City Council - Regular Meeting

We're ready, yeah.

Well, good morning.

It is a beautiful day in Lake County. It is June 23rd, 2026. Welcome to the Lake County Board of County Commissioners meeting. I am not the typical chair. Chair Campione is out today, but she is with us. She's just not here in person. So I'll be filling in as the vice chair. I'll try and do a good job today. We're going to start, as always, as tradition with our invocation. And today we have Pastor Michael Watkins. If he could please come forward and lead us in our invocation, and then we'll remain standing and we'll have our pledge.

Good morning to you all. In my younger years, I didn't quite understand why people were always excited by saying good morning. As I get older, I'm grateful for another day. Let us pray. Oh God, how thankful we are for another day you have given us that we can live and respect each other and love each other and make our cities, our counties, our states, and our country better. So I thank you for the County commissioners. I pray for their families and loved ones. I pray Lord God, as they make decisions, it would be for the better of the residents of Lake County. Lord God, I pray for the residents that may be coming with issues that they need help with. And I pray Lord God that you will bless them. So, Lord God, we thank you for our country. We pray for our military and all those who are protecting us, our police officers. Lord God, we ask you to bless this meeting. Let it be done decent and in order. And I pray, Lord God, as we prepare to celebrate 250 years of the United States, I pray you'll bless us as we come together celebrating. And I pray this prayer in the mighty, wonderful name of Jesus. Amen.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Amen. Y'all have a great day.

Thank you, Pastor. Chair Campione, can you hear us? Just want to do a check before we get into the meeting.

Yes, can you hear me?

We got you. Loud and clear, okay, thank you.

Thank you, appreciate that.

All right, so we'll go to an agenda update. Jennifer, is there anything new for us?

Yes, I just wanted to point out that at the previous board meeting, the board did approve for Commissioner Campione to vote remotely, so she will be participating and voting today.

Okay.

And no other updates.

No other updates, all right, thank you. We'll now go into a very special time of the meeting for us, our Employee Service Awards. So Janine, you come forward and tell us about our great employees.

Good morning, Commissioners. Good morning, Vice Chair. My name is Janine Nelson. I'm with Human Resources and Risk Management. This morning, you'll be recognizing employees who have reached significant milestones in their careers with Lake County. We're going to start with those who started in May of 2021, five years. Sean Baudet, Parks and Trails Program Manager from the Office of Water Resources. We have Ethan Blanton, Firefighter Paramedic, Fire Rescue. Megan Milanese, Emergency Management Director, also Office of Fire Rescue. Public Works Engineering Operations, Larry Sutton, Survey Technician II. Would those individuals stand please so we could recognize them? Thank you. Moving on to 10 years of service, started in May of 2016, Office of Fire Risk Group, Blake Calder, Fire Lieutenant Paramedic and Public Works, Maintenance Area 1 Leesburg, Michael Sparkman, Road Senior Equipment Operator. Michael, you want to stand up? Thank you. I'll read the names of those with 15 years of service, started in May of 2011. Mark Gatto, Fire Lieutenant EMT, and Jason Spinelli, also Firefighter EMT from Fire Rescue. Then we also have a 20-year employee, May of 2006. She's on vacation, was not able to be with us today. December Souders, Scales Attendant 2. So let's give those employees a round of applause. Thank you. This concludes our presentation for today. Thank you very much.

All right. Thanks, Janine. All right. So now we'll go to our minutes approval. We'll call on Mr. Cooney. Good morning, Mr. Cooney.

Good morning. I have two sets of minutes for your approval this morning.

Move to approve. Second. Okay. All those in favor of the motion, say aye. Aye. Opposed? There are none. There are none. That passes unanimously. Okay. So we will go to our citizen question and comment period. This is your opportunity to speak for three minutes on an issue or whatever you want, I guess, assuming it's not on a zoning agenda. We give separate time for that when that comes up. So is anybody, let's go online first. Is there anybody online that's filled? Okay, all right. So I'll come back to the cards that I have here in front of me. And we'll start with Vance.

If I'd known Leslie was not going to be here, I would have worn my Leslie shirt so you could make sure she was around. Vance Yokum, 12619 Milwaukee Avenue, Tavares. Just quickly, this is on the one on minutes. And I noticed that the minutes take forever to get produced and published on the agenda. I looked here, the closest one was 40 days old. And I would suggest on the day of AI transcriptions, you can even put the video of this meeting on YouTube and it transcribes it. and you have one, maybe it's not completely legal, but it would suffice for us that want to see what the minutes were. So I would encourage you to look at ways to update the minutes faster and produce them. In my mind, they should be produced the next following meeting. They should be available, which means they'd have to be done in about a week so they could get on the agenda. Okay, and the other two are on the agenda, so.

We'll call you up then. Thank you, Vance, and I will just say that, you know, you've asked that question before, and I know the clerk, I think, does an excellent job on the minutes. They don't, I don't think they, maybe they use AI, I don't know, but they would not want to double, they'd want to double check that. So I think the timing is being thorough, which they always have been, and that's why it takes longer.

Actually, you guys have a two-step process. So the things that would qualify legally as minutes are produced generally the same day or the day after. to meet statutory requirements. You guys have asked us to give you, not verbatim, but fairly close to verbatim minutes. They get produced and then double checked to make sure there are no errors, which is why it takes a little bit longer in that process. And I think the idea behind that for you is that you wanted to preserve the record for all of the citizens to come. I know, Mr. Vice Chairman, you've asked me for the first year of minutes of the county. And so if you just read what the state would require as minutes, that probably wouldn't give you a really good feeling of what was really going on in the county. And that's why you have the process you have.

That is true, yes. And those were very interesting minutes, the first year of this county, and the handwriting, too. You don't write out the minutes in handwriting, do you?

Well, I could, but you wouldn't be able to read it.

Yeah, yeah. We appreciate what you do. Thank you for explaining that. All right, our next comment card is from Pedro Diaz. Pedro, I see Pedro in the audience.

Good morning. Good morning, Vice Chair. Good morning, Madam Chair and Honorable Commissioners. I had a quick three-minute speech here prepared for you guys. My name is Pedro Diaz, and I am the owner of Fumao Restaurant. Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to speak today and for your service to the residents here in Lake County. I'm here today to ask for your support in proclaiming the last Sunday of June as Lake County Croqueta Day. To many people, a croqueta is a simple, delicious Cuban snack, but to me it's so much more. It's family, it's tradition, memories. It's a reminder that some of life's greatest moments happen around the table with people we love. My grandparents left Cuba in search for a better future and eventually made their made Miami their home. Like so many Cuban families, they brought with them their traditions, recipes, values, and incredible work ethic. Those traditions were passed down from generation to generation, and they helped shape the person I am today. The man who had the greatest influence in my life was my grandfather. While my parents worked, he was the one who picked my cousins and myself up every day from school. He taught me the value of hard work, humility, and perseverance. When I was younger, I used to DJ. I didn't have enough money for a case to hold my DJ equipment, so he built one for me by hand. He never had much, but he always found a way to give me everything he could. My grandfather was born July 3rd, and when we first began planning Fu Mao, the restaurant, our goal was to open on his birthday as a way to honor his memory and everything he taught me. As construction progressed, our open date became this Sunday, June 28th, the last Sunday of June. Looking back, I truly believe it happened for a reason. It gave us the opportunity to be here today and ask you to help establish a new tradition for Lake County. Last year, my family and I moved here from Miami to Lake County. We now call this community home, where we're raising our three beautiful daughters. We chose Lake County because we believe in future, its people, its strong sense of community. Fumao is our way of giving back to this community, the community that welcomed us with open arms. We hope to share not only great food, but also a piece of our family's history and Cuban heritage with our new Lake County family. If approved, this proclamation won't simply recognize a restaurant. It will celebrate family, culture, entrepreneurship, and the traditions that bring people together. It will support local small businesses and create something that residents can look forward to. FOR YEARS TO COME. ON BEHALF OF MY FAMILY AND OUR TEAM AT FUMAO, AND ESPECIALLY IN MEMORY OF MY GRANDFATHER, I SINCERELY THANK YOU FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION. IT WOULD BE ONE OF THE GREATEST HONORS OF MY LIFE TO CELEBRATE OUR GRAND OPENING THIS SUNDAY WHILE CELEBRATING THE VERY FIRST LAKE COUNTY CRUQUETA DAY. THANK YOU, GUYS.

THANK YOU, PEDRO. I APPRECIATE THAT. I WOULD JUST LIKE TO SAY I KNEW YOU BEFORE, BUT HAVE GOTTEN TO KNOW YOU IN THE LAST WEEK OR SO A LOT BETTER. Really appreciate our conversations, and again, for all of you in the audience and those listening, Fumau is gonna be opening soon in Claremont. It's gonna be a wonderful business, so welcome very much. We wanna extend a warm welcome to you, I guess is what I'm trying to say, from Lake County. I think all of us will agree on that, into South Lake as well. And so what I plan to do is personally come to your opening this Sunday. I will read into a letter of appreciation just from District 2 to you as well. And I think maybe we have some thoughts about how to honor Cuban culture broadly even and the influence and the everything that's been done to build community from the Cuban community itself. So we'll find a way to be able to, I hope, honor that as well broadly as the county commission. Anything?

Oh, just, yeah, we support it. We'll pass the proclamation at the next meeting, so great job.

I think, yeah, I think what we can do is we can write up a resolution. We still would have to approve it as a county commission, and then we can read that and bring that forward to you, yeah.

And I'm just checking in on timing. Commissioner Parks?

Yes.

from a timing standpoint can we get that together in time for the opening or should we just um you know all sign a letter of support um and then we'll bring the proclamation forward thereafter i think we could all sign a letter of support i'm looking at melanie because melanie will help us follow procedures but i think we can

Right, so the opening is this Sunday, I believe. So you certainly can't do a proclamation today. I don't have one drafted for you to look at. We can certainly draft a letter of recognition that you all can sign if you would want to do that today.

Just to be very clear, a formal proclamation that's drafted and read and all that, we can do that next month. But for the purpose of today, I would move just to proclaim and recognize the last Sunday of this month as Croquette Day in Lake County, Florida.

Okay. Do I hear a second on that?

Second.

Okay.

All right. Any other discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor of the motion say aye. Aye.

Aye.

Opposed? There are none that passes unanimously. So we'll be able to proclaim that on Sunday at your grand opening. So, Pedro, thank you for coming down like this. Appreciate you. And good luck with the new business. Thank you. All right, I don't have any other cards, I don't think. These are all for agenda items. So when we get to those agenda items, I will call your name. So we'll move on to, there's nobody else online, correct? Okay, what would you, you'll have to come forward. What are your names? Okay, yeah, just come on forward now, sure. If you need to go, that's no problem. You can speak on, no, that's, understand, understand.

Thank you, my name is Nicole. Good morning, Commissioners. I'd like to thank Commissioner Sabatini for bringing this very hot topic of the AI data centers to this meeting. Far too often, actions are taken after the fact, and I wanted to commend this county for an instead approach for more of a proactive approach. I'm asking that this panel stand in support of banning of the AI data centers for this county. Where AI may have some benefit, we must carefully consider whether building additional large-scale AI data centers is in the best interest of our communities, our environment, and our long-term goals as a county. This is a hot topic around the state and the United States, and we're seeing a lot of issues with this. AI data centers can consume enormous amounts of electricity As AI systems become more powerful, their energy requirements continue to grow. This places an additional strain on our electrical grid and can increase costs for residents and businesses. At a time when many communities are working to improve energy efficiency and reduce emissions, it is important that we recognize there are real concerns on how this may impact our community. Another important part to mention is that data centers often require substantial water sources for cooling. and considering how high temperatures are in Florida, we must consider the water availability within our county and our state. Committing large volumes of water to industrial infrastructure may create competition with residential, agriculture, and environmental needs. Economic benefits are frequently overstated. While construction creates temporary jobs, modern data centers are highly automated and generally employ relatively low amount of people once operational. Communities may bear the environmental and infrastructure impacts without receiving a proportional number of permanent high quality jobs in return. And lastly, we should consider land use and the community character. Florida has continued to become so overly developed and protected lands are becoming compromised. Large industrial facilities can alter landscapes, increase noise from cooling systems and backup generators, and place additional demands on local infrastructure. Before approving these projects, decision makers should ensure that the benefits clearly outweigh the costs. Although innovation is important because responsible growth is also equally important, we should not assume that every AI data center proposal serves the public interest. Instead, we should demand rigorous environmental review, transparent cost-benefit analysis, and strong protections for local communities before moving forward. So please stand with your communities in banning the AI data centers for this county Thank you for your time and consideration, and thank you for letting us go early. Thank you.

Thank you. Appreciate you coming. Yes, sir. Go ahead.

Good morning, commissioners. My name is Justin. Thank you for having me today. I also just want to thank Commissioner Sabatini for bringing this forward. It's a very important issue to us. It's not just the energy and the water concerns, but mainly that 24-7 low-frequency hum that everyone's reporting in the other states. It's keeping the residents up all night, and it's just mind-blowing that they've put these things so close to the wildlife and residents. Just thank you to Lake County for leading the way on this, honestly. You've got 10 other counties and cities that have already taken action, and I believe five more are voting on it today, including yourself. So that's really encouraging to see. The most refreshing thing has been the unity across party lines. So many times I've come into meetings and it's been, you know, one side's on this side of the issue and the other on this side. So far in Lakeland and other cities, you're seeing people from every walk of life inside of the political spectrum speak out against these centers because I think we all care about what untouched land that we have left in our communities. So thank you for the moratorium. I'd be happy to see you all explore even a permanent ban on this. And the other thing I just want to mention is let's go ahead and look into every little piece of this sort of control grid that they're implementing in our lives, like the flock cameras. I don't know if you have any in Lake County yet, but they're spreading across Florida. And it's just a... collecting data and spying on us on our public right-of-ways. You know, it's one thing to have a private company have really high-tech cameras and spy on anyone that comes near their private business, but to use our easements, and every time I drive and go to Publix, my license plate and my face is being registered into some database, and we don't know what they're using that for. So thank you for stepping up on the data centers, and let's just continue to take down all these little mechanisms that invade our privacy and affect our health. Thank you so much.

Mr. Chairman, if I can just clarify for the residents and for the record, the agenda item today on data centers is not an adoption or an approval. It is discussion only. If the board chooses to move forward with it, then staff will be bringing back more information and a potential ordinance. So just so everybody's clear, nothing will be adopted today.

Right, yeah, thank you. And so you can continue to follow the issue. We take it very serious, and we'll delve deeply into it. So thank you. All right. Anybody else? Anybody online one more time? Okay. All right, so I'll go ahead and close the citizen question and comment period, and we will move along to our clerk of court's consent agenda. Mr. Cooney.

Good morning again. I have three items in my consent agenda for your approval.

Move to approve. Second.

All right. Any discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor of the motion say aye.

Aye. Aye.

Opposed? There are none. That passes unanimously. Thank you, Mr. Cooney. So now we'll go to our consent agenda. This is tabs three through 15. And I do have a card for tab seven, two cards for tab seven. So why don't we pull seven.

And I wanna pull four real quick too. Do we have someone here from the supervisor of elections office or no?

No? I don't think so.

I'll vote to prove it, but I think precinct changes are well, do you want to pull it? Well, I don't want to, yeah, I don't want to wrap it. Let's just pull it. I'll talk about it.

Okay. All right. Any, anything else?

Um, commissioners make a motion to approve consent agenda items three, five, six, eight through 15.

All right. Any discussion hearing none. All those in favor of the motion say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? There are none. That passes unanimously as well. Okay, so now we'll hear tab four.

Well, I would just say this. The item, obviously, is to recommend approval of the SOE's Supervisor of Elections request for precinct changes. Precinct changes, to me, are very significant because, as you guys all know, we've all been in elections here. Every time precincts change, people say, oh, my goodness, my precinct and this, and I'm so confused.

Use the microphone.

It's a big issue when you do precinct changes. And obviously sometimes they're necessary or close to necessary. I just wish there was somebody here from the SOE that could say a few words. Would you guys be okay tabling this till next month? Or is this like an emergency item? If it's an emergency item, I'll go with it. But I'd rather them say a few words about why it needs to be done.

Supervisor Elections did request that it go today. This particular change is only changing three addresses only.

Okay. If it's that limited, it's fine. I'll go ahead and move to approve it. Second.

Second.

Okay, and I will just say, in the future, if there are gonna be major changes, or even somewhat significant changes to the precinct map, perhaps the supervisor could come and just publicly tell everybody what's going on.

I will let him know.

Okay. All right, any final discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor of the motion, say aye. Aye. Opposed? There are none. That passes unanimously. Now we are on to tab seven, which was pulled because we had some public comment. So Jennifer, do you want to, this is our letter of opposition to the Heart of Florida deep well injection project. I don't know if there's any explanation you want to sum up and provide or,

So we did have a presentation at our last board meeting providing information about the Heart of Florida's application to do the deep well injection project. This board stated that they were opposed to it and asked that we bring back a letter of opposition and a resolution opposing this project. So that is what you have on the agenda today for consideration is the letter and resolution of opposition.

Okay, thank you. Well, we got two comments first, so we'll go ahead and hear those. So, Catherine Wright, there she is.

Good morning, Catherine Wright at 40216 Gator Lake Road, Lady Lake, Florida, and all that good stuff. Good morning. Thank you for your continued opposition of the swell injection proposed by ACMS, also known as Heart of Florida. I have actually prepared a package for you guys detailing the company's past actions which demonstrate the welfare of the public doesn't seem like it's their priority. What I'm gonna do is just go over a couple of the situations they have had, from unauthorized disposals of 11-year-old iodine tincture from Thatcher Chemical onto their facility, to inspectors finding failure to detect unauthorized waste from Other areas, other times, erosion, leachate, potential disturbance of asbestos during a piping installation. Also, the record keeping is not the best of its ability. They decided to put in an evaporator, as we know, but then they decided to use some other evaporator instead, so the permits are just not up to par also. don't do what they say they're gonna do. Also, as far as I can see, there's no fines that were given to them due to a strong odor, and the strong odors have been constantly going on. In fact, I have in this package two pages of 146 pages of them turning it into the Sheriff Department, because that's what they were told to do. Their water quality reports from 2023 to 2026 shows benzene levels have exceeded groundwater cleanup standards. And it's just, I just really appreciate what you guys are doing opposing this situation. And even then, their district manager claims a commitment to environmental stewardship and safety. The evidence in this package really does suggest otherwise. And there are multiple failing wells that are going on in the area, and I have their addresses here also. So in this packet is just true data, emails, correspondence that I've been putting together and that has been given to me to prove that this injection well is not for anybody at all in this state. So do I hand that package over? Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Wright. Is that package the one that's supposed to go to the sheriff, or you've got a separate package going to the sheriff?

Well, that package is for you guys to have on hand. Okay. I just want to make sure. Right.

All right. Thank you.

You're welcome. Thank you.

All right. Thank you, Ms. Wright. Appreciate that. Mr. Jeff Conelson? Colson. Colson. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. It didn't take me too long to butcher my first name this morning. It's all right.

All right, my name's Jeff Colson. I've lived in Lake County since 1978. I served in the military from 1983 to 2013. I worked in industrial food manufacturing at Minute Maid in Leesburg. I also worked at making orange juice in Howling Hills. I also worked at Pasco Beverage, and I also worked for Lake Wales. I know all about effluent, waste treatment, And what this lady said only heightens what I already was concerned about when this came up. Anytime you're injecting any kind of substances into our aquifer, either into our aquifer or beyond our aquifer, there is chance of leaching, leaking, well breakage, cracking, and there's heavy metals in this stuff because people throw batteries away of all kinds, NiCad, so cadmium, lithium, She already talked about some of the benzos, and there's acetones, there's solvents, there's paint thinners, there's all kinds of things that are being thrown in there. And this really came up so late, I didn't even know this was going on. And the only reason I'm here is because, to me, it was so urgent that we understand that this isn't going to affect Sumter County. This isn't going to affect just Lake County. This is going to affect our entire aquifer if something goes wrong with this. If they want to do something like this, that water needs to be treated, filtered, and sanitized before they ever inject it. And they don't want to do that because the cost is high. So they're looking to take all their effluent and all of their leaching water and pump it into the ground and pretend it never happened. And if anybody knows anything about history, things go wrong. you know, I don't know if anybody knows the old movie, uh, Broadwich or whatever her name was. It was back in the early seventies. I'm old. Okay. And then in the early 1970s, DuPont, or I think it was DuPont, they had destroyed a whole town and killed a bunch of people because of all of the, the toxic waste that they were dumping. And it was getting into the aqua into their drinking water. So this lady's right. This is dangerous. This isn't just, Uh, inconvenient. This is dangerous. And I don't think anybody's taken it serious enough. And I know that it's not on the card cause I wasn't really thinking about that, but I've been having problems with data centers as well because of the water usage. We already give away too much of our aquifer to businesses, uh, who bottle water and send it up north and they put labels on it and send it back. And I've seen this go on for years. Aquifer is a finite resource. It's filled, but it's filled very slowly. And if you're taking more of our aquifer water for those kinds of practices, it needs to be monitored. They need to know how to recycle that water, they need to know how to reuse that water, and they need to be conservative with that water. You know, when I was working at Minute Maid and when I was working down at Florida Natural, Oh, did I run out of time? Go ahead. Okay. I was in charge of a department and we had wastewater problems and we had drains specifically designed to catch runoff and we had to do unbelievable stuff to prevent chemicals and substances, and then we're talking about orange juice. We had some solvents and stuff in there, but we were talking about caustics and acids and all kinds of things that we had to use for cleaning and sanitation. So these are not issues that can just be blown away, because once that's in the ground, everybody's going to forget about it, Your grandchildren, my grandchildren, and I have a lot of grandchildren. I have 13. And I have been a Florida resident forever. I love this state. So everything that's going on with this is really, really starting to bother me about this injection test. Because you know what they do with tests? They use it as an excuse to get approval. Thank you. Okay? So that's my beef. What she said gives you the documentation of bad practices, which is another thing that you all need to be aware of. Thank you, sir. I thank you for your time. You know, some of you are no, some of you I don't know. Yes, first time I ever met you, Mr. Parks. And I know Kirby only because I think you're in my district. I'm at 1108 Pine Avenue, Tavares, Florida. I think you're in my district. And I know Anthony because Anthony, well, I know Anthony.

Thank you.

But I know him. He's very public, and I got a lot of emails from him.

He's not public at all.

So anyway, I just wanted to give you all that and tell you that I love my county, I love my city, you know, and I'm really concerned when I see people just, you know, I'm not against industrial expansion, but it has to be right.

Thank you. I agree. All right, so is there, I do see somebody that would like to speak. Ma'am, would you like to speak on this issue? Okay, yeah, just come forward and you've got to say your name into the mic so the clerk can get the record. Okay.

My name is Elena Colson, and one thing that he didn't bring up is that the Sumter landfill that's doing this, it's not just their own waste. There are train loads of waste coming up now from Miami-Dade. So it's not just the local county waste. This is waste coming by train loads. I don't know how many tons are coming up daily from Miami-Dade. So that is all going in there, too. I just wanted to.

Thank you. And we're aware of that, definitely. Appreciate that. About the waste coming up from South Florida, we're aware of that. Thank you. Okay, are there any other comments? This is tab seven. Anything else on tab seven? Anybody else, I should say? Move to approve. And there's a second I'll just add quickly for discussion. We I think we have expressed all of us that we strongly oppose this, especially based off the data from our wonderful geologists, professional geologists that presented the last meeting. So definitely moving forward, I'll add a personal comment and say I do think that this coming year we also need to be solutions oriented because this is waste and you can't send it to outer space. You can't put it in the in the aquifer. You can't put it in another landfill. Um, so there's going to be this circle of what do we do with this waste? And I think locally we have the power to be able to advocate for technology and ways to actually treat it. And so it's not waste anymore.

It may be a good idea to have this as one of our legislative priorities. Thank you.

Yes, I totally agree. what's making a priority. The state's gonna have to help this on a broad, from the statewide issue. So that's a great idea.

And we have technology now that we could clean the water using onsite or something that's a portable wastewater system. So the opportunity's there. We just have to get the state involved with us. So I'd like to make it a legislative priority.

Great idea. We'll put it on there for sure. Yes, ma'am, go ahead.

Well, no, I just wanted to weigh in, too. I appreciated the comments, especially Mr. Colson's right on target. And I think that we've expressed our concern as a county commission. And this is an extremely serious situation. And I am really pleased that everybody is behind this as far as moving forward with our opposition. I like the idea of elevating this to a legislative priority as well. But we've got to be diligent about this. And again, I want to thank the public for weighing in. brought this to the attention of everyone. And I am 100% in favor of moving forward with the letter and making this a legislative priority and also exploring things locally that we can do to address the waste stream and how things are addressed going forward from an innovative standpoint, as opposed to just relying on landfills, which personally I've never been a fan of. And frankly, I

have had concerns about part of florida ever since the day that contract was awarded so those are my comments all right um if there's nothing else um we'll go ahead and take a vote um all those in favor of tab seven say aye aye aye aye um all those in the post there are none commissioner campaign i'm sure i'm assuming you voted yes for this so right

I did, you just didn't hear me. I think I ended in with everybody else's.

I wanted to check. Okay, so there are none opposed, that passes unanimously. So we've passed tab seven. All right, we'll go on to our presentations, correct? Correct. All right, tab 16, Ms. Jamie Stewart.

Hello, good morning commissioners. I have actually four presentations, so we'll just run through them one after another. I do have the first two for you today, which is the Internal Subdivision Road Maintenance and Distributed Wastewater Treatment, MSTU. This is seeking approval of the Internal Road Subdivision MSBU and the Wastewater Treatment System MSBU rates and establish the public hearing dates. Like I said, I'll run through the presentation. We'll do the requested action on repeat. The internal roads MSBU was adopted by the Board of County Commissioners in September of 2023. Its purpose is to provide a funding mechanism for maintaining the county roads within new subdivisions and will ensure a good state of repair for roads, sidewalks, and associated infrastructure. As you can see, we have a new subdivision that came online. That's your trail side that you see there. These are the rates that were calculated for each subdivision. The MSBU rate is calculated individually for each subdivision based on the length of the roads, the sidewalks, and the number of lots in each subdivision. So here's the requested action, which is for the approval of the internal subdivision road maintenance MSBU and establish the public hearing date for September 8th, 2026 at 9 a.m. or soon thereafter.

Move to approve.

Second. Okay, is there any discussion on that? Hearing none, all those in favor of the motion say aye. Aye.

Aye.

Opposed? There are none that passes unanimously, thank you. And I guess you might as well just stay up for the next four, three at least. Sorry, giving you an extra one. Tab 17.

Indeed, so the distributed wastewater treatment system, MSBU, is next. This is the MSBU that was adopted by the Board of County Commissioners in July of 2023. It's for residents who opted into the program and covers the annual fee of the cost associated with the installation and operation of their system. The current amount is $700.19. It was increased by 3% from last year and this annual increase is the minimum amount the contractor is allowed to increase the rate per the contract. Now for the requested action of approval for the distributed wastewater treatment system MSBU and to establish the public hearing date of September 8th, 2026 at 9 a.m. or soon thereafter.

Okay, any questions?

Yeah, I've got a question on this. If I'm not mistaken, this is for our onsite, and they're currently under a current contract, currently today, and that contract's good till when?

It's a 10-year contract, so I think we started with them 24 maybe, but it's a 10-year contract.

So one of my one of my concerns is if we were already having people who don't quite understand what's happening with when they sign up for this program. and correct me if I'm wrong, they sign up for the program, it goes on their tax bill. When the tax bill comes due, they have to pay that tax bill, but sometimes they're not explained that or they don't comprehend 100% and they're unable to pay that tax bill. If they're unable to pay that tax bill, then the property would go into lien and then foreclosure, is that correct?

Correct. So if they don't pay that portion of their tax bill or any portion of their tax bill, a tax certificate gets struck off. After three years, a tax certificate holder can then force it to a public sale for a tax deed sale, and yes, they could lose their property.

And some of the people who are taking advantage of this grant are disabled veterans, for example. I know we have a couple of them that that are on this grant that I'm afraid that when it comes up, if we raise the price of this, they will not be able to afford it. So for that reason, I would like to continue on with our current contract until the contract expires and then reevaluate after that.

Okay, well, all right, so I guess you can, this is to advertise today for the hearing, right, to establish the public hearing date, so I guess you could bring that up there, but I mean, isn't the new contract I thought the new contract was addressing some of those issues, plus as well as the education component of it, ensuring that they were going to know fully what they were voluntarily signing up for. Now, there's new MSBUs for the new neighborhoods. They just know right from the start, because that's in their neighborhood, where they could have been required to be on sewer or some similar system.

Correct, but we're talking about systems that are in the BMAP. The state is the one that gives up the permits for the sewer systems the state is the one that requires the b map that's true so so i'm not quite sure why the county would have to be on the hook for state mandated state approved state given the authority of placing these systems and then having our citizens of lake county bear the cost or the whole cost of a state decision when they're the ones that give the permits out to begin with. So I'm not in favor of it, that's just me. I'm not in favor of going for a public hearing. I don't think it's necessary. I won't be voting against it either way.

No, I understand that. And I'll just say, Laura, because I know BMAPs fairly well, So what the issue is with the county is we will be held, just like the cities would be, if you don't do anything to address the BMAP requirement, you will be subject to whatever the consequences are. It could be fining, it could be cease and desist, I mean, it could be all kinds of different things. So this is always, and we can get into it later, I'm sure, when this comes up, but this has always been put forward as a matter of trying to think long-range sure that our residents are not in the situation like they literally are in Brevard County right now where they where the state has said you have to be on DWTS or a public sewer system and then you don't have any money that's available for them to do it and Then they are totally hung out to dry at that point. I

So this would, again, I understand the BMAPs. I understand that the state is the one that put the BMAPs out. I understand that the state put the regulations of the BMAPs out. I also understand that the state is the one that gives the permits for the septic systems. And if the state wants to give permits hand down a mandate to a county or a city that they are providing the permits for, then the state needs to have some kind of ramification to help with the payment of those systems. Again, we already have a contract with this company. It's a good contract. I don't see a need to raise it. It's good for 10 years. They got seven years left on it. Let them finish out their contract and we can evaluate in seven years.

Understood, and we'll talk about that when we have the actual hearing, and I may not necessarily disagree with you on that. I think, again, you know, BMAPs, I think, are important, because it... No doubt. And we need to have somebody come in, because, again, those people, and there are places around Florida where they have had to pay for it, and the state has said, because they're progressing that way, because water quality is so... is being degraded now at this point by septic. And deep water.

Can I add something?

Well, deep water. Yeah, I mean, partially. Yeah, no, that's true. Go ahead, Commissioner Gambione.

Well, I was just going to mention that, you know, it originally started when the state was going in and providing money for places that had pollution of groundwater or surface water from septic systems. They were helping them pay for centralized sewer and gigantic projects. And then once they put the sewer system in, the customer ultimately still had to pay the sewer bill. So you had customers that had been on septics, never had paid a sewer bill ever because they were on a septic system. They were then forced by the state to go on a central sewer system. The state picked up the cost of the sewer system or at least assisted the local government with it. And then the customer still had to pay, though, the bill not the bill for all the improvements in the capital but the bill that came every month and what's different with the dwts is that the bill can't come every month you know as a regular utility bill that's why it has to go on the tax bill so it does kind of create this scenario where it looks a lot larger because it's 12 months of billing on one bill and it's on the tax bill And then, as you pointed out, those ramifications that if you don't pay your bill, you could potentially lose your property. So I just think that as we go forward, we need to think in terms of maybe those hardship situations, similar to how we have to address them in some other situations like solid waste pickup and things like that. So if it's a scenario where it's a new neighborhood that goes on it, everybody has notice up front. They know what they're getting into. That's a different category. The situations where we have the B-maps and we're trying to get people off of sewer and they're signing up, maybe we need to take a look at those hardship situations like you described, for example, a disabled veteran. So I would just think that we need to break this out and look at some of these details to see where we may be able to even get some assistance from the state in that regard. So I just wanted to bring that up and we'll have more discussions, I'm sure, in the future.

Sounds great, okay. All right, any other discussion? I think we just need a motion. This would be to have the public hearing.

I move for approval for the public hearing. Second.

All right, any other final discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor of the motion say aye. Aye.

Aye.

Opposed? Aye. Okay, that motion carries three to one. All right, Jamie, tab 18, please, and 19.

The next two are solid waste and the fire assessment. The intention, of course, is the same, to seek approval of the initial solid waste and fire assessment rates and establish the public hearing dates. The solid waste assessment is used to fund the collection, management and disposal of a residential solid waste and recovered materials in unincorporated Lake County and must be set annually and are included on the trim notice. It does not include vacant lots and the assessment cannot be used to fund countywide services such as the landfill operations, convenience centers and hazardous waste disposal. The proposed solid waste assessment rates you see here, they reflect the rate adjustments to match increased contract costs for hauling and disposal. The rates on the left are once a week, the ones on the right are twice a week, and have increased by $37. And the requested action is for approval of the solid waste initial assessment resolution and establish a public hearing date of September 8th, 2026 at 9 a.m. or soon thereafter.

Okay, great. card for tab 18 and 19 for Vance. I don't know if you wanna wait till you hear 19 to speak. Okay, so what we'll do is we'll, I guess we can take motions for both 18 and 19. Who'd approve? Okay, well, all right, we'll do it this way. So we have a motion for tab 18 and then. I'll second the tab 18. All right, so Vance, come on up.

My understanding for this is that this is taking the assessment costs, the tax costs for fire and for solid waste, and moving it over to another line item on the bills, tax bills that people get? Am I right or wrong?

These assessments have been in place for many years. This is not the millage.

This is just to set up, set the new values.

Set the rates for the upcoming fiscal year and establish the public hearing.

Then as they used to say, never mind. I appreciate it. We always don't mind the questions. But again, these are essentially like enterprise funds. So the costs are, they are what they are, but they're not. This isn't discretionary. We don't build up reserves. We just pass the cost on. And the solid waste, I will say, is very competitive, if not better than cities. The cities do a great job too, but those rates are very competitive. So anything else with tab 18? All those in favor of the motion for? Aye. All right.

Aye.

Any opposed? There are none. That passes unanimously. Tab 19, please.

Yes sir, this is the fire assessment rate and it's used to fund the protection services such as fire suppression, prevention, building inspections and basic life support. It does not fund the advanced life support services. The rates are calculated based on the call data and distribution of incidents, the allocation of resources and budget and the proportionate share of each land use. This is the rate schedule which as you can see in the far right column has not changed. And again, this is for approval of the fire rescue initial assessment resolution and establish a public hearing date of September 8th, 2026 at 9 a.m. or soon thereafter.

Move to approve. Second. Okay, just a quick discussion. Vance, I assume you're okay. We'll waive you on that one. Appreciate it. And I do think there'll be a day to have a broader discussion. You'll notice that you said that there's no increase, but I think at some point, and I'm look at our manager, and Tommy is in the audience, about having a discussion on where we're going with the five-year plan and how that's gonna be funded to get to where we need to get to with that so that everybody's, it's transparent and everybody knows what we need to have the best Lake County Fire and Rescue in the country, so.

Yes, sir.

All right.

Thank you.

Just my two cents. Anything else? Hearing none, all those in favor of the motion say aye.

Aye. Aye.

Opposed? There are none, that passes unanimously. All right, now we're on to tab 20. This will be Mike Fitzgerald. Mike? This is our JPA, one of my favorite topics, joint planning agreements. I see a representative from Montverde here. Give us some good news about a JPA, Mike.

Thank you, good morning. For the record, Mike Fitzgerald, I'm the Office of Planning and Zoning Director. This item is to recommend approval of a joint planning agreement between the Town of Montverde and Lake County. For some background, on April 14th, 2026, the Town of Montverde adopted Resolution 2026-05, adopting a joint planning agreement between the Town of Montverde and Lake County. The JPA creates a joint planning area boundary to be incorporated into the city and county future land use maps. The JPA establishes procedures for reviewing and commenting on development orders and planning applications and provides provisions for consideration of municipal annexation, utility connection, transfer of development rights, and a pathway for transportation planning to be completed. The JPA ensures the protection of the Ferndale special area and includes the patient strategy drafted by the East Central Florida Regional Planning Council as an exhibit. And staff recommends approval.

Well, I really appreciate that. Good to hear that you're recommending approval.

And I know that you've spent... We don't usually make recommendations, but we will on this one.

No, I know. And I really appreciate your hard work over the many months. And we do have East Central Florida Regional Planning Council. Thank you very much for your assistance as well. And Town Attorney Anita Groskarver from Montverde is here as well, expressing support, I assume. And so it's a good day, kind of a quietly good. This is a big thing for the county, I should say, to have better planning processes put in place.

Yes, sir. This is a strong step forward for what we're trying to accomplish throughout all of Lake County. So I would like to thank Mount Verde for being a big part of this process. So thank you very much. And with that, I'd like to make a motion to approve. Excellent. Thank you.

Mr. Chairman, we have to wait for Commissioner Sabatini because you need to have a quorum present in the room.

So person online can't be considered a quorum?

Commissioner Campion? No, you have to have a quorum present in the room.

Well, I'm going to reserve my motion until Commissioner Sabatini comes back.

I mean, I'm happy to second the motion. We just have to wait for him to come back to vote. So I can second that motion.

Okay. He just has to be in the room. Correct. So Commissioner Sabatini, if you can hear this, because we can hear in the back. Hurry it up.

There you go. Do it.

Or we were going to take a break. Either way. All right. So you have to be in the room to vote. Move to approve.

We already have a motion.

Okay, all those in favor of the motion say aye. You need to ask for public. Oh, okay, yes. All right, so is there anybody that would like to speak on the JPA? Thank you. All right, hearing none, I'll close that public comment period. Now we do have a motion on the table in a second. All right, all those in favor of the motion say aye. Aye. Aye. aye opposed there are none that passes unanimously all right thank you thanks anita for coming appreciate you appreciate the council showing up as well good day and staff again i know a lot of hours were put into this yes yeah so uh this would be uh yeah tab 21 um

So yeah, I'll read the title. So an ordinance of the Board of County Commissioners of Lake County, Florida amending or repealing the following sections of the Lake County Code, Appendix C, Land Development Regulations, repealing Section 1302 entitled Alternate Members, repealing Section 1303 entitled Board of Adjustment, providing for transfer of the duties and functions of the Board of Adjustment to the Board of County Commissioners, amending section 130402 entitled membership, amending section 1415 entitled variances and appeals, amending other sections of the Lake County Code and land development regulations to replace Board of Adjustment references, provide for severability, providing for inclusion in the code, providing for filing with the Department of State, and providing for an effective date. If you choose to approve this today, I'll become ordinance 2026-27.

All right, thank you. Any discussion? From the board? And I'll go to the public, yeah. I just, okay. So this opportunity for the public who wants to speak on this agenda item, tab 21. Nobody online, okay. Hearing none, I'll close the public comment period on this. Bring it back to the board. Move to approve.

Second.

Okay. I will just say I've made my objections to this known at the last meeting. Don't need to dwell on it anymore for me, but. All right, all those in favor of the motion, say aye. Aye. Opposed? Opposed, so that motion carries three to one. All right, regular, now we're back to the regular agenda, now right into, Commissioners, we're going through this pretty quick. Our commissioner's reports.

Commissioner Sabatini. This will be tab 22. This is a proposal for a moratorium on data centers. There's been 12 applications for large data centers just in the last year. I think that number's gonna accelerate. I think this is the conservative position. I'm not asking for an outright ban. I think we start with a moratorium, take a look at this, and then as we get closer to October 1, 2027, when SB 180 expires, then we can talk about what we really want to do with these centers. But they're understudied. Even the legislative bill that passed the session this year doesn't really do that much when it comes to these data centers. They're understudied. They're misunderstood. They're very, very serious commitments to utilities and land use. And I think just a moratorium is a very common sense position. That's why six other counties have done it. I believe it's Pascoe, Jackson, Nassau, Citrus, if I'm not mistaken, and someone else, yeah. So again, just a pause, temporary measure, puts a pause on these things until we learn more. And then a year from now, who knows what it looks like. Most of us weren't even talking about this a year or two ago. So that's it.

OK. Any other discussion on it?

Yeah. When you talk about data centers, everybody has a thought in their head of what a data center is, right? So data centers can be of all different sizes. I would like to see in this more... This moratorium is not really a moratorium as the way I see it. I see it as a pause until we can get the correct language in the system for these things. One that I would like to see is that we have to mandate that they use reclaimed water. Plain and simple so if they don't use reclaim water then go against the code anyway Those are some things that I would like to see in a data center but a data center could be anywhere from a Room in a in a bank to a big building. So I think we have to quantify the size as Well, but I'm okay with putting a pause on any Citrus County said it perfectly right. Currently we lack those specific zoning provisions and development regulations to addressing the unique operational characteristics of data centers. So I would like to see that pause until we can get those in place and then we can move forward from there.

Good comments, and I agree. I think we'll use the word pause, because we gotta always be careful, and I know you said that too, Commissioner Sabatini. Pause would be good, a little bit of time to get our facts, to get what we want for our community, the time is appropriate, because we're redoing our comprehensive plan. And we'll get all the facts, and yeah, I mean, I think all of us definitely think of the, not wanting to have a major mega center, you know, clearly, but also is it smaller and much smaller spread out approach that doesn't have environmental consequences or energy cost increases? But we just have to have all the facts. So I think this is a great idea to have a pause. So I would be in support of that for sure. So do I need to make a motion on that? I think Commissioner Campione, do you have some comments?

Well, no, I'll make the motion. I'm glad to make the motion. I appreciate Commissioner Sabatini bringing this forward. And of all the times that we push back when the state tries to take rights away from us as local governments over our own decision making process, I think this is one of the times when if the state would, in fact, take a more assertive stance. and look at the state as a whole and actually do an evaluation of whether these have to even exist in Florida. Is our environment too fragile? Can our grid support them? How does it affect residents? All of those things need to be taken into consideration. And if there is a need where you have to have them in certain locations, that it would be looked at comprehensively. And if they would take the leadership role in this one, this could actually make sense. Now, I wouldn't want anything imposed upon a local government that did not want to have a large data center in their community. But it just seems to me this is one of those times when it really has to be looked at comprehensively. And I'm all in favor of us saying from... from our standpoint in Lake County, until we have more information and understand this better and know exactly how this could affect the environment, our residents, our quality of life, all of those issues we're concerned about, the grid, that we definitely take a pause on this and do research.

So, Mr. Chairman, I don't need a motion today. We, by consensus, have direction for my office to prepare an ordinance, and we will bring that back to you at a future meeting.

Excellent. I appreciate that. Great discussion. And thank you, Commissioner Sabatini, for bringing that forward. We do have a comment, sorry, before we get into it, because Vance, do you want to come up? I know you filled out a card for this tab. And then we'll get to you next time.

uh... last night except uh... all of you including jennifer a uh... couple of emails so with some information on other things that are happening related towards data centers uh... one of the things that i think they need to incorporate into your view this is the uh... the the movement that sorry started to create decentralized data centers at residential unit level And the developers are cutting deals with these companies that want a data center and they actually provide about a $30,000 server that goes with a house and it's connected through the internet and they do some of the data churning right there. And of course they use a lot of electricity to power those things. And so you should be aware that those things are going on. You could have a developer that is planning on offering those just like a solar roof that generates power that you sell back to the power company. Well, this is the same concept and it's already being developed and I sent you all information on that. The other one is just a short YouTube video about how there also is a trend where these power companies that want a data center are going out and buying mobile home parks and then replacing them, which I find hard to believe you can do that easily because it's not the same kind of land use. But anyway, that was an issue that came up. So be aware. I monitor a lot of stuff on AI News, and I'll send you more now that I know this is in the pipeline. But there's so much money involved. There also is a lot of changes in technology that may reduce the need for massive land data centers. In addition, some data centers have been slowed down or canceled. And because the technology is changing so fast that all of a sudden you could have a new type of processing unit that is used for data centers that only requires one-tenth the energy of the previous ones. And so that's happening. It's just like watching fireworks, you know, all these things going on. So you have to be aware of all of them. Thanks. Thank you, Vance.

All right, so you have direction on this? All right, and now we'll go to tab 23, Commissioner Sabatini. You would like online proxy rights to vote at NACO.

Yeah, so this is the National Association of Counties. You guys probably know we get their newsletter every two weeks, basically, of everything the counties are doing. You're probably, some of you, I mean, maybe Commissioner Smith, I have never seen this on the agenda before because NACA is not something that historically the county's really been involved in. We've always been involved with, I guess, what? FACO. Florida Association of Counties, which actually starts tonight and runs for the next four days. Me and Commissioner Parks will be there, and I hope everybody comes. But I don't think people realize how big of a county we are now and how much our voice matters at the national level, too. So we've seen estimates of how big our county is. But I think it's actually probably about 460 to 465,000, although you see estimates that show lower. Bieber from UF shows we're that big. So if that's true, if we're roughly that big, we're actually the 160th largest county in the country out of 3,100 counties. The average county is about 26,000 people. I'm sorry, the median county is 26,000. The average county is 100,000. So we're in the top 150 to 200 out of the 3,100 US counties. So we are a major county. Now, of course, as you guys know, it's important for us to have a statewide national voice based on the amount of advertising we're doing in terms of tourism to try to get national events here. I think we should send someone to NACO. Uh, I would defer to anyone else on the board that wanted to do it. Um, I just, I think I spoke to commissioner parks and I could be wrong, but I think you said you weren't gonna plan on going this year. Okay. So I I'd like to go. I think it's important to vote. I think whoever we send to vote should vote, um, um, at the will of the board. So whatever the board wants is how they should vote. at the National Association of Counties, not obviously just spuriously on their own. So I'd like to go, I'd like to vote. I think we should make it a permanent item going forward as our county continues to increase in population. And it's in New Orleans this year, it's next month. So that's the item.

Yeah, and I will add that, of course, FAC is extremely important, Florida Association of Counties, because we get a lot of information about one, that's going on in other counties, two, best management practices, what's worked, what's not worked. So it's invaluable. NACO is, I think you described NACO very well. It's broader. We're a much different county. We're not 200,000 people anymore. So I think you bring up a good point. NACO, of course, maybe the thought is one of us, I mean, all of us should participate in Florida Association of Counties. Um, and, and there are counties where all five commissioners do that and we can't always have that. And we understand, you know, people got, there's other things to do sometimes, but we have good participation in port association of counties, NACO. I do think it is important to have one of us, uh, uh, participate in NACO. Um, there's opportunities to participate for multiple, uh, commissioners to participate in the policy side, which those meetings are done via zoom. which is something that is, we encourage, and the state of Florida is encouraging, FAC is encouraging all the counties to participate more in NACO because it's kind of like one of those things, if you're not participating in it and you're not, you know, if you're not at the table, I guess you could be on the menu, so to speak, but with NACO policies, and we don't always agree. The Florida Association of Counties, likewise, doesn't always agree with what happens at NACO and policies that are are put forward, but we are trying as a state, trying to become more influential in NACO. So I do think it would be important to have one commissioner, whoever it is, we can designate that on a yearly basis, participate in NACO. And if others want to participate in the committees as well, that could be all five of us.

So with that said, I would say I think it's... good that this item came around for the data centers conversation because it just shows an example that obviously the hottest topic at NACO this year will be data centers in my opinion and it's a national topic it's a local topic and it's a state topic but I think if we're not part of the national conversation we're missing out on something so I'd like permission to go vote and then come back and give you guys a short report on what I saw at NACO so um i would like to uh do you know what's on the on the agenda for for naco for coming up skim through the agenda i have not been to a naco before a lot of the items were sort of broad i think the agenda is only getting flushed out fully this month because it's about a month away i'm wondering if jennifer or melanie can give me that information and

I have no problem with that, but I would like to go to the annual conference, which is in January or February or something? February.

Yeah, in February. And that's a good one to go to because that is when actually the policy decisions are made that day. So that would be great. That is very predictable in the sense of you know exactly what you're doing, and it's in Washington, and you are connected directly to your congressmen and women senators, and you put the policies forward. So that would be great.

Okay.

Do we need a motion for that or no? Okay. I would move to approve to allow myself to vote. And also going forward, a member of our body to vote at every conference. Good.

Okay. All right. I'll second that. All right. Any other discussion?

And is there going to be a way, I mean, are we going to be apprised of what the issues are? Or, I mean, how do you... I mean, I understand what you were saying, Commissioner Parks, that there are times when everyone can be involved versus one commissioner weighing in. But I guess, is there a way for us to see the agenda that's been published and even discuss at our meeting before the commissioner who votes weighs in?

Yeah, I mean, what I would suggest, if I could jump in, is a week before the meeting, we have our staff distribute the full agenda to the whole board, get comments on what the board thinks, and that becomes a public report that whoever the designee is is expected to act in accordance with. That's what I would do.

Okay. If I may, I can download the agenda, send it to all of you, and then we do have a board meeting. This conference does not start until it looks like maybe the 17th. We do have a board meeting on July 14th. So I can distribute the agenda this week. It will give you time to kind of review the topics, and then we'll put an agenda item on the 14th agenda for you to discuss. Perfect. any topics you wish to discuss.

That's perfect. And then it'd be up, um, it'd be, uh, our, our understanding that the representative from our board's gonna do as the board wants to do like a delegate.

Yep. Yep.

Yep.

Perfect. Yeah. And, um, so this will mean that when you get back to, you'll need to, whoever it is in the future, we'll need to provide a good report so that we're transparent. We did this. We voted on this. We went to these general sessions, whatever. Yep. I think that would be important as well. Sounds good.

Okay. Last thing, though, just because back in the day, Commissioner Cadwell used to go to these all the time. And so I think there needs to be a policy. Like there's the one I think that takes place in D.C. is the main one. I know they have these others in various locations. So we do need to. consider to what extent we're paying for expenses and stuff like that. If someone's actually traveling and going to these meetings and how many you would allow as a matter of policy. So just, I think everybody needs to keep that in mind.

Yeah, totally agree. I think just my experience would be the most valuable ones. The best one is the one in February, but also the annual meeting is good because you still vote. so i i think that's a great idea to have a policy there's no reason whatsoever for us to go to western coalition or western states coalition or northeast anything like that and you can see all those meetings they have there would be no reason why we would need to go to any of those but that probably would be limited to just those two in the future so that's a good idea i think we should make it clear on that as well All right, any other discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor of the motion say aye. Aye. Opposed? There are none, that passes unanimously. All right. Oh, so I'm up, tab 24. It's a... If you want to move, I would need to go ahead and talk about it. I will read, uh, I will read it. We haven't read it in the last year or two, but I'll, if you don't mind, um, I'll read it and then maybe you can make a motion. How's that? OK. All right. We'll do that. So this is we are at tab 24 for those attending. This is approval of hopefully the Pride in America proclamation. So we are the only county that we know of still to this day that has a whole month dedicated to the pride in our great nation. And it's especially powerful and poignant this year because we're celebrating 250 years. And this is something we do. We recognize the entire month in July. as Pride in America Month, and we have, those of you who know this, we have guest speakers that come, we do flag retirement ceremonies, we do events over at the Historical Museum that honor what's good about this nation. Nothing's perfect, obviously flaws and all, we embrace our history, and this is about celebrating what's good and coming together, uniting us around our flag, our country, throughout the month of July. So I will go ahead and read this proclamation, and I appreciate Commissioner Smith supporting it, moving it forward. All right, whereas on July 4th, 1776, the Second Continental Congress approved a Declaration of Independence, which gave force of law to our separation from Great Britain. Each year since then, we have celebrated the Fourth of July as Independence Day, the birthday of the United States of America. And whereas the year 2026 marks the 250th anniversary or semi-quincentennial of the founding of the United States of America, a historic milestone commemorating two and a half centuries of freedom, self-governance, and the enduring strength of our republic, And whereas this Declaration of Independence has given the world the strongest and most successful country in human history, a nation founded upon the principles of defined invalid rights of the people and the equal and equitable application of the rule of law. And whereas the commemoration of this momentous and unprecedented achievement, and particularly this 250th anniversary year, is worthy of recognition throughout the entire month of July. reminding the citizens and residents of this nation of the extreme risks and sacrifices undertaken by our forefathers to secure the freedoms so often exercised today. And whereas it is our hope and desire that as a nation we set aside differences, celebrate that which unites us as Americans, taking pride in our great nation and its many contributions and advancements to mankind and to the world, especially during this historic anniversary year. Now, therefore, be it proclaimed the Board of County Commissioners of Lake County, Florida, proclaims that the month of July 2026 will be recognized as Pride in America Month in honor of the 250th anniversary of the United States of America, a month-long celebration of American patriotism, exceptionalism, and gratitude for our great nation.

Thank you, Commissioner Parks. And I'm wholeheartedly for this. I would like to say that I would like to see every city in Lake County adopt the same thing. It took a lot for our founding fathers to even sign that document. They knew what was ahead of them previously and post the signing of the document. We do truly live in the greatest country in the world.

i'm proud to be here i'm proud to be from lake county and i'm proud to say i make a motion to approve thank you all right uh any other discussion yeah i wanted to waste weigh in a little bit sure go ahead um just one of the things that i mean i think it's great that a few years back we started doing the pride in america month and i think commissioner parks was it commissioner parks you you started that And I have always wondered whether we could at least consider changing the terminology to celebrating America Month.

I. You mean going forward after this one? Going.

What's that?

That's what I meant, like. For next year? Next year?

Well, just from the standpoint of the terminology, because I think it, I mean, I kind of understand when you came forward with this, it was sort of a twofold type concept, because there was a lot of controversy over different things that were Using the word pride and you really wanted the focus of the month when we celebrate our country's birthday. We celebrate all of the great things about America and the things that Commissioner Smith just talked about. And so I always felt like we should... utilize the word celebrating America or the terminology. So I just wanted to put that forward for everybody's consideration.

Um, yeah, I like pride better. It's stronger.

Yeah. I mean, I just brought it forward because I, we want to, we want to be proud of our country. That's, that was pretty much why I did it.

So, but I know, and I understand, and I, I understand that's exactly why you did it. Um, so I just didn't want there to ever be any, I don't even know if I could use the word confusion versus, you know, a misunderstanding about, you know, other things that are going on in the month of I guess it's month of June is when the other the pride month thing goes on. So anyway, I just I just wanted to be clear that. what we're really focusing on. Yes, it is our pride in our own country. It's our pride in being Americans, but we're celebrating the fact that we are Americans and celebrating our country. So just something for everybody to consider, but I support moving forward.

Okay, agreed. All right, any other discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor of the motion, say aye. Aye. Opposed there are none that passes unanimously. Thank you very much. Um, really appreciate that. Okay. Uh, commissioner Smith, uh, tab 25.

Okay. Tab 25 is a presentation by, uh, Scott Chevalier with, uh, powerhouse. Now powerhouse, uh, is an organization is helping our youth, um, He has done a phenomenal job. He's within our local high schools, and I thought it'd be extremely important for this board and the community to hear the type of positive impact that Powerhouse is having for our youth and the changes in the lives that are happening throughout all of our county. And I know some of y'all have met Scott, but... I wanted to do a deep dive into what he's doing and how he's affecting the citizens of Lake County in a positive manner. So, Scott, take it away.

Thank you, Commissioner.

Well, thank you, Commissioners, for a chance to speak. I hope I keep my voice. When you sit so long, you think, I'm going to be able to speak right now. It's great to be with you, and it's great to talk about, I think, America's most valuable national asset, and that is our young people. That was not just said by me, that was said in an inaugural address by a president in this nation. I love it in a county commission meeting to give you a quiz, do you know who that was? Anybody know who that was? That's normally the result I get from most people. It was Herbert Hoover. in his inaugural address who said that our youth are our most priceless national asset. I believe that too. One of the things I want to do today in the brief time I have is to talk about why we exist as an organization and what we're doing in Lake County schools and the impact that we're seeing it have in our young people. So first of all, I want to show that we're not a new organization in Lake County. So Powerhouse started in 1999 in Nashville, Tennessee. I moved to Florida nine years ago to a town called Clermont, Florida, not too far from here. Ran into a police officer, not physically, on the Clermont police force named Officer Colon, who had just come from a situation that was critical. and he looked like he'd been to an accident scene i sat down with officer cologne and in that conversation he told me he was baker acting five students in the claremont community every week and he had no solutions That was disturbing to me because coming from Nashville, Tennessee, if you were Baker acting five kids in a city like Nashville, that would be a huge number. In a small community like Clermont, Florida, that got my attention. I began to share with him what we had launched in Nashville, Tennessee, and why we had stopped what we were doing in Nashville, Tennessee. Nashville had a program called Powerhouse where we were in every school presenting a message on the power of choice. It took us to the Pentagon. We partnered with the National Guard through three states. And I shut it down nine years later because I saw the need of something I would like to call sustainability. Not just telling a young person that they have the power of choice and how powerful choices are in our lives, but showing them a pathway to understand what their future can look like. And so Officer Colon challenged me that day and said, why don't you do that here? And I said, I'm not 35 years of age anymore. It takes a lot of energy to start a nonprofit back up again. And in the midst of his urging, we did that. I started collaboration meetings, and in those collaboration meetings I had judges and attorneys, and I had the theft recovery man from Target in Clermont come to that meeting. And they began to communicate. One of the reasons they were at the meeting was because they were having students being arrested who did not need the items they were taking, but they wanted to be seen. They wanted someone to know that they counted. And so in the meetings of collaboration, someone stood up, I wish I knew who the lady's name was to this day, and said, I bet you'll never do this at Leesburg High School. I didn't know where Leesburg High School was, except there was a Sonic in Leesburg. And so I made my way there often, found the high school, met the principal, told him what we were working on, and he handed me a key to the school. I immediately pushed back and said, we're not ready to do that yet. We're just in the planning stages. A year later, we launched what we now call Pathway to Purpose at Leesburg High School. The students who come to Powerhouse are assigned by school leadership. They are identified as students who are probable of getting through the system or falling out of the system in the educational system as a dropout. They're either having behavioral issues or their grades are not on par where they need to be, and so they are identified as potential dropouts. So you need to understand first the audience that comes into a powerhouse classroom. I'm going to show you very quickly, and this may be the first time if you're watching or if you're here today, you get to see what hope looks like. Because hope's a word we use all the time. There are two premises, and I'll go through these slides very quickly, that Powerhouse believes. Number one, we believe every student has a passion and purpose. Doesn't matter where they come from, what their situation is, we believe they have that within themselves. But likened to that, every student needs someone to achieve it. Nobody in this room, no one hearing my voice, got to where you are by yourself. Someone encouraged you, motivated you, opened a door, introduced you, began to build a network for you so that you could have hope in your future, something that you were pursuing. So as I said, we're not new in what we're doing. As a matter of fact, I put this on the screen. I don't like to put this up there, but my board of directors says, you need to be proud of that. And I am. That we were selected as Nonprofit of the Year in 2024 by Lake County. And I'm thankful for that recognition. I'm thankful because behind that recognition are students' lives who have been changed. In 2025, we received the Leadership Award for some of the things we've been working on behind the scene to see lives changed. The question I want to put up for all of us is this statement. You don't know what you don't know. In other words, it's an exposure opportunity for young people. Some of the things I'm going to share with you, you might not know, but they're facts for us to understand because what is going on in young people's lives, if you don't know the solution, then you operate in your circumstances, in the environment that you find yourself in. So what Powerhouse does is we begin to take students from where they are and begin to give them opportunities. Now, I want to give you some statistics. This is from the Lake County Economic Development Office. This is statewide. There are 267,000 16 to 24-year-olds currently who are not going to school and not employed. Now, that's concerning to me as a taxpayer to think about how many young people are not being engaged. About two months ago, I was invited to the Kia Center where the Assistant Secretary of Labor met with organizations around Central Florida to talk about this issue. The government is now calling this bed-rotting. where young people are totally disengaged from the workforce because the only direction they're finding is on TikTok and social media. And about every young person you meet is going to be the next social media influencer. That's how they're going to live their lives. So there is a loss of direction and furthermore, a loss of engagement into the why of their education. Now, how does that impact us? These are some statistics that you might not know. 63% of students who walk across high school graduation platforms never accomplish what they said they were gonna do. Hey, my name is Scott Chevalier and I'm the... He doesn't need to talk right now. 63% of students never accomplish what they're going to do or what they said they were gonna do in high school. There's a reason for that. I say it all the time. Students need direction beyond the diploma. They need a plan of operation. They need to understand the day after graduation, what are the stages, what are the steps you're going to take to move toward your future? What are the relationships you're going to establish so you don't go to one semester in a college, get in debt, come back, and find yourself missing the opportunity or being in debt financially to what's going on in your situation? 30% of students who graduate high school, and I don't know what I'm hitting. Thank you guys. 30% of students who graduate high school say actively they don't feel prepared for life. That they don't feel they have the tools ready for being the next stage of life and what living is. And what Powerhouse does is Powerhouse takes them to the next level. It engages who they are, helps them understand what their purpose is, and then it launches them into the program. So I'll let that guy speak.

Hey, my name is Scott Chevalier, and I'm the founder and executive director of the Powerhouse Youth Project.

I'm excited to share with you one of the most powerful career panels that we put together for students through our program, Pathway to Purpose. You see, throughout the school year, we're on campus with these students, giving them the courage and understanding of what it means to step into the best version of who they are. During week 16, we bring together different professionals from different industries from all across the community so that these students can now be prepared to have a conversation of what that pathway might look like. The engagement in the room is magical. Students now know what questions to ask. They now have the confidence to engage folks who are doing things that they want to see in their own futures. You know, we live in a time today where students are disengaged. They're disillusioned. They're hopeless. Our government calls it bed rotting. They're literally disengaged from the workforce. But during this session, students begin to realize the why of their education. They begin to understand that they do have a pathway to purpose. I hope you'll join Powerhouse in engaging your students in your community so that they can understand they have a place in their future and they can become the best version of who they are. So there is real studies behind what we're doing. This is interesting to me because two psychologists who have more degrees than I do talk about the value of understanding purpose. On your screen you can see it talks about purpose being a support to resiliency. Purpose supports their mental health. It reduces negative behavior. It buffers the social media impact and the stigma that TikTok can have in a young person's life. Understanding direction in your life as a young person. Not identifying I'm going to be a plumber. Not understanding I'm going to be a welder, but understanding that my life has meaning. Let me show you the realistic significance of this right here in Lake County. Because just recently, we had drive-by shootings in Eustis. You may have saw it on the news. I was called by Channel 13 to talk about why couldn't these young people just be in a summer camp program. If I went back to slide one, you don't know what you don't know, is exactly what I told that reporter. These students who are involved in that, first of all, don't feel valued to be a part of such a program, don't know of such a program, don't have access to such a program, and do not have someone who are giving them the support to be in such a program. But I can guarantee you this, and I can say this because I've seen it work. If these students would be engaged in a program like Powerhouse, where they begin to understand what their purpose is, when they begin to understand the direction and understand the power of the choices they're making has a lot to do with where they end up in life. I can guarantee you behavior would change because they become more passionate about what they're pursuing than the opportunity and the situation that they find themselves in. So people ask me all the time, what is our secret sauce? It's very simple. It's relationship and relevancy. Relationship says, do I matter? Does my life have meaning? To understand that they have importance, that they have a relevancy in their life, means that I'm here for a reason. Relevancy means, why does it matter? Students ask themselves that question after COVID. Why after watching computer screens, why does it matter that I'm in a classroom? Why does it matter that I'm in attendance without my other peers? Why does it matter that I have to sit through history or math or science or whatever the class might be? They've lost sight of those things that their education has a destination. because they've lost sight of their purpose. Now, does it work? I want you to see the real facts. These are before and after pre and post testing that Powerhouse does. Keep in mind what I said in the beginning. Who are the students that Powerhouse gets assigned to? Students that are looked at as the highest probability of falling out of the system, of not making it in the system. We have up to this date, as I stand here before you, 100% graduation rate of students. These are students, some of them who had a .32 GPA. You have to work at that. Who graduated with a 3.5 GPA. I ask you, what changed purpose? understanding that their presence in a classroom was more than a grade and more than a test, that they were pursuing something that was important to them. And so it affected their behavior, their decision process that they made in life. One of the things I want to point out on this screen that I think is also very important is to understand that 95% of the students we work with reported having a better or an increased idea of their plans and their goals after high school. We purpose this in our classrooms. You see, Powerhouse is on the classroom, on campus. We have our classroom on campus. There is strategy to our classrooms on campus. Now, what are students saying? I don't want to lead all these up here for you, but I'll give you two I love. One said, it led me to believe in myself. I want to go back to what those psychologists found. I have meaning. I have purpose. I learned lessons that would carry me on through life. To understand that what I was doing in high school didn't end with high school. There was more to it than what I saw before. Now, I think we skipped through these. I've got to show you because I promised you I would show you what hope looks like. And I don't see those slides. So I want you to understand today as we sit before you, and I thank you for the time, being in Lake County high schools where we are right now and currently moving this year into Lake County middle schools, the impact is significant. And so I urge you in the connections you have, I'm new to Florida. I thank you for Commissioner Kirby Smith, Sean, I know you, I mean, we've had long conversations. I would like to sit down with all of you to find out who are those people who care about education beyond a test, beyond a diploma, so that every Lake County student who graduates high school has in their backpack a plan, a network of knowing what their next step is, because the statistics of those sitting at home and those who are missing opportunities in the workforce, I meet them every day. They're the students who are now working at an O'Reilly's, handing you and I our oil, and I have the conversation and saying, is this what you wanted to do after high school? No, but I gotta pay bills. Understanding that there is more for their life by understanding what steps I need to take. We call it in Powerhouse, passion, purpose, profit. I want to end with this because I'm also the Sports Hub podcast host for Style Magazine. And yesterday I had on the show the weightlifting coach at Leesburg High School. It was fascinating to hear him tell the story because one of the things he talks about in getting them ready for competition, and you need to understand, if you don't know Leesburg High School and the weightlifting team, they are now seven times state champions. They have people now going to national championships. And I asked Josh, after the time on air, how do you get them to that point? Seventh grader walks in, he has no muscle. He doesn't know how to lift a barbell. His statement was profound because it's what Powerhouse believes. He said this, I want them to peak at state. It didn't matter about the first week of weightlifting. It didn't matter about week two, week three. He wanted the mindset of all those students who came into that room to know I have a goal, and it is to peak at state. Powerhouse's goal was very simple. We begin with the end in mind. So all 17 sessions while we're on campus is leading to the point where they can identify what they want to pursue in life and then we can celebrate them with our mentorship as they do that. I'll end with this because we'll be going to lunch soon. And most of us will probably look for that Chick-fil-A sign and find our favorite Chick-fil-A menu item. But he said it best when Truett Cathy said, it is easier to build boys and girls than to mend men and women. Thank you guys for letting me spend some time. I would encourage any time that you would have to sit down that we can continue the conversations. Currently, we are in four Lake County high schools. We'll be launching in two more middle schools this year, but we want to see Powerhouse expand so that all students have an opportunity. Thank you.

Thank you.

Well, Scott, thank you very much for your time. Your program, I know, personally, has impacted a lot of lives, and I open the floor up to any of the commissioners that have any questions for Scott, and really do encourage each commissioner and each person in the public, whether you want to be a mentor or you want to know more about the program, to go ahead and give Scott a call. What a great organization, and thank you very much for everything you do.

I just want to say, oh, can I just weigh in?

Go ahead. Yeah, and I'll go after you.

Okay, sure. Scott, great presentation. I heard you a few years back at the Children's Services Council, and I'm just in awe of the great work that you're doing and your team is doing. And any, you know, opportunities you see or when we meet and talk, opportunities, doors we can open, I'm there ready, willing, and able to I just think it's amazing that you're getting to the core of what makes these young people tick, what they need in order to realize their own potential and to feel that sense of purpose, which completely changes lives as you so eloquently displayed today in your presentation. So thank you. We value you. And we're extremely appreciative for the great work you're doing.

All right, and I will just say, Commissioner Smith, thank you very much for asking Scott to come. Boy, this is a great, it's great when we get these great positive stories about building community and good leadership and what you're doing to affect the next generation. So thank you very much. And Scott, yeah, we've had some good conversations. I always say that I feel really good and inspired after we... have conversations, we are long overdue for one, so I will commit to you that you and I will connect also to see what I can do to help you move forward in Powerhouse and everything that you're doing. So God bless you and thank you, really, because you're impacting lives, I can tell. Appreciate it, thank you. All right, thank you very much. We will keep moving along here. We'll go to tab 26. This is Mike, come on back up.

Thank you, Chairman. For the record, Mike Fitzgerald. I'm the Office of Planning and Zoning Director. I do have a presentation. A brief presentation. Yes. This item is a request for approval to advertise an ordinance amending section 90106 of the Lake County Code entitled landscape buffer requirements. By way of background, on April 14th, 2026, the Board of County Commissioners considered public input regarding landscape buffer width requirements and what impact that would have on development. The proposed ordinance will establish a minimum landscape buffer width of 20 feet for development along public roadways. This will serve to improve stormwater infiltration, the visual effect of landscaping, it'll reduce runoff, and it will mitigate heat islands. With that said, a type A buffer currently under our code, it has choices of 20, 15, or 10 feet. Our code was not specific to the width of the buffer. It said a type A buffer was required along public roadways. This ordinance will serve to codify that a 20 foot width type A buffer is required. With that, I'm happy to answer any questions.

All right. Thank you, Mike. Yeah, I think this is we had some really good discussion back in April on this and March and April, maybe. But this is definitely a step in the right direction. A lot of questions about codes and what our codes will do in the future after they we go through the comprehensive planning process and make some changes. But I think this is great. Those, if you'd like to see more trees, this is definitely a step in that right direction to see an enhanced buffer. So I know Commissioner Campione, I think, wanted to bring this forward. So appreciate her asking about this. And here we are. We've got this vote today to make this change. Yes, sir. Any questions?

I'm just waiting on Commissioner Campione.

Okay, so I think it's a step in the right direction. I don't know whether Senate Bill 180 prevents us from going further or whether we could move forward, at least with this, and then entertain some additional ideas. I mean, I personally would rather see, when we're talking about the major roads and rights of way, I I think it should be wider, or I think there ought to be a way to utilize a wider buffer to incentivize the use of maintaining existing tree lines. And I am hopeful that maybe Mike could help us with that, where maybe that's been done in other locations where you could actually be incentivized to keep the existing vegetation. And as long as it's not, you know, invasive vegetation, non-native type vegetation, but it's native and it's healthy and so forth, it just seems like that would be more beneficial to promote for wildlife and biodiversity and at least keeping some wildlife type corridors intact as opposed to properties being Completely reconfigured and all of the existing vegetation ripped away. So I want to put that out there for something that could be considered and see where everybody else is at on that. But at the very minimum, I think. Being clear that it has to be 20 feet based on our existing rules is very important. I just think there should be, again, more landscape material. And I'd like to see a proposal for how we could incentivize maintaining natural vegetated areas.

Thank you. Well, the Board today approved funding for the land development regulation rewrite, and we can certainly take a deeper dive into the existing landscape regulations, see how they address native plants, see how they address existing vegetation, and move forward in that regard. This ordinance is a very simple ordinance. It merely establishes a landscape buffer width, increasing it from 10 feet to 20 feet. In the land development regulation rewrite, which is going to happen immediately after today. We will certainly take a look at how the landscape buffer, I'm sorry, the landscape regulations read and make improvements in accordance with public workshops that we'll be holding with the consultant.

Yeah, I think that would be the chance when what you're talking about is definitely gonna be a good way to go for us. I think where you would address that and the concerns Commissioner Campione is expressing would be, when we change the rules, make it that, first of all, they're mapping nuisance exotic species where they're at so that those are removed, but then the natural areas are also mapped, historic trees, native trees, and those areas could be incorporated into extending the buffer, making it larger. Is that kind of?

Yeah, don't we already have an ordinance to protect our heritage trees?

Yes, sir, we do.

Yeah, we just passed that just a couple of couple of meetings ago, so they've already can't touch that. So I think the incentivation would be to go around those and use this as part of their buffer. I think it's a great I think it's a great plan.

Yeah, good first step. It would again, it would be to get into those. Well, we took a step at the last meeting to where now on all your zoning reports, we're going to require that you tell us whether it's in a Florida wildlife corridor The P1, P2, or P3, so we'll know. That's correct, sir.

The GIS department has added that layer to our GIS map, so staff will be aware of that overlay.

Sure.

But keep in mind, heritage trees are, I mean, heritage trees, we're talking about large trees. We're not talking about maintaining areas where there's existing vegetation, where wildlife is currently living and would have the opportunity to continue to be able to exist and live and so forth. So I think there's a difference. Just want to make sure we understand the distinction between saying, yes, we're going to preserve a heritage tree here and there when they're really big trees on a particular property. And we've seen sometimes what that looks like. They they recontour the property and then they try to create an area around this tree to keep that tree there. I'm talking about keeping habitat in place and vegetation in place. And it just seems like you could incentivize that by making it something that a developer considers to be beneficial. And then that would make them want to go that direction as opposed to

know a brand new landscape buffer yeah i i see what you're saying i i then that's why i go back to my comments so i think this is a good first step because it clearly defines the 10 to 20 foot with trees where it wasn't clear before so that's a good first step but to your point commissioner campion yes it should be areas When we change the rules, which I hope we do on this, there would be natural areas that are mapped on the site, including could be historic trees, which will be protected anyway. And then it would, you know, whether it's incentive or it's required even maybe in some cases to protect those areas and use it as your open space when we get to. Right. Yeah, that would be the key to change it then.

um as well and to direct development away from those areas um and uh when you look at this landscape material though that's in this 20 foot buffer do you think that's dense enough compared to what you see in other codes I mean, I'd like to think back to our landscape along 437. There's a project that was approved by the county that was I think it's called Sorrento Pines. And it has the most sparse landscaping along the right of way that I've ever seen. What I want to make sure of is that we're actually requiring a level of material that is adequate as well.

yeah I mean I would I would like to see more now I think within buffers most of them should be Florida native or I know Florida friendly is something we do around entryways and things like that because we give more flexibility there I would like to see that but I don't you know I don't know how you would incorporate that into because would you have to change other parts of the code when it comes to

Yeah, I think wouldn't it be best just to pass this ordinance and then work on the stipulations within this? I'd hate to muddle the waters of this one and then lose sight of what we're doing and have Planning and Zoning come up with a very good vegetative buffering situation to bring it back to us.

Okay, I'm just looking at two canopy trees, one ornamental, And one row of shrubs. And that just doesn't seem like much material.

So, I mean, an oak tree grows 40 feet wide.

Yeah, that's why they do that. So I think what we could do is pass this, but if we also directed that you come back with some specific, I can tell you right now, on the types of buffers, I can tell you right now, not just Cherry Lake, a local Lake County company, but the outside CoLab, they have, and I think we've talked about this before, but they have examples of what a buffer can look like, and they actually get pictures, and that might be, If we had pictures and you saw this, you would see how much better it would look if we just have to require it.

Right. I think photos are helpful because when you just see like diagrams on landscape buffers, it gives no indication. And again, go down 437, look at Sorrento Pines. That is a county buffer. That's just not something that. I mean, I feel like that's something we can fix immediately. We shouldn't have to wait for a long process. And that was the reason I brought this forward and wanted this to be addressed. So I appreciate the width being clarified. I just think the landscape material needs to be more dense and that's something that we should do as quickly as possible as opposed to waiting for a long process. The longer process maybe can refine it and we can come up with some innovative ways to promote native vegetation use and those kinds of things. and maintaining existing tree lines and vegetation. But I would like to see this brought back sooner than later with examples of the material itself that's in this 20-foot buffer while we're waiting for bigger, better changes in the land development regulations. That's my request.

Okay, so I think if we got this move forward today, I'm gonna be, maybe I'm gonna be a little ambitious when I say this, but I think within a month or to six weeks, you probably could have some pretty nice, pretty good, nice pretty pictures that are details of what could be actually put into this code as to what we're expecting when it comes to the buffer, so they're not just sparse. And there are other requirements backed up like you do, like the caliper, or maybe it's DBH of these trees. So you're not putting in, they're not putting in spindly stuff, which we need to clarify. But I think as far as a layout goes, we could probably do that within a month to two months to make it quick. What do you think?

Are we talking about quantity?

I think you're talking, I think, yeah, Commissioner's about configuration. I think it's both quantity and configuration.

Yeah, I think it is. I think it's quantity and configuration because how you lay that out matters as well. But I think there needs to be more quantity. And I think photos of what that looks like could be helpful.

Yeah, we have photos and we have, we actually have, there's, buffers that have been tested now for a couple years.

We also have to be careful when we do this. I don't mind the 20 feet, but we're thinking subdivisions. But if someone built a single family home, they would have to still abide by whatever we come up with.

The single family home single parcel is exempt from this.

Okay, then that makes me feel a whole lot better. Okay.

Thank you Marshall residential subdivisions would be subject to this. All right. Thank you We are just today under this agenda item. We are just looking at the buffer type a We do have a variety of buffer types that have different quantities configurations with so if we want to go down the rabbit hole, so to speak. We are affecting more than just one piece of code and it will affect more than one chapter of code.

So that's why I think we get this done today and then we look at, maybe I'm being ambitious, maybe it is a little longer, but as quickly as possible, all the buffers on numbers and configuration and composition. we could do that, and I think there's some examples. So that way you can check, you'll have time, because you're right, we need to make sure it doesn't conflict with other places in the code.

This is something that the board is requesting staff to bring back prior to the LDR rewrite.

I think so, yeah, I think, yeah. Yeah, I know that we've talked about this, there's some things that, again, my opinion is I wish the code was changed a long time ago, We're gonna piecemeal it and it's still gonna professionally, like you said, today we authorized that to get written. That's a longer process that'll take, I would assume it would take at least a year to do that. I don't know what you've given them in the contract. I can't remember.

I'm hoping it can be six months.

Okay. Don't quote me on that. No, I know. Just like don't quote my one month. But I think if we could get this, you could probably use whatever we get done in the next month or two months in the new code rewrite, I would think.

So let me just jump in here. So additional changes, if they're not incorporated in this ordinance, we're bringing a new ordinance, it's gonna be longer than a month or two because all of these have to go to the Planning and Zoning Board, right? So we have to write it and then we have to have it advertised at least 10 days before the P&Z Board. So chances are you wouldn't get it there until probably at least September based on the timing that we have right now. But just another suggestion for Commissioner Campion's purposes. So right now what it says for the right of way buffer is it's a 20 foot type A. As Mike just mentioned, we have other buffer types that have more material, more dense material. So maybe the solution right now while we work on something different going forward, maybe you change this from a type A to a different type. because we have A, we have B, C, D, E, F, well we don't have an F, I don't know why it's in there. So maybe that's your quicker solution is instead of a type A, which is your very basic buffer, maybe it is a type D or C or something like that.

So you're saying making a type D actually the standard for type A, essentially?

No, changing this particular ordinance instead of saying a 20-foot type A, saying a 20-foot type D. Around these roads, okay. Right, just because this is right up against the right-of-way if you're looking for a fix sooner rather than later for subdivisions up against a right-of-way.

Okay, so in fairness to other commissioners, can you put up what a type D is?

So let me ask you this question. If we approved a 20-foot buffer, can we not come back next meeting and designate the type within that buffer? Because I'm not comfortable with wordsmithing it right up here and not understanding what all the buffers are.

So this is approval to advertise.

Oh, this is approval to advertise.

If you approve it today, then when we come back for the public hearing, we can bring you the different buffer types. And then during the public hearing, you could choose if you wanted a different level of buffer.

Thank you. Awesome. Okay, that'll work.

Okay, and for advertising, we can just add those different buffers as possibilities so that we look at those. Everybody can look at them going into that meeting where the ordinance is being considered.

Right, so you can advertise it as it is right now with the type A and then, oh, I see what you're saying because we're going more restrictive.

Right, so you need your more restrictive shown at this point or referenced.

So what I could do is change it to type D, which is the most strenuous, and then you guys can always go down.

So could we make a motion to approve the buffer with the understanding that the buffer type will be determined at the public hearing?

Yes.

OK. I'd like to make a motion that we approve the road width landscape buffer to 20 feet with the understanding that we'll be coming back with the buffer type at at the public hearing discussion i'll second that and then just want to add for discussion to just make sure that it's clear that because i don't want to you clear problem

that we've gone more restrictive.

Because I want to look at all the buffers and see them, and I'm sure Mike's going to go back and send each one of us an email that has every type of buffer type and what's in them.

I would make a suggestion that the board amend the motion to eliminate the width of 20 feet because the different buffer types have different widths. A buffer type B has a 20 feet, but a C does not have 20 feet, a D does not have 20 feet, and an E does not have 20 feet. Right, I just did the whole buffer.

Yeah, I just did the whole buffer at 20 feet.

So the motion could be, for clarity, could be the D, Lance, because that's the most restrictive with the understanding that it could be less.

How about we just bring this back on July 14th for approval to advertise again, and at that point you can then select your buffer width and buffer type, and then I can advertise it and bring it back for public hearing.

Make a motion to advertise. Okay. All right. Any discussion, Commissioner Campione?

Again, I don't want to advertise it today. I want to bring it back on the 14th, and then you can choose what you want, and then we can approve it for advertising on the 14th.

I'll withdraw my second. That will be cleaner, and we will have all those buffers in front of us, and then we make our advertising decision on the 14th as we look at those different buffer types.

You're just talking one more meeting.

So we need to table this?

Yes, let's do that.

I'd like to make a motion to table until next meeting. Second.

Okay, and I'll just say, Mike, I'll get you some of those diagrams of buffer layouts that CoLab has done in the time.

That would be a great help, yes.

All right. Any other discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor of the motion, say aye. Aye. Opposed? There are none. That passes unanimously. Tab 27, Melanie and Mike, I guess.

This agenda item is a recommendation to approve advertising for an ordinance amending Section 140700 of the Lake County Code entitled Subdivisions to bring the section into compliance with Chapter 2025-164 of the Florida Statutes. Some background, on June 20th, 2025, Governor DeSantis signed into law Senate Bill 784, which became effective July 1st, 2025, that required that plat submittals be administratively approved and that they no longer come to public hearing for approval. So the amendment today to the section 140700 would bring our regulations into compliance with state code. With that, I'm happy to answer any questions.

So we've gotta do it. This is a, it's coming from the state.

So just to clarify, we have been doing it because it's state law. We just need to make our LDRs match state law.

All right. Move to approve.

Second.

Any final discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor of the motion say aye. Aye. I think she said yes. Commissioner Campione?

Aye.

Okay. There are none opposed. That passes unanimously.

Thank you, thank you.

All right, we're towards the end of our meeting, so we'll go right into reports. County attorney? Nothing, okay. Jennifer, manager?

Yes, just one item, just to make the public aware that our county offices will be closed on Friday, July 3rd in observance of Independence Day.

USA, go USA. Go USA.

No update.

No update. Okay.

Yeah, I would like to ask the board at least thought on this as we're looking at our codes and changing sides of buffers. We've had a huge issue with internal subdivision roads. I would like to come up with an ordinance that we go above and beyond our traditional 20-foot or 24-foot wide. I know Mike is grimacing, and don't worry about it. Come up with a... a road width that is amendable to parking so we don't have all these issues that were coming up now with people parking on the street. And just see what that looks like. I don't know. I know the developers, it's gonna cost more for the developers, but hey, you know what? If it costs more for the developers, maybe they can have a better community. And I'd like the board's permission to at least have staff work on that.

I think it's a great discussion and work on that. There's practices now that were places that have learned from mistakes in the past and some things that they're doing, even designs and the way it's enforced, and there's lessons to be learned. So I think it would be very good. You know, you could always do, some neighborhoods now, you can do alleyway. And I know, you know, that's often associated with higher density, but it doesn't have to be. There's alleyway, rear alleyway loading. There's also longer driveways that go in so that they're not on the side. You just got to allow it when it comes to setbacks. And there's definitely a discussion to be had on that, how to do that. So appreciate that.

Also, they do parking areas sometimes. So if they did want to have a more narrow road that had parking restrictions, then they provide separate parking locations. So those are other things you can take into consideration when you look at this. But I think it's good to bring it up and try to get it addressed sooner than later.

So just as a reminder to the board, we have been putting in our PUD ordinances since October, that very type of language where it has to be a minimum 34 feet in width. If there's going to be street parking, if they're not gonna do street parking, then they have to provide either driveways that are wide enough or long enough to accommodate four vehicles without impeding the sidewalk, or they have to provide overflow parking on every block or however they want to design that. So we've currently been putting that in our ordinances. We are in the process of working to put that in the code so it's applicable to every development and not just PUDs. So we'll be bringing that forward to you soon.

Thank you. I appreciate that. Okay. Commissioner Campione. Anything?

I don't have a report. I'll wait until the next meeting. I have my hands full. As you guys may or may not know, my daughter had a little baby, and so I'm in Boston helping her right now, and then I'll be heading home soon.

Congratulations. I knew that. I just didn't want to say it, but you have said it, so congratulations, and obviously a very important reason to not be here and I tried to do my best to follow your lead as the filling in for chair today. So we look forward to seeing you when you get back.

You've done a great job, and I appreciate everybody working with me and allowing me to participate online.

No problem. Appreciate it. Safe travels. Many blessings to your family. I don't really have anything to report other than I wanna wish everybody, I guess I won't see everybody in a meeting until July 4th, our Independence Day, so have a safe, thoughtful, memorable 250th birthday of this great nation. It's gonna be amazing. All kinds of stuff going on, parades, activities get out show the love show your love for this country just do it in a safe way and bring your family get them all involved and this is we're just we're just totally blessed to live in Lake County and in this great nation of course but man we're even more blessed to just live right here in Lake County so I just wanted to say that and I appreciate you all and do you have a special day for us

I do. In case anybody out there is wondering what today is, today is a very special day. Today is National Typewriter Day. So if you have a typewriter, just go out and use it just for old time's sakes.

Nice. Okay. All right. Very good. All right. With that, we are adjourned. Thank you.