edge Water destructive flooding caused by filling Builds on Watershed has been documented since 2019 I would prefer our taxes pay to protect our residents interest than for another scent towards fill and build development over Watershed that's sending our beautiful County into a cycle of being flooded out out uninsured and undesirable I hate to see this happen on this council's watch I appreciate every one of you especially a shame considering chair brower's um preservation efforts his L hard preservation efforts thank you for listening what is your name Patrick I'm speaking for Mr Robert for you're speak speaking for Hot Rod yes okay speaking for me too okay this is Jackie forner um they were devastated by the floods um oh I'm sorry they were their home was devastated by the floods good evening Council um can you pull mic a little closer yes sir the uh tilted up okay Podium goes they're at 12200 uh Orange Camp Road to land uh unincorporated counties surrounded by City Annex property uh we've heard many of our concerns addressed tonight which is very very welcome we have heard about uh the jurisdiction for police action enforcement and the like we have heard about um models and studies many residents need immediate action taken um that's our issue after hearing everything tonight it sounds like we're on the right path but flood damage issues that currently affect our properties and our health we desperately need to get back to a normal life we would like special attention given to Res residents that have definable engineering issues that can be addressed immediately this Council needs to push for action and there are residents that are hurting that need to get back to their normal lives if there are definable issues we'd like to push forward on those actions thank you thank you thank you Kathy Turner Lori galy Gary Singleton we have at least one of those here are you Kathy or Lori okay I don't see Kathy coming forward so go ahead good evening uh thank you very much for the opportunity to speak um appreciate all of you and and your service to the community um my name is Lori galui I actually live in the city of Daytona Beach and I'm veryy happy to have uh councilman Reinhardt as our representative but I'm here tonight to represent um Habitat for Humanity of Greater Valia County and I'm here with my colleague our director of operations Pamela Greenhall uh she also handles all of our construction activities the mission for Habitat for Humanity is to create opportunities for affordable home ownership we are both the general contractor and the bank providing add a zero interest mortgage to every homeowner that we work with in valua County we have built um more than 195 homes working with 195 families and more than 400 children who now have a safe decent quality-built home that they can afford we are also in the process of development of Legacy Woods a a 40 unit de velopment that you approved after very serious and complex conversations with you and the county staff you do have a number of very complex and stringent regulations in place and we do in our experience we have had to comply with all of them for each of our infill building uh with all the municipalities that we work with and certainly with this development however we are certainly mindful and empathetic with everyone in this community who has had a flooding issue there has been some horrendous issues that I know personally of we understand the severity of that habitat for humanities work with our earlier homeowners whose homes were built in those areas and we've done our own mitigation in recent years we do support and encourage everything and anything that you can do we encourage a collaboration We Believe vCard and the Faith organization has been working closely with you as well and we support that but we do not believe that the answer is a total moratorium the homeowner families that we serve represent many essential workers here in this community and we ask you to consider them in this decision you all know how much affordable housing we still need in this community and a moratorium would shut that down we have great momentum we are working hard to build that we have five houses under construction and the development infrastructure underway please consider all of your essential workers and the people who need more affordable housing in this community when you consider this moratorium thank you so much you uh Gary Singleton Gary still here Carmen Ros Amanda he's has left the presence no Gary Singleton Edward tesner thanks for hearing this out and thanks for all your information earlier on I'm live in Troy kin District Breakaway Trails right across from the newly Tobe built Avalon Park and in 22 I took my video camera my phone across the road from where I live and did a little video of the lake Avalon as I call it because there's not a bit of ground you can see there when you go to look at it and then I checked it a couple of times and we had just big thunderstorms last summer and it's a lake how they're going to build on that property I have no idea and I threaten any of you to go walk on it it's a big giant Wetland there after the last hurricane I also went over there and videoed it and put it up online and uh I had one guy that former mayor of Orman Beach disput it and I asked him to come walk with me and see if he could get out of his car it was Knee Deep he couldn't do it so uh you know it's just ridiculous there I came here thinking we needed a 12-month moratorium but I don't think we really need that long of a deal listening to everybody here it sounds like you got all the studies in place you just need the direction to do it and we respect all of you guys you're all smart good hearted people that want better for our community I don't think there's a single one of you that doesn't want that and I think with the proper direction and maybe a three-month moratorium I think that'll get everybody focused on doing it 3 month or six month but I think if we walk away from here tonight without a moratorium so many people are going to go yay we won business as usual in Valia County we're not going to do a darn thing all these Builders I know a fair number of them they've got great ideas and if you got a moratorium on there they're not going to have to stop building as I understand it all the contracts that have been signed and the things that are under construction are going to keep going in the six months they'll go by very quickly they really shouldn't lose any jobs or anything else they should be able to maintain that and go and God knows if you try to get anybody to your house to fix something an electrician a plumber or a carpenter you know there's nobody out there doing that so those folks can find some work in the interim but I would say focus on it get these guys that are Builders the faster you do it you lift the moratorium earlier if you come up with a you know a plan that's going to attack all this and it sounds like all the information's there you just need to spearhead it and I want to thank Jeff and everybody that put it out because if we didn't have the meeting in November saying we're going to have a meeting now in January it would have all been just shuffled away and nobody would have been targeted and as everybody said you know Valia is the number one one county in the state of Florida for flooding number seven in the nation nothing to be proud of and we need to take it on we've got the people in the man power to do it and again thank you thank you David Smith followed by Karen Clark followed by Mark Watts thank you chairman thank you Council I'm Dave Smith I'm in District 4 been in vucha county for 52 years I'm speaking on Orman Beach's saturation impact we're in lowlands we're in Wetlands Luan county has uh well not only the Statewide standing in the likelihood of flooding but now national ranking too our aging and nonfunctioning infrastructure in the cities and subdivisions and the choked uh canals that go through that are not managed by sjwd or are a main problem the tital influence has been severe in tamoka River tamoka Basin region for the past few hurricanes statistical rainfall increases establish lished and demonstrated by graph tonight the clear cutting and Paving are known contributors to flooding I'm concerned hearing from Ben that we are still using 1950 figures to estimate today's expectations it almost sounds like government can't care enough to evolve with the severe weather pattern changes so also Ben Bartlett stated that County Engineers are identifying flooding issues and discuss discussing the issues further with sjwd the dragged out discussions uh they're not making gains to date so I'd like to know when this partnership between blua County and the sjwd is going to come to some fruition of action my neighbors and I would like to see this Council choose to implement a moratorium as legally allowed and keep it as long as it takes for chapter 72 chapter 50 changes to be implemented whatever it takes possibly not as long as a year lastly on creation of a new entity can we not call it a zar as in the Communist block as a veteran I find the usage offensive thank you Karen Clark Mark Watts Joe dubac right thank you for being here and listening to all of us whether you leave the room fall asleep read your emails it doesn't matter you're here so that's good um there's all these people that gave all your technical things about rule this and rule that just see how it goes Jeff brought up in one meeting about smart development when you have 100 acres 40 acres 20 acres don't rip out all the trees because 10 times the amount of water that you see on top the trees hold it down underneath where it's supposed to be so if you're going to have any kind of of additional things with this moratorium which is maybe good for a couple of months because the one fella said then you'll see everybody getting off their butts and see how fast things can get past instead of saying in November oh let's wait until March or April well I'm glad that you guys have it now because that would be a whole lot quicker that you guys can go through a partial moratorium or whatever word you want to use because I know there's like a million different versions but just pay attention and let it see how it goes you'll see how fast things are moving along and get approved we know that and also the St this what when the or fuel Farm went in you asked Jeff Brower he said why didn't we know about this sooner well it's because the staff goes at their own pace and by the time you all hear about some of these atrocities you would have known it months ago instead of 6 months ago from when you were plopped in your land you know oh anyway I got they go thank you Mark Watts followed by J luac followed by Deborah mcshain good evening members of the council uh for the record Mark Watts with law firm of cob Cole and I bring you glad tidings from the city commission meeting in Holly Hill um Let me let me start by saying uh I think all of us know people or have friends and family that have been affected by some of the flooding that we've seen in recent U events and each and every one of those instances I think is an absolute tragedy and I think all of us agree on that and are working daily to to to try and avoid repeat and try to come up with Solutions you'll hear from some of my colleagues here in a few minutes um about some of the specific things we've been working on and recommendations we provide but I'm tasked with u standing up to talk about your legal Authority so with regard to the proposed uh proposal of a countywide moratorium um article 8 section 1g of the Florida Constitution outlines the general scope of authority granted to Charter counties like Valia the scope and Authority can be vested in Charter counties may include the supremacy over Municipal Authority and specific instances the last sentence in section 1G provides that a charter shall provide which shall Prevail in the event of a conflict between Municipal a county and Municipal ordinances it's possible therefore for a county Charter to define the order of priority when it comes to the hierarchy of count of County versus Municipal ordinances section 202.4 of the Val County chter Charter empowers the county to uh the County Council to enact uh with specific authority to enact uh ordinances that apply countywide including within Municipal jurisdictions to understand the scope of the authority granted by chapter by section 202.4 review the specific language is required first the County's Authority is not Unlimited in order to exercise The Authority enacted uh to enact standards in countywide application consideration of the advice and comment of the various municipalities is requireed required uh let's see second The Authority granted by the county uh Charter speaks to the authority to enact standards procedures requirements and regulations that relate relate to specific enumerated areas of regulatory um Authority there are several examples countywide of countywide Standards we've talked about a lot of those this evening what that Authority does not empower the county uh to do is usurp Municipal home rule uh Municipal home rule is defined under 021 subsection 3 and recognizes that municipalities have all authority that is not subject to a preemption by the county pursuant to the county Charter adopted under uh you know Section 1 G of the Constitution so in essence rather than read the rest of what I sent you earlier today you have authority within the mun within the unincorporated areas uh to regulate to impose moratorium to do any of those things your Charter visions do not extend that Authority into the cities I think that's consistent with the advice that you've received from your County attorneys um I think that's consistent with the both the Constitutional Charter and statutory regulations that we all have to deal with thank you Joe dubc Deborah McShan Lisa choser no Joe no Deborah no Lisa Kelly Cortino we've got one that's here winner winner followed by Jessica gal are you still here she's here followed by Chris rally okay um good evening new smna beach my name is Kelly centino I'm the executive director of Lucha County Association for responsible development also known as vCard first I'd like to thank our County council members and staff for organizing this meeting tonight holding this session demonstrates your willingness to listen to us as residents and acknowledge the need for a better system in place here is a brief overview of vCard as a nonpartisan organization vCard facilitates open discussions provides educational resources and serves as a bridge between municipalities industry professionals and residents my members consist of environmentalists Engineers land use attorneys local governments and many other Industries for over 40 years vCard has collaborated with local municipalities sorry local municipalities on a variety of ordinances covering topics such as storm water regulations affordable housing low impact development and many others I'm asking everyone to keep an open mind tonight and let's focus on working together to find alternative Solutions unfortunately flooding issues don't have a single Catalyst or a one-size fits all solution vcards technical Review Committee has formulated strategies for flood mitigation and we'd like to share them again this evening while these strategies have been emailed to all council members we'd also like to share them with everyone here tonight this discussion involves many intricate components and I'd like to introduce my team of experts who I should note are all volunteers they will provide technical insights to help alleviate the challenges that we are facing the following members who will be speaking after me are first Jessica gal who practices environmental land use and Zoning law the second Chris roelly a professional engineer and the third mallerie Tatum an environmental scientist I'm confident that our alternative approaches to protect our residents and Safeguard our homes from flooding if you're interested in viewing our mitigation straty IES you could email me at Kelly ke responsi development.com let's work together to do this in a responsible and thoughtful way thank you thank you Jessica gal followed by Ronda Hobs followed by Jose Rivera good evening Council Jessica gaop coof from and current chair of vCard um first I want to say I hope you appreciate that I've shifted from very long emails to colorful infographics I think it works better um the suggestions that vCard has brought forward are meant to be the beginning of a collaborative discussion one that result in both policy and Regulatory changes to the extent that this Council would like to pursue them we acknowledge the need for proactive changes to reduce the impact of flooding within our community and believe these Regulatory and policy changes exist that will allow these changes to address existing flooding conditions and create standards for more protective development and the use of best practices in the future um there were 10 because what a lovely infographic um and I will hit on three of them before turning it over to the rest of the team um the first and I think my favorite is the establishment of a collaborative quarterly meeting between the County local governments and other agencies like St John's and do um the critical components of this are utilizing a staff level review with experts and then the elected body um of officials from our discussions that we've had so far in the community it seems like we already have a group at the staff level the local mitigation strategy group um that is currently tasked with allocating funding in a reactive measure um after disasters but we think could be retooled to be proactive um in identifying policy and funding measures and then we believe the elected official Round Table recently discussed um putting together a flooding subcommittee that I think would fill in that elected official role um the I idea there is to create a structure that mimics both the policy level and the technical advisory Comm committee to identify funding sources and grants um and create one voice to speak to our state and federal legislators about um in priorities we've also identified the need to create a funding mechanism to address existing infrastructure issues um we talk a lot about how development needs to pay for itself under state law development cannot using impact fees pay for operation or maintenance so existing issues um so finding a way to fund that Gap we've provided some options um they are all policy decisions but the mechanics there we are happy to assist in any of those um we've also talked about something that I think this county has visited a few times which is establishment of transfer of development rights how do we protect environmentally sensitive areas or some of our agricultural lands and direct development to where infrastructure exist to support those uses those are are three of the 10 you'll hear the rest and we want to thank you for your consideration of the topic our hope is to find meaningful changes and approaches that will benefit the residents of valua County as Kelly said we are volunteers but we are are ready and willing to support you guys in these Endeavors any way we can thank you is Rhonda Hobs in the room I think we're going to start going through these quickly Chris rally good evening council members and chair my name is uh Chris rley I'm a professional engineer with Zev con and Associates I also serve as Vice chair of luch County Association for responsible development or vCard as Kelly mentioned earlier vard's technical Review Committee worked collaboratively to develop these flood mitigation strategies we appreciate the opportunity to share them with you tonight as a professional who studies storm water and flood management daily I I know the importance of addressing these challenges proactively regulation whether new or enhanced is not something we shy away from it's a necessary tool we all live work and play here and we want what's best for vucha County the first I want to discuss as a possible solution is emergency storm water easements these would allow local governments to access private stormw water facilities for emergency repairs replacement or maintenance the city of Port Orange enforces a similar policy um which helps them address failing infrastructure during critical events Property Owners remain responsible for costs striking a balance between accountability and Public Safety the second would be repetitive loss standards flooding hotpots required tailored Solutions such as higher design standards increased compensatory storage or strategic buyouts to create Regional stormwater systems these measures ensure that resources are directed to the areas where they're needed most the third is an infrastructure assessment and Regional maintenance programs the county has already gathered valuable data on storm water systems which should now be used to prioritize upgrades and clarify responsibilities many systems span multiple jurisdictions creating inefficiencies consolidating maintenance for regionally critical infrastructure under a single entity or a stormw zar can improve accountability and reduced delays the round table that Jessica mentioned earlier um could play a vital role in identifying priority projects finally Technology Innovation um Tad um addressed this earlier there's actually new technology out there that ties to the weather and will pre- pump down systems that are tied to the weather for forecast where they will measure the amount of that that rainfall is basic creating that storage before the the storm comes these systems have been approved by the St John's River Water Management District um which they have not previously but they have just started getting approved and they will create additional capacity as discussed combining the predictive modeling and automation equips us to handle increasingly unpredictable weather thank you for your time and focusing on these important issues to together we can ensure vucha county is prepared for future challenges thank you thank you okay however I say this it's going to be wrong is it hosu Rivera is it you'll tell me when you get up here Rodney Haggler Jackie vanderlip H Rivera Josh Rivera for sure that's good uh I support the M moratorium if not now then when right uh valo county is number one number one for flooding in the state I think that's more than enough right there means that we have a big problem right today is 96 days after Milton Miller Lake is still flooded 7 fet in some areas water still currently flowing in right now as we speak raise the minimum standard for building and the flooding you know just like they said you we have all these land all these land they're developing on clearly there's water coming off of those lands and and flooding the surrounding properties right whatever formula that's currently being used is not working we know that you guys are pretty intelligent you just got to start acting make things happen stop flooding people's private property and essentially stealing people's property you know bringing property values down everyone's worried about building new homes if you continue to build new homes without addressing the major flooding issue that we have you're just building future homes that are also going to be flooded so you know no one no one wants to live in an area that's being flooded you got to address the this is our number one problem we have clearly so we got to do everything we have together you know work together and make it happen thank you for your time thank you Rodney Haggler Jackie vanderlip Brett Aaron Brett Aaron asked to be removed Jackie vanderlip Rodney Haggler Jake sujan Su sanovich followed by uh Milo Ru followed by Elizabeth pompy how do I show my slides uh you don't unless you had given to the clerk 24 hours ago too late sorry they had to be checked for viruses that's okay you can talk all right my name is such a Wan um I spoke in November and this time I was a able to bring my mom so the story was our house flooded she's like 880 years old so I just wanted to make the council remind the Council of the people who have had their homes flooded um right so it was that 3:00 a.m. phone call so we're here to just tell the council that we're in support of the building moratorium there's a lot of people in the community who suffered um when their homes have flooded and they've lost a lot of stuff including my mom here um I found a document from which the Florida Department of Environmental Protection they wrote in I think it was the 90s so I found it and then they gave they gave some flooding guidelines what you have to do in order to prepare for floods so there's a quote from the document it says it is much easier and much less expensive to prevent storm water problems through proper planning than it is to restore water bodies and rebuild flooded properties so I just wanted to read that statement for everyone who's here so we can as a community try to take those kind of actions and hopefully reduce costs of flooding in the future um that's all I have thank you thank you Mila Raco I see movement Eric and John try it in a minute okay good evening Council my name is Mila Rocka Griffin I am a senior in the Environmental Studies program at the University of Central Florida and a Land Management technician for Bard County whether we like it or not we are inextricably connected to and dependent on our Earth with each action we take we interact with nature often leaving the environmental impacts of our actions as an afterthought whatever we do to the environment we do also to ourselves if we destroy the Earth going to Mars won't save us there is no second chance and there is no Planet B it is high time we acknowledge that our GDP is not the most important thing here at stake for our futures are also on the line and the decisions made today will decide the kind of World We Leave Behind for our children so it is imperative that the Council resolves to place a moratorium on development so that there is ample time to consider the implications further development would have on flooding water quality and availability biodiversity habitat fragmentation and our quality of life when you give developers permission to cut down and pave over our forests you're exacerbating the severity of flooding events putting human lives at risk and causing millions of dollars in property damage Hurricane Mountain alone cost $267 million of damage to structures in valua largely due to flooding furthermore The increased storm water runoff caused by the inaction of our government to limit expansion carries pollutants into our waterways and our aquifers these contaminants diminish our water quality lead to toxic algae blooms such as red tides and deplete sea grasses which are vital to the health of our Indian River Lagoon declines in seagrass have caused massive manate starvations in recent years starvation Remains the leading cause of manate morality on Florida's Atlantic Coast as a 70% decline in seagrasses from 2007 has been recorded obviously the storm water regulations in place are not working if the council decides to allow the further construction of housing developments which increase the population of vucha County enormous strain will be placed on our aquafer which is already being depleted at an alarming rate as the average person uses 100 to 150 gallons of water per day I afraid that if we continue to expand at this rate we'll just turn into another Orlando attempting to make money by prioritizing industry over Environmental Protection is a false Bill and is one that will be paid many times over to quote Martin Luther King Jr for in the true nature of things if we rightly consider every Green Tree is far more glorious than if it were made of gold and silver thank you so much for your time thank you you are you Eric good okay my name is Eric I'm speaking on behalf of pipeline Enterprises I've lived in Orlando Florida since 1998 and in vucha county for about the last eight years now I bought a farm not that long ago I'm a plumber by trade been in the construction industry for over 25 years in Central Florida on projects buildings theme parks I was the foreman for the Universal Studios water park um hospitals Custom Homes I did custom homes that were 9 to 13 bathrooms I've Done big projects I know how water moves during that time I've witnessed it I've witnessed firsthand the difference between building a quality home quality structures which takes time takes a little bit of extra work a little bit of extra input and uh just building quantity you know stuff that just get slapped up and no problem I see a lot of that around here now um we are here today uh because the citizens are worried about a couple of things that impact our um that impact our lives uh with the proposed development you guys have we are concerned about a couple of major topics Building without regard for surrounding properties too quickly with profit in mind instead of the people who've been paying taxes quality of life for the citizens who have lived in valua county and helped build it we've built our lives here we love this town we're always here we're not going nowhere Highway 44 used to be a one lane road turned into two lanes not yeah what 10 years ago 15 years ago something like that um we didn't have much traffic on Highway 44 if you guys remember in the past now we can be backed up for two hours trying to go to the beach that's saying that we got a lot of stuff going on without infrastructure well that actually the traffic is a sign of too much growth too fast without concern for infrastructure and safety of the citizenry already here there are new uh subdivisions and construction projects popping up everywhere and our taxes are going up some cases 400% uh that's that's crazy quality of life in Florida Wildlife if you were to ask any longtime Florida resident what their favorite Beach to go to is it used to be new Suna Beach they would tell you how much they love the garlic JB's Fish Camp if anybody been here around for a long time I mean if you remember flip-flops which is now a Dunkin' Donuts and Starbucks and they're about to build a high-rise apartment complex let me ask you how do you think that's going to affect the mang GRS right behind it it used to be that a fisherman could keep could keep most of what he caught in the day the regulations have changed so much so often that every time I change my fishing location I have to look at my FWC app and see what I'm allowed to take and what I'm allowed to keep I mean come on and and the regulations are kind of odd too thank you that wasn't three minutes yeah time flies when you're having fun um well the thank you for coming uh John zet Trower is Elizabeth pompy I'm was told that she left Rob pck we have movement followed by Chelsea Pastak if you want to come up with him and Melissa Cox Rob pck unincorporated Lucha County District 2 thank thank you Council and staff I think pretty much we're here today because our need for storm water infrastructure has outpaced our supply of that same infrastructure and we all know action is needed with the frequency of the local flooding many feel it must be our top priority and things can't be business as usual budgets must be re-evaluated money's transferred work groups and individuals must be reassigned if we are to find a timely solution obviously studies or a master study will be needed but it should be from a county and City pooled money and look at the whole of the county and the whole of the problem anything less would be repeat of our past failures only focusing on one small area without looking at the big picture countywide I think a meeting of officials should take place very soon to address funding of this prospective countywide study and in the meantime maintenance work like dredging Spruce Creek and others should be done while areas to be used for large scale storage sites are located and secured maybe we could focus all of that Motocross staff on flood mitigation efforts or storage area location and acquisition if the area west of Halifax where I live and the Town West area could be used for a motocross track using Echo funds why not instead that use that location for water storage and a water related recreation activities such as fishing or kayaking make it a dual purpose but handle this flooding issue by providing the storage that even the study from 2009 indicated we needed but has not been provided yet and let's do it with the same enthusiasm that we saw when local staff tried to sell me and my neighborhoods on the fact that we needed a motocross track to convince us of that so we our public private partnership could make profits which was the motive I heard behind behind the motocross track U I don't have a whole lot more on this I'm not going to bore you you've heard pretty much everything but what we need is action and I'm hoping we get that thank you very much thank you Chelsea good evening Chelsea pastor um Port Orange un Incorporated valua District 2 first and foremost thanks for this special workshop on this important topic that's affecting a lot of us from all over the county I know at least four of my neighbors have had to leave tonight we live in tamoka farms Village and I know you guys have been here for a long time as well um but I want to start by saying that I think everyone here wants Solutions moratorium or not we need Solutions um the first topic I really want to talk about is Health having just spent 5 days in the ICU over New Year's myself with respiratory failure secondary to the flu something that's come to my mind and I'm a lifelong asthmatic is mold so somebody mentioned it earlier but in as soon as 24 to 48 hours after flooding mold spores can start to grow um I'm a registered nurse but it doesn't take a rocket science to know it's not good for People's Health um water hasn't even seeded from a lot of people's houses in 24 to 48 hours especially during Milton and Ian factor in shock the unknown who to call not having service all of these things all while the clock is ticking some are still in need of repairs I have a neighbor who still hasn't had their home repaired from Ian um a neighbor that just moved in back into their house after Ian two months before Milton struck um there's a lot of people going through this um mold toxicity is a serous problem one that we should be working on a solution by not having the flooding um I want to see you know more done at the local level to help with citizens in need and not just have business as usual my second concern and I know we've talked about this a lot tonight and I've talked to you guys several times about it in the past is the lack of the infrastructure my husband mentioned it the study in 2009 where the solutions were posed to not have in our area and the solutions still have not been done so what I heard is we're going to order another study um which is just kind of disheartening um there's been hundreds of Homes and Apartments built on Town West utilizing the same infrastructure that was insufficient before that almost worked before existing homes before but now during the heavy flow of water from the new developments flooding is it's flooding the existing residents in the older homes I'm hoping that we can make changes or pauses for for-profit development but until changes are made within the unincorporated County we also need to look at the local municipalities and I think it would be helpful and beneficial if the city and the county can join forces instead of pointing fingers um those of you that have your um certain cities maybe go to the different meetings and just try to work together so we can have Solutions thank you thank you Melissa Cox Jimmy belon and Jessica cisac hi I'm Melissa Cox good um I live in Glen ABI and DeBerry um Glen ABI has had severe issues of flooding in 2008 tropical storm Fay destroyed many homes in Glen ABY there were um many homes that had to be demolished this past April we went before the board in DeBry with many DeBry residents and begged the city to not approve the plans to build 125 tow houses on the property adjacent to Glen ABY the board told us they had fixed the issues that caused the flooding in glenabby in 2008 well months later when Milton happened we had the exact same flooding issues on Alexander woods and Glen ABY and flooding on high Banks took a month for the flood waters to go down where we could use that entrance to get into our neighborhood during Milton the storm caused many roads in Glen ABY to wash out we had one house in our neighborhood where the Rushing Water washed out the foundation of the house and caused a massive hole in the road the roads in glavi are caving in from the amount of water moving underground directly beside our home is property that has Wetlands on it and has recently been purchased and approved by the city to build 125 Town Homes which will take away the wetlands in areas for all the existing excessive water in Glen ABI to drain that doesn't take into account the flooding that will take place when they build the land up and build the and the waters flow into the established homes in glenapp in their plans they're building six tow houses that have six units each in them right along our property line so that will be 36 homes directly on our property line when we walk out of our house I'm extremely worried that building this mean town houses directly beside our house will cause flooding flooding of our home and I'd like to have my concerns on record with the city of DeBry and valusa County the city of Delan has seen the issues when newer housing developments have built up the land causing flooding into the older developments I feel like other cities and developments need to learn from the mistakes and do their best to prevent this from happening to more homeowners I think a moratorium is necessary for the city to take some time figure out the problems and create some new laws to protect the vucha County residents in their homes we can't stop the Hurricanes but we can stop building huge multif family developments in Wetlands we also need to work work on holding accountable to engineers and developers who are causing the flooding into existing homes when the question was asked tonight if there's a plan in place or a timeline to hold Engineers or developers accountable no one knew the answer we need to recreate the laws and hold accountable the developers who are being greedy in creating quantity over quality and are destroying the homes of the taxpayers in vucha county and I also um heard the lawyer come up here tonight for the development who's building beside us and say that the county cannot hold the city of DeBry responsible and I feel like that needs to change you know I feel like um you know we pay our tax dollars TOA County and I feel like you know the city and the county need to work together um because it is scary that they can come in and build all those town homes on Wetlands thank you thanks for coming in Jimmy Belton Jessica from Port Orange Michael McGee thank you Mr chair for pulling me out of the depth and uh thank you gentlemen for being here um real quickly I had a slide deck 30 de 30 pages but it didn't get in time so I will see you again at a future date we we do know the difference between management leadership I know the good Colonel has graduated from the commander general staff college and I suspect the war College as well and so um he knows firsthand and probably do a very good OPD for you all on some of the uh Concepts that are with the doctrine from the military on leadership and versus management granted we have some very brilliant gentlemen um and women in city council and uh County Council um probably all the way across the board with the 67 counties and oh by the way there are not 16 cities there are actually 18 cities so just a quick note there for everybody's edification um but one of the things we have to understand and I'm sure the good Colonel can appreciate this having been in the military as long as he was is that while you have very smart people that you employ you expect them to not only be worthy of that pay but you expect them to be Earnest of it as well and what I mean more specifically is that at the end of the day they're really bureaucrats and especially as you move higher up in that food chain you are basically you've already bought into the policies procedures laws Charters etc etc that dictate how you maintain that position so consequently are you going to do the job that you're actually supposed to be doing when you're actually a public servant which if your if your income comes from taxpayer dollars then actually you actually work for that that citizenry so you really shouldn't be called a zar and like a previous veteran that spoke please do not refer to a former um Dynasty that obviously did not go very well and ended in another other bad industry called the Communist uh uh unit the UN Union of Soviet Socialist Republican states or Russian States I'm sorry I'm a little bit nervous here because I see my time as dwindling but one of the things I think we we've all SP focused on um and I've Heard lots of red herrings slippery slopes and non seers tonight um and so with that in mind we're focused I think too much on flooding not to you know poooo that and say that that's not important because it is but when you when I see the concept of whether you do a moratorium or not or find some other way to use leadership not management but leadership you you it's incumbent upon you as Leaders to actually set the groundwork for what does leadership mean you have a very very daunting task in front of you but why not see how the laws which are just that they're just laws they're not carvon Stone only the Ten Commandments were um but it is your responsibility to figure out okay so do we have to appeal those and what what Supreme Court do we end up do we end up at a six uh sixth circuit court or do we end up somewhere higher um because the daunting of all the information has been B breached in and tonight is just that so anyway I will see you at another date time so we can go further on this thank you by now Elizabeth bonds Lisa colon hi thank all of you for um listening to us tonight and um in June I noticed an article in the news journal um that said the governor had vetoed a lot of projects for valua County included Daytona Beach Shores 1.3 U million for the sewer Force main Improvement in uh replacement Deltona 1 million for a sanitary sewer collection system Rehabilitation Holly Hill $800,000 for water main improvements h Hill for $1.8 million in Wastewater improvements Oak Hill 500,000 for storm water ditch cleanup Orman Beach 225,000 for storm water uh improvements South Daytona $750,000 for sewer system Rehabilitation pipelining and um you know you hear all this about lawsuits um that you're worried about the developers like suing us but you know you guys don't even have a countywide comprehensive storm water plan and I think that the the existing residents you know this was going on before the storms still not fixed the governor vetoed this money we didn't have a plan on what we're going to do and you keep on building on this land it's like it's like hanging wallpaper like when your sewers busted you know it's just why are we building on this so I just think that you guys need to um end the practice of filling the Wasteland uh the Watershed and wetlands um one acre of wetlands holds a million gallons of storm water so I think it's very important that we take that into account and uh you know there's there's plenty of room for construction I mean we keep on hiring Orlando just in the paper yesterday um we hired this Orlando company to redo the um the main the the Daytona Beach Boardwalk we've hired that same company from Orlando to fix like the pier and everything else in Daytona like why do we keep on hiring people from Orlando to do this construction we can hire our own people there's plenty of construction and there's no incentive to revitalize the um the blighted neighborhoods so that's all I had to say I just really hope that you guys um push forth with the moratorium I know you're not going to but thanks Lisa colon uh Steve H zorano Bryce Merritt Ann Miller good evening I'm from district one and like most residents in the Taylor Road area of Dand my property is unincorporated vucha County but it's being flooded by developments in the city of Dand and this is what happened to us this is a photo of our home after Hurricane Ian we had a a puddle in a corner of our property it was at the deepest 5 in and please note that post that's circled there this is our property after Hurricane mil Milton we woke up to 2 feet of water across an acre of our property 27 in at the most you can see the pose circled way down there um I don't even know how to estimate how much water we had uh in comparison to Ian 200 times as much I mean it was catastrophic um you can go ahead and just pass through so that's just a a flooded car in 18 in of water um that's our backyard which looked like a byou um so you know the question that arose in our minds was what in the world is the difference here it's not the rainfall it was about the same we did not have a uh clogged um Canal we didn't have a failed retention Pond there's only one possible factor that we could find around us and it was the building out of the Reserve at Lake Victoria which had gone in since hurricane Ian it was built to handle 8.5 in of water in 24 hours where did the rest of it Go apparently it went from The Reserve at Victoria through what was left of the wetlands and into my neighbors and my yards which is indicated by that yellow circle sorry about the weakness of my typography um but this is not or my uh cartography this is not the worst of it though if you'll go to the next one thanks chissa um there are three more developments slated to go in around us so we lost tens of thousands of dollars worth of property this time around if this happens we anticipate that water will be in our home and probably our losses will be in the hundreds of thousands now this is just us but if you'll go on to the next map this is uh pulling out a little bit to the rest of what's happening at Taylor Road the yellow circles once again are apparently places that are um in what do we call them um closed basins which are clearly human created actually what what I want to say to you doesn't have to do with the um moratorium I want to thank you as a council for considering those of us who were in unincorporated areas flooded by the city I heard that issue mentioned several times please keep remembering us because we are not getting any response from the city of Dand thank you thank you Stephen gutner Gunter sorry Jack cely and Susan shag nessi stepen wow you guys hour and a half driving 100 miles from the last one that got cancelled now this one this late at night it's a real burn burn out for some of us um we definitely had water in our home twice after 4050 years never any flooding but I won't go into all that um you've heard plenty of it you know what's going on it's why we're here I would just like to say that the moratoriums uh I'm neutral you're not going to solve anything with the moratorium um you'll get a good breath maybe you can get some codes changed before people sign a permit but I'm kind of confused how every building project goes through a plan review and that's been going on for decades in 2005 uh valua County banked $1.5 billion in permit fees they had major bragging rights with no end in sight 2005 fast forward this is 2025 you must have banked $1 billion in permit fees now what I don't understand is I've seen the engineers having to go over Plan reviews how do you go over all these plan reviews and then have as many failures as we have with our homes flooding now your Consultants had told you um from the 90s do not build in your wetlands and Watershed if you do you're going to flood the older homes out and you're going to destroy habitat here we are you're building in the wetlands building in the watersheds there's nothing wrong of development but you can't develop in the wetlands I mean it's it's been there for decades I could just say that HB 53- 43. 814 Clos bir2 the law is you cannot develop cause flooding and impact adjacent to lands and you have to have the storage capacity and the conveyance route around my house you've used the same ditches for 30 years and yet the development has like been 10 times that but the same ditch it can't hold all that water um Jungle Road is a dam yet you send all your storm water from the south side of 44 from West all the development comes to that area within a mile every conveyance route dumps into that same spot and yet you have the small covert uh Bridge Dam on Jungle Road that back flows and that's what's pushing water into our houses and uh basically up and down uh there's 2et of water on Otter Colony Park the whole area is just underwater you're not going to solve that you're just going to have to elevate our houses thank you you're Susan I am good jack cely is not in the room okay it's all yours thanks good evening um I'd like to thank the council for the opportunity to speak um I am in Mr Dempsey's District um I live at Jackson Woods Road um proud and thankful to be next door neighbors with JC figuro and I'm very close to the Common Grounds Farm on the other side um tomorrow makes 27 years since we closed on our property and moved to Jackson Woods Road um we have never um been out of our home for this long if I count it correctly tonight will make 98 nights somewhere else than our home um uh we had access problems in addition to flooding uh our road floods um some of the flooding on Jackson Ranch Road we know was not from the storm because the day after Milton Jackson Ranch was not flooded but the day after that it was um we believe the water came from uh the elementary school there Freedom um but at any rate um my husband Thomas and I um we we don't really have the capacity to um dig ditches in our yard anymore um I'm a former educ Ator homeschool mom um my husband has served uh our country for 33 years he's a registered nurse um but we have you know we're old and older and um I as a former teacher I'm always looking at definitions of words so I just want to share something here um I had to write it down cuz my phone died because I've been here a few hours like you um a morat is a temporary sus suspension of an activity until further consideration warrants the lifting of the suspension such as if and when the issues that led to the moratorium have been resolved um we have been flooded by Victoria Trails behind us they are not retaining their storm water um JC did a great job knowing exactly how that's happening and so um I do ask you to please consider uh supporting a moratorium so that the existing problems can be addressed and I really appreciate being able to be here tonight thank you thank you Lisa Smith Deanna Coleman are you Lisa good okay Deana Coleman and uh corneel Cornelius Neil Gan oh Neil ganzel go ahead six hours oh my gosh so many things I want to address first of all I want to um Mr Santiago um one of the last meetings I agree with you you guys got the heat for a lot of the building around us when in fact the city was the one that approved it as far as my understanding goes you all denied these builders on three different occasions and they filled out whatever paperwork was needed and the city annexed them in and let them build um adjacent to my property I live down Rockingham um Don Dempsey is in my dist district one and um he knows you all know um adjacent to my property is wetland and Mr Kent I felt for you hearing your story earlier about I think it was your daughter or family member that looks at four to six feet of dirt basically and then they're going to build on top of that ours is like probably anywhere from 8 to 10 and um they have flooded us out I have a neighbor she had a moat completely around her property I mean there's just so many things that you all know and have heard about but it is Criminal as I say every time what is happening to us longtime residents um it was our American dream too to have our homes and our home was built and just like these new homes and the newer Generations coming in want new homes and that's great great but it's not at our expense we should not be flooded we should get help you all have been at least you look at us when we come and talk to you the city is of no help I've gone to all the city meetings they're not paying attention to us nobody we feel like nobody cares and I want to thank you all for at least hearing us out and and trying to look for some resolution um that's all we're asking we we don't want the land and the building to stop here just temporarily until we can fix the problem and there is certainly enough infrastructure and that needs to be rebuilt are somebody said earlier I mean the traffic in our town I know we're having roundabouts everywhere now but the traffic is just crazy you feel like you're in Orlando sometimes so thank you for listening I really hope that um we can all work together and get something done I like Pat joclyn said hurricane season will be here before you know it again so thank you deian Coleman uh Cornelius ganzel Jeffrey root uh oh we hit on one are you Jeffrey yes okay good evening chair and council members my name is Jeffrey Ru I am a resident of Deltona just 2 years ago while I was still in high school I heard about all the construction jobs available in our area and I knew I wanted to be a part of that I made this decision to pursue a career in the construction industry and started working for a local Builder right after I graduated now I'm engaged and working towards buying my first home but I'm really worried about what a 12-month moratorium on new construction could mean for my future if this moratorium happens I could lose the career I've just started I would have to leave vucha County to find work or even consider switching to another career path which feels really discouraging after all the effort I've put into this one I want to build a life here start a family and support my future wife but if I can't work for up to a year it could have a huge impact on my finances and savings it could actually wipe them out completely I hope you understand how devastating this moratorium could be for young workers like me who are just starting out thank you for your time and thank you for your consideration thank you Jeffrey Graham Shannon Krueger and mallerie Tatum thankk you gentlemen of the council members everybody here coming out taking time I know it's been a long day I'm a v County resident my family's been in this County for 155 years my grand my great great grandfathers both came to Orange city in 1870s so longtime resident my grandpa was born in orang City on Carpenter Lane in 1892 my father was born in New SMA and I was born in Dand so I've been here and I've seen changes I've been here 68 years and yes I've seen the land grow seen it change they built Victoria Park park around there was 20 acres there eight of us each have 2 and 1/2 acres they built Victoria Park around the trails there's a 10t wall that backs up to my house my back Pary line is 332 ft there's 4 and A2 houses the last house on the end the Wall's 10 ft tall the center part of that is where they had a uh an area that they did a benchmark for that development and they brought that Benchmark 3 ft above my property at that point they moved millions of yards of soil they cut down every tree they raped everything from there gopher turtles smashed destroyed scrub J gone natural habitat it was far 140 Acres of Farmland some cattle on it they changed all that they built Victory Park well that's good that's development that's progress there's a lot of people that's been harmed by that and everybody says oh no it didn't do anything it does I'm sorry it has that brick that that wall that they built at the bottom of it there's 4in pipes that come out from it that shoots water onto my property I've got photographs of it be happy to show you I didn't know it was 24 hours to be able to show that in advance but I put them on my phone here anybody wants to see them I'll be happy to show you okay my next door neighbor to the right had 2 ft of water in their yard came almost to their house my property slopes soften enough that water didn't stay up on the top of my property my property is the highest point between Blue Lake and Orange Camp I'm not Orange Camp uh Blue Lake and Martin Luther King and that's why they chose my property put their Benchmark to make their property up to that there's other neighbors that I have the Caulkins there's there's there's four or five other neighbors that have had a lot of flooding and they haven't been here to the meetings and I need to get them down here for this um I just want to be you know Pat the farm I know all those people and I know all the things that they're going through and I'm here to support them my home personally is not completely flooded down by the end where that 10 fo 10 foot part of the wall is the ground's mushy but I feel so bad for everybody else would be happy to show you thank you it's Shannon Krueger still here how about mallerie Tatum you are the last to hi my name is Shannon Krueger and I live in the North End of Dand so district one um but in the county you know you know out in the county I did not personally have a flooding event but I know so many people that did I um I got calls i' I'm a fairly recent Resident I've been here about seven years but I've gotten calls from people that you know talking about oh I would never move there the flooding da da da da da da because that's the reputation we're getting for having these huge flooding events I'm really really strongly in favor of a moratorium I still real estate for 30 years I'm not totally anti-development but we need to pause because the definition of insanity is to to keep doing the same thing we're doing which is approving under the regulations we have and then expecting to get a result that will be different so if we continue to build under the regulations for large developments that we have now it's just going to make the mess worse I do believe we keep talking about the moratorium and I think everybody here we're talking really we want a moratorium on large developments I see no reason that you should have a moratorium if somebody wants to build themselves a single family home we could have yeah you know that would help habitat that would help actually I think a lot of the small Builders if we allowed you know you could have an exemption for small lot you know I don't want to say small lot that's not the right word but small developments with maybe at least a quarter acre each like the oldtime ones that are not going to make a huge addition to the problem during the moratorium allow that actually could be a window for people that want to build homes because right now it's hard to get anybody to do anything so allow that have a moratorium on large developments because we have two major problems we have to solve we have to figure out how to solve the problems we've already created with the regulations we already have in place that are not working but we also have to come up with new regulations that will allow some smart development that will make sense for the county to be able to grow but we can't grow the way we are now it's just going to make the mess worse so a I think a moratorium maybe six months with you know maybe two Monon extensions or whatever is needed till we can come up with a solution for the flooding we have and how we can make sure that any new development does not make future more flooding we need to solve I I I absolutely believe we should not be building on the wetlands I don't care how many extra feet of dirt they put on it those are wetlands are meant to to um refill the aquifers and we need that I mean it's not always going to be raining too much they're going to be drought times we need those too thank you mallerie Tatum you're the last speaker make it good you guys made it um my name is mallerie Tatum and I'm was supposed to speak with vCard but Jess forgot to put in my card so here I am and you know here we are um so I want to First express my gratitude for your service to the county and for taking the time to hear um everyone's input it's reassuring to see dedicated leaders while s excuse me it's reassuring to see dedicated leaders serving while making factual and science-based decisions my name is mallerie Tatum and I'm environmental scientist at Zev Cohen and Associates and an a board member of vCard I obtained my bachelor's degree in environmental science from Stetson University and my MERS of environmental science from bethon cookman University as a scientist I have worked at local Environmental nonprofits ranging excuse me for the federal government and now I work at environmental consult Consulting assisting our clients ranging from local governments private citizens and developments to abide by the environmental regulations set in place to protect our clean water air and Landscapes as a fifth generation Floridian in valuch County transplant there is no better place that I would want to live work and play one of the items that I volunteered to speak about are wetlands Federal Regulations State statutes and Valia County codes have been implemented are enforced and are designed to protect Wetlands these agencies including vucha County require developers to avoid and minimize Wetland impacts during the perming process avoidance means designing projects to preserve Wetlands completely while minimization involves reducing impacts when avoidance isn't possible these policies are crucial for preserving our natural flood bluffers we and we strongly encourage the county to continue them to enhance these efforts we propose a tiered fee structure for permitted Wetland impacts higher quality Wetlands would be prioritized for preservation or harder to impact with fees collected to fund restoration and conservation efforts in the county this ensures that wetlands are protected and maintained in perpetuity the second item is low impact development or liid which incorporates avoidance and avoidance of environmental impacts to manage storm water runoff protect water quality and enhance natural ecosystems like many people here flooding hits close to home for me my home in Port Orange flooded during Hurricane eating Ian and I have worked diligently to make sure that I did not have to experience another loss this includes the physical labor of sandbagging outside every door but also asking the hard questions of design strategies and development moving forward I believe the strategies presented by vCard are critical for building a more resilient vucha County thank you for your attention and we look forward to your questions thank you guys thank you okay uh several names up to start our conversation we call it uh debate um first up is Troy Kent thank you chairman and I am prepared to start the debate which is why I put my name up there but chairman um to give you the courtesy this was your item and I applaud you for bringing up this healthy discussion for us to have your name came up right after mine I will yield to you if you wanted to start and kick this off if you don't want to start I'm I'm happy to but I wanted to make sure that I offered that to you I'll go after you if you want to go first I would appreciate that and I'll I'll take you up on on that and um cuz I don't know where anybody else is is going just keep my name in the queue please ladies thank you we still there and um I I did put this on the agenda I am proposing a moratorium for the specific person purpose of finding solutions to our current flooding I'm proposing it for the purpose of making changes in the way we are developing every day that we delay and more development is is a approved we risk flooding out more of our constituents our current development standards are already a burden to our local economy and to the property values and finances of our residents some of our residents have lost the most significant investment of their lives as well as their lifelong liftime personal possessions how many are tolerable we cannot afford add another flooded neighborhood we don't have the money to correct the flooding issues we have now continuing to add more flooding is a recipe for financial ruin for our cities for our County and already for some of our residents I am proposing a moratorium that should be as short as possible but gives us time to work with the cities and the state to put meaningful changes in place before adding to the list of flooded neighborhoods I'm hoping the construction indust the chambers real estate groups that all of us will work together with the county and the cities to make the necessary changes with a moratorium in place I believe Solutions will come rapidly I don't want to harm anyone's business I don't want to harm anyone's future however that is already happening the sooner we do this and as a community the more resilient and profitable we will all be and we will see fewer of our neighbors losing everything they have worked for there is already Financial pain and ruin in our community we have the dubious honor of being the number one County in Florida for flooding that is already damaging our economy we are destroying our own quality of life we need good businesses to come to our County with high-paying jobs we want our local businesses that are already here to thrive a few of our businesses are flooding now but who will want to come if we maintain the reputation of the most flood prone County in in the State of Florida what business will relocate here if they fear their employees can't find a safe place to live let's work together this Council I believe tonight is ready to work together to find Solutions let's do that before the price is even higher our suffering residents require immediate action our future Generations are here demanding that we take action now yesterday I had a conversation with staff and I said the the most important thing I think think we could do is to stop the drain and fill developments and I was told well that's not science that's not what's causing the problem um we can you put up that first um first picture of Venetian Bay they referred me to a report by Jones Edmonds and I'm not blaming Joan Jones Edmond uh for the report but I am going to say the way we're using it is misleading it best um and deceptive at worst the last sentence is in their development analysis says the model results showed no significant off-site impacts caused by the two developments for Hurricane Ian well here's why this is uh that's not Venetian Bay that's Coastal Woods that's Coastal Woods this is Venetian Bay um look there's another picture of Venetian Bay that's further out um this should have been the second one do you have the the other picture there Venetian Bay is surrounded by open land they didn't flood neighboring properties because there are no neighboring properties around them they're their own neighborhood and they did Flood the picture that was just up if you could put it back uh up again before I'm out of time um I'm going to be out of time the other one was Coastal Woods just keep it right there please Coastal Woods the same thing Coastal Woods is surrounded by preserved property there are no neighborhoods um to to flood so to say that these prove that raised up neighborhoods are not flooding the neighborhoods around them is just deceptive and we shouldn't be using it to say to say that because that's not what it says and I'll continue on in my next 5 minutes I'm asking for a a more orium with exclusions for this for single family homes and for commercial because that's not what's causing the problem it's raise developments Troy KK you thank thank you chairman and and I do I do applaud you um for having the guts to bring this up and talk about this because it's a real problem in in our communities right now currently and I want to thank the public for showing up tonight there wasn't an open seat for those of those of you listening online there was not an open seat and I believe that the Overflow downstairs was probably full as well I know at one point we had 92 speakers signed up to speak and and this is one of the reasons that I love local government is that you have direct access to your elected leaders that you put in these rented seats to represent you and you get to come forward and tell us what's on your mind and I appreciate each and every one of you for sharing that because that public testimony piece is hugely important I know to me when I'm um formulating a decision especially one as big as this I'm going to come out and just tell you I'm no to a moratorium okay but but I bring Solutions and and I appreciate it you don't you don't have to yell out from the crowd with any snarky comments I'm a notable moratorium but I bring solutions that I think that this County should adapt and Implement uh immediately I come to you tonight with a multi-pronged approach and there are seven things that I want this Council to consider and I'm I'm I'm hopeful I can get all seven of them we can get all seven of them but here they are I'm going to lay them out for everyone we need to stop this um from this problem from to happen and we need to fix the problem number one no more building on any Wetlands whatsoever if you want to see how it can be done in Orman Beach on Granada Boulevard there's the go look at the Office Depot in the Moose Lodge on grada that was BT Before Troy was an elected official in Orman Beach I don't get to take credit for this but the commissions before me did and look at those buildings and how they were built and how those Majestic Oaks were untouched and how the wetlands there on Granada the fingers of wetlands were untouched number two no more paying into a wetland mitigation bank number three your water on your property must stay on your property number four we must clear all County and City canals Nova Road groover Branch ETC number five we need to have a realistic but an aggressive plan to purchase low-lying homes in low-lying lands that consistently flood these individuals want to sell their homes they don't want to live in water they know they're going to have a hard time selling it we need to make sure we're partnering with FEMA which are the feds the state the cities and our County dollars and we need to purchase those homes and turn those areas into storm water retention ponds we need to have a serious discussion about the county lands that we own that are near these flooded areas where we can put that water into a retention Pond that was number six and um number seven we need to have better healthier conversations with our cities about apartment complexes if you have not been down on the east side and I'm I'm I'm sorry I'm not giving the West Side any love I'll let you West Side guys talk about the apartments over here if it's a concern of yours but if you have not been down LPGA Clyde Morris or Williamson and you look at the clear cutting that has taken place and the thousands of people that are there bringing in and I know it's supply and demand but we need to have healthy conversations with our cities and just pull back on the reins and say whoa come on now you know I'm not a no growther I'm not your guy for that I I'm not a no to development I'm not your guy for that I am a no um until the infrastructure can handle it if our roads can't handle it if we don't have if we don't if we don't have the ability to put the water somewhere I'm a hard no all day every day so those are my seven things gentlemen that I would love for us to consider tonight can you repeat number four clear all city and county uh canals Nova Road groover Branch things like that so chairman I'm I've got 10 seconds left on my first round and I'll just say so I'm a no to your moratorium but I'm a yes to the seven things that I brought up thank you C councilman Santiago thank you m chairman um sad you know the thin out outside I was hopeful that more people would stay but it it's I guess it's late right long it's long and and that was just so those what questioned why I wanted the one minute I wanted to give everyone the opportunity to speak um and if you heard the cards a l a lot of people left because of the duration what I predicted I wanted to hear from everyone it was not to stifle any speech and also this conversation would have started an hour and a half ago and many people could have heard it unfortunately most people won't hear that so now I'm a little bothered by that um David Hill thank you for sharing your experience and Kathy on uh the meeting at the uh St John's Water Management I'd like staff to certainly follow up on their comments with St John's to see what what are they talking about willing to engage with us so we can get on that right away I'm hopeful um oh George want to say something but save my time if that's okay Mr Chair George wanted to chime in yeah can you hold his time please I had conversations with St John's with the chair this morning I think before their meeting and and uh yes there we'll continue those conversations but uh uh the the chair wants to also send the message that she uh is uh on top of it and and ready to help out however that she can and uh again we had those conversations this morning which I probably contributed to the good experience that everybody had so good news we're we're out ahead on that awesome thank you and I've had the opportunity to meet with the um the Miller Lake folks and a few others just so you know and you know I think I shared with uh oh uh um Mr JC earlier today that what I found that the people that I've met with their problems are a little different the the the causes are slightly different and different from the Miller Lake area and and I I think I agree with what we said is that what we need is action I wrote down some of the comments that people said if you're really followed along with a lot of the commentary and the questions and answers that our staff were being uh answered and and providing to us I hope you picked up that there's a lot of things going on there are several things going there's hundreds of millions of dollars that are getting ready to be invested this didn't start yesterday this has been going on for over a year the enra committee almost two years they started on this low impact development focus a little over a year ago I think so this wasn't yesterday that we picked this up I know some folks don't think that we just started this there's been a lot of work happening there was commentary about uh disappointment with another study also if you listened into some of the feedback we received the purposes for the studies it gives us Solutions on how to fix each of the individual areas they have the individual basins these studies are going to look at what the root causes are and what potential Solutions are in place specific to those areas that's how we come up with the ideas to the fixes that's why we need them um I wanted to address that um I I came in here today whether you believe it or not with an open mind to find out if there is a basis for a moratorium countywide moratorium and I'm not convinced that we pass that threshold to impact this County drastically with such a heavy arm first also in relation to that I hope you also learned that our legal department made it very clear we have no authority to impose a moratorium on any of the Cities it does not exist I don't care who tells you anything otherwise 100% we cannot do it so we don't have that Authority with that in mind also I think it's important for the public to know that in the two years that this council's been joined I think we've only really approved two from what I recall I asked staff so I stepped back and did a little research there have only been two development project that I think you can consider maybe significant I think don't hold me to the exact numbers one of them was 162 units another one was about 20 units outside of that we had several small ones that's a 10 acre partial divides it into five for a family member but we only did two in this County even if we put a moratorium today that could only be imposed in the county you will see no results of that because the county can and not enforce it in the city there's no real development happening in the county those are the realities I'm not trying to insult anybody but that's the reality of what we're dealing with what we need are solutions I've met with many of the the residents I'm all in finding Solutions I met with JC again today I says I want to find a solution I don't want to uh uh uh worry people more I don't want to uh uh uh think people or or allege that this County Council is not uh or staff is not doing anything to it I meet with them I think my colleagues meet with them too they're working hard they've been doing it for years now I don't agree with everything they do but that's life right and we try to redirect them I can tell you with I'll speak for myself and I'll probably say the majority of the council only because I didn't talk to them we take this serious but a moratorium will not solve anyone's problem that was here today talking about their flooding I am sorry you flooded and certainly we have a huge task to implement some new standards I agree with almost everything staff said today that we need to do I threw out some ideas and I think we need to run with them a lot of them are already in the pipeline within the next 3 to 6 months probably less than that you will see a lot of these things start to fall in place they are in action and we can continue to work on more and more as we learn more moratorium will not solve anybody's problems thank you Mr chair Don Dempsey um yeah and I'm going to lead off the same way that Troy did I'm a no uh again you know for a moratorium I I don't believe a moratorium is going to do anything except take away people's Liv hoods and I just don't want to see that happen um I had the benefit you know I grew up from a broken home my mom took me up and I was raised in a coal mining town in Southwestern PA I came down to visit my dad here in Delan I got through my childhood of visit visiting my dad I got to see the land rise go from Dead Land to almost triple its population in the last 30 some years and I also got to watch what used to have the most per capital being a coal mining Community go from that to nothing closed storefronts desol I mean a deserted Town basically deadland North okay so the fact that we are in a growing Community I don't want to say we're spoiled but I'm saying we ought to really relish that because we have a it's a good problem to have because I've seen both sides of it and I would I don't want to do anything to inhib growth if we shut down the building Community they're going to leave these guys here are going to go find a job in Tampa or Orlando or Miami they're going to go Lumberjack's got to go where the trees are and they're going to go to where the work is and when this one year moratorium is over good luck getting them back that's the problem we had with covid a lot of businesses had problem I talked to a lot of guys who had thriving construction businesses and other businesses and when Co was over they only got maybe half their staff back it's hard enough now to find workers and to give them an incentive to leave the area good luck getting them back okay so we don't want to do that we need to these are heroes in my opinion I mean they are the ones who actually get out there and get dirty and and do the work for us so we don't want to run them out of town I don't have seven I have a three a two-step plan and I uh I got a long term and a short term I keep hearing repeatedly that it's the cities um I think from when I first started here our county is 700 and please correct me if I'm wrong and Clay if you're still here our county is 700,000 Acres back in 1990 we had 100,000 acres of Municipal the rest County now the municipalities have doubled they're now 200,000 which is annexation I submit that and I hear this all the time the cities don't turn down annexations all of Kepler that whole area Taylor Road I I think was all turned down by county and they just Annex right into the City and there you go and yet we're left to clean up the mess and so I don't necessarily appreciate that so in the short term I would like to use every single dime we have of this Federal money for infrastructure like I've been chiming for the last year infrastructure infrastructure infrastructure then use that for strategic land acquisition from what I've heard from Mr Bartlett and other people it seems like the Quick Fix is going to be strategic land acquisition and Demolition and expand storm water retention and I I agree with that I mean I'm flattered that you guys think we can find a fix in six months or a year I I don't think any of us are that smart but from just the year and a half or whatever of listening to our experts and other experts it seems like land acquisition is the best choice I spent an hour and a half at Dr Anderson yesterday thank you for that and I appreciate enra and they're working on this and we've got all these Basin studies coming eight what is 8 million we spent wait till that comes back but I want to be cocked and locked and ready to pull the trigger that when these studies come back and they say you want to fix Taylor Road you got willing sellers buy these properties create immediately immediate storm water retention and let's have the checkbook ready to write that check Miller Road Lake Gertie I mean it seems I hear quick fixed problems but they're expensive but we getting 328 million from transform 386 another 100 plus million from this Milton relief money and I'm just maybe I'm overconfident in our new Administration but if we rank number one in the state and flooding and apparently seven in the country maybe if we turn them down and say you know what I know that's earmarked for low income housing areas but how about say thanks but no thanks unless we can put it all to infrastructure and I have a feeling that President Trump and whoever else is pulling the strings up there um would listen to us I I just you know we we're a strong Republican state I don't think he's going to turn our backs on us and uh I I have a lot of faith in that and if I'm sorry I'll be quiet I'll be before before we go on you said you had a long term and a short term which was which that was short both of those land acquisition I can well I'll wait till my turn and I'll use the other five in infrastructure or shortterm yes okay uh councilman Johansson thank you um I I want to discuss and clarify a few things I I hate to mince words but uh I don't want anybody that's a colonel out there to think I was a colonel I was a a Navy Captain same rank just a different name um and um secondly I keep hearing about this uh we're we're number one for flooding and and so for me in the military one of the things we always talked about is read reference a so I went to the company that did the research and and they are Landscaping firm long long long builder.com and they don't have a re search arm so I I really can't give you the details other than they went to FEMA so I went to FEMA nowhere in there does it say we're number one but but what it indicates and and what that study they had showed was that we are one of the most vulnerable cities or vulnerable counties for flooding and and that isn't because we stink at infrastructure uh it it's because of our location a lot of Florida counties were in there you know why because we get hurricanes um so uh we're we're pretty low on the uh on the fire thing a lot lower than California so uh so that's kind of I just want to clarify that um on the moratorium I'm having I'm I'm a no for the moratorium for this a lot of the same reasons but one of the things that I had a problem with when I was doing my research is if if development is causing flooding and I drive down 95 and see that Amazon distribution center I drive down Highway 4 and see that distribution center and the big hospital out out here and I look at the impervious land that's that's just decimated with asphalt and and then think why the poor homes that people live in but not that big slab what makes it okay for them but not okay for them and and I couldn't I couldn't I couldn't find myself a good reason why it was not good for raising land for uh residential but it was okay for raising land for Amazon distribution and nothing against Amazon I got some stuff today um so so that that was a problem for me um I want everybody to know a lot of people talk today about uh getting the cities together and getting the county together in my opinion we should have done that years years ago but definitely before this meeting you know just throw it out there so what has done is the Roundtable of elected officials which a lot of you all may not be aware of or or definitely don't go to because I go to them um it's all the Mayors for the most part or or an elected representative from each of the 18 cities but there's only 16 of them I don't know where the other two are I'm going to talk to the lawyer about that later um and and the chairman and the county manager and and a lot of elected officials and city managers in the in the wings but uh um they established a a a a resilience and flooding subcommittee which will be one person from each um each City one person from the county of which that happens to be me I'm co-chair with the um mayor of the Tona Beach Shores and we're going to take a lot of these tasks um and and take care of them and look at each one of them we're going to work with Ben Bartlett and we invite uh the Dr Anderson of the world and the vcards of the world and VB of the world to give us good answers to some of these questions and we're going to ask for all the uh every city studies and put them all together and see if we can make sense of the whole thing so we're not operating in 167 separate silos and to try to get stuff done comprehensively and try to think regionally instead of just Citywide because if we think Citywide we'll we'll build a wall around our city and the other 15 or 17 cities no matter how you count them will flood so we don't want to do that so that's where we're headed thank you very much chairman councilman Reinhardt thank you chair um first off I want to thank you chair for bringing it up regardless of whether or not we're in agreement which I'm not in agreement with the moratorium for for many of the same reasons but I appreciate the fact that you're passionate about it I am interested to know um what enra will bring enra I was here as a citizen sitting in the back I attended the County Council meetings um before I got elected and I sat back and and I heard about this this enra I even remember when they came up with a name for it and I I was excited about it because there were a lot of issues back then that are they're in existence today that they could have addressed and I'll admit at first I was a little concerned when no offense that they got hung up on trees for so long but at the same time it showed me the passion they had about everything involving the environment in this County and that I commended and then when we asked them hey we have an issue with with lid they took it and Ram with it doctor you are one of the smartest ladies I've ever met in my life and and I thank you for your service on that committee I truly do and I think that you're going to bring a lot of of of things to to the table with respect to that um I said during my questions that every council member has heard of an area in their District that is suffering tamoka Farms Village really hits home uh and it's due to the fact that a lot of lot of them believe and I don't know I'm not a scientist and um a lot of them believe it's due to the fact of the development that was occurring uh from Port Arch and Mr Dempsey you brought it up earlier with respect to what we have all heard um about everybody talking about well it's this development it's this development Mr Santiago I check that same issue it is to two of the developments that we as a council had approved um so a lot of it is the developments are are occurring in the cities um so I do think part of that step process Mr Kent I'm I'm in agreement with you on your on your steps I I actually had a couple more to add but um you know the the Wetland building I agree uh the Wetland mitigation Bank the the you know water stays on your property I think it says that now yet okay uh clearing canals we had that same conversation uh earlier when I was asking Mr Bartley the questions about uh canals and whose responsibility there's a lot of confusion about that uh on Whose Canal is whose I get phone calls and emails all the time hey what are you going to do about Nova Canal okay I'm going to get on the phone and call the state unfortunately because they thought it was the counties so and anyways go on I I could go on about that um the purchase of low-lying lands I like that I had said that before I mean after a storm you know and asked Mr Bartlett I said uh have we looked at those things and and said that as a result of this storm did we see a lot of flooding in that one area wouldn't it be nice to be able to purchase that but remember and I'll say it again is you have to have willing sellers so unfortunately we just can't take it over better communication with the cities and I agree with that 110% and I think we've got that uh well we've got it now and I'll leave it at that uh I think that this committee that was formed at the round table which I was present for as well I think it's a great idea and it's holding them to that it's accountability it's talking about uh yes we can call it a different name I don't really like that name either uh I didn't spend my career in the military it was in law enforcement but I don't like that that word either so we can come up with a fancy word form I don't care or a committee I don't know but anyways having that kind of oversight I think oversight is important holds everybody accountable so I I I truly believe in that there were some other issues I I heard something about sand plugs tonight I'm very interested about that they may mention I I see Wendy is over there she's shaking her head no okay so but I hear golf courses I see golf courses I very seldom see them flood so I think they're on to something over there um more storage for retention there was an area in Daytona that flooded drastically uh there was an area right behind it's uh the South Street area there's an area directly behind it that they've evacuated those homes and they have been since hurricane Ian so two years uh I asked the city it belongs to the city of Daytona that area I thought well you know you talk about tearing them down and rebuilding what about don't tear them down and rebuild them tear them down to use it for retention to help the pro the apartment complexes that are flooding we got to continue to have those conversations with the city as well but it doesn't just mean us it means the citizens as well when you have those planning boards go to the planning boards and I'll I'll reserve the rest for later thank you Mr chair councilman Robbins thank you chairman and Council um all great um talking points I I share a lot of the same concerns but um just so everyone knows where I'm at being Target specific making all of our moves count on what we can control here locally uh first and foremost uh focusing on uh laser locking on what we can uh control and fund and do at our level while collaborating and walking and chewing gum at the same time I think we're all capable of doing that high impact Solutions and decisions and focusing on results without further damaging our community to ensure that The Cure just like we saw with covid that The Cure is not worse than diagnosis because we're still dealing with that Regional collaboration is going to be key as we heard tonight A lot of these issues are happening within the cities with that being said those issues are still our issues we are a community and we need to in my opinion work uh better with our our cities and our neighbors I'm proud to hear that we got this uh other board established we have one of our own that's going to be chairing or co-chairing it uh to help with that collaboration regionally and um like many of my colleagues with the data and the facts given today in the in the in the fact that there's a lack of development or very little development on Incorporated volucia I just don't think that a moratorium is prudent at this time because we have so much more we can do in the meantime or that we're already doing without hitting that that nuclear budding and causing further damage to our to our citizens and our community and our economy so thank you councilman Dempsey yeah um just kind of continuing on so the the like I said the fast I'm gonna talk fast because I only got five minutes the Fast Fix would be land acquisition going to the federal government or doing whatever we got to do to try and get to maximize the amount of federal dollars that we can use to infrastructure for um strategic acquisition of repetitive flooded property um stop programs that incentivize more development I keep saying that about affordable housing we're we're waving impact fees or putting permitting to the front of the line I want to why would we give incentives for more development when we're all here talking about stopping all development so why should you guys pay more in taxes to offer incentives for more building that makes no sense to me um if we have to I mean I I agree with Miss Shyer actually if we need to use County property even if it's not strategically located County runoff property for storm water hey maybe we need to sell some assets we hold a lot of money our goal is 50% of the the land maybe we need to sell off some of that land to start buying these strategic properties okay I don't know maybe we could do a hierarchy or something like that and properties that we could afford to sell to raise quick cash to buy these repetitively flooded properties to get them out of there so that we could build more storm water retention I think that would be a good F quick fix if we could do that we've got The Uncanny ability now to make a lot of changes with the um Charter review coming up in a couple of years so what I'd like to do is once these committees all do their thing once we get all these reports coming in once we get enra report we get the input from the uh the Roundtable res search put all that together and then make whatever uh recommendations put it on a referendum if we need to put it out to a vote for whatever amount of time for whatever millage to get quick Revenue to put a fix to these repetitively property repetitively flooded properties and buy them out for however long it would take to raise that enough enough of that money and then last is I would like to see this referendum take away all this limitations um that the the county has with the city Mr Robbins is saying why can't we have a I won't say the word but why can't we have somebody to go around and enforce these regulations who's monitoring these subdivisions to make sure that they're not violating the the St John's management limitations well hey maybe we could put it out there in a referendum and let the voters decide maybe they want the counties to take back some of that power maybe we should have the ability to Trump the city's Desires in certain scenarios because maybe we've had enough of the Cities you know we turn down properties and then these cities just Annex them and we just have to let go of the wheel and say I guess you can do whatever you want maybe we need to take some of that back and uh to have more oversight I know we're talking about rural boundary coming up at that time maybe we need to look at other options that we can let the voters decide on in two years and since the charter Review Committee is coming up maybe this needs to be a discussion once we get all these reports in the studies the round taes Andra assimilate it debate it and see what we want to put on a referendum and let the voters decide and that's basically it guys I um but I don't want to see a moratorium go through either I think there's other ways of handling it that's kind of I agree with Troy's list I think that's wonderful these are just a couple other things I uh I thought about so thank you guys very much bye councilman Santiago thank you Mr chair I just want to recognize Matt I thought you had the at the jail they called you the Zar that was incorrect thought I did some research on that okay um Warden with the capital W Warden um so uh the um the referendum stuff uh don I I I think that's a good discussion because we're going to be getting into that in the next few months anyway so I support having that discussion to recommend whether we want to send it to the uh the committee that we're going to be forming or we we can put stuff on the uh the question on ourselves also um uh for a referendum vote uh so I think those conversations because of the impact that it has it probably should go to that level um as far as um Troy's uh seven uh comments um I could agree with all of them but I think there's going to be a problem with one of them I don't know what number but the hold water on your land um if you remember from our legal presentation um one of the points there was I believe it was federal law pertaining toward towards uh water to not affecting the natural flow of wetlands in effect so that one might be problematic I just wanted to share that um and uh what what I'd like to do council is that we heard a lot of great things from staff of that that's already ready to come to us very shortly and I think clay had mentioned we're going to be updating chapter 72 first um I I want to get through those things as quickly as possible and then shift to whatever we can Implement from there into chapter 50 which then then we have say with how the cities develop so that's the process we're following and if we're going to put it in 72 I'm I guess if we can legally put it in 50 I'm going to put it in 52 so and then we hold the city accountable to how they deal with storm mortar so I'm very supportive of that transition um I do ask that uh staff uh our legal team as we get these uh proposals coming before us and ordinances to adopt some of these changes that staff has been talking about um if we can make those announcements as broad as possible I know apulo mentioned as to what Authority we can uh um expand on and how we amend the language as we're going through please make it as broad as possible because there's a lot of ideas floating I think uh the six items I'll just say that now Troy the six items are worthy of of discussion during those times that we can amend uh ordinances as they come before us if we so feel to implement some of those uh six items that uh that I think are worthy uh to put in there unless staff puts them in beforehand um my I Mr chair I had a question the staff legal do you need us to make a motion or can this just it looks like there's no support can they just move forward without lack of support what what do you feel is appropriate I I can answer that because I I can't make a motion I'm the only one for the moratorium so there's not going to be a motion for a moratorium so we just let it die yeah what but what if I could we're still on your time it's okay Mr chair go for it um what we have to have tonight is Solutions we've got we can't walk away from here yeah and and go a whole another year and next year have a whole another set of people that were flooded out of their homes Don's talking about 2 years of ref that gives us two years of new people that are flooded out we we have to to start something I I agree with you Mr chair I thought you did I I do but I think if we rewind the tape staff said they're going to have some stuff they're going to start send bringing the stuff within two to three weeks I'm not arguing with you I'm just saying I want to come out of here tonight with a motion of some a couple motions maybe of of things to do toy listed Seven okay I want to add one but well I'll make a motion Mr chair how's that okay let's see if this works I move to uh not pursue the a countywide county imposed moratorium and direct staff to bring forward ordinances as proposed recommendations from enra uh and other agencies and staff members in response to some of the proposals that were put forward from staff I'm missing one thing and to incorporate I'll say six Troy the six items that you said there minus the uh hold your water on your land um as a recommendation because I don't think it's we comply with federal law and that's my motion may I add chairman may may may I make a comment to Mr Santiago and try and getting the changes no because I'm listen I I am thrilled actually and and chairman I'm actually also very happy for you even though the moratorium isn't happening I think the conversation and the actions that this Council from what I've heard thus far and the vote I think that's getting ready to happen under David's leadership with that motion I think his going is a huge step in the right direction and for me chair I think that this is a a win for a win not only for you a win for this Council but really a win for the people of uchia County I I just wanted to ask David and I'm okay with that taking that one off if I can get six of my seven listen I'm not going to cut my nose off to spite my face but I wanted you to consider the chairman said he had something you wanted to add and I wanted to hear what you wanted to add because maybe Mr Santiago will add that to the motion okay uh and and also since you let me have the mic for a minute Mr Johansson I found out yesterday at my district dialogue that you were leading this this um new board and I got to tell you Suzanne Shyer I don't want to put words in your mouth but she was super excited telling me about it with your leadership and I just publicly want to say it made me take like a sigh and weight off my shoulders because you're the Right leader at the right time to help direct that group of leaders into doing really good for luia County so I just wanted you to know uh I totally endorse your leadership on that and I'm excited for what you're going to be able to help mold in valua thanks for the latitude chairman he's the colonel remember go ahead Mr chairman we still have your you haven't got a second on the motion it's still out there because Troy asked me to to add to it excuse me I think it was Matt maybe all of you said that it was Matt said I I appreciate that you're passionate about a moratorium I I'm not I'm passionate about finding Solutions I'm passionate about moving forward but what we're talking about now is what led me to a a moratorium because I don't see action for for two years so we need to find a way that we start with action um with your uh uh with your motion here what I wanted add Troy was not you said stop building on Wetlands I'm going to say stop the the lifting the land to build and that's going to be more complicated but I I pointed out the the two developments that um uh Jones edman says it proves it that I don't really think they say this but they said those two developments aren't causing flooding in neighborhoods around them they're not there aren't any neighborhoods around them um there's no neighborhoods around Amazon so Amazon's not causing flooding um but if alls we have to do is look at uh uh Sawyers landing and Victoria Park and look at the flooding we can you can follow the water and see it flooding the there's there are um Point order uh what is your point um can we get back on track we are he asked me a question it doesn't it had does didn't have a yes or no U answer we need to look at Oak Leaf Preserve in in Edgewater uh Lake wiam misset and Crest winds we have the if nobody believes except for me that highrise developments are flooding the neighborhoods next toone then then we we have a problem because that's where most of it's coming from chairman if if if Mr Santiago is okay with with adding that then I can tell you you know I I think Mr Johansson was going to Second it or or I'll be happy to Second it as well Mr Santiago I'm I'm sensitive um to timelines I feel like we should give staff a timeline to start bringing this stuff back to us because time is of the essence and bringing it back 7 February 17th February 11th 11th yeah February yeah we're going to propose a special meeting February 11th which is the gap meeting there and and uh February uh to attack the uh chapter 72 and the LI the enra uh uh recommendations we want to bring them forward um and go over them and that would be getting those in motion uh towards being uh put in place what his Dy your motion yeah um I think Jake already seconded I don't know if you heard it yeah Ma um but Mr chairman on on your points on those those communities I'm hopeful and I don't know the answer that some of those answers will come with these Basin studies um that may be around those areas so that we get the answers to the questions you made um and then we can address it certainly then um but but I also asked staff in my motion what my comments is to make their their notice very broad so it gives us a lot more latitude to to make changes during the meeting we heard you so I mean the the purpose will be what I mentioned we can we can open the uh uh reason for the meeting uh a little broader so that some of these other things can be discussed as they it just so you know we generally do write them very okay about as general as I can get away with knowing that give you the wiggle to make some changes sometimes you can't you got to bring it back you can make it an act related to County ordinances no that's probably a little too General I'm joking that's my motion I think I have a second Mr chair from so I'm confused did you add mine to the motion I did not be uh the the question about I think you made I wanted one thing out of this whole night with you out of 10 hours repeat it again cuz I'm not clear what what is the addition I'm sorry I'm trying to write is uh uh to end uh raising the land for development highrise land developments I don't know if we can do that Mr chair that's why I didn't uh agree to but we need to and we got to start figuring out how do we do that I I'm not opposed to the conversation um I don't know if we can do that I mean so can we get back on track please please please well we are we're discussing his motion his his motion's been stated it's been seconded okay so the one item I want is not on the motion all right cool I'm sorry sorry yeah yes you can't do it yeah it's illegal okay no no com Mr chairman can we get a two-minute recess please can we get a two-minute recess please second uh does council want a two-minute recess all in favor say I I I any opposed I we we got to get this done okay two-minute recess we back at 10:59 e e e e on the floor is Troy's six points you struck your water stays on your property CU you don't believe we can do that with the state and um no because legal department said we can't do that make okay and we struck the uh the one thing I wanted to add to get away from uh raising the land that floods out people around them Mr chairman and I and I I get you I want to leave it off this motion but I would support a motion after this directing staff to do the legal analysis on your request and get that back to us aren't they going to do legal analysis on all of these okay that that's fine I'm not going to take it separate I'm not going to argue with you it's the uh okay so the motion on the floor is for these uh six items um seconded by Jake Johansson is there any time frame on it I think I I said for the next meeting to allow a latitude in the ordinances that have come in before so that we can add them things on there and staff may come with it ahead of time with recommendations for example no no build on Wetlands those SE of thanks and this is just for additional information for us to to adopt it to to look at a possible adoption correct okay thank you okay so the motion is to get additional information to create ordinances for it now we already have ordinances being proposed coming on February 11th all right that's the motion the floor again I'll just say that again this is why I asked for a moratorium because we're looking at years now um I hope I'm wrong I don't see that Mr I hope I'm wrong I that's what I see I hope I'm wrong February 11th we're going to vote on a few things yeah that's not years that's three weeks away yeah okay on on a few things so uh it's a really long who really long motion um um can you reiterate it before I call for the uh please Mr chair I I think the council understands the motion I think we ready to vote was there any debate on it I qu I have a question I guess okay I don't want to delay this any longer but we're just talking about getting more information right we're not talking about actually voting on an issue because we're I want to wait till all the Basin studies are in and all the engineers and and everybody the Comm are certainly going to require the Basin study to support it but there was some lwh hanging fruit I think that Troy had on there that we can probably deal with so I'm I'm I'm up in the queue here uh let me know when it's my turn chairman okay uh yeah well I just open it up for debate or questions on this so if if if that's where you are us my name yep so um thank you chairman I I think if I understand that enra is going to come up with some uh well it has come up with some um options and and we're going to hear those and we can adopt those yes on the on the 11th so if if we are all liquored up on Li right now and they bring three or four or five liid things to us on the 11th we can vote to incorporate them we should be familiar because we made them um um basically optional a couple months ago um uh and and the uh the other stuff that clay bringing to us I think we can vote to accept that as well so we're going to start making progress the patient studies are going to come in then we can make some more changes if we need to um uh yeah the the the uh Charter Review Committee is going to be a while um so that's going to have to wait but there's a ton of things we can do in the meantime and U and my subcommittee is going to take a while to get some stuff done but I I'll share with you this and I was going to talk about it at the end of the other thing the gentleman up here talked about leadership and and and I think the most important part about sticky issues like this that need to be resolved is is we need to work with stakeholders to get consensus you just can't show up put something on the agenda and try to get it passed who who do we work with we work with all the stakeholders all the cities we're working with the citizens how many of us and and I'm the blame I I have a phone call with one board member but how many of us have been to patka to a St John's River Water Management District meeting there's some there's some there is some Rel relationship building that can go on there I I see the the the guy at the round table every week but but uh but I don't talk to the board that often save one person so those are relationships that need to be had and and I think it's important that as we are able uh that we get up there and talk to those folks and have a working relationship so it's just a phone call away not a hey I'm one of the members of the council so I think that's part of leadership and when when we say that the the cities are to blame um uh at the end of the day I think it was Troy that brought it up uh or maybe David that at the end of the day we are the county and although we don't have legal authority over a lot of thing the cities do geographically we represent the whole stinking County all 18 cities so it's our responsibility to to kind of lead them in this collaboration um so I I I urge us all uh to work on those relationships so so we don't have to wait until something bad comes up to start asking for help favors things of that nature that's all I have thank you okay uh I'll just make this real quick um I I couldn't agree with you more we need to work on relationships um um so which is why I've spent the last four years traveling this County talking to Residents from one end of the county to the other about uh flooding problems and by a huge margin um they wanted a they want Solutions but they wanted a moratorium because uh they don't want to keep adding they know that if we spend a year or two years doing this we they'll be new developments approved um and it just adds to the to the problem um I did go to St John's Water Management District I toured Lake W misset with the director Mike register of the St John's Water Management District and he said uh Crest winds was breaking the law um I hope he's talked to um some of the C Cole people about that um um I went to Edgewater and I worked with the mayor and some of the council members on their moratorium which they passed I just got a text from somebody that said new samna beach extended their moratorium um tonight um so um I'm talking to people all over the went to Pearson talked to the city council there um they supported the moratorium we're not going to get a moratorium I so and I'm not going to cry about that I just want some kind of of a push to get these things done so that we're not back here next year with a whole new chamber full of people that are flooded out so we've got a motion on the floor that um uh for Troy's six items um um I don't know who is well I'll go with the top name try can't thank you chairman and I I just I'm going to I've got five minutes I'm only going to take I think one if that publicly I want to thank you and I I I can't tell you how to think or how to feel but to me just my thoughts what a huge win for for Jeff brower's agenda to help our County tonight and I say that because we're here tonight because this was what you brought up as the chairman you get to add things to the agenda and we have a special meeting about this and we have six things that I know are going to help this County and when I'm done talking and we're done with this vote I'm going to follow Mr Santiago's lead and I'm going to make a separate motion to direct staff to look into your idea so I just uh I guess I'm using my second five minutes my last 10 seconds here to tell you thanks for bringing this to the Forefront because now there's action and change and it's a huge part of it is is because of of what you did so hey chairman thanks for that you you've said that twice I appreciate it I I I think I want the same thing that that everybody that I'm I'm looking at once we just we want results for our our people and I I'm just looking for a way to make sure that we we push it and push it so I'll continue to do that Matt Reinhardt thank you chair um I didn't want to leave a couple cities out uh you know with when we talk about it's not just um tamoka Farms Village South Daytona Midtown its areas in Delan it's everywhere uh and I know that Midtown is working well with the the Army Corps of Engineers and I appreciate that South Daytona is aggressively uh looking for grant money which we approved uh for retention areas in that that area those are Band-Aids I'm sorry but they are you know and and we need to look for better Solutions and I couldn't agree more just for clarification on February 11th what exactly will come to us just so there's no confusion because I see a lot of faces out there like what will happen What do we do what do we accomplish clay could you I'm sorry chair if you would entertain that that's okay no you could just so there's clarification on exactly what we are accomplishing with this vote this evening on February 11th one item will be the presentation on the recommendations for the liid standards to be added for our storm water as an alternative uh it's gone through enra it's made the recommendations the planning and Land Development regulation has commission uh commission has reviewed it they've made their recommended changes it's coming to you it's an ordinance you can take action on that in that the C plan Amendment and the first reading of the ordinance will be available for there from that point from on that okay on the LI oh the first reading okay and then the second item will be the items that are going to be presented this Thursday to the planning and Land Development regulation commission which are the recommended changes from enra for our storm water standards in chapter 72 of the code of ordinances which is what you were talking about Mr Santiago then we could apply to chapter 50 thank you and then enra is right now beginning and we are working on the analysis to get them for their February how the changes could affect to chapter 50 and also looking at how out uh surrounding counties and the 16 cities have as far as their standards so we are working on trying to do a comparison and Analysis of how other local governments are following through with storm water regulations to see what could be incorporated into chapter 50 based on that we may also have subsequent changes to chapter 72 well any and what exactly are we bringing back to with the six issues that Mr Kent brought up well obviously we're going to have to start digging into those those some of those factor into the discussion that enra is having and we will basically follow through on that and see if that can be something that we could actually vote on yes on that day okay uh not on the not on that day I know for you to bring it back I understand okay Sor myselfy broad I guess I'm eager like the chair is but I get it so all right so we'll hear more information with respect to that and hopefully vote on that soon thereafter yes okay thank you thank you Mr chair you're welcome uh know the discussion uh I don't think we need to call the role all in favor of of proceeding with these uh six Solutions say I I I any opposed okay we'll start with that uh Mr Kent chairman I make I make a motion to um direct staff to bring back to us uh uh have legal look at and have management uh look at your idea of not allowing I think it was infill on on any new development is that is that what you were talking about in what do you mean infill raising raising the okay raising the land raising the land um want me to word that differently I I'll word it how how you won this was your idea but you can't make a motion because you're our chairman that that's right unless I pass a gas to our vice but I don't think it's necessary I think we're heading to is that word okay or how how would you like it I would like more information how do we end um raising the land um for new developments 3 feet 5 feet whatever the footage is sure um and and I I think it's going to be a major issue and problem but I'm okay asking the question so that it can come back to us and I I might add that if you're you're number number two no Wetland mitigation um um or number number one stop building on Wetland is probably going to be as difficult right as the one that I had but it would solve it it could solve the problem cuz it's when we develop Wetland is when we have to raise up the land so um so Council to make sure that it is addressed how the chair uh would like it my motion is for um staff to bring back to us um the feasibility to not allow the land to be raised for development I'll second if for staff come back and give us their analysis thank you David uh thank you uh for debate or questions either one and let let me say this before I call on you Don yeah I'm not sure we can finish this with each of us taking because we've each probably taken five and five what we need right now is this back and forth to try and get solutions that we all uh want to see so I'm until somebody calls me out on it I'm going to be lenient with everybody Don Dempsey you you wanted to if Jake if I'm allowed to talk I don't know who's policing this but um basically can I ask can I ask Ben I'm sorry Ben I didn't mean to interrupt your uh I think it's still his birthday for another 4 minutes these these Basin studies and everything that we just allocated all that money to to all these cities I mean are they going to be talking about that very issue about filling in wetlands and raising is that going to be part of the studies what they will look at is um you can model the impacts to Wetlands and things like that model impacts to the flood plane and um so if you take an area that's low-lying and you raise it up for 5 ft you can model what that does to the surrounding properties and take a look at that if that is a concern if you know you know they take a look at Future land use and if there's low-lying areas that have a future land use that are potential for development you could take a look at that and see what what kind of impacts that would have if if those areas were to be elevated with Phil I mean I I guess the the the sum of my question is basically are these Basin studies gonna tell us one thing about the problems in Orange City with Miller Road versus the problems in Dand with Taylor Road versus Lake Helen and their issues or whatever I mean are they going to have different yeah so we're we're we're going to drill down on on you know Mr Santiago said it really well when he talked about looking at these areas and and he's spoken to folks and they have different issues going on in different areas so you really want to look at those areas to find out the specific problem and to your point yeah the solution might be be different um in in those different areas even though they experience flooding in the same storm do you think it might be prudent to just wait for those Bas studies to come in before we start voting on policy um well I think as a matter of policy you know when it comes to not um filling in Wetlands I mean we already have the avoidance and minimization rules so clearly you know that's really a policy decision I I don't I would I don't know if a basin study would influence that decision one way or the other um anytime you fill in a low-lying area you know that's why we have rules on compensating storage and and and avoiding and minimizing impacts to Wetlands and things like that so I I would say policy decisions like that and and the legality of whether or not you can prevent any sort of fill being placed for development purposes I I don't think those need those discussions need to wait for a basin St okay thank you very very much appreciate it guys Jak Johanson thank you chairman I because words get bandied about here I just want to make sure that I'm aware I guess clay will clay will have to tell me maybe not you said wetlands and we talk about Wetlands so as I understand it a wetland is is something that's designated um my neighbor's back lawn right now because he emptied pool is wet land um but it is not a wet land so when we have these discussions about Camp fill in Wetlands uh I want to make sure we're talking about the same thing uh there's there's designated Wetlands there's designated Upland it changes it gets looked at all the time but I I don't want somebody's uh um um some of these backacre that got wet because of a torrential downpour to be considered you know oh that was wet land you can't uh you can't fill so let's make sure we're talking apples and apples when we go through that discussion councilman Santiago thank you Mr chair I think we're going to get a lot into a lot of different conversations here with that said I think we've given Direction I move that we adjourn okay can we vote on the motion on the table go for I call the question I'll reverse it and then move to adjourn okay all in favor of the motion on the on the floor to proceed with the six uh no the motion was to with the last one with one we we got that one okay to research your uh your thoughts right uh all in favor say I I any opposed and that motion carries 7 to zero um no Clos no closing comments no closing comments um we we have a a motion to adjourn and I want I'd like to ask staff a quick question it one of the speakers I think it was Chelsea of Pastor NE said the 2009 study for the uh tamoka Farms Road Village rural community has to be redone is that is that true I going to have Ben speak to that that's kind of a a a myth that's out there the study was done and the projects were done that could be done from that study now there were projects recommended that were on private property that uh uh we could not uh uh do so you want to yeah that's correct or were cost prohibitive yes that's correct what Mr reinald said regarding it's the B21 Canal study which uh is in the Spruce Creek Basin which will be one of the first ones we're looking at and we're not just looking at that specific area we're looking at the entire Basin but uh yeah uh we're going to take a look at that and see what can be done out there right we from lot of the projects from 21 were done and I think one of the recommendations was swap out a double box covert and construct a bridge there you know is a minimal amount of um uh gain you would get get from that in terms of Flow versus the cost of constructing essentially a new bridge plus I think we just put the box covered in uh in a previous study so uh you know that's so again the the projects were done that could get done and now that's why we're going to go with a new look at things out there thanks okay there was a uh did you actually make a motion to adjourn uh not the second time okay not the second time Mr shair is there anything else we're we're going to take this up for from probably every meeting from here on in one way or another any other council member have something to offer Jake are you going to get liquored up now okay all right we are adjourned at 11:22 Tom tomorrow e