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Hey This This is like Heat. Heat. What are you going to do? Welcome to the Valuchia County Council meeting. The meeting will begin in 10 minutes. Heat.
Heat. Hey, hey, hey. Hey, hey, hey, hey. Hey, hey, hey, hey,
hey. Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey,
hey, hey, hey, Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey,
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hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey,
hey, Hey, hey, hey. Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey,
hey, hey. Welcome to the Valuchia County Council meeting. The meeting will begin in 5 minutes. Hey, hey, hey. Hey
everybody. Hey everybody. Down. That's It's been Welcome. Welcome to the Blue Shapi Council meeting. The meeting will begin in two minutes.
Mr. Rick. I mean, I'll get Oh, look at that dog. That's it. Okay, good afternoon. It's good to see everybody here. Um, we will call the uh
July 21st, 2026 Flush County Council meeting to order at 4:03. Um, we will start in just uh just a few seconds with the invocation and then the P pledge of allegiance. If you are a
member of a faith group who would like to um participate in the invocation, please just send an email. Um, all faith groups are welcome. send an email to uh K the letter K green.gov
and she will um get you all set up with all the information that you need to do that. Today we have uh Pastor Mike Carol. He's the senior chaplain for the Valuchia County Sheriff's Office. And if you would like to come start and uh
stand with me if you care to and then just remain standing for the pledge. >> Thank you, sir. God, you see the agenda today and you understand that all the decisions that need to be made and considered. So today, I ask that you impart your wisdom these men and women that you would guide
their decisions. You grant them peace and encouragement as they carry out their responsibilities. God, I ask that you would bless the economy of our county. Provide opportunities for employment. Provide financial stability for our county and every person and every family living within it. God, I
pray that you would provide protection for our first responders as they serve. Grant them courage, strength, and wisdom in every situation. Surround them with your presence and grant them your peace at home and on duty. God, I ask that you place a hedge of protection around this county. Guard every home, every
business, every school, every workplace from harm. I pray your peace and your safety would cover our county always. And for that, we give you thanks in the name of Jesus. Amen. I pledge allegiance to the flag of
United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Chissa, would you call the role, please? >> Mr. Robbins, >> here. >> Mr. Santiago,
>> here. >> Mr. Dempsey, >> here. >> Mr. Johansson, >> here. >> Mr. Kent, >> here. >> Mr. Reinhardt, >> here. >> Mr. Brower >> here. Do we have any speaker requests for the
opening public participation? Those are for items. Thank you. Okay, we have a few. When I call your name, please just come up to the podium, which looks elevated, doesn't it?
Um there is a uh a button on the left hand side of the podium that makes it go up and down. It might have to go down for uh most people. Uh but come to the podium. Please make sure that there's a microphone near your mouth so everybody can hear you and you have three minutes to talk about anything that pertains to
the county. Perhaps something we could work on on in the uh future. Um, you don't have to give your full address if you don't care to for safety reasons, but please tell us uh what part of the county you're from so that your
repatives uh knows who you are. First up uh this afternoon is Keith Chester from Dand. Yes, you'll have to excuse me. I'm a little shy. I don't often speak.
Uh, I'd like to take and have a moment of silence, please, for the loss of free market conservative values and the loss of JetBlue Airlines. To start, I'll start from there. I am worried about the additional traffic and the
impacts on our roads that will be caused by this development. I am worried about the increased traffic accidents that will occur with the additional traffic. I am worried about the impacts on emergency services. I'm worried about the impacts on the environment and on
the wetlands in the area. I'm worried about the development uh that this development will cause flooding and that because of that flooding uh because of all of the impervious surfaces. I'm sorry, got a little mix. I am worried
about the use of environmentally unfriendly fertilizers, pesticides, and chemicals and the runoff of them into our sensitive bodies of water in the area. I'm worried about this develop I'm worried that this development will
further strain our water resource utilities and utilities. I'm worried this development will harm the wildlife to include the endanger endangered gopher tortoises. I'm worried about the negative impacts on the current
residents. All of these are things that were said before the Crest Wind development went in, which is next to where the proposed truck center is on 44 and I4
where there happens to be a hotel and a gas station currently. I am totally in favor of that truck stop being built. I was not in favor of all the homes and all the people moving to Florida. But one thing I do know is when you have an influx of people from all
over the country, you have to provide services for them. And part of that is having all services come through semi-truckss uh that are delivering goods and uh for those services. So we need
this truck stop at I4 and 44 when it comes up. It's needed. You don't move next to a major intersection of two major highways and then expect where there's already commercial development and then expect no more commercial development after that. So along with
all these people who've moved here, we have to provide the services too. And it's a safety factor too where the truckers are able to stop and get fueled and to be able to get something to eat. There's been it's long overdue to have a truck stop in this area on I4 because
it's a long stretch from there all the way down to Tampa. So, I'm 100% in favor of placing a truck stop there. I'm sure there's going to be environmental impacts just like there is on every development that's been approved in this county. So, thank you. Thank you for
your comments, John Nicholson. goes as it dries down. John Nicholson, Daytona Beachside. I'm shocked that he didn't mention the idea that there's an Amazon or two right next to this area and then there's two and possibly a
third one in Daytona Beach and they have trucks galore. So, yes, it is necessary. Uh secondly on item F um I'm not quite sure the yeah last time I raised this with Don Don said oh I don't care so I don't know
whether he cares or not but the um water management district we're seating some of our control to them. Uh could you explain that please? And uh the other one was the uh firefighters. Um
I don't know how many years ago Daytona Beach um took over a u some kind of organization for the firefighters and nothing was said about it until the following year when the city had to cough up $3 million because their
investments weren't what they thought it would be. So I know uh our staff would look at this very carefully for the county. Is there any possibility that uh the county could go in the hole uh by taking over this um
firefighting thing? Also, there's been several articles in the paper uh with regarding uh the property taxes. Now, there are two on this council that appear to be saying that they're all for
the amendment. All right? They want to have uh $93 million debt for the county. They don't think that's a problem. Um, our city manager is saying, "Yeah, it'll be a problem for us, but not as bad as
for Deltona and the Shores and some of the others who don't have our business." Having looked at this, there's just no way that people can say, "Well, it's only 10% of their income.
It's only 40% of, let's say, Deltonas." Any loss of revenue for almost any uh group has to be made up somehow. We can't keep cutting back. But Asher did that. I bring that up all the time.
Seven years of roll back. We had no police cars. We didn't maintain our buildings. When we cut funding because of roll back, we ended up with a 27% increase in uh
property taxes. Well, of course, you need all what, seven of you or six out of seven to do that. But why would we want to go through that? Why would we want to cut things to the bone? Um, so I'm asking for a little discussion among
you guys to whether this is good or bad so that the public knows what's going to happen to us as a whole. So there's two of you out of the seven that are for it. What about the other five? Thank you. >> Thank you. Uh Amy Manisi Amy Munisi to Leon Springs Community
Association. I'll be coming before County Council since 2010 advocating for uh Deleon Springs. In 2011, we incorporated as a 501c3. In 2012, Valuchia County came out and did public meetings and we were able to help our
downtown area by getting rid of split zoning which was a big problem um and getting B4 zoning put in place but we were not able to get um water and wastewater services at that time. So we didn't look at architectural standards even though the downtown looked terrible. Um but then we did get water
and waste water. The miracle of that came and along with that came hydrants and businesses are interested in us again. I believe on the screen you can see two of the buildings. That's what our downtown looks like now. Isn't that pathetic and sad? And Cararissa, could you go to the other three?
We conducted public meetings with our citizens. Uh several of those in 24 2024. Valuchia County came out and conducted a public meeting and we asked for citizens to turn in photos of what they would like to see us look like. Um and we received this. You see a Dunkin
Donuts there that looks very similar to the decrepit building I showed you in the previous photo, but yet um it has that wonderful kind of old cracker, old Florida look. And that's what our citizens say they want. You see the one in the bottom? Uh it has sort of the chicken coupe kind of look to it. And
our citizens said we really want to go with old Florida. We want to um we don't want to perpetuate the uh Ponto Leon look, the Spanish look because he never came to Dillion Springs. And even though that was supposed to be a good tourist trapper, it isn't true. So, we do have a
lot of Spanish style buildings, but people by and large said they wanted to have craftsman or cracker old Florida looks. Um, you see these photos, some of these were taken in the villages and you see where they have married um old Florida with different types of styles. Um, they've done that very successfully
in St. Augustine where they've married uh old Spanish style with old Florida style and we believe we can do that too. Um Jake Johansson has become our champion in this and we're so grateful to him. Um Ray Tiner came out and spent three hours in my car where I showed him the the good, the bad, and the ugly of
what we have in Dillion Springs and what we're up against. And um I believe that Ry has uh talked with county staff and worked on some things. I know Jake is going to probably talk with you about this at the end of the meeting, but um I guess because of Senate Bill 180, we
have to look at incentives versus uh an ordinance, but we need your help. We've been at this I've been at it since 2009. I'm getting old. I want to see the downtown look like a decent community again before I launched to heaven. It's a great dream that Don Mberg had and he
passed it down to me and we really need you all to make this happen for us. Thank you. Oh, the cow. My cow. I've got seven seconds. This little fella was in the road last night and I just want you all to see what it's like to live in Deleon Springs. This is part of our rural
heritage and we want to keep that. We want to keep our rural heritage and we want to keep our um agricultural community. We just don't want to keep on being ugly. Thank you. >> That's what I was just think. That's what I was looking at. No, it's it's not mine. Uh, Katherine
>> Pante want me to call somebody else. >> Secretary, can I ask you to give us a roll call on this? >> Nope. >> All right. With that, um, Madam Secretary, can I ask you to give us a roll call on this one as well? This is to approve the language as has been
presented in your package this evening. >> Miss Bright, >> no. >> Mr. Clayton, >> yes. >> Mr. Ingram, >> yes. >> Mr. Johnson, >> yes. >> Miss Quiet, >> yes. >> Mr. Lewis, >> yes. >> Missy, >> yes.
>> Miss M Parker, >> Mr. Sakenovski, >> no. >> Miss Shriber, >> no. >> Mr. Toland, >> yes. >> Mr. Watts, >> yes. Miss Wheeler? >> Yes. >> Miss Walford? >> Yes.
>> Okay. By my tally, I think that pass. >> Not that not right now. >> Um, >> what was that? >> 4 to 10. >> Four to 10. Okay. >> What you just heard was the roll call vote on the county charter amendment
five titled establishing registry increasing county council voting requirement for transfer of conservation land. This vote occurred during the last Charter Review Commission CRC meeting on April 13th, 2026, which I attended. I played the recording because I need to correct the record. At the last meeting,
Mr. Clayton stated I was wrong or mistaken when I said four CRC members voted against this amendment. As the recording clearly shows, the vote was indeed for against, Miss Bright, Miss Shriber, Mr. Parker, and Mr. Sandowski. I make it a point to verify information before I speak on protecting our
Valuchia Forever Land Conservation Program. which all of you claim to support. Only two of you actually stood up for it by voting for a stronger amendment. Thank you, Councilman Kent and Chair Brower. The rest of you helped advance Councilman Dempsey's wishes to undermine the program. The CRC members
were chosen by you and were given parameters to work within. According to the chairman of the CRC, Mr. Watts, subsection 3, county public purpose, was written intentionally to create a loophole. It opens the door for Councilman Dempsey's Money Pit motocross
facility funded on the backs of taxpayers by simply calling it a park. Mr. Dempsey has also repeatedly mentioned Solar Farms and three other CRC members telegraphed their support for additional uses that the public never approved when we voted for Valuchia Forever to purchase
conservation land. It is no surprise that Cobb call attorneys serve as chair of Valuchia Forever, another as chair of the CRC, and yet another who appeared to represent the applicant in the public private partnership for the motocross project. Development interests are
written all over this shameful amendment. This council has repeatedly said, "You have no plans to sell our conservation land." And that may be technically true, but why sell it when you can simply develop it for purposes the voters never intended? You had the chance to truly protect Felia forever
with a strong amendment. Instead, you made a conscious decision not to. Thank you for your comments, Adam Dovy. Council, thank you for hearing me this afternoon. Uh, Adam Dovy from Quiet Place in the Country. Um, I didn't know a lot of that. That was interesting. Um,
I'm still getting familiar with how to work the council and how to go to the meetings and how to be part of this conversation and it's strange how much gets done um on public record but out of sight. So, thank you for that by the way. That was uh that was enlightening. I want to speak really simply. I'm not
going to browbe today because I think I beat that drum last time. Uh, just overdevelopment. Um, specifically what's uh near and dear to my heart is this creek cing crossing nonsense, excuse me, between uh quiet place in the country and uh the flyin.
They are reproposing, they are trying everything they can um and more power to them because development makes a lot of money. But I put a Miss Green was nice enough to put something up on the screen for me. I have a very talented friend who is a uh a uh event director and
she's trying very hard to bring events to this city or to this county, to Port Orange, to Daytona, to everywhere. And this is just four things that really stood out to me that I think stand out to everybody. Indigenous Florida heritage, Florida cracker traditions,
springs and waterways, African-American heritage, Caribbean inspirations, citrus roots, Latin American influences, and coastal and surf culture. Nowhere on here does it say zero lot land or zero lot neighborhoods. Uh driveways that you
can't fit a full-size truck in. Um over congestion, traffic destroying our wershed, all the stuff that we all know nobody wants. Um I'm starting to go to a lot more of these events or not events but council meetings and a uh a mayor came up to me and said very nicely he
says thank you for coming more people should come and speak up because and not so many words he put it I'm not a dictator and he's right that's really the the the truth of the council but there is a difference to folding to when a well spoken attorney shows up and
outguns you guys. I'm sorry. Just I've seen it happen a couple times and at some of the city levels, but to also not be feckless. If 70 80% of the population of a county I mean they it's not a secret. It's what we vote for. Felicia forever comes to mind. But to stand up
for what we have, nobody is dying for more housing. New York ran out of housing and and property years ago and they're doing just fine. We don't have to overdevelop. I'll give you an image that I say a lot of the times. Um it's actually out in your one of your properties, Danny. Um,
it's a picture of a field with some cows in it and it's old Samsula. There's nothing there. And somebody spray painted a sign in big letters that says, "You're going to miss this when it's gone." And if that can paint a picture of what Valuchia County is, what it should stay as other than South Florida
nightmare, overdevelopment, overt trafficked, destroying our watershed. We all know this is the right thing to do. So again, not to Browby, but please take care of what we have left of Lucia County. We need it. Thank you. >> Thank you for your comments,
Greg. Uh Bellots, >> did I get it right? >> Bullets. Yes, >> Bullets. I appreciate the time here. Um I think you remember our vacate request that uh it was on June 2nd and it was a longer
one of the longer vacate requests in Bthoon Beach at uh West Alphen Avenue and uh we were turned down on the vacate. I just wanted to know um most of the everybody pretty much at the county all the staff approves it of course everyone pretty much said it was going
to be a done deal that's why I did not show up at the meeting I wish I would have I honestly feel that uh the decision would have been different the the image up there the last time the whole time showed the property like high
and dry property west off avenue 70 50 foot by 150 and um half of the property is in the wetlands and onethird of it is in the water. We bought that property, my wife and I, 25 years ago for our
family. We didn't just buy it to make money out of it. We we were planning on having a family, you know, we have we bought five lots from five individual people that wanted to build homes on each one of these lots. In their own minds, they thought they were going to build on them, but the one guy lot seven
and eight, which is in the water, wanted all this money. He lived up in like Connecticut and I bought it from him because I wanted to own the whole block to protect the property and and protect the wetlands. The wetlands weren't even brought up one time at that meeting which is really amazing and and and
Bthoon Cookman University was never brought up in that meeting. You know, they we were trying to buy that lot from another owner before where Bthoon Cookman owns in front of ours and they never wanted to sell it and she donated it. Her name was Veronica. She's donated it to Bthoon Cookman University. Now, I
know the county doesn't really care that much, I guess, about the tax base, but if this property goes on the tax roll, it's gonna number one, we have I don't know if if anybody got to look at the stuff I sent over with all the wetlands and everything like there's one there, but did you get the things I sent over
to the um last night? I mean, last week with all the the surveys and we've owned the property 25 years. We got a lot of uh different environmental information. and it shows how we can only build on the corner of that big giant lot to the north. It looks big, but there's
wetlands. And then the county wants to build um picnic benches and have people come down there, the public. I mean, this is between people's homes. My kids are going to build across the street. We're building a home for them. We're going to live on the other lot. We we
bought five lots and combined them. We didn't have to combine all these lots. We could have there could there's four water and sewer hookups on that property. So there could be four homes. We we like the environment and uh we want to build just two homes, but to vacate, we're going to go ahead and just build West Alphen Avenue if we have to.
The county has to build it, but we don't really want to build the road. We want to just vacate the land and then we can get make that one parcel bigger. Danny, you know about Bthoon Beast. I don't know if anybody else has been down there, but that's it. And I wish you
reconsider. >> Thank you. comments. >> Wendy Anderson. >> Mr. Chair, can I have a moment of personal privilege? >> Yes. >> I just wanted to tell the gentleman, we normally can't talk responding to things
that people come up and speak, but if you stay to the end of the meeting, I plan to bring up your subject if you stay to the end. >> And I wrote a letter everybody not one. >> You're good. You're good. I just want I know. I just want to let you know. Hang in there. That's all I want you to know. >> Okay. I'll wait till the end. Thank you.
>> Wendy Anderson. Good afternoon, chairman and council. My name is Wendy Anderson. I live in District 1. Um I want to just uh remark on a few things that I've been hearing as I've been talking to residents across District 1 over the last few weeks and months and and that is the mantra that
we've all heard time and time again is that growth does not pay for itself. And a question came up um shout out to Mr. Mesabov here. I hope he's listening. Um, I I've been asked time and time again about impact fees and whether or not the
council has um kept pace with increasing impact fees to keep up with um keep up with inflation, keep up with the actual cost of developing and also to and I'd like to just add this piece to it to
acknowledge the fact that as resources I'll define those in a second. And as resources become increasingly scarce, they become increasingly valuable. Our water supply, the quality of our water, our air, our wildlife habitat, our green space for storm water protection, our
roadways, our our hospitals and beds and hospitals and our seats and schools. All of those are resources and the more scarce they become as we grow more and more, the more valuable they should be. And so I know that the county is currently undergoing a study to um to
consider raising impact fees at either at the end of this year or the beginning of next year. And I would just like to encourage you, particularly as you're going through budget deliberations now and into the next few weeks. I encourage you to consider the possibility of increasing your impact fees to the
maximum allowable by state law, which would be 25% over that could be phased in over the next two years or 50% phased in over the next four years. This is important. We're behind the curve on impact fees. And if you're worried that it might actually cause um developers to
leave the county and go develop somewhere else, well, I would just say that's fine. That's fine. listening to the speakers we've already had this morning. It seems like that's the will of the people. So, I would just that's that's the comment I wanted to make is that we've done pretty good in the last
iteration of increases with the tiered fees. That makes a lot of sense to actually base the fees on the size of the home because that tends to translate to the size of the impact of the population. So, um I do hope that over the next few months you will consider um increasing impact fees as much as
possible. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. Uh Cassandra uh Manisek or something close to that. >> Hi, I'm Cassandra Monzek. I live on um Hope Street and we were here to discuss
um the Hope Street paving project. Um, we historically have a dirt road that is now, um, in the process of being paved. Um, I have lived on the street for myself 16 years. My husband since he was
in one, so 50 years he's lived on the street. Um, basically our neighbors have decided that it is time to pave the road without asking. Um, they have made us feel bullied into this project, uh, without proper drainage. um it is
flooding our yards. Um so Miss Magnelli has um a whole presentation for it. I was just adding my little tidbit. She was supposed to go first. So um I just wanted to basically back her up and say that um us as residents are really
against this project. Um unless it is done from end to end, not halfway done without proper drainage. They have not applied for permits and they have not done permits. They have not even considered where all this water is going to go and what it's going to do to our
houses. So, um, that's it for now. Miss Magnell's got the rest of the presentation. Thank you. >> Okay. Thank you. Uh, Rebecca, did you want to go? She's called you out. Good evening or good afternoon. I'm not
here fighting for the fuel farmer yelling today thankfully. Um you guys know my name Rebecca Mgali. I'm here as a resident of Joe Estates on Hope Street in Orman Beach. For nearly two years, my family and our neighbors have lived with uncertainty surrounding this roadway project. I am not opposed to reasonable
improvements. I am asking that they be completed transparently, lawfully, and with full consideration of long-term effects. This process has significantly affected my family, my neighbors, their children, their animals. My children no longer ride their bikes or clear play near the road as they once did because
of the tension and fear of retaliation within our neighborhood on top of stray bullets hitting them from our neighbor in the back who keeps shooting at night. I have been confronted and harassed by neighbors simply for asking questions through appropriate government channels. No resident should feel intimidated
for for participating in public process. My greatest concern is storm water. Apparently, our funds are going to run out in Valuchia County in 2030. It was on the news, unless it was fake news. Paving increases impervious surfaces and changes how water moves. Yet the current plans, if you could show those
documents, the two um images. Yet the current plans depict only half of Hope Street. Even though it is one continuous roadway in and one way out, water does not stop at arbitrary property lines. It follows elevation, grade, soil conditions, and drainage pathways. Storm
water calculation showed should therefore consider the entire connected area and its cumulative impacts not only to the portion of the selected part for permitting. The earlier section of Hope Street was paved without the storm water review now associated with this project.
The county appears to be considering that prior paving retroactively while reviewing only portions of the remaining roadway. This raises concerns that one continuous improvement is being fragmented into smaller sections, potentially reducing or avoiding regulatory thresholds that might
otherwise trigger ERPs or CGPS through the FD. Is there a lawful engineering or regulatory basis for dividing this roadway into separate projects? I respectfully ask the county to explain the basis of the record on record and provide any documentation or exemption
agency determining this. Since the paving has occurred, we've seen more water. We have seen flooding from behind and in front of our properties. And so I asked the county to explain. Is there a conflict of interest if the
person applying for the permit happens to be a resident residing on the road along with the engineer and have already unauthorized without permitting paved their portion of the road and are now seeking retroactive um permitting? Two, why is only part of
the continuous road shown in the plans? How were cumulative storm water impacts assessed? How does water have memory? Does water know to fall only on half of the road and avoid our half of the road not to flood our properties? And who is legally responsible for maintaining this
road afterwards? >> Thank you, Rebecca. Um, I think we both received uh an email from Ben and we'll be I'll follow up on that with you and and Ben. Thank you. Uh, Pam Tisdale.
Hello, my name is Pam Tisdale. I live on Hope Street also and I'm here today for the first reason is to talk about the lack of gun safety in our residential area with gunshots going off all the time.
I'm also here to talk about our all of our canals that have been there 40 years that all of a sudden they're all stopped up and water's not moving. what's going to happen when we get more drainage that's coming through.
Okay. And it just it really concerns me too back with this road project then how can a few people that I've lived out here 40 years and I have emailed the county on this can just decide to do stuff you know not a
group participation like we all have done for the last 40 years. That's it. Thank you. Thank you for coming in. Uh Nancy Miller, >> mayor of Daytona Beach Shores. >> Thank you, Jeff. Does it this go down
more? >> Hello. Uh Nancy Miller, Daytona Beach Shores, and I'm here as the proud co-chair of the storm water flood mitigation that I chair at the committee with Jake Johansson. I want to tell you when we started this committee about 18 months ago, we had several pillars that
we wanted to accomplish. The first one was to secure funding. Have we secured all that we need? Absolutely not. But $400 million through transform 386 has been secured. And I want to thank each and every one of you up here that has
approved that. But what I'm here to talk to you about today is that we had talked about an interactive dashboard. And I want to let you know that that launched last week. So I'm very happy to announce that. That's something we worked very hard on. That was one of our other
pillars that we talked about communication. I still have people saying nothing's being done and that is not the case at all. So a little bit later this evening, Ben Bartlett will be spending a little bit time demonstrating and he'll take a quick moment to show
you how it works. So this partnership with the storm water was between the Valuchia County roundt, the flooding subcommittee and all 16 cities collaborating together on this project. The um interactive
uh launch will provide convenient way to explore work underway. So you'll be able to go in through this interactive to find out what is being done to reduce flood risks risk to improve drainage and strengthen storm water infrastructure. This will consolidate major flood
mitigation efforts and it will be into three primary functions. The first one will be storm water infrastructure projects. So you'll be able to see what projects are underway, watershed analysis and storm water maintenance activities. You'll be able to click on
the components to learn more about the efforts, including what is happening, what's its purpose, the anticipated timeline, and other project information. It's going to provide a view of the work underway to protect each neighborhood, improve drainage, and build a more
resilient Valuchia County. So, this is going to be available on valia.org on the very front page. It's going to be regularly updated and it's going to continue to involve with all new projects and you can check back regularly for new information. So again,
very happy that this is something that we tried to get across 18 months ago and now it is here. So thank you very much. >> Thank you uh Michelle Utter. I want to thank you for letting me speak
today like you always do, every single one of you. I'm standing here today because I am a medical whistleblower who has tried is tired of screaming into empty rooms and federal level while the
systems meant to protect citizens. Instead, they're playing political games. For the last several years, you've seen me at this microphone. I have done everything responsible as a citizen and
did everything through every official channel for finding through public records request submitting certified data blocks even to the state epidemiology department, Governor DeSantis and Latapo after traveling
overseas with scientific data and proving that my spike protein is actively persisting over 2,35 days. And what has what was the response of the federal government?
Total inst total silence. I have been ignored by leadership in activity. Blacklisted by high-profile medical freedom organizations. This multi-million dollar charity and flashy political podcast don't want real
advanced diagnostic data that want safe marketable public relations campaigns. Just this month, they are pushing a pharmaceuticalbacked bill in Washington that uses strict injury tables to protect the corporate immunity shields
and not the injured who are hurt by 2021. So, I will be sacrificed. I am not here today to beg anyone. I just want it on public record.
Everyone should know that Chairman Brower was one who's done more for me than the federal government has done this whole entire time. But while local board is showing compassion,
the bar the broader spectrum of the government is silently put me into my grave. I'm done writing. I'm not used to writing you and speaking to you because I like to give you my full attention. But because of this bill that's coming out, the vaccine injury compensation
modernization act of 2026, there is no lockdown. There is nothing to protect us. They're caring more about um big pharma not going bankrupt. Instead, they're ready to sacrifice me. So, I'm here to let you
know I am being bullied, harassed, and much more. So, because I care about future generations, this is what I deal with besides my own health going down. But I had to have this on on record so you know exactly what's going on with
me. And I'm not mad at any one of you. I thank you for letting me speak. Thank you for coming in. And that concludes the uh opening public participation. We'll move uh to item
one, approval of the agenda. Can I get a motion to approve the agenda? >> Motion to approve. Second. >> Motion to approve the agenda as written by Councilman Robbins, second by Vice Chair Reinhardt. All in favor say I.
>> Any opposed? And the agenda is approved seven to zero. Um, item two is a consent agenda. Um, let me take this in two parts. Does anybody have a an item they would like to
comment on after the vote? Does anyone have an item they would like to pull for a vote? Chairman, I just wanted to um just ask a couple questions on item uh L uh just to our staff
before or after the vote. before before the vote. Okay, >> we're going to pull >> chairman motion to approve the consent agenda absent item L. >> Second. >> Thank you. And you didn't let me finish. >> I'm sorry. >> I'm there more.
>> It's No, just item K for after the vote for a comment with staff. So the motion is uh still for L to be pulled and uh K for a comment after the vote. Um all in do you you have public
comment and can you clarify who the second was >> you? Okay. Um okay we have a item K. Let me look at these real quick. See if there's any L's
here. CF. >> Let's go ahead and do public comment before we vote so we can hear from uh the public. Uh first up we have nobody wants to go first, but Steve, you're
you're going first today. Steve Crump. Uh on item C. Uh thank you, chair. Good afternoon. My name is Steve Crump, Deleon Springs, Florida, and I am speaking on behalf of Luc County Farm Bureau in in support of agenda item C, the continued
implementmentation of the fairgrounds master plan. Phase, excuse me, phase two. The fair fairgrounds complex is the front door for agriculture in Valuchia County and is home to Farm Bureau, the agriculture extension service, the fair association, the cattleman's association. It's where farmers,
ranchers, and small businesses and the public come together yearround. Farm Bureau uses the facilities for our weekly farmers market, our annual membership meeting, and educational programs. Every Wednesday, our market attracts approximately 220 vendors and
2500 shoppers. It serves as a small business incubator for local entrepreneurs while providing residents access to affordable produce and other goods. And we have seen the benefits of phase one improvements. Last Tuesday's heavy rain left much of the Midway
underwater in the afternoon, but thanks to the phase one in drainage improvements, the water was gone by the next morning, allowing us to open the farmers market at 5:00 a.m. with minimal disruption. Before these improvements, flooding would have likely prevented us
from opening at all. Phase two focuses on practical needs, not cosmetic upgrades, fire suppression, uh, high HVAC improvements, ADA, ADA accessibility, and other infrastructure necessary to keep this facility functional and safe for the community.
And as a side note, I can personally attest that the need for additional shade, especially in the summer months, is critical. The project is funded through ECRO and not the county general fund and delaying the work will only increase construction costs in the future. The previous
council adopted the fairgrounds master plan and this afternoon I we ask that you stay the course and continue investing in this important agriculture and community asset and thank you for your consideration today. >> Thank you Katherine Pante.
She's still here. You're speaking on item F. >> Good evening, council members. I'm here to request that item F be removed from the consent agenda and placed on the regular agenda for consideration at a later date. The public deserves a full presentation from county staff, particularly given that a substantial
document was recently added to the item. The public deserves greater transparency and an opportunity to fully understand the details, implementations, and justification for this project. I'm also concerned that no needs assessment was requested for Councilman Dempsey's project, particularly since the council
previously determined that a needs assessment was not necessary. How that how was that determination made, especially for a project involving an expenditure of several million dollar? I respectfully ask that item F be removed from the consent agenda and brought back at a later date as a regular agenda item
with a full presentation from county staff and an opportunity for meaningful full public discussion and input. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> You want me to stay for K? >> Go ahead and do K. >> Basically, it's just the same. It's a large agenda item. The public really
didn't um get to offer input. There was one public meeting held out west. This is for the Deep Creek thing. There was only one public meeting. Um, it was advertised on the calendar, but there was no Facebook um, message like the county usually puts out when they
advertise events. And there should be a full presentation by county staff so that the public understands and can provide input into that project than just a few select groups of people. Thank you. >> Thank you. Uh, Connie Colby
also on item F. And then Wendy Anderson, you will close it out on item F. >> Sorry, a little slow these days. Um um on item F, I I had a couple of slides
there. The first um slide that I'm seeing there um shows the that um the properties that were put up for um Valuchia Forever. These are the numbers on the left hand side for me anyway. And
these are different from the numbers that um were voted on as far as I can tell. Um I'd like some explanation as to what numbers were actually voted for for the property. That property is showing four different properties put together and
apparently there's not one single number that goes with the whole property anymore. So, I'm kind of this particular item is not relevant or helpful to me because I don't know where they're trying to put anything. They're talking about easements here and um different
things there. Anyway, back in um when this property was purchased, there was a general consent order that was purchas that came along with the property and it says that prior to any transfer of any property interest of the the property and until restoration and monitoring
activities are set forth in the general consent order have been completed, the respondents have agreed in the general consent order to maintain legal access to the property sufficient to allow respondents and their agents um and consultants and contractors to
complete the restoration activities. Now, we're It sounds like we're trading that off for um easements in place of the um general con consent order. Um
I don't quite understand how we can do this. It should one thing not be complete. It It's what was recorded for fixing this property up. Um then in um the summary or the um the summary of
the it tells us that there there was a field verification done on this property and all of a sudden Valuchia Forever has 280 282 or 242 acres of land and some of
this is going to be taken away for easements. ments. It would be helpful if the map that we have for this property could show where the easements are, where the 240 acres are, if they contiguous, are they spread out all over the place, and what's happening. And
they give a lot of information about what's allowed on those particular acres. And then it's they totally ignored the fact that there's another 104 acres on that property that nothing's told us what they're going to do with those or what's going to be allowed on them.
Um, it's kind of disconcerting to know that that's happening out there and we don't know there. >> Thank you. >> Thank you, Wendy Anderson. Also on item F. Good afternoon, Wendy Anderson. Um,
District 1. So, um, Miss Pente requests that you all pull this from the the consent agenda and put it on a future, um, full agenda. And I completely agree with that. This is a big topic. It's a big topic that's been going on for over a year. And, um, and the lack of
transparency that is embedded in this item is is overwhelming. I think what we just heard from Miss Colby is that there's a lot of confusion amongst the public about what's going on with this property. Um, to me it looks absolutely illogical that we would spend millions
of dollars to buy a piece of property for conservation, conservation of existing wetlands and then we would sell an easement back or or sort of trade an easement back to the state to protect wetlands. Well, didn't we
already protect the wetlands by buying it the first time? So, yes, we knew when we bought it that there was a a general consent order to restore the damaged wetlands that were on the site. Damaged wetlands that somebody once said, "Wow, you know, they're already damaged. Maybe
we should just put a recreational facility on it." No, how about we actually restore it to the wetlands that they were supposed to be? That's what you do when you buy conservation land. So, the the easements will now require passive recreation. We have we have definitions for what passive recreation
is. The uh the resolution itself specifies very very clearly what can and can't happen on it. No ATVs, no OVs. Our own chapter 82 in our own ordinances already spells out what can and can't happen on a conservation land. No swamp
buggies, no OVs. I want that clarified. I want a public meeting about this where we clarify what happens on that newly named pitcher plant preserve which is right next to the longleaf pine preserve which is beautiful and also full of
pitcher plants by the way. So we need to have a big discussion about this. This has been a big topic. This is an electiony year topic that is coming up time and time again and we need to get this out on the table and discuss the fine details of not just this particular
change, this particular resource management plan, but the entire project. This has been piece meal together in the least transparent way I could even imagine. So, we've we've got to pull this and have a bigger discussion about it. Thank you.
Okay. Um, Danny, item L. And then, uh, Brad, are you coming up for that? Okay. And then I'll have a question for you on item K as well. >> But, thank you, Chairman. Uh, Brad, I'll
I'll try to be as quick as possible. I just kind of just wanted to bring awareness. I know you and I have had a little bit discussion about my concerns. >> Yes. >> If you could um tell us real quickly um what's going on uh how this came about. >> Yes, sir. >> And then I'll follow up.
>> Yeah. So, Conservation Florida is asking to rescend a grant they received in the last cycle. Um once they started um there was a existing structure on site in a building envelope that was pre-established that they were going to be able to add to use as the basis for
the project. Once they started the project, they realized that the building would need to come down um and they would need to replace with a new structure. Um they are bringing that building down after our discussions with them because as a conservation
organization, it would not make sense for them to maintain a structure at this point that they don't have a use for and develop a secondary envelope on conservation land. So, they're using that same envelope that they had previously described. um to build a
brand new building. >> Okay. Uh thank you, Brad. >> Yes, sir. >> Uh council and and and public, the the reason I brought this up, uh D Ranch is down in in the Ostein area. Uh David, it's I I believe it's kind of on our on
our border. Uh it's an awesome project, awesome organization. Um but was appetizing uh originally with this project was our partnership kind of price tag with it, right? cuz there was an existing um building on it. Uh
beautiful building. Uh any man's dream building, you know, a red iron shop kind of building, 60x 100ish. Uh lean twos, overhangs, all the good stuff. Overhead doors. Um pretty much a clean slate. And Carissa, I sent you some pictures.
Do you have them? If you can put up the engineering one first and then I have a little slideshow highlighting. Is Georgia Turner here? I'm calling you out on a in a good way. Some good pictures and you'll see how to put George's
pictures in order, her facial expressions. Um but but real quick, uh council, um I I'd like us to make absolutely sure and Brad and our our management guys,
there's no guarantee that these funds if if there's a uh this tax reform is going to be there and that's what I kind of wanted to talk about. Um, I made contact with Miss Tracy Dean and some of the explanations I got were the the building
was um not been able to be ADA compliant uh and it was degraded. I I kind of disagree with it. I can almost guarantee my colleagues would after seeing it because these buildings uh council, they're a they're a shell and they're red iron and and how they construct
these buildings uh they frame on the inside of them. you know, they can do mezzanine, they can do all sorts of stuff. It's a uh like the painter Ross, like a clean um a clean slate, a clean um um portrait that you can paint with it. So, here's
the original um the building kind of layout which they had. And uh if you can go to the next next picture and this was the uh first set of engineering and I believe the the board had changed and maybe their their their views had possibly changed which is
fine. I just want the council to kind of get a good idea of what the building looks like. There's the outside of the building. And you can go to the next one. There's a uh you can see the inside uh inside of the building concrete uh slab.
There's a front view. Next. Oh, there's Georgia. All right. And you can kind of see the uh the sides of the uh the sides of the building. So, >> the size of the snake. >> Yeah, it was pretty uh pretty cool
event. But, uh, council, something I'd need, and Brad, I don't know if you guys can help me out with this. I just, uh, would like because this is possibly coming back in the future. As I understand, they're going to come for a greater ask. And I'm weary, uh, uh, of
of where this is kind of going because I don't know if the money is going to be there or or if it's going to have the support for possibly what they're asking. I'd like to see the board minutes of their their board their meeting boards to see their discussion and why uh the the the automatic change
and also to any of the engineering notes from when um they had those discussions because it sounds just based on my conversation with the the new director. There's probably a little bit more to this which is fine. I just want to have uh the ability to dissect this thing a
little bit. Um because these buildings council uh my experience, I've owned them. I own them and there's also about 30 of them that were built in Oakill. Like I said, you can build these into whatever you want. They're windloaded. They're engineered. Um Don Don's
familiar with some of this stuff. Uh so in that too, most importantly, the Ostein folks too kind of got caught off guard and said, "Hey, um we want to make sure our tax dollars are being stretched and spent um um fiscally responsible as
well." So if we could, Brad, what do you think on the staff level? Should we go ahead and and and resend this or should we wait for this additional information to come back to make sure if they really want to do this? Um what do you think?
>> The reason we brought it forward is their engineer said that the the uh the structural integrity of the building as it existed was compromised and it could not be added to. So the they had brought 2.5 million previously as match and
asked for I think 600,000. Now they're asking they still have their 2 and a half million. They're asking probably 2.4 2.5 to build. they are expanding the footprint and and doing a second floor to add more educational exhibits um to that footprint but they are coming in
the next cycle um with an application. So I think that >> so it will come back before you in um August or September the application after it goes through the process >> in in in my thought process to close this out. I'd have to see the the notes.
I've been in this building. I know it. But I don't want us to get in the business of bad business of tearing down perfectly good structures, which I believe it is, and I believe it can be modified uh to fit to fit the need. But
this is taxpayer dollars, so you can see our concern with it. Um because you know in the future um I haven't seen one 501 that hasn't come back and said hey we're expanding in 5 years we're expanding in 10 years. It's a good building. It's
probably if you have to build it today a4 million. If you had the government build it it's probably 500,000. So you can understand my concern. Council I'm kind of stuck where >> Tell us tell us what you would like us
to do. We could vote it up, we can vote it down, or you can make a motion to bring it back the next. >> Can we have some more comments first? Maybe >> questions first. >> Yeah, because I think we'd need some more information on the board meetings and and stuff like that. Um, but what are >> you hoping for in the end? >> I I don't know yet. I see I see the
hamster going on David's uh >> Okay. Uh, Councilman Santiago, >> I got to feed this hamster. I'll you know, this sparked the question. So, can we pull up the first picture that you put up there? The layout, the floor plan.
Sorry. So, I will say as as we're waiting for that, so when we uh made adjustments with your um permission, uh the board minutes since they are a nonprofit organization, their board minutes for the last 12 months will be in their application um that we will bring
forward. So you will be able to see that. We certainly have that in um in our offices now and we can distribute it early for you as well and get the letter from their engineer and any other supporting documents as well. >> So what is the plan that this this
layout that I'm looking at? This is what they proposed in the application. Right. >> This is their their previous application that they're asking you to resend. And I would I don't want to advocate or be misconstrued as advocating for someone's project. So there's a Danch representative here. And if I may, I' I'd turn it to him. Um, I'm not ready for that yet.
>> Okay, got it. >> Um, so this is what they submitted that we approved, >> correct? >> And I think I heard >> in last cycle. Yes. >> Yes. Correct. What they're trying to resend. >> Yes, sir. >> Okay. And I think I heard in your one of your comments that you said that now they want to add a second floor.
>> They're going to add a second floor after after the news that this was structurally unsound >> after the news. Or was it during the evaluation of putting a second floor that they figured out that it might not work? They they couldn't have put a second floor on based on our our agreement with them.
>> Understood. Understood. So, I'm just trying to get a timeline here because I don't understand why they can't just submit a change request for their existing application, a modification. >> So, scope change requests, we typically do not allow for a budget increase. It
would have to go through the process. >> I'm not saying a budget increase, but to use it for Sorry. Cor >> Yes. >> Yeah. But not before us today. >> Correct. >> But we could say use that money for your
project as it is too, couldn't we? With a modification. >> Not. It's not how the process works. I'm sorry. So, I'm having trouble following council member. >> All right. Maybe maybe I'll make it a little simpler. Not Not that you need it to be simpler, but for me, it's all good. Um they have an application that
we have approved for $600,000 approximately. Okay. >> And is there anything within that process or any governance of this body to say we acknowledge your second floor or changes to your plans?
We will accept the changes to your plan and go forth and use the $600,000 we've already approved. Is there anything that prohibits us from doing that? No, they can't complete the project though without the additional funds. >> I didn't ask you that. I didn't ask you
that. >> My question is >> no. >> Could we disperse the $600,000 with a modification agreement accepted by this body to use the 600,000 and move forth with whatever they're doing and raise whatever money they need. >> Yes. They would have to submit a scope
change request to this board. >> Okay. Good. And you know, I think what's what piqu my interest is I think the legitimate conversation here is that the pending issues that we have that we're going to have to deal with with the tax amendment
that's going before all the voters in a few months, right? It's going to be a lot of tough decisions coming forth by this body and a lot of people will like it and a lot of people won't like it. But I think as Danny was saying that I I want to be very cautious and good
stewards of the funds that we do have and stretch them as much as possible to fund as many other projects that are available. Um I I I'm a little bit leery that this came in because we changed our
max grant amount to $2.5 million. And I'm leerary that this is the motivation that drove I'm not accusing, but I'm my spidey instincts are telling me there's something fishy here um with trying to tap into additional funds um at
afterwards. Um so I I'll just say this guys, chairman, I think you did ask for guidance and maybe I think Matt, but I'll just lean and then whatever we decide, but um I I'd like to see that those those minutes. I'd like to see at a minimum also any engineering stuff
that did determine that this building is not ADA compliant or is uh not suitable >> structure compromised. >> Oh, it's compromised. That's a pretty strong word. That means we have to tear it down. >> That's what that means to me. >> Um but uh
>> it's and again I I would prefer that we don't take any action today and revisit this in the future because I'm concerned. Thank you. >> You're welcome. Uh, Councilman Johansson, >> I I have a few questions to today. The
item is to resend this $600,000. >> Yes, sir. >> That is the item. >> Yes, sir. >> They don't want it. They want to give it back. That is the item. >> Yes, sir. >> It's dangerous. >> It is dangerous because we might not give them any more money after that.
They're out 600,000. My question is, are are are they going to bulldoze the the existing building before they get the 2.5 mil? If they would get it, I'm seeing the
handshake the handshake. No. Um I'm I'm all good with rescending the $600,000 and sending them on their way. I mean, good luck if that's the decision they want to make. But, but I've I've
heard time and time again, and we I think we heard it earlier today is staff told us it was no big deal and and it was a sure thing, and then you get up here and you find out you don't get your 2.5 mil cuz we had a bad day at the
office. Um, so so be careful what you ask for. I think I I especially in the environment we're about to go in. Um uh but right now all they're asking for is to take our $600,000 back which which
could go to another project um and and come what may uh in the future. >> Correct. And we'll be back their ask with the 2.5 million will be back before >> whatever. Yeah. >> Council. >> Yeah. I'm I just want to concentrate on the item today. I think.
>> Okay. Councilman Robbins. >> Thank you, Chair, and and uh Mr. Johansson, I agree, David. I agree. And and um I think we can I think we can handle the item. I just have one follow-up question, but um just in in my uh stance. Uh I think it all kind of
ties in to each other and our future decision. That's why I asked for for more information. Chairman, may I speak to this young man, >> the owner? Uh the are you the senior manager or >> uh director of philanthropy Ben Collins Stone Street here in Dand County.
>> Ben, nice to meet you as well. >> Uh quick question. Um what happens if you guys resend this and you don't get to 2 and a half million then what? >> Great question. Uh we have much less nature center than we have pro than than we would like um than we think that the
the county would like. Um, but we will move forward and and attempt to find other ways to fund it, but it won't be what we've put forward here. It will likely be um lesser uh using what we have the best that we can using donor funds um but not the vision that I think
we presented when we unveiled it to the public and talked about uh the value of a nature center. We've got all these convers conservationists here who are eager to learn about it. Um, and I think, you know, part of what I heard in the discussion is how do we um, our conservation mission is not to expand footprint on this site. The only way we
can go is up. We couldn't go up in that steel building. That's the issue. >> Did they say why? >> Um, I I don't I don't know through the engineering. I know that they said it couldn't hold that. Um, that I can get you the details. We'll get you the board minutes. We'll get you the engineering >> because it's got the vertical height. I think it's 16. >> No, it has the height. It's that for
whatever reason architects and engineers said that to get that additional, you know, square footage inside, we had to go up and the building could not support that. But we have had people come to us and say, you know, are you going to recycle it? We're going to scrap it. Can we get this out for parts? So, our goal is to recapture absolutely everything we
can. Nobody wants to see a good building get bulldozed, especially in the name of conservation. But we are committed. Our mission is not to have any more impact on that site. The only way we can go is up and the only way is with a new building. >> I get it.
All right, >> commissioners. Thank you so much, >> Councilman Santiago. >> Yeah, and and and Jake, thanks for bringing clarity. That's all we're really here to discuss is is is the decision. And I I I when you said that, I wanted to clarify the the purpose for my questioning in line is to try to at a
minimum preserve their 600,000 that they've been awarded. And that's why I threw those questions out there because it's it's it's a risk that they're taking. Um, and sounds like you're willing to take it. >> This is the process. You've been
encouraged and this is the process. >> Who encouraged you? >> Excuse me. >> Come on back up. >> You said Yeah, I got to come back up. >> Come come back up to the microphone, please. >> I I you sparked another question. You said we've been encouraged because this is the governing body that decides all that.
>> I'm going to say our board. >> Okay. >> Yeah. Yeah. No, when we when we understood kind of what we had to work with, the scope of what we wanted to do, um we decided that you know a larger nature center, more capacity, um education space, interpretive exhibits, all that stuff was not possible in what
we had and so we wanted to to go bigger. >> That's basically the driver. You guys want to be bigger. >> I mean, we want to have the nature center that the county deserves. Absolutely. >> Not the one that you presented >> more programming. What we presented on steroids. Yeah. what we presented with educational partnerships, partnerships
with visit west, with other folks across the state. I >> understand. I'm just saying not what you presented to the public when you guys did that unveiling. You want more >> uh the vision that we gave him I believe is consistent but great. Yeah. Larger inside, more space, more exhibits. Yes, more. >> Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair.
>> Vice Chair Reinhardt. >> Thank you, Chair Brad Hiden back there. Just a quick question, Jake. Also, thank you for thank you for bringing clarity because it's just what we're voting on. I appreciate that bringing it back inside. Not an engineer, didn't state a holiday and
express if my understanding and forgive me because I have not seen the building, but when you say going up, you're not talking about going up on top of the existing roof. You're talking about going up within because the roof is as tall as it is. Correct.
>> Do you understand? I guess. Well, maybe I need maybe I need but I do have question from >> apologies for the confusion. I think initially we wanted to go up because we had the space within the barn >> within the actual barn. >> Correct. But the because architectural engineering said we couldn't do it. Now
going up means when we build a new on top of that foundation we will have a second floor. >> Okay. And now Brad the question for you. Yes sir. So he answered the one question. If this does come back, if they bring it back and seek the you know the different the the additional
process, will the architect drawings or whatn not the architect explanation be involved in that as to why they could not go with the existing building? >> We will get the letter from the engineering archite what what Danny wanted with the notes. I would prefer to also see that >> I based on the council's direction and
my understanding of this conversation the staff will put construct a timeline and a memo uh with that additional data. >> So in answer thank you and so in answer to your question D you know you say do you want this brought back yeah it's going to come back probably so but I think we address what we're here today
to do. Thank you. It is a gamble but more so for them. >> Okay we're only dealing with item L on the consent agenda. David Santiago, let's wrap this up. >> Yes, sir. I I think we still need a motion. Move to approve the decision of the 600,000.
>> You need a vote on the general consent agenda first because it was removed item L and then you would need to motion and vote on item L. >> So, the MO motion was made for the consent. >> Okay, then let's deal with the rest of the agenda. I had a a a question on item
K for for Brad. Um, just before we all vote on it, I don't know if it'll change anybody's mind, but the uh item item K is the uh Deep Creek >> Yes, sir. >> preserve. And I've got numerous
questions about allowing uh uh ATVs. And the questions from the public was you're going to have uh dirt bikes in there, too. Now, it's is it is it 10,000 acres? It will be the combined acreage of adding this 1300 acre parcel to Deep
Creek Preserve will get us close to 10,000 acres. >> So my first thought was with 10,000 acres there ought to be room to have dirt bikes, but I understand that that's not the case here. Can you what is >> it's off highway vehicles, so it would be more for u um like ATVs um side by
sides. I I don't believe we included motorcycles, did we? >> Yes. Yes. >> Oh, you did? >> Yes. >> Okay. Is it trails, paid road or so? It is uh established roads most of the 3.8
miles that we're proposing. However, as we get through the design process, if this is approved by the state, this is a proposal to the state. Um, you know, >> this is on this the part of the land that's owned by the state of Florida. >> That is correct. >> Not by the county, not by St. John's. >> That is correct.
So most of it is on established roadways. So there'll be a little impact, but there may be some realignment uh once we get in ground truth. Um but it will be in the same area as we get on the property. >> Okay. I just wanted to since I had
numerous questions from the public, I wanted the council to be aware of that what was actually happening. Okay. So that's the only other thing I had on the uh consent agenda. You heard the couple speakers from the public ask for item F
to be pulled. I'm I haven't heard that from the council. Um, uh, George, I'll ask you a a quick question on that because it is a it's it's an important question and stop me
when I if I misstate something, but what what I understand reading the item is that um, we're actually transferring more land from Echo into Valuchia Forever for conservation and that's the purpose of conservation easements here.
you're talking >> so it's um the we are protecting more acreage than we initially thought with this item. So the easement is adding an additional layer of protection. If I may address some of
the some of the um you know the characterizations here the the consent agend the consent order had two parts a restoration part and uh a mitigation part. And so we've we've completed the restoration. We've restored the ditches. We've did some level grading. That work
is done. So we have done the restoration that was required by the consent order. And we are mitigating the rest of the impacts by putting a conservation easement over the portion that's bought by Felucia forever. We are also getting
an additional mitigation credit to um allow for us to put a trail head um there for Longleaf Pine Preserve. So, we're getting benefit as well. >> Okay. Thank you. All right. Uh, if there's uh no other
questions from the uh Well, let's let's do this in proper order. Do I have a motion to approve the consent agenda? Minus uh D and Troy Kent, you already made that motion and vice chair Reinhardt made the
second. Any questions on on that part of this? All in favor of approving the consent agenda, please say I. >> I. >> Any opposed? And that motion passes seven to zero.
And now we can move to uh item L. And uh can I get a motion on that? >> To approve item L, Johansson. >> And so the vote would be to resend the $600,000. And that motion was by Jake Johansson,
second by David Santiago. All in favor say I. >> I. >> Any opposed? All right. Well, that was the longest consent agenda ever, and it didn't it didn't
take much more time than some of the other ones. You looking forward to it. Okay, that takes us to item three, the fiscal year 2026 27 advertising budget
um for Halifax area advertising, Southeast Valuchia Advertising, and West Valuchia Advertising. First up, you gonna speak for everybody >> if you let me and I'll be short. Yeah, >> you're not really that short.
>> Ah, I'm not taller than me. >> Lori Campbell Baker. I'm the executive director for the Halifax Area Advertising Authority doing business as the Daytona Beach Area Convention and Visitors Bureau. Um, just quickly in our audience is the chair of our board, Jim
Jorski from the Tortugas. We have staff here as well and Destiny Nevice is here from Florida Restaurant and Lodging Association. Um, quick note for those listening at home, this these three budgets that you're going to hear are not adorum.
They're not general fund. These are uh bed tax paid budgets that are gifted to us from visitors who stay overnight within Valuchia County. So, it's a great system. I'm going to give you the just the top seven super quick lightning round on the Halifax area. One, um, our
collections are down this year in the current year, but also a bit projected to be down next year as well, which means we're going to be pulling a million7 out of our fund balance to artificially boy that budget just a little so that we
can step it down. you'll see something close to a $3 million in fund balance that will likely be less um a bit overestimated in terms of tax revenues. So the budget will drop basically from
15.7 million to 14.5 million for the year fiscal year 2026 27. But we're going to do a lot with that money. So that said, we are still allocating a little over 5% for county initiatives, including $400,000 to the Ocean Center,
working with Lynn Flanders and team, and also $400 $400,000 to Daytona Beach International Airport to improve air service, airlift support there. Um, in our group sales, working with the Ocean Center, working with the meetings
hotels, trying to get more close in business, more weekday business. We have our our sales director here. She's doing a great job with her team. And then marketing. We have our chief marketing officer as well. And we're going to be focused on reconfiguring one of our
positions. Not adding, just reconfiguring. Um multimedia specialists. So think in terms of 16 social media channels. We're kicking out two, three posts every day per channel on the big ones. We're going to do more of that. So, if you've been following us
on social, you see a lot of exciting things about the Daytona Beach area and Valuchia County. We want to do more of that. And of course, also leveraging AI as much as we can to do even more with even less. That's it.
>> Thank you. Any questions for Lori? >> Uh, Vice Chair Matt Reinhardt. >> Thank you, Chair. Lori, thank you very much. I don't know if everybody had the opportunity, but um I did take a phone call or a Zoom call from all three of you at one time to be able to ask my questions that I had ahead of time.
>> So, full disclosure, when we get through something like this, so the public knows, we did have our our chance to ask those questions. We did >> and you did answer them. The big thing is that >> you're doing more with less basically in a nutshell to wrap it up. And you are. You are. And I'm pleased and and I
happened to look over to my left a little when the you brought up the point about the funding that we're helping out the airport >> of course. >> So >> absolutely >> I don't know where I was looking at. >> They're doing a great job at that. Thank you ladies. >> So thank you very much. Appreciate it. And thank you. >> They're working hard and we're working
hard to get them successes as well. So it's a great collaboration. >> I think that's it. You must have done a good job. >> Thank you. >> Who's next? Okay. >> New beach. >> That's right. Southeast Palutia
Advertising. All right. There we go. All right. Thank you so much. The budget remains stable this year. We were hoping to be up a little bit more than what we are, but there's a lot of headwinds out there as we know, and we're hoping that those
will start subsiding very quickly. Um, wanted to let you know too, we continue our support for DAB the airport and all the lift that's coming in there. It's very vital to all three of us to have these key feeder markets be uh nourished with these aircraft coming in and uh we
will continue working those marketplaces too as well. It's a major thrust of what we're doing this coming year. Budget is dynamic. We can address any economic changes as they prevail and that is something that we're feel very strong about. You can see the budgets here. Um
we were hoping again to uh close out the year a little bit higher. Um we are up just a tad bit but um we will remain flat probably most likely from last year and we're projected to be about the same for the next year but of course we're working very hard um doing a lot of PR
and a lot of um creative strategies to make sure that that continues to increase. Um personnel o overhead everything somewhat remaining the same. Uh we did move 175,000 out of contingency into marketing to offset
that flatness this year and we'll continue and I don't know why that slide got all messed up but um we'll continue to keep working strong. We've had some really good gains this year with our PR wins. Um Southern Living Travel Leisure has written about us in the last couple
months. We've actually it's kind of the gift that keeps giving. This particular story uh rendered over 2.5 million impressions. It got picked up by one media house, got um blasted over on Yahoo and then AOL. It just kept going and going. So, we we managed to get all
of this impression. So, working really hard to keep that going. Here's the Southern Living article. We continue to host the media journalists. And that is my presentation. Thank you for um having those calls with us and addressing any
questions that you may have. We're happy to answer. >> Thank you. Any questions? Good job. So, George is up. >> West Felia, >> Georgia Turner, West Faluchia
Advertising Authority. Uh, just a couple of things to tell you. I think you've all seen the year that we had a lot very disappointing to um go get a about a $60,000 budget cut. But what do you do when you have that happen to you? Well, you go with your tried andrue. We really
have had a focus on what we are successful with and that's promoting our trails and our trails and our trails. Uh our traditional trails which are almost completed. Um the cool craft trail that's my favorite, the one with the beverages and um then the wings of the
west trail that we've kind of revamped this year with Erica uh doing yet another um wing set out at Drench that we were just talking about. So, we also um have really um expanded our focus on the outdoors with a lot of um folks that
came to fish uh including a journalist who came here who's done some great um stories about crappie, the big crappie that she caught and the lots of crappie that she caught. And also we'll be working with the Berkeley Labal uh spec tournament in January and February. Then we're also expanding our focus. Uh for
those of you who know Carly McKenna, uh she's moving into the um meetings part of our meetings promotion part of our um work. And so I'm expecting big things from her. She's actually out at a convention right now talking to meeting planners and um wedding planners.
Weddings continue to be a huge part of what we're doing too with all the great destination weddings and venues. Uh arts and history and arts and culture and the rest is history. That's kind of one of our things, working real closely with the new owners of the Stson Mansion that are doing some great things as well as
all the other folks that are doing arts. Um, we're also expanding some of our u partnerships. We've been very involved with a mighty river recovery that I know that you guys are familiar with, but uh if you look at our I'm not sure where they are, but we have about a a slide.
Am I do I can I do it? Can I do it? I don't know how to do it. Uh this is all of our local partnerships and kind of said our small budget emphasizes working with everybody and their brother. We really are so fortunate to have Daytona Beach and New Smyrna do a lot for us and
include us in a lot of their programs. I was just talking to Andrew about a Brazilian group that's coming with influencers next year that Visit Florida next week that um Visit Florida is bringing. We work with all of our chambers of commerce and just really work with everybody to try to to make
things better. So, just to um give you a little bit of bragging about what we've done, these are some of our accomplishments. Um we also tend to find ourselves with some of our partners like the museums that came in and said uh it's did you know that May was museum month and we want to do something big.
So, we did uh organized a uh a bingo passport where we took people around to uh 24 we have 24 museums. Also, we have a new visitors guide and we've um doing a lot of more networking through something called talking tourism. the um I've told David this and he's loved it
that our uh contribution that we put in with the um airport has been good for us. Um we have been promoted very heavily for that and uh it's it's been a good thing for us. We continue to work and I didn't even mention them first with STSON. U we are the official travel
partner of STSON athletics and now we're the official travel partner of STSON Homecoming. So um that was one thing that Carly did. she went to something called the Southeast Tourism Society Marketing College and she came back and said everybody that has colleges in their town, this is what all they're doing. So, that's been a great thing.
And then speaking of which, Carly and our chair Bren Adams were both um selected for the um there were two honores for uh the uh 40 under 40. So, we're proud of them. So, I guess the numbers don't lie. Um we're just going to be working smarter and harder. If I
can do it, where is it? Anyway, uh you've seen our budget and uh I think here it is. You've seen our budget and really what we're trying to do is just, you know, work as as smart as we can with with everything that's happening with digital. Uh this is what we've had to do this year is just kind of scale
back a little bit from time to time, but that doesn't mean we're we're not working hard. So, that's what I've got to say today. >> Thank you, uh Vice Chair Reinhardt. >> Thank you, Chair Georgia. Thank you. Um and it's hard. It seems like your budget being smaller and to have when I say do
more with less that you're having to do a lot more with less, right? >> So, we appreciate that. I had a question when you brought up about the weddings and it seems like watching social media there are more and more of these >> places that are popping up. I mean, we have some beautiful >> We do >> beautiful prime real estate that's out
here farm. >> So, have more have have those individual businesses reached out to you as far as their their advertising and whatnot? I mean, more of them. >> We do. Yes, we have. And we do a um huge um wedding promotion. We do a lot of wedding shows and and you know do that
as well. That is the good news about weddings. Recession proof uh COVID proof they were you know people got married in their and >> and they're also from my understanding they're expanding just from weddings. They're multi-functions or other functions that they want to do in these locations. >> And that's been a really good thing for
us is destination weddings is what we call them. They might go to the beach, they might come to the springs, they might, you know, do everything after they did. And a lot of people ask us for goodie bags and for information, you know, for their guests that are coming. >> And last question, set Stson Mansion, >> Stson Mansion.
>> Do they collaborate with you? >> We work very very closely >> because I know they have um um a dinner theater type thing. Uh the murder tour thing that we're we're signing up for. I thought that was cool. >> Yeah. Um the >> speaking from an old correction.
>> Yeah. Uh we work very closely with them and I'm very proud of them because we've nominated them for a lot of different accolades. I mean they've they've been you know all over the world uh acclaimed for their Christmas spect we want to go and I'm as soon as it's done I'm just going to yell out Troy Kent did it.
>> Okay. >> Thank you very much. Appreciate it. How do you get a smile out of you Troy? >> Well you said 24 museums on a museum tour. Is that West Faluchia or all of us? >> That's West Faluchia. >> That's West Falucia. That's counting everything from >> David. Am I right? >> How
>> Oh, 14. Sorry. >> Okay. >> I'm I'm uh I'm getting too anxious. It's still a good number, but it's still 14. And that's >> How many micro breweries >> in West Falia? >> Four. Four. Now, >> how many county How many do you have, Lori? >> Do you know how many micro breweries in
Halifax? >> You have Debbie. >> If I asked you a motorcycle question, you would know the answer. >> Um, >> yeah, I know the beer. I just don't know the museum count. That was a good ad when you created the uh the micro
brewery tour. Um it it's helped them >> great for us. >> Yeah, it's helped the businesses too. >> Uh I'm going I'm going to ask you and any one of you can answer this is the question I'm getting from the public. We talked about it some yesterday.
>> Every one of you said that um uh you're going to be flat this year and probably next year too. Planning on being flat. Um, but you're working like you're going to create an increase, >> right? >> The question I'm getting, if it's flat
and the advertisers and bringing people in, why do advertising at all? >> Well, look who advertises. Have you ever seen Coke and McDonald's and all of those folks? I mean, you know, I I just think that, you know, if we don't advertise, we're going to get lost in in the scheme of things. I know that our
money, the 17 million seems like a lot, but in the scheme of things, that's not much. One of our colleagues told me that he had $55 million in reserves up in um Panama City Beach, you know, so how much do they have? How much do they get, you
know, bring in? Uh we see Orlando all the time with that, you know, all the numbers that they're bringing in. But in the scheme of things, we are still in Valuchia County a small destination, but we have a lot of interest in our area. Daytona Beach, international interest.
New Smyrna, international interest. us West Faluchia, you know, you go out to Blue Springs State Park within the next couple of days and count the people how many languages they're speaking there. So, we really have a a fantastic product. I've been in this business for 41 years last month. And this is the
best product I've ever sold. So, and I just we're going to continue to promote it. You know, it might not be that traditional advertising like you see some of the things that we do is more, you know, promotions and that kind of stuff. is that the the days of you know buying ads and you know different
publications are we we do a little bit of that because we still you know have some good ones but you know the things that we're all doing are very creative I mean thank goodness for AI thank goodness for the internet thank goodness for social media all the things that are out there right now that we can all really stand out
>> so let me get on let me get on my soap box up here >> I think what you're telling me is when the market's down it's a it's not a good time to stop advertising and I know that All three of you are changing it. You're looking more at closer customers. Florida we've always Florida is our main
uh is our main uh market. >> Okay. Uh thank you. You're one last thing just so the public knows all of your money comes from the bed tax. >> So and that as as there's less people
renting rooms and hotels motel there's less money coming in for you. So, it's kind of >> have to also look at it this way while I've got everybody's attention. Um, we had when I first came here 10 years ago, our average daily rate was about $280. Now, it's about $130.
>> So, you know, you could even have stayed even with the number of like we have with the number of hotels that we have, but it would go down a little bit. So, we're hoping for some new properties within the next couple of years. All of us. >> Okay. Thank you. Don't leave yet. Uh, Councilman Santiago has >> uh Yeah, thank you, Mr. Chairman. I was
just going to say you all are doing a lot with a little and I move to approve your budgets. >> Okay, we have a motion to approve by David Santiago. A second came from Vice Chair Reinhardt. And we have one member of the public who would like to speak on
this. Amy Munisi Amy Munzi Leon Springs Community Association. Since you've already decided to adopt their budget, I probably ought to just stay quiet. But I just have to brag on Georgia Turner. I was here long before she came and I remember DeLeon Springs getting zero
attention, zero good publicity. And we have so many wonderful things out there. You know, we have a national wildlife refuge. We have a state park. We have two county parks. We have a mountain biking trail. We have part of the Deleon Springs Trail, which is part of the Valuchia County Trail, which is part of
the river to see loop. And uh Georgia just came on the scene and just exploded. She fell in love with Deion Springs and she has promoted us like crazy. And um I'm sure the other ladies do a fantastic job, but I just know what it was like before Georgia came. And she
deserves a lot more than $93,000 and $317 and you know, she needs she deserves a lot more than that. But she's doing a phenomenal job. She's doing $5 million worth of business out of $93,000. So, thank you very much. And I just want to take a moment to thank her for
everything she does. She loves us. She loves West Faluchia and it shows. Thanks. >> Any other questions or comments from the council? Then all in favor of approving the advertising budgets for Halifax, Southeast, and West Faluchia, please say I. I.
>> Any opposed? >> And your budget is approved unanimously. 7 to zero. Item four, contract amendment of solid waste collection and recycling services with FCC Environmental
Services Florida. >> Move to approve. >> Second. >> Motion to approve by David Santiago. Second was by Vice Chair Reinhardt. >> You're not coming up here to talk trash, are you? >> That's exactly why I'm here. >> We don't allow it in our rules,
>> boy. Um, good evening. Ben Barlet, Bluc County Public Works Director. Um, I know y'all made a motion to approve, but there's a couple things I >> We haven't voted yet. >> I do want to uh explain this is two-part um agenda item. The first part is the
amendment to uh FCC's contract. They're uh allowed by contract to request a CPI adjustment to their collection element in their contract. And they're also uh requesting an an adjustment to the uh disposal element which is a direct result of the fee uh tipping fee
increase. They're requesting they can request up to 5% uh they're requesting 4.16% which is in line with the CPI for uh garbage and trash collection. And then the second part of it is um an increase to the non-advalorum assessment
for the unincorporated uh residents in Valuchia County. The current uh assessment was $297. We're looking to increase it by $6 or 2% to $33 to cover these additional costs. Happy to answer any questions.
Questions from council. I I have one. Is um they can do this again next year? >> Yes, sir. >> Do they understand we might not have any money next year? And is that why they're doing it this year? Well, this well um
the garbage collection for the unincorporated area is paid for nonad it's paid through a nonadalorum assessment. So, it's not advalorum property taxes. In a sense, it's really just a pass through cost or a fee that residents pay on their tax bill. The the proposed property tax amendment would
not affect this type of fee. >> It'll affect the public. >> Yes, sir. They don't want to vote for property taxes and then see fees and sales tax and everything else go up. Whether or not that's good or bad, I don't know. But this sentiment
right now is not very favorable for increased uh spending. Um, Councilman Santiago, >> thank you, Mr. Chairman. I just wanted to uh re-emphasize if you could that this is a CPI thing that's in line, right? >> Yes. Yes, sir. Um, and this council has
stated previously when it comes to fees like this, they've requested or y'all requested that we bring uh small increments to you all instead of one large increment, which is what >> this is basically a cost of doing business increase >> in the in the non-avalorum assessment amounts to 50 cents per month per household.
>> Thank you. >> Increase. >> Councilman Johansson, >> Ben, how how often do people get >> garbage? >> Garbage >> collection in the unincorporated area. They they get one week one time a week for regular garbage, one time a week for
recycling, and one time a week for um yard trash, and then they also can schedule a bulk item pickup as well. >> And and that's included in this price. Yes, sir. At $2525 a month. >> Yes, sir. >> Hell of a deal. Thank you.
>> Uh Councilman Robbins. >> Thank you, Chairman. Uh Ben, on the recycling that they get once a week, I know uh in the past recycling's been hard for that stuff. Is it beneficial to
do that or are we actually recycling it? >> Yes, sir. It actually goes through the recycling facility at the landfill that's run used to be run by Jel Corp. They've since p it's been purchased by FCC, the same company that does the the hauling, but they do have a uh a waste
waste recycling facility there. And every bit of material that gets recycled doesn't end up in our landfill, which extends its life. >> Okay. >> Thanks. >> And I guess that's it for questions for you. So, we have a motion and a second
to approve. Uh all in favor say I. >> I. >> Any opposed? And item four passes unanimously 7 to zero. Item five is ordinance 2026-13 amending the local provider
participation fund in chapter 110 of the code. Ryan Osowski. >> Good evening council. Ryan Oowski, chief financial officer. This is an item that was requested by the consultants that work for the hospitals. Uh the hospitals are in agreement with this. This is
aligning uh our current local provider participation fund with changes in federal rules. Uh I have Colleen from the uh consulting firm here. If you want to go through a PowerPoint, she understands if you don't. Uh other than that, please let me know.
>> Councilman Santiago. >> No need. >> No PowerPoint needed. I move to approve. >> Second. >> Or Jake. Second. >> No, I don't care. Motion to approve by David Santiago. Second was by Jake Johansson.
>> Where'd he go? Oh, >> no money out of the general fund. This is a hospitals requesting to uh >> as as a brief background, this is an assessment that only the private uh nonprofit hospitals pay and then we in
turn forward that money up to the state who then uses it to match federal dollars which then trickle back down >> uh to hospital providers. So, it's a way to enhance Medicaid uh revenue for the hospitals. Even though they're at the beginning paying a tax, they support
this because it ends up increasing their revenues. >> Okay. Thank you very much. Any other questions from council? All in favor say I. I. >> Any opposed? And item five passes unanimously. Item six. >> Chairman.
>> Yes. Sorry. Sorry. >> Um uh with your permission, I think we ought to uh open up items six, seven, eight, and nine since they're all the same. >> So I was going we were going to do that. Ben will make one presentation for all
of them, but we have we do need to be specific in the uh motion and for all all of them. So when you when you are done, I'll just read each one unless you want to do that in your presentation. >> I'll do it in my presentation.
>> Uh Ben Barllet, public works director. Um this is our um you've seen these before the non the non-exclusive commercial solid waste collection and disposal franchise uh agreements. We have four applicants Fence Service Incorporated, DBA uh AAA Dumpster
Reynolds and FSI Rolloff Containers, Wastist Pro of Florida, Pitchet Pros LLC and Waste Management Inc. of Florida. >> Motion to approve item six, >> seven, eight and nine above. >> Okay. So
>> we we have a motion in a second to approve each one that you just read to receive this uh revenue. Um motion came from uh Councilman Robbins and second was it by Jake or by Vice Chair Reinhardt. >> Question
>> and a question from the council uh Councilman Santiago. I ask this every year um regarding the um the non-exclusive uh tipping well trash collection. Of the 16 cities we have, do
all 16 I I'm surprised. I'm sorry I'm throwing this at you just last minute, but do all six city 16 cities have franchise agreements with their trash or >> I believe uh a large portion of them have exclusive franchise agreements and some have non-exclusive franchise agreements. Um, I'll actually defer to
Regina here to probably answer the >> brains of the operation. I get it. Come on in. >> Yeah, a lot of cities have exclusive and some others do have the non-exclusive franchises as well. >> Well, good. Well, thank you. And and I just I love to brag on the fact of the ones that have the non-exclusive. Uh
Valuchia has a non-exclusive which allows residents of Valuchia County if they need to get uh private uh trash dumpsters or anything like that, they get a lower fee, much lower fee with the way we do it in the county. We get we get blamed for everything that happens
in the cities, but the county doesn't do this in the way that it costs residents more money. >> Right. And also for commercial businesses, they can choose from any of the approved. >> That's right. Thank you. So it's cheaper to do business in the unincorporated area. That's what you're saying. >> Uh, and when it comes to solid trash
collection. Yes. >> Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. >> Councilman Robbins, I have nothing, sir. >> You are gone. All right. Uh, the motion is to approve items six, seven, eight, and nine, uh, estimated annual revenues. All in
favor say I. >> I. >> Any opposed? and 6 through nine passes unanimously 7 to zero which brings us to Ryan Osowski and item 10 the uh fiscal year 202627
trim rates and budget overview. Good evening again council ranowski chief financial officer. This item is really a preliminary item. It is not an official budget hearing. the budget process uh starts or actually it
continues through this item. Budget process started a long time ago, >> but one of the first official actions the county has to take is to file a trim rate with the uh property appraiser by August 4th. Uh that's what we're here to discuss today. Uh once a trim rate has
been set, the only direction you can go is downward. So the recommended budget has uh today been posted to the website and provided to to council and over the next uh four meetings uh if necessary. August
is not scheduled but it's it's available if council wishes to have discussions on the budget. Uh September is is going to be our recommended budget hearing. We'll get to that at the end of the presentation. Uh let me try to actually follow through the slides here. We did get our values
from the property appraisers office on July 1st. They're in line with the June 1st values that you saw in the 5-year forecast presentations that were presented at the last two meetings. Uh the the recommended budget follows the 5-year forecast. It really is a
culmination of that process. Um the as as I mentioned during the 5-year forecast meetings, we followed uh the footsteps of where council led us in
the in the uh February through April uh budget workshops where we saw all of the services that were considered uh non-public safety, non-mandatory spending. So we had a series of five mini budget workshops where we went over
all of those activities. Uh the one u reduction that we implemented uh and it was approved at a previous council meeting was uh some votran service changes that did result in uh savings to the general fund uh as
well as to the vot operation in general uh which uh was able to reorganize some grant funding. But the general fund piece was 364,000. What you have here, um, this year, uh, you may recall in previous years, for
for I don't know how long, but for as long as I've been here, we've divided the budget into an operating and a nonoperating budget. And we had our reasons for doing that. Uh, it it is not something that's required. It didn't
follow uh city budgeting. it didn't follow some other county budgets. This year, I've I've taken the the opportunity to redefine how we present the budget. There is a gross budget amount. That is the amount that we will
be statutoily obligated to to to uh adopt in our resolutions, but there's a lot of items that are double counted in that. And I'm following a model that I saw in Semino County. Uh in Semino County, they they adopt like a $1.2 2 billion budget, but what they refer to
as their net budget, 800 million. And so what I did is I did the same thing for our budget, a net operating budget. And the difference between the gross and the net is to remove double counted transactions. So you have transfers that occur between funds. If a fund is
budgeting to transfer money out to another fund, that's an expense of that fund and then it comes in as a revenue of the other fund to then be spent again. So that's a double count. We also have internal service funds like our health insurance plan. Every fund pays an expense into the health insurance.
That's an expense on that fund. And then when the health insurance fund pays the claims out, it's again an expense. So those are double countings as well. So intern uh interfund transfers internal services are removed from our net budget number. And then there's one final uh
difference which helps us align to city budgeting practices. Uh, county budgets by statute are required to recognize all carry forward funding, which then leads us to budget for reserves. In a city budget, if you're not going if you're just going to
carry forward your fund balance, you don't actually have to budget that as a beginning revenue and an ending revenue. Uh, for a personal perspective, I like to to for for residents to understand what I'm trying to say here. It would be like saying your annual budget for your household is how much money you're going
to earn plus what your savings account balance is and then you budget what are you going to spend out of that. Why does a savings account have anything to do with your your incoming money and your outgoing money? Well, if you're going to draw down on that savings account or if you're going to add to that savings
account, we're required to include those things in our budget. Our reserves uh are projected to be spent down uh this year for capital projects in a variety of funds most notably impact fee funds. So generally you will always find that
the county adopts a budget where we spend down part of our reserves because we collect money and we build it up and then we spend it down for for like impact fees. So all that is to say that net of reserves, our savings account, ending balance, and net of double
counted transactions. What you're seeing here is the comparison between the two years budgets. Our net budget, which is pretty close to what we would actually expect to spend. If you look at your audited financial statements at the end of the year, these are the type of numbers you see. You don't see $1.8
billion. We don't spend $1.8 billion because of this double count and the savings account balance. What you'll see is $1.1 billion is our net budget for 26. 1.064 is our net budget for 27. Even if you were to look at the gross
numbers, because that is legally what we would have to adopt, both of those numbers are also uh down this year. Uh 1.882 versus 1.800. But I do want to say that the net budget is truly like the a proxy for the
external resources that we're actually going to spend this year. And and why does the distinction matter so much? Uh especially in an environment where we're considering property tax reform, if we're going to face an impact two years from now of a potential nearly $120
million revenue reduction, it's a much bigger chunk of $1 billion than it is of $1.8 billion. So, I'm just trying to put some some scale to to the potential impact there. The breakdown of the county's net revenues that this chart looks a little
different than it ever did before because we have the biggest piece of the pie chart used to be the appropriated fund balance. It used to be the beginning savings account. Well, now that I'm showing a net budget, the only thing I'm showing here is the amount of the savings account that we plan on spending this year. That's the
purple piece of the pie where it says use of fund balance. Property taxes represent 80 uh sorry 42.8% of uh the revenue that we'll be bringing in. Uh charges for service make up the third largest piece. I've listed out
some of the larger ones in the uh lower left hand corner of where some of those charges for service come from. uh each piece of the pie. Um I've done I've tried to to make it as granular as possible without having the font be too small on this pie chart. There's lots
more details in the recommended budget. Net expenditures by type. Uh personnel operating and capital improvements are all uh in the 22 to 25% range. Uh we've always presented this chart before, but I'm going to focus a little bit more on
the second chart, which is a new addition this year. And this is our expenditures by function. So this is where where are we spending the money. Remember that while we talk about property tax as having uh funding a lot of public safety, there's a lot of the budget that doesn't come from property
taxes. Remember this revenue piece over here where charges for services pay for the landfill uh or the airport. EMS has a large charge for service. A lot of that budget doesn't come from property taxes. So most of the budget you see for public
works, which be is the second largest piece of this pie, is actually not funded with property taxes. There's a there's a little bit uh coastal on the beach and the mosquito control district, but you've got uh the the landfill as one of the biggest operations in public
works that is uh not property tax funded. You've got road and bridge and construction engineering, building roads with impact fees and gas tax money. A lot of that is not property tax funded, but the area that is a lot property tax funded, mostly property tax funded is that public safety piece of the pie. So
that's when you say uh I'm just trying to explain why public safety is showing up as 35% here. But when we talk about property tax reform, it's a much bigger number because you're looking at an entire budget that has property tax operations and non-property tax operations in it as well.
our taxable value by property class. Uh we are primarily residential. Uh we've taken the pie chart and we split it into two pieces this year because of the potential for property tax reform. Homestead property makes up 37% of the
total taxable value of uh the county's tax base, which is why you're seeing similar percentage impacts in property tax reform potential impacts. Here's where the property tax revenue goes by fund. Uh about a little less than half
of it goes to the general fund. The law enforcement fund makes up about a quarter of it and then the rest of that is split among functions. The largest of the remaining functions being the fire rescue district at 10.8%. And I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that that general fund percentage,
there's a large public safety component to that between subsidizing the beach and most notably corrections. General fund highlights. This is a little bit of a repeat of what I talked about with the 5-year forecast. We are presenting maintaining a flat millage
rate with uh no increase from the current year. Roll back revenue growth uh this is the growth that comes in revenues that are coming from new construction is about $5 million. Revenue generated above roll back is 6.7. That's up a little bit from the
June 1st values where it was a little in the lower sixes. Uh this is approximately 3%. Uh we note that that isn't in line with inflation where in previous years our property tax value may have been a lot higher and that gave you room to cover inflation and do a tax
rate change. Now that we have inflation right around where your your uh your tax value increases, it definitely uh leaves less room for that. Investment income in the general fund did decrease by or is estimated to
decrease by 2.2%. I talked in more detail as to why. It's on the slide there. I won't cover it again. I I covered that in the last presentation. I will highlight that the county department budgets again for the second year in a row decreased in this budget
by $185,000 even after assuming full inflation in in a in a wage increase, FRS retirement increases, health insurance increases, contractual obligations such as I like to point out software the most at this point because it's becoming an increasingly large
percent of our budget and software companies always have a CPI adjustment in their contract. Uh the largest increase in the budget was elected offices uh expenditures of 4.1 million. Again, this was in the 5-year forecast in more detail. Um so
2.3 of it was the sheriff's office. Uh the debt on their uh new building. The remainder was split across functions with the second leading office or elected office being the judiciary and the clerk. Uh there's no leading cause
of that. It split across a little bit as salary increases, a little bit as health insurance, a little bit as the clerk requested more money, a little bit of his increased capital request. It all added up to about $900,000. External expenses, net increase of about a million dollars, leading category
there. You may recall we talked about CRAAS a little bit. That was the leading category in the external expenses. uh beach management and capital subsidy remained flat um at $17 million and our major capital improvement budget
decreased by $7.7 million. Again, that was all really covered in the 5-year forecast. Uh this is a chart that shows our history of where we've been with millage rates. We've had full roll backs and partial roll backs in our in our last 10 years in the general fund.
library most notably has been at rollback five out of the last seven years. So this year because of how little we've taken advantage of increased values in the library fund, they've just it is now
time they they the inflationary costs have caught up in the library fund. Here is the tentative rates that we would uh ask to be published on tax notices. These are not budgetary adoption rates. Budget adoption happens in September
and we have August and September to to go through any requests or changes. If a rate that is lower than uh what we show on here is adopted, we can't go back to these rates if we do a lower trim rate. Trim rates are the highest you can do. We're asking for
uh the rate to be held steady in eight of the funds with a roll back rate in the port district and a partial roll back rate in the fire services district. I do have one more slide, but it's more about scheduling. So, at that point, I will stop right here for questions.
>> Uh, Vice Chair Matt Reinhardt. >> Thank you, Chair. You had mentioned about public safety and how much of a big of a piece of that budget is, and that's traditionally had it's gone up. Mhm. >> Um, corrections is in that, you know, I I couldn't go without mentioning the
fact, >> but I will say for that our cost per day for inmate has actually gone down >> from I think it was last year, George, if I'm standing correctly, it was $111.95. Now it's $110 if I'm not mistaken. So, I mean, we are going down
and we do, for the public's input or for their information, we do have ways of bringing it even more with what you guys helped me with with the second chance stuff. So, I just want to put that out there that at least there's that. >> Okay.
>> Councilman Santiago, >> you said something that I I wanted you to elaborate a little bit on CRAAS. >> What was the impact of CRAAS to us this year versus last year? >> Um, when it was in the five-year forecast, it was listed as a million dollars. We did find while we were
inputting the July 1st values that there was a uh calculation error. I believe it ended up being about $700,000. Veronica's telling me I got the right number. $700,000 increase. >> So, it's costing us an extra $700,000
this year because of CRA. >> From a million to 1.7. Is that right? >> No. No. From a million to 700,000. >> Additional. >> We were off by 300,000. There was We didn't input a calculation piece that we had to. So, we got it fixed.
>> Do um when is the next CRA? You may not be ready to answer this, but when is the next CRA scheduled to expire? >> The next CRA that's scheduled to expire, I believe, is South Daytona. And this would be this budget that you're adopting would be the last year that that CRA gets paid.
>> Interesting. Okay. The renewal that we did not too long ago, >> Poly Hill was scheduled to be the same date as >> Poly Hill was scheduled to originally be the same date as South Daytona. It had a similar ending date. So, this would have
been the last year if we had not if council had not voted to extend it further to the to the deadline that the rest of the CRAAS have, >> which is 2036. And that was a million dollars a year, right? >> Something like that. Yep. >> Thank you. I said this day would come.
Thank you. Um the proposed bill on property taxes right now. Thank you. Um does it it excludes any reduction to uh fire and law enforcement?
The current constitutional amendment does not include any language that uh that was similar to what the legislature had proposed back in January or February where fire and law enforcement were held harmless. That is not in the current
constitutional amendment that's being voted on. >> So the only thing being protected is the school board. >> The school board is being protected because they're not affecting their taxes at all. Whereas the taxes the taxes the way that they were protect the way that it was
proposed to protect law enforcement and fire previously was different than how they were protecting the school board. The school board was being protected because they just weren't going to touch schoolboard taxes. The way that law enforcement and fire were previously protected in the drafts that the house put out in January and February was to
say that the budgets of those functions cannot be lower than they were in 26 or 27, whichever was higher. That language was in the January and February bills. It is not in the current um constitutional amendment, but it remains
to be seen whether uh if this were to pass if Tallahassee would mandate something like that. We we just don't know. >> And and that's ultimately where I was going. We really don't know if this is approved by voters,
how the legislature or the Florida Department of Revenue will interpret how to how to manage this and the rules that they set. Um, so we're not going to know everything until it's voted on. You won't know what's in the bill until you
pass the bill. One of the other areas that I've seen discussed online that could be a potential after the fact change as well is there was both the house bill and the governor's original proposal and had
some sort of protection for rural areas. Um I believe the house bill did I know the governor's bill did that ended up not making the final cut. So, if the legislature were to come back and try to help the fiscally constrained counties, that would be after the fact as well.
>> Right. Okay. Uh, Councilman Santiago, >> you weren't done. Okay. And your you had one other thing you wanted to talk about timing. >> Well, after we talk after we talk about the the trim rates, we do have to set
the uh first and second. Well, the second is really for for notice purposes that this is the plan. These are both the already planned scheduled council dates. The time is not correct on this slide. We meant to change this to 501 like we
did last year. Um, so we're recommending that the first budget hearing be Thursday, September 3rd, which is the pre-existing scheduled council meeting at 50:01 p.m. Not 6 o'clock. Sorry for that. Uh, that did not get changed this time. Uh, and the second budget hearing
actually gets officially approved at the first budget hearing, but the plan is for Tuesday, the regular meeting on September 22nd at 5:01 p.m. That would be the other action that has to be uh taken today is approval of the first
budget hearing date. Okay. Uh, I don't know if everyone in council heard that we need to set the two dates for the budget hearings, September 3rd and September 21st.
>> 22nd. >> I couldn't read my own writing. >> But at 501, yes, like we did last year. These slides came from last year and didn't get updated, but we did 501 as a kind of a later change last year.
>> September 3rd is not time certain. >> The third is also 50. They're both 501. What I'm mentioning is that the slides say 6 p.m. We meant to say 50. >> Okay. All right. So, you need a vote on that and and then u talk just a little bit more about budget. Motion to approve
the times >> on September 3rd and September 22nd 501. Motion by Vice Chair Reinhardt, second by Councilman Robbins. All in favor say I. >> I.
>> Any opposed? And the times are set. Um, today we are setting the trim rate. You're setting the rate that will be mailed as a potential uh rate that when you get your trim notice, it says uh last year's rate rate
if this if the council were to move forward with the advertised rate and then it shows a comparison. This is setting that rate. It is not setting the rate that you actually tax. That does not get set until September. >> So it can go down, it can't go up. >> It can go down, it cannot go up. Which
brings me to my final remark that we we got the budget today. Um, you and I spoke about it. I asked for two minutes and we talked for about an hour, I think. I appreciate that because it's there's there's a lot there in what we
face. um if we have to if this passes and we need to cut whether it's 92 million or 120 million, whatever it is, it it's it's a huge um cut.
Um my thinking all along has been let's start this year instead of one big cut next year. But if we do that without cutting spending, it really puts us in a bad position next year. The only way to
reduce the budget for this year is to actually cut spending. So I would just request um rather than asking just go to roll back and everything which means it's all coming out of reserves probably
um I would ask you know each of us as council members to go through the budget that we got today and if there's cuts that you want to make and I know this is difficult especially for those that are that are running but I also know that
you're financially responsible so we need to look at it and decide where where would you actually cut spending and sometimes this is a difficult part and I'm I'm not telling you anything that you don't know I'm just saying the
hard stuff out loud that a lot of times cuts means people we in order to avoid cuts to services we will have to eliminate um uh programs personnel Well, and so
please, you know, it's how many pages is the budget? 600. Never mind. It's big. >> It's a lot. >> It's big. I started on it when I saw it in my mailbox. And again, I really appreciate you uh because I I I looked
at the first page and saw the which you already mentioned the gross budget. I said, "Hey, we already cut $82 million." um you know we're we're half we're threequarters of the way there but it's not that easy but that you've been very
humble on that. I think that des does deserve uh the public knowing that we've staff has already reduced the budget um a lot. Um
so uh here we go. It's going to be a lot of work in the next uh two years depending on what happens in in November. But regardless of what happens in November, we we know that the public wants uh tax
relief from from DC to Daytona Beach Shores, you know, wherever you look. Um, and they want property tax or uh property insurance relief, but that's
out of our hands. Um, David, you were up. Now it's uh Councilman Johansson. Ryan. Um, so if you look at the if you look at the net, you're you're down 51
million, right? And the and the chairman just said 82. If you look at the gross, that's slide four. Um, and and then now that Chris is on slide four, uh, on slide 10, >> I'm moving it myself. >> Okay, perfect.
>> I don't know which slide is the number though. >> You look at the flat millage rate or the roll back revenue growth is 5 million associated by growth. Then the revenue generated above roll
back because we're we're at flat is 6.7. So we're getting $11 million more and you're still cutting 51 mil out of
the net budget. I know it's not that simple, but >> remember that you're looking at general fund numbers on this slide. That was the total budget which a lot of the decreases were actually in capital projects. >> Capital got it.
>> All right. Thank all I have. >> If the hardest question and we talked about this a little bit, if the trim rate stays as it's reflected today, property values have gone up. Um that means we're
passing along a tax increase to most property owners >> under the definition set in Florida statutes because we collect 3.4% 7 sorry 3.4% more that would be advertised as a tax increase of that percentage.
Um and and the reason I say it that way is because there's inflation in every budget. We're not changing the tax rate under Florida statutes. uh rate changes are not what drives whether it's a tax increase. It's whether you collect more revenues, >> right?
>> I would note under that definition, the state's never been at roll back. >> State rates been 6% forever. >> So at least the millage rate stays the same, but their property values went up. All everybody's almost property values went up. So they they're paying more
>> unless we roll back >> the it is really set by the definition of the state. If the tax rate hasn't changed you the value has gone up by 3.4% and they call that a tax increase because
you are paying more taxes. But that same thing could be said about everything that we do in in in uh life and specifically what I was trying to refer to as the state. When things go up in cost, the tax rate stays 6% just like the flat tax rate would do
for property taxes. >> Okay. Thank you. Any other questions from council? Uh so you need a vote on trim rates. Yep. uh you want it for every fund.
>> It can this is not prescribed like the budget hearings are. So if you want to do all of it at once, you want to do just a slate and then come back and talk about one, that could be done. There's no prescribed method because this is like I
said, this is not setting the budget. That's what September's for. This is just for the mailing that goes out to taxpayers to say here's what could happen. Okay. Uh, chairman, I'll go ahead. >> Councilman Johansson,
I I defer. I think I >> Councilman Kent, >> I'm going to go ahead and make um the motion. Chairman, and I'm going to put it all together and I'm going to follow the 26 27 recommended rates that have been presented by staff. Do you want me
to read each one or are we okay with that? >> We're okay with that. >> Second, Johansson. >> And I'd like to comment that the The reason behind my second is because chairman, you brought up a good point. We just got the bud budget book. This is
the max rate. We can go down. Um uh staff's already given us this rate because they can perform at this rate. We don't have to go up. We have no special projects and we can start whittling down based on what we've learned for the past 6 months or five
months or four months in budgets um budget workshops. Thank you. >> I second everything Mr. Johansson just said. >> Okay, we have a motion on the floor to approve the trim rate at this time. All
in favor say I. I. >> Any opposed? I >> or nay, I should say. And the vote is uh six to one. Okay. More fun to follow. Item 11.
>> Chairman, did you say more fun or more fun? >> I'm glad you haven't lost your sense of humus. Item 11, resolution establishing a repeat domestic abuser database and providing for inclusion of
certain records within the database for those who meet the criteria. >> So, good evening, Randa Matusak, director of public protection. Uh so yeah, so just like they said, um this is the uh proposed resolution for a
domestic violence offender database. And just a little bit of background here, um this is based off of Savannah's law from Tennessee, which established in 2026, so January 1st, 2026. uh they established a persistent domestic violence offender
registry which requires um uh one at least one prior charge and then consent of the victim to uh be registered on this uh on this public registry. It is a registry process much like a sex offender registration. Uh so the uh person after a court order would go to
the clerk's office in Tennessee and register there. It includes the uh the the public information. Then includes the name, date of birth, conviction date, county of conviction because it's statewide, and then a current photo. Uh again, because it's a registration process, and um you can uh apply to be
removed after certain uh under certain circumstances. So after so many years based on the number of convictions, you can come off of the registry. Um uh other states have looked at this including South Carolina, Mississippi, New York, uh Pennsylvania, Hawaii, including Florida. It has not passed in
those other states and it did not pass in Florida and it was withdrawn in March 2022. What we're proposing here is a domestic violence offender database instead of a registry. Really, it's uh mirrored off of or the the structure of it is mirrored off off of our animal
abuse database. Um right now in the resolution, it includes more than one conviction in the county. It includes domestic violence offenses or dating violence. and uh what would be published on the database uh and accessible to the public via a website which would and the
link would be on the corrections website. It would include the most recent booking photo. So that's what we collect at the time of their booking. Uh full name, date of birth, case numbers of offenses and then references to the applicable statutes and offense dates. Um this is distinct from a registry and
the the uh distinction here is important because it does not require staff time. Uh so nobody has to come and actually register uh to be part of this database. It's really just a a query off of a off of the clerk's data. Uh and uh and it's just a view that's filtered basically
for domestic violence offenders. Uh so it's a quick web- based search of the clerk's data. And then of course because it's not a registration process, there's no fee required. So basically it pulls information from the clerk's office. It pulls the mugsh shot from the from corrections. Combines it very similarly
to the animal abuse database that we already have. And so with that, I'll take any questions. >> Vice Chair Reinhardt. >> Thank you, Chair, Mr. Tusc. Thank you so much for doing this and thank you so much for putting this together. Um,
quick question because I've asked these questions and I know we were in the infancy stages and we talked about this and I was looking forward to this conversation. Um cost associated with putting this up really is minimal if any. Correct. >> Fairly minimal staff time to actually get it. Um >> and once it's up, it's just direct feed
and it automatically happens. So there is no residual cost that occurs as a result. >> And we were able to to mirror a lot of the animal abuse uh registration. >> That goes to my next question. We we how much was really associated with that? We we jumped right on that and that went
statewide. Um, so the same principle lies with the animal abuse as it does and to me people, hey, I love my dogs, but people are important. >> Um, retro, how far back do we go to start this? Does it start this day going forward? Does it include anything?
>> It would be your direction. >> It would be during the conversation today. So, some of the questions that were brought up was, you know, do we go back 10 years? Is that something that the clerk's office could supply? Does that put any uh burden on us to I don't think it does to to obtain does it and
we've had the mugsh shot system for that long so we're able to pull that as well. >> Oh we can have we could go back significant you know with the mugsh shot data and I think it would be unless it's unless it's a there's a legal question on how far back we can go. I think it would just be a matter of what's available in the clerk's office and I'm not aware of that necessarily.
>> I don't want to be burdensome to them but at the same time I want to be transparent and help out the public as much as possible. That's the principle I have here. And then um also with this, I'm glad you brought up what had happened in 2022. Um the direction wasn't there. If you notice that those
things were brought up by those before Tennessee did. >> So Tennessee did theirs after the fact. Uh they're seeing I mean it amazes me how we haven't gone here yet. >> Um but I just did want to point that
out. I'm glad you did. Also there was forformational 277 house bill 27 or senate bill 277 that did some protections for domestic violence now and this is marginally like we had discussed >> to possibly enhance that. >> Correct. I >> think so. Yeah.
>> Okay. And I do have some other comments but this is question time so I'll respect that. Thank you chair. >> Uh Councilman Robbins and Johansson do you have questions for Okay. Questions. Do we know why? I did a little preliminary on it, but do we know why
for the main uh main part why it didn't pass in the House or the Senate back in uh 2022 >> 2022? I believe it died in committee. >> Yeah. >> Why do we have any notes on that that you can provide to >> Not that I'm familiar with. >> I mean, that probably be pertinent.
>> Uh Morgan Swank, assistant county attorney. Uh there were no notes that indicated why it did not move forward. I did look into that originally. Um, and we did mirror a lot of what we are currently using based on what the proposal was. Obviously, it's different because it's not statewide, but we did try to stick with some of the
information that they were looking to use and um, some of the requirements as well. >> And this is for convicted, right? Correct. >> It would only be convicted. Um, and it would be uh, because it's going to be pulling from the clerk system, it would be in Valuch County. Um, so it would be
purely convictions and it would pull that straight from there. >> Okay. All right. Thank you, >> Councilman Johansson, for questions. >> Yeah, I I think I got them clarified
that that this won't pull in information from other states. This is just Valuchia County court records. >> Correct. Yeah. So, it's not just only other states, it's it's other counties in the state. So, this is only Valuchia County. >> Only Valuchia County. So,
so it protects, but it doesn't >> it it it lacks >> it. It's it it it's a start. All right. Uh that's that's all I have. Thanks, >> Councilman Dempsey. >> Yeah, I'm uh really worried about the collateral effect that this is going to
have on the court system. Um but first, let me ask uh staff, it says here requires a previous charge. So, does that mean a previous accusation? for a previous conviction? >> No, it's a pri prior conviction of domestic violence.
>> Okay. Is a withhold of adjudication considered a conviction? >> No, sir. >> Okay. You know, in some arenas it is, in some it isn't. >> Right. We would not include that. >> I'm sorry, ma'am. >> We would not include that. >> Okay. Um well, just to the uh the bill,
Senate Bill 1782 died in the uh Senate Judiciary Committee. So those were learned people in the judicial uh sector of the Senate and it died in that committee. So I would think those people
are pretty well enlightened as to the court system and how it functions. Um I'll get into comments later. I just I wanted to make sure that that statement here on the slide about requiring a previous charge meant a conviction and not just a charge. So thank you.
>> And you said yes. >> Yes. Okay. Uh, Vice Chair Reinhardt. >> Thank you, Chair. Is all the questions? >> Uh, or did you have any? I have >> No, but I'll say this. You can you you wanted to start debate? >> Yes, sir. But we have We have I know we
have people that you want to >> Yeah. >> call up first. That's fine. >> Can I ask a question? >> Again, this is time for questions and then we should probably listen. >> We start debating it, but if you have a question, please ask. >> Have we contacted uh the public defender? I have not spoken with the
public defender. No. >> Okay. We spoke with uh uh the state attorney. >> No. >> Okay. What about um Mark I forget his last name. The guy who's the director of the court system. Weinberg. Yeah.
>> Mark Weinberg. Have we consulted with him? >> No. We've talked with the clerk's office just to ensure that the process is feasible. >> Just with Laura. Have you talked to Laura herself or something? talked with the with with the IT the same folks that we did with the animal abuse database
>> but not with Laura Roth the clerk of the court >> we're just to hear to implement the the will of council so we have not yeah >> okay that's all thank you want to hold >> I just I had I did have one other
question sure if I could um I know I'd asked legal about this uh with respect to law enforcement officers If there was a an arrest made, that person went to court, was convicted. Right now, we're talking about twice. I don't think they're going to be
employed, much less, but is there any protection for them as far as their information >> being blocked? >> Um, so we did limit the information that we were pulling to the ship. Uh, so the one thing that there is language
regarding photos. Um, and it does talk about they're exempt, not confidential. Um, and I actually did find an attorney general opinion uh from 2012 uh that actually did deal with mugsh shot for law enforcement and it did talk about
that um they may be released if there is a statutory or substantial policy need to do so. Um, so obviously the reason for the exemption is for protection of law enforcement. Um, but the need for putting a database together for a repeat offender would be to protect the public,
to prevent recidivism, all of those things. So it would allow for the release based on that information because it it is an exemption, not confidentiality. So >> thank you. And and I have the reason why I asked that question is we've seen law enforcement
um officers in all branches that have been convicted that their mugsh shot winds up showing up after the conviction has has occurred. So I don't think anything that we're I don't think we're violating anything by doing that. So I know that question was asked so I wanted to ask it for the record as well. And
then can we also discuss if there was once and if this gets approved could there be an appellet process involved in this like say somebody wanted to appeal the fact that they're on this registry is that something or is that >> so we do have language uh that does
allow for them to provide us notice something um regarding um I was incorrectly put on you've put up a picture and this that can happen >> correct and it's a so we do have a process which they would provide written notification uh to I believe it's corrections uh would notify them would
provide all the documentation showing you know you've put up my mug shot you've put my name this is not what I was convicted for or I'm not even convicted for anything um you know so we we do have a way for that to be taken care of so that if someone is on the list and shouldn't be we can get them removed
>> thank you very much that's all I have for now >> how can how could that happen accidentally somebody's name get put on it and their mugsh not >> any any kind of error. I mean, it's it's not common error. It is a big error, but it's not it's not common. We don't
really have that. I don't I don't recall any kind of an issue like that with the animal abuse database or anything like that. Um what can happen maybe occasionally is a is a a record shows up that should have been sealed or expuned or something like that. I mean, not typically, not at all, you know, but
errors happen and we want to make sure that there's a way to to that. >> Okay. >> All right. Uh, I think there's seven members of the public. First is Jennifer Kelly. You'll be followed by Cat Pante. Can y'all hear me? Okay. Um, Jennifer
Kelly. I live in Orman Beach. Um, good evening council members and chairman Brower. I am here today to speak in support of agenda item 11, establishing a domestic abuser database for repeat offenders. Similar to Savannah's law passed in Tennessee last year, this resolution will improve public awareness
of repeat domestic violence offenders for Valuchia County residents and citizens of our surrounding areas. This is a great opportunity for Valuchia County to set a precedent for all the other counties and eventually the state of Florida to follow. Savannah's Law was named in honor of Robertson County,
Tennessee Sheriff's Deputy Savannah Punkett. She was killed by a former partner with a documented history of domestic violence. Studies tracking intimate partner homicides frequently note a history of domestic violence acts as a major predictor for lethal outcomes. Did you know in the US prior
to police contact or a previous conviction significantly increases the risk of intimate partner homicide? Research shows about 20 to 50% of domestic violence homicides involved a perpetrator with a known history of prior domestic violence, highlighting the severe lethality risk associated
with repeat offenders. In Florida, domestic violence fatalities account for about 20% of all homicides with around 180 to 220 individuals killed annually in domestic violence related homicides. State agencies also record over a 100,000 reported domestic
violence offenses each year. Why this database matters? Not only will it improve public awareness, it provides an additional tool for victim safety and prevention efforts. Mostly, the focus of domestic violence has been on the aftermath of abuse, shelters, mental health, counseling, and services
provided by government and nonprofits to help victims get back on their feet and become survivors. Although these are great to have available, we need to start shifting the focus to prevention. For example, increased penalties for domestic violence offenders. Last session, Florida lawmakers address this with HB277.
One thing this law does is it takes a first-degree misdemeanor domestic violence offense and enhances it to a thirdderee felony for the repeat offender. Approving this database today is yet another great tool to have in the prevention toolbox. I myself am a survivor of domestic abuse.
I'm sure I wasn't my abuser's first victim, nor will I be his last. But moving forward and starting over, having a tool like this easily available could save my life. At the time, at the same time, it's important to understand that the registry will not be a complete
record of all abusive behavior. Domestic violence often goes unreported and unprosecuted. And not every situation results in qualifying conviction like in my case. With that being said, please vote yes tonight on this agenda item so abusers
that do end up with convictions can be easily searched and identified, helping to prevent these monsters from moving on to their next victims and saving lives. Thank you. >> Thank you u for speaking uh Cat Pante and you will be followed by
Amanda Neston. Good evening, council. I stand before you today in strong support of establishing a domestic abuser database for Valuchia County. However, to make this initiative truly effective and meaningful, we must strengthen the proposed resolution with one critical change. An offender should be added to
the database just after one conviction for domestic violence related offense, not two or more. Convictions in domestic violence cases are notoriously difficult to secure. Victims often hesitate to testify due to fear of retaliation, financial insecurity, and other reasons.
Diversion programs and plea deals frequently keep repeat offenders from ever being convicted. Far too many perpetrators are arrested multiple times before they ever see a conviction. We cannot allow these systemic barriers to leave our community vulnerable. We
already set the bar at one conviction for the sex offender registry. Domestic violence offenders deserve the same level of accountability. The safety of our families demands nothing less. According to the FBI's February 2026 special report on domestic relationship
violent crime, the percentage of violent crimes occurring within domestic relationships has increased over the 5-year period studied. Law enforcement documented over 11,000 domestic violence murder victims and an additional 1.1 million victims of domestic violence.
75% of those victims were female. The report also revealed more than 70,500 incidents of teen relationship violence in 2024 alone. I've seen this pattern firsthand during more than 20 years in law enforcement. Domestic violence
always escalates. It never deescalates. What begins as an argument too often ends in tragedy. Council, let's do this and do it right. Lower the threshold to one conviction and place the offender in a database. By taking this step, we honor the lives of those lost to
domestic abusers in our community. Position Valuchia County as a statewide leader in victim protection. And most importantly, give victims and law enforcement officers the information they need to stay safe. I urge you to approve a strong and patful database
that puts prevention and public safety first. Thank you for your time and commitment to protecting the residents of Valuchia County. Thank you for your comments. Amanda Nest, you'll be followed by Nancy Miller.
>> It's Amanda Weston to specify. I guess my handwriting is not that great tonight, but good evening chairman and council members. Thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight. My name is Amanda Weston, third generation Valuchia County native and immediate past president of the board of the domestic
abuse council of Valuchia County. This pro proposal is about one simple idea, informed choice. Every day we encourage people to do their homework before making important decisions. We research contractors before hiring them. We check
vehicle histories before buying them. We run background checks for many jobs involving trust and responsibility. Shouldn't the women, families, and loved ones in our lives have the same opportunity when entering a relationship? This database would not be based on
allegations. It would apply only to individuals with two or more domestic violence convictions. That is a documented pattern of violent behavior established through our justice system. Patterns matter in law enforcement,
medicine, and public safety. We know that past behavior helps us assess future risk. A history of domestic violence is one of the strongest indicators of future violence. Yet, too often, victims don't discover that history until they're already emotionally,
financially, or physically tied to an abusive partner. By the time they're trying to leave, it may be too late. Research has found that approximately 75% of domestic violence homicides occur during or after separation, underscoring why awareness before commitment is so
important. The consequences of repeat domestic violence extend far beyond one household. Every incident affects first responders, prosecutors, our courts, health care systems, and most importantly, the children who witness that violence. These cases place
enormous demands on county resources while leaving lasting trauma throughout our communities. This doesn't tell anyone who they can date, and it doesn't create a new criminal penalty. It simply makes verified information about repeat offenders more accessible so citizens can make informed decisions for
themselves. If greater transparency prevents even one family from becoming the next 911 call, protects even one deputy from responding to another preventable domestic violence incident, or spares even one child from growing up in a violent home, then this registry
will have made our community safer. I respectfully ask for your support tonight. Thank you. >> Thank you, Nancy Miller. And you will be followed by Buck James. Good evening. And this time again it is Mayor Miller. So I'm speaking on behalf
of um Daytona Beach Shore. So Vice Chair, thank you so much for coming not only to our city. I know you spent a lot of hours going to several different cities. From hearing the conversation tonight, I'm understanding this is only a first step. It's not going to solve
all of the issues, but again, it's a first step. So, I just want to tell you on behalf of Daytona Beach Shores after you came to visit us, it was a 50 um vote that we're so happy to be able to give you a letter of support. I'm sure you've received it from our city and
many, many cities. We want to be able to help these victims. And I think I've told you the story probably in the past year. There was two domestic violence incidents that were very close to not me, but people that they were close to. and both of them unfortunately resulted
in death of the victim. So again, thank you for this first step. We appreciate it. >> Thank you. Uh Buck James, you will be followed by uh Emma Sandberg
Anders. I'll get it right next time. Chair Brower, Vice Chair Reinhardt, Council members, it's good to stand before you again today uh to talk about this very important subject. My name is Buck James. I currently serve as the CEO of the Domestic Abuse Council of
Valuchia County. I've been in that position for almost two years now. Valuchia County ranks as one of the highest counties in Florida for domestic violence incidents. Every day, we work with survivors whose lives have been changed by repeated acts of abuse.
One of the lessons we have learned is that domestic violence often follows a pattern and recognize that pattern can save lives. That is why I support the concept of a public registry limited to individuals who've been convicted of
qualifying domestic violence offenses not just once but twice. There's a pattern. This proposal is not about accusations or arrests or public shaming. It's about providing the public with verified information after due process has
occurred so individuals and families can make informed decisions about their own safety. A centralized registry could help someone entering a new relationship identify a documented pattern of violence before becoming the next
victim. It also sends a clear message that Valuchia County takes repeat domestic violence seriously. If this registry moves forward, I would encourage the county to ensure that every search result prominently connects
users to domestic abuse council's confidential hotline and safety planning services. Learning that someone has a history of violence can be dangerous without professional guidance, and we should always pair information with a pathway to safety.
Domestic violence thrives in secrecy. Thoughtfully implemented, this proposal can replace some of that secrecy with verified information while respecting due process and helping protect future victims. Thank you for your
consideration. >> Thank you, Emma Sanders. And you will be followed by Carmen Ruez. Good evening, council. My name is Emma Sanders. I am the director of community impact for Domestic Abuse Council. I have worked for Domestic Abuse Council
since 2017 in various roles. I did have a speech for tonight. After hearing all the speeches, I don't want to talk about a speech. I don't even want to talk about statistics. I want to talk about the last two months as in my role, the
last three days. Today, Monday, Thursday, and Friday, I sat in a murder trial for a perpetrator who was convicted of first-degree premeditated murder of his wife over 30 plus years, where he stabbed her 19 to 20 times. Today, I had to witness the
victim impact statements of her family and watch her 16-year-old son, who was 14 at the time, testify, the impact that that had on his life. This is our reality. This is not a whatif or what could happen. This is what is happening in our community. It's the same thing that's happening in
our shelter when I have two families that are coming in at the same time with the same abuser. DCF is sending us referrals and the same perpetrator is listed on our referrals where we're having to send one family to another shelter because it's a conflict of interest. This has just happened in
Daytona Beach in Valuchia County. Same perpetrator, same pattern, different families, different children. This is not the first time that has happened since in my career. We have to do something and be proactive. Yes, there are services in our community that does attend to the needs of survivors after
the fact, but without prevention, we're just going to have those families continue to fall into the water until that stream. And we're pulling them out and pulling them out, but they're not stopping the source. This registry would not just be the end all beall. It is not a cure, but it's a tool. And the more tools that we have, the more better our
community will be. I implore our council to stand behind this proposal to show that us as a community, we say no to domestic violence. We hold perpetrators accountable and that we know that this is not a home issue or private issue. This is a community issue that we are facing head on and we're committed to
making Valuchia County one of those leaders in our in the state for the people that passed on it in 2022. We have to do something differently than what we've been doing because if we keep doing the same thing, we're going to keep getting the same result. We're going to still see these victim impact statements. We're going to still see
these sad stories on the news. I'm going to still be in courtrooms crying with families and consoling them because nothing has happened. People aren't standing up for them and teaching them how to stand up for themselves. Thank you for your time. >> Carmen, and you will be followed by John
Nicholson. My name is Carmen Ruiz. I live in Holly Hill. I also sit on the board of directors at the domestic abuse council. And while I support domestic abuse council, I want to share my story. I had the opportunity to email all of you my
my story in detail. But this this database would have changed my life and my family's life. I married somebody who I met in church. I never thought that I was in danger. I didn't think to look at a background. He
was a great guy. and my life changed two months into my marriage and went on for eight years. The hardest day was not leaving my ex-husband. The hardest day was when his previous victim reached out to me three years later and I found out that I was
not the only one cuz I carried a trauma from the end of my relationship into my new life of thinking that it was my fault. It had happened for four years in their relationship and it was documented. I didn't know where to look and I didn't think about looking because
he was a great guy. Eight years of my life and a phone call to my parents that could have ended one of two ways. The way that it did that we were separating or that I was dead. This can change lives. This gives us an
opportunity as individuals to make a decision before we get into a relationship, before we entertain someone, before we hire somebody to take care of our parents to watch my nieces. My ex-husband was alone with my six
nieces many times over eight years. I don't know what could have happened in that room. So, I just urge you to consider this. Sorry that I'm emotional, but I also urge you to consider one conviction. This happened eight years. I
can't even tell you how many times I was abused. It's not a one-time thing. By the time they get to two, they've done it so many times. I am your victim. I have a family. I belong to someone.
A pet abuser, an animal abuser can be found quickly in Blue County. give me that same respect and every other family in Valuchia County. Thank you. John Nicholson, Daytona Beachside. I I can't relate to any of that. I don't
uh I've never had it in my family, but I've rented the people. They've torn up the apartments. You've seen the abuse on the women neighbors. I have an apartment next to me. They're always running to somebody. You see
people crying on on the sidewalk out front. They can't stay inside the building. Um we need this. It's a tool in the toolbox. You've heard that. But we also need it for another reason. And
I read several newspapers. And in every newspaper I read, whether it's the New York Times, uh, USA Today, whatever, there's always a policeman getting shot and getting killed in domestic violence.
So for no other reason, we have to pro protect our police officers. This is you go on a what people say is a simple domestic violence. There's never a simple domestic violence. It can always turn to
tragedy either for the woman or for a police officer. So for whatever you do, please pass this for the protection of our police officers as well. Thank you. >> Thank you. And that uh ends public comments on this. Uh Councilman Danny
Robbins. Thank you, chairman. Uh just to uh kind of wrap up where where district 3 is at. If anyone's on the fence about this, uh this information is already out there from what I hear of uh Councilman Reinhardt's uh proposal, it just pulls
that information and consolidates it. Uh and one other thing thinking more uh about this not just for domestic uh violence protection but also too we have a huge elderly population here in in Valuchia County
right and um how many of us you know my folks are in their 70s and 80s uh but how many people out there get caretakers for uh their their old folks too and and um the older community uh is not
they're they're hindered by technology. They don't know how to use it. So, anything we can possibly make uh where it's uh simpler uh for not just domestic abuse. I think this can be used uh advantageously in multiple ways. Babysitters,
I mean, you you kind of name it and it just consolidates the information. That's how I'm looking at it. And um um I'd like to hear what everybody else has to say. So, thanks, >> Vice Chair Reinhardt. Chair, if you don't mind, um, I
pass and let the other individuals that had comments because if they have questions then of me, I would be more than happy if that's okay with you. >> Yeah, that's fine. >> Question. >> Okay, go ahead with your question. If somebody could answer the question,
um is is there any um legal or any obstacle to going to the one-year or excuse me, one offense? >> Uh no, there is not any prohibition. Um the this because it's based on convictions. Um that obviously provides
some protection. um and it is a compelling government interest and we're looking at recidivism. So um actually did prepare a striketh through version of only one as well if council wants to review that after all the discussion. Um
we do have one available >> and and I want to ask a little deeper question and I don't want anybody to take this question the wrong way. I'm trying to get to facts. Okay. Um I'm very sensitive to to to what's occurred to you and I respect your your testimony. Um, can you describe to me
what could be considered a minor offense in this category where someone could potentially get convicted? Um, and what I mean I I don't really know a lot of those that that that
world, so I've never really been exposed to it. So, um, is it could someone, let's example, there's a scratch in someone's face and someone got into an argument and I'll just say my my wife wouldn't scratch me on my face. She might punch me. I'm joking. But, um, if
I had a scratch and could someone get convicted for something like that if I don't want to minimize that, folks. I want you to know that because I know there's bad people out there. But >> so we use the definitions uh for
domestic violence and dating violence that the the state law has in place already. So we are looking at some individual that has violated those um statutes. They've been convicted. Um, I I think it would I can't imagine that
somebody would be convicted for something like that, but I I don't that's something I would think it would go through the whole process of having the trial and all the evidence being presented. I think it would be difficult to be convict not unheard of, but
difficult to be convicted of something minor um having gone through the entire process. But I'll let >> Yeah, just to give you an idea of the kind of offenses. So per the the resolution here, it refers to uh domestic violence and the definitions
thereof. And so domestic violence according to the statute. So I'm just going to read it for you. Um domestic violence means any assault, aggravated assault, battery, aggravated battery, sexual assault, sexual battery, stalking, aggravated stalking, kidnapping, false imprisonment, or any
criminal offense resulting in physical injury or death of one family or household member to another family or household member. So those are the types of offenses. Now, like Morgan was saying, might somebody make the argument that a scratch to the face is is assaulted is uh you know, but that would
go through the court process as well for for the con for the conviction of that. >> Sir, what I would add to this is that just remember like all we're doing is pulling the data based on the resolution that you approved and the terms and the definitions that they're using in the statutes for what's based on a
conviction. So, you know, we're not we're not creating a registry per se that somebody has to come in and meet certain conditions to register it. It's all being taken from what the court court's already adjudicated as convictions under the statute as abuse or domestic violence as that's written out. >> That that is very helpful, Russ. Thank
you very much. And that being said, guys, I I'd support changing it to one year based on what I just learned. >> I'm going to leave the motion for my friend here. I just wanted to suggest that. And sir, if I may, you said one year, but you just mean a single conviction. >> Yeah, that's what I meant. Sorry. Yes.
But I'm gonna leave Matt to make the motion when he's ready. >> Okay. Um I I have a question. I don't know if Matt can answer it. Um haven't heard from Don yet. He's he uh I'm sure you're
confronted with this in your in your work. Um I'm I'm not against this. I'm not against moving it to one year. I It's a tool. One offense. I'm sorry. One offense. >> Um but but I'm listening. Several of you
told your stories. Um I want to tell a real quick story and then ask a question. I don't know if probably Buck or Carmen would would be the best ones to answer it, but I knew a a family of a
mother and with a two or three yearear-old daughter um who was abused, beat up um regularly. She met another guy who uh took really good care of her and the baby, never abused her, wanted to marry
her, proposed. She turned it down and went back to her abuser um for one one date and the next time that she was seen by her friends, she had two black eyes and she was pretty severely beaten.
So, I'm wondering I can't imagine that. I mean, she knew she was getting beaten and went went back. Is she going to check on a directory? How how will this help? Will it help? Do women that does any women
who's dating somebody, somebody said they met somebody in church, I think it was Carmen, um before you date somebody, would you would you check this directory? You
think they would? Okay. I I hope so. Um you can answer that. >> Thank you, chair. So, I I I would think so. And this is, you know, you hear me advocating for my other things. You hear Mr. Ken advocating for the beach and the dog
beach and and that's awesome. You hear uh Don advocating for for whatever he you know everybody does, but we're getting out there to the public and we're we're telling you this and I think we continue to do this. This is something that's near and dear to my heart. You know, if if there was a
registry like this and I haven't come out too many places public about the family member that was involved, it was my daughter. What dad wants to get that flipping phone call saying that somebody took a gun to her
and hit her? Don, you know the story. We could have been having a lot different conversation if it would have killed her. >> So, I'm an advocate for the one time. I said that when I went to those commission meetings.
Almost every city commission that I went to, these are the representatives of our public. These are our governments of ever our municipalities. Almost every single one of them said, "What's wrong with one conviction?" They were tried. Due process was done. They were tried and found guilty by
their peers. >> So, they're tried by a jury >> or they could be it could be a judge. It could be a judge. Don, you can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think they can they can elect for a judge trial. Correct. Or no, on domestic. >> Both parties. >> Both parties would have to agree.
predominantly they're probably going to get or found guilty by by a jury if they took it that far. So that being said, I think that they will and and I think that anybody hears this, I mean, the news is here tonight. They're here. The story's out there. I've done four or
five interviews over the last several days. Buck James has done interviews. The information is out there. If we pass this tonight and be the first in the state of Florida to do this, we are not only showing how serious we take being
number four that we don't want to be, but we're also showing the state of Florida, Don, I know that they had reservations in 2022. It is 2026, soon to be 2027. A lot of things can change. I respect your opinion on that. There are some smart people up there that
decided not to go go forward with this, but Tennessee did it after that. So, a lot of things can change. So, we're going to show the state of Florida that we're serious about it. I'm serious about it. Everybody out here is serious
about it. It has touched everybody's life in some way, some shape or form, and this is why it's it's passionate. Yeah, I was passionate about the other stuff, but I'm more passionate about this. I want to protect our citizens. I want to save their lives. And if this is a tool that can do it, by God, let's do
it. I I I'll make a motion for for one conviction. >> Okay. Motion on the table from Vice Chair Reinhardt is uh for one conviction and to pass a
uh domestic abuser database. Second was by David Santiago. Uh and sir, if I may, if I may, Mr. So that motion included to strike the word repeat in the resolution the word repeated >> the definition of a repeated conviction in in subsection
uh 3H I believe is that correct Morgan >> I just want to make sure we don't >> yeah whatever gets us to that one conviction thank you sir >> you have a motion in a second right I would ask Miss Swink if you could just read what the changes are to the resolution so council and the public is aware
>> Thank you Mr. Thank you, chair for giving me a little leeway on that. I appreciate that. Sorry again. So, >> uh the resolution will remove repeat um from the whereas clauses um from section
two um and from from section three and from section 3H will uh remove repeat domestic abuse offender uh definition. >> Still good with your second. >> Good with your second. Yep. Okay. All
right. So, we have that motion on the floor. Uh, Councilman Dempsey. Um, Matt, I totally understand where you're coming from. I understand your zeal. I have a daughter as well. I have a nine-year-old little girl, and I hope
and pray someday she doesn't meet up with the wrong guy as well. But having done this for 36 years, both as a prosecutor and a defense attorney, I prosecuted one half of the at one point in my career, I prosecuted half of the
domestic violence misdemeanors on this half of the county for nearly two years. What you don't understand, these cases that we're talking about tonight and hearing about, they're horrific. And I can only um give you my condol I'm
sorry to hear that you've gone through what you're going through. But I can tell you having done this on the daily that's my bread and butter is criminal defense. Now I was a prosecutor. I ran for state attorney. Okay. Microphone. You have to understand
how many innocent people were caught in the net. And David when you were asking what does it take? I mean literally I could throw this at you. That's a battery. I can say >> get out of my way. That's a battery. Get
away from me. That's a battery. Something as innocuous as that in a domestic in a domestic environment >> is a battery. I promise you, I've seen cases as innocent as that where people get
arrested. There are a lot of innocent people caught in the net. Thomas Jefferson said, quoting Volater, it's better to protect 99 innocent people than convict one innocent than one guilty person.
John Adams, our second president, who defended the uh the English soldiers at the Boston Massacre, Boston Massacre, because no other uh colonial attorney would represent them, said it's more important we protect innocents than prosecuting
guilt. Because if innocent people can go to jail while living an innocent life, then what's the sense in living an innocent life? Our country was founded on protecting innocence more than prosecuting guilt. Now, our state attorney has done a wonderful job of
prosecuting domestic cases. I see it daily. Our sheriff does a wonderful job of arresting people in domestic situations. They do a wonderful job. I see it daily. And I've been watching it for the last 36 years.
Okay. Laura Roth, you can get this information off the clerk's site. It's already there. If you go on the clerk's site and you look to the category and it says V, I submit that's violence. It's already there. We can't under in 2019 Florida statute
943.0584 subpar 2 subpar f said that you can no longer seal or expune a domestic violence case. Prior to that, if it was a withhold or a drop charge, you could seal it from public record. That that's no longer available.
You can't seal or expune a domestic charge. If you want to find out who your loved one is dating, just it's already there. Laura Roth does an incredibly good job of keeping our clerk's records up to date. I see it every day. I
challenge you. Look at clerk.org. Our clerk's office is incredible. Imagine when websites first came out 20, 30 years ago, she got clerk.org, not Valuchia clerks.org, whatever. Clerk.org. That's how on top of the the internet our clerk's office is. That was
under Miss Miss Matusk, but they have a legacy of doing a great job. It's already there. And it's concerning to me that we haven't reached out to Laura Roth to see what her input is on this because I think she's already done a
great job of flagging domestic violence cases already. It's already there. We haven't reached out to the elected public defender. We haven't reached out to Mr. LaRissa. We haven't reached out to Mark Weinberg. I would submit that if
this becomes a new sanction for these accusations, that's going to create a lot more trials. That's going to clog the courts because there's going to be a lot of pe I see it every day. A small less than 1% of the accusations actually go to trial. But being categorized as
being on the domestic violence registry, database, whatever, it's it's a registry, but >> a database, whatever. Even so, you're going to have that stigma. And having that stigma is going to cause a lot more people to want to go to
trial. I mean, are we ready to build that new courthouse they keep talking about on the east side for a half a billion dollars, whatever it is now? >> I mean, are we ready for the clogged courts because people are not going to go to trial? They're not going to take a plea and they're going to insist on a trial because they don't want that
stigma of being on the database when we already have. I mean, I'm not I agree with you in theory, Matt. I really do. And I understand why you're doing this because domestic violence is a problem, but I think it's already being well addressed. I mean, David, I'll ask you,
the Senate Judiciary Committee, I know you were in the legislative branch, but they don't just put anybody on those committees. To be on a judiciary committee, you got to have some legal experience, right? Predominantly, it's attorneys. >> There was only two attorneys on the uh
judiciary. There was only two that year. >> How many? >> Nine. >> Okay. Well, at least there's two. We only got one here. But I'm just saying there's there's so much collateral issues that could come about
it. And not even talking to um you know, the people in the system that are going to have to deal with this on the daily um I think is premature. I'd like to get the input from Mr. Weinberg and Mr. LaRissa and Mr. Mets just to see how
they think this might affect the system. And I would like to have a presentation from Miss Roth to show what's already been done. You can't in 2019. You can no longer seal or expune this stuff. It's no longer kept a secret. It's out there for everybody to know already. I'm just
afraid that it's going to cause more people to want to go to trial to avoid that stigma of being on the database. And there are, I tell you, there's a lot of people who um are not guilty in these accusations. A lot. Way more than you
think. It's not all the I would say the overwhelming majority of the cases it's one person's word against the other. There's no marks. There's no there's no physical evidence. It's just a swearing match. And all too often it comes in a custody battle or in a divorce case and
it's used as leverage. It's not even a bonafide accusation, but it's an accusation solely being used to get instant possession of the house, to get that other partner arrested. A lot of times it's a it's it's one of the more abused accusations that I see in the system unfortunately and that's what
I'm concerned about. So if it hasn't passed through any of the other 66 counties, I think there's a reason why. I think there's a reason why it hasn't passed in all these other states and why it failed in our Senate Judiciary Committee. And I think it's premature
to just vote on this without any input from the people who deal with it daily. the, like I said, the elected public defender, state attorney, and Mr. Weinberg on behalf of the the court system. Thank you, >> Councilman Johansson. >> I'm I'm somewhat confused. Um, on one
hand, the information is already on Laura Ross website, and these are for people who are are already convicted. They've already been through Mr. Mets. They've already been through the lawyers
and they're convicted rightfully, wrongfully, they are convicted. Point one. Point two, if it's already on Laurel Ross website and we're just saying,
let's make it easier via database and it's not going to cost a lot of money and it's going to be easier for people to get information. Look up J Hansen. Boom. I'm not going to date the guy.
>> Point two. >> Point three. This is not preventing anybody from dating anybody. It's just making it known that the guy or girl you might be dating may have
beat the crap out of somebody in their family before. And and at that point, you got to start asking the question, hey, I looked at the thing and I noticed, Jake, that that you have a domestic violence uh uh case where you
were found guilty. Yeah. You know, I got a fight with my ex and I scratched her face. Um, I would hope that a dad or or or uh or somebody who's dating would then um
do a little more research. But but these people, I don't know how it's going to clog up any system when it's already done and you're saying it's already there or just make it easier to find. And and I may be wrong, but but that's
how I see it right now. Um, and we already talked about the Senate Judiciary. I'm I'm not saying they're dumb people, but they're not a bunch of judges either. They're a bunch of realators and bankers and and and a
lawyer or two. So, um, I I I I don't I don't think that getting R.J. and Hey, R.J., um, these people have been convicted. We want to put them on a list so everybody knows where they are. I I don't I don't I'm not saying it's a
waste of time. We can ask them, but but uh um if it's already on Laurel Ross website, I don't see why we have to go ask people why we have to make it easy to find the folks. That's all.
>> Vice Chair Reinhardt. Thank you, Chair. So, real quick, Don, I respect you to know. Are you hearing me down there? Oh, okay. >> Tomato tomato. Okay, >> this anyways. >> Going back and I respect the fact that
you said they can go to Laura's website. They see a V. I personally would not and I've been in in that field for 30 years, worked in booking. I didn't know that a V stood for that or DV. I did not know that. And what citizen out there is going to
realize that? I don't want to have to look through every single charge to find out where that person was convicted. Um, as far as checking with Laura Roth, and I don't think anybody checked with her when we implemented the animal database,
did we? No. Uhoh. Um, I don't think we checked with uh R.J. Larissa. A lot of respect for the man with that. Uh, oh, Matt Mets got a lot of respect. Don't think we asked him. I did ask the sheriff. The sheriff is 110% in support of this.
He goes, "It helps my deputies. It's a tool. It is another tool." So, when we talk about, and I respect the fact that, and and you had me thinking for a minute when you said that they could go go to court and they said that they're on a database and it could
hurt them. Their criminal history is going to hurt them. And they have that already. They already have it. So why why is it that they're on a database is any more severe than already having the charge in the criminal history? You see where I'm going with that? So when they're going
to court, they're not saying, "I don't want to be on a database." What they're going to say is, "I don't want that stuff in my criminal history that the judge is seeing, but that's not going away." So I mean that that I'm sorry, but it didn't didn't make as much sense. Um
it's it's a preventative tool. It's a tool. It doesn't prevent anybody from making that decision. You still have the decision to whether or not you want to date them. You still have the decision of whether or not you want to hire them to bring a loved one into your home. You still have the decision if you want to hire that individual for child care.
That's your choice and your decision. It's also your choice and your decision if you see that person on the database to dig deeper if you want more information. And I love the idea and I'd like to say this Russ on our database that we put on there.
Have we discussed as far as retro or is it from this point forward? Do we discuss that now before we get all this together? Because I'd like to put this to bed tonight. >> It's not on the resolution, sir. So that would be recommended to be What do you want to do? So I would I mean is I would
like to say what 10 years is that something >> I think that's rough order magnitude what the clerk generally goes back to >> I think they only they don't go back any further than that I think that's possible by virtue of the of the mugsh shot as well. Okay. And then also on the website uh
that we put this on that we put the domestic abuse council information on there if we could because that is our source our resource here in Valuchia County. So the only uh recommendation I would have is that if we can do 10 years we'll do 10 years but that the motion would be such that to allow staff to be
flexible within you know if it's less than 10 years because that's all it goes back to >> if it does it does up to yeah up to >> up to >> so I'll change my motion for that if David agrees with the second >> or five years
>> you agree David agrees on the 10 so sold and I know there's a couple others that want to Thank you, >> Councilman Robbins. Thank you, Chair. Guys, I I think we're somewhat overthinking this. I think there's a middle ground here. Uh I wouldn't even
call it a compromise. Uh Don, you're not wrong. I' I' I've seen it myself, not for as long as you have, but staff to not create that stigma in respect for his professional uh experience, but also
to respect uh Mr. to Reinhardt's um um direction that he's going. How hard would this be to coordinate with Laura Roth instead of when they log into that little portal there that they have for there to be a link just like you go to
valia.org and type in road maintenance. And guess what? It brings up all the road maintenance. Uh storm water. It brings up all the storm water, domestic abuse, end of story. How hard would it just to be a a quick
link and don't put say registry? Don't say this. All this is is an easier way, a consolidated way to get the information. And I think we're making too much out of this a as as a whole. Um
I want to support it, but I want it to be the most efficient and effective way possible. I don't want to make a a mountain out of a mole here. I don't think this is too difficult to get this across the line. So that's just my two cents. I think we're making this more difficult. This can be
done with an algorithm and uh probably 10 minutes with one of our tech guys uh to set this up uh just for a quick link that is specifically for uh domestic abuse um you know convictions. That's all. >> Sir, I think that's a that's a great suggestion, but that's a I think that's
a policy decision for Miss Roth to make. And you know, I think right now the items before you is what's before you for the county to make the the database. But you know, if that's something you want us to engage in later on, it's a policy decision. I'm still reading the whole council, so I can't see. Hold on a second.
>> I'm ready to talk, >> you know, but I got a couple minutes left. David, but >> I'm ready to talk. >> Councilman Santiago, >> thank you, Mr. Chair. >> I'm done. Never mind. >> If you're done. No. Yeah. Listen, I think staff has done a a good job of preparing this. This is already public
record. It's for convictions. I'm comfortable with it and I call the question. We've already said our pieces. >> Mr. Chair, if I could just so we're transparent on this, could you read the sentence where you would amend the
resolution to add the 10-year language so council and the public knows? Um it could be placed in section two. Uh the county council hereby directs the establishment of an online domestic abuser database uh which shall contain
the names and other related available public record information of domestic abusers living in Valuchia County who are convicted uh of one or more uh instance of domestic violence uh offenses on or
after uh and instead of on or after the effective date offenses uh 10 years prior to >> 10 years prior to the effective to the effective date >> up to 10 years >> up to adoption of the resolution
>> of the effective date. Um, and there's also in section three, the county of Valuchia uh shall post online and maintain a publicly accessible domestic abusers database um on the Valuchia County official website which includes abusers abusers convicted of domestic abuse offenses
um up to >> I think you got it in section two, Morgan. Section three just talks about what's in the database. You're good. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. Where on the county website would that be?
>> You'd have to make a page or >> new page on valuia.gov. >> Okay. >> Right. So, it's just a it's it's a link basically to a search that would land on uh corrections page. >> Okay.
Chissa, would you call the role? >> Mr. Robbins. >> Mr. Santiago? >> Yes. >> Mr. Dempsey. >> Mr. Johansson? >> Yes. >> Mr. Kent? >> Yes. >> Mr. Reinhardt? >> Yes. >> Mr. Brower? >> Yes.
>> So, the one year passes six to one. >> One conviction. >> One conviction. Um, not for right now, but Buck or Carmen, either one. I would like to talk to you afterwards. How How are we going to use this? How can you make it
effective? Who's going to That's that. That's my question. So, okay. Item uh 12. Thank you all for coming in to speak on this ordinance 2026-12
implementing term limits for boards, committees, or other appointed bodies. >> Good evening, council. Chris Ryan, assistant county attorney. If you recall, at the May 5th, 2026 County Council meeting, council voted to impose term limits on boards, committees, or
appointed bodies of no more than eight consecutive years with an accession of board that have five-year terms, boards with specialized qualifications, or boards established by charter. Now, you also chose to use one of the terms I I found some from some of the uh other local governments whereby you could
choose to wave the term limit requirements by a simple majority vote should you believe it's in the county's best interest to do so. And this ordinance is enacting that recommendation. >> I'm here to take questions. >> Um questions. Don, is this a hold over
from the last item? Your name? Yes. You got sorry we didn't get to hear from you. Uh any questions? I I have uh uh I don't know really know if it's a
question for you. It's really probably a question for the council, but I've noticed on echo the uh current status is two terms of four years. Valuchia forever three terms of two years. I would like to see both of those be the
the same two years of two terms of four years. Right now, if correct me if I'm wrong, right now when I look at it, it looks like everybody on Valuchia forever is set to terminate at the same time, which means they could
be reappointed by the council, but it's potential of not having any experience on that >> potential. Yes. and and that could certainly be the uh the good cause you think to uh be the reason why you chose to wave those term limits, but that's entirely your prerogative.
>> Uh all right, let's hear what the um any other questions or no questions. Okay, Councilman Santiago. >> Thank you, Mr. Chair. Gentlemen, I I I'm not a fan of this item. We could just get rid of it. I think term limits for appointments that we do,
you can decide for yourself if someone wants to continue if you want them to continue to serve. So, um, I don't see the necessity of it. >> Who brought this up? >> I don't know who brought this up. It wasn't me. >> Ryan Santiago. >> I know. We're going to play the video, but, um, I don't think it's necessary,
guys. That's just my opinion. I'll I'll vote for it, but you could hold your own appointee to a term limit at any time. >> So, are you making a motion? >> Well, I I move to uh deny ordinance 2026-12. A motion to deny the ordinance by
Councilman Santiago and the second was by Vice Chair Reinhardt. >> Thanks staff for making all that work. We appreciate it. >> Well, he asked for it twice. Please get rid of this. All right. Any
other questions, comments? We have one comment from the public. If you'd like to come up and speak, Mr. Nicholson. John Nichol Tony Beachside. Not only do I come to your meetings, I come to about 10
city meetings for our boards. Daytona Beach has a hard time now getting members to show up on their boards. They have 11 people. Five show up. We have Peabody board. Out of 12
meetings a year, they can't conduct business but two because the members don't show up. Um, it is very difficult to get people to to be on boards. There's one person on the planning board that has been on the board since the
'9s. Uh, there's a woman on the Peabody board been on the board since the 90s. they show up every single meeting. So, it really would be a detriment if you sit there and start kicking these people off and saying, "Oh, well, they can
always come back after a term." Well, once they've been off for two or three years, they don't come back. So, um I like uh David's idea of of throwing this out because it really does cause more harm than it does good. Thank you,
>> Mr. Ryan. You still down there? One more question just so we're real clear on what we're voting on. On the second page of this, it says current status and it lists boards with term limits including Valuchia and Rack Valuchia forever. If
we vote uh to deny um term limits, does it change that? >> It does not. No, this is just term limits across the board for all boards that wouldn't be qualified outs. Um but it would still retain the status of the boards that should this not pass tonight, it would still like anything
for example uh Echo or Forever that already have term limits, those would remain >> changes. >> Status quo stays in place. Right. >> Okay. Any other questions, comments? All in favor of denying the uh implementation, please say I. I.
>> I. Any oppose? Nay. Johansson >> nay Kent >> okay I should have called the role okay so there's two naysen
and Kent okay then the ordinance or the implementation uh fails it's not uh it's not implemented five to two >> I just want the record to reflect that
the resolution Miss Swink wrote passed, but the ordinance that Mr. Ryan wrote failed. >> Okay. Item 13, direction on amending county meeting rules ordinance. >> Yes, sir. Uh, this is a followup to
prior direction from council. Um, you do have a meeting rules ordinance that provides for how your meetings are conducted. Um, and I believe a concern was raised by a council member back in April when this
was discussed about possibly modifying the ordinance to specifically prohibit acceptance of speaker cards once the public comment period has started for any particular item. Uh, this is presented to you for
direction. Uh, if you did want to proceed, we bring back an ordinance change. >> Okay. Councilman Kent. >> Thank you, Chairman. Yeah, I I remember I was kind of vocal on this one and um this I think will help continue to
streamline our process and if someone, you know, our meetings are open to the public. We have public participation in the beginning of our meetings. We have it at the end of our meetings. You can talk on any agenda item that we have. Um, but this just kind of lays out that if you want to talk on it, have your
card in when the chair calls that item up. Um, I just think it it it streamlines our process. It doesn't stop anybody from speaking, but um, you know, if you want to talk on the item, put your have make sure your card is in
before the chairman calls the item. That that was where I was with that. >> Okay. We have two members of the public who would like to speak on this. Uh, Cat Pante, you're still here. And then Wendy, you will follow her.
You're still here, too. Good evening, council. I'm speaking in opposition to amending the county ordinance that regulates public participation during meetings. The public should continue to be allowed to submit speaker cards at any time during the public comment period as is currently permitted. This policy ensures
that residents have meaningful opportunity to participate in decisions that affect their lives and communities. Many residents are doing their best to arrive on time. Some are coming directly from work. Others are dropping their children off at school or traveling from the east side of the county. Life happens and not everyone can arrive at
the exact moment a meeting begins. We should not create additional barriers that make it harder for residents to have their voices heard. Amending this ordinance would further restrict public participation and could prevent residents from speaking simply because circumstances delayed their arrival. Public participation is a cornerstone of
our democracy. I urge you to preserve the current policy and ensure that every resident who makes the effort to attend a county meeting has a fair opportunity to be heard. And on in reference to some of the agenda items that come up, there's times that I've been sitting here and I've heard discussion and then
I've chosen to put in a card to speak. So anyway, thank you for consideration. >> Thank you, Wendy Anderson. >> Good evening. It is evening now. Wendy Anderson, District 1. Um I don't think it's good optics in an election year for you all to be u reducing the amount of
public comment in public meetings. Um but really it's it's kind of what Miss Pantage just said. Um many of us who sit through these meetings through hours of these meetings who are paying attention who are listening to items may not think
at the beginning of an agenda item that we have anything to say about it or we really want to hear staff's explanations. you know, sometimes the agenda item materials um do not have as much explanation in them as is presented by the staff person or is brought out by
the questions um offered by the the councilman. So, I think it's, you know, for those of us who are able to sort of think on the spot and come up with new questions and new ways to contribute to the conversation, sometimes we need the opportunity to put in a card after that
agenda item starts. I don't see any benefit to restricting that. You might have a few people, you know, the John Nicholson's and Cat Pantes and Wendy Andersons of the world, you know, who you hear a little bit less from, but um you know, but for the most part, I think that that it benefits you all to hear
from us um anytime you can. Thank you. >> Thank you, uh Councilman Troy Kent. >> Thank you, Chairman. I um I appreciate the comments from both both of the speakers and they bring up good points, but restricting comments I I I I can't
adhere to that because quite frankly, the public can come in here and fill out a yellow card on every item on the agenda, every single one. And I would recommend you do that. And then if you decide you don't want to talk on it, you could just simply raise
your hand say I pass. I mean, if if that's if that's what you wanted to do. Um, but and council, I'll just tell you this isn't about inhibiting anybody from speaking. You can still speak on every
item that we have. It's just streamlining our process so that when the chairman starts the item, that item, not the beginning of the meeting, that item, he has his list and it's there and our clerk isn't running over with three or four or five more
cards once the item has started. And I'll just remind this council, every four months I hold a district dialogue for um four residents in district 4 and I start my meeting the same way every time. I tell the audience that are
there. Sometimes there's 30 people there. Sometimes there's 85. We will talk about anything you want to talk about. I won't shy away from anything. I'll answer every question even if I don't have an answer. I'll tell you I don't have an answer. But I won't shy away from any question you have and we will talk about anything you
want to talk about. So I I just put that out there because I certainly wouldn't want someone to get the wrong impression that I'm trying to stop people from participating in their government. I hold those meetings for you so you can participate with me and tell me what you think about different items that are
going to come before us. Like I said, this doesn't stop anybody from talking on the items. It just was a a thought to streamline our process to make our our meetings um continue to to run as efficiently as possible. That's all it
won't break my heart if we don't change anything either. I mean, just tell you that as well. Thank you. I I I don't have any doubt that you don't want to shut down people, but I think I think Cat and Wendy are exactly right because I I'm sitting here
getting cards from people and it does h sometimes it is Wendy and sometimes it is Kat, it's always John. Um but um she's right that you you can't get here on time all the time. They'll get here
just a little bit late. I we'll get two or three on an item. So, it's six or nine minutes. Um I think it's more important to protect the public's right to participate in our meetings. It's critical to hear from them. It was
critical to hear in this this last item on the uh domestic abuse. Um, and I I think our higher um I think the best thing we can do is
protect the public to be able to come in and and speak to to items. It's I don't see it as a as a problem. Um, and I know because the same thing you see the same thing happen on this council. We'll discuss them first. We have questions
and then we have debate. will go into debate and somebody me somebody else will say hey I want to go back and ask another question because a debate creates questions in your minds so I want to give the public the same
opportunity the same respect to do that that we do up here that we can uh maybe I'm too lenient that the council will will be glad when I'm gone but I like to give the council time if they have a question I want them to be able to ask it if you have a question
that was um brought about by debate. Um I'm okay for you to come in and ask it. It helps us make better decisions. So I I'd say um I'm going to vote just to keep it the way it is and not change anything. Vice Chair Reinhardt.
>> Thank you, Chair. Um Troy, I don't think you are stopping people from talking. So I agree with you. You're not. Um and I understand where you're going from. And yeah, that's kind of an idea. The state kind of does that as far as filling out a comment card and I I pass and whatever
whatever they say. David, you remember whenever they stand up and they say, "Yeah, I agree." And whatever. But anyways, they don't come up and talk. I am babbling now. Danny just told me not to babble. So anyways, >> but there I did not. But just like you just said, chair, you give us the
opportunity. Hey, can I answer that? And you always say yes. And I appreciate that because there are things we think about and I think the same applies to the public. So, you know, it would be great if they got here and filled out looking at today's agenda item. That
would be a lot. And if they got here late, they probably wouldn't be able. My hand would be killing me. But it is a great idea. I like it, but I don't know if half the people are going to do that. So, uh, and I think it all falls back to you, chair. You're the one that has to address it. And if you don't have an
issue with it, nor do I. So, I I I like the way it is. >> Okay. Uh I don't see anybody else up for a discussion or a question. Is there a motion? >> Chairman, I don't think there needs to be a motion at this point. I mean, we
just if there's no motion, it stays status quo the way it is. Correct. So, it's it's a mood issue. >> So, pass. Okay. Um, thank you the public for speaking up not only on this but all of our items today. It's really important
that you come um and let us hear from you. Troy Kent agrees with that too by the way. Um, okay. Public participation round two.
I've only got three. So, okay, guess who's first? John Nicholson and I filled out the card early. John Nicholson, Daytona Beachside. No, I didn't expect you to uh curtail public speaking and I
understand uh why you're doing what you're doing because you've done that from the very beginning. So, in an election year, words matter and I don't want anything to hurt you. All right. I know. But you will be. Um second, uh
again, I want to bring back the um the agenda or the voting item uh in this coming um election. Um years ago, uh I was at a economic advisory board meeting for the city of
Daytona Beach and Ken Sharples was introducing the half any sales tax and is in his presentation the um data that they had gotten was that it would pass easily that nobody would object to having a half penny sales tax. And I sat
in the audience and I went and so he looked at me goes, "What are you shaking your head? no for. And I said, "People are going are not going to pass this half penny sales tax. You got to remember that you just denied
increasing the um impact fees. >> People don't like the idea that they're going to have to fix the roads and pay for the roads that the developers are getting free." The second thing, they don't trust the politicians.
So, when you put something before them and they don't know where you're going to spend the money, they're not going to okay it. Well, I just read an article yesterday in which they said that the uh they have a poll and depending on how
you word it, it passes with 61% if you say it in one way and it goes down to 45% if you say it another way. So, I'm asking you that depending on how you guys want to vote. I know there's two people here
that have publicly said that they support this. All right? I don't know how the rest of you stand, but we can't afford to go with 100%
uh no property tax except for schools. We're not going to be able to make up that difference. And I understand people say, "Well, it's only 10%." But that 10% when you were down, I think we were 6%, George, a couple of years
ago, we're down to like three for the for the basic. >> Yeah. >> So, we went down three. So, now you want to go down even more. You're not going to have the funds to do what you want to do and what we need to do. So, I'm
asking you to publicly come to a decision and let the public know how bad it's going to be and what has to be cut. Libraries, parks, the beach, let them know what's going to be cut. Thank you,
>> Wendy Anderson. Okay, last time. So, uh, Wendy Anderson, District 1. So, I, uh, I wanted to talk to you about water quality because it's my favorite topic and, um, and I've got 2 minutes and 51 seconds to do that. So, PAS, forever chemicals, um, that's one
of the, um, persistent pollutants that, uh, we've become increasingly aware of over the last few years. Comes mostly from industrial processes, um, testing of fire retardants and bomb ranges and things like that. Um we have several parts of Valuchia County where there is
um noted PAZ in our in our groundwater and our drinking water supply and um and so we are party as a county to county utilities um to one of several uh class action lawsuits nationwide against the chemical companies that produce this and
will at some point hopefully in the near future be receiving settlement money from that. Um, I've checked with legal I've checked with uh util utilities director and public works director and um and they've assured me that the amount of money that this the county
stands to receive from that from that lawsuit is is minimal. That it will not be enough to actually implement technologies that could start to remove these chemicals from our waters uh from our drinking water. And and that's really concerning to me that um that
that you know we might just be party to a lawsuit just for you know chump change but whatever you know I want first of all to just put it on your radars that money is coming in and when it comes in a I want assurance that it's going to utilities b that it's going to go to utilities in such a way that it will
improve something about water quality and and then in my final one minute and 20 seconds I want to change topics on you and talk about another serious water quality issue. not just water quantity. We're all also hearing um big news across the nation, across the state
about AI data centers and the impacts that those have on our on our utility infrastructure, on our electricity grid, on our uh our water supply, on um on our wildlife habitats just, you know, for the the sheer size and footprint of
these things, but also um also on water quality. So the water that they use um for the cooling systems does eventually return back to the environment even if they're recycling water on site. Um it does eventually go back to the environment and it goes back polluted
and and so knowing that we already have polluted water from PAS and several other sources, septic tanks, fertilizers, things like that. Um, I would like to just again put it on our radars that we really need to have a plan to keep our water clean to to clean
the water where it's already dirty and and hope that we can do that. I would also really strongly recommend again in an election year maybe you guys could get this done before November um that we actually put a moratorum or some sort of
limit on AI data centers that may be looking at Valuchia County and if we have any I'd really like to know about that. Thank you. >> Thank you. Uh, Greg Bletz, >> pardon. >> Bullets.
>> Bullets. My wife couldn't make it today because she had she's at a tournament with my daughter, a tennis tournament, so I wanted her to spend her three minutes, but I'll use her time up. >> Okay. >> Um, we were extremely, again, we were extremely disappointed about the
decision. Our hearts were set on building our home where it's delayed now because we don't really know where our property lines are. If the vacate happens, we pick up 25 ft for each lot. We own all that. If you guys got a chance to look at it, did anybody get to
see anything? The information that I sent over, I sent it over to the CH was told to the public participation website and I also sent an email to every council member with all the we I have a s I have a environmental report from a local guy here. His name is Jordan. He
owns an environmental company here and it was a $2,000 environmental report that we did on that property. So, the county, it was really unfortunate that Tad did not present that information to the board. I feel that it was a to the council member. It would have been a different decision.
It looks like I said before when you guys were looking at it because I watched that video eight times that of the last meeting that I should have been at, but I wasn't. So, I'm getting my three minutes. I doubt I could have pro I doubt I could have changed your mind because apparently the county wants to
build put uh picnic benches in between our property, but my I lived in uh I lived in Blusher County in Newman Beach 35 years. Okay. We lived at OceanWalk Condominiums and I know that Danny knows where it is right down the street a mile
and a half away from our property. Every morning I'd get up, I lived there six years and I will jog down there and I would just dream about my property. build there for my family. So, what the county is doing to me is I can build a Spongebob house if they want me to.
It's,00 square feet. That's our home. That's what I can build right now on that big giant lot that everybody looks is really big, but take a look at what's really there. I can do that. It's going to look funny and that's going to be my kids' home. my I wanted my grandkids to
be right there next to me and walk across the street West Alton that doesn't exist of course and have our property like a everybody living together and that was my plan to retire there. But now my son's a pilot. He's a
a commercial pilot. He has his check right on Friday. He goes to Epic Fight Academy and um he's going to I'm going to get his house all ready to build. He's going to help me build it one day. He's going to live there. My daughter's going to stay with him until she figure out what she going to do. We want to be
across the street. We can still build two homes on that property. We bought five lots from five people that and four of those lots, like I said, have hookups. One of the one of the lots was purchased from Glenn Stos and I'm sure you know who that is. He was going to build a house on that property and um he
actually represented me on a couple things on getting variances, but I Glenn told me try to get a vacate. So, I just want to know if I can speak, put it back on the agenda and discuss it. >> Thank you. Uh,
all three of you want to speak on this issue. >> Okay. Councilman Robbins. >> Thank you, Chairman. Chairman, there there's uh it's come to my knowledge. Uh, there's uh some additional information I think that we need to consider here. I'm willing to make that motion to get uh get him back on the
agenda if uh I can get some support. Also too, there was concern share of Cararissa. Can you um Google map that that area right there and then zoom out a little bit? We have I'm sorry,
>> Greg. What was your address again? >> It was in between Turtle Mound and Ingram. >> Turtle. I think I think it's 6211. >> 6211. What? What? I'm fixing to show Ingram or is it on the Turtle Mound side? >> It's the property on Turtle Mount Ingram
and West. There's five. >> Carissa, give me the cross streets. Uh there you'll be able to pull it up. What I'm getting at, guys, too, I know um there was concern about parks and I just wanted to zoom out and I'm I agree with Mr. Kent where we should have uh more of
these pocket parks. Um yeah, now scroll out. How far is our We have a a a park further down on Ingram, not too far away. Do we know where that is? Is it that little divot, that little square there? Uh about a
mile away, half a mile away. >> 6150. >> Okay. Anyways, we we have we have a little park there, a kayak launch, uh basketball hoop, volleyball, a boardwalk, benches,
kids playground. Um pretty cool little park right by there. Um keep going keep going south on Ingram. I think it's that square. Where's that? See that square right there? Right. Yep.
Right there. Okay. Look at that little You see that square? It says Mackerel. Macro A there. Um, can you put that in the center of the screen? Okay. Yeah. That whole area right there to the north, you'll see that park.
You'll see the boardwalk. Um, I take I take my kids there, so I know it's pretty much the community goes there and then they can walk right across the street to uh the Bassoon Be Beach Park where there's um uh shower stalls, uh
places for surfboards, parking, grilling, cooking, and there's also a couple pavilions on this property as well. So, I'd be more than happy to put it back on the agenda, but I have to get the support of my my council. Sir, sir, Mr. Robbins, for the record, just so I'm
clear because the it's an application he would have to redo which has fees and advertisements associated with it for a public hearing. So, I just want to be clear what the motion is in terms of the fees and the cost to advertise because it's either going to be him unless the council makes another motion, we would
do it. Do we have an explanation why some of this material um wasn't provided at the time? >> Sir, Mr. Casever is here, but my understanding I I'm not certain what material you're talking about. We take the applications as they are. they could
sit around to staff and uh the information that was provided by the applicant as well as staff after it's processed so that people can make a decision as to whether it meets the threelegged uh criteria that was provided to the council at the last meeting for vacation
which uh the motion was made based on that criteria to deny it. So, okay, >> my understanding is all the information was provided and presented to the council at that time. Before I make a uh a motion, I'll I'll hear from the rest of my colleagues, but I I think it it would pay to revisit this somehow. So,
we'll go from there. >> Thank you, Councilman Santiago. >> Thank you, Mr. Chair. Um and and that's why I said to stand by because I was going to suggest also let's just get it rescheduled and and if there's new information for us to listen to, I think we owe it to to the property owners and
staff to to make their uh updated presentation. I don't think we should litigate it today, guys. No, >> let's decide whether we want to give them another bite at the apple. The question is >> wave the fees. >> Um the fees. So is it advertising fee? How much are the advertising fees
>> total, sir? It's about $660. >> That's the entire application fee. >> That's my understanding unless somebody wants to correct me. >> And how much of that is advertising? >> Okay. >> We paid for the petition cost of petition is 660. The uh advertisement is
responsibility of the property we normally do it. So depends on the size of the advertisement itself and the number of papers. I don't know what that cost is. >> So it's in addition to the fee. >> I'd be okay with waving the fee and and let him advertise it as as normal. >> Second. >> So he has to reapply.
>> Yeah. And we would wave >> we have all the same documentation. And so there's nothing to really cover in terms of that aspect of I have no problem uh not asking for the $660 petition. We have all the material we need. Uh so nothing really has to be redone. We just have to put it back on
the agenda for discussion. Uh we can throw on anything else that's requested to be seen for consideration. Certainly do that. >> If the applicant's willing to readvertise it, I'm I think I'm okay with that. >> Okay. Councilman Kent,
>> we spent a year working with >> Chairman, can you ask him to not yell out from the chair? >> Don't uh don't jeopardize your position right now. >> Chris, we understand. the aerial picture back up with the the map that we had of um the original one, not the Google map,
but the one with the property, the lines on it there. And I'm not going to litigate this here, but I think it's important to have this conversation briefly. Um, and I'm going to I think it's important for the applicant as well, so that you know if
if majority on here don't want to bring this back, he understands that. He hears it. Yeah, that picture right there. And I had a really great conversation with Greg. We had a I think over 30 minutes. Um, and and it was really positive and
and I'm going to repeat some of the things I I told him. I didn't use this Disney World reference, but it's not my job or or our job to make your dreams come true, like if you were at Disney World. And I had staff, I want you to know, I had a staff member come to me
the very next meeting and said to me, "Hey, uh, there's a vacation on this, um, agenda. Are you okay with this one?" And I said, "I I am." And I loved his response. He looked at me and said, "Why this one and not the last one?" And it made me like scratch my head like
the the one on the next meeting was 10 ft and it was landlocked. Hello That's 7,650 square ft touching the water.
Okay, that's the difference staff. That's why I was okay with the 10-foot landlocked and waterfront right here. And I told Greg, I told him, I said, I got to tell you something. I love your story and
your idea about a family compound. I want to do the same thing. But my the difference between me and you is I'm not going to purchase property that the government has the ability to give me or not and put all of my chips into that thinking they're going to give it to me.
This makes his property worth a tremendous amount more than what it is right now. A tremendous amount. And we talked about that and good for him. But I'm going to tell you the comment about, you know, you put a park bench and someone can, you know, have a picnic
sitting there between two of our homes. You have them in your communities as well, but I'm going to tell you, there's at least a dozen of them in Orman Beach that are pocket parks that are on the Halifax River. They are in between two homes. There is a park bench sitting
there. People go down and watch the sunset. They throw a Frisbee with their kid. Don Dempsey, you were spot on when we talked about this about the a very passive thing here and just a park bench because once you give it away and it's
gone, it's gone. And when we zoomed out and you looked at all those homes clustered there, if you don't live on the water, you don't have that opportunity. But I'm thinking about these people that live around this that aren't on the water that would like to come in and sit down
and watch a sunset, throw a Frisbee, have a conversation with a friend, sit in silence by themselves. So I can just tell you right now, for those reasons, I'm not in favor of bringing this back.
So I'm one. There's two. There's been a motion and a second to bring it back. So I'm one. So either we hear from the rest or we won't. But those are my reasons why I I want him to have his dream. I do. I want you to have your dream, just not on our dime. I've got other
people that I think would like to sit down there and enjoy it on a park bench, and that's where I am with it. >> Councilman Santiago. >> Yeah, I'll just wrap with this. Um, Mr. Chair, what interests me and you can do this one that if you decide to invest,
if this passes, is give us some more information. And I think you'd made some comments that a lot of this is wet now or it can't be utilized. That's going to be of a lot of interest to me if I get this to be reheard. That's what sparked my interest. And remember, Disney has villains, too. So,
>> I'm joking. Joking. Joking. That's my friend. >> And rodents. >> Uh, okay. So, the motion is, and I'm not sure if Danny if you made it or if David the motion was to bring it back and you
made the second. Okay, Danny makes a motion. Uh, David Santiago did second um with waving the $660 fee to bring it back. You have to advertise. Um,
Councilman Robbins. >> Thank you. and staff, if we could, let's get a an outlay of the the wetlands, non-usable, usable. That way, we can we can better see this um a layout of this and evaluate it. Thanks.
And I'm going to call for the vote, but I'm going to I'm going to say this. This this is not to punish you. You weren't here the first time. It would have made a big difference if you were here. So, this goes out to the public. If you have an item,
be here. and speak for yourself. Um, so, okay. Uh, the motion is to to bring uh to bring Greg back. All in favor say I. >> I. >> I. >> Any opposed?
>> Nay. >> So, I think two, five yes and two no. >> You want to call the role? >> Who is the second? Nay. >> It's the different part of Disney. It was >> the kids don't go to >> It was Don and Troy were No,
>> the what is it? The haunted house. >> All right. So, you've got your uh you've got an opportunity. Good. Good luck with it. All right. That's the end of public participation. uh takes us to
closing comments. These guys are arguing over candy. Okay, are we ready? County manager George Rectal. I have no comments tonight. >> County Attorney,
>> I did have some, but in light of George, I'm gonna >> You don't want to show him up? Uh, welcome back by the way. Hope you had a nice trip with your son. Uh, that takes us to uh, council members Suzanne.
Nothing. Okay. Uh, well, first one's out of the room. Councilman Robbins. There he is. We've had enough jokes. No, other than uh we were talking about Jake's dating history. His dating say
would be called carbon dating. So that's it. I have nothing. >> Oh boy. >> Got to get a little zinger on Jake. >> Pretty neat. >> Okay. Councilman Santiago. >> Thank you, Mr. Chair. I had two things and one was the one that we just dealt with. So, I think that was a good move
there. Um, and the second thing in on here is I have to give I think credit to Danny because you brought this topic up first, the AI issue, the data center. Sorry. I know you brought it up a few meetings ago. Um, and and there was
discussion about sending that back to staff to give us information on options. Um, and I think it's just getting so much more attention that I I wanted to consider the thought process of and I usually don't say these words, but a
six-month moratorum on data centers in Valuchia while we get uh an understanding of what the trends are and understanding what protocols we can put in place to protect our community. And again, Danny, I said this because I know
you led with that last time, so I don't want to steal that from you, but I wanted to bring it up again to to do that. It was on my list. >> Well, there David, it's a good chairman, if I may, uh, real quick, if if you could try. No, I'm just kidding. You can
um there's a lot of misinformation. Uh, some some people in the the audience or speakers uh hit on it. Uh, election time is a a goofy the goofiest time of of all times. >> Um, but we need uh factual information
for the public. A lot of what I see is flashlight under the chin. Um, I want to get by that. We want to deal in facts and not emotions. So, I'd support whatever you want to do, David. um in terms of uh looking at this. I don't think there's been one um proposed in in
Valuchia, but we do need to look at it um and make sure if we do go forward. I think my biggest concern was in accordance with our charter because there were water resources >> in our sensitive uh our sensitive uh areas. So, yeah, what we want to do >> and I've had more opportunity to to look
into it more since we last talked and and and I agree with you. There's information on both sides of this, but maybe it may should be prudent to to put a a six month out there. Give us time to uh make some wise decisions and if we have to make any changes to protect us.
So, >> Madam, Mr. Chair, >> if I was just going to say if you want to make a motion to bring it back tonight. >> Uh oh, there we go. >> Yeah, we already uh we did that last meeting, >> right? I was going to say I was just trying to inform you that uh you we're
scheduled to do that on the second meeting in August >> with a moratorum. >> Not a moratorum, but you had asked for uh options and information. >> Yeah. >> Before you would >> Yeah. I I want to add to that. I want staff at that time to have prepared for
us if this council decides uh uh resolution. I think it would be for a six-month moratorum on that. And I make that in the form of a motion. Mr. here. >> Have a motion to add that to discussion coming up uh next month. Uh motion by
David Santiago, second by Councilman Robbins. All in favor of adding that little uh please say I. >> Any opposed? Okay. >> Were you done? >> Okay. Councilman Dempsey,
Councilman Johansson. >> Thank you, sir. Um, we heard from Amy Munzi earlier and um I spent a little bit of time talking to Ry and and staff
and and um as well as Suzanne. I really would like to request staff um kind of re-evaluate the overlay. If you look at I've traveled around Florida in my time and and I'm sure there's many other
places in in the nation where zoning wasn't done right. The overlays aren't done right and you have these main streets that aren't main streets because they were they were built
improperly. Uh here's an opportunity for DeLeon Springs to start from scratch and clean slate. Um look at Deberry. They're trying to redo their their main street. Uh here's an opportunity for them. Uh so
I would love to to have them uh look at the overlay and um uh see if there's a a business strategy for their downtown that allows the things that that they want. um split zoning so you can live
above and and work below if if if we can get away with that. Um I understand that SB 180 might have some restrictions on on how we do that, but maybe the answer is uh some type of
incentive to get the folks that come in and want to build stuff. um uh give them a little bit of of incentive to build the way that the um the Del uh Dian Springs area wants it to
make it what they can be. And I know that that Ray is on board with doing that with George's uh permission and and our guidance thoughts everybody. All right. It'll it'll be some some changes probably to zoning and whatnot.
So, we gota got to move forward. So, >> you're making a motion to bring that back for consideration. >> I'm making a motion for staff to work with uh uh DISA and and come up with a
plan and present it to us. >> Okay. Yep. >> Was Russ against that? >> Was that was that with that outburst? No. Okay. Okay. Okay. We have a motion to bring that back for more information for the
council to uh consider. Uh is there a second to Mr. Johansson's motion? Second by Troy Kent. Any questions? All in favor say I. >> I. >> Any opposed? >> Okay, that's all I have, sir.
>> Uh Councilman Kent. >> Thank you, Chairman. I have two items I'd like to talk about tonight. One is we received an email today from Maya Duen at 2:25 p.m. titled um get outside, get growing, regrow Valuchia programs
planned across Valuchia County. And I just want to say council, it was a little over two years ago that we implemented the regrow the loop program. Thank you very much. Up in Orman by the Sea in Orman Beach. And then we've taken
it a step further with Regrow Valuchia. And it's just to me it's incredible that it says Regrow Valuchia will host a series of environmental education programs, workshops, and outdoor experiences from August through December, offering residents
opportunities to learn about native plants, conservation, wildlife habitats, and sustainable landscaping throughout Valuchia County. And then we have 20 opportunities for our residents to participate. All free of charge by the way. But some of these are making a difference in your own backyard, coastal
plants workshop, plan your winter garden. And then I won't go through all of those. But then at the end there are two ongoing events. one titled community tree planting events where they tend to give out tons of free trees and then the
master gardener talks. And I just want to thank this council for um having the forward thinking to approve this program that we have partnered with um many in our community and different organizations and it's very little cost
to the county for something as rewarding and wonderful as this. So, thank you for that. My second piece was and you know, my memor is pretty good, but George, you can help me on this. I could have sworn I I I brought this idea up to have a
discussion item about it. Maybe it was six months ago, maybe it was a year ago, maybe it was 15 months ago about the possibility and I said for this to happen, we'd have to have tons of state and federal involvement. But for us to have a discussion about the possibility of creating an inlet
in Orman by the Sea by Hybridge and um I was just having a discussion about that and I thought I had 70 agreement from the council that we were going to talk about that and I if if my memory is right on that can we have that
discussion within the next three months is is my ask. Yeah, Suzanne's got an update on that because we have done some engineering work. Let's talk about that. >> Well, actually, council was provided an engineering paper that we commissioned
through Taylor Engineering, one of our coastal engineering firms, who looked at uh this proposal in depth. It was distributed to all council via email. Uh and I'll find and redistribute that.
Thank you. uh to all of you and then after you take a look at it, if you'd like to have it scheduled, we'd be happy to do that. >> Yeah, >> that's all. >> Vice Chair Reinhardt. >> Thank you, Chair. Boy, I'm surprised everybody didn't have a lot to talk
about or nothing after we didn't have We need to not have meetings more often like that, huh? >> Keep keep it going that way. >> I've only got seven or eight things tops. No, I um I had the opportunity today and and this is not to tell you where I went
like Joe Hansen tells me, but I think everybody needs to to learn about it. So, at the courthouse, pre-trial services, I did their proclamation for pre-trial service and probation week, and they gave me a tour,
and we're one of few counties in the state that actually have the lab actually in the courthouse. They can process lab results from your analysis and whatnot when these individuals are on probation or pre-trial and get it back within 10 minutes.
And Don, you know this. And a lot of the judges are utilizing that. So I I I had a vision of a judge asking somebody, "Hey, you've been you've been doing drugs?" No. Test him. 10 minutes later, he goes out to the jail. So, but if you get the opportunity to go out there,
there's a lot to learn out there. So they're doing great uh great job. They have actually uh are accredited twice now to excelsier status. So that's huge for the accreditation world and cor and correction. So I commend them. Great job. Um
I have one other thing. I've been talking to Paulo. Is he still here? There he is. >> I don't hear from him much anymore. >> There's a big guy. So, we had talked some time ago about ebikes, and I know we've all been kind
of waiting on what the legislation would do with respect to ebikes, and I'm talking about where our jurisdiction goes on the beach. And there have been many incidents of people either run down. I hear complaints about it on the beach um or almost ran over and the
speed that they go and non and nine times out of 10, the sheriff's office will take action if they see it, but if they don't see it, it's kind of hard for them to take action on it. But nonetheless, um, House Bill 243 that was kind of laid on the table and
then Senate Bill 382 with respect was vetoed by the governor. So, the state's not doing anything with it, my understanding. So, can we do something here locally? So I was asking talking to Apollo because I sat on the first meeting with Captain Powers and Paulo and some of the other people
that were involved in this and they it it ended with we will get some more information but we're kind of waiting to see what the state will do. Um Paulo is that doable that we can bring that back? >> Yes. So so your authority specifically on the beach um uh regarding ebikes is
very very broad. So unlike Yeah. So you can prohibit them completely on the that is that is within your authorities. >> I don't want to take away one's mobility but I just want it I want I want some options >> so we can bring something back. There are a lot of policy decisions you will need to make regarding how you want to
treat ebikes where you want those uh ebikes to be on the beach which portions of that beach and their general conduct, right? How are they going to operate? they are a conveyance and I don't you know I'm a big- time huge supporter of driving on the beach and that is a driving thing that mechanism they can
use on the beach um so I don't want to limit that um but I do want to see what we can do with respect to precautions for that >> sure we can bring something back and um it'll have to it'll be a discussion items with a lot of options so we don't
know how you want to treat ebikes um do you want to restrict them in some areas do you want to restrict them during you know highly congested The high I was thinking the high congested times. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. That's all. >> Before you leave that, I think Councilman Santiago wanted to >> All right.
>> Yeah. I I Matt, I know it's an idea of yours, but I don't know if we have consensus for that. >> True. >> I agree. No, that was my next move, but we haven't gone there yet. But >> um because first of all, and and I don't know the answer. I need to find out there's a problem first before I want to
create laws to restrict people's freedoms in any way. tell me what the problem is in history of what we've had going on. Then we go find a solution. >> Sure. >> I don't want to find a solution looking for a problem. >> At least that's how I feel. >> We um
>> we could Yeah. Whatever council decides, but uh we could get some information together on that. I we'd want to speak to uh primarily our sheriff's office >> and that that was bringing them into the conversation is what I want.
>> And we have that data. We have the the incident reports regarding ebikes, you know, and we we've had several uh serious ones. It's your policy decision of whether or not that warrants, you know, a revision of the regulations. >> That's kind of where I was going, David. I want to find out. They're they're the
ones seeing it. I'm getting reports here and there, phone calls, emails, whatever about ebikes. I'm sure it >> the conversation kind of like I said in the beginning when I said the conversation ended when we wanted to find or at least my part of it and we I heard the fact that they wanted to wait to hear what the state was going to do
but I want to hear what their issues are and then what we can bring back to help them. >> Yeah. And so, you know, thank you. Thank you for bringing back. I think it's a worthy discussion because certainly we see people that act irresponsibly on ebikes. I I see it. I want to
acknowledge that. Um, and then may maybe we can institute I'm just now I'm going a little bit broader on this, my Matt, and I'll I'll stop briefly, but if there are law enforcement issues that that the sheriff's office wants us to uh address,
then maybe we ought to have a process where they can come to the council and say, "Hey, we have X, Y, and Z problem, and it has the county has the authority to do it." and just kind of get that process that that lays on process more efficiently with our our our council. Um
not that speaking to any of us individually is wrong, but I I you know I want law enforcement there is a problem say hey this is a problem fix it. Um Paulo or Suzanne can kind of confirm it, but I believe those conversations have already
in the process of taking place when getting some feedback from the sheriff's office if they did recommend any changes to your ordinance. It wouldn't be you have the regulatory authority to have to approve it. >> And the last thing I'll say is if we are going to move forward, I didn't read the
governor's veto on it, but I'd certainly like to know what information the governor used to veto it, too. Thank you. Thank you, Matt. >> Uh, Councilman Robbins. >> Thank you, Chair Apollo. To also get us the vehicular data as well, terms of
citations, speeding, reckless, uh, parking violations, whatever that may be, because I I have a feeling you you're going to see cars up there as well. You know, I just kind of feel like David, I don't want to be
going down that road if we don't have to. Thanks. Just a quick question, Paulo. Are ebikes not regulated by speed limit and traffic lane? >> 10 miles per hour >> in the traffic lane >> in and anywhere anywhere. So any vehicle >> they don't they're not restricted to the
traffic lane. >> They are not that was a decision by county council back in 2021 2022. Um they are restricted in the driving areas, but they can meander in and out of the traffic lane. That's kind of one of the issues we're seeing is the
ebikes start going into crowded areas. Um, and ebikes can get pretty fast if you especially if you modify it. Um, so that's one of the things, you know, that balance between accessibility versus safety is kind of what you're going to have to deal with.
>> And they're not allowed in, says inlet where there's no driving. >> They're not allowed in the natural areas. They are allowed in >> What about bicycles? >> Uh, bicycles are allowed. um they are considered under an ITP. They are motor vehicles under ITP. Okay. So they're treated the same way. You can have
ebikes in the core area. So ISB all the way up to Seab Breeze. They're permitted because that's an urban area. It's really that natural area which has that um higher restriction on anything motorized. >> Okay. And that's that's all I wanted to
do is you know it may not be a problem but I know that um ebikes came around after I mean that ordinance was created when >> oh we recently updated our ordinance in response to ebikes >> to ebikes. Okay. >> We we are specifically granted by the statute to prohibit ebikes on beaches we
have jurisdiction on. >> Okay. All right. That's all I want. >> So are you making a motion? >> No. I think you're already bringing that back. Correct. So we if I understand you correctly, we'll work with staff, get you some information. Y give that to council and then >> that was already we already plan on
doing that. So I'll leave it alone. >> All right, that's all I had. Thank you. >> Okay, then at uh 8:22 we are adjourned.