Waterways Advisory Committee - Regular Meeting

Ralph Rohanna?

Here.

Member High?

Present.

Member Woodworth?

Here.

Chair Lewandowski?

Here.

Vice Chair Mascoot?

Here.

Member Winter?

Here.

Member Lancaster?

Here. Okay, Pledge of Allegiance, please.

Where is it?

We got our seats reassigned here. Once again. All right. Moving on to approval of the agenda for today. Any discussion?

YEAH, I HAVE A QUESTION ON THAT. I JUST THOUGHT I'D PUT IT HERE RATHER THAN WAIT FOR ITEM 12. WE DID IN A FEW MONTHS, SEVERAL MONTHS AGO, I HAD A DIRECTIVE FROM CITY COUNCIL IN REGARDS TO DOING SOMETHING WITH THE PROPOSED MARCO PASS DREDGING. AND WE HAVEN'T DONE ANYTHING WITH IT. AND WE JUST CAN'T IGNORE IT. AND I'M THINKING THAT MAYBE WE SHOULD PUT IT ON THE AGENDA TO BE A ONE-MINUTE THING TO ASK THE PROPONENT WHETHER HE WANTS TO WITHDRAW IT OR WE WANT TO PUT IT ON THE SHELF UNTIL IT COMES UP AGAIN OR FOLLOW THROUGH WITH THE DISCUSSION AND REPORT BACK TO CITY COUNCIL AS ORIGINAL. BUT WE SHOULD DO SOMETHING WITH IT. WE JUST CAN'T JUST NOT BOTHER WITH IT.

OKAY. WE CAN BRING IT UP AT THE END. THAT'S NOT A PROBLEM. ANYTHING ELSE ON TODAY'S AGENDA? Okay, can I have a motion to approve the agenda?

I'll make that motion. Second. Second.

And then Martin, second. Okay, all in favor? Aye. Opposed? Okay, motion passes. All right, approval of the minutes. Any discussion? Okay, can we have a motion to approve the minutes from last month? Motion to approve.

Second. Second. Second.

Second was Ralph. Okay, all in favor? Aye. Opposed? Okay, motion passes. All right, old business. We have the Marco Island Police Department Marine Unit. Were you deferring to...

I will in a second. We got our new code boat. It's out front. So we took delivery of it this week. We're waiting on decal in a week and a half to two weeks. The scheme's already up. Martin has it if he can throw it up on the screen for us. So that's what it's going to look like when it's decaled. So it's going to be a sharp boat. It's going to give us a lot more presence in the canals. And then our code enforcement, we have the supervisor, Keith Richter, and then our Marine Officer, Berrios, is present. They're going to talk here in a minute. But this is going to be a great asset for us as far as being able to enforce some of the things that you guys talk about on a monthly basis with the violations that we can't. We see some, we can enforce some, but now we're going to have someone that's dedicated just to code violations on our waterways. Thank you.

Just a question. Was this supposed to go along with the dock or the lift at Caxambas? I was wondering where that was.

The, no, the dock, we're actually going to, we decided now we're going to keep this boat behind the fire station on Elcam on their existing lift. The city already has a lift there, but they've outgrown it with the size of their boats, so we have an operating lift that the city owns, so it's going to be kept right there, which is about, I don't know, 100 yards down from where we were going to do that dock project.

Thank you.

Any other questions about it?

Just for the record, I've applied to do a ride-along or two. Yes. So I would also like the opportunity after I do that to make, you know, some reports or comments here at Waterways. So I'd be okay.

Yeah, anyone's allowed to do ride-alongs. We do them regularly. So if anyone wants to come do a ride-along with Maureen or Code on one of the boats, and I have yours. It's on my desk. We're just waiting for the boat to get decowed and get him – acclimated with his vessel and get it out there and running. So it should be a couple more weeks. I'd like to tell you that I appreciate the opportunity. Get used to it first and get his bearings on what he's got going on.

You have to bring your own bait, though. I'll go get some.

Mr. Chair, I just wanted to ask the MIPD, is that limited to a number of persons on the ride-along? Is it just one per trip or more?

One or two per trip. I would say two would be max on that boat. But like I said, we can do them different days. I mean, you're not going to want to go out there for a full tour. It gets warm. But he can take you out and run you around, show you what he's doing, what he's looking for, and give you an idea of what he does on a day-to-day basis.

I have a question on the code enforcement. What's going to be primarily the focus of the code enforcement boat?

obviously there's lots of codes and so the primary focus is going to be water quality we'll do the storm drains we'll do the illicit discharge into the canal silt fences so mainly the water quality for now and will that will the code boat be operating like business hours, weekends? So right now we'll be working on the Marine unit Monday to Tuesday to Saturday. It's flexible.

And so just basically hours, regular kind of what I would call business hours, like 8 to 5? Yes, sir.

Eight to five. I mean, you know, again, it's flexible. If we need something later, we'll schedule it later. If we need it earlier, we will.

Yeah. What about things like checking ATONs and stuff like that? Is that going to fall under the code enforcement, or is that going to still roll into the PD? Checking what? ATONs, navigational markers. I know the PD... The PD do a good job in finding them and telling them.

We're still going to be out there in doing that. This is just going to give us another set of eyes. Like, if he's on the south end of the island, he notices a Natan, he's going to contact us and say, hey, this one's missing. We'll still go through the Marine unit to get them assessed and decide whose they are and get them replaced and get the right people notified. He's still going to be out there driving around. If he sees something, he's going to notify us. So it's just going to give us another set of eyes out there, you know, five days a week. So it's going to be a huge asset for us.

Great. I got a question. So it's going to be staffed Thursday through Saturday. I'm sorry, Tuesday through Saturday. All the time or as you guys have people available?

No At Eduardo's he's full-time. So yeah, no, he that's that's his He'll be on the boat every day. Okay.

I Have a question. Why what code enforcement's here related to? stuff that's happening on the water and barges, but it's not necessarily connected to the code boat and or maybe maybe you'll be inspecting barges and whatnot is it in in the magistrate hearings I see that the seawall companies are being fined for illicit discharges for blowing or when sawdust falls in the water from like a saw going across and I've seen like the fines are rather large like $5,000 and which I'm sure is just being passed on to the resident at some point in some way shape or form but are those in those cases are those egregious like they there will like knowingly letting the sawdust go in the water and doing it without attempts to clean it up or is it on the first drop of sawdust that you guys now see that it's considered irreparable so you know when you cut the sawdust and you blow that debris in the in the canal or you leave the the cut

wood in in the canal it's considered irreparable it's it's harmful um and that that fine is levied against the contractor yeah understood and um irreparable like sawdust floats and i've heard these these people they have mechanisms to try to address it because

I mean, making a dock, I can only imagine a chip of wood is going to fall in the water. So if they have mechanisms in place to scoop it out, which a lot of them, I guess, do now. They're being very responsible and putting barriers down. If they are picking that up and being proactive, is that still something you guys would cite?

Well, it all depends. So if you have, you know,

items in the water to keep that sawdust or that debris close you pick it up so you know we'll take that in consideration thank you so I have a comment on that I think that the seawall construction people are supposed to boom the whole area for the seawall construction what I've seen not necessarily from a boat but just visually from my canal what work has been done they don't do a particularly some of them don't do a particularly good job of that, of actually booming the canal so they can catch that debris. And I think the concern on it is more around a lot of the docks now are plastic. So when that goes in the water, it doesn't degrade. Well, it floats. Yeah, it basically floats. I mean, with sawdust, it will float and eventually decompose because it's wood. So I think the concern is more around that. But I think what's happened is that... They do their best. Sometimes they have quite a turnover of employees that don't necessarily know what that is, so they're in this continual kind of training process for the people. But to me, to your point, Dan, it's pretty difficult to build a dock where you've got a skill saw and you're chopping wood and not have that happen.

If they have a procedure, and maybe this is educational, where it could be like, if you have a pool net, if you have your turbidity barriers, and you have a spotter, and you immediately, you know it's going to happen. I mean... you immediately address it and document it rather than someone watching from a vacant lot and sees the first little bit go in and then just starts writing. I think you'd get a lot more seawall companies being proactive to get that stuff out if they knew they had a protocol to follow.

Normally when we get calls on these, it's pretty egregious. It's not there's five flakes in the mounds piled up against someone's stock or the canal because the tide had changed or whatever, and now all the debris is washed into one area, and it's like packing the back of the canal. Mm-hmm. I don't think they're driving around looking for just someone quickly cutting a beam and there's a couple sawdust. We usually get calls and respond to them.

Well, if the beams or the ends are falling in the water as they're cutting and they scoop them out, I think that's responsible and hard to avoid. I think it's just realistic.

Correct. I think there's some common sense when they enforce them. But if they go and there's sawdust packed, you know, you can see a sheen of dust and oil or whatever on the water, that's when it's a major violation.

Thanks. Thank you. To me, on that point, I think it could kind of behoove us as either a committee or a city to actually go and educate the marine contractors. that many of them on the island, and I absolutely know that some are, from a quality and ethics point of view, are here, and some are over here. And so we should, I think, make best efforts to train them, and then once we've done that and explained we're really looking for egregious violations, which is how they get fined, I think that would be helpful, just to slap them with a fine without trying to do the next step of change their behavior,

so i i personally have conversations with almost all the um con seawall contractors on the island so so we we know ideal you know daily conversations if it's an issue but like the sergeant said if it's not egregious we We know. We have the companies that take precautions, and we have other companies that don't. And they all know the rules. I've had conversation with them all.

I mean, if you've got an offender that is just egregiously being told of these things and not changing behavior, I mean, can we, as a city, could we take a really strong step and suspend their license?

If and when it happens. The wall and barge company are, I would have a co-vote, or at least they'll be passing them quite frequently. And you're a crucial part of our repairs. enabling them, giving them the right direction, and keeping them out of trouble so they don't decide to close up shop and go elsewhere. Because we do need them. And I've said it before, as soon as we have a hurricane, they are the first people we call, island wide. And if we treat them like dirt and unfairly pursue them, it's going to come back to bite us. I think they're all being responsible. It would be nice if they had education and protocols to address some of these things that you guys are going to inevitably come across. Thanks.

Did we ever – I know they've spoken to us a few times about the lack of properties to stage their work and that it was increasing the cost to the average taxpayer. And I'm not sure we gave them an answer or pursued that. Is that still sitting around? I mean, it would be fair to help them out with that. That wouldn't be us. That would be city council. Yeah, but we're mandated to work on our seawalls, so I don't know. It's just something that they asked us to help them with, and it doesn't seem like we've done that.

I would agree. Just as we can present access points for water sports and stuff, which has come out of this committee, I think it is responsible to identify potential staging options and places. They're just far few.

Yeah, I've got two comments, one about this and one about something else we talked about a moment ago. On seawalls, I'd really like to see this issue because it is one of our four mandates to waterways for this to be a regular agenda item. I think it's that important. So that would be one comment I wanted to make. And the other one was a question. What would the difference be on ride-alongs if you're doing the code enforcement boat or going with the Marco Marine Police? And can you do both? And just a little bit of an explanation on that.

I was going to focus on law enforcement and patrol and more rescue missions. But, yes, we do ride-alongs on both. You can do both. Thank you. Martin?

Yeah, so I forgot where I was going to go on this one. But I think the staging thing has been challenging. And I've had lots of marine contractors kind of push on it. I think where we are now currently is they cannot produce seawall panels on island. So they're either manufacturing them off island and bringing them in, or they're having them factory made. So really the staging piece of it is getting it off the lorry onto the barge. And we did approach Collier about potentially using their lot on the other side of the bridge, and we got told, no way, not going to happen. They don't want to do it. So the only other option that we've got is... either to buy a lot, the city to buy a lot, to help these guys out, or them collectively buy some lots, but they're not really any available. Or the other option would be to figure out how to do some staging at maybe Caxambas, but that's not going to go down particularly well with the residents, because they really don't like people using Caxambas.

David?

I think if the county saw that they would be paid by the seawall companies to use that barge landing and it would be a revenue source for the county, that would be ideal. That's right. I mean, they're using it for Naples Pier. It could make a nice barge park out of it and keep it clean.

I mean, it's kind of interesting. I think the Seahawk people are going to come in and talk later on some educational stuff they're doing. But I know when that thing was fairly prevalent front and center, one of the proposals that they put, because they would have needed access, was to actually go in and completely revamp that area and screen it and spend I think it was like a couple hundred thousand dollars of their personal money to tidy it up to then allow it to be used for work on Michael Island, and even that got shut down. So, I mean, we can take another swing at it. We'll pay you for using it, but it's challenging.

Would this committee support discussions, support the city council discussing with the county commissioners to encouraging them, encouraging the county to use, to convert that piece of land that they're currently using as a barge loading area, to properly convert that to a designated barge area that Marco Island barges and seawall contractors could count on using. And I mean, it takes that intensity off the island. Over there under that, it's out of the way. It's open water. Would this committee support or I'd like to say unanimously support.

I absolutely think we should support turning that into something. The challenge that you've got is that location for the seawall companies, the conversations I've had, is if they're building in the north or the south of the island, a lot of their cost is actually loading it and taking the barge. I mean, it takes them a day, basically, to get the barge around the island. because these things are big and not particularly fast.

The steps are very limited.

But I agree we should do something. I think we should support the Seawall contractors. Now, how you manage it, because you don't want all of them turning up on the same day, to say, right, we're loading on Monday at 6 o'clock, so there's some logistics. But I do think that we should, maybe we put a note up to city council to ask them to address it with Collier.

I would support a motion if somebody were to make it.

Not right now. We'll go back to agenda items. We'll put that on agenda. Rick?

First, we're kind of getting off topic and off the agenda here. I appreciate that it's all part of the entire discussion. But I think that's a whole agenda item separate for the next meeting. I would say that I did meet with the chief and some of his staff, and I think we had a great meeting, discussion, the enthusiasm of the departments to move forward on this. It's been a long time coming. We've been pushing for it for years. at least five or six years that I know of. And I'm very appreciative of their help and enthusiasm on it. And in terms of going overboard on enforcement, I think everybody says ignorance of the law is no excuse. And both landscape contractors and seawall contractors know what the law is. And if they don't, they should know. And I have complete confidence that the city staff will be fair in enforcing it. But you can't claim you don't know what the law is in terms of illicit discharge. So if we're going to get into that topic, again, I think that's a separate discussion item.

CHRIS RODGERS. Anything else for the Marco Marine Unit? No? OK. Thank you, Sergeant Montgomery. Thank you, guys.

Thank you.

OK, moving on. Ralph, your presentation on dredging alternatives.

OK. Martin will put it up there in a minute.

Thank you, guys.

Go get them. This was slated for June. That meeting was canceled and of course I went out of the country for the next month after that. Let me pause in this picture because I stumbled on it from back when I was running projects in the Middle East because there's so many parallels to Marco Island. This is the Palms Jumeirah, and it's completely dredged construction, limited access, just like we are. Some of the finest engineers in the world have built that. It's actually off Dubai in the UAE, very shallow, Persian Gulf, very warm. And when they first designed that, You see that crescent, that circle that you see around it? That was all completely surrounding and connected at one time when his engineers told him that, hey, you're going to end up with some Puget cesspool algae-filled thing. You can't build it that way. And much like Marco, the decision makers kicked it down the road for years. They built it, and of course it became an algae-filled cesspool. So what you see there now, they broke through it to get some tidal flow on the left and right. Those are little conduits. They're over 100 meters and with substantial bridges that had to be built. And the whole bottom section that you see had to be opened up to allow water to get up into the canal area. But that wasn't the end of it. Since the palms do not have seawalls, it was never made to handle tidal flow or storm surge, so the beaches started to disappear. So since they have unlimited money in the Middle East, they had a fleet of dredgers to replenish all those beautiful little beaches. And the obvious lesson learned is when you kick the can down the road, sooner or later you end the road, there's a price to be paid. And you better hope you have unlimited funds like they have here to cover it. rather than addressing it. So I really just want to throw it out there. There are some parallels. No matter how much money you have or how little I have, you can get bitten by this sort of thing.

I think the reality, Ralph, is this whole thing is sinking now anyways. I'm not sure I would say the engineers that built it were very qualified because that whole palms thing is sinking into the ocean.

Yeah, and that actually is part of the result, you're exactly right, of the tidal flow and sternum surge. It wasn't meant to handle that. But there's actually, I didn't get into it, but this was actually a very big success since it was pre-bought by some very rich people. And then when that came out, that it started to sink, started to lose their beaches, they had already started another one up the road that's twice the size as this. And they found that people didn't get rich by making the same mistake twice, and it went bankrupt. So it goes further than that. Let me get into this a little bit. Part of what this is, is to answer some of the questions that came out from the May meeting to get better conversation on it. But I want to, just to give you something to think about as I go through this. At the end of the day, when we talk about mobilizing boats, the proper equipment, the people, getting them on site, the demob, THE REPORTING, THE ANALYSIS, ALREADY WOULD BE ON THE $10,000 RIGHT OFF THE BAT. AND THAT'S NOT SOMETHING THAT WAS UNANTICIPATED, BUT JUST SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT WHEN I PROPOSE SOMETHING AT THE END.

There it is.

Just so people who haven't been keeping up with it just kind of catch up. Remediating the MUC, my argument has always been that we need to know where it is and how much it is before you can start making decisions. I was critical of the Seahawk presentation and proposal because we didn't know where and how the MUC is to even engage in those conversations. However, this may be taken on a little bit more important. Seahorse seems to be back, and they're insisting one has nothing to do with the other. I'm a little dubious about that, but keeping an open mind may be a partnership of some sort when we do find out what they're up to. Part of what this whole thing is, it's a tier three of a multi-pronged approach. At AWT, the whole landscaping arena is number two. This would be a potential opportunity from the Harper report that says the muck may not be as extensive and it may be piled up in a limited number of areas and perhaps dredging to go after that might be something we might do. Something that's obvious, we know what the muck is. It's that light material on top of the hard bottoms. It's 75 to 90% water and it tends to flow. I think we've talked a lot about what it takes IN REGARDS TO THE DREDGING, THAT SOME OF THESE SEAL PROPOSALS ARE DREDGING THE MIDDLE OF THE CANALS. PART OF OUR PROBLEM IS THAT THE STUFF FLOWS BACK INTO THE AREA THEY DREDGE. SO WE TALKED A LOT ABOUT THAT. THERE WERE SOME QUESTIONS BACK IN MAY WHEN THEY'RE TALKING ABOUT How do you find out where this muck is and how do you do that? And this is really, I just want to put something down that when you want to do it manually, this is a low brow type of way of doing it. This is the way you do it at water treatment plants. It's basically a clear tube that gets stuck down and you end up with a column of muck so you can tell how deep it is. You can send it to a lab, see what the organic content is, that sort of a thing. And also, the cost is about $300. It comes in five-foot lengths, and that's what we were talking about there. When you start to get into the more professional way of doing this, to cut to the chase, it's dual frequency sonar. It sends out one frequency to see the top of the muck, which is very light, and another frequency to get to the hard bottom. The difference, obviously, is the amount of muck. I did brainstorm a little bit as well. If this is an ongoing thing, what if we bought the equipment ourselves, learned how to use it, and outfitted the code enforcement boat or some other boat, and instead of hiring multiple times professionals to do this. And you can see that the cost of the equipment itself is already beyond $10,000 budget, even if we were to think about doing something like that. We've seen this slide before. This talks about an example where they, similar to us, where we thought we'd have to dredge everything to get a handle on this muck, and they went out and did the smart thing. They did a professional survey, very similar to what we're talking about, and they found that only a third of the waterway is all mucked up, and they saved 70% of the cost of addressing the muck. This is one example. This is kind of what I'm kind of talking about. These are the engineering firms that we have the most responsible view of. I've done a lot of work here, and the reason I kind of targeted them rather than going down in the tiers is that in case, like any proposal, there are obstructionists or throw things out, throw darts at it. And it makes it very difficult when you have these kind of people who are very reliable that anybody will say, well, are they certified? Are they any good? So this is where we targeted first to take a look at them. I did explore some of the opportunities for a marine service. agreement that may be in place with the city. I talked to Justin about it. Sometimes there's engineering retainer agreements that we could latch on, but those opportunities are not there apparently at this time. And this last slide, I threw it in there because if you go and have a boat doing stuff looking for muck, this is kind of a suite of things you collect to get a full assessment of a canal. This is much like you saw in the Keys where they assessed a canal so they can have a whole bunch of data to determine what is the best way to address some of the issues in a particular canal. I mean, it may not always be muck. It may be other things. And this is kind of a suite of things, if we wanted to go the next step, to add to that. So with that, in my view, from what I've seen so far, I mean, certainly you have some out-of-the-box thoughts of doing it ourselves, partnering with Seahawk. But it seems like the way to go is to actually box in what we would like to see in way of a professional service, give us confidence that there's a limited number and amount of muck, which means it's something that we have to go through a bid process. We have to make, of course, something to city council to get them on board. So I'm throwing it out now to see what direction to take on this before we actually do more.

Martin, you're first. Yes, I have a couple of questions. Firstly, I missed the meeting, I think, where this first got kind of introduced. And you had mentioned that you were thinking about doing some personal kind of muck testing or whatever you want to call it. There was, what I could see, a very minimal cost to kind of getting that kicked off. If you want to go ahead and do that, I am happy to fund anything that you expend on tubes or whatever to kind of get this thing moved forward. I appreciate that's most probably not the, perhaps the most endorsed professional way. It's kind of like a, you know, villagers taking a stab at trying to get some data. But I'm happy to fund that. If you want to go ahead with that, just let me know. I'll write you a check. I would say on this other stuff, it's obviously a bigger ticket item, but the reality of all of what you've said here is very valid, and I've been pushing for as long as I can remember to get data on what the canals were like 25 years ago and what they're like now. And it seems we can't kind of break through that. And I don't know whether that's a cost thing. We've got an independent company that have gone off and funded and got some data, but we can't seem to fund getting the two data sources overlaid. Is it overlaid now? Yeah. Okay.

She presented at the one meeting, didn't she, where you click on the map and it'll show you the old one and then show you the current one?

I'm not sure if it is, I missed it. So I would say this is all stuff that's gotta happen. As to the cost, I guess my concern is even selectively dredging, we're still most probably looking at 30, $40 million. You know, if you take the original Harper thing that was 183 and you kind of back that out, it's still a very significant cost. And it really comes down to how serious are we as residents and a city council at addressing it. because you can see from the bond issue that just went through, incredibly close, just about made it. Hopefully it gets ratified on the 26th, but I just imagine doing the same thing again like this. I've already had conversations with people where I don't want to put any money into the canals because I don't live on the canals, so just the canal people pay and stuff like that. So I think all this is great. I do think it needs to get pushed up to city council and funded. But I think we need that data source, and then I think we need to figure out how we're going to pay it.

Yeah, you're right. We did talk a little bit about it in May. And doing it on the cheap, like I had proposed, what, a year and a half ago, I had my finger on the button to buy the equipment and do it. And then I realized that, well, it was voted down five to two. This committee did not want it. So rather than spend hundreds of hours in doing that, and bringing it in and said, well, that's kind of stupid on my part to do that. And maybe it was going out too far of throwing myself out there to do that.

I'm surprised because, one, it couldn't have been voted 5-2 because I wasn't here and I would have voted 5-2.

No, no, no. When I originally opposed it a year and a half ago to get this data, because I didn't know what the composition of the committee was or anything else. I said, well, we need this data. Let's do this. It was voted down five to two not to spend the $350 that I proposed. And it occurred to me, and it was brought up again in May, and I said, it was voted down. He didn't want it. versus me just going out and doing it. Didn't make much sense. I do agree with you with everything else as far as it looks like we need to do this more professional. It is not cheap, as those other people in the river did in that estuary. It wasn't cheap, even though to say 70% of whatever it would have been. But certainly it's well beyond our $10,000 to do anything. And it's something that we'd have to package together and look at it a little bit more closely and see what we want to present to city council. And certainly it is an uphill swim, as you said, particularly now. but it's not something that... Really, it may be an opportunity to jumpstart the results from AWT and the landscaping and bring those results maybe years ahead. But again, it may fail. I mean, this testing may say, no, the muck is everywhere. We're not going to spend $189 million.

I've got a question for you. So this is about muck collection and analyzing what is found. but you're the tubes and all that, that's what you're kind of pursuing. Right. Okay. So I believe it's, um, August 28th. Seahawk has a educational symposium they're hosting and I know they have done some, well, I shouldn't say I know this, but I, I believe they have done some at least, uh, know cursory muck collection maybe at that meeting on the 28th they'll have some of that information and then you know that would help us make this decision I mean I agree like let's see what what's out there you know but maybe they've already done some of it and then I mean that's only in what you know a week take what we what we hear there and roll it into what you're requesting and see

Yeah, and that's why I'm saying they may be up to it. Maybe they have a whole different solution than what they tried before. It doesn't hurt strictly to find out. But yeah, it's well taken.

Ralph, I'm just kind of wondering, do you have a specific... conclusion or recommendation on where we ought to go with this? Or is this more of a informational?

My recommendation is that we develop a box, package, something to present to city council that, naturally it's debatable how many canals or how many canals we can do in one day, that sort of a thing, to say this is what we need and this is what should go out to bid. and see what comes in from industry. So this could be something that we say, we've got 220 canals out there, we say we want to look at 20 canals, assess 20 canals and see what we have, or we want to pay for one or two days and do some of this and see what the ARPA report, see if this muck is in one location. And part of that also goes out. utilizing dredging anyway. So there may be some working in there since we should be doing that piece, tie another piece into it. But again, we need to maybe not.

I've got a slightly related, but I remember back to 2017 hurricane. There's a lot more canals than just muck. Not saying muck, but there were parts of, you know, bicycles, old drums. You find how in your, or clean up the muck house, all this debris and all this stuff. There'd be a whole other cost, you know, whatever we have to do. They're visible in 2017.

Well, fundamentally, we're talking about stumble, just like any other project you'll find here. But I would go along with it, working around this stuff. It would get picked up. I wouldn't fill this. That would be an issue.

It would be a lot when we saw the dry cane Irma. So that's what I had. No.

All right. So, Ralph, to me, this is kind of a summary of what we've talked about for a long time now, which is good. But one of the comments I have a question on for you is when you're talking about, okay,

when you're judging to everything well it depends exactly how much we can fund, because fundamentally, the comes in, you're talking about X amount of dollars. And it makes a big difference, like when we talk about hydraulic , which is a bounce, and where it is, how is it? So that's part of the calculation, but there's a little bit more into that at the end of the day when the project is actually constructed, nailed down.

Because you said that some of the waterways might not be an issue, so we may be able to skip some of them. But I guess my question is kind of two parts to this then. Any time you put something in the water, you're going to disturb the ground there. So I think the goal that everybody was trying to achieve here is to get clean water in the canals. How, if you dredge it, how do you get clean water in the canal? Even if you dredge, I mean, where do you have to dredge to? And then what would be the, how does it become clean?

Well, normally a target, if you want to talk about levels, which is what you're getting to, you want seven feet. That's where he maximizes the ability to use the canal for what you would put as proper purposes, as well as enhancing the flow. That's part of the reason why you'll see, like in the Keys and parts of Naples, they use the backfill encapsulation method because they're too deep, restricts the flow, gets stagnant. It's an opportunity to bring it up closer to that seven feet. So there's a lot of innuendo in there, a lot of bits and pieces to it to get exactly what you want and nail it down when you talk about levels. But taking it out down to the baseline, yeah, that's what you like to do because it's more effective if you can get it all. because then it doesn't flow. Because a lot of it is not the amount of the muck. A lot of it is the surface area is the big deal because that's what's impinging on the water column and sending up the nutrients. So like the problem with the seahore proposal of dredging the middle of the canal, if there is muck on the side, it'll just flow in the middle. You end up with the same amount of surface area impinging on the water column. That's why they've gone to the backfill encapsulation method. So it depends what we find to say, okay, here's what we've got with the survey, and this is the best way to address it. So there's a little bit of variable on that end.

Maybe you can help on this too, Vedrick.

I have two comments. With all due respect, I think we're kind of drifting a little bit, and we're covering stuff we've all covered previously. before. I think it'd be helpful if you came to us with a specific proposal or recommendation that we could act on or vote on. And I agree with Dan that I think there's some Seahawks people here that...

Wait a minute, I heard... I know, I know.

It doesn't happen very often.

I almost fell off my chair. It probably won't happen again, but...

I'm just kidding. But... I'm planning on attending their symposium on the 28th. I encourage everybody to do it. I think we're going to learn something. And maybe what we learn will help focus our discussion here, because I just feel like we're kind of drifting again and rehashing stuff we've talked about for years. But if you've got a specific proposal, let's get it out in front of us.

Well, that's what I mentioned before. The proposal is to package something to put in front of city council. We'll package it up then.

Well, I think he's looking for our input.

But if it is the same as we mentioned before, we're not going to get anywhere with this because of the circumstances surrounding it. Let's not bother going there and wasting our time. Well, then we won't waste our time with it. But if this committee says, yeah, there's enough meat here where we want to package it up and get a little bit more detail and bring a draft or something we will present to city council, then I'm happy to do that. But that's going to depend on the committee. Yes, we want to go that next step or not.

A couple, three things here. I agree with Rick, and I'd like to see the package. That's number two. And number three, I'd also like to see the protections for seawalls and the boat docks that people have in these canals and exactly how they will be impacted and or protected from potential dredging. I think that's very important for the public to know that and for the security of those, you know. So I think that's all to be, which we haven't talked about.

Well, yeah, it's been discussed quite a bit. But not now. That's the reason why the Sea Opera Pole is only doing the middle of the canals in between to stay away from the docks and seawalls. Right. But that's not what I'm asking for. You know, I mean, it would be helpful if you were to do that. What is the impact of dredging if we want to go to the next yard? But I don't think we're there yet. I think maybe that is an issue.

Ralph, I think it's an important component of the whole topic, I think, that you can't really talk about dredging without including those impacts.

Right. I suppose, yeah, we can do that. That's another whole thing. It's been discussed before. Yeah. You know... I don't know how to respond to that really. Maybe somebody else can.

I was going to say on that point, typically the seawalls when they're put in all those years ago were not put in muck, they were put in hard base. So if you remove the muck of the seawalls, the pilings piled down into that hard bedrock, and they're not just pushed into the muck, because if they were, they'd just fall over. So I think it's something to check, but I don't think it's a significant.

Well, that's exactly why. That's the reason why all the stay away, the seawalls and the pilings, and you're only doing the middle to defray from that, because we recognize that the life of the concrete on these seawalls IT'S ALREADY BEYOND THE 50 YEARS. AND CORRECT, THE MUCK IS PILED UP. THAT'S PROBABLY WHAT'S HOLDING HALF OF THEM TOGETHER. AND I KNOW MYSELF, ONE CANAL OVER TWO YEARS AGO, THERE'S A COLLAPSE ON GALLION. A LOT OF ISSUES RESULT. AND THAT'S WHY IT'S BEEN BROUGHT UP. WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT SEA WALLS. I DON'T KNOW HOW TO HANDLE THAT PIECE AS PART OF THIS. IT'S A WATER QUALITY PIECE. WE'RE STAYING AWAY FROM THE SEA WALLS. SO I DON'T KNOW.

That's why I asked the question. I think we're drifting again. I'd like to move beyond that. So I'm willing to make a motion that we appoint you to come back to the committee with a specific recommendation with all the components that you recommend be part of it. And I don't think we're asking you to write an engineering specification to do this work. put what you want in a proposal, and so we can vote on it and act on it and move it forward. But to just keep talking about it, I think we're just wasting time, no offense. No, no. I mean, I agree. So I make a motion that you come back to the next available meeting with a proposal that's more concrete and more definition of exactly what you're looking for.

Correct. The specific engineer will come when they develop the bid package.

I don't think we need a motion to have him do his work. But what I think, correct me if I'm wrong, I think what you were trying to do is you want to package this up. But to package this up, you're asking for our input, correct?

Well, I've made the motion or I didn't exactly make the motion. I've recommended that we take the next step and package something to bring to city council and they would determine, yes, there's meat here to get a big put together.

I made the motion for you to do that. Yeah. But now do you think that Mr.

Chair, just point of order, there is a motion on the floor. I would suggest a call for a second before further discussion.

I'll second it. Okay. All right, discussion. Okay, so do you want to wait until after the Seahawk presentation to come back to this to bundle it all together?

I'm going to start working on it if that's what the committee wants to take that next step. Part of that is I'll be there August 28th and probably might have some conversation before or after. I mean, maybe they're – I understand they're here today, so maybe something from that. I don't know. But, yes, I can do that. If this committee wants to take that next step, I will do that preliminary step.

Okay. So my question is, is you have a number of items on here you're looking at. Are you looking at doing the sludge judge, or are you now going completely into, like, the bathymetric survey?

This needs to be a professionally done bathymetric survey at this point.

Well, the city just did their police, what program was that? The Seakeeper. So, I mean, that's some information about.

No, that's only depth of water with a regular sonar. What we're talking about here is the amount of muck. It's not directly related how deep the water is other than practically speaking when it's accomplished or taken into account. But we're talking about the amount of muck and where is it.

But isn't the whole thing with the bathymetric survey that we've got the data from years ago and we've got the data now. So if there's muck in there, the depth of the water will have changed. So A minus B equals C kind of deal.

Well, it really doesn't because, as I mentioned before, it can be as much as 90% water. It may not read the muck. It just doesn't. It can be vastly different.

A depth sounder, which is what's being used for this survey, will ping down to the muck. It won't... Ping all the way through the muck.

Yeah, it does Mr.

Chair if I could add to the conversation So I think what member Ohana is talking about is actually doing some core samples of the muck To find out the depth of the muck itself, which is different than a bathymetric survey which would find where where the bottom of the water is and the top of the muck is so two different things and but I think what member Rohan is trying to get to is getting the The characteristics of that muck and the layer and the thickness and of it Right Right.

Yeah, it's like I said at the beginning. It's how much of the muck and where is it and And I talked about the dual frequency machines that give you that.

And are you looking to do this on the entire canals or just to pick a couple canals to start with?

That's part of what I'll determine, if you want me to go further, how many canals to confirm what Harper says, if I think we can do it with fewer canals, just a number and extrapolate from there, and then go, if you want to actually have a project out of it, then obviously you've got to do them all. I said we decide that have the muck, then you'd have to go back, because to do the work, you have to do a further survey, which goes across of doing the work.

All right do we have any public comment Emily Bacon Hello we are back So I have just a quick comment to leave.

Excuse me. Can you state your name for the record?

Yes. Yes. I'm Emily Begin, the Vice Executive Director of the Coastal Habitat and Water Quality Initiative, or Seahawk. And we are a science-first 501 nonprofit based in Naples that's conducting independent canal research and providing free technical assistance to local governments. statewide so many of you have mentioned repeatedly about our canal science symposium I'm here just to provide a few isn't familiar so our canal science symposium is going to be on Friday August from 2 to 4 30 p.m. at the Marco Island Public Library we're going to from you a grant and they will be attending and helping speak and be a part of our panel They're gonna help us show water quality nutrient loading and residential Marcos with also some interrupts and opportunities from any community years It's time exactly on these issues and we wanted to invite personally so Laureen and I are here some people from the team and We want to help spread the word so that residents can feel heard about the issues of water quality and learn It's free and open to the whole island. And you can register on our website and through Eventbrite. And it is becoming a very popular event. So we're just telling people to register. And we may have to have a second area for people to view and live stream it. So we're not here to advocate for a single fix. I know there was a little bit of mention about that. We are a science nonprofit, and this event exists to educate the public, which is one of the pillars of our organization. We think that's important in the waters every day. So I hope and am happy to answer any questions at our organization briefly here, or we'll speak more about our organization at the event at the beginning. Thank you.

Thank you. Just a question. Is there like an agenda that we can see of what you're going to be talking about?

Yes. So if you RSVP, you should receive an email that'll tell you about the agenda. And I believe we have it on our website. If not, people can RSVP and see the agenda. But it'll be just some of the topics I described, nature-based solutions, water quality, the history of Marco Island, and some more information about Seahawk and how we support local governments and do our research all around the state I also wanted to mention that a program that we're running is we're doing free water quality testing for residents of the island and it does offer some indicators that you had described in your assessment not all of them but some of the things that it will be able to let me get my notes up real briefly Some of the things that it will be able to help provide some information on if you sign up to have this water quality testing completed by our team and the indicators that it will help search as we work as a part of a national work group. We've brought together about 15 scientists from across the world to study residential canals because we recognize that this is a much bigger topic that lacks any body of scientific literature on them and what to do about them. So when you sign up to do our free water quality testing, you're actually helping contribute to our database so that we can better understand this and contribute to the research. I volunteer. Yes. That's also on our website.

I've already registered for the event, but I didn't see where you sign up for free water quality testing.

When you choose events and a science symposium that has a lot more information. There you go. Good morning.

Dennis Bartolucci, Marco Island. Thank you for your service on this committee. I've attended some of your meetings, not all, and I wanted to share a perspective from that and particularly from today. First of all, I appreciate the time that you all put in and that time I think that what you're attempting to do is to advise the council on actions to eliminate problems in the city and However, we might not be getting to that piece of the agenda, which is recommending action. So let me just say a few things. One, I think after years and years of discussion, it seems to me that a consensus is formed around the fact that the reuse water is a contributor to the canal problem. I think we finally arrived at that. The discussion around AWT is part of it. You know, where we go with AWT, hopefully we implement it and we cut down the nutrients that are coming out of the reuse water, but at least we've gotten to the point where we now admit reuse water is a problem. I think we now are at the point where we also admit that there's an accumulation of junk at the bottom of the canals from years and years of malpractice, if you want. canals haven't been maintained and we've continued to add pollution to the canals and sometimes it's landscapers dumping stuff in there and sometimes it's the city dumping reuse water in there but in any event we now know that we've got a muck problem we have to deal with as well that's good What we don't have are the recommendations going to the council for action so that the public could encourage the council to take action. The council, this is like a loop. The council says we need our experts, you all, to tell us what you want us to do. The public wants the problem solved. You're the starting point. I can't figure out And please, don't take this as an insult. Sometimes I'll say things and it sounds like that, but I'm saying it in the spirit of constructive criticism to start to move things forward. I can't tell if this is a coffee club WITH DISCUSSION INVOLVING A BUNCH OF CITY PAYROLL, IN OTHER WORDS NOT FREE, OR IF THIS IS THE COMMITTEE THAT ASPIRES TO ADVISE THE COUNCIL TO TAKE ACTION ON SERIOUS PUBLIC ISSUES. The only way I could measure the effectiveness of this group is by seeing that advice is going to the council on a regular basis on important matters so that the council can receive and understand your advice and act on it. I would encourage you to come off the bench, vote on the proposition that Mr. Woodworth has put forward. And let's move forward. Honestly, I think that you're all trying to do the right thing here, but what's missing is the most important part, the action. The action is get some advice to the council. And if in the future I'm fortunate to be on the council, I would insist that we get that advice on a regular basis. Take action. Talk is cheap. You're having good discussions, but Be decisive, please. We've got real issues here that we need to solve. And you are the front of the train to getting those solved. And you all have different points of view, and they're all valued. But let's move it forward. Let's get going. I encourage you to take action. Please don't take what I said as an insult. It's a compliment to what you're trying to do, but I encourage you to move forward to get it done. Let's do it. Thanks.

Thank you. One comment I'll make on that that maybe the public doesn't understand, but we can't meet each other outside of here. So as we sit here, this is the only way we can see what everybody wants. I would love to sit down and talk to Rick and understand a number of things. And Ralph's got a lot of data, and Ralph has been presenting for it. And all we're trying to point is so we can kind of move forward.

I THINK THIS POINT BASES MY RECOMMENDATIONS, MOTION, ACTION. I'LL PACKAGE AT A NEW LEVEL BECAUSE THAT HAS TO HAPPEN, BUT I'LL COMMIT TO DO THAT.

Could you say one other thing? And here I'm probably.

This is public comment and it is the public is supposed to express their viewpoints. It's not a dialogue section. So what I would suggest is maybe putting the process or how the committee is working on another, on a future agenda item so discussion can be had amongst the committee members of how to best bring things forward to council. Thank you.

I'll admit that this I listened to the expended. Honestly, I think most people through island wide, I think three, I've sat on this committee back to Harper, which was package this up and send it up. What they do with them at this level and ordinance, the council have to figure out how to fund that. And so I think Ralph has done good. I think we package it up and send it up to city council.

Okay. Any more discussion no, okay? Member ha yes and vast unanimous concern All right moving on that's my agenda a second Okay, new business. No Wake Signs a Tiger Tail. We started this discussion a little bit last month. Justin, do you have any update on that?

Yeah. I did reach out to the city's coastal engineering consultant. That's actually their name. And they are researching the process to be able to restore in the Sand Dollar Island channel that goes to Tigertail Beach. And they, WC, and so that's in the process. Once they do their research, they will provide a proposal for that. I will bring that back to this committee here. for further action, whether you want to send that up to City Council for consideration and have it budgeted. That's all the update I have on that at this point. Okay.

Perfect. All right. Staff communication?

Yeah, a couple of things. At the June City Council meeting, the second City Council meeting, which was on June 15th, City Council did vote to establish the meeting frequency for all advisory committee meetings, I believe four. uh committee members from this committee were present at that meeting and city council did establish nine meetings annually with also the option for two workshops in addition to those meetings so it would be total of 11 and they did there was discussion of a recommendation of having a hiatus during the summer of three meetings so that you would be that would be your your nine meetings those three meetings during the summer is when as you know seasonal residents are not here, but that's you have the flexibility of establishing the dates for those nine meetings, and this will take effect when you establish your calendar for next year meeting, your meeting calendar for then. And so that's one item. And then the other item is there was discussion during Member Rohana's presentation earlier about the costs for some of the, Doing some of the piloting for this selective muck Assessments You do have but it's kind of late in the game now and we don't have it on the agenda here, but you're the $10,000 that's allocated to this Advisory Committee will We'll finish at the end of September, and then starting in fiscal 27, that amount has been reduced to $5,000. But since you don't have anything advertised on this agenda for expenditure, I don't see how you're going to be able to use up any of those funds for any of those items right now.

I saw in a prior meeting, didn't we allocate some?

We talked about it, but I don't think we actually did, right, Rob?

No, yeah, I talked to you about what's my cost, whether what we'd get. I determined for $1,000 to Gantt to recommend what I did.

Any more staff communication? I'm on staff communication.

To point out, the city filed a... 4E update, comprehensive update of the FEEB.

Point of order, Mr. Chair. We can discuss that in other committee communications under Item 13 coming up.

Perfect.

Staff communications, just for staff to share. Okay. But you can bring that up during other communications.

As long as we have enough time, hopefully we'll. Do you guys have more for Justin? I'll do the same. All right. City Council?

Hi, Deb Henry, Marco City Council. In response to Elliot coming to council on Monday night and asking for direction, I just wanted to start with The city's website has what your responsibilities are, so I just wanted to touch on a few of those things in conversations that I've had. For safety, boating, and navigation, I ironically did see Josh yesterday, and it's on half a dozen boats. The problem is, and I didn't realize this, the chip that you put into your Garmin, you have to check that out and download it. Not a lot of people are doing that. So it is an active thing. So it goes to the fourth item. What a great conversation. And there's probably letters to the editor with information on this. We're trying to poster of vacation. This is what we want the public back to the conversation from wonderful councils having. But I think it would be came. to do a writing campaign to city council and maybe but just talking about it but if you present your problem with us it'll be just an action for and this is paying a test and i and uh defeat been taken to other land ideas be a lot more helpful actions are wonderful but they're meant and the focus areas for you guys to get no new papers

All right. So last, would you be willing? I have my ideas. I divide between the whole length of treatment. I like the look of it. In the first month, it looks on how much work you want to go into. What fertilizer do we want to put on them? And water. Research. Looking at all, say, the University of Florida, which has the sacred cow. I don't know. What about the piece that we can affect immediately? You have something that maybe we could do for education. Also, well, I don't have centers. And I think there's so many. You've got. One more month and go to it. I want to do it right.

Yeah.

And I don't want out there that is going to be picked apart as it well should.

Chair, just as I should do, I do leave, but thank you.

May I have just one comment? I agree that it is all-encompassing. That's why it's so valuable. But we can piecemeal it. I know Rick has a great paper that addresses getting rid of the turf ordinance, which could be one thing you can address. Not everybody agrees on that people should have the option to get rid of their turf. Maybe we take it piece by piece, and then we can accumulate it. Because I know it's difficult, because the ordinances as they exist now, some really smart people put a lot of time and effort, went through a process and created it. And it's gotta go beyond just, we wanna make this change because Elliot Mascoop says so. So it's not easy to do, I get it. But maybe if you take, piece by piece, and start to dig at it.

I don't want it to be an Elliott Mass Group says so. I want it to be the University of Florida and the state of Florida and the science says so. That's what I want it to be, not me. So that's why I'm working so hard on it.

Canal access for paddle boards and kayaks? You want to try to do that next month?

Well, I think it pretty much got shut down. I mean, it seemed like there wasn't a lot of traction for it.

Okay. All right. We'll hold off on that.

I don't know whether we want a consensus to.

Does anybody want to go back to the paddle boards?

I mean, I've done my bit. I did my research. I put forth the reasons why I thought it was a good idea. And, you know, some people from city council kind of said no.

Okay.

No way in hell do we want anyone getting into our canals. Well, they're not actually their canals. Moving on.

Okay. All right. Construction and inspection of seawalls.

I would happily want to discuss that.

Do you want to try to do it next month?

Yep.

Okay. And then we talked about a biometric or bathymetric survey at Marco Island Waters. Are we going to kind of just table that? Or do you want to talk about, or do you want to bring your judging piece back up for next month?

Well, we already did that, I think.

Well, will you have it ready for next month for the agenda?

Yeah, sure.

I'll do something with that.

So then skipping bathymetric survey would be part of your thing. And then you had landscape and turf reform. You want to do that next one? I would. OK. So that's three for right now. So it's probably good there.

Can I just add one thing? I think I got slightly cut off at the end of my comment. You've got two opposing points of view that have to be blended, meaning people who come down here buy very expensive properties and want to see yards and lawns that look like what they want versus people also who live on our canals and who live on Marco Island who want to have clean water, the fish jumping out of the water, be able to jump in their water. without fear of pollution. So I'd say the two opposing points of view, that's also part of what I'm working on, how to best get to a happy medium between the two. And this is a much bigger issue than it looked like at the beginning. And I just wanted to get that out on public record.

Also, during the meeting, we talked about staging options for seawalls. Did you want to maybe address a little bit of that in yours?

Yeah, I can do that.

Okay. All right. Is there any other agenda items for probably the future?

I think I mentioned at the beginning, but I think council mentioned that maybe the Marco Pass dredging proposal. It sounds like what you're saying is it's already at a higher level, even though they gave it to us to give up professional input and report something. And that's on our table.

Kill it at our level?

I was just going to say, I think it makes sense if we can to see if Dan could give us an update since he sits on that committee, just a quick five minutes update as to where it's at. I think it's important for the people on the island to know that that's happening.

Okay. Well, if we've got time, we'll see if we can do that for next meeting. Is there anything else for next meeting or future agenda?

Mr. Chair, before you leave this subject, a recommendation would be to limit it to three items. So the staging options for seawalls is...

He's going to see if he can put part of that into the construction and inspection of seawalls.

Okay. And then the last one, the update for October, since we already have things for September. Okay.

Okay. All right. All good on the agenda items for next meeting?

Yep.

Okay. All right, other committee communication? There was a few of you guys that wanted to talk.

Is now the time?

Yeah, go ahead. Thank you.

As I started to say before, I found in the communication to city council that the city had filed a update to FDEP for the IV-E plan. And I got the IV-E plan through a FOIA request. And while I was out there, I noticed that the water testing results aren't being posted on the city's website anymore. I think Joan could probably tell why that's happening.

I can speak to that.

Either one.

Yeah, so as you may be aware, anything that is published on Citi's website now has to meet the ADA digital requirements. We did request that the ADA requirements, they ended in an effort for them to come in with each, and it, at this point, is, staff time. I'm sorry, as far as that and the staff, I don't know if to cede that.

As soon as some do have a deadline that were that the city came up with a law that we have to work So the more information that gets web more work that needs to be done We are 88 compliant along with is that for vendors? information documents compliant fashion FOIA requests The city's more until the documents are a client. We cannot start loading them on the website deadline dates That's correct when is the federal is april 2027 very um off is it 27 or 28 i need to double check the year it feels like the website there is an awful lot of documents that are on the website that we are in the process of making ada compliant so the more documents that are added to it are more documents that need to be made ada compliant And again, we're not trying to withhold information from the public. The public can make FOIA requests to the city and close out. We're just trying to manage something to remove any cutty that's coming our way in a way that's a federal requirement.

Does the city have a vendor assisting you with that process?

So we have ASL to provide some technology recommendations that we have made. This was included as part of the budget. The vendors to convert very big documents like that, that's very, very expensive. So Ford now, within the budgets as we recommended, they're called crawl through the site before we get to that deadline and tell us exactly what is not compliant. staff can go in and make and we are if there's other kind of technology that's available to help us convert but based on first blush of technology companies I've looked at they are they're pretty expensive right now we're gonna keep looking at it we're not gonna give up on it but this is what we found so far do you have to go back to every single document that's been submitted that is so there is addition that the government has given if now there are some documents so for example like the past maybe the CAFR's dependence reports that are an active document like say they're 10 years old we can put that we can put those in a folder and that's called an archive and we can put those in that are not ADA compliant but we need to be prepared if there's any documents that are on the website to support that they're not active anymore

So the city's position at this point is anything that you guys are presenting, make sure it's compliant. Exactly. Okay.

Can I keep going?

Go ahead. It's your comment.

First of all, I'd like to compliment Joan and Justin for being responsive to my many FOIA requests, and I know I'm not the only one that's doing it, so I hope the city is budgeting enough help for you and your staff to make sure that you can continue the level of responsiveness that you've had so i appreciate it it's a it's a cumbersome process but it does work and joan's been very helpful now i'd like to switch to my specific comment is part of the 4e report said that and this is a quote the monitoring record assembled for this update demonstrates clear and sustained reasonable progress. Well, my second FOIA request was to ask for the water quality reports for June of 2026 and If you, I tabulated them, but I didn't circulate them, so I didn't, which is a 0.3 limit. The average of all the test locations was 0.785, which was double the nitrogen that we're supposed to be at. is significantly worse than any of the testing . So I would that we have had which is supposed to per liter, mega something per liter. The average for the 14 testing locations were 0.0875. Again, almost double. So not only are our canals not getting better, they're getting worse. And that was confirmed by Gene Wardlehoff, who circulated a report to me that confirmed the testing that nitrogen is back in the air category. The ecosystem is collapsing due to eutrophication. So I don't know whether we just didn't get into the 4E preparation. I just know that when he releases the for you report to this committee Which think since we're the waterways committee we would have got to see The submittal and not just wait for the results waters getting worse pictures Relatively and said I can tell you my canal gotten better anything since I moved to Marco 10 years ago Thank you.

I'd like to respond to that. We're going in the opposite direction of where we want to go. What we're doing ain't working. To definitely, you know, I wish we could work together. We can't. But, I mean, this is exactly what I've been so upset about. That's why it's getting the fertilizer. I'm working so hard on it. Availability time is big. So much to do. the staff and what they have to pay for the vice chair of the waterways advice all we can as much as times and we need our two workshops if it's to put it into perspective as i mentioned decision and the muck does not take a vacancy don't take a vacation we can't take a vacation from what we do Just to piggyback on Rick, work to do. And the less we do, as far as I'm concerned, and I know there's a big cost going to be here, we need to do all we can. Thank you.

And I think I support that our problems don't sleep. So we've managed to get seven people here. And I know it for staff. Most of us are willing until we stop. And it's a disappointing direction. I just hope we manage as many of the meetings that we can. One kind of final comment on that is that we remember when I was on the waterways committee in the early 20-ish time, we had an agenda in 2008. We didn't have another. We used to. to Dennis, Mike, that we could exchange ideas that we out in the sun. You know, we're here. But if we've got even 10 or 15 minutes left, let's open it up among ourselves to talk and exchange ideas and thoughts. And if there's people in the audience that want to say, hey, you know, 15 minutes, what kind of idea that would be helpful? So I'm just throwing that out there.

A couple of things. One, the testing thing. I feel like we used to always get the results kind of sent to us on email, and I'm not sure that I've seen that. You haven't. And I'm just thinking maybe the easy fix is, obviously we can't comment on it, but we should be able to get those results and send it to a committee. Maybe that will be helpful. You can get them if you submit a FOIA request.

All it takes is an e-mail request, and we will e-mail it to you. You send an e-mail, and we reply with the e-mail.

Make a function of when it gets sent to the committee. Send me an e-mail. And then the other comment to your point, encouraging to see that things are moving, what I would say is we have to be very, very careful and aggregate data in saying if we look at all these things, because From my memory, when we started drilling down, there were one or two locations that were always problematic. And so I haven't seen the data you've got, but I think we need to shelve it. It's an in-depth topic, and it really is difficult to make sweeping statements about, on average, we're impaired. Because it is like, if it's just one or two locations, there could fundamentally be an issue. Not one location that was even close to them. OK. Well, I don't know. I don't share the results.

Take a look.

But I think that most probably we should drill into it a little more. Absolutely. I agree with you. It has to be brought up as a bigger discussion because at the end of the meeting we're short on time and we're all very passionate about trying to fix this. Then a couple of other things was, one, there was a comment made about the survey and now we've overlaid the data and I'm unclear as to have we done it or haven't we done it or can we do it or... Okay, so Seakeeper took our old bathymetric survey, laid the one on top. What was the results? How do we get a readout on that from somebody?

MIPD's not here anymore to talk about that, but I can send them an email and ask them that.

Thank you. I think it would be good to have a summary of, like, here's the two things, and we can say in this particular area we see three foot of sediment or muck or whatever.

Justin, am I mistaking, didn't she present that at the meeting like four or five months ago, six months ago? Where you click on a dot and it'll show you?

There was discussion of it, I remember, but I don't remember specific details of... You can definitely click on a dot and it will pull up the information that they have as to the current depth. But the important point, I think, for us is, where were we and where are we? And that's really the data I want to drive to. to be advertised press or anything like that, because that clip, I'm sure on video, but you get to show up and what you're doing is loud in the room. I believe it's 130, 150. That's what the at the library.

Oh, it meant this room. Sorry about that.

It's at the library, right? Rose. So I think it's more. I don't have a ticket yet. You're going to be sitting out in the parking lot.

I'll relay what she's saying. Have signed up, and I believe that they're looking at or are unable to be that you can attend.

Great. Thank you. comments I guess even productive projects that we're working on and all that one information let's can't talk outside of let's also try the things that we can actually up AWT there's nothing you know so let's let the education piece on the landscaping maybe net I think I'm is there any topic we're missing that we should be enough that I forward but I

You guys never talk about this or you never talk about that. Anything else that's a problem we should be addressing? Air quality and some of the other things.

Well, we did about a year ago with our whiteboard, we did navigation with our items. We knew our pitons. You hear about all the time now. Collier Creek, Oteria, septic conversion. Then we moved on to marine construction, seawall prospectors load. So you're going to actually do it again next month. education fertilizer landscape materials and canals and conservation and then you know bodies which we're kind of told about today again being safe and secure boating and navigation in surrounding waterways those are things that we discussed that we want to do so i mean if you guys want to come up with an agenda item that falls into that that's a good thing on that but i mean for the next month already so one consideration i know was mentioned in nine

You can have a workshop that doesn't become just another meeting. It's going to take support of what is it we're trying to accomplish, what do we want to do. It's an opportunity to make it more free-flowing, have other people come in, interior and external, internal. But it's going to have to take some thought ahead of time, much more than just a meeting and creating an agenda.

What is the difference between a workshop and a meeting?

Workshop is a topic, one topic related. So if you want to tackle one topic, you would dedicate the workshop for that. And then at a workshop, you're not voting on anything for approval. It's just that. It's a workshop limited to one topic. Yes, you can have presentations, you can invite speakers, but it's not something that you would vote on.

We could invite a vendor to a workshop, a potential vendor.

You can invite a vendor if you want to do a deep dive on that topic. You can invite them to come and speak.

So we can't invite vendors.

They can do a presentation. That's correct. Yeah.

But I'll just caveat that, that they can't be selling their ware. Right. No, I get it. They can't be promoting something where they would have an unfair advantage as compared to other vendors.

A workshop limited or just like a meeting?

Same timeframe and actually What was discussed at Council was in 90 minutes for these committee meetings Understand the issues that you guys mentioned here I will mention that I And public work staff will be available for your two hours. I

So the council didn't vote to limit it to an hour and a half?

No, they voted on the frequencies, but what was discussed during that council meeting was that all the committees are 90 minutes. You're one of the anomalies. There's other audit committees, 90 minutes. All these other committees are 90 minutes.

We're on the agenda time for the minutes. to come somebody from the commission committee or we're talking about it public comment and this committee would have if it's not going to be anything talk to somebody from the beautification went through ed henry city council created liaisons beautification with the other person

I just wanted to say as for basic education should be mentioned I think we should okay