Board of County Commissioners - Regular Meeting

Chair, you have a live mic.

Thank you. We'll bring this meeting of Board of County Commissioners to order this morning looks like we have pretty good crowd this morning so if everybody don't mind to go ahead and silence your cell phones just so while we have speakers at the podiums and other things going on that won't be disruptive so when you're up there you know be courteous to each other County Manager

Yes, sir. We're going to begin with our invocation by Pastor Heath Jarvis, Faith Church Naples. And our pledge will be led by Captain Wayne Smith, United States Air Force retired, former prisoner of war. He will be followed by comments from Bruce Page on the new Vietnam Memorial Wall, which is a traveling wall commissioned by the state of Florida for Rolling Thunder. Thank you.

Good morning. Good morning. Let's pray. Father God, we are so thankful to be able to gather here today in one of the most beautiful places on earth. We are thankful to live in Southwest Florida, to live in one of the greatest states in the greatest nation on earth. Today we will be discussing business and issues that affect all who live here. So Lord, help us to present our ideas with civility, humility, and an open mind. May we only do what you would have us to do in your sovereign design. Lord, I pray for all of the leadership of Collier County, that you would bless them, that you would bless their families, and give them specific godly unction in every decision that is made today. Lord, I want to offer a special prayer for the friends and family of Donna Fiella. She was a great patriot and a wonderful friend of Collier County. Lord, we are grateful for the legacy of 20 years of service that she leaves behind, and I ask that your peace would guard the hearts and the minds of all who are feeling her absence. Bless these proceedings today as we endeavor to enact only what would please you. And I pray this in the name of Jesus Christ, our Savior. Amen.

with liberty and justice for all.

I see Bruce.

You know, while Bruce is coming up, Wayne, I just want you to know Lois usually carts everybody that's going to lead a prayer right in the middle, and she left you over there. Oh, okay. We're coming in. Everybody was running hot.

Good morning, Bruce. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I'm here to announce the, I've been commissioned through Rolling Thunder, Florida, not the Chapter 5, but Florida, to build the next traveling Vietnam wall. I have in turn asked Ben Wilson, who is the welding instructor, Lorenzo Walker, if he would have his class help assemble and build and manufacture this new wall. He's graciously accepted the challenge. as have i we have accepted donations throughout the state of florida to purchase the materials for this wall and they will be starting commencement of this wall starting tomorrow actually they're going to start cutting all the materials up fabricating it welding it and getting it ready we expect completion of this wall to be early uh i think august And it'll go from Lorenzo Walker, it'll go to the print shop where they will print the 56,000 names that perished during the Vietnam War. And again, it's an honor to be able to do this for our community. The best part about this is the kids They're not really kids. They're young adults. They really know nothing about the Vietnam War or the war. Most of their parents weren't even born at the time. So it's going to be a great experience for us to be able to teach them, show them exactly what this means and the sacrifices that were made during that war. So it's an honor to be able to teach them and show them what's going on.

Thank you for your time, everybody.

Commissioner Castro I believe you wanted to say a few words this morning before we get started with sort of the day-to-day that we have to run the county the way Donna would want us to I wanted to take the time as the district one commissioner to say a few words and we all want to say a few things first I want to thank our County Manager Amy Patterson and John Mullins in the back who stayed connected with the family and kept us all informed. A lot of us were able to go to the viewing yesterday. And just a few things about Donna. So Donna sat in this District 1 chair for 24 years. It'll never be matched. It'll never be duplicated. With term limits now, I'm not sure any of us would want to served for 24 years, but Donna had the fortitude, the strength and the patience and the professionalism to do it for a record amount of time that will stand forever. She was an amazing pioneer and leader and a lot of people probably don't know, but even while I was running back in 2019 and even after I won in 2020, Even though Donna and I may be disagreeable, we met quite frequently at Sam Snead's, which was one of her favorite restaurants, just the two of us, to kibitz and talk and get advice and laugh. She wasn't just a county commissioner. She was a mom. She was a grandmother. She was the same age as my mom. They actually almost shared that their birthdays were like a week apart. She met my mom several times. So a lot of times our conversations didn't start, you know, Rick, why are you screwing up the county? What are you guys doing? It was so different than that. And we really had some great, great conversation about the county, but also just about life. And she would ask about my mom. And my mom just recently passing made it difficult to go to Donna's wake yesterday because, like I said, they were very close. And they were both moms and grandmas. I know she took great pride in that. Donna wouldn't want us to sit here and mourn her passing. I think she would want us, like most people who are incredible county and public servants, to celebrate her life. And I know that maybe a few of us have some stories, and I thought I would just share a couple of short ones. Soon after I was elected, every 10 years, they redraw the the the uh district boundaries and so you know i look i lose a little bit of district one and then commissioner saunders he gets a little bit of my district and you know the way the rules work the districts are different in size but but by the state rules and regulations they try to keep them about the same population and i remember after the maps were drawn don and i met for lunch and um district one used to have under Donna's leadership for all those years Bayshore the whole Bayshore area and those of you that know her service she took great pride in doing all she could to raise the level of appearance and quality of Bayshore and when the lines were redrawn and we don't have a lot of latitude or say and how the lines get drawn. Bayshore was taken out of District 1 and it was put into District 4. Commissioner Caldwell wasn't the commissioner then. But I remember as soon as we met, before she even sat down, she's like, how could that happen? Bayshore should remain in District 1 forever. And I've done so much work in Bayshore. And I take it as a personal insult. And she wasn't yelling at me. But it just showed the fire and the passion and the dedication. And everything that she still had for Collier County and for her district and for the people of the county And so we did sort of laugh a little bit at it. I was telling Commissioner Kowal Donna would be so proud and she was proud of how Bayshore has continued to improve But she definitely set the stage. She served in a different era. I'm not sure she would enjoy every commissioner meeting now with some of the things that we have. But she was the right person, the right leader, representing the people during the span of time that she served. And no one can ever take that away from her. Lastly, one of the things she said to me at one of our meetings was, at one of our lunches, she says, I want to give you a piece of advice that always worked for me. And of course I had a very attentive ear. Oh my God, Donna's going to tell me like the one magical ingredient how to be a good county commissioner. And she says, you know, about every week or so I used to bake cookies and I used to put them in my office and then county staff would come And it would give me a really great chance to meet new people. Word would get out that I had cookies and whatnot. And I'm sitting there and thinking, listen, I'm Italian. I make lasagna and pasta, but I'm not your cookie guy. So after we sort of laughed about it, I told her, I said, Donna, that tradition is safe with you. Nobody will replicate it. I won't be trumping it at all. And we had a nice laugh over that. But that was Donna. You could be disagreeable with her, but not unfriendly. and I really appreciated how she reached out to me and I reached out to her and we you know collectively came together many times over just a really nice lunch and she came to several of my functions and met my family and I really appreciated that so she will be missed but definitely not forgotten she was loved and respected across all of District 1 but all of Collier County for a reason And before she was a commissioner, she worked at the airport. She worked at NCH. I mean, she left an indelible legacy and footprints all over Collier County, and it shows. There's a reason we renamed the park in her honor, which in a few weeks we're going to have a ceremony there to continue to honor her memory but I just wanted to say as the current District 1 Commissioner maybe this will forever be Donna Fiala's seat I'm honored to sit in it and there will be people after me that sit in it but nobody will be able to replace the legacy and the time and service that Donna certainly had across that county. So I just want to say on behalf of the citizens of her district, we miss her, we love her, but today we celebrate her life and we thank her for all that she has done for Collier County and all that her memory and her inspiration will continue to inspire. to make the county as great as it can be. So Donna, I know you can hear us, and I know you have a lot of friends in this audience here. I can tell you she definitely can hear us. There's no question she's in heaven baking cookies right now. So why don't we just give Donna a big round of applause, because I know she can hear us. And now I'm going to turn it over to the commissioner who stole Bayshore out of Donna Fiala's district. Just kidding. But Dan, she'd be so proud of what you've been able to do and continue to do. I'm sorry to turn it over to you, but Donna, we love you and we miss you and we hope we can continue to make you proud.

Well, what I know, yeah, she took a lot of passion in that area in Bayshore. You know, if you guys know my history, I worked for the sheriff's office for almost two decades. And, you know, Bayshore, which people that have been around long enough remember this Kelly Road. That was the area your parents said, don't go near, stay out of there. It was one of the tougher neighborhoods of all Collier County. And it had that reputation. But no offense against Commissioner Saunders, but Deanna Fiola was the only commissioner name or person I ever knew was a commissioner as a deputy sheriff. because she was so passionate about that area, especially after 2000 when the CRA came into effect and it took that area over under the CRA and the Triangle area off of Davis in 41. She was very visible and she was visible with the Sheriff's Office and our community policing organization and the people that had their roots in that community, you know, through the different levels of government. And she was very, you know, up front. She was always around. When there was a function, you always saw Donna there. She took great passion in that community, you know, when it was hers and even after it wasn't even hers. And, you know, I met her a few times outside working for the sheriff's office, especially when I was running for office. It was kind of like you had to go to the East Naples Civic events and stuff like that because you were – you kind of had to get like anointed you know like you had to meet donna hey this donna kissed the ring you know whatever you had to do but uh but it was all good you know and um you know i got a phone call from her uh while i was still in the campaign mode and and my wife wrote a letter during the campaign and it was about basically about me and i forgot all about it and it was mailed out to voters and and i guess donna got a copy of the letter and talked about the father i was the man i was the man of service and stuff like that So I got a phone call. She had just had an accident. She fell down, and she was using a walker at the time. And a friend called and said, would you mind speaking to Commissioner Fiala? I'm like, well, sure. I'll speak to her. And she just said, you know, I just want to let you know I got your wife's letter. I was very moved by it. And I felt like, hey, maybe I got her endorsement. But she didn't say that. But just the way she said it, like, she was, like, moved and to take the time to call me. And I wasn't even elected yet. it was special you know hearing that over the phone conversation a lot of people don't know you know she she is a record setter a paver of you know she paved the way for women in the state of Florida you know she's the longest tenured female County Commissioner out of all 67 counties in the state of Florida a female to hold a seat that long that she holds the record so if you didn't know that that's pretty impressive so and let alone being here and what she's done for this community so we miss you we know you're in a better place god bless you thank you commissioner chris would like to say something i'm sorry i didn't have the privilege of knowing commissioner but i know that she was beloved by everyone and i also know that she was a

great community servant that eventually turned into a servant leader. And I know that I would have loved her too because she voted against the mask mandates back in the day, and she held my heart for that. But I regret that I didn't know her, but I would have loved her if I'd have gotten to know her.

I did have the privilege of serving with Commissioner Fiala, but I had known Commissioner Fiala long, long before that. As a matter of fact, I hate to say the dates, but back in the late 80s, early 90s, I was on the County Commission at that time, and I was part of a ski team, a water ski team. And Donna Fiala's son was on that team. I think he was 12 years old at that time. And that was quite a long time ago. So I knew Donna and her family going way, way back. And I also had the privilege of representing clients in front of Donna here at the County Commission before I ran for election in 2016. And I can tell you, as someone petitioning Commissioner Fiala she always had the best interest of the county at heart. Your friendship with her was important but it didn't sway her in terms of how she would vote on an issue. It was always what's in the best interest of the community that she served. And then I had the real honor of serving with her on this county commission when I got elected in 2016. And she continued that theory or that ability to look out for the best interest of her constituents. That was always her guiding principle. I can tell you, there were times when I disagreed with her. I actually disagreed with her on that mask mandate that we were talking about. You did. But it was always a very professional, very friendly and intelligent position that she would take. It was a position that she knew or she felt was in the best interest of the community. So the thing I would say about Donna Fiala, we all love Donna Fiala. We all love working with her. Some of us had the opportunity to serve with her. But the main thing I would say about Donna is she was one of the most honest, most giving people that I have ever known. She is missed and I certainly learned a lot from her and appreciate the opportunity to present cases in front of her and serve with her on this commission.

Assuming since I'm the only one left, I'm going to get to go last. Well, good morning, everybody. I miss her. 1984, I started. I was a charter member of the East Naples Kiwanis Club. I started that club, and back then it was a men's only organization. And circa 85, 86, the women of the planet sued the Kiwanis and said, we want to join your club. And to alleviate the lawsuit, they opened it up and allowed women to join Kiwanis. And I believe, I'm not positive about this, I know she was the first Kiwanian woman in Collier County. And I believe she was the first woman in the United States to ever be able to join Kiwanis. And that was the beginning of when i met donna and of course my mom lives up in pennsylvania and donna is a mother hen she has an entire brood that she keeps tucked right up underneath these wings and i'm a pup 1984 i was considerably less vintage than what i am now and she just stuck me right in here she had two children that were similar vintage to me Sherry and Bobby. Sherry and Bobby and I became dear friends. I then, of course I wasn't fed enough, so I got to go to the house, and during those times I was deemed Billy Deer. That's what she always called me, was Billy Deer. So fast forward to 16 when I get elected. My first meeting ever is an MPO meeting, Metropolitan Planning Organization meeting. And so Penny Taylor was sitting where Commissioner Saunders is sitting now. And I was sitting where Commissioner Hall is. And Donna had hurt her knee. She hadn't got her knee surgery yet, so she wasn't getting around well. And so she came out of the back, and she was kindly struggling to get up those stairs. And so I got up and went over and helped her get up the stairs. And as she goes by me, she pats me, and she says, oh, thank you, Billy Deer. And when I sat back down, Penny looked at me and said, you shall forever be known as Billy Deer. And I went, badge of honor. A little anecdotal story that will make you feel better. Donna, you know, as her cognitive issues started to enhance, she had to go to an ACLF. She hated that place. She was locked up. They took her car away from her, and when friends couldn't come and get her, she was locked up. But one of the little nurses that works in the ACLF hooked her up with Uber. Sherry was telling me, I mean, the home went nuts. You know how they are. I mean, they went nuts because the little girl hooked her up with an Uber, and the Uber came, took her to go get her hair done. And she didn't ask permission. She went out the back 40, went to the hairdresser, and of course that place went nuts, and then she came back. Well, there's an app you can put on your phone that tracks you, 360 something. Well, then that little girl ultimately, because it happened two or three times, and then they put one of those tracking 360 roundabout things on her, and they were able to then keep track of her because she wouldn't ever, ever ask permission to go. She just wanted to go. My parting thought to you today is I care not what your political beliefs are. I care not what your religious beliefs are. There is one irrefutable fact that happens when somebody leaves this world. It's a new journey. It's a new journey. Think of the journey that our friend is on now that we can only imagine. And we wish her well and we will see her again.

Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, may I just make a request before we get on to the business of the day that we maybe take a moment of silence, all of us. And there's so many people in this room here who know Donna, some way better than all of us, but together. And let's just think of a happy memory, a happy thought that you have. She served in this room for so many years and I think we can still feel her presence here. Trust me, I can feel it in the seat and the pressure as well. But let's just take a moment of silence. Pastor, thank you if you're still here for your comments about Donna and her memory. But let's just think a happy thought. Later today at 1 o'clock is her funeral service, which we've made some adjustments in our calendar. So those of us that are able to sneak out of here to attend and pay our respects will have the opportunity to do. But let's just take a moment of silence to think about Donna and her service, and just what a kind and wonderful public servant she was. What a great mother, grandmother, and friend she was to so many people. There's a reason why she's beloved in this community and beyond, so. With that, let's just think a happy thought about Donna for a minute. Donna, we love you, we respect you, and we miss you.

Thank you. County manager, sorry.

Yes, sir, agenda changes for April 28th, 2026. First, we have continue item 11B to the May 12th, 2026 BCC meeting. This is a recommendation to provide a final ranking for the 166.63 acre Smith's property, located south of Sable Palm Road, approximately 1.5 miles east of Collier Boulevard. And to direct staff to pursue the property with funds from the Conservation Collier Land Acquisition Fund, if ranked on the A list. As the property was ranked C list by county staff and A list by the Conservation Collier Land Acquisition Advisory Committee. This item is moved at staff's request. Next move item 16A11 to item 11C. This is a recommendation to authorize staff to issue an invitation to negotiate to solicit a qualified development partner for the construction of housing that is affordable on county owned property at Port of the Islands. this item is being moved at commissioner mcdaniel's request next move item 16a8 to item 11d this is a recommendation to approve an agreement for sale and purchase under the conservation collier land acquisition program with lewis and cynthia alonzo for a 2.73 acre parcel at a cost of seventy six thousand four hundred forty dollars for a total cost not to exceed seven seventy eight thousand two hundred thirty dollars inclusive of closing costs this is being moved at commissioner hall's request Move item 16A9 to 11E. This is a recommendation to approve an agreement for sale and purchase under the Conservation Collier Land Acquisition Program with Thien Van Tran and Luau Thi Kim Nai Gun Tran for a 2.27 acre parcel at a cost of $150,000 for a total cost not to exceed $152,180 inclusive of closing costs. This item is being moved at Commissioner Hall's request. Move item 16A15 to item 11F. This is a recommendation to approve an agreement for sale and purchase under the Conservation Collier Land Acquisition Program with one Klaus Peter Michael and Marshall Adler for a 1.14 acre parcel at a cost of $28,160 to Heiner Gaviria. For a 2.73 acre parcel at a cost of $70,980. Three, Robert L and Linda M Harden for a 2.73 acre parcel at a cost of $67,430. And four, Daniel Rivera for a 2.27 acre parcel at a cost of $59,020 for a total cost not to exceed $232,300 inclusive of closing costs. This item is being moved at Commissioner Hall's request. Finally, move item 16A7211G. This item requires commission members to provide ex parte disclosure. This is a recommendation to approve commercial excavation permit PL20260002040 to remove 77,000 cubic yards of material from the Collier County Resource Recovery Park industrial planned unit development. This item is being moved at Commissioner McDaniel's request. We do have court reporter break scheduled for 10.30 and again at 2.50 if necessary, and we'll make a decision about a lunch break when we get closer to noon.

Thank you.

County Attorney, I'm sorry.

Nothing except that I missed Commissioner Fiddle an awful lot.

Commissioner Saunders.

I have no changes I do have some disclosure on the summary agenda or actually I have no disclosure on the summary agenda Commissioner Hall Thank you chairman no changes and no ex parte on the summary or consent Commissioner LaCastro Yeah no changes no disclosure on summary or consent Commissioner McDaniel

Commissioner sitting down here wondering what y'all been doing because I got disclosures all over the place 16 a 7 17 C and B I had meetings correspondence so on no changes

I do have expert a also on 17 C really be at meetings nothing on 16 a 7 and I have no other changes to the agenda I get a motion to approve so move motion second all in favor signify by saying aye aye all opposed same sound same sign the ayes have it

Very good. That moves us to item three, awards and recognitions. First up, we have our 20-year attendees, Christian Quintana, Emergency Medical Services, 20 years. Congratulations.

We're going to grab another photo that got the brass here.

Thank you.

Moving on to our 25-year attendees, Blanca Nieves, code enforcement. Congratulations.

Thank you for your service.

Congratulations.

Maria Estrada, zoning, 25 years, congratulations.

Congratulations.

How come we always get blamed on zoning, huh? Thanks, Maria, congratulations.

That's the reason there's so many people in here. We won't say anything. We're all real good secret keepers.

All right. Two photos on three.

Commissioners, that moves us to proclamations. Item 4A is a proclamation designating May 7, 2026 as National Day of Prayer to be accepted by Pastor Jesse Barrett. Congratulations.

I like your boots. Oh, thank you.

want to tell us about it when it is where it is when we got to show up

Oh, are you gonna show up?

I'm looking at my calendar right now.

So May 7th at 7 p.m. at Naples High School football field, a lot of the churches are gathering together to unite and pray for our community. We're praying for government, for education, for families, for churches, for the media. Commissioner Hall comes and prays every year for local government because Lord knows you all need it. Amen. And it's just a great time, and it's also great for a lot of us churches to get together and show that we're not individual churches, but we are the church. and we're wanting to get together and unite because we all play for the same team, and we want to show that we love each other and we love our community, and we want to see a change happen, and it's done through prayer.

It is on my calendar, 7 o'clock, Naples High School.

May 7th, yes, sir. Yep, yep, May 7th. Awesome.

I got a little mad at Pastor Thigpen because I used to be the lead prayer giver when that all started off. And then when Commissioner LaCassero came through and was up for re-election, the pastor thought it would be good to stick him up in front of all those people because he was running for election. So I lost my throne, yeah.

Hmm.

I heard you stopped going because he walked into the church and he burst into flames.

I've seen him several times. There is a chance. Walls quiver. It's not 100% untrue. We have video.

I always cover you. Don't worry.

Commissioner Hall got us. Thank you, guys. I appreciate it. Thank you.

item 4b is a proclamation designating may 2026 as drowning prevention month to be accepted by daniel white advisory board chair nch safe and healthy children's coalition congratulations where's the doc no doc this year no doc come on we missed the doc

Thanks for all you do. Thanks for all you do.

How's my friend? How's my other friends?

Hi good morning Kim Kosler administrator for the Florida Department of Health in Collier County thank you county manager chairman and commissioners for recognizing May as Drowning Prevention Month with our many waterways and coastline water safety remains essential and we appreciate your continued partnership protecting the community drowning is fast silent and 100 preventable supervision barriers alarms and cpr readiness saves lives protecting children around water takes all of us and our community is strongest when we work together the nch safe and healthy children's coalition continues to lead with proven layers of protection and we are grateful to all of our partners who make this possible naples children and education foundation for expanding swim central and underserved areas the collier county parks and rec under james and randy for may water safety events collier county public schools for distributing water safety resource packages including door alarms for children with autism and teaching water safety spirit week The Florida Department of Health in Collier County, where we do community outreach and we manage the state swim voucher program. The US Coast Guard Auxiliary for maintaining 13 kids don't float life jacket loaner stations. North Collier Fire Control and Rescue District for their lifeguard program and public safety efforts. And last but not least, Florida Drowning Prevention Foundation for providing Stewie the Duck, our water safety mascot. Throughout May, we encourage residents to learn more and get involved. Resources are available at Water Smart Florida. Thank you again for your continued leadership in helping keeping every child in Collier County safe.

Thank you.

Item 4C is a proclamation designating May 3rd through 9th, 2026 as National Travel Tourism Week to be accepted by representatives from the local tourism industry. Congratulations.

Now we know why all those people.

Yeah, that's why everybody's here. That's why people are here to see what happened.

Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. How are you doing? Good to see you. Good to see you. Good to see you. Good morning. Good morning.

How are you? Good morning. How are you guys doing? Good morning. Thank you. How much? There he is. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you.

They got all the babies.

Sure. Yeah. All right.

So let's see. I need a couple. Let's see.

Can't see the camera.

The camera can't see you. Click, click.

Do you want to say anything for us?

We're speeding up the calendar. Yeah, I think we are.

I think we are. Julie's in California checking on her manufacturing plant that makes all of her fashion. So we think she'll be back Friday night. But if she is, then we'll be there. But even if not, I'll take malaria.

Yeah, I know. All right.

Good morning.

Good morning, Chairman, Commissioners, Chris Lopez, Regional Director for the Florida Restaurant and Lodging Association for the Record. Very joyous day here. Thank you all so very much for this honor and this recognition for Tourism Week. To the distinguished representatives of our industry in the crowd, thank you all very much for your support and showing up today and your continued support going to work. every single day congratulations on another strong and successful season we hope to ride that wave as long as we can into our slower summer months to our vcb staff and our county administration thank you so much for your diligent and studious leadership of all things tourism and making sure that the eyes and ears And the planes and the tourists are coming to Southwest Florida, specifically coming to Collier County, Naples, and Marco Island. On behalf of the Florida Restaurant and Lodging Association and our nearly 10,000 members across the state, Collier County is a jewel of our state. There's not a whole lot of other places quite like it. We recognize that. We know you all do as well. And we appreciate this honor. So thank you so very much. Thank you.

Commissioner Saunders. Before everybody gets up and leaves, if I might just say one quick thing. I'm glad Chris Lopez mentioned the slower summer months as you ride into that. As you know, the county commission has placed on the ballot a one cent increase in the tourist tax. And the Collier County Restaurant Lodging Association and the Chamber of Commerce are supporting that effort. And I'll say this, I've said this before, this is kind of a call to action of all the folks that are in the tourist industry. The reason that we are placing, or one of the reasons we're placing that tax on the ballot is to finish the Paradise Coast Park. And with that, we'll have softball fields and baseball fields, and we'll be able to generate a lot of tourism in the summertime. And we'll also be able to build the field house that Commissioner McDaniel has been pushing for a long time. that will also enhance tourism in the summertime. And so my call to action is that the Restaurant Association, the Chamber of Commerce, they're all putting together a bit of a program, a bit of a campaign to educate the public on this. They're going to need some funds to do that. The county commission has committed $150,000 to an educational campaign so that the voters in November will know this is a tax that will generate tourism. It's not a tax on our ad valorem taxpayers. And it will also provide some wonderful playing fields for baseball and softball for our kids and soccer and other field sports for our kids here in the community. So I want to just plant that seed and try to spread the word that that will be something that will benefit the community. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. LeCastro, you want to say something?

Yeah, I wanted to add something as well I let up here. Before you all leave, we have so many community leaders in the tourism industry here represented all in one spot, which is rare. We usually get onesies, twosies here. I can't echo enough that we really need your help to separate rumor from fact. um out there regardless of the tax just in general you know when i read things on social media and people say oh thank god all these uh snowbirds are gone you know what what a nuisance what a hassle you know whether people like it or not this is a this is a piece of paradise that attracts tourism some people that live here permanently now came here as tourists and then fell in love with the place so you know putting a lock on the front gate isn't realistic of collier county that will never never happen it doesn't mean we have to be overrun but a lot of great things that happen in our county are the result of the injection of revenue and tourism dollars and we keep our beaches looking pristine and we're able to tap into those funds in a variety of ways to make this community better whether it's season or not season. So I know a lot of you are on social media Don't be shy or afraid to chime in there if you see somebody write something that is totally taking a large majority of the community in a totally incorrect direction with a bunch of misconceptions because we really do have a lot of misinformation out there about on the type of community this is and how tourism is a piece of it. I mean, nobody's looking to turn Collier County into Miami. I always laugh when I hear that because then I think, wow, that person must not have been in Miami very recently because we're not even close. But tourism is an important piece. it gives us a significant amount of revenue and some people that have lived here a really long time and were tourists themselves and that's why they are now permanent residents some of them have forgotten that and so it's one of many pieces that make Collier County great and then when those snowbirds do leave the money they left behind is what helps us here at the county and others museums you know different I'm looking at Hilah Crane and her museum on Marco Island, and we've got all the different places all over Collier County that benefit from those dollars. And when citizens say, my gosh, I'm glad they're gone. If they were gone for good in the off season, we wouldn't be able to enjoy beautiful restaurants on Marco or Fifth Avenue. We wouldn't be able to take our kids to museums. So many things would close down because they just aren't supported and funded properly. So this is a really important time that people don't get confused when they go to the polls, whether they're voting on a small tax that is going to affect tourism, tourists that come here and not the permanent residents or just other things that we talk about when it comes to tourism. It just really pains me when I see people sort of chime in with total misinformation and they're speaking like what they're saying is so factual. And it just creates more of that sort of national inquirer type of information. And so looking out here, we've got Sharon Lockwood who leads the JW Marriott on Marco. You got main players that are in here. Please help us spread that word. Talk to your employees as well and get the conversation going. Whether somebody agrees with the tax or not, just understanding the dynamic that Collier County, a big piece of our business and revenue and the things that make the county as beautiful as it is and keeps it looking like paradise. the people that visit here seasonally or just for the weekend or what have you you all know that the majority of the people in this room know this we know it as well but you know sometimes on the outside of these doors you know folks are just happy to live here and now it's you know I discovered this place and now I want to be the last person to walk through the door and that's just not really realistic but thanks for all that you all do out in the community to make Collier County truly special and different and that's why people come here so thank you

Thank you. And anytime we have this conversation, I'd like to just remind people that this one penny is an increase to, I believe, our six-cent tax already for lodging. So this is lodging of people that come to our county for vacation and tourism. It's not something that's assessed to the citizens of Collier County. So that one penny will be added to the visitors that lodge here. It's attached to their bills and however they pay their lodging.

Unless they go to the very successful Great Wolf Lodge. Okay.

Yeah, that. And you've got to understand this. Then when they leave, we keep the money they paid in that tax here. But you have to understand, too, this program is controlled by the state of Florida statutorily. So there are certain things we can use the money for. There are certain things we're prohibited to use the money for. So it's a very, very – there's oversight over this money from the state level too so but it is definitely the reason we can purchase the best quality sand every year for the beaches and do all our re-enourishment projects our dune projects um anything that we can to articulate to connected to tourism the state will allow us to use the money so just let everybody remind people that this is not a tax upon the citizens of collier county this is basically just the visitors and we get the benefit to use that to make our county better, even for our locals who live here year-round. County manager.

Mr. Chairman, I'll move to approve the proclamations.

Thank you. Second. All right, all in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. All opposed, same sign, same sign. Proclamations have passed. Thank you.

Commissioners, that brings us to item seven, general topics on the current or future agenda.

Yes, Mr. Chair, we have two registered speakers. I will ask both speakers to use both podiums. Our first registered speaker is Edwin Thompson, and he will be followed by Diana Guntermull.

Good morning, Mr. Chairman. Good morning. Good morning, board. My name is Ed Thompson, and I'm here to speak about a device that I've created I call the Taxpayer's Test Program. This all started with me with the sports complex. I had known about it, but I never really looked into it. And when I did, what I saw was four football fields, four soccer fields, and a stadium. And I began to wonder, what is this costing me as a taxpayer? Or is it costing me anything? So I began to do a lot of research on the subject of how Discussionary budget items like the sports complex come into being. And I discovered, or I think I discovered, that across the nation there's no program that consistently asks a simple question. You know, what does it actually cost? I couldn't find a clear answer, so when it came up the problem, is that we lack a consistent taxpayer standard. Projects are approved individually, but successive costs accumulate. In other words, each program adds on over the years to other ones. So it comes up with, the taxpayer test answers five core questions. Who pays? Who benefits? Who uses it? What does it fully cost and what are the alternatives? That leads to 10 categories to consider in compiling a final answer, a bottom line or a top line. Full cost accounting, utilization and capacity, broad public use, user pay, that kind of thing. So this leads to a unified taxpayer ledger, one place where all costs are consolidated and visible. The taxpayer test is front end. It doesn't replace anything. It comes before priority-based budgeting. Priority-based budgeting assumes you have a budget. It assumes you have a project. The project is in the works, or completed. 30 seconds, that's all. I'll go to the bottom line. I would like to do a pilot program with the county on any project as a just to prove the product, the project to you and to verify it to myself. So I'd be looking for your guidance on that.

I met Mr. Thomas I think we met at an event you're fine sir we met at an event and you were kind of telling me about this and it tweaked my interest because it sounded like it was something like a worksheet basically that if we have an idea of something in the county that we might pursue it's something the staff would just go through this checklist and kind of give them a better feel on what where where this might end up or where it's gonna be or what it's gonna cost taxpayers so It kind of tweaked my interest, and then I heard you were going to speak here today, so I just wanted to kind of fill people in. I don't know if it's something that you can put it together and bring it to me, and we can have a deeper discussion about it, if it could be something we could use on the front end or not. I'll bring it to you. Think of it as a— I know a couple other commissioners just lit up, so I'll just let them ask a question. Commissioner Saunders?

I was basically going to say the same thing Commissioner Colwell that perhaps he could meet with Chris Johnson or somebody on our staff and let us fill in some of the blanks as to what this program does and of course it would have to if it's something it would have to work very well with resource X which is obviously Commissioner Hall's issue and so I thought it might be worth taking a look at but I think it would have to go through our staff yeah I agree Commissioner Hall

thank you chairman uh thanks ed i encouraged mr thompson to come forward this morning with his i have met with him and seen the re his rationale is pure and his heart's pure in this so i was going to say the same things to mr saunders i just encourage you to get with mr finn and get the direction from him as to how to kick it off it's really simple stuff and it's just a standardized thought process before we go spend money Who pays? Who benefits? Who uses it? What's the total cost? And are there any alternatives? I mean, those are really good thoughts. So if you would just feel free to reach out to Mr. Finn, and I think that y'all might can work out some details and get a little good pilot program. I'd look forward to seeing the results of it.

Thank you for your response. Much appreciated. Think of it as a 10-level spreadsheet with a top sheet. All right. Thank you, Mr. Tom. Thank you.

Your final registered speaker is Diana Guntermull. You have three minutes, Diana. You have three minutes.

I'm Diana Guntermull. I'm here probably to complain. I'm a citizen, a senior citizen with a disability.

Ma'am, can you put a mic down closer to your face?

I'm a senior citizen in Naples, Florida, and I use Collier County Transit. The system is really failing me and a lot of senior citizens. It's settings, it's lag times. When I call to make an appointment to be picked up, I live one mile from where I usually go. mean all the facilities I need are one mile from me that's what's great about Collier County that we have all these things in neighborhoods we don't have to travel across town so my transportation needs are usually one mile and the system books me to pick me up one hour before I need to be there And then protocol says I have to be there an hour. So now we're two hours. And the bus picks me up sometimes late, but rarely. So anyhow, for an example, yesterday I had to go to UPS to send a registered letter. I wanted to be there at 11. This is what I told the booking system, equal lane. They picked me up at 10, so now I'm there an hour. Now I have to wait an hour for the lag time and then I get picked up. I cannot leave my house and go one mile without it taking two and a half to three hours. This is not a convenience for the citizens, it's an inconvenience. The system needs to be retweaked. and allow for short, distant rides. I don't know if I could make myself clear, but it's an inconvenience, not a convenience, and it leaves me trapped with groceries melting because I got there an hour too early. So I'm just requesting that this be looked into. I looked into the software. It can be adjusted for short term trips.

Thank you, ma'am. Ms. Commissioner McDaniel, you want to say something?

Turn around. I didn't know where the sound was coming from. Our director of transportation is in the back. They were aware that you were coming today. And there is, I'm told, a fleet of staff that's going to talk to you in the hall and address these issues and see what we can do to help.

I'm doing this for me personally. I understand what you're doing.

I'm just sharing with you time and place here. You've expressed your concerns and your thoughts, and so there are people that are going to be talking to you in a minute from our staff to maybe better help.

Okay. I hope the system gets fixed.

So do we. Thank you. Thank you, ma'am.

That was our final speaker for this item.

Thank you County Manager Commissioners that brings us to item 9 we'll start with item 9a and 9b these are companion items apologies for the long titles this will require participants to be sworn in and for ex parte to be disclosed So starting with 9A, this is a resolution designating 1,446.59 plus minus acres within the Rural Land Stewardship Area Zoning Overlay District as a stewardship receiving area to be known as the Corkscrew Grove East Village SRA which will allow development of a maximum of 4,502 residential dwelling units of which a minimum of 10% will be multifamily dwelling units A minimum of 10% will be single family detached and a minimum of 10% will be single family attached or Villa. A minimum and maximum of 238,606 square feet of commercial development in the village center context zone. A maximum of 100,000 square feet of indoor self storage use. In the village center context zone, a minimum of 45,020 square feet of civic, governmental, and institutional uses in the village center context zone. Senior housing including assisted living facilities and continuing care retirement communities limited to 300 units in the SRA. 362 of the maximum 4,502 residential dwelling units. in the affordable housing context zone, no commercial uses in the neighborhood general context zone, and 8.50 plus minus acres of amenity area in the neighborhood general context zone, all subject to a maximum PM peak hour trip cap and approving the stewardship receiving area credit agreement for Corkscrew Grove East Village stewardship receiving area and establishing that 11,703 stewardship credits are being utilized by the designation of the Corkscrew Grove East Village Stewardship Receiving Area. The subject property, consisting of 1,446.59 plus minus acres, is located on the north side of the intersection of State Road 82 and Corkscrew Road, east and west of Corkscrew Road, in Sections 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10, Township 46 South, range 28 East Collier County, Florida. Its companion item is 9B, a recommendation to adopt a resolution designating 1,295.4 acres in the Rural Land Stewardship Area Zoning Overlay District as stewardship sending area with a designation of an SSA 22 pursuant to the terms set forth in the escrow agreement stewardship sending area credit agreement for SSA 22 and stewardship sending area easement agreement for SSA 22 approving a stewardship sending area credit agreement for SSA 22 approving a stewardship i'm sorry i lost my place approving an escrow agreement of said stewardship sending area the subject property is located in sections three four nine ten and fifteen township 46 south range 28 east and with that uh we need to have everybody let's start with excellence let's start with ex parte and then we'll go to this wearing in commissioner saunders

I have ex parte on both of those items, including e-mails and meetings and letters as well.

Mr. Hall. 9A and 9B, I have meetings, e-mails, and calls.

Mr. Castro. I have meetings, e-mails, and plenty of letters.

Commissioner McDaniel.

Plenty? Could you describe plenty? A big stack. Yeah, a big stack. Of e-mails, too. And I as well have correspondence, e-mails, calls, and such.

i also have meetings emails and calls tom how many speakers do we have right now we have 23 registered speakers okay all right uh so all participants need to stand and be sworn in by the court reporter that includes anybody that's giving public comment on this item Good. We'll begin with the applicant.

Good morning.

Good morning.

For the record, Rich Yovanovitch on behalf of the applicant. The applicant is Alico, Inc., and with me today are John Kiernan, who's the president and CEO of Alico, Inc., and Mitch Hutchcraft, who's the executive vice president of real estate. Mr. Mulhare and Jeremy Chastain are our... man planners alvaro yesti is our civil engineer lucy gallo is our economic consultant norm for billcock is our transportation consultant and as part of our presentation, and as usual, you'll take a separate vote on both of those items. The project is roughly 1,446 acres. It's located on State Road 82 and Corscrew Road. Corscrew Road is this road right there. this is the i believe 10th stewardship receiving area designation that you've seen in the pa in the past so you're familiar with the process the rural land stewardship program was established think in 2002 as part of a program to address environmental concerns out in the eastern portion of Cairo County it's part of two programs the rural French mixed-use district and the RLSA program as part of the RLSA program lands are set aside stewardship sending areas that's one of your petitions to establish credits to then designate lands as stewardship receiving areas there are very specific criteria in the land development code as well as your growth management plan for the process to establish a stewardship receiving area and to establish stewardship sending areas our project meets all of those criteria And in fact, this SRA is fulfillment of basically a commitment made by Cairo County many years ago when it designated stewardship sending area number 11. LECO placed property into a stewardship sending area to generate some of the credits necessary for today's stewardship receiving area. with a commitment that the program would be followed through with the designation of an SRA so we're here to designate an SRA as I mentioned it's 1,446.59 acres our requested density is 4,500 true dwelling units which includes 362 affordable housing units which is based upon the calculation required in both the growth management plan and ldc to set aside areas for affordable housing mr mulher will show you where those areas are the four units per acre There's a cap of four units per acre in the Land Development Code and Growth Management Plan. Our requested density is 3.11 units per acre, so we are consistent with the density allowed within the program. We are providing 238,606 gross square feet of neighborhood scaled retail and office uses. That is based upon the 53 square feet required within the growth measure plan in the ELDC. so we are consistent with the both of those requirements for the establishment of neighborhood scaled retail and offices we are providing uh 45 000 20 gross square feet of civic government and institutional uses which is consistent with the 10 square foot per unit requirement within your land development code and your growth management plan Since we had the Planning Commission meeting, we've met with the Sheriff's Office. They've requested that we provide an additional three acres for them to have a substation out in this area. So you have that commitment reflected in the SRA document, so we are actually increasing the area of land set aside for public service facilities including the fire department. So we have both land set aside for the fire district, Immokalee Fire, as well as the sheriff's office as part of this process. As I mentioned, we went through the Planning Commission review. They recommended that you approve the designation of the SRA. Your staff is recommending approval of the SRA. We'll take you through in greater detail how we are consistent with all of those requirements. But as you all know, and maybe some of your speakers don't know, so I just wanted to give a little bit more of an overview of the program. As you can see, there is an area designated pink. The pink area is where development is to occur in the rural land stewardship area, and that is where our project is located. We are within the pink area. That's the open area. That's where development is to occur. You will hear how we are furthering and benefiting the Panther by providing corridors for wildlife as part of this program. We are consistent with the generation and utilization of credits that are in your growth management plan. To date, over 52,000 acres have either been permanently set aside or being held in escrow in exchange for the development of lands within the open area. That is approximately a three to one ratio of lands set aside in stewardship sending areas per acre of land designated as an SRA. The program took a while to get going. The first program or the first SRA was Ave Maria and there was a rather large gap in years. But the program is moving forward as I mentioned. There are nine SRAs. this will be the 10th SRA as part of the as part of the project from a program for the rural land stewardship area and at the end of our presentation at the end of the hearing we're going to request that the Board of County Commissioners uh designate our project as an sra and approve ssa 22 as part of this project i'm going to turn it over to mitch hutchcraft to take you through some of the alico story and commitment to the environment as part of this project and other projects involved by alico and then mr maul here will come up and take you through some of the planning aspects And then we'll wrap up and, of course, interrupt us at any point, but hopefully through our PowerPoint presentation we'll answer many, if not all, of your questions.

Good morning. For the record, my name is Mitch Hutchcraft, and I am with Alico. As Rich indicated, joining me today is John Kiernan, President and CEO of Alico. I'd like to take just a couple of minutes to give you a quick overview of who Alico is. Alico is a community-based company. We have a history of over 125 years. Most of that here in Southwest Florida. We have had employees who have lived, worked, and played in Southwest Florida, so we are not new to the area. One of the things that Alico is proud of is our legacy of community involvement and conservation. Over the last 40 years, we've been actively involved in finding solutions for those issues. Naming some of those includes the donation of 760 acres of land for what is now Florida Gulf Coast University. We have contributed land throughout the state, Polk County, Hendry County, Collier County, and we have also sold land in those areas that have now become part of what we all recognize as significant natural resources including what is now the headwaters of Crewe, Kalawakuchi Slough, and Devil's Garden Land. In fact, in the last, since 2017, Alico has sold over 40,000 acres to the state of Florida, furthering their conservation goals. And we had recently put five properties into the Florida Rural Land Protection Program for consideration. One of the things that Rich briefly indicated is in addition to participating in the 25 plus year history of the Rural Land Stewardship Program, as we started this process, we wanted to do an additional level of review to make sure we were putting development in the correct location within the pink and we were conserving area in the right location. The box on the left you can see is the corkscrew property that this village sits within. The area to the right is our stewardship, part of our stewardship sending area. So I'd like to walk you through very quickly the analysis that we did to make sure we were being environmentally sensitive and put development in the correct place. This is a series of maps that is all public data and that we are utilizing the latest, greatest, best available data to do our analysis. This shows wetlands, and so the blues and the greens are high quality. The browns and the mustard colors are low quality. What you'll see is on the east side in our Felda property, where there's stewardship sending areas, there's lots of high quality wetlands. On the corkscrew, there's a few areas of low quality wetlands, but virtually no high quality. If you look at surface water, again, significant coverage on the sending areas. Just a small area on the southeast

edge of the corkscrew property.

If you look at floodplain, the same is true of the sending area. Significant amounts of floodplain, very small indicators on the corkscrew property. If you take a look at natural communities, there are a couple of pockets within the corkscrew property. While it doesn't show much in the Felda property as we've done our site analysis, on the eastern edge of that property, which has been in cattle ranching for some time, there are significant areas of natural community out there. If you look at potential habitat richness, so how many species could that land typically support? Again, you'll see significant coverage on the Felda property on the east side and a couple of small pockets with some areas on the very southern tip of the corkscrew property identified. If you look at strategic habitat, what is the most important habitat? Significant coverage over on the Felda property and a couple of areas located either on our northern boundary of Corkscrew or again on the southeastern edge of that property. If you look at landscape integrity, how well it is connected to what's around it, significant coverage of the Felda property, a small area on the southern boundary of the Corkscrew property. If you look at primary panther habitat, significant coverage of the Felda property, a small area on the southern portion of the Corkscrew property. The state of Florida adopted a Florida wildlife corridor overlay to identify this is an area where we think meaningful connections ought to be encouraged. It's not mandatory, not required. But if preservation, conservation activities occur within those areas, it's applauded. And so, again, the southern, southeastern portion of the Corkscrew property is covered, but significant areas of the Felda property. My background is landscape architecture and planning. There's Ian McCarg developed what's called a McCargian overlay. So you take all of that data and overlay it, and it gives you a map like this. And so those areas that are darkest gray are the most significant, most prioritized, and the areas without gray shading are the least. And so you'll see that the Felder property is virtually covered with just portions on the northern boundary of the corkscrew piece and some of the south and southeast corners. That's important because this next map outlines in red the areas that are planned to be put into conservation over time. So all of the Felda property is scheduled for conservation. The areas outlined in red within the Corkscrew property are scheduled for conservation. conservation easements, protection easements. So virtually all of the areas that were identified of having importance within the corkscrew property are part of our conservation plan. All of the Felda property will be put into conservation. Areas that are crossed hatched have already been submitted for conservation. SSA 22 is the large area that is on the east edge of the corkscrew property. That is real quick. Yep. So this area right in here is the 1200 acre plus or minus conservation SSA 22 that you'll be considering as part of the package today. That's meaningful for a number of reasons because it is consistent with the program to establish the connection east and west that the Collier County identified as part of the rural land stewardship program. But if you'll see in the inset on the right hand side, there's also additional work that looked at the least cost pathways. How do you make the connection from Crewe up to Spirit of the Wild? And this corridor not only achieves it, but it also connects to planned corridors that are already established or identified in Hendry County. To give you a feel, this area over here, again, shows where that 1,200-acre SSA-22 is. To give you a feel for the size of that, it's almost three miles north to south. At its widest, it's almost two miles, 1.8 miles east to west. And at its narrowest part, it's about six-tenths of a mile. In addition to that, we've had conversations with Florida... FPL, Florida Power and Light, they have property that abuts us that they plan to keep open space that further augments that. And so if you'll see virtually our southern boundary, which connects to the crew property, is put into production through SSA 22. Slides got repeated. One of the other things that is important is you can see in here the least cost pathways corridor, which identified the preferred location for a wildlife corridor. Virtually all of that is contained within our proposed SSA 22. But beyond that, we have worked with Florida Department of Transportation to identify a wildlife underpass under State Road 82, which is currently being four-laned. That underpass is already under construction and will be completed before the project even starts construction. In addition to the underpass that Alico funded, there are two additional wildlife underpasses that FDOT is implementing as part of that wild that for laning. That also includes wildlife fencing to direct wildlife to those underpasses to help minimize any future interactions between wildlife and vehicular items. So with that, that's the quick overview of the planning that Aliko went through to make sure that we did it in the right way, consistent with the rural land stewardship program. With that, Bob my hair.

Commissioner McDaniel has a question for you.

Just one quick question for now. Good morning, by the way. Good morning. You and I spoke, worked on considerably the sector planning processes in Hendry County. Yes, sir. How does this... development requests blend in with our neighbors to the north and effectuating what's necessary for the proper corridors to travel and such.

I appreciate the question. Thank you very much. In this map outlined...

I know you're rather partial to the sector program because...

That's right. I had the opportunity to work on this sector plan, which is in Hendry County. Outlined in blue is the Southwest Hendry sector plan. The areas that are cross-hatched in black within that boundary are the proposed wildlife corridors. And so what you can see is our planned wildlife corridor connects to both this central one and this Eastern alignment that then get up and cross over to spirit of the wild, wild. So there is a planned connection through an existing adopted sector plan in Hendrick County that this ties into and and makes the connection. So it all melds. Yes, sir.

Okay, good. Thank you.

Thank you.

Good morning for the record Bob Mulhare on behalf of the applicant I just want to go over some of the more some of the specifics that relate to consistency with the comprehensive plan and the land development code as it relates to the RLSA program and designating this as an SRA The SRA requires designation of what are called context zones and requires that there be a minimum of at least two, neighborhood general and the village center contact zones. The, I guess, tan color here is neighborhood general. That's the largest of the contact zones. And then you have the village center. grayish color. Most of the villages that have come forward, all of the SRA designations require affordable housing. Most of the villages that have come forward have created a third contact zone, which is allowable. You're required to have two, but you can have more. And that third contact zone is for the affordable housing area, which is right here. And this, of course, is a signalized intersection right here. The green area here and over here is SRA. They're almost completely surrounded by the neighborhood general designation. Oh, let's see. We kind of went over these. But it's important, I think, to reiterate that this SRA does not include any lands designated as flowway stewardship area, which is an FSA. or habitat stewardship area, which is an HSA. Those would have to be protected. If they were included, they're not. There is a stewardship sending area, 23, which I pointed out right here and here, that includes 81.56 acres of WRA, which is existing water retention areas. Those also are protected. And finally, the SRA, doesn't include any lands within NRI, Natural Resource Index, greater than 1.2, and it doesn't include any lands that are designated area of critical state concern. And that coincides with the location of this within the pink area that was designated approximately 25 years ago now. So the gross density per acre within the project is 3.11 units per acre. It includes 362 affordable housing units. The total number of units is 4,502. Required open space in an SRA is 35%, which would be 506.3 acres. This SRA provides a minimum of 516.6. So that actually exceeds the requirement in the LDC. SRAs are required to be designed to encourage pedestrian and bicycle circulation, multimodal means of getting around the project, and that's achieved through an interconnected sidewalk and multi-use pathway system serving all of the residents within the project. We have slightly more now, I think, than 63.63 acres of public benefit use in the form of the affordable housing, site, the public school site, the fire station, and the sheriff's substation. We have direct access to both Cork Street and State Road 82, and we will be providing a 25-foot perimeter landscape upper along these two major roadways. As Mitch indicated, State Road 82 is in the process of being four-laned. We are contributing right-of-way, which is approximately 65.40 acres, including right-of-way reservation along Corsica Road of 17.65 acres, or in addition. And the estimated concurrency proportionate share for this project is $6.91 million with those reservation and right-of-way dedication. I mentioned three context zones. This just gives you a little bit of a of an understanding of what those are intended to be. And as I said, neighborhood general is the largest of the three. It's predominantly residential with a mix of single and multifamily housing. And SRA villages required to have, you know, various types of housing units. Again, it includes that pedestrian-oriented multimodal design, which I'll go over in just a second in a little bit greater detail. The village center is just under 170 acres in size. There's a formula that's required. The number of dwelling units by 53 square feet yields that 238,606 gross square feet of neighborhood goods and services. And there is a formula for civic, governmental, and institutional uses, and that yields the 45,020 square feet of those uses. We have added indoor self-storage as a permitted use that cannot be counted towards the minimum amount of required neighborhood commercial. And there's a 24-acre elementary school site. We've already discussed, I think, the affordable housing, which is required. It's 2.5% of the gross area of the village, and it has to be entitled at 10 units per acre, and that's how you derive the 362 dwelling units. The SRA does include a trip cap not to exceed 4,092 two-way adjusted average weekday PM peak hour trips. I just wanted to go over this a little bit. This is the bikeability and walkability plan. So throughout the project here, there are 10-foot multi-use pathways, which are designated in green. And those extend further to the west as well. And there is a 10-foot multi-use pathway along State Road 82. That will be constructed as part of the widening of State Road 82. There are also sidewalks throughout. Those are designated in blue. Blue is a five-foot sidewalk within the neighborhood general areas. And then the orange is a six-foot sidewalk that is on the opposite side of the roadway where we have the 10-foot multi-use pathway. So there's very good connectivity and multi-use ways to get from point A to point B. sorry I kind of screwed things up here okay We did have, I think Rich mentioned, we did have a neighborhood information meeting on September 24th, 2025. We had no participants online or in person and no questions or comments were raised. And Steph and the Collier County Planning Commission both have recommended approval of this request. And at this point, we're open for any questions that you may have for the entire team. Thank you.

I see no questions from my members up here yet. I don't know if Mr. Yovanovitch, is there anything you want to finish before we hear from staff? Because I think we might want to do it.

The only thing I wanted to emphasize is that when we do identify the exact three-acre parcel for the sheriff's office, that's going to be within the affordable housing tract near where we have the fire station. So what we'll do is will modify the adjacent neighborhood general to make up for those three acres so you will you will not lose any affordable housing acreage as a result of accommodating the sheriff's request so there will be a future action an administrative action to accommodate that three acre parcel for the sheriff's office with that we're available to answer any questions the whole team's here um and

Mr. LaCastro has a question.

Thank you, Chairman. Maybe either from your side or from staff or if there's organizations in the audience, what I'd like to hear more about is the environmental impact. I mean, all of the correspondence that we get back in any large construction proposal is always, this is where all the panthers live. You can't do anything there. This is protected property. I mean, most people have never seen a panther, but then when I read my emails it's like this this area is riddled with Panthers and you know you're destroying environmentally protected property I don't think any of us want to do that but I would just like to hear more facts about how this area would be impacted by how the environment would be impacted and how it does or doesn't impact the Panthers. And then I do see in your proposal, there's a lot of things you're doing to improve the environment, water flow, protected areas. So it's not a matter of, we're just paving this whole thing to totally destroy it. So before we get into any kind of discussion, somebody, your side, the county staff side,

that's the part that i want to hear a deeper dive uh in we know what the buildings how many they're being requested and and all those i think we're all um very familiar with that but um touch on that at some point i'll have heather go into a little bit more greater detail mitch went over it uh briefly when talking about how ssa 22 works into the program and how we identified the site heather is our ecologist i'll have her give you a little bit more a little bit more testimony regarding how we do not fall afoul of any of the environmental regulations from the state and how this program actually does further the intention of that.

Good morning Heather Samborski with Passerell and Associates first I just want to start this is just one part of several steps in a permitting process for this project to be built so we're here today to review the SRA application as a county level designation we also have to obtain permits from the state and the federal government so we are going through the environmental resource permitting process with the water management district a requirement of that is to demonstrate that we've avoided and minimized impacts to wetlands listed species and we have a similar process we have to go through with the US Army Corps of Engineers very similar have to demonstrate avoided and minimized impacts to wetlands and listed species and both both processes include coordination with Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission and US Fish and Wildlife Service We have SSA 22 here on the screen in that pink area. Mitch talked about the Florida wildlife corridor designation and we can see the least cost path on here is that yellow and black dotted line. So we've very deliberately placed conservation areas in a location that's considered to be valuable for Panthers. The work we're proposing to do within SSA 22 includes restoration of existing agricultural lands that's over 700 acres of agricultural lands that we're proposing to do some restoration work on to increase the value to panthers that will have to be reviewed by the u.s fish and wildlife service there is a process for them to review impacts to panthers as part of that process and we have to demonstrate that we have sufficient compensation to panther habitat so that is that is part of what ssa 22 is for um to to demonstrate that we will not negatively impact panther habitat and i can answer any other specific questions but that's just a general overview commissioner hall thank you heather i um i appreciate the data

It's come forth with all of the different maps, the overlay, showing us that great thought has been, has gone into protecting our environment, to protecting the species in there. The data removes all of the emotion for me. You know, we get these, we get all, we get these emails that say, you know, you're ruining the panther, you're tearing up their, you're going to ruin this, you're going to ruin that. Well, that's emotional. This is data and I really want to go publicly and say I appreciate the thought that's gone into this. And then third, secondly, for perspective of the open space that's required within the receiving area, that's 500 and something acres. That is a lot of land. I've got two farms in my family in West Texas. One of them's 440 acres, and the other one's 120 acres. And that's about the same amount of open space that's required. And that is a lot of open space. And I appreciate the thought that has gone into this. you can tell that you wanted to avoid the sensitive areas. You wanted to incorporate the parts within the receiving area that are still environmentally sensitive. You made those sending lands. I think it's pretty well thought out, and I appreciate it.

Thank you and I just want to add as part of the process early on there was a lot of coordination with wildlife agencies and crew and other other NGOs just to to get ahead of this and to collaborate with them and make sure that this project was being designed consciously so that's that's definitely been an aspect of this project Any other questions from the board thank you thank you

I want to maybe get through staff, and then we'll take a corporate break before our 20 speaker or 21 or whatever we're up to now. Yes.

Good morning.

Mike Boese, Planning and Zoning Director. I'm here to present the staff perspective for the SSA 22 as well as the SRA, and this is the 10th SRA that is being proposed within the Rural Land Stewardship Overlay Program. And just to remind and give a little bit of perspective to the Board of County Commissioners, when the RLSA was adopted, there were three primary focuses that the state had the county pay attention to related to the eastern lands. One was environmental protection. The second was the premature conversion of agriculture to urbanization. And the third was property rights. And we have reviewed the components and designed the regulations around attending to those three scales. And each one of those scales, when adjusted, has an impact upon each other. And we think this program and we think the overall program does a good job of trying to create that balance between those three sometimes competing interests. The SRA, as you have heard with the specific context zones and the attention to the NRI scores, has been arranged to be within the confines of the program. I think this is a SRA coupled with the SSA proposed 22 as well as SSA 11 to create the credits for the entitlement, does a very good job of attending to the needs of the large mammal corridor, the panther corridors. As you can see, all the attention that was provided for it towards the connectivity, to the connectivity for how the large mammals and the panthers will transverse the larger southwest Florida. Staff is recommending approval of both the SSA as well as the SRA. Any questions that you may have? I know you've got 22 speakers and probably a pretty good amount of time. Try to keep it brief just on the highlights, but anything specifically you would like staff to address, I could try to answer.

I would just like to ask one question, because I think a lot of my emails and correspondence I've been getting is that it was people from the citizens that occupy the estates, and a lot of it was like, you know, you're ruining the estates, you're adding another town or village in the estates. I just want to make it clear, this is not in the estates, correct?

No, the RSA is outside of the estates. It basically encompasses about almost 200,000 acres that surrounds the town of Immokalee. And here is relationship. So the RLSA program is not a detriment in my planning perspective to the states. It's an attribute. Why do you say that? Well, for 40 years, the pattern of a movement from the estates has been from the estates in the east to the west where where your goods and services and your jobs were and then back towards the east the eastern lands rsa this is the 10th sra over millions of square feet of commercial allocation of uses job creation opportunities as well as late industrial opportunities for for job creation in in goods and services That development, that eastern economy that we are starting to develop, that we are achieving, Aave is a great example with the glass manufacturing, Arthrex's two manufacturing facilities, now provides opportunities for the estates folks not to have to travel to the west all the time, but to the east. And that not only provides a level of convenience, it provides a benefit from a transportation standpoint. The amount of traffic that's going to be dependent upon the West for goods and services and economic employment opportunities is not going to be replaced by the Eastern economy, but it's going to be supplemented by the Eastern economy. So it is an asset to the estates in terms of the relationship, the goods and services, the opportunities to reduce your trip length from the estates folks being able to head to the town of Big Cypress, which is just on the other side of DeSoto Boulevard and eventually Big Cypress Parkway. So the program is an asset to the estates. So the folks that live in the estates should look at it and think about the opportunities that are going to come and the greater proximity from their households to the needs of those households with goods and services that would be arrived from, whether it be in Ave, whether it be in the town of Big Cypress, whether it be in Longwater, whatever the SRA may be. So in that regard, I view it as an asset and not a detriment to the estate.

Thank you, Mr. Boese. I see no other questions from the board. I would like to take a court reporter break, come back here at 11, and then we'll get to our public speakers.

16 minutes.

his hand, but just do the driving and I'm on my way. It's all on the right side in Montego Bay. I think I remember, but it's twice as good Like how cool the rum is from a silver tray I thirst to be thirsty in Montego Bay Sing out Come sing me live Come sing me Montego Bay I still feel emotional.

Honey talks, but it don't sing and dance and it don't walk. As long as I can have you here with me, I'd much rather be forever in blue jeans. Honey is sweet, but it ain't nothing next to baby's treat. If you pardon me, I'd like to say we'd do okay forever in blue jeans. Baby, tonight. Baby, tonight by the fire all alone you and I. Nothing around but the sound of my heart and your sighs. Money talks, but it can't sing and dance and it can't walk. As long as I can have you here with me, I'd much rather be forever in blue. Every day nothing next to baby's treat If you'll pardon me, I'd like to say We'd do okay forever in blue jeans Baby, tonight Baby, tonight By the fire all along you and I But it don't sing and dance and it don't walk Long as I can have you here with me I'd much rather be a rebel in blue jeans And as long as I can have you here with me, I'd much rather be forever in blue jeans, babe. As long as I can have you here with me. Love is in the air Everywhere I look around Love is in the air Every sight and every sound And I don't know if I'm being foolish Don't know if I'm being wise But it's something that I must believe in And it's there when I'm looking to arrive Love is in the air In the whisper of the tree Love is in the air In the thunder of the sea I don't know if I'm just dreaming. I don't know if I feel safe. But it's something that I must believe in. And it's there when you call out my name. When the rising of the sun Love is in the air When the day is nearly done And I don't know if you're illusion Don't know if I see it true But you're something that I must believe in And you're there when I reach out for you Love is in the air Everywhere I look around, love is in the air. Every sight and every sound. And I don't know if I'm being foolish. Don't know if I'm being wise. But it's something that I must believe in. And it's there when I look in your eyes.

and get started tom i believe that brings us to the public speakers yes mr chair we have 26 registered speakers i will ask speakers to queue up at both podiums for us in the interest of time our first speaker is j cole hagen and he will be followed by bb canter

So just remember, guys, when you see that little yellow light come on, it means you have about 30 seconds left for the three-minute period. And just go ahead and...

Except for Jay. Jay, you only get 30 seconds. But Jay only gets 30 seconds.

I'll be brief, you know. And once you start, the time will start. Jay calling in for the record.

Questioners? Developers? Hey, we keep hearing the word planning when it comes to these large developments, but what I see is a pattern of build first, deal with the consequences later. When you take over 1,400 acres of rural land, like is being pushed by the Floreshine developers here, and turn it into a high density development, you don't eliminate the water. You change it. It moves. You create standing water, retention ponds, and disturbed ecosystems. And what comes next? You guessed it. It's lots of mosquitoes. And then, mosquito control gets called in. Not as prevention, but as damage control for these rural developments. We already see what it looks like. In Ivor Maria alone, mosquito control has been out there with eight aerial treatments this month. Some days morning and night. That's not occasional response. That's becoming routine intervention. And most people don't realize what they're going to be dealing with once that kind of land use change takes hold, you know, when they move there. That means more ongoing pressure on mosquito control, more disruption to residents, and fewer choices for the communities affected. And it creates a cycle of dependence where the expectation becomes constant treatment just to maintain livable conditions. So to wrap this up, what you're calling planning, I see it creating another chemically dependent community disguised as planning that will need damage control for years to come. Because once you build it, it doesn't go away. Thank you.

Your next registered speaker is Bebe Cantor, and she will be followed by Kimberly Heiss.

all right um i'm honored to follow somebody who is going to be on the ballot with me not against me i'm also running for collier county mosquito commissioner district number two and rather than repeat what jay said i'll just talk about how as somebody who's been around collier for a long time i've made some very very interesting observations i ran against commissioner hall in 2022. Since then, he has rubber-stamped RSLA villages in Baron Collier ancestral lands. I am wary of the applicant's attorney, Mr. Yovanovitch, arguing to follow bad precedent. Just because it's been done before doesn't mean it should be done again. I urge my commissioner, Chris Hall. Chris, look me in the face instead of looking away. Okay. Just recall, Chris, to vote no on this application. It is time to vote against the self-enriching proposals of the Oliko heirs who want to monetize their agricultural land. You have received lots of letters opposing this project and probably none

Encouraging you to vote in favor Thank you Thank you Your next registered speaker is Kimberly Heiss and she will be followed by Christopher Calvano

Hi, my name is Kim Heisey. I'm a Florida wildlife artist and conservation advocate and I came here from Broward. I'm here to urge you to not become us. Broward County is the poster child for urban sprawl and habitat destruction. Learn from our mistakes and do not follow in our footsteps. You have your rural lands and your habitats and the opportunity to protect them. Please deny the Corkscrew Grove development and other ideas to develop rural land and wildlife habitat into more density. Your constituents are begging this of you. The call to stop the overdevelopment, particularly in rural lands, and especially for things like this, which is basically a town right in the middle of rural land and panther habitat. Opposition for these developments has been increasing for years and is featuring prominently in your elections. There are already hundreds of homes on the market like the ones proposed here that residents can't afford. Out of 4,500 proposed homes, only 362 would be set aside for affordable. I hope you are tired of getting the proposals for giant county altering developments and only getting a token amount of affordable housing in return. Plus, it would only increase traffic on already strained roads. This development and others that would come after it and extending ever east are the very definition of urban sprawl. And it would add increased taxpayer costs to maintain the roads and infrastructure with little in return. This type of development tanks quality of life in bankrupt cities. No amount of conserved land or affordable housing or other slight benefit dangled over your head can outweigh the cost of maintaining roads and infrastructure over large geographical areas. issue is not just this development but what comes after it if you allow a development like this only more developers will want to do the same not only would this be bad for the city and residents it would be exceptionally bad for florida panthers it would destroy primary and secondary habitat cut off connectivity between breeding grounds and the rest of the florida wildlife corridor it would increase traffic in the keys in a key sector of the corridor which is the number one killer of panthers Roads are simply incompatible with panthers. Busy roads are one of the barriers for panthers utilizing the rest of the Florida Wildlife Corridor. The amount of emails you have no doubt received speaks to how many people from around the state care about this issue. You are Florida panther conservation. All of Florida panther primary and secondary habitat is in your county and the surrounding counties in southwest Florida. Florida panthers do not have a significant breeding population anywhere else yet in Florida. They need a strong connected habitat here so that they can eventually move north to utilize the rest of the corridor. Each development in Florida panther habitat reduces the amount of panthers that can exist because they are territorial. Our existing lands can only support around 200 animals. We need all the land we have left that is rural to remain rural in order to conserve the species. That is data. Please hold the line here, because again, this threat isn't just this development, but the ones that would be proposed all throughout this area ever after. As the county grows, the need for you all to stand firm will only become more important. As you can see from the bills coming down from the state, only more pressure will be put on rural lands. Saying no early and often is what voters and residents want from you. Deny this and others in this area. Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next registered speaker is Christopher Calvano, and he'll be followed by Daniel Zagarek.

How are you, commissioners? Thank you for your time. My name is Chris Calvano. I'm back from Broward to express my disapproval of this development. The narrative currently being pushed across our state is that an increase in the amount of housing will make it affordable. This is false. In the past five years alone, despite all the additional housing developments that have been and are currently being built, the cost of housing has risen. The entire state's in the midst of a freshwater crisis. There are already restrictions in place in many counties. Our aquifers are under extreme stress from increased extraction pressure and saltwater intrusion. Much of the infrastructure that exists is not designed for the amount of urban sprawl and population increase that is happening and is seeing failures as a consequence. The importance of protecting habitat for all of our native plant and animal life cannot be understated. Our panthers, black bears, and other wildlife need connected, continuous habitat to survive. Habitat fragmentation and vehicle strikes are two major causes of the Florida panthers and other species decline, both of which would greatly be increased by this proposed development. The proposed site's in very close proximity to Corkscrew Swamp, a sanctuary that's critical to helping maintain a clean, fresh water supply to the surrounding area and recharging the aquifer. The construction and urbanization of this proposed site for this development would undoubtedly have lasting negative effects on the corkscrew. Collier County's natural areas in the flora and fauna they inhabit are truly special, a number of which are found nowhere else in the country or the world. They're resilient, but they're also delicate. It doesn't take much to adversely affect them, and any amount of removal or encroachment can have lasting negative effects. Collier County is treading on a slippery slope. Commissioner LoCastro made a comparison between this county and Miami earlier. If you want to see the future of Collier County, if you continue on the path of sprawl, come visit Broward or Dade County. Both of those counties have become the examples of what not to do regarding reckless development. We have to constantly fight for the last bits of green space in Broward and Dade. I've said it before, and I'll say it again, because we in Broward County are in the advanced stages of it. It's death by a thousand cuts. Collier County still has a chance to avoid this fate. Please consider not only the immediate adverse effects of this development, but also the precedent being set by allowing this, because it will not end here. Thank you very much. Thank you.

Your next registered speaker is Daniel Zagarek, and he will be followed by Tom Mortensen.

good morning commissioners my name is Daniel Zegaric I live in district 4 I think you know me I think this corkscrew village is a bad deal for Collier County I've not heard how it's gonna benefit Collier County I came in in November and asked to talk to you guys about long-term debt everybody looked at me like I had three heads LeCastro was talking about gas mileage in an F50 versus a Ford Focus. Where is the benefit to Collier County? I'm not against development. I've been a businessman my whole life and made money every time development happened. But just to build homes and build more homes? And in and hide behind workforce housing are these people gonna Come to Collier County to work from that location Are we gonna lose them to where they can make their best buck? You know what? You know what the answer is? The Conservancy of Southwest Florida does not like this and The Army Corps of Engineers, who you guys ignore as much as you ignore me, doesn't like this. A federal court and judge two years ago called this a scheme, parts of this a scheme. What are we doing? What are we doing? I don't know, vacate an easement. Are all the principals here? to vacate an easement, or is that just something else that you raise your hand for? I don't understand. I really don't. So you got time to explain yourselves, I'm sure. And we bought 20,000 acres of land. We have 17,000 acres of land on fire. I haven't heard anything about that today. You know, use your brains. You're great schmoozers. I'll hire any of you for that and get you a good job right away, you know. But you shouldn't, I don't know. I'm just disgusted. Thank you. Thank you.

Your next registered speaker is Tom Mortenson, and he will be followed by Dr. Judith Hushen.

My name is Tom Mortenson, and my wife describes me as a seriously mentally deranged game camera nutcase. Because I've got about 40 or 50 game cameras out on conservation collier land at Pepper Ranch and Caracara, and also some over at OK SLU. I moved down here from Minnesota about 12 years ago because my wife left me. She moved down here to care for her elderly parents and she left me with a house I couldn't sell back in Iowa. It took a couple of years, but I eventually caught up with her down here and she let me back into the house. And the first thing I did is I put my game cameras out at OK SLU and immediately got a Panther. And since was heard the story about the Panthers I put out a few more cameras and since then I've gotten over 10,000 photos and videos of Florida Panthers that I share with the FWC Panther scientists and people that I meet out on the road and frankly I'd like to share that with you here today and so I've put the best of my Florida Panther pictures from O.K. SLU immediately adjacent to the area you're talking about today on a thumb drive. And somebody here... Can we go with Tom or a court reporter? Okay. Share that with the commissioners. I want to introduce you to some of the Panthers immediately adjacent to this area you're talking about right now. There is a female panther that we've been watching very carefully at Pepper Ranch. She looked pretty fat back in December and all of a sudden she got skinny in January and the FWC panther scientist said it'll take about three months for her to reveal her kittens and by gosh she did and they're just absolutely stunning little cute little kittens. There's another female panther on the crew side, on the Karakara side, that had two kittens last year, and as far as I know, both kittens died, and the panther mortality rate amongst kittens is very high. Two-thirds of the kittens don't make it. But what's really key to me is the area that panthers require. Males require over 150 square miles of land that they defend brutally. The females get by with about 50 or 60 square miles. And when I look at this very special area corkscrew Marsh This development is definitely going to curtail that habitat and my guess is the activities both on corkscrew Road And on sr82 will drive the Panthers out Thank you. I hope you enjoy the Panther pictures.

Thank you sir

Mr. Chair, your next speaker is Dr. Judith Hushen. She has two registered speakers that are seating time, Suzanne Calkins and Gary Bromley. Dr. Hushen, you have nine minutes.

Good morning, Commissioners. I'm Judith Hushen. We need to keep in mind that this new village represents only half of the proposed construction by this developer. They expect to come forward with Corkscrew Grove, west which is approximately comparable and these will be the 10th and 11th new developments in the rlsa new towns and villages require significant upfront investment by the county because of the way the rules work especially when they're located in rural areas without existing infrastructure. This property has been orange groves and has a low level of infrastructure. In fact, they didn't get anybody to come to the neighborhood meeting because there isn't a neighborhood right there. People don't really live in that area. It will require that Immokalee water facilities be expanded, adding new wells, a water treatment plant, a wastewater treatment facility, and this will be on land east of the development. then new pipes will have to be run to the development that's on the back of the county. The installation of this town will require the installation of stoplights on both Corkscrew Road and Route 82, which will slow traffic as 4,065 peak travel car round trips were predicted. However, this is probably small by a half. We'll discuss that later. There is not expected to be a lot of internal capture for this traffic. The north end, it's also going to require widening roads. The east end of 29, where it goes off into 82, requires widening. In addition, 82 has to be widened from where it's currently being widened over to 29. So we have more road widening. That's more dollars. The economic analysis is faulty as usual and uses very old, sometimes 15-year-old numbers in its calculations. The number that's easiest to question is the density of the projected new town, which is guesstimated at 1.9 persons per household. That's the Collier County number. And that's largely built because Naples and that area has an awful lot of singles and older people. So they're small and older households. The value for Collier County as a whole is probably closer to 4.3, which is Golden Gate, the nearby community there. And the long range transportation plan for the RLSA uses 4.5 persons per household. Well, 1.9 and 4.5 or 4.3, it's like double. This means that all the calculations that rely on a population figure, including schools, auto trips, EMT, fire police, et cetera, are too low by 50%. This both puts a greater impact on county voters and deprives new residents of the town from having adequate infrastructure. Impact fees are supposed to pay for this development, but they are locked in when the village or town is planted. on the comp plan map and are only repaid years later at a lower than the current rate when homes are given a C of O. Ave Maria is still paying back its impact fees 20 years later. I just thought I'd put that in context. In short, impact fees do not cover the investment required by the county to build new rural towns and villages. When the RLSA part of the comp plan was being reviewed at public meetings, Back in 2008-2009, I asked a county staffer what would happen if the county lacked funds to complete all the required infrastructure in a timely manner for the new developments. He said the developers could build the infrastructure themselves and then pay themselves back from the impact fees. So in other words, they would be paying impact fees to themselves as they completed drawings, as they completed homes, but they would have to do the infrastructure themselves. And this would not trigger Burt Harris because it wouldn't limit the developer's rights to develop. They could still develop. Collier has about reached the end of its ability to float bonds without destroying its rating. recently it went out for short-term money for some upgrades to the nerf signaling that this is a real problem this new village and its soon-to-follow twin will only make county finances more strained maybe it's time to look at having the developers self-finance their or their required infrastructure This is a difficult decision, but now is the time for the BCC to start considering this, to stop and consider the totality of the county's obligations to all of the new towns and developments in the RLSA as more developments keep being approved. The BCC can also call for a moratorium until their finances are in better shape, which would again not trigger Burt Harris. It's not fair to the existing residents of the county to saddle them with huge debts on which we are right now only paying the carrying charges. We're not paying off the debt. We're paying the carrying charges and not the principal. The experience with expanding the nerf has demonstrated how expenses of county residents through their increased water bills can be affected to try to cover some of the costs. hope you as a board will seriously consider what actions are required to ensure a sound fiscal basis for county operation in the future that's what i'm asking thank you thank you ma'am and i was a part of the rlsa from the beginning so i've listened to all the discussions and i know where all the bodies lie so thank you all right thank you mr chair your next registered speaker is marcia ellis and she will be followed by cody davis

Good morning, Commissioners Marsh, Ellis, for the record. I did send comments by email. I had also requested that the comments that I gave to the Planning Commission be part of the formal written record. I do have some concerns about some of the procedures that have been going on, including a request I'd made on May 1, 2025, to be considered someone with substantial interest, to be notified of meetings. And that basically did not happen. So I'm speaking about three different legs. The lack of coordination, and I mean coordination among the MPO, coordination in terms of regional planning because we are talking about a lot of impacts in lee county my home county i'm also concerned about the international covenants that we hold because this property is connected to and part of a wetland system. And the Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary was recognized internationally in the Ramsar Convention as a wetland of international importance. That is 1888 is its identification number and that took place in 2009. That distinguishes this site from the other site that's over in Hendry County. It's also important that we consider the gene mixing of the panther, and we do things that support those recovery goals with those populations. The next section is the sacred nature of the site. Again, referring to that international importance and those covenants that we hold to the whole world as an international site of importance. I'm going to say that we talked about someone that this commission was close with, but I'm going to invoke Bill Mitch, because really it was his work that guided UNESCO's World Heritage Site Selection. They relied on his work. We respect what his legacy is in our community, and we not remove that ancient landmark. I'm going to quote Proverbs 22, 28. We really want to honor his legacy and consider what we're doing to our environment. And then third of all, I'm going to talk about the impacts on Lehigh Acres. And this will also include the impacts on Immokalee. When we leapfrog, we are condemning the quality of life in these communities. I included the census. So we have 114,000 people in Lehigh Acres that you all are ignoring. We don't need 365 select families that are going through whatever criteria that you're going to use to put those people in there to live on State Road 82. We're not going to go in with this brand new city building scheme and ignore the fact that 17% of those people live in poverty and 73% of that community is non-white. So I ask that you consider the packets that have been provided to you and your decision making and think about the kinds of legacy you're leaving behind.

Thank you.

Mr. Chair, your next speaker is Cody Davis. We have a registered speaker that is ceding time to Mr. Davis, Alexa Anderson. Mr. Davis, you have six minutes.

Good morning. My name is Cody Davis, and I'd like to address a fundamental issue with this proposal for Corkscrew Grove East Village, which is that it does not meet the intent of the RLSA framework it relies on. The rural land stewardship area was designed to allow flexibility only in exchange for something better than conventional development. Specifically compact, walkable, mixed use communities that reduce sprawl and function differently from the typical suburban patterns seen throughout the county. But the staff report itself undermines that premise. It describes this project as, quote, compact suburban style development similar to many of the PUDs located in the urban area of Collier County. This is not a minor characterization. It's an admission that this project resembles the exact development pattern the RLSA framework was created to avoid and replace. Despite that, the project is requesting numerous and in some cases extraordinary deviations, 16 altogether, some of which directly undermine the stated intent of the RLSA. For example, 8.1 Deviation 1 raises the per-location cap for non-residential uses from 15K to 30K square feet. That scale of use isn't compatible with a walkable, neighborhood-oriented mixed-use village. It encourages regional draw and car dependency. Further, the language of the deviation is unclear on whether it applies only to amenity centers or whether it could be used to build other non-residential uses in the future. It's also notably ambiguous on whether the deviation applies only to the per-location LDC cap of 15k square feet, or whether it also applies to the per-use cap of 3k square feet. The limits on the nature of the amenity centers will be dramatically different whether the broad or strict interpretation is applied, but if this isn't made clear now, staff will likely default to the broad interpretation, which further increases the potential for regional draw as a result of the deviation. 8.2 Deviation 1 dramatically alters parking requirements to make the Village Center even more car-centric and regionally oriented. The applicant states in their request for this deviation, quote, to remain viable in the marketplace, the Village Center commercial uses need to be accessible to and convenient to motorists from Corkscrew Road or State Road 82. This statement from the applicant themselves directly acknowledges that this project does not comply with the intent of the RLSA to promote walkability and internal capture. Additionally, market viability is not a legitimate justification for deviating from the law, especially in ways that harm the future of the county. And when looking at the actual layout, the disconnect is apparent. The village center, which is supposed to be the focal point of walkability, is located across a state road for a large portion of residents, including the entirety of the affordable housing context zone. It is incredible to describe that arrangement as walkable, compact, mixed-use development just by the physical form alone. Finally, I want to address the claim of fiscal neutrality. That conclusion is based on a static, build-out-only snapshot decades into the future that doesn't account for the timing of costs, the financing of infrastructure, or long-term service obligations. The peer review even plainly states that the fiscal neutrality analysis may become obsolete. In other words, the public will be required to fund roads, services, and facilities years and even decades before the projected tax base fully materializes, if ever. The peer review of the economic assessment acknowledges this fact. Quote, it's important to recognize that fiscal neutrality relies on accurate projections, often 20 years or more into the future. Because the model used is a static snapshot of build out, the analysis does not even attempt to assess whether these long term obligations will be met by long term tax revenue on an ongoing basis. And this all assumes that the figures provided by the applicant are correct in the first place, because those figures weren't independently verified by the peer reviewer. Further, the model does not analyze the fiscal impact on wastewater and water, even though the development's effect on the Immokalee Water Sewer District's pipe connections per mile will have a direct impact on the rates that are paid on those utilities. This is a clear violation of Chapter 4, Section 8, Subsection 7K of the county's Land Development Code, which plainly states, quote, an economic assessment shall be prepared and submitted as part of the SRA designation application package. The analysis shall consider the following public facilities and services. Potable water, waste water. Without a fiscal neutrality assessment that accounts for this development's impact on the pipe network, it will be effectively impossible for the Immokalee Water Sewer District to set rates in a way that is just and equitable as they are legally required to do. The hypothetical one time connection fees do not account for the recurring maintenance costs. So while the project may appear fiscally neutral in a hypothetical future snapshot that assumes no change in known variables decades into the future and illegally excludes major utilities, that is not at all the same as demonstrating that it will be fiscally neutral in reality. This proposal relies on the flexibility granted to RLSA development, but doesn't deliver the defining characteristics that justify that flexibility. It functions as conventional suburban development while operating under a framework intended to prevent exactly that outcome. For these reasons, I urge the commission to take a close look at whether this project truly complies with the intent of the RLSA, not just its procedural form, and to be skeptical of recommending approval for projects that don't have any recurring fiscal accountability mechanism, such as a look-back provision, because without it, the county is essentially signing a blank check to the developer. Thank you.

Thank you. Mr. Chair, your next speaker is Brad Cornell, and he will be followed by Patty Whitehead.

Good morning, Commissioners. Mr. Chair, I'm Brad Cornell. I'm here on behalf of Audubon Western Everglades, and I appreciate the opportunity to address you on these two items. I mainly want to address you about the stewardship sending area, number 22. I first want to note that I have, as I'm listening to your public comments from speakers, I agree with many of these comments that share concerns about panthers, and habitat loss and the threats of roads that are presented by development to this endangered species. I do want to note, though, that we've had these concerns for many years. I've worked for Audubon for 25 years and was a volunteer for eight years before that. And back in 1997, we joined a lawsuit against Collier County because the county was not doing a good job of protecting panther habitat and wetlands on 300,000 acres of rural Collier County. And the outcome of that was the final order in 1999 that said, Mike Boese noted for you that you need to do a better job of protecting the environment, protecting farms, and protecting private property rights. Come up with a plan and you got three years to do it. And that plan was divided into two and was the Rural Land Stewardship Area Plan and the Rural Fringe Mixed Use District. We participated like many, many other folks did back in those years and we support the strategy that Rural Land Stewardship has. And this project, while we do not support or advocate new development, we acknowledge that people keep moving here. Wish they wouldn't, but they do. But what we do support is the mechanism that the Rural Land Stewardship Program lays out for protecting panther habitat and wetlands and farms, frankly, because we need all those things in the future of Collier County. and um the the reality is that this stewardship sending area 22 is a really important mechanism 1200 acres that's aimed at protecting florida panther and other large mammal movement through the eastern side of this project and connecting between the corkscrew in the crew system and Ocala-Wikuchi Slough and the whole path that goes up to the Caloosahatchee River. This is a very important strategy. So we support SSA number 22. We have met for over a year with Aliko and their representatives and consultants and And we continue to meet with them to work on ways to maximize habitat and wetland protection. This is one particular way that we think is very successful, and we support SSA 22. Thank you. Thank you.

Our next registered speaker is Patty Whitehead, and she will be followed by Matthew Schwartz.

Good morning commissioners I'm a resident of Estero but I live very close to Corkscrew Road and I really really enjoy going out to the Corkscrew Land Trust parcels the Cypress Dome trails and the March trails and in hopes of seeing wildlife in hopes of eventually maybe seeing a panther let's see if that'll ever really occur with the level of development that's occurring out on Corkscrew Road I first I want to begin my remarks by saying a lot of what the applicant said today was parts of it were really disingenuous let's start with the neighborhood information meeting notice that went out okay They notify property owners within only 1,000 feet, all right? The checkbox, I have the GIS processing request, property notification address listing. There was the option to go up to a one mile, and they should have gone up to a one mile because they captured no residents within the Corkscrew rural community, all right? The entire Wind Loop Road neighborhood was avoided because they limited their coverage to 1,000 feet. And so who did they cover? They covered, I guess, about less than a dozen properties. Seven of them were their own Alico landing properties. Three of them were South Florida Water Management, and one was a nursery on the other side of State Road 82. I mean, come on, folks. Who reviews this stuff? Seriously, staff needs to do a better job reviewing these things. Furthermore, I mean, the deviations are just abominable. This deviation, okay, deviation number three, which establishes multifamily residential to a maximum of four acres to instead allow multifamily lots to be a maximum of 25 acres. You're putting a six-fold increase in density in multifamily in an area that we know is Low usage, rural roads, endangered species habitat. You're urbanizing this area. This is so wrong. And now, as Dr. Hutchins pointed out, you're going to mirror image this development to the west, Corkscrew Grove west, and align it with Kingston. It'll be just one massive stretch of sprawl. Are there any hopes of panthers moving further north to the wildlife corridor? Do panthers follow roadmaps? No, male panthers don't follow roadmaps. They follow their instinct, all right? And we know, as Tom Mortensen pointed out, Two of the kittens of one of the females were deceased, probably because it was interspecies predation by a male panther. We're going to just have more of that, and we'll have a dwindling panther population. Thanks.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Matthew Schwartz. Matthew has a speaker that is registering time, Donna Knapp.

Is she here? Donna's here.

Thank you, Donna. Mr. Schwartz, you have six minutes.

Good morning. Matthew Schwartz with the South Florida Wildlands Association. When you folks vote today, please consider the statements I'm going to share with you from scientific and policy experts. Hopefully this will address some of the data that you're looking for from experts, including Collier County's own policy experts. Also consider this completely rural property with no major internal roads, no development, including no residents, as was just mentioned, the reason no one showed up at the neighborhood public meeting. 100% covered by Panther habitat. And ask yourself how this project, Corkscrew Groves East, that is going to obliterate 1,500 acres of habitat, build 4,500 new residences, put about 9,000, that's two vehicles per household, average in Florida, put about 9,000 new vehicles on roads slicing through the Panther score habitat, dovetails with these well-informed opinions. Starting out with the Panther Recovery Plan from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Recovery Objective 1, to maintain, restore, and expand the panther population and its habitat in South Florida and expand the breeding population, breeding portion of the population in South Florida to areas north of the Caloosahatchee River. Expand the habitat, not shrink it. According to the recovery plan, moving the Florida panther off the endangered species list requires three viable populations of at least 240 individuals each, that's adults and sub-adults, maintained for a minimum of 12 years, that's two panther generations. It also requires sufficient habitat quality, quantity and spatial configuration to support these populations for the long term. We're nowhere near that goal, we're not moving to that goal, and this project takes us even further away. Recovery is a major goal of the Endangered Species Act, and attention to recovery is a mandate of the US Fish and Wildlife Service in the permanent process they're going to have to do for this project. Another paper from How Much is Enough? Landscape Scale Conservation for the Florida Panther by Kautz et al. This is the famous paper that actually delineated the panther habitat zones we use today. Keep in mind that much of the panther's most important habitat is agricultural lands, just like Cox's Grove East. The primary quote, the primary dispersal and secondary zones comprise essential components of a landscape scale conservation plan for the protection of a viable Florida panther population in South Florida. Assessments of potential impacts of developments should strive to achieve no net loss of landscape function or carrying capacity for panthers within the primary zone or throughout the present range of the Florida panther. How a project like this does that is beyond me. And from the introduction, there's a famous quote in this introduction I want to read to you because if you get this quote, you've got the panther in the nutshell. The Florida panther is an endangered, wide-ranging predator whose habitat needs conflict with a rapidly growing human population. Three, another scientific paper, Robert Frakas, landscape analysis of the adult Florida panther habitat. Dr. Frakas is a retired 21 year veteran with the US Fish and Wildlife Service. Because there is less panther habitat remaining than previously thought, we recommend that all remaining breeding habitat in South Florida should be maintained and the current panther range should be expanded into South Central Florida. This model should be useful for evaluating the impact of future development projects in prioritizing areas for Panther conservation. That's not being done here. Four, this is from your own growth management plan. This is from Collier County's growth management plan, the conservation and coastal management element. Goal six, to identify, protect, conserve, and appropriately use native vegetation, native vegetative communities, and wildlife habitat. The preservation of native vegetation shall include canopy, understory, and ground cover, emphasizing the largest contiguous area possible, which may include connection to offsite preserves. The purpose for identifying the largest contiguous areas is to provide for a core area that has the greatest potential for wildlife habitat by reducing the interface between the preserve area and development, which decreases the conflicts from other land uses. Corkscrew Grove East and West, when it's built, will take out about 3,000 acres of habitat, 1,500 acres for each village, of currently contiguous wildlife habitat that's connected to many, many public lands surrounding it. and convert it to dense fragmented suburbia, increasing the interface between the habitat and development. Exactly what Corkscrew Grove East will surely accomplish is exactly what your own conservation element says don't do. Maintain contiguous lands. You're putting this in the middle of the contiguous lands. You saw it on the map. Those are roadless, undeveloped, unpopulated areas that panthers roam through. You may not like the science or policies that I'm sharing here because it conflicts with the growth you envision in Eastern Collier County. That's a long-term goal in this commission. But I assure you that is better than what is in the current version of the RLSA. Back in the day, pre-2011, a project like this would almost surely would have been submitted to the Department of Community Affairs. It would almost surely have been labeled as sprawl, and that would have been the end of it. But Governor Scott called the DCA a jobs killer, and that was the end of growth management on the state level. Finished. For the last 15 years since that happened, you folks, this Collier County Commission, have been 100% responsible virtually for all of the development that's come into this county. Our state animal, as somebody mentioned, now depends on you. You're the steward of the Florida Panther. Nobody else is going to do it. I'm going to wrap up on there, and please make a wise decision today and deny this application. Thank you. Thank you, sir.

Mr. Chair, our next registered speaker is Patricia Forkin. Patricia has a registered speaker, seating time term, Myra Williams.

Commissioners, I hope you're not getting too hungry yet, but I know you have secret food in the back.

Must be a really good secret because I don't know where it is.

I can't tell you how many meetings I've been to about rural lands west, RLSA, and all the rest of them. I came from Washington, D.C., And that whole mess down there, I worked there as the president of the Humane Society International. I did a lot of treaty work. I have seen it all. I have some enemies in Japan and Iceland. But I have no, I really was shocked at the ability of developers to railroad everything. I've been here through the whole RLSA fight. And I told a colleague today, I'm done with it because I might as well stab myself in the eye because there's nothing that can be done. I would love to see somebody on this commission become the Panther hero. I'm wearing the Marco cat today. I hope all of you have been down to Marco Museum to see the Marco cat. We are known for that. It's heading its way back to Smithsonian. So I basically just wanted to talk about panthers today, although there's been some fabulous discussions already. But I'm going to focus on the panthers. Everything has really been said that this is breeding habitat. This is not, I'm just kind of walking through it to get to another place. It should be preserved, and as was said earlier, for this is the complete protection of the species. Now, if you guys want to extinguish the panthers, That's your choice because these kinds of proposals are not going away. We've had Kingston, we've had Belmar, we've had River Grass. They're all pouring into the same area. And as has been mentioned, the Panthers cannot read maps. Chris Hall wanted a bit of data. Here's some data. If you look at the map up there, that is where the Panthers are being massacred by cars. That's the biggest hotspot that kills Panthers on a regular basis. That's right where this is going to be. And as I understand it, DOT started doing underpasses. I have nothing against underpasses. I just rather have nothing that they have to underpass. But they've started doing underpasses, but lo and behold, these guys changed the design. So those two underpasses would send 10 Panthers right into the town. Oliko, however, I met an Oliko representative when I was with the wildlife corridor folks that Kathleen Pasadomo passed a while back, the one that goes from Appalachia down to here. And the Oliko guy said, well, you have to sweeten the pot for us to not build in these areas. I don't know what sweetening the pot means, but I don't see how NGOs can compete with corporations. And I understand they have lands now that are going to be unusable because of the Orange Grove disaster. In the old days, And you've given a lot of land away. I know that. You told us that at the beginning. That was great. FGCU has land. That was good. I would rather see this go to the Florida Wildlife Corridor that Pasadena is very hot on and got it passed through Tallahassee. So why can't this go into some sort of preserve area?

And I wanted to show you one other thing.

This is where the two, as I understand it, this is where the two underpasses are going right now that have to be stopped. They've been stopped because Alico has changed the design of their town. And so I don't know what's going to happen there. I don't know if we have to... They have to swallow it. So it's my understanding that Alico has paid for another underpass for them to build so that it would be going more north. I'm not sure where it goes on this map. So it's been kind of a crazy thing. I'm not looking forward to coming to more of these meetings where we're going to kill the Panther because maybe we don't care about it. It's a state animal. The kids loved it. I've been reading a hilarious book by Craig Pittman about the whole history of how the Panthers were down to a very few animals and then people got together and saved them. This is a point where you have to really come to some serious decisions. And I know you get aggravated with the letters of Save the Panthers. It becomes like noise. Please, let's not have another meeting like this. I hope that we can have more preserving of these creatures. Thank you.

Thank you.

Mr. Chair, your next registered speaker is Kaylin Glenn, and she will be followed by Kim Nguyen.

if you guys don't mind whoever's next just kind of get ready to stage up at the other podium just for time concerns thank you uh hello good morning commissioners okay all right i don't have a baby with me in my hands this time so great to see you all again uh so my name is kaylin glenn i'm a lifelong resident of quarry county and i the last time i was actually in here mr rick lacastro uh hosted our associate leadership choir class where we got to do a mock version of this which is really great so thank you again for that um yes i mean there's been some really incredible comments here so i don't want to repeat too much on what everyone said but i just wanted to read through the little bit that i wrote so um i currently professionally work for the forest stewardship council so my whole day job is working with landowners all throughout the southeast specifically in the forestry sector And we're seeing tons of mill closures. I know it doesn't apply down here, but as a whole, we're seeing our rural and working land struggling to survive. And I know there's a lot of, we're out of issues. Why? I know the Alico family and their properties in the Orange Groves have also struggled. So we're seeing this happen throughout the Southeast. It's not just happening in Clark County. And there's a lot of work that's being done. Recently, we had Michael Wynn from the Wynn family here locally present to our class, and he talked about us needing a more diversified portfolio for our economy here in Collier County. And so when I think about that, and I think about all the boards that I sit on, where we're looking at ecosystem services, we're looking at mitigation banks, there's lots of economic value that comes from retaining these agricultural landscapes that we may not even realize is valuable for another 20, 30 years in the ways that we understand it now. And so I'm really concerned when we're seeing the rate at which these lands are getting converted to permanent development that we're selling out on maybe future value for our families that hopefully will be here for more generations to come, but also some of the natural resource value and the wildlife value that comes from our panthers moving forward as well. So just wanted to note that. Yeah, I'm asking you all to please vote no on this. My family was one of the first to come into Immokalee. I've seen this area change quite a bit, and there's been stories of how it's changed. And it's very special and near and dear to our heart. And I know that these rulings don't go based off emotion, but when you think about the constituents that you represent and where their values are and what they want to see moving forward, I do think that that should be taken into consideration at least. in some way shape or form i also understand that it's within the illegal's rights to request this so good on them and i do really appreciate their considerations for the florida wildlife corridor as well as the connections to spirit of the wild so thank you i recognize it's you know it's a it takes a juggling act and i recognize that they've also consulted some of the experts within that realm to have a larger well thought out plan but i still would suggest you voting no on this um let's see uh yeah i don't know there's been great comments today so just wanted to be up here and uh make my nod towards uh you considering to hopefully not uh approve this thank you thank you our next registered speaker is kim winn and then we will visit our registered speakers on zoom thank you

Greetings, commissioners. My name is Kim Nguyen, and I stand in opposition of the Corkscrew Grove East development. As a real estate professional and a conservationist, I want to be clear I'm not anti-growth. Growth is a part of what draws people to Florida. But responsible growth requires restraint, foresight, and respect for what makes this place worth living in to begin with. Every decision you make today will echo for generations, and when we look back, we will not wish we had built more cookie-cutter developments. What we will wish is that the natural environment remains natural, which makes Florida so unique. People come here and stay here because of our wildlife and our open spaces and our connection to the Everglades. This is not just an environmental issue. It is an economic one. Tourism depends on it. Our identity depends on it. Once we allow development to encroach further into these areas, it doesn't stop. I'm sure you're aware of that. It sets a precedent, one request after another until there is nothing left to protect. Many people agree that we do not want to become another Miami. People say all the time that they travel from Miami to Southwest Florida to decompress. I'm here today to speak for what cannot speak for itself, the birds, the panthers, the owls, the trees, and the clean water. These are not abstract ideas. They are the foundation of our quality of life. They offer something no development ever could. Peace, inspiration, balance. I spend time at Pepper Ranch and in the crew lands that will be impacted. When life becomes overwhelming, as it does for so many of us, it is nature that restores us. That is something we cannot afford to lose. We do not have a shortage of development. What we have is a shortage of thoughtful housing solutions. If we are serious about affordability, we should be addressing the rise of institutional investors, turning homes into short-term rentals, hollowing out communities, and driving off costs for residents. I understand the weight of the decision for you. There will always be opportunities for more money and more profit. It's literally like endless. But there will not always be Florida Panthers. Once they're gone, they're gone forever. The Florida Panther is the mascot for Lake Park Elementary. Baron Collier, all here in Collier County, FIU, imagine the message of having the Panther go extinct and the impact that will have on the youth. I urge you to protect what cannot be replaced. Please vote no. Thank you.

Thank you. We're on the Zoom now, correct?

Yes, Mr. Chair. Our first registered speaker on Zoom is Brittany Powell. Brittany, you should be receiving a prompt to unmute yourself. Brittany Powell.

Thank you for the time to speak to the commissioners today. I appreciate the ability to appear via zoom. I've been attending these meetings. And see the same message over and over again from developers that this is a good idea for the county. based on their biases. And I hope that the county commissioners take light of the opposition to this project and the multiple speakers that have been present giving you alternate data than the data that Mr. Hall finds with great insight. So again, I oppose this project and I'm hoping that the commissioners make the right decision today so we don't see repeated wrong decisions with all the development in Collier County when there's a clear outline to preservation that is the ability of the commissioners to follow to preserving land in this area for future generations. Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next registered speaker is Haley Krasick. Haley, you should be receiving a prompt to unmute yourself. There you are, Haley. You have three minutes.

Hi, good morning, commissioners. My name is Haley. I have a degree in environmental studies from Florida Gold Coast University, and I've worked in stormwater inspection in Collier County. So I've seen how development affects land and water systems in practice, not just on maps. I want to state clearly that I oppose the Corkscrew Grove developments. A lot of what I was going to say about Florida Panthers has already been covered. So I want to focus on what this means at a system level. At roughly 1500 acres, this is not just a single project. It's part of a larger pattern. a fragmentation and cumulative impact on a connected landscape that is already under pressure even with conservation areas and mitigation like ssa 22 connectivity still declines over time edge effects increase wildlife movement becomes more restricted those impacts don't stop at project boundaries This region already invests in Panther education and awareness programs that teach local students about Florida Panthers and their habitat around corkscrew. That reflects a real public commitment to conservation, but it also makes it more important that our land use decisions align with that message, not work against it. This also adds an estimated 9000 additional vehicles in a region that already experiences severe seasonal congestion, which increases roadway pressure and wildlife collision risk in existing corridors. also want to acknowledge that what has been said about conservation efforts and habitat projections i respect that these recommendations come from people who care deeply about this landscape but mitigation does not fully replace connectivity once it's broken it reduces impact it doesn't restore the system my concern is not whether these impacts are recognized or mitigated on paper it's whether the system can continue absorbing them without crossing a threshold or ecological function is permanently reduced Because once that connectivity is lost is extremely difficult to restore. So I'm asking the commission to evaluate this, not just as a single project, but as a part of a cumulative build out pattern across Corkscrew East and West and surrounding region. At this point, the facts are not in dispute. The question before you is whether we allow those impacts to accumulate past the point where the landscape can be functioning as connected ecosystem. Thank you.

Thank you.

Your next registered speaker is Jim Abernethy. Jim, you should be receiving a prompt to unmute yourself. Yes, can you guys hear me? Yes, sir. You have three minutes.

Thank you. Good morning, commissioners. My name is Jim Abernethy, founder of the nonprofit Wildlife Voice. I am also a wildlife guide here in Florida in addition to a National Geographic cinematographer and conservationist. I am here to strongly urge you to deny the Corkscrew Grove developments, both of them. The Florida Panther populations is estimated between 120 and 230 individuals remaining in the wild. This population is on the edge of extinction and entirely dependent on the remaining habitat in South Florida, especially in Collier County. In addition, the only breeding population of the Florida Panther is in Collier County. Vehicle strikes are already the leading cause of death for Florida Panthers, with dozens killed each year on roads, many of them in Collier County. This project would add approximately 9,000 additional vehicle trips into an already deadly corridor. This will be the result in a direct increase in the mortality risk of Panthers. This proposal would also convert roughly 1,500 vehicles Acres of critical habitat into the suburban development and with the corkscrew Grove West expected to follow the total impact would effectively double it. From an economic standpoint, people come to Florida for what still exists, wildlife and functioning ecosystems. That is a long-term renewable asset. Once habitat at this scale is lost, it is gone permanently. Growth will happen, but placing it in one of the most critical wildlife quarters left for this endangered species is not responsible planning. I urge you to deny this proposal and prioritize growth that does not come at the expense of endangered species survival. In the end, your legacy will be remembered not by what you created, but will be defined and remembered by what you refuse to destroy. Thank you.

Thank you.

Your next registered speaker is Lucy Gallo.

Oh, OK.

Thank you. Our next registered speaker with that is Marie Morandi. Marie, you should be receiving a prompt to unmute yourself. Marie Morandi.

Can you hear me?

Yes, I would advise you to mute a phone or something near you. You have a lot of feedback. But you have three minutes. Marie, I'll make another call for you if you could unmute your computer for me. I would suggest, Marie, we're going to come back to you. I think Marie's having some technical difficulties. That will take us, our next registered speaker, to Rachel Barabo. I hope I'm saying that right, Rachel.

You are, you are. My name is Rachel Joy Barbeau. I'm a Florida resident and a former national sportscaster, and I've spent my entire career telling stories that matter. First of all, I just want to say to all of you, I've been listening to the entire meeting, my condolences to your precious Donna who passed away. So sorry for your loss. I also want to say thank you for serving. I want to start off by saying that. I also want to, in my three minutes, say this. I work with NFL teams, I work with the NFL, I work with teams all over the country, athletic teams, and we talk about legacy. And I am a storyteller, and so I want to ask each one of you who are serving on this committee, who are giving your life to public servanthood, What is your legacy? This issue, the Panthers, have made its way across Florida. People are talking about it. People are watching. And more importantly, people are paying attention in a way that they have not before. Again, I want to ask you, how do you want to be remembered? Do you want to be remembered as leaders who protected a wild and irreplaceable Florida? Or as decision makers who allowed it to be chipped away piece by piece? Because that is what it is. Y'all, this is not just land. This is Florida panther habitat is so many people have said before right here and call your county the heart of their remaining territory and that makes you more than commissioners. It makes you stewards and not just for this county but for the entire state. Now listen in the past year alone florida floridians have risen up. We've seen it with state parks, the everglades and land swaps and the push back against over development. We have had enough And we've seen it at the ballot box, where candidates who are willing to stand up against overdevelopment are winning. The tide is changing. People are done watching Florida disappear in real time. And developments like this, they will only encourage They will only encourage Panthers and people coming together to be struck by cars to be to be in this area. And again, I appreciate the developer and their ability to be able to try to develop, but not here guys. This is not responsible. Like so many people have said, Panthers don't follow maps. Okay. And so I just want to leave you guys with this. I want to ask you, as you lay your head on the pillow tonight, what do you want to be remembered for? Do you want to be remembered for stewarding and protecting a wild Florida and for protecting the Panthers? Or do you want to be remembered for development? Development, because that's not what Floridians want anymore. Thank you so much. God bless your service, and please do the right thing and vote against this.

Thank you.

Your next speaker is Rhonda Roth. Rhonda, you should be receiving a prompt to unmute yourself. Rhonda Roth. There you are, Rhonda. Yes. Can you hear me? Yes, you have three minutes.

Thank you so much. My name is Rhonda Roth. I'm the chair of the Sierra Club Colusa Group, which exists in Hendry Glades. And most of our members are in Collier and Lee counties, approximately 2,000 members. in those counties and I'm speaking on their behalf today. We know some things and I appreciate all the information that came from speakers with whom I agree, Kim, Matthew, Tom for sharing the beautiful panther photos and videos which I do receive in my email and many, many of us enjoy seeing the videos and the photos that Tom shares with us and I hope that we'll continue Aliko, we know that Aliko is a wealthy and influential landowner in Southwest Florida. They were so influential as to get House Bill 4041 passed, which created the Corkscrew Grove Stewardship District last year with the help of Representative Lauren Mello and Ron DeSantis. We also know that they will become wealthier and they will be the main beneficiaries of this transfer to urban sprawl or suburban sprawl. We know that there will be an additional strain on infrastructure, on water, utilities, roads, schools, and quality of life. What we don't know is what will climate show us? How will the atmospheric rivers turn into flooding in these newly paved areas, possibly with devastating natural disaster results? We don't know if the water will continue in droughts as a result of climate change or just natural cycles. We don't know if the water will be available. We don't know where our food will be grown. We had a burgeoning citrus industry. We have to grow our food somewhere. Citrus has its challenges and we can no longer have that in Southwest Florida, but what about the other food? It's grown somewhere else. We don't know where that is. Somewhere else. Well, what about these ag lands? And we know that this is a violation, as well as all of the other developments in the area, of the Endangered Species Act. Having 20 to 30 panthers killed on the road every year is not sustainable. This puts the animal in jeopardy. And I cannot understand how any of you will want to live with that. We do not know these things. We do not know the importance of the existence of the panther or any other species that are out there. We don't know the importance of, we don't know the effect on water resources. There are just so many things we don't know. But we do know that we should be careful. We should be preserving our ability to grow food, feed ourselves, take care of the wildlife that existed here long before us, and preserve a quality of life that we currently are on the verge of losing. The traffic is horrible. It's crowded. Air quality is affected, especially inland. Tourism dollars are probably decreasing. So let's be very, very careful with this. And Sierra Club urges the commission to vote no on this proposal. Thank you.

Thank you.

Mr. Chair, if I may, I'm going to try Marie one more time. Go ahead. Marie Morandi should be receiving a prompt to unmute yourself. Marie Morandi.

no loss sorry sir not very much but we'll use our final speaker all right thank you tom well this will end the uh public speaking portion of this agenda item um i don't know if the petitioner would want to do a closing just a few brief brief comments and i i can bring heather back up here and give you the dissertation about the real facts about the florida panther and the real facts about our particular land But I do want to hit a couple of points about what some of the public speakers said. One, as you all know, We're actually reducing water consumption. We're converting ag that is very water intensive to home. So we're actually using less water with what we're proposing. I hear the murmuring of the crowd. Clearly they don't like it.

Ladies and gentlemen, hold on one second. You all had 26 some speakers come up here. Nobody said anything while you were up here speaking. Please be courteous of everybody in this room because it is where we do business and is where we should do it civilly. So I appreciate that. Thank you.

By definition, the Rural Land Stewardship Program is not urban sprawl. We did this process in 2002 specifically because we were being told we did not properly address urban sprawl. Our program was award-winning and actually got codified into Florida statutes because it was an appropriate way to address how to develop within a county like our county and other counties similar to Carter County. So the Rural Land Stewardship Program is not urban sprawl. So everybody who's telling you it is, it is not. It is not urban sprawl. The program was designed to make sure it was not urban sprawl. You heard, I've known Dr. Hushing for a long time. She's not an expert in economics. That's not what her PhD is in. You have gotten expert testimony from Lucy Gallo, who's online if you want to hear from her, but in her analysis of the economic impact, which was reviewed by your own consultant, Jacobs. So all the expert testimony in the record is that we do meet the economic criteria set forth in your land development code and your growth management plan. Now, Brad Cornell and I have known each other for a long time, and sometimes Brad Cornell and I don't agree. That's okay. One thing you didn't hear from Brad Cornell today was opposition to the SRA. He did not oppose the SRA.

Ma'am, the court reporter is trying to record what he's saying, but if you're saying behind her, you're just talking, that's interfering with her ability to keep this documented, this hearing, please.

So Brad was a participant in this program. This was a program that was landowner, county, and NGO driven. The program, and I think I can get back to my slide, Tom got drug out. You remember the slide that showed the pink area. Also on the slide, it showed where habitat stewardship areas were. It showed you where flowway areas were. Guess what? This area was not designated a habitat stewardship area. If it were so environmentally important as a habitat stewardship area, it would have been designated that on the map, and it would not have been designated pink as an open. We can bring Heather up here to show you why, because it's an orange grove. It's a dead orange grove. It is in the right area. You've heard no testimony from the experts that we don't meet the criteria. It is, and I agree with Commissioner Hall, it's an emotional issue. People can get up there and talk about the Florida Panther and how it has its issues. This program was designed to address land planning They have other opportunities. They can go attack this project at the Army Corps of Engineers level or the water management level if they really believe that they're right on the environment and water management. We meet your criteria. And because we meet your criteria, we are requesting that you approve both the SRA designation as well as the SSA designation on these lands. And one other point, to show that this really works, the OK SLU, I believe, is in four or five different SSAs. So the program is working. The OK SLU is becoming designated SSA, and those corridors are being protected as part of this process. And we are protecting those corridors as part of this process. by designating ssa 22 we've already participated in this process by designating ssa 11. we're available to answer any specific questions you may have but those are just brief responses to the public comment it doesn't appear do we have any questions from the board at this time mr chairman oh sorry mr saunders i would like to ask mr bosey to come up for just a minute

While he's coming up I'll let him know what the question is You guys made me look bad there was nothing on the screen Three names popped up I just want to understand what let's assume for just a minute that this all gets denied if it what can what can the property owner build on that on those properties I guess the question is what is the underlying zoning that would for example in Golden Gate Estates it's one unit for two and a half acres one unit for five acres what's the underlying

the the agriculture mike bosey planning zoning director of the agricultural zoning district will allow one dwelling unit per every five acres so it's a one to five allowance pardon me while i put this back in here they all work in in golden gate estates

I believe that's probably the one of the areas in the county that is receiving the most building permits for units on two and a half acres on five acres is that Is that correct? Because I understood that that was a very rapidly developing area in terms of those units on, or those developments on individual lots.

Yes, the Golden Gate Estates, it's one unit for every 2.25 acres. There are some larger lots than that and some smaller lots. But, yeah, that is growing at a pretty rapid rate. We estimate about 7,000. vacant lots remaining before build-up, but it is developing at a quick pace.

And then one other comment, if I might. I am somewhat persuaded by Dr. Hushin's comment concerning the number of people per unit. I'm not talking about number of people per unit for this particular project because that's, as far as I'm concerned, that's the process that we have there. But I would urge staff to take a look at how do we come to that number. Don't need an explanation now, but would at some point want to know how or why that's the number as opposed to something a little higher.

And what I would say, not to discount the importance of that number, What the RLSA requires is a prescribed amount of square footage for commercial and civic and institution type of uses per household, regardless of one person living in that household or eight people living in the household. So the provisions for how much set aside to make this a sustaining community is per dwelling unit and not persons per dwelling unit.

but the reason I mention that I'm not sure what the impact is on schools and sure on the transportation that sort of thing so just just at some point would like to have a better understanding of the impact of that number and is that the right number thank you Mr. Chairman Mr. LeCastro.

Thank you, Chairman. Mr. Moseley, just to separate rumor from fact, was the NIMH advertised correctly? The note was made that it only went out 1,000 feet, and so that kept tons of people from attending.

And I believe the NIMH was held last August 2025. It was October 28th where the Board of County Commissioners adopted a one mile notification area for the rural agricultural zoning district. So this was advertised per the code, which was 1000 feet at the time. Three months later we increased it, but obviously they were well past that.

okay um and mr cornell if you can come up to the podium and i can let one of the other commissioners speak is he here is brad still in the room he left i think he left okay i'll just hold my question then i think uh are any other commissioners lit up yeah commissioner mcdaniel yes that's uh mr bosey um you oh there's brad you want to go ahead and take care of him Yeah, sure. Mr. Cornell, if you'd just come up to the podium, I just had a question for you real quick. I'll just set it up a little bit. We get a lot of folks that come in here who we don't know very well and say, I'm an expert on this, I'm an expert on that, here's the data. You're here regularly and meet with us personally and take the time to really educate us on your view on many things. And so I greatly value that. I don't always agree with you. But I don't think you come in and lie to us, but there's always two sides to every story. So one of the things that I will ask you is, what would make you hate this less? Because when citizens come to the podium and they say, all this land should be protected, or we get 100 emails saying don't build, don't build. Sometimes citizens make it sound like they think the county owns the property. that we should just you know turn it into a dog park or make it a national protected forest or something a lot of times we get suggestions that aren't realistic I mean we have a private landowner that wants to do something with the property that's not illegal immoral or unethical we're trying to figure out what what might be possible and what's not possible I was listening very closely to the comments you made and you were sliding in and out of some not that you were banging on tables in a favorable way saying you know I you know that there was a there was a solution but I want you to do a little bit of a deeper dive on what you think could happen to this property because some of the comments of just don't do anything preserve the panther I mean that's if the county owned the property you know maybe we would have you know more latitude to do some of those things but what we don't and building on this property isn't Illegal immoral unethical. It's just a matter of like how much can you give us your view on if you were king for a day? What kind of changes that you think the landowner would would have to make that would make you maybe not love it But hate it less or or can you you know, you give us some some some options With with the knowledge that you have of how this land Sits right now as far as being used by panthers preserved could it be built on, you know? Give us give us a little bit of your view

Brad Cornell with Audubon Western Everglades. So thank you for the question. To clarify, the unfortunate reality is that you can build on almost anything in Florida, and that's something that unfortunately keeps me in a job and keeps me very busy. And I don't like that reality. It's a threat to the things which Audubon exist to protect, which is habitat for wide-ranging species like Florida black bear and the Florida panther and wetlands for wading birds like the wood stork and great egret and even flamingos, which seem to be making a comeback because we're restoring the Everglades and that has had a positive influence. To answer your question, I would love to see more acquisition, restoration, and preservation of our rural lands or at least those places like the Immokalee Ranch or the Devil's Garden that was a LECO property that they sold to the state. Those are good examples of places that we want to see protected, either through continued profitable cattle ranching, like cow-calf operations, or through acquisition. Collier Enterprises and Baron Collier sold over 30,000 acres in the past year to DEP through the Florida Wildlife Corridor appropriations from the Florida legislature. That's a lot of land. And almost all of it was in the rural land stewardship area. And so that reduces the ability to generate credits for building more villages. Do I want more villages? Absolutely not. But the reality is people keep moving here, as I said earlier. I don't know what to do about that, except for build a wall at the Georgia line, and nobody seems to be doing that. So we've got to figure out a place to put these people that is less harmful. Land acquisition, restoration, much preferable, like Collier Enterprises and Baron Collier did with their land, and Alico did with their Devil's Garden land in Hendry County. Those were good outcomes for conservation. In lieu of that, what we have created with the Rural Land Stewardship Program is a a way to leverage, if you're going to have development, put it in the least damaging place and leverage as much conservation outcome as you possibly can. That three to one ratio that was quoted earlier, that's about what we're getting in rural land stewardship. So we want to see at the end of 50 years, 130, 140,000 acres permanently protected and much of that restored in Eastern Collier County and the minimum amount

developed whatever that turns out to be it's kind of hard to say you feel like in their plan they're not preserving enough of that entire footprint because there's a was it five six hundred acres and then you know the way you look at the graphic it's not like they're just um paving the entire thing over and building uh skyscrapers um what's your thoughts on when you see you know what they are Building and and my follow-up is when you say we should put the right things in the right places Well, this is land they own so and we can't make the landowner donate it Give it to us for free sell it for a penny an acre I mean, you know all things that you know, but sometimes, you know, we get notes from citizens This is what you should do with it if you care about being commissioners none of us up here have have the power to make the landowner do anything and as far as that same issue we're having with the orange grove off of Sable Palm. I mean, we might come up with several options, but the land owner's going to probably say no to all of them, thinking they can do something that's going to be more valuable to the property that they own. but so two-part question what do you think they're not preserving enough land and then you know it's not really a question but you know i think you do understand we can't say wow we hate this this development on this piece of land move it somewhere else you know um that's not viable either so the first time you say that that you all have land use authority i mean sometimes tallahassee seems to be trying to usurp your authority

And I don't like seeing that. I don't think you all do either. But ultimately, the local government has land use authority. You have the power to make plans. That's what your growth management plan is all about. And you actually have a pretty dang robust growth management plan that looks at this question of, what what do we preserve what do we develop and where do we put all these things and what infrastructure do we need to provide for all that so given that that land use plan the rural land stewardship program that's on this part of the county i think what you've got is is a negotiation that's certainly the way we have approached it and we have knocked on alico's doors we've met with their their principals and their consultants, and we continue to try and get as much conservation outcome. For instance, this 1,200 acres of the SSA 22, I am very encouraged to see that because that's the kind of regional link that we need for wide-ranging species like panthers and bears. Without that, There is a link that exists, but it's not nearly as robust through those failed citrus groves. And frankly, with the failure of the citrus groves, Aleko could go to row crops. Row crops are even more polluting. They have much more fertilizer demands and pesticides and irrigation demands than even citrus. And citrus wasn't all that good to begin with. But it did, without people living there, it did serve as habitat. Restoring that corridor, the 1,200 acres, is a really important measure for the region. From the Corkscrew Marsh, the crew system, including Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary, all the way up to Spirit of the Wild and the Calaway-Coochie Slough. That linkage has to be protected. Another sore spot is going to be in Hendrick County that you don't have any authority over, but I think Commissioner McDaniel referenced it. It was that sector plan. in west hendry county that king ranch has authority over and the hendry county commission that is going to be critical to make sure the corridor that alico is building connects through hendry county all the way to and duda The Dudas have a sector plan just north of that all the way to the Spirit of the Wild and Dinner Island and ultimately north.

Do you think their plan does not preserve the corridor enough or at all?

No, it does, but it stops at the county line. There's more to the story that we don't know the end of and so I'm nervous about that and we want to talk with the King Ranch. In fact, I have sat down with King Ranch folks recently, a couple months ago, and they're bringing some things forward to you through the Rural Land Stewardship Program, but they also have this sector plan in Hendry County. And so, this is what you all need to do. You need to not look at one project at a time. You need to look at the whole map, because that's the way a panther looks at it. A panther requires huge landscapes in order to survive, in order to make breeding habitat connect, and in order to feed itself. That kind of landscape doesn't come on just one project. This project has a good piece. It's got an important part. But that's not all of the story, and we need more to that story, and we need to add to this. If you're sitting down with the Hendry County Commission anytime soon, you might want to bring this up because that's an important link.

Thank you.

Yeah. Thank you. Brad, one more second.

Don't go away. He's done with you.

I got you. I just got a quick. So, you know, I kind of got this from you when you did your initial, your public speaking portion that, you know, this does create that link from, you know, because I know for a fact the Panthers don't like to move through open fields. I mean, they like to cover. They like to keep this, you know, their patterns to a certain way. because of you know that's the way they are they're very majestic they don't want to be seen and you know having orange groves is not the typical way they migrate through open fields or open open areas where this corridor where they're suggesting where the professionals are saying this is the natural progression and this is now going to link the south to the central the important areas to the north to get the breeding, to have them meet new species or new DNA line of panthers. So in a way, this project is pinpointing that actual crossing area that they're going to utilize and it's going to preserve it into perpetuity. That's kind of what I got from what you said initially.

That's right. And another encouraging aspect of this, I drove to a meeting in Hendry County, um, that some of the folks in the room, um, were at too, uh, in LaBelle a couple of weeks ago. It was a good meeting, but on my way there, I drove by Kingston, which was not a happy occasion. Um, and then I drove, um, by this intersection and turned right on state road 82. And I saw the construction of a Panther underpass that's going to go under four lanes of State Road 82. And 82 has been testified to as being expanded. And the fact that Alika was building this underpass for four lane 82 is really, really significant. And they don't have a permit yet to build the rest of their village, but they're building the crossing. we could not get that from kingston that's what we need in kingston too because it's got the same problems we've got the same road corkscrew road well corkscrew 282 but we don't have the crossings um that's that's really key if you're going to keep panthers from being killed from the this is the biggest source of mortality for panthers is roads mr mcdaniel

Yes. Good afternoon, Mr. Cornell. Commissioner. Is it afternoon yet yes it is but let's talk about the Florida Panther for a second I've got an enormous history with with what's been going on I was sitting in the back of the room back in 2000 2002 when the RLSA was developed and then I served on the five-year review committee for the RLSA an award-winning land use plan one of the huge deficits that I have lobbied for forever and i want all my friends over here in the environmental community to be listening as well is the are you aware of how the estimation of the population of the florida panther currently exists do you do you know how they count the cats not very easily so it's pretty wide range last i knew they had a tracker Is that still, in fact, the primary population estimator?

You're talking about Roy McBride, who's passed, and his son. Is that who you mean?

Yes.

Yes. They have used a Panther tracker.

Yes. Do they use any other methodology other than trail cameras and such?

Well, there's all, you know, Roy, when he was alive, would use Panther sign. He would go out into Panther habitat and It wasn't just roadkill. It wasn't just collared cats. He actually would read the signs in the habitat and estimate from what he found out in the landscape. Now, that's not a whole lot of what they, I mean, that's still part of it.

Here's where I'm going. I'm not leading you down a rosy path. What I am suggesting is that we, the government, the private sector, and the public sector as well, and the NGOs, work together to better estimate the population of the Florida Panther. if you use solely traffic fatalities as a portion of or as the methodology and i heard one of the public speakers talking that there was the estimate currently is somewhere between 120 and 240 panthers and if you lose 30 of them you just lost 40% of your population to traffic fatalities that doesn't really line up for us to sustainability for that population as you and I had discussed and we are well aware the the goal ultimately is for three distinct populations going up the state of up to 240 Panthers they learned because of the requisite of the enormous amount of area that a panther in fact requires that's basically south of the Caloosahatchee River we could sustain without human intervention for the for the management of the population we could sustain a population of 240 panthers and then they wanted another one another population 240 and then another population on up to the state line Well, there are really cool technologies that are out there that can better estimate the population. And it's going to take the private, and I'm pointing at you because you're sitting there, it's going to take the private sector along with the public sector in order to have a better estimation of that population. I don't care whether you're counting panthers or people. If you have an inaccurate estimation of your population, any plan put in place is doomed to failure before the ink ever even in fact drives on that particular plan and so my ask of you today is join with us work with me work with the private sector and let's come up with a better methodology than the previous one that's been utilized to date to my knowledge which was a tracker and If he didn't see them or see their sign, they weren't there. And I would really, really appreciate working with you and the private sector in order to better estimate the population of the Florida panther.

Commissioner, I'm sure everybody in this room who has spoken and people who haven't would like to see you know, the science of Florida panther conservation advance.

So we're all with you on that. One of my little, one of my little harebrained ideas is a drone flight up and above with thermal. And you can distinguish between a panther and a bear and a deer and a pig all the way across the board. And if it were done in a scientific manner, grid systems could be Flown and documentation could be utilized from where those species are counted in the different sectors that they're in fact done So that's just something I'd like to talk about at some stage David Schindle with US Fish and Wildlife Service and

Dave Honorato with FWC here in Naples. Those are two folks you want to talk to. Okay. Because they're the premier scientists. Well, let's me and you go talk to them. What's that?

Let's me and you go talk to them. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Thomas I'm somewhat of a trail camera nut myself in my office I have a lot coolest picture of a Florida panther I'd like to show to you sometime I'm really looking forward to the thousands of pictures that you in fact have I I think I have the coolest trail cam picture ever documented right behind my house by the way And just so you know, right behind my house, my house is in Corkscrew Sanctuary Swamp. I butt right up to the sanctuary. I serve on the executive board and the board of trustees of the crew, the crew lens that all this flowways and so on and corridors, in fact, intersect with. So it's very, very near and dear to my heart. Mr. Boesey. Um, yeah. the sake of repeating i think i heard that we were i was delinquent we have been delinquent in quite some time because of the notification processes uh when the land use change proposition comes forward and so if i heard correctly the timing with this still allowed for the developer to pick a box as to how far they went in order to notify the neighborhood of what they were in fact proposing is that correct the regulation at the time that they held the neighborhood information meeting was a thousand feet okay there's no other box to check it was it was a thousand feet and then we adjusted that in October three months later after they held their NIM so they abided by the rules that were in place we had yet to have fixed those rules even though we were in the process of they abided by those rules correct okay um and and this it maybe is or is not your field of expertise but the water and sewer component that's being provided here is it has that been looked at by our staff to ensure that there isn't a burden on all of collier county for the utilities provided for this neighborhood

Potable and wastewater were part of the fiscal analysis. Potable and wastewater were both part, and stormwater, were both part of the economic analysis that was provided for within the package.

And did I read when I was reviewing the package, did I read that there isn't an economic burden being imposed upon our community for the potable water and sewer

I'm not sure if it was a neutral determination or a positive determination, but either of the two are the ones that are allowed to pass go, so to speak. So, yes, it was provided for.

I see two of them moving up behind you, so maybe somebody has some different answers.

Sneaking.

Got to watch them. collier county is not responsible for providing water and sewer service it's the immokalee water and sewers district so so that analysis it is it has no impact on collier county's ability to provide service so the general taxpayers are not responsible for it i'm aware of that i just wanted to hear that out loud because it was represented that we were being burdened is that what you wanted to say as well jamie okay um

Trinity Scott, a positive head nod would work. You can come to the podium if you want to. But State Road 82 is in the final stages of being four-laned? Correct. That's a positive head nod. And Miss Judy, if you haven't been out there in a minute, it is being improved as we speak. understand the one thing that it isn't known that the other improvements at the other end over here on State Road 29 there is a loop road coming off of 29 about down down by where 29 goes out of town out of Immokalee there is a loop road coming up teeing into the old State Road 29 and that will be four-laned as well up to that roundabout so I just wanted to share that and how many wildlife crossings are How many wildlife crossings are proposed in that State Road 82 segment? I remember way back in the 2008-2009 days, Ms. Husham, when I served on the five-year review for the RLSA, we were discussing that. And how many wildlife crossings are there now? Do you recall? I don't recall I know of the one that with Alico there may be one other one but I had it in my brain that there were in fact two so we answered the four lane thing thank you thank you and for my mosquito control wannabes as you're moving forward If you do make it through the mess of getting elected to serve on the mosquito control, move towards larvicidal control as opposed to aerial spraying. It's far more effective, lasts longer, costs a minute more. But we're never going to eradicate those little critters. They should make the mosquito the state bird. But larvicidal control is a far better methodology to bring them into the realm of possibilities.

Let's see.

That's all I have.

I can, I'll add on to that, that if you go to the immediate mosquito control, you can actually, they give you the fish for free. You put them in the retention ponds within the community and they eat all the larva. So you don't have to use any chemicals. It's a natural way of doing it. They'll deliver them to you or you can pick them up. They have millions and millions of these little fish that their main appetite is the larva. So they do a pretty good job in their retention ponds. So just anybody can do that. Even around your house, you can go pick them up. appears to be uh we have no more questions from the board um i guess could we take these uh independently 9a or 9b or do you do attorney no folk on them it's a combined unit as a combined unit okay

Can I get a motion for the two combined 9A and 9B as they stand Yes and as a final point I'm gonna make a motion for approval of this development and one of the things that I want to clarify is this proposed development is encompassing about 1,500 acres plus my just a little under and if i'm not mistaken i saw in the reports that in excess or almost 52 000 acres of pristine wetlands and habitat are being set aside in perpetuity

That's cumulatively as part of the overall RLSA program. Of the RLSA. It's roughly a three to one is what I'm trying to say.

So it's about 5,000 acres. And other SSAs. Forgive me for my misspoke there. It's 1,500 acres for 5,000. So with that, I'm going to make a motion for approval.

I have a motion for approval do I have a second second a motion a second all in favor signify by saying aye aye all opposed same sound same sign it's passed unanimously Okay, we're going to go, we're going to do some unorthodox today because I know some people want to get over to the service. We're going to take a two hour lunch. So we're going to have, well, self explanatory, back at 2.48 or 2.50.

Sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet

sweet sweet sweet sweet is

You took me from the shelter of a lover I had never known Who loved any other We kissed after taking Thank you. Thank you. I wait in the darkness of my lonely room Filled with sadness, filled with gloom Hoping soon that you'll walk back through that door And love me like you tried before Since you've been gone, all that left is abandonment Of the dreams I hold Is a band of gold

I've got the straight in my face. The smell of that chick just put my spine out of place. My school is insane. My work's down the drain. She's a total blam blam. She said she had to squeeze it, but she, and then she, I don't need, I'm in there. Cause you can't afford a ticket back from Suffragette City. Hey, man. We'll be right back. We'll be right back.

Chair you have a live mic.

And it is the vice chair to be certain. We are now in session.

We can take some of our item 11s while we wait for others to be here for the other land use item.

Can we do Imperial Lakes?

No, we need four or five in the room. So we're going to jump around a little bit here.

And I assume someone's going to keep track of our jumping.

OK. Me. So let's start, if Trinity's ready. We're actually going to go to 11A. All right, so item 11A is a recommendation to award invitation to bid number 25-8421, Big Cypress Golf Estates and Country Club of Naples, secondary drainage and water main replacement to Wright Construction Group, Inc., total amount of $5,785,747.47 with a total owner's allowance of $578,574.75 and approve the county's portion for payment in the amount of $3,282,544.68 with an owner's allowance of $328,254.47 and the city of Naples portion for payment in the amount of $2,503,202.79 with an owner's allowance of $250,320.28 in accordance with the terms of an existing interlocal agreement and authorize the chair to sign the attached agreement. Mr. Peter Hayden, your supervisor project management from Stormwater, is here to present or answer questions at the board's pleasure.

I was going to say, do you have an itch to scratch, or are you OK with this?

I'm good either way.

Do any of my colleagues have a question? Want to see the presentation that we've all read and reviewed? And I'll take a motion for approval. I'll second. It's been moved and seconded. We approve the agenda item as presented. Any discussion? And I don't have the, well, here comes the real chair now, but I don't have the benefit of the little board, so. And Commissioner Kowal, since you and I have arrived, we have a motion and a second on 11A. Oh, okay. No discussion, no presentation, and I'm ready to call for a vote before I hand it back.

there's nobody lit up so correct all in favor aye aye opposed same sign same sound so moved now we'll pass the gavel back to you yes sir thank you um we're gonna oh commissioner saunders hello yeah how are you he stopped by me i was waiting i said i'm gonna wait till he comes and then he you got by me and serena said you know it's hard it's hard to believe it i'm still really fast

All right. We're going to jump back then to land use. And that will get us back to items 9C and 9D, which are companion items. Item 9C is a recommendation to approve petition VAC-PL202600002 to disclaim, renounce, and vacate the county and the public interest in a portion of the 60-foot roadway easement, as recorded in Official Record Book 238, page 913, and Official Record Book 1365, page 1357 of the Public Records of Collier County, Florida, located approximately one half mile south of veterans memorial boulevard in section 15 township 48 south range 25 east collier county florida the companion item does require ex parte disclosure by the commissioners and a swearing in but we'll start here a recommendation to approve an ordinance amending the zoning classification from a planned unit planned unit development and special treatment overlay to a residential planned unit development for a project to be known as Imperial Lakes RPUD to allow development of the previously approved 430 multifamily dwelling units or an alternative of 313 dwelling units, including single family, two family, townhouse, and multifamily subject to a trip cap for 78.28 plus minus acres of property located on the future extension of Veterans Memorial Boulevard, north of Imperial Golf Club, west of Castlewood at Imperial Planned Unit Development in Section 15, Township 48 South, Range 25 East, providing for repeal of ordinance number 82-81 and providing an effective date. With that, let's have ex parte from the commissioners.

Mr. Saunders.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I did have some meetings and emails concerning item 9D.

Mr. Hall. Meetings and emails as well.

Mr. Lacoste. Same for me. Meetings and emails. Mr. McDaniel.

As well.

And myself at meetings and emails.

Very good with that we have everybody stand and be sworn in by record report court reporter, including any that are giving public comment. Very good Mr Yovanovitch will start with you.

good afternoon for the record rich ivanovich on behalf of the applicant which is in a realty trust inc uh mr arnold is our professional planner uh jim banks who i believe is on the phone is our traffic consultant and tim hall is our environmental consultant on this project As the county manager pointed out, you have two petitions related to this agenda item. One is a petition to rezone the property outlined in yellow to a PUD, basically as a modification from the existing PUD. that allows 430 multi-family residential units in five-story buildings to allow us to add single family and duplex units to the mix of homes and if we do elect to do one single family home the number of units goes down to 313 and i will show you where uh as an accommodation to our one of our neighbors namely castlewood in this lower corner we agreed to limit the height and limit the products that can be built in that area on the master plan also we are requesting to vacate a uh road reservation that was in an old deed uh reserving to the public uh 60 feet 30 feet on our portion of the property and it's along the southern boundary and 30 feet on imperial golf course we're requesting to vacate that because it goes to nowhere uh this is the old cradle well it's cradling i don't know what they call it now but cradling concrete a cmex sorry that's already been vacated so there's no access all the way to the west to get to uh 41 so we requested a vacation of uh of that 30 feet on our southern portion of the property uh staff's recommending approval of that vacation If you'll recall, I think it was at your last Board of County Commissioners meeting, we, the developer of this property, entered into a developer agreement to extend Veterans Memorial Boulevard to the west to basically the railroad station, railroad tracks. So as part of this project, we will be extending Veterans Memorial Boulevard, and that will be our access until the county extends further all the way to, I believe, 41, ultimately, for this project. So those are the two petitions in front of you.

Could you take a little yellow arrow and show where Veterans is going to be extended from?

Right here to, well, it's going to go here. Commissioner, I can't tell. I think this is the railroad. Where's the railroad? Further east here?

Right there. Right there. Got it.

Thank you. I need a bigger scale so I can see. But anyway, it's to extend it for that distance as part of a developer agreement that you guys approved your last meeting. these are our surrounding neighbors we're right by the high school we're by conservation collier lands both to our west and to our north and we have imperial golf course to our south As I had already mentioned, the request is to add a different single family and two family product type so we could add that to the mix, which would result in a reduction in the number of residential units should that happen. This is the existing master plan. Five-story buildings were allowed here and basically throughout the project.

Original access was up in this corner.

guess I'm going a little bit into Wayne's presentation as I mentioned this is the revised master plan and this is the area that we agreed to limit the height and unit type to single-family not to exceed two stories as we front the Castlewood project Thank you. And then the area that we're vacating is in yellow. That's the document that created the 30-foot reservation, and that's the portion of the reservation that we are vacating. And you have in your files letters of no objection from the Castlewood HOA as well as Imperial Golf Course. That's an overview or master plan on an aerial, again, highlighting the area to be vacated. Mr. Hall, you have a question?

Yes.

Mr. Yovanovitch, I did receive... six emails as of late yesterday afternoon and they were all the same they were cutting pace but they were saying it was the people from castlewood on supreme court and they were saying that if we vacate the easement that's going to lower their property value and all they sent me was a rough map and i didn't understand how that would affect their property values have you heard anything from them

i i spoke to them uh i believe uh the gentleman is going to uh one of your speakers might might advocate their position for why they don't want the road right away vacated i would think that they would want the road right away vacated because if Without the road right away being vacated, you're going to have five-story structures, multifamily versus two-story structures that are single-family should we develop it as anticipated. So I honestly don't understand the argument of how we would be reducing their property values. It's not an access road for them to get to or from their project. So I don't understand the rationale. And so I'll let them explain how we're somehow impacting their value.

They don't abut the road right-of-way. This area right here is preserved on their property.

That also includes one of their – I think that's probably a water management lake. So I don't understand the position of how we're – I think we're actually probably enhancing their value, but I'll let them speak for themselves. And this will show you the preserve I was talking about and the width and the distance before you get to any of the home sites in Castlewood. I'm going to stop there because I know you've read all the materials. That's an overview of what we're asking for. We're available to answer any questions you may have regarding the petition. And your Planning Commission recommended unanimously approval as well as your staff is recommending approval with that. Answer any questions you may have.

I see no other questions from the board at this time did we hear from staff Tom how many public speakers do we have on this item two registered speaker one in the room one on zoom okay I want to hear from staff first

Mike Bose, the Planning and Zoning Director. The applicant is correct. The staff is recommending approval on the project. It was heard by the Planning Commission. There was one additional request that the Planning Commission had requested of the applicant. They had agreed to it, incorporated with it through the PUD, related to dark sky compliant. There's some concern related to the railhead scrub preserve and some of the... occupants some of the wildlife in there because of that it was requested and it was agreed that the facility will be or the project will be developed down shielding with the lighting as in accordance with the dark skies they are requesting three traditional deviations staff is supported one of the most unique is the multiple preserves instead of one preserve is multiple preserves because of the nature of where the most environmentally sensitive prop lands are on the property staff has reviewed it and it's approving that deviation um so that's just just the overview it is a uh as the applicant had uh indicated this change uh um to include the single family is a 27 reduction in the overall intensity of the project if if it is approved so this would be somewhat of a down zone

In terms of the intensity but staff is available for any questions that you may have I Don't see any from the board at this time We can move on to the public speakers if you want Tom.

Mr. Chair. Your first registered speaker is Brad Cornell. I

Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and commissioners. I'm Brad Cornell, and I'm the policy director for Audubon Western Everglades. And thank you for the opportunity to address you on the Imperial Lakes RPUD, the revisions that are proposed We also testified at the Planning Commission hearing, so several of these are consistent with our testimony then. We recommend shifting the Northeast Pine Flatwoods Preserve in the northwest corner to protect the extremely rare coastal scrub that's adjacent to the large Conservation Collier Railhead scrub preserve. So if you look at the map, the upper left-hand corner has the as the really rare scrub, so some portion of the pine flatwoods would be more appropriately shifted to that scrub. And that's also, it goes overall into the conservation collier preserve. We also need the bear management plan to include required bear-resistant trash cans. It's not just an education program, though it is that, certainly. But this is bear country. It doesn't seem like it is, but if you look at the bear nuisance calls from FWC in the last two, three years, There are many in this area all across North Collier. We recommend several compatibility measures given their adjacency to the 135-acre railhead scrub preserve. The first one is a fire management buffer on the west side where the county must regularly burn the preserve, which also protects this community from wildfire risk. So that's true of all the communities that surround fire-prone habitats, including this scrub preserve. So we're talking enough distance to make it possible and easier to get burn permits for the county to manage that land appropriately and to reduce fire risk. Dark skies, it's great to hear that there has been a commitment to implement dark sky lighting for outdoor lighting in this whole community. That's wonderful. An additional measure of that would be to assure that the spectrum of lighting is the warm spectrum below what's called 3,000 Kelvin in the spectrum. So more yellowish tones of light that are better for wildlife and and nighttime. And finally, the other nature compatibility issues, nature where we live, would include 30% littoral plantings in the lakes, 50% less turf grass, which treat turf grass more like a throw rug rather than wall-to-wall carpeting because grass demands irrigation, fertilizer, pesticides, And if we want to conserve water and have good water quality, less grass helps get there and more native plants. Thanks very much for considering that.

Mr. Cornell, one question. Yes. I'm looking at the map that's up right now. The one in the upper right-hand corner that says preserved, when you initially made your comment, are you talking about moving that to the left-hand corner?

Some of it, yes. So if you look at that map, you can see in the upper left-hand corner there's scrub habitat in the upper left that is not preserved and that would be a higher value higher ecological value and it's adjacent to an existing county preserve so you would you would get a twofer by preserving this on this site reducing and shifting the the project a little bit to the east to accommodate that so you're really not changing

the density or the the economics you're just shifting the geography of it a little bit to accommodate that scrub okay thank you mr chair your next speaker joins us on zoom paul ewing paul you should be receiving a prompt to unmute yourself paul ewing there you go there see you now paul Paul, are you there?

No.

One more time for Paul Ewing. Might be having a tech issue on your end, Paul. Not getting any mic. We'll come back to Paul, I think.

All right, well, we try. He was the last public speaker, though, right?

Yes.

Because I have to either close it or keep it open.

I can give one more attempt, Paul Ewing, if you should be getting a prompt to unmute yourself.

Okay. All right. Well, this is going to end the portion of our public speakers. Yovanovitch, do you have anything else you want to add?

A couple things.

uh there is a significant effect to the site plan if we switch those preserves um and i can have mr hall explain that so it's not a it's one you're trading wetland preserves versus upland preserves so that's a cost associated with that and it changes the whole configuration of the layout and the number of lots that would result as a as as a result of trying to do with mr Cornell requested. I do want to point out that we did give him a lot of what he asked for. We already have in the PUD their bear proof dumpsters and trash cans. He asked for that. We included that. We included the lighting limitation to three It's it's this common area lighting and street lights and the RPUD will be a maximum color temperature of 3000 K whatever that stands for so that's open Kelvin. No, I Someone tried to explain to me what that meant, but I so we gave him that as well so we we did try to accommodate to the changes that Were reasonable and we could accommodate if you go back if I pointed out to you if we go back to the original development you'll see that the access was up in the upper left-hand corner. So we have made the plan a lot better, have larger preserves. The preserves are in the areas that your staff has agreed is the better places to do the preserves. So we did make reasonable changes and we're requesting that the Board of County Commissioners approve both the request to vacate the roadway as well as the request to rezone the property.

Thank you. Commissioner Saunders.

Thank you. Mr. Yovanovitch, can you put that aerial view back up, that one? Yep. Okay, just to make sure I understood what Brad Cornell was talking about, in the upper left-hand corner, there's a small area there that looks like it would be the scrub jay habitat. It's only a little teeny piece. yes okay so the question is mr. Cornell was looking for a way to preserve that little corner of your property which it looks like you're not gonna be using that for anything that's part of a residential tract oh so that little corner would be yeah that's part of the residential tract yeah the homes would be on that side of the street how many homes would that involve that little

Little square there a little kid. I don't I don't know First of all, I don't know what he's asking for is how much area if you were to simply move this area to that area Yeah, that's it. That's a significant. Oh, yeah. No, that's not we don't have it I'm gonna have mr. Hall say that there's no scrub Jays there.

All right, let's hear that and then I'll maybe have a question or two form I

You can see how white, I'm sorry, for the record, my name is Tim Hall with Terrell Hall and Associates. You can see that corner is very, very white on the aerial. Right now it's bare sand. It's been impacted in the past by the off-road vehicles, Jeeps, dirt bikes, four-wheelers, everybody running through there. Most of those really white areas you can see the trails are where those Off-road vehicles have kind of torn things up and and run through there over time So in terms of the habitat that's there. It's mostly sand right now. There's a couple of little islands and of palmetto and the scrub vegetation. It would involve some pretty substantial restoration to be able to bring that back up to a good habitat. And in going through the hierarchy with the other permitting agencies that we have to deal with, that wetland area in the other corner they felt was a higher priority to preserve than that scrub corner.

On this area, where are the scrub jays?

There are no scrub jays in this area.

I'm talking about going further to the left there. So there's no scrub jays?

There's no scrub jays, but the habitat type is called coastal scrub. So if we had scrub jays, it would be a habitat that they would be in, but there haven't been scrub jays in this area of the county in decades. Okay, thank you.

Mr. McDaniel.

Yes. One of the things Brad did mention was a fire buffer. And I'm not sure how you get there except for a large cleared space between the county's land and the development land. And one of the things I'd like to ask you is, have you put a provision? Because I know in several of our rural villages, we've put a provision of a written statement from the developer to the homeowner that you're in an area where controlled burns actually take place. And so are you going to, or will you stipulate that you will provide that written notification to a property owner?

We don't have that currently in the PUD, but I know what you're talking about.

We can take that from others and add that so we can let people know that there's... We did it in Longwater and Belmar in Big Cypress back in the day because of the Panther Preserve and all of the controlled burns. And as was said, we need to be able to burn the... preserved to the west of this so we just want the folks that buy a new home in here to be able to know that someone someone lit that fire potentially and they need and has to be provided in writing with their with their purchase agreements we can we can add the commitment we've done in others is that sufficient enough to cover everybody's bases on the legal perspective yes good

All right. Well, I see nobody else lit up. I assume the county attorney would take these two together for a vote? Okay.

I'll make a motion.

So do I have a motion?

I'll move to approve both items.

Second. I have a motion to approve and a second. All in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. All opposed, same sign, same sign. Thank you. The ayes have it. Thank you.

Commissioners, that brings us to item 11C. This is formerly 16A11. This is a recommendation to authorize staff to issue an invitation to negotiate to solicit a qualified development partner for the construction of housing that is affordable on county-owned property at Port of the Islands. This item was moved at Commissioner McDaniel's request. Mr. Cormack-Giblin, your Director of Housing and Economic Development is here to present or answer questions.

Afternoon.

Good afternoon, Commissioners. Again, my name is Cormac Giblin, Director of Housing Policy and Economic Development. Before you today is a direction to proceed with an ITN to offer the old hotel property at Port of the Islands out to bid for housing that is affordable. For background, this is a macro view of the Port of the Islands area. In the center of the screen right there is the old hotel property. Above it, our property is 6.86 acres. It was acquired on January 9, 2020, for a tax deed process that cost the county just over almost $1,300.00. We then invested about $388,000 to demo the hotel that had been standing there. And since then, we've spent almost $8,000 in mowing and upkeep on the property. In March of this year, the county manager received an unsolicited solicitation, a letter of interest from an affordable housing developer expressing interest in wanting to develop 100% affordable housing development on that property. Since then, we've received communications from other affordable housing developers as well that they would be interested in joining that process if the county were to make such a decision. Again, there's a zoomed in view of the property. It's been totally cleared and demoed and we've been mowing it for the past few years. Here are some pull quotes from the developer's letter of interest, saying that he's prepared to move quickly and looking forward to discussing next steps. In your executive summary staff has proposed some of the evaluation Criteria that would be included in the ITN that would include the total number of units delivered income targeting to some of the lower median income populations special targeted targeting for essential service personnel veterans and seniors and Leveraging state and federal dollars to the maximum extent possible as well as hurricane resilience and environmental

sustainability and with that commissioners our recommendation is that you authorize staff to issue the ITN for development of housing that's affordable on this property Commissioner McDaniel yes I requested this item be pulled predominantly because we got an unsolicited offer to develop it from an affordable housing developer I don't want to just put out an ITN based upon an unsolicited offer. I want us to solicit the property and market it in as wide of an avenue as we can and should, including a for sale sign on the site itself. And so sometimes when you're reading these things, we get herded down a path, and we're not always doing what I think we ought to be doing. So I just wanted to clarify that.

Mr. LaCastro?

Yeah, I actually would support that. I think healthy competition is good, so they're interested. They could bid on it. The question I had for you, Cormac, was have we done all the environmental mitigation? Do we have asbestos? I mean, we took a lot of stuff out when we tore down that hotel. Is that land good to go, or we would expect this person, whoever got the contract, if we moved in that direction, that they would still have some work to do? I'm just curious of the environmental health of that footprint. Do we know?

we haven't done that analysis we haven't done it okay okay and just to be clear on my suggestion it's open for everything not just housing understood okay so um and with that i'll make a motion for approval yeah a second commissioner hall i have one question i have a couple more people so let's just say that we put this out for bid and we don't get any offers that would be appealing to us

What amount of, I saw, it was very quick, it said that they would be willing to lease this property from us, but I didn't see any figures of what they would be willing to lease for.

Typically, what we would do is enter into a developer agreement and a long-term land lease. Similar to the situations we have with the Golden Gate Golf Course, affordable housing being developed on that, where we have a long-term land lease with a developer. Like a dollar a year? It is a dollar a year, yes. I wouldn't be interested in that. The public good out of that is that there's long-term affordable housing.

It could be the best deal we get, but we can't know that until we go through the motions. Correct.

Let's see what comes back. Commissioner Saunders. Yeah, and that was sort of where I was going to raise a couple questions. Are we looking to do an ITN for someone to purchase the property, or are we looking for someone to lease the property? I think that that would be the determination we'd have to make, or is it just throwing a piece of property out there and saying you want to lease it, you want to buy it, give us a proposal?

well with the original recommendation was to put it out for an itn to do a long-term land lease right so the county would retain ownership long-term uh with commissioner mcdaniel's change now i think that has changed to for sale or lease or bring your best offer commissioner that's that's what you intended was for that is what i open on any any type of a proposal absolutely sorry i just want to clarify that i don't need to explain it any further yes sir

All right. So, Commissioner McDaniel, you made a motion. I got a second. Can you just kind of verbalize exactly what the motion is?

I think Commissioner Saunders kind of did. I'm making fun of you. I can't remember what I had for lunch, let alone what I just said. Do you want Commissioner Saunders to do it again? Don't write that down, Terry. My motion for approval was to go forward with the ITN, but to open the property up for availability to all markets and all things, including the for sale sign on the property. I think we have an advertisement process through the clerk's office. I want to put out as many places as we possibly can.

Okay, and I have a second permission to pass.

How long would we do that for, Cormac? Is there a set time where we can make it?

An ITN is usually released for 30 days, depending on how many bids come back.

That's fine. So we'll wait and see what comes back, and if we think it's thin, we can...

Remember, the reason we acquired this property is it was for sale on the courthouse steps through the foreclosure. Nobody bid on it, and that's how we acquired it.

So I have a motion and a second. All in favor with the new language and moving forward with the ITN. All in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. All opposed same sign same sign. Thank you. Thank you.

Commissioners, that brings us to items 11D, 11E, and 11F. We're going to take these together. We can break them up however we need to, but Ms. Cook will be up with all of these various conservation collier properties. I'll read them in, and then we'll get started. Item 11D, formerly 16A8, is a recommendation to approve an agreement for sale and purchase under the conservation collier Land Acquisition Program with Lewis and Cynthia Alonzo for a 2.73 acre parcel at a cost of $76,440 for a total cost not to exceed $78,230 inclusive of closing costs. This item was moved to Commissioner Hall's request. item 11e was formerly 16a9 this is a recommendation to approve an agreement for sale and purchase under the conservation collier land acquisition program with dean van tran and luau the kim neigen for a 2.27 acre parcel at a cost of 150 000 for a total cost not to exceed 152 180 inclusive of closing costs again this item was moved at commissioner hall's request Finally, item 1611, I'm sorry, item 11F, formerly 16A15, is a recommendation to approve an agreement for sale and purchase under the Conservation Collier Land Acquisition Program with 1. Klaus Peter Michael and Marcia Adler for a 1.14 acre parcel at a cost of $28,160. 2. Heiner Gaviria for a 2.73 acre parcel at a cost of seventy thousand nine hundred eighty dollars three Robert L and Linda M Harden for a 2.73 acre parcel at a cost of sixty seven thousand four hundred thirty dollars and for Daniel Rivera for a 2.27 acre parcel at a cost of fifty nine thousand twenty dollars for a total cost not to exceed $232,300 inclusive of closing costs. Finally, this item was moved at Commissioner Hall's request. Ms. Jamie Cook, your Director of Development Review, is here to go through these at your pleasure if you want to take them however. She has them all moved into this presentation.

Commissioner Hall wanted to make a comment.

Yeah, I'll just sum it up for you, Ms. Cook. I brought these back, not because I just have heartburn about it, but I wanted to have a discussion with all of us, and we couldn't do that on the consent. Here we've got six properties that have worked their way through CLAC. They've worked their way through the A-list, and out of six properties, we've got almost 14 acres at a total cost of $460,000. It's going to cost us $26,000 in the first year to pull the exotics off and maintain it. And then after that, we're a minus $5,940 annually as a liability to the program. And that's the difference in the taxes that we're going to give up plus the annual maintenance. And so I just saved you from having to do the math. I am not opposing this program. I love Conservation Collier. Matter of fact, some of the things that we've purchased recently, I've gotten a lot of positive feedback. I actually want to honor the program. And I know that over the last three years, we've kind of fallen into a lulled approach of piecemealing properties, hoping to fill the gaps. And I feel personally like that is failing. You know, it's a novel idea and it's an honorable idea, but in reality, we're not filling the gaps. We've got a little property here, a little property there, a little property over here, a little property over there. Some of them are close. Most of them are wetlands. Most of them are not very desirable properties to build on, they're way out there, they're close to I-75, east of Everglades. They're here and they're there, and some of them are close to some of our preserves. Granted, that's true. But I just wanted to have a discussion. I feel like some of these properties have become an exit strategy for some of the landowners. If it was a good deal for all of them, these targeted protection mailings that we're doing, we would have a lot of response, a lot of interest to sell those properties. And the reason why I feel like it's an exit strategy for some of them is if you take a look at the offers that we have made, They've been rejected at the full, you know, we would come in at an aggressive 90% of the appraisal offer, and the sellers are rejecting it, and we're immediately jumping on the full appraised price to sell these properties. And if we're going as a board, if we're just going to decide, yes, we're going with this piecemeal approach, then I would like to challenge us challenge staff to negotiate for these properties if we're gonna try to piecemeal them then why not offer 50 cents on the dollar the seller can say yes the seller can say no but that's the sellers choice And then if we are to acquire these, we're acquiring them at a great value for a Conservation Collier program. We are going to incur the cost every year for everything that we purchase, and we need to be prepared for that. We are going to lose the tax rolls, the income off the taxes. You say, well, that's not very much. It's $500 here. It's $227. On these six properties, it's $6,000 a year as a swing. It's also that we're incurring, we got staff costs, we got appraisal costs, we have legal costs. We have a lot of costs that we have to prepare for these things and I just wanted to have a robust conversation, and if this is the direction that we want to continue going, then I'm going to have to swallow, you know, just suck it up. But without having the discussion, I don't know. If it was my business, I would not be handling my business like this. I would treat the taxpayer's money and the program's money exactly like I would want to treat mine. And with that, we get the CLAC. I'm highly disappointed in the CLAC. And I hope that they're listening because the CLAC is not acting to us, in my opinion, as an advisory board. They should be bringing up some of these points to us. This is a property that's available. However, this is, you know, This is wetlands. You know, it's it's our advice to this or our our advice had to went to me. The clack is acting as a conservation car, your sales board. They sell us on every single property that comes along, whether it's an acre point one five or whether it's 202,210 acres like Williams Ranch. I want to vote. I want to take these properties. I want to do it all at the same time. But I want to take them one by one. And if you want them, we'll get them. I'm not going to vote for any of them because I'm opposed to the piecemeal process. But we can just go one by one. And Mr. Chairman, you can call for the vote. but I think our job is to steward this program and to steward it better instead of just getting led down the road well we're here because of this or we're here because of that or now we have an appraisal the seller rejected our offer which was an aggressive nine cents on the dollar and now that we're back at full price they paid three grand for the property eight years ago and now now they're wanting fifty eight thousand dollars that's fine you can always want it But whether you get it or not, it's going to be up to us.

Mr. Saunders. uh thank you chairman could you uh just very quickly show on a map where each of these properties is i know commissioner hall said to go through these one by one ultimately i'd want to do that but i just want to see where where they are real quickly here sure um the the first parcel the alonzo parcel is in the panther walk preserve which is um east of everglades just south of the mockley road and on that it's in the red

yeah what is the gray and what is the green the green is property conservation Collier already owns and then the the bluish gray is the preserve boundary of the targeted properties that the program is trying to acquire okay and those were all individually owned yep all right what's the yellow one right there the yellow one an offer has been accepted but it hasn't moved all the way through the process yet um the tran property is in the i-75 everglades target area so it is just north of 75 east of everglades and the yellow triangles there indicate is the target the whole target protection area um and then the blue and green off to the right is the gore preserve on the other side of the canal And the green is what we currently have under conservation code the blue is what we like to have maybe or what's available Correct and then the four in the Gore Preserve this is one the Adler parcel these two are on this list for today and then this one down here in the bottom right

Where is the Gore House?

It is right about here.

Right about there, yeah.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Mr. McDaniel okay thank you Mr. Chair Commissioner Hall I don't I don't necessarily disagree with you but I think what we have is we have an ordinance that's been established for conservation Collier these TPMAs have been established by previous boards and organizations within conservation Collier And the acquisitions for these particular pieces or parcels gave us opportunities to acquire land and to assimilate aggregation of properties within these TPMAs. now I'll be the first one to admit I established the TPMA along Everglades Boulevard but it wasn't for a mile north and a mile east and west and somebody grabbed on to it because I wanted specifically the properties that were front and on Everglades Boulevard to ultimately be able to effectuate that wildlife crossing underneath Everglades Boulevard so Well my suggestion is We vote on these things individually as you have suggested. I like that number two We we make an adjustment because I I I read too much. I went into the appraisals on these sites There's another one that was there's another up up in the horse pen strand I think the one up there for 76,000 or something like that the appraiser i've never been to the property i haven't physically inspected the property i've only utilized aerials in order for me to determine the quality of wetlands if at all if it not this is an estimation on what i see based upon an aerial photo which is throwing a dart my vote is real appraisal with require the seller to come back with an environmental assessment of the property paid for by the seller at their expense here's what I know in the real estate business if you want to sell me a piece of property you have to provide me for with an environmental assessment and or I have to go get that environmental assessment and an environmental individual I don't want to call my friend an earth muffin back there but A real-life environmentalist goes out, walks on the property, does an assessment, and determines the amount of wetlands that are included. Once that's determined, then there's a cost, Commissioner Hall. There's a cost associated with mitigating if you want to disturb those wetlands. we associate that cost back to the appraised value, and that is a reduction in the sale price equivalent to what an open market transaction would happen between he and thee. And so suggestion is we move forward on these, because right now staff has rules. The rules are the ordinance that's in place now. We really can't deviate too awful much from what the ordinance in fact says today, move forward on the acquisition or not of these tracts, and then adjust, and every time I have a meeting with folks at Conservation Collier, yeah, we're working on redoing the ordinance, sir, we're gonna get that back to you, and I'm getting older every day, and I haven't seen that yet, and I wanna see that, and we have a meeting, and adjust that ordinance, and add in a component Because when you read the appraisals, it stipulates that the comparable analysis is the proper methodology, but they use these bulk comparables that are out here for the aggregate of the TPMA, and not specifics on the open marketplace one two there is no cost component with the necessary developability of that tract and the costs associated for the open market and then third as an adjustment to the existing ordinance commissioner saunders brought up a very bright idea quite some time ago and that was write that write that down terry he had a good idea at least once yeah purchasing easements on these tracks prohibits the development legalizes the expenditure of taxpayer money and cooperate with that seller to effectuate the positive attributes for the exotic removal and so on and so forth Both hands win. So I'm highly recommending that we really accelerate the redo of the conservation collier ordinance and get some of these things put in there so that our staff has better direction as they're bringing these properties forward.

Mr. Castro.

I realize these are in like environmentally sensitive areas like you say you got Cypress mixed hardwoods and all that are any of the properties any of the three slides also in the middle of the you know I guess what we would call like the wildlife corridor or anything is any of that part of what made them a list The Alonzo property in Panther Walk is part of that Florida Wildlife Corridor Foundation corridor area

does connect to private and other private and public conservation lands including Crewe and this one does have it does fall within the scope of the MOU that we have with the Wildlife Corridor Foundation that they would pay for half of this parcel That was the reason I was happy with that because half the purchase price was being laid off by and we had talked about cooperating with these outside organizations for these acquisitions so

I guess my follow-up too is, and this is maybe more of like a side question, do you think we have stringent enough processes, I guess I should say, to determine if something is A-list? It seems like, you know, When I first got elected and we were picking off a few conservation collier parcels, and I realize everyone's different, so I might be comparing apples to chairs, but it was always like, wow, it's filled with gopher tortoises. Oh, this is exactly where the panthers cut through. You know, it's like, you know, there's a parcel just in the middle of wetlands, you know, and I realize that there's some environmental protective value to that. But do you think, and then also here that the appraiser didn't even walk out there, I totally agree with that. I didn't pick up on that, and yeah, that's a real problem. But do you think that we have stringent enough? To me, when something made the A list, way back when it was like it jumped off the paper you know and b wasn't even close now it just seems like you know um property is available we appraise it the the owners want they take the money i'm not saying these aren't valuable pieces um but you know it just seems like we're getting more generic kind of things and they're making the a list is is that maybe and it's just um bad timing maybe we do we do have a stringent process what's your analysis of that

I struggle to speak to the program before I began overseeing it three years ago so I don't want to speak to what was done earlier I do think that during the staff review so there's a couple points to all this I do think during the staff review staff has become more discerning in what they would consider a list versus the C list We don't touch the appraisals. But a lot of these areas that you're seeing, especially these piecemeal parcels, the whole area was ranked on the A list. So to both Commissioner Hall and Commissioner McDaniel's points, these target areas were previously ranked on the A list. So these parcels are automatically just put on the A list when they come forward. when we bring you the target protection mailing areas item later this year probably over the summer I think that would be a good opportunity to really dive into those areas and determine what the program should be targeting

I'll just say that I've said before I sometimes do have reservations when we're picking off these little puzzle pieces and it doesn't seem like we're connecting anything but the last time you were in my office and it's been a bit but we you gave me a deeper dive because I wanted to know a little bit more about the parcels that were green there were some big green sections that used to be really tiny small green sections and now it looks like wow we own this big huge footprint okay that wasn't one purchase that was our predecessors over time that so sometimes when I do see a piece of green and it seems like it's out in the middle of nowhere and and I do struggle with it a bit then I also sort of think I know but if we don't if we don't get started on trying to pick off some of these things then we'll never own this whole piece and the spirit of the of the program is that eventually if this is an entire giant a-list footprint we're trying to acquire as much of it as possible and you know 10 commissioners from now in District 1 you would hope that there'd be hardly any blight blue gray on here i mean i know that that's the that's the goal so sometimes it's hard to see sort of the value when it's like oh yeah we bought this tiny little strip and then you know we might not buy anything for five years but correct me if i'm wrong some of those big huge green chunks that we that do fall under conservation calling now used to be a whole bunch of tiny little strips of green that eventually got pieced together correct

Absolutely and this one in particular didn't become a multi parcel project until 2023 so in three years the program has already acquired 20% of the goal Commissioner Hall

At the least, I wanted to say this too. If we're going to sell these properties or purchase these properties at full appraised value, I think that we ought to be requiring the seller to handle the first annual maintenance to clear the property or else put that money in escrow so it's not a burden on us to the program. We have to start thinking about how to do business better. Because right now, to me, all we're doing, yeah, we're getting the benefits of the property. It'll never have a house on it. The property doesn't have a house on it now. I would be willing to bet $1,000 in escrow that 50 years from now, that property still won't have a house. So as we do business better, if they want to sell it and they want the conservation collier program to be an exit strategy for them, then they need to pony up. We need to make some offers. And this would be beneficial to us if and when we ever got 20 of these lots next to you. That would be really beneficial to us. But right now, you're the lone ranger sitting out there. We're going to offer you 30 grand instead of $76,000. And it's Monday Night Football. You make the call. So that's just the way I think. And I could be all wet, but that's just the way I think. And we have to start thinking better business-wise because really what we're doing is we're just gaining a liability on the books. We're not getting any better benefits than what exists out there today, and we're just creating a liability. So I don't want to belabor it. We can move.

Mr. Saunders. Thank you. I've got a couple questions, and while I'm doing this, maybe Mr. Bosey can come forward as well. Just looking at the Alonzo parcel, because it happens to be on the screen now, is that part of Golden Gate Estates? Yes. Okay. Yes, yes. So it looks like there are surrounding this blue area or gray area it looks like there's some development I can't really tell from this area are there houses around there It would be single-family homes that aren't shaded There's an elementary school My question is in surrounding this these blue areas to the right to the left it looks like there's some development in that area are those houses Yes those are estate slots Those are estate lots. On the other parcels that are sort of in the wilderness there, are they kind of surrounded? Are they in the estates as well?

Yes, this whole area is zoned estates.

And there's some houses around those. All right. Mr. Bose, I asked you this question during a zoning hearing, that Golden Gate Estates appears to be one of the most rapidly developing parts of the county. Maybe it's the only part that's left to develop. But I think you said there are 9,000 lots that are left to develop.

I'm sorry seven Mike Bosie planning zoning director seven thousand seven thousand how many how many lots have houses on them in Golden Gate Estates right now just a ballpark number I think with within the rural Golden Gate Estates or all the states have lots we'll use all estates I think there's probably twenty one to twenty two thousand lots that have houses on them

in total okay and so you probably had you probably have 14 to 15 thousand okay how many of those had houses on them 50 years ago couldn't answer that question but I would say very little I know the only reason I said that is I may take that bet because what happens over time either one of us will be alive to pay it I know but we'll put it in our states and trust I used to live on 56 right there the reason I point that out is it's the I mean it's the obvious people are building houses out there and if we don't acquire this property over time people will build houses out there because people want to be out in the wilderness and and have space and this is relatively inexpensive property and so Give it time, I think these will develop. So I think the strategy of acquiring these lots perhaps is not a bad strategy as long as the lots we are acquiring are in some critical areas for either water flow or animal passages. And I'm assuming that in all of these parcels, that's one of the elements of review by the CLAC, is this part of a system that over time, if we're able to acquire this, that it's a valuable system versus, okay, just let it be developed. Is that fair? I mean, is that true of all of these different, I know it's true of the Gore property. Yes it's true for this one as well the Panther Walk Preserve protects the horse pen strand which is basically a wetland slough that runs from Immokalee Road South So these little blue shaded areas blue gray shaded areas are vacant lots right now Correct I'm gonna I'm gonna support the acquisition of these I think it's just it's a good strategy over time because I think if we don't do it there will be houses on these on these parcels

Mr. Hall. So let me just pose one question to you, Commissioner Saunders. Let's just assume, how long is this program still going? Six years? Seven years?

Through 2031, currently.

Okay. So we've got four or five years to go. Let's just say in those four or five years that we acquire twice the amount of property in the program than exists. So we've got 40% of the property. And then everything else in the gray, eventually there's houses that are built on them. What have we gained? Nothing. We've gained nothing unless we can gain the whole thing. And that's my point about the piecemealing.

Let me answer that. I'll answer that question. We're going to be collecting money for the next four or five years. The program doesn't end just because we stopped collecting money. When we finish collecting money, we probably will have, I don't know, $75 million, $80 million. There will be a large amount of money still available for acquisition. So the program will go on. much longer than the three or four years left to collect taxes. And quite frankly, this program has been so popular with the voters that in three or four or five years, we may want to put it back on the ballot again. It won't be Bill McDaniel and me, but it will be some of you guys may want to put it back on the ballot to continue this. But the program doesn't end just because we're collecting money.

It helps. It helps. Mr. McDaniel.

Yes, and I'm all for moving these forward. I mean, you have to remember, Commissioner Hall, even though our staff's all standing over there looking at us crooked, they're listening to what it is that they're saying. They're the ones that are working on the revamp of the ordinance for conservation, Collier. These properties have been brought. These properties have been brought to us under the current ordinance. We can't really deviate either other than voting yay or nay on the acquisitions as they have been brought forward. So my, my, and again, these TPMAs are established as flowways or corridors of travel. There's an east-west one that's going on right here on this Alonzo piece that goes over and into the 846 mine and across Immokalee Road and over into the huge preserve that's over on the west side of Immokalee Road. There's more to this than just that red dot that's in the middle right now. And the more we acquire, the less density. One of the nice things in Golden Gate Estates is there's an enormous amount of habitat that's already left even when someone buys buys a lot and builds a house the critters still move to and through the backyard even though there's a house there they get used to the dogs barking and so on and so forth so i'm i'm suggesting that we move forward on the vote on these acquisitions and that we give direction to staff immediately to ramp up the redo of the ordinance for conservation colliers so we can get some of these wants that we as a board want to get inserted into that ordinance effectuated and and commissioner we have been working on the portion to get rid of the b list so we've been working on that well and and into commissioner lacasse sort of comments with regard to a list b list c list we've already given them direction to work on the redo for the ordinance and eliminate the ranking of these sites it's either it either meets the criterion or it doesn't they bring it to the board or they don't so

Mr. Castro.

Yeah, I just wanted to add, and I probably said this before when conservation collier parcels came up, but I almost think they should never be on the consent agenda. I mean, this is a little bit longer of a discussion, but I think being able to be completely transparent. We're all saying this is a very popular program, people are really interested in it. Imagine if it wasn't pulled forward by Commissioner Hall or any one of us. I've pulled several conservation collier things off of consent and I wanted to vote for it but I wanted to be able to speak about it not just have it buried and then six months down the road you know citizens are all sending us emails going you guys don't do anything for conservation collier you know when's the last time you bought a piece of property and I don't know how many people are watching now but I just think there's value and that if you're ever going to bring anything here maybe my colleagues would disagree and say oh you're just making the meetings longer This one, we've done a deeper dive, but other ones, I remember the handful that I pulled off. It was a five minute discussion. It was, you know, we were able to see the slide, make it part of the official record, and it's not like these are two hour discussions, so that would just be my proposal. I don't think any of them should be buried on the consent agenda. I think we should always be talking about it. It allows us, look how we've sort of deviated into some different areas, which is really healthy discussion. We just came here to vote on this, but then it's like, this great idea about the program or hey I got a question about the CLAC so I think there's always value in pulling it off of the agenda and not having one of us pull it you know if you think there's something that's just so cut and dry that you know it's a no-brainer but I don't think any of these are no-brainers and I think you know part of the problem way back when was there wasn't enough discussion about the conservation collier program and there was probably some waste and maybe some things that were just you know purchased rubber-stamped I mean look what one of the things that came out of our discussion what a year or so ago where you know we were saying hey if a parcel is next to somebody's 10 million dollar home and they own the parcel maybe we don't get we don't pay them top dollar because now they have a they'll never have a neighbor so they get some big benefit you know and there was there was a lot of those things that came out of the discussion so don't want to make it up I'm not making it a motion or to vote on or whatnot but you know maybe it's just something for us all to think about that and conservation collier proposals to vote on maybe should always be somewhere towards the end of our agenda to briefly speak you always have it packaged so well that unless we talk too much like we're doing right now like I'm doing and everybody else did today it really should be something pretty pretty quick but at least it gives it exposure And then at times maybe catches something where we go, oh, wait a second. You know, this one sort of got through the clack and sort of a funky way. And all five of us have a few questions. So that would just be my thought.

OK, well, think about we'll work with the county manager on that.

Well, I agree with my colleagues up here, and I do, you know, I think taking a deeper dive, I think over the past three years, the amount of things we've discussed, I mean, everybody up here have good talking points about moving forward with this program, how we purchase these properties. I mean, just over the last three years, we've discussed things where, you know, we were taking the middle of the bid between three bids or whatever, or two bids, and taking the average and offering that. and we did purchase some properties at a lesser value than what they thought it was worth or what the hive bid was. Then we even got to the point where we were discussing that we were actually competing against ourselves because we were the only people buying the properties in some of these rural areas. using the uh the the cell prices that we were setting by our own own selves so this is yeah our comps was our own self was the comp so i think a lot of these things are healthy and to discuss these and you know it makes sense as commissioner castro said about you know just being buried on something we just wave our hand and i'll take a vote and everything's passed and nobody really takes a deep dive into it But like what Commissioner McDaniel was saying, I think there should be some skin in the game for the property seller, too. Because just as a private citizen, anyone else, you sell a piece of property, you know, you're the one selling it. There's certain things you have to provide, you know. And it seems like, as the government, we always just take, you know, it's like we're going to pay for it all. And I don't think that's the way we should look at it, you know. And if there is environmental, you know, piece properties worth something environmentally you know that would cost somebody to like we had the discussion will this be filled up in 10 years i don't know but is it possible yeah but if somebody builds something on this one of these gray lots that's still available they're gonna have to pay to have whatever environmental issues remedied So why would we pay for that at full price? You know, I think maybe we should have some sort of, you know, something. And when we get this ordinance, when it finally comes to fruition and comes before us, I think we do have to have a long discussion on what should be in the ordinance and how we approach this. Because I think maybe the cost should fall back on the seller on some of these things. Because I don't think we should have paid full price or something that we're gonna have to mediate with the tax dollars. So If we get a reduction in price and then Commissioner Saunders I think we talked about that about a year and a half ago about the you know buying the rights and the owner still owns it but it keeps it in perpetuity and it's still an environmentally sensitive piece of property and It still stays on the tax rolls But it's still protected. Let's vote. So I think there's a lot of things we can do. I know he wants to vote. Yeah, let's go. I didn't get to talk like you guys did.

You're the chair. You're supposed to let us talk. I did. All right.

So we're going to take these individually. So do I have a motion for 11D? make a motion for approval that's the alonzo piece that's the alonzo piece yeah second so i have a motion and a second all in favor signify by saying aye aye aye opposed aye okay there you go four one all right we got the 11e that is the this is the tram parcel make a recommendation to deny i don't have a motion for this one

I have a motion for denial. I'll second it. I have a motion for denial of this one. I heard you. Okay.

Mr. Chair. Over here, sir. Who said that? Oh. Sorry. Just wanted to make it aware that each individual item had two registered speakers on them on Jiminy Christmas.

I think that would have been good to know a minute ago.

Sorry about that.

So it was somebody on 11D? yeah i thought we were going to go through each of them individually with the presentation so that's funding but all right let's back up a little bit then tom are they the same two people for each one yes okay so it's the same two for each one i got you but we already voted on one without hearing this public's uh comments so well let's go ahead and hear uh comments from public before i move forward first speaker is brad cornell brad you want me to give you your speech

Or do you want me to give the speech that you're about to give?

I'd be happy to hear you give that, Commissioner Saunders. I'm Brad Cornell. I'm the policy director for Audubon Western Everglades. Mr. Chair, thank you for the opportunity to address you. If it's all right, I'm just going to lump the three together. That'd be perfect. Because that was kind of the temptation you all had. We're supportive of the purchase of all three of those, and there's a couple of themes I want to underscore that comes out of your discussion that you just had. One is that a lot of these parcels In fact, all of them for today are in the Golden Gate Estates, North Golden Gate Estates. This is a subdivided landscape that has lots of really valuable panther habitat and wetlands and flowways like the Horsepen Strand. And so important that you've got one organization, the Florida Wildlife Corridor Foundation, that's actually matching your conservation collier dollars. And so that's pretty significant. And I want to point out, for instance, the Panther WAP, let's see, that was the Alonzo parcel.

Yes.

When you protect that and you reassemble this subdivided landscape, you're providing for the opportunity to mitigate wildfire risk in Golden Gate Estates. Really, really important. No other agency has the capacity or the wherewithal to do what Conservation Collier and what you all can do in Golden Gate Estates, to reassemble these. with the exception of the 17,000 lots of Picayune Strand Restoration Project. That was a really unusual assemblage. You are the only ones doing that now. So that's why reassembling these subdivided landscapes is so important. The I-75 connection around Everglades Boulevard, that's a corridor between the Panther Refuge and your really large preserves in North Belle Meade. big quantities, you've got a couple of thousand acres in North Bellmead, and the Panther Refuge is 26,000 acres. In order for that to work, you've got to have the connection. We talked about that on the RLSA ILECO parcel. And then finally on the Gore Preserve, You've got two multi-parcel and two TPMA parcels on that. The Gore project has hundreds of acres already protected. This is a very successful project. You're adding to it in the Golden Gate Estates, again, for fire protection, for habitat, for panthers. and for the wetland restoration. So for those reasons, assembling small parcels is really, really important, and really only you all can do that. That's a unique role that this program plays over time. And Red Maple Swamp and Winchester Head are successful because of that strategy over the years. So thanks very much for supporting that.

Thank you. We have one other speaker, correct?

Yes, sir. Your next speaker is Tim Hall. Ah. Huh.

um good afternoon tim hall just speaking for myself this time hello um i wanted to uh to kind of echo a lot of what brad said i think that that because these properties and these areas that have this environmental benefits um have been subdivided in the past the only way that you're going to be able to put them back together is is one piece at a time like putting together a jigsaw puzzle i mean it's just gonna take time and and you know i think the commissioners need you guys need to have the the wherewithal to to have that long-range view that that every little piece that we get is going towards that that long-range goal um one of the things that that commissioner hall said was that about the properties not being desirable my business my job is to work with landowners to try to get permits for them to build their houses and i will say that i've been doing it now for over 25 years When I first started, if a property had wetlands on it, people didn't want to have anything to do with it. They wanted upland properties. Those were the easy ones to build on. Those were the cheapest ones to build on. As time has gone on, those easy properties have been built. So then, okay, it's got some wetlands on it. We can work around those. over time those properties have gotten rarer as well so now those these that are left with 100 wetlands those are the ones that we're starting to see people come in now to want to develop a lot of it now is about access they're going for these wetland lots that are closer in as those get developed they're going to start moving out further into the less accessible areas and you know i i would definitely take your bet that in 50 years that these lots are going to have houses on them

Thank you.

the legislature has also passed rules the mitigation banking rules now have made it easier for single family properties and all to develop these wetland areas the way that they look at the um the mitigation banks and the credits that are available versus the impacts that get proposed on some of these lots they've made it easier for people to come in and develop these wetland properties so i think in the next five or ten years you're actually going to see more and more of these wetland lots being developed if you have the opportunity now to protect some of these I would urge you to do so Thank you Commissioner McDaniel

So Mr. Hall how are you today? I'm well thank you Good to see you and I don't want to belabor the point but in general how much does it cost to do a wetland assessment on a two and a half acre tract of land just plus minus I'm not trying to pin you down There's a wide range but and the

the prices i know of they start at three hundred and ten dollars and they can go up to about fifteen hundred plus minus yeah plus it depends on location what the property looks like and again i preface that by saying i'm not trying to pin you down i'm just what i'm looking forward or looking for

I want that as a portion of our ultimate analysis as we're moving forward on these properties. Once we make that wetland determination, we could even go to contract. I don't want to take any more time. Thank you very much.

I would say with respect to that, having the sellers do the assessment is great, but don't rely 100% on that assessment. You've got to have your own people ground truth it. That assessment's being done on behalf of the seller.

I rethought what I had said earlier, and I thank you for that suggestion. And I was about to go into a litany on what we're going to do to fix conservation collier, and I don't want to do that litany until we fix conservation collier ordinance. So we'll just thank you.

thank you all right so those are two public speakers we have no more correct that's all sir okay all right so it sounds like both of them were in favor of purchasing the alonzo properties yes i guess our vote can stand on that one since we already jumped the gun so um on 11e and you had a motion not to correct and i had a second so all in favor or not Purchasing the property signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed, same sign, same sign. Opposed.

Aye.

Aye. 3-2.

3-2, no.

3-2, no. OK.

So F11.

Do I have a motion to purchase F-11? So moved. So I have a motion to purchase. I have a second. All in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed, same sign, same sign. Aye. All right, 4-1. That one passes. All right.

Is that it?

That's it for me. That's it for you.

Thank you. All right.

Commissioners, that brings us to item 11G, formerly 16A7. This item will require you to provide ex parte disclosure. This is a recommendation to approve commercial excavation permit PL202600002040 to remove 77,000 cubic yards of material from the Collier County Resource Recovery Park industrial planned unit development. This item was moved at Commissioner McDaniel's request. Before we go any further, we do need to do ex parte and also be sworn in by the court reporter. We'll start with the commissioners. Sorry. Commissioners, ex parte.

Commissioner Saunders.

I did have an ex parte communication with several people on this, all on our staff or other constitutional officers.

Commissioner Hall.

Same thing, correspondence with staff.

Commissioner LaCastro Same staff Same And myself staff Very good I don't know that we have anybody but staff but I suppose they still have to be sworn in so for anybody that is going to be participating we need you to stand for being sworn in by the court reporter Right. Mr. Deloney, your director of facilities management, is here to answer questions, present at your pleasure.

Who pulled this? I did.

Commissioner McDaniel.

You want to start it off? Yes. All right, why don't you go ahead and prove.

I'd like to just start it off by making a motion for approval. Okay. And then I have comments, assuming there's a second. I have a motion to approve, and I have a second. Okay. And under the comments section, the rationale for pulling it was there were In my world, people were making determinations on substandard and good dirt, bad dirt, good fill, not good fill. And then there wasn't, in what I could discern, there wasn't a good path going forward segregating how the disposition of our asset, which is the fill dirt, substandard or not, as to how it was incorporated into the contract. And I just would like, going forward, in the ITN process, because this all gets generated out here when we do an intent to negotiate, a little clearer delineation on what's in fact going to be expensed out as we're looking at, especially on aggregate, when we're disposing our own assets, I want it to be a little clearer. Not saying that it wasn't done properly, it certainly was, but that's the reason that I pulled it.

Any other comments? I know yesterday I had a phone call made out to you and just clarified that contractually it was basically in the contract written that way. Yes, sir. You confirmed that for me over the phone call. So we have a motion and a second. All in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Opposed, same sign, same sign. Thank you, Mr. Lund.

Commissioners, that brings us to item 15. Item 15A is public comments on general topics not on the current or future agenda by individuals not already heard during previous public comments in this meeting.

I do not have any further registry speakers.

For what?

Well Mr. Chairman why don't we just have her come on up Yeah I mean that's fine It's going to take him more than three minutes Yeah the same rules apply you have three minutes

I apologize I'm a little bit new with your procedures here and my name is Marcia Ellis for the record so since I drove up here from Lee County I don't know when I might be able to afford another tank of gas and I want to make the most of my time I did speak earlier regarding the uh rural land stewardship program and i just having learned more about it i wanted to weigh in a little more generally about the policy and some of the things that i heard so i continue to have concerns about what are the unintended i think but actualized impacts of that program I think the program is top-down planning, that it is benefiting the Eastern Collier property owners that own 80% of the large tracts that are out in this part of the county, and that they're controlling the process to their benefit and to the expense of the public interest. I believe that it undermines sound policy and planning practices that favor compact contiguous growth and redevelopment I'm concerned that this policy is perpetuating patterns of segregation by the denial of redevelopment funds in urban areas and also it prevents the update and maintenance of urban infrastructure in those compact contiguous areas It increases the taxpayer burden. And in Florida, Collier County ranks second for income equality and eighth nationwide. That's the difference between the most wealthy and the poorest people. I think this rural land stewardship policy is perpetuating that. in the 2023 collier county needs assessment the bulk of the residents in immokalee reported dissatisfaction with county maintenance and infrastructure I'm going to also say that due to lack of coordination when we push out into these rural areas among the other counties, in this particular instance it's Henry and Lee County, that we can anticipate an increase in fatalities on those roadways. And that pattern has been emerging through this period where we've moved away from coordinated regional planning. I also speak to talking about how to measure panther population because I have seen two panthers personally and three panthers have died 20,000 feet from my home. We did a suitability study in coordination with the Florida Gulf Coast University on gopher tortoises in Lehigh Acres, which is a highly carved up landscape. And so we were able to take the GIS overlay and look at the suitability of habitat and the likelihood that the species would be found in those locations. So we were applying some methodology and some technology to try to determine that because there was a permitting gap. We didn't have a mechanism to enforce the law. Oh, I'm sorry. So I'd be happy to speak more about that. Thank you very much for your attention.

Well thank you for visiting from Lee County No other speakers?

No other speakers sir

commissioners item 15b staff project updates we do have one update this is the paradise coast sports complex schedule update and project status phase three for field nine and again mr brian deloney your director of facilities management is here to go through the brief presentation good afternoon yeah good afternoon brian deloney facilities director today i'll provide a brief update on paradise coast sports complex with focus on phase three specifically field field nine

So I'll start with going back over the phases, even though I know y'all are all very familiar with this. So phase one and phase two are complete. Phase three is really the next major effort, and then the phase four and phase five are the future efforts. And we got the map updated, Commissioner McDaniel.

Good. Thank you.

Yes, sir. so what we've been really focused on since we had the settlement agreement with manhattan and you can see by this isn't even all the projects we performed out there we've been fixing non-conformances out there we've been closing out the permits but that's been our real main focus our real our last main permit the south florida erp was actually closed out the 8th of this month So we have completely finished out that construction portion and permit function associated with phase one and phase two at this point. While that's also been going on we've been maintaining the facility this is a really high used facility we've had approximately over the last year 550 work orders about 4,100 hours of manpower spent out there along with some focused upgrades that we've done up there such as the air conditioning in the in the training rooms we've really spent a lot of time of keeping this facility up to date in good shape Our next major effort out there is this phase three. And as you can see from this print, you know, really we're talking about building 18, which is the restroom and the field nine down there on the south side. this shows an aerial overlay of of those areas with building 18 located right here which is the restroom and then the field nine and associated pavilion parking lot being located there For building 18, this is the restroom facility. It really supports fields five through eight. The scope currently includes updating the design. We had previously had some design on this, but there's a new building code out and we need to update the design. This facility will also support the expansion into phase four. It'll have the IT infrastructure room associated with it. Then it'll be the adjacent pathway along with the building. approach here is a design bid build we're going to be utilizing Jacobs to do the engineering through our professional service library and then we use our GC contract to perform the work here the schedule associated with this is to get this completed in q4 2027 this is another aerial showing you know where the building lies within in a little closer view a little different view and then the fields five six seven and eight the big portion of this and the main focus is is the field nine completion so uh The scope of this will include artificial turf, the drainage, especially systems associated with the drainage, the granite rock, scoreboard, the parking, the lighting, the landscaping, the prefab pavilion, and then the connecting pathways. The approach here for Field 9 due to, one, the total cost of it and to expedite getting it done is we're going to be using a design-build function to get this done. this is based on qualifications and value it avoids a separate action procurement action for construction and it also allows during the execution a little overlapping of the phases current statuses we've also have Jacobs retained for this to put the design build package together part of that main scope of that is is when we stop the contract with the last construction manager there was infrastructure installed in that area such as the field lighting some of the stormwater the hydrants the irrigation along with the purchase of a lot of the materials such as the turf the infill the goal post the netting so there's a big function of the getting the design build package ready by inspecting that surveying that and making sure all that's in good condition so we can include what we need to in the scope for the design build bid the current schedule for completion of this is q2 2029. right here shows essentially where building 21 will be the pavilion um and with the field uh adjacent to it you can see from the print there this is a little bigger than just a standard field the whole area that's underneath the pavilion and adjacent to it will be turfed as well with the parking surrounding it and the pathway connecting on down from the northern parking lot mr delaney what kind of surface is under the pavilion So it'll be turf. The turf will extend underneath the pavilion as well.

Mr. Saunders.

Thank you Mr. Chairman the reason I wanted to have a discussion on this is I know nothing about construction or anything and how long it takes to do these things and I needed the education and I appreciate it what sort of got to me was the Q2 of 2029 completion date for the for the field and I just thought can it really take us three years to A field and from what I've been told there are lots of things that have to be acquired that extend this time period and I thought maybe a brief discussion on how can we expedite the permit not the permitting but the actual contracting process when you go out for design build is there a way to shorten the time period that we normally take because I understand that that could take six months or a year and then the other thing I was told is that there are certain items that have to be acquired there's granite for the field the sub layers substrate and that this is a specialty type of granite that we have been purchasing from Mexico and that there's like a 12-month lead time to to get that material I thought well can we order can we go ahead and purchase that sure we must have some idea how much we would need because we've been building a lot of fields maybe something like that would help shorten the time period so those are just questions it may not be technically possible it may not make any sense but I thought you know let's at least talk about how we can help you perhaps cut some of the time off because it just seemed like three years being a novice and not anything knowing anything about construction it just sounded like three years to build a field it just seemed like a lot And I realize now there's a whole lot more to this than just the field.

And I would like to just bring it up, the fact that you're talking three years from today's date as the question. bringing now before you but we i think we approved this over a year ago or about a year ago so i mean this particular exact project we approved so you got to add a year on the front end of this date so we're looking four years from approval so my question is and i brought this up the county manager the other day when i had my one-on-one is What would the difference be if we made the field itself grass other than turf? Because I know the soccer team and some other interests of bringing other events in or bringing actually pro soccer players in for exposition, they will not play on turf because of the injury factor. what would the cost be to just say you know what let's have one filled grass now that we have the opportunity to build it the last soccer field so we can bring these other entities in and maybe bring a little bit more money back to the community with the investment versus waiting for some mexican granite rock to put underneath the ground with the turf and all this other stuff we're looking at is there is there a possibility that would expedite the building in the field

So I'll start with Commissioner Saunders' question first and the long lead items. That sort of goes into what I talked about, the design build, right? We ought to be able to go a little bit out of sequence, out of phasing there. So while the design is finishing, right, we can put in within the proposal or the request for proposals we send out that they're required to order the long lead materials while the design is finalizing. we could purchase the rock we could purchase the drainage we could purchase the building which should be able to be established pretty rapidly before the permitting is complete so we wouldn't have to do a direct purchase but we could put it within that that proposal that they have to go out there and purchase that early and uh commissioner call you raised an excellent point in terms of the

for grass field because what kind of got me interested in this doing this field moving this along was we were told by Roberto the FC Naples team that there had been a request from some of the professional teams I think there was one from Argentina that wanted to actually do some practicing in Collier County but when they found there was no grass field that would accommodate them they said well we can't come here so the thought was maybe by having a grass field at some point that we would have that would open up some other opportunities I don't know if this would be the right place for a grass field, but I'm just saying that you've got an excellent idea or point because we've had that discussion in the past about the benefit of having that. Maybe we don't really care about that aspect of it. Maybe we want these all to be artificial.

it sounds like there may be some ways if this stays as an artificial field turf field that there may be some ways to shorten that time period it sounded like that's what you were guessing we've kind of taken that into account already that we could we could do that out of sequence that's why we wanted to go with the design build procurement speaking to the grass field though And it's a little tough to answer one because this was previously permitted through South Florida with a turf field. So I don't know exactly how it impacts the amount of water storage because there's water storage underneath those fields within the rock within that infrastructure. far as cost it would reduce the cost when some of my main key numbers associated with cost is the CCNA Act which is basically the professional services I'm limited to seven and a half million of amount of construction that i can do underneath the professional service library once i get below that i get a little more nimble as far as being able to design this so i think probably from switching from a turf field to a grass field we could start getting below that 7.5 million and make us a little more nimble, at least on the engineering side. We would still need to solicit out the construction via formal solicitation, which does have a longer time frame, but it's much shorter than professional services.

And do you know offhand how often we have to change the turf when we use the turf fields? I mean, when they get a certain life to them and then you have to You happen to know offhand?

I mean, I just know what I've read, Commissioner. They've talked about, you know, 15 years that those fields can go, but you do have to do some maintenance, you know, in between that.

Okay. All right. Any other questions? Do you want to say something, Mr. Frank?

Does he not?

I'm sorry for my voice too much hockey game so we're seeing about seven years out of these fields removal of the artificial turf to go to grass field would likely result in a full modification to your ERP those rules have changed so that's going to make the entire site subject As Mr. Deloney did point out that there would be some storage of water underneath of that under that field, as it's currently anticipated for design. And permitting the other alternative and again. Talking about saving money, grass is the way to go. But you do have a resting period where that field would be out seasonally, especially during the off season or the lack of rain where you've got to let that grass recover, get resotted. And we see these fields go for somewhere between $70,000 and $85,000. And that could be seasonally when we have to replace the sod, depending upon how much use it occurs. yeah i know we do that with some of our baseball fields now in july usually we do the restoration of them so and and uh just one last thing i promise is that we did have mr finn and i did have bob out uh mr merino uh and daniel uh i think daniel middleburg uh their vp he was the only one that could make it but we introduced them to north collier regional park daniel had never been there and as a result of that now they're running the fc naples soccer camp for the kids at north collier and he did indicate to mr finn and i that north collier regional park in our grass fields there may very well accommodate some of the european players that would want to come here or even the maybe future world cup teams that would want to come to the states to practice on those grass fields okay

Thank you.

Mr. Saunders. Thank you Mr. Chairman. I think we should stick with the plan to have the artificial turf field and then I would ask Mr. Deloney let us know what we can do to help make this a little quicker you know if there's some modification or if there's something that we need to do in terms of the competitive selection anything we can do to shorten that construction period.

Yes, sir. I mean, I can guarantee you there's nobody who wants it done quicker than I do. It's frustrating, you know, from a guy that does construction to see these things take so long to come in fruition.

Thank you. No other questions. Thank you for the report. Yes, sir. Thank you. All right.

Commissioners, that brings us to Item 15C, Staff and Commission General Communications.

I have nothing else. County Attorney.

Nothing else. Mr. Saunders.

i do not have anything either mr chairman just uh look forward to our first meeting in may commissioner hall uh nothing to add i did want to say when brad was here and he was talking about the bears in district two most of them have gone home mr castor nothing from me thank you

Mr. McDaniel oh yes Commissioner McDaniel had something to say oh just hang on all right number one you told me to speed it up you told me to speed it up a minute I did you were making it we're not going to go there I'll tell you later number one there's an issue that's been brought before me I know the property owner I know this lawyer Conservation Collier, and I know we're talking about a rewrite of that ordinance, Conservation Collier has a set of rules, and our staff that works within Conservation Collier reads their rule book, and when they hit the end and they can't go any further, they say no. And I would like to give consideration to allowing our staff to go past the praise value and allow for the property owner to talk to us about those values. I'm not saying it's good or it's bad. It's just that there is some substantive information that the seller has that he's not been able to present to us and that property can't come back to the board. So in this instance, I'd like to, it has to do with a piece of property out east of 29, and I'd like to at least allow, this kind of as a test run, allow that property owner to come before us to make a presentation. How do you feel about that?

I have no objection to that.

I'll whip up an agenda item and see if I can get them in. Then we'll worry about whether or not we let staff do that going forward or not. Number two, the ongoing saga of the Immokalee Airport and the racetrack. the racetrack, who ends at the end of the month, can no longer do any more races after the end of April. They have asked for a lease extension on a smaller piece of property, about three acres over to the east of where they're at now, because they have those big, I don't know if you've ever been there, but they have big concrete blockades and that sort of thing, and they need, they would like, I would like to offer them lease extension for the full amount of what they're paying us now for the area that they're using but only for that three or four acres and Up to 90 days no more than 90 days and they pay in advance for the entire 90 days before we grant the extension I don't know if they're gonna agree to it or not they they called me last Friday to use the three acres what the store their equipment I mean they've got a lot of stuff there there's a start booth and there's yeah other things and this it's about three acres that won't inhibit what we're doing with the development of the north half of track a and then the balance of track D and It won't impact any of that, but it's just giving them a space. But I'm not living with them paying us every month and us hoping we get a check. If they agree to this, they're going to pay in advance for that three-month period, and it will be segregated off. And it extinguishes their lease of operations, but it's necessarily a new lease for this little area over here. i'm not opposed to letting them have a little lay down area to store their equipment until the time comes they get it off the property or whatever i've dealt with these these folks a lot and sometimes things get misconstrued but this is very clear yes you can release this space for up to 90 days pay in advance if you want to pay if you only want it for 60 days pay in advance for 60 days i'm going to give staff that latitude to negotiate that But under no condition are they allowed to continue to do races after the end of April.

Is there anything officially we have to do for that, or is it just draw that up?

We just waved the magic wand and Trinity's saying yes, correct? Okay. Okay, you got that, Trinity? Okay, and then number three, I'd like to make a suggestion. When we orchestrated the Randall Curve piece and the residential and commercial and then the swap for the land at Wilson Boulevard, everybody's really happy that Tractor Supply is at the corner of Wilson and Immokalee Road. We came up, the county came up with 10 acres of land in that transaction at Wilson and Immokalee. I'd like to make a proposition to have staff bring us back some suggestions on the utilization of that. And one of the utilizations I would like to see is an eastern DAS facility, primarily for evacuation and larger animal housing on that 10 acre land. okay with that chris what are you talking to him about you have to look you guys fall on that i was writing the news i said no racetrack no i quit okay are you okay with having them come back and talk to us about that that's a good idea yeah i like that it's that that's an area as we all know it's growing we have a we have an enormous need for evacuation folks to be able to have and house it so it'll be a cat 5 facility and it's 10 acres so we have enough room to house larger animals.

You're talking about the county constructing a Cat 5 hurricane shelter there, or just for the animals?

Just for the animals. I mean, if it comes back that there's a Cat 5 hurricane structure there, we'll worry about flipping the coin and figuring out how we're going to pay for all that. The suggestion is I want to elevate it so the staff can come back and give us some options for a future date to discuss.

Yeah, and an area for folks to move horses for example, is really needed during this recent brush fire situation. There were I don't know how many horses were moved, but there were a lot of horses moved out of the way to other private locations. And this would would certainly solve that problem.

Yes, sir. and then last but not least this is just a point the finger at somebody there's been a firehouse built on desoto boulevard called station 74 that i was a young man when it was proposed that it would be open not a young man any longer and it's still not open and i would like to know specifically when it's going to be i've been at i remember at a town hall and i'm not chirping i know things happen but i had a town hall that i had last year i was i was told within 60 days of that

So Brian Deloney, facilities director. Right now we're looking at the second week in May. Second week in May.

And could you give me a brief, because these guys are done, a brief discussion on why we haven't opened it yet?

so it's associated with one the fire pump and two the permit close out um we've had a ongoing saga associated with the fire pump and and fitting it down the well and then being able to get the controllers in for the revised fire pump that could fit down the well and it being a long lead item. We have purchased a temporary controller and had to buy a different disconnect and get FPL. I'm really sorry I ask why.

You're doing good. But for the record, second week of May.

Yes, sir, that's what we're looking for right now.

I'm down with that. Okay, thank you. That's all I have, Mr. Chair.

Oh, number five?

I probably could dig one up.

Well I got a correspondence from Mr. Holliday at NCH most of us know who he is he didn't want a proclamation but he did want us to draft a letter of recognition to celebrate the National Nurses Week May 6th through the 12th so I took it on my half to author a letter on our behalf so I figured I'd just ask you guys before I signed it and send it off if you're in support of it or not

Absolutely. Did you use AI? Yes, for sure.

Big dashes and everything. That's how you know it's AI. Who proofed that letter? Yeah, I was going to say. The guy I'm buying the Mexican marble from. All right.

Well, I don't think we see all support. All right. I'll sign it and send it over. Good to go.

All right. Other than that, I enjoyed almost a full day's worth of work with you fellas today. My goodness.

It's been a long lunch. Let's go.

All right, we're adjourned.