Board of County Commissioners - Regular Meeting

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Thank you. ¶¶ Thank you. This is getting...

It's time to get quiet, and it's freaking us out, just so you know.

So we're saying amongst ourselves it must be because Commissioner Zimbao is not here.

I don't think that is it. Well, it is 9.30 exactly, so welcome to the June 23rd Board of County Commission meeting, and I am calling this meeting to order. If you would, please silence all of your equipment. That would be awesome. We are going to start off with an invocation and leading the pledge from Pastor Blackshear, who is a member of the East Altamont community and has been a huge supporter for Rosenwald, and we appreciate you and we thank you for being here as well.

Thank you for the invite, and I know this is not protocol, but this is the best county commission in the state of Florida.

Let's make it protocol. Amen. Amen.

Let us pray. Father, we thank you and we bless you for another opportunity to come together to do the people's business. Lord, I pray for this commission that has always led with integrity and honesty and truth. Lord, that you would bless them, that you would bless our chairman, our chairlady as she leads this commission with balance, that you would bless each and every one of these commissioners and the decisions they're making today. Father, that they realize that people lie in the balance of what they do. that it is a weighty responsibility. We thank you for such a great commission. We thank you for those that serve on this commission. We thank you for their work, their history. We thank you for their purpose, Lord. And we ask you, God, I ask you especially, sometimes with public servants, we don't realize that they have lives and families. They have people in their lives that are affected by some of the things they deal with. Lord, they have loved ones that are sick. They have children that are in college. Lord, as they do the people's business, I ask today that you would handle their business. Lord, the forgotten business of these commissioners, that you would handle their business. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. 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.

Thank you.

Pastor, you are why we love Seminole County. We have two proclamations this morning. The first one will be read by Commissioner Lockhart, and it is Code Enforcement Officers Appreciation Day. And we see you all there, and we appreciate you very much.

Commissioner Lockhart. Commissioners, it is truly my honor to move the following proclamation of the Seminole County Board of County Commissioners proclaiming June 1st through 7th, 2026 as Code Enforcement Officers Appreciation Week in Seminole County, Florida. Whereas code enforcement officers provide for the safety, health, and welfare of the citizens of Seminole County through the enforcement of local building, housing, and land use codes. And whereas these professionals are dedicated to protecting the environment and the natural beauty of our county by ensuring responsible property maintenance and compliance. And whereas, since Seminole County assumed full responsibility for code enforcement operations in October 2025, The program has enhanced service delivery through improved responsiveness, greater consistency in enforcement practices, strengthened customer service, and increased coordination with residents and community stakeholders. And whereas, in less than one year, this dedicated team, which includes five code enforcement officers, one supervisor, one manager, and two clerks, performed more than 2,500 inspections and achieved a compliance rating exceeding 75%, demonstrating their commitment to voluntary compliance, neighborhood preservation, and exceptional public service. And whereas, through their tireless efforts, code enforcement officers help to prevent blight, maintain high property values, and improve the overall quality of life for all residents. And whereas, the Seminole County Board of County Commissioners recognizes the vital role these individuals play in community development and public service, often working in challenging conditions to ensure a safer community. And whereas the Florida Association of Code Enforcement has designated this first full week of June to highlight the importance of the profession, now therefore be it proclaimed that we, the Board of County Commissioners of Seminole County, do hereby proclaim June 1st through 7th, 2026 as Code Enforcement Officers Appreciation Week in Seminole County and encourage all citizens to recognize and express their appreciation

for the dedication and service of our code enforcement professionals adopted this 23rd day of june 2026. we have a first and two seconds all those in favor aye opposed hearing none passes unanimously we have the division manager john martin and i would love for you to say a few words about the team i think there we go

Spontaneous applause from the team.

Because everything in that proclamation is correct. It really is so much better.

I apologize now for being a little choked up. That's awesome. Being able to come to Florida's A Natural Choice and deliver a code enforcement division that's professional, that's community focused, that met each one of your goals has been a lifelong honor. And it's my privilege to serve the citizens of this wonderful county. And I can't take any of the credit because my team, if you guys would please stand up in the back of the room. These folks make it easy for me to look this good. I thank each one of you for your trust, for this opportunity, and I assure you that we're only going to continue to get better. So thank you very much.

Thank you so much. Thank you. We appreciate you all. I don't know if you saw it, but you got a little standing O from your team as you were walking back. Let's get that on the record as well. The next proclamation proclaiming July 2026 as Parks and Recreation Month in Seminole County will be read by Commissioner Delary.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Oh, don't leave yet. We're going to take pictures. Don't leave yet. Don't leave yet. You've not been sprung from the asylum.

They have code enforcement to take care of.

I'm sorry, Commissioner DeLaurin.

That's quite all right, and it's totally understandable, and I'm glad that they're sticking around to get the photos, but what I wanted to say, Madam Chair, was that we all have so much to be thankful here in Seminole County, not just code enforcement, our entire staff, and Seminole County is truly a wonderful place to live, work, and play. In fact, You know, during the pandemic in the past, so many people from other parts of the state actually came here because our county was not just open, but to enjoy our leisure and our parks and our trails and our trailheads. And I'm very honored to read this proclamation into the record and proclaim National Park and Recreational Month here in Seminole County. So the proclamation of the Seminole County Board of County Commissioners proclaiming July 2026 as National Park and Recreational Month in Seminole County, Florida. Whereas parks, recreation are an integral part of the community throughout this country, including Seminole County. And whereas parks and recreation provides facilities for sports, outdoor activities, and unstructured play, improving physical and mental health, of county residents of all ages and whereas parks increase economic prosperity enhances property value boost tourism supports businesses and reduce crime and whereas parks trails wilderness areas protects our precious precious precious excuse me resources and promotes environmental stewardship in Florida's natural choice, and whereas Seminole County provides residents with more than 40 parks, trailheads, wilderness areas encompassing more than 7,600 acres, and whereas Seminole County parks and recreational staff, volunteers, and partners work tirelessly to ensure safe, clean, accessible, and fun spaces for all to enjoy, and whereas the U.S. House of Representatives has designated July as Park and Recreation Month, And whereas Parks and Recreation Month serves an opportunity to celebrate and raise the awareness of the valuable benefit of providing our parks, trails, and natural lands in Seminole County, now, therefore, I proclaim that we, the Board of County Commissioners of Seminole County, Florida, do hereby proclaim July 2026 as National Park and Recreational Month. in Seminole County, Florida, and invite all residents and visitors to explore and enjoy our beautiful parks, greenway, and award-winning trail system adopted this 23rd day of June, 2026. Second.

Motion and two seconds. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Hearing none, motion passes unanimously. We have Director Rick Durr here. Rick, would you like to say a few words?

good morning commissioners again richter parks recreation director for seminole county i am finding myself without words which is rare I can't thank you enough for the recognition for not just our park system, but the support that we continue to enjoy from both our residents and from the commission. And none of that would be possible without the hard work that's done by our staff on a daily basis, oftentimes in the evenings and on the weekends. That's the part of the business of serving our community. And again, I am so proud of that particular group. And I'm very proud to be here in Seminole County. Where are y'all? Come on. Oh, come on. Stand up. Stand up. So thank you again. Appreciate it.

You're welcome. Much appreciated. And now, if we have code enforcement come down and meet us on the floor. Commissioners, will you meet me down for pictures?

Thank you. Thank you.

¦ ¦

. . Thank you. Thank you.

So Chairman Herr and I did a ribbon cutting for a section of trail yesterday with a group of folks. And it was warm. It was actually oppressive. And I just said to Richter, I said, you know, we ought to remind Congress that not every state is enjoyable outdoors in July. And perhaps they should change it up and one year do Parks and Recreation Month in November so that we can all actually be outside and enjoy our parks for National Parks and Recreation Month.

And actually, the picture in the newspaper today, nice picture.

Very nice picture.

It was great. Great team.

Great job. Thank you. Well done. Well, equally interesting, we have Scott McIntyre here for our investment report. Mr. McIntyre, we appreciate you being here.

Thank you for allowing me to be here. It's good to see you all. And I kind of feel like this is Groundhog Day because it feels a lot like what I've said the last couple of times I've been in front of you because a lot feels like it's close to changing and then it doesn't quite get there. So obviously right now, events in the Middle East continue to drive the financial markets. I wouldn't look at stocks today. It's pretty brutal. But from the standpoint of investing, obviously we're more interested in the bond market. and yields are rising. And the reason yields are rising is because inflation is rising. And the big question is what the Fed is going to do. Are they going to cut rates? Are they going to raise rates? And that's really unclear right now, as it should be. But the reality is it's going to be much later this year before anything happens at all. So from the standpoint of the portfolio, that means that the earnings are going to stay pretty close to where they're at, which is good. Obviously, you need investment earnings. And we have been quite conservative over the course of the last three or four months, sort of stepping out of the way of the market. Again, yields have been rising and rising and rising. And I expect they're probably pretty close to the top right now, but I'm not sure that we really want to step in. Liquidity is something that's very important. So just kind of keep that in mind. The labor market improved quite a bit since the last time we were here. Not only did we get a really good number in May for nonfarm payrolls, but we got a great big upward revision, which is pretty rare. So all of a sudden, the labor market looks puzzlingly good. The economy is doing well, but really it has all to do with AI infrastructure build out, which is just absolutely enormous. The rest of the economy not quite as solid, if you would. But again, the Fed is going to be on hold until December. That red line is quarter over quarter annualized GDP. So you can see the last two quarters have been 0.6 or 0.5 and 1.6, which is pretty sluggish economic growth. Obviously, we're in the second quarter. If the Fed were to raise rates to slow inflation, they would be slowing down the economy, deliberately trying to slow economic growth to be able to get inflation in check. And we're really not in a position where the Fed can do that, regardless of whether or not the Fed is giving that message. I certainly don't think that rate hikes are in the picture for this year, and not next year either, just because the economy is weak. This is just a real quick look at what all of a sudden has happened in terms of non-farm payrolls, three straight months. Big revisions made those previous months look bigger. Before that, it was pretty dynamic growth. I'm really of the impression, frankly, I haven't talked to a lot of kids who are getting out of school right now, that the job market is not this good. So I'm not sure. This might be a bit of an aberration, but nevertheless, again, one of the reasons the Fed would cut rates is if the labor market was weak, and it's not weak either. So no cuts, no interest rate increases. I'm not going to go through what's over there in the writing on the left-hand side, but what I do want you to pay attention to is the gray portion of the bar, which represents the portion that energy is pushing up headline inflation. So it's all energy at this point. If you take away the increase in oil and gas prices, then inflation is generally under control. This is the two-year Treasury note yield. I show this to you guys all the time. It has risen and risen and risen this year. And again, that has to do with inflation being higher. Honestly, if there were a memorandum of understanding, if there were a peace deal, if there were a ceasefire, if there were relative calm and stability in the Middle East, energy prices would move lower, but not dramatically lower. So I think that inflation is going to be with us for a while, and as a result, I think rates are going to be similar to where we are. Now, having said that, you know the drill. I scratched through the last several meetings so you can see the path of interest rates, Treasuries in particular. One thing to focus on is those overnight pool rates. The majority of the liquidity is at Florida Prime, which is, again, the federated managed, used to be the state pool, lowest fee structure, highest yielding. So there is a fair amount of money that is sitting there from Seminole County. That's not going anywhere. If anything, that yield on those pools will increase a little bit as we go toward the end of the year. It will only fall if the Fed decides to cut rates, which, again, I don't think is going to happen. I'm going to dash over here. So the portfolio, the overnight rate is 350 to 375. The portfolio is yielding about 398, 399. The securities that are maturing right now, interestingly enough, are at yields below where the market is. So when those are reinvested, they'll be reinvested at higher yields, which will boost the portfolio, hopefully, back up to 4%. So that is a... I could be happier if we held on to all our money until rates were higher and jumped in, but that wasn't the case. Back up a step here. Well, let me go forward. This is a quick look at what it's yielding versus its benchmark. So you have the red dots. And then back over here. So maturing investments, as I said before, the two-year note right now is above 4%. Securities are maturing at 388, 392. They'll be reinvested back above 4%. talking to the folks in the clerk's office, talking about your cash flows, talking about your spending, which is some of this, I guess, construction spending that was a little bit slow has started to speed up a little bit. So the spending is back on track, for lack of a better way to put it. which means a lot of the securities that are maturing are used right now to fund operations. And again, one of the discussions I've had with the clerk's office is allowing for more liquidity because right now things are very uncertain. And again, I'm really not sure when the situation is going to change. Some of the maturities that will not be used will be put into Florida Prime, and the only thing we're asking for here is to reinvest essentially what is the early July palm term maturity, rolling off at 388, what I assume will be 415 to 420. So a very limited ask here. And as I mentioned before, this isn't us just mailing it in. This is whenever you've got a lot of uncertainty and it looks like yields are going to stay elevated, you increase your liquidity. And of course, at the same time, there are spending needs that are happening as of this time of the year. So normally, Chairman, if you can sort of help me with the motion. Happy to do that.

Madam Chair.

Commissioners.

I'd like to make a motion to implement the recommendations of our financial advisor based on a report submitted today and recommend the clerk to implement said board recommendations.

Second. A first and a second. Any discussion? Hearing none, all in favor? Aye. Opposed? Hearing none opposed, it passes unanimously. Thank you, Scott, for your work.

Good to see all of you.

Thank you.

Safe travels.

Thank you.

That brings us to the consent agenda portion of the program. I'll ask Ms. Drager, do we have any public comment forms? Yes, ma'am. All right. Well, then I'll turn it over to our attorney to give us instruction on public comment.

Thank you, Chairman. Florida law provides that members of the public shall be given a reasonable opportunity to be heard on propositions before the Board of County Commissioners except when the Board is acting on emergency or ministerial matters or conducting a meeting exempt from the requirements of the Sunshine Law. Individuals shall be permitted three minutes each for public comment or six minutes when the individual is an official representative of a formal association or group. The Chairman may modify the maximum time for public comment at her sole discretion when appropriate. Public comments on quasi-judicial or other public hearing items will occur during the board's consideration of those items this afternoon. Public comments on pending procurement matters or on non-agenda items shall not be permitted at this time. Members of the public desiring to make public comment must fill out a speaker form and present the form to staff. Forms are available in the lobby. Chairman?

Thank you.

All right, we'll hear public comment now. There is one speaker, Carrie Drys, speaking in opposition to agenda item number 10. Come on up.

When you get here, if you would give your name and address for the record, that would be great. That microphone right there. And we'll start a timer. You can see the timer up here.

Sure can. Thank you. My name is Carrie Dries. I live at 4848 Gabriella Lane in Oviedo, which leads me to speak on the agenda item number 10. Good morning. Thank you for having public comment. I can't usually come to meetings as I'm a public school teacher. These take place, obviously, during the workday. I'm not speaking in true full opposition to the development. I'm actually super grateful that this person who purchased the land, almost 14 acres only, wants to put four homes on it. So I'm grateful. The property on which I live and the property next door has been in our families since the 80s. So we've obviously seen this area grow in quite a way. So I'm really just asking that the board would take these things under advisement when approving this development. I know this will go through. It's just there's quite a pattern in our area of just knocking down every single tree. That's there, which causes extreme drainage issues to the whole community, not just that homeowner. Someone just put in a property behind us, knocked down everything, and then doesn't understand why their yard is a pond. Because trees are sponges, y'all. So I just would hope that that owner, I don't know if they're here, would take that under advisement. And when the entrance is being put in, every single pine tree that's there not be taken down. As we all agree, this is what makes Seminole County the natural choice. And what's beautiful is not just us living here, but all the wildlife that we have as well. We just desperately need a drainage study. Gabriella Lane goes up to Tuscawilla and then Brooks Lane. It's just this little rural enclave of a square. And Brooks Lane acts almost as a dam. So our little square, nothing can drain out of that. So we need some kind of outfall drainage to the creek, to Bear Creek. And I support that this person bought this land. They can put on it what they would like. But again, with increased development, we've had a lot of displaced wildlife, much fewer trees, and as I said already, drainage issues. Bears with no place to go killed two of my backyard goats this past fall. We have a family of coyotes that lives in our back area in this proposed area. I would hate for them not to have anywhere to go and then continue to kill people's pets and things like that. So really, all I'm requesting is that a drainage study is done and that the owner be discouraged from knocking down every single tree and then not understanding why there's no drainage. Our septics and drain fields fill every hurricane season. The land is super saturated. So that is all. I appreciate you.

We appreciate you being here and we appreciate you teaching our kids. Thank you. Thank you. All right, commissioners, that brings us to, that was it, right? Yes. That brings us to the consent agenda, item 4, 4A through 17. County manager, deputy county manager, anything to pull today?

Nothing to pull, just noting that there was an addition to the agenda on Friday, item 4A, which is distributed to your offices.

Commissioners, anything to pull? No? I'll look for a motion.

Yes, Madam Chair. With the understanding that our Development Department will take into consideration the young lady's comments, which were well taken, I would move Constitutional Officer Consent Agenda Number 4, Special Addition 4A, and the County Manager Consent Agenda Items 5 through 17. Second.

I have a motion and a second. Any further discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Hearing none opposed, it passes unanimously. Thank you. That brings us to item 18, the regular agenda. And this is Mr. Joe Acala, Information Technology Director. Joe, welcome to the podium.

Thank you. All right, we're here to talk about admin code, information security, and artificial intelligence. All right. So here today, again, as I mentioned, we're to discuss the 26.5, our information security policy as part of the admin code, summarize the updates that we recently were made, and really discuss Section D, which was the largest section that we had in there regarding some guidelines around artificial intelligence. So what did we change? So really remove some of the outdated language that was in there. Obviously, as technology changes, terminology changes, and so forth. So we wanted to try and remove some of the outdated language that was in there. We additionally clarified the role of the CIO and Information Security Division Manager. One's more policy-based, while the other is more operational and execution-based. We also referenced the state statute, which is 282.3185, if I remember correctly, regarding security training. That's part of the state mandates that all employees must be security trained. We have to track that, report that, and so forth, so we wanted to make sure that that was captured in there. And then finally, as I mentioned, updating the policy to include some artificial intelligence guidelines, which is Section D that we incorporated. So what all does Section D? So Section D really discusses only utilizing AI-approved platforms. We did not list specific technologies or platforms because, again, this can change on a moment's notice. So we put language in there to say only used approved platforms. Most importantly here, review and approve all content created by AI. We want to make sure that it's well known. AI can make mistakes. It can hallucinate, as it's termed. So we want to make sure the human is involved in that loop to capture that, review it, and make sure it is accurate before publishing any of it. Also, we asked for reviewing of contracts. Obviously, you heard during the budget presentations, many of the departments were discussing AI being involved in their applications and platforms that they're acquiring. Here, as part of our vendor risk management, we also look at how our data is utilized in those vendor platforms, and really more importantly, making sure that they are securing it and ensuring that our data is secured in their platforms. The next area we discussed in the policy was AI to be used responsibly and not to harm the public or county. Pretty self-evident in that aspect. And finally, we talked about appropriate controls to be implemented to protect our data. Again, this is to ensure the safety and security, availability, confidentiality, and integrity of our data. And then finally, we specifically identified a couple of unacceptable uses, such as Social Security numbers, credit card information, any PII or HIPAA. Don't put that stuff in there. Seems to be pretty self-explanatory, but again, if it's not in black and white, we wanted to make sure we explicitly spelled that out. So with that, that concludes my presentation, and we have a recommendation for you.

Thank you. Commissioners, any discussion? I would just say thank you for bringing this forward. I think it will not surprise me if at some point in the near or not so near future we wind up making amendments. I hope that you and our team will feel like you can bring those to us when you need to because this is such a rapidly changing world in this sphere that we're experiencing now. So thank you for the work and look forward to more to come.

Thank you.

I think the only thing that I would add before someone makes the motion is that I think because all of this is so new and because the language is rapidly changing, What needs to happen with this is a really extensive training program that includes your team involved in every single department, in every single role, and making sure that the messaging is consistent as it goes through the organization. Otherwise, we will have misinterpretations and misunderstanding and then the potential of an error. So training for this is really important. speak to that from personal knowledge in the commercial universe is folks not understanding it as well as they think they understand it. With that, commissioners, I'll look for a motion. Motion to approve is presented.

Second.

I have a first and a second. Any further discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Hearing none, passes unanimously. Thank you for your work on this. Brings us to any public comment? No, ma'am.

Thank you.

Item 19, this is a resolution delegating temporary authority to the building official and the development services director to establish fees to become compliant with House Bill 803, and we have Mr. Rhodes here.

Thank you, Madam Chairman, and good morning, Commissioners. Briefly this morning, as you all know, legislature went through their session and passed a number of bills related to development services, development services fees, and other activities. House Bill 803 passed, and it provided us with a number of things to be concerned with, one of which was our fees. And so the resolution we're presenting to you here today and asking your consideration for addresses the fees, in particular the deadline specifically associated with the adjustment of building permit fees, which is July the 1st. The general legislative direction, as you all probably are aware, has been to require fees more and more to reflect our actual costs, and that is continuing. That's also evident in another bill that we may talk about at another point in time, House Bill 399, which is doing the same thing to development fees, planning fees, things like that, as it's doing to building fees. But they have a different effective date for those fees. And then in general, there are also, as you all know, again, a lot of state mandates for permit applications, turnaround times, processing times, penalties associated with all of those things. And so we're continuing to kind of look at the long-range nature of a lot of this legislative work wind, let's say, to try to make sure that we account for it in a way that we don't have to keep coming back over and over again. House Bill 803, and it's committee substitute for committee substitute, but 803 amends five different chapters of Florida statutes, provides for some exemptions from permit requirements, which are also going to be problematic for us in some respects. It does prohibit fees from being based off of value of projects and provides the fees, cannot exceed the actual cost that we incur as a county to provide those services. also requires local governments to create a registration system for private providers. Private provider inspections and plan reviews are becoming more and more prevalent across the state as demand for housing and speed and a lot of other things again continues to put pressure on us all. It also sets a minimum reduction of fees in the statute for when private providers are utilized by developers or builders. And again, it set an effective date, which is problematic for us, of July 1st for most of these changes. As you all know, I think the governor signed the bill in early May, and so it has not left us with a whole lot of time make the adjustments that we'd like to see made for the long term in response to this and to other needs that we've got. This is an excerpt from the bill and just indicates a specific amendment. They're underlined at the bottom. Inspection fees may not be based on the total cost of a project and may not exceed the actual inspection costs incurred by the local enforcement agency. Note that it says may not exceed. The legislature doesn't mind if it's less, of course. which isn't very helpful for us. But at any rate, the upshot of this is we know that we need to conduct a fee study and we are working with our purchasing division manager. We're looking to piggyback Just about every local government in the state is having to go through right now something like we are and respond in a similar way. We're a little bit ahead of the game, I think, with the resolution that we're presenting. But we all are being forced into looking at our fees across the board. And so we're hoping we're able to piggyback on a couple of those existing contracts out there and get something underway in the next month or so. As you all know, the previous fee study that the county did was in 2018. It did not result in any changes. We had a lot of recommendations, but it did not result in any changes to our fees. Most of our fees have not changed since 2008. Very important that we do this study. Very important that we look at those actual costs and program that into our new Accela platform as that comes online, as well as kind of do the deep dive and figure out how much it's really costing us to provide all of these services. The fee study is not going to just address building permit fees. It will also get into the rest of the development permit fees, whether it's a subdivision plat or a variance or what have you. So it's going to cover a lot of ground, and it'll be a lot for you all to be thinking about in the future. So the action we're requesting today is to approve and authorize the chairman to execute a resolution authorizing the building official and development services director to adjust permitting and development fees to be consistent with the requirements of state statute.

Thank you very much, Commissioners. Any comments? Commissioner Constantine? We're all looking at you.

You know, I mean, yes, we want to do this. We should be doing this. And I think all of us want, and we've said this before many times, you know, in all areas, we want to make sure we have the actual costs. But it would be remiss of me if I didn't say also that this is once again, you know, Tallahassee telling us one size fits all. And they got mad at somebody. Somebody got mad at somebody because they raised the fees somewhere else and ran up to Tallahassee and said there ought to be a law and therefore, you know, now we have one size fits all for everybody in the state.

With that, I'll be looking for a motion.

Move approval of the request.

Second. All right. Any further discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, it passes unanimously. Thank you for your work on this. Thank you. And keep us ahead of the pack.

Absolutely. Thank you.

It's like getting your order in at a restaurant before the 30-person party gets their order in. Yes. And it's probably good business for the fee study people. All right. Well, was there any public comment on that? No, ma'am. That's good because we're ready for our next item. And this brings us to a work session on stormwater, and I see our Tanya Allure standing here ready to go with a team behind her that's ready to step in at a moment's notice.

Thank you. Thank you, Chairman. Thank you, Commissioners, for having us here today. My name, as the chairman said, is Tanya O'Loury. I'm the Public Works Director here at Seminole County. The presentation that we have before you today, we mentioned this back in January and February when Joe Lofaso was given all the updates on our basin studies. And we told you then that our next step was to take all the projects that were identified and evaluated as part of the basin studies and put them all together into a stormwater master plan. We consider this stormwater master plan that we are going to present to you today as a living document. Of the 106 projects that have been identified, only eight are in various stages of project development under our third gen funding. We do need this master plan for us to continue to go after funding, whether that be federal funding, state funding, or just funding with our partners. So this is a very important document for us. And this county, as I've mentioned in the past, has been very successful in getting additional funding for these drainage projects. The rest of the projects have not, have been ranked, but have not been funded, and that is up to you. So at various points in the future, we will come back to you to move these other projects forward as funding is identified. So with that, I'm going to turn the presentation over to Joe LaFaso, our Assistant County Engineer, and we also have Ricky Lee here from Jacobs to present the the presentation. Thank you.

Thank you, Tawny. I am Joe LaFosso, Assistant County Engineer, and I am here today to present on the updated stormwater master plan. There we go. Thank you. Oh, thank you. The purpose of this presentation is to update the Board of County Commissioners on the finalization of the updated Stormwater Master Plan and to request the BCC accept the updated Stormwater Master Plan into service. Today's agenda will go over the project background, current status, and requested action. The background of this project is that its purpose was to update the Stormwater Master Plan from 2018. The updated Stormwater Master Plan contains all the new project concepts from the new basin studies approved in early 2026. It also includes project concepts from the various nutrient studies. It provides project prioritization using the same evaluation criteria as the basin studies, but on a county-wide basis. And it creates a technical framework for future policy-making decisions regarding flooding protection and water quality.

Wait.

No, no, no. He's still here.

I'm not going nowhere.

OK.

He's still here. I've got two years. I'm good.

Good to know. So for the record, we do have a quorum. Bob is just off camera.

The current status of the project is county staff have.

I'll come back now.

Thank you. Oh, now we have a big quorum. Big quorum. Joe, we'll stop wiggling around if you keep going.

Okay. How about that? No, that's no problem. Current status of the project is county staffing consultants have included the countywide project concept rankings and the draft updated stormwater master plan is prepared and ready to enter service. At this point, I'll turn it over to Mr. Lee to continue the presentation.

Thank you, Mr. LaFosso. Thank you, commissioners. My name is Ricky Lee with Jacobs Engineering. And we'll talk about the stormwater master plan update. And we'll do an overview of our approach, including the criteria and the various steps as we go through. All right, our goal, as Mr. Lofaso said, is to update the previous 2018 stormwater master plan. And this one, we mostly worked on the eight basin studies that were previously completed with the county, as well as several nutrient projects. And these projects were located in unincorporated Seminole County. And obviously, water doesn't care about jurisdiction, but we focused on those areas. take a look at where there is opportunity for partnerships. The eight basin studies listed here, Midway, Lake Harney, Little Wekiwa, Big Wekiwa, Yankee Lake, Lake Monroe, Big Little Econ, and the East County basins, including Lake Jessup, Howell Creek, Soldiers Creek, Gee Creek, Little Lake Howell, as well as nutrient studies, which focus mostly on water quality listed there. The seven steps that we took for this update, data collection, project screening, evaluation criteria, site assessments, benefit scoring, cost assessments, and then finally project prioritization. Mostly for the data collection, we worked with the county consultants working on the basin updates and got their information and put them together in our GIS database and used that for project screening. We met several times with the county staff over the years on the various criteria. And those criteria are listed here in this chart, including flood protection, water quality, ease of implementation, operations and maintenance, alternative funding, potential benefits from water augmentation, and community enhancement. And we'll go over how some of those features were decided on and what that looks like But these are the same criterias that were used in the basin studies, so we try to be consistent with our approach. And as you can see on the chart, flood protection is 35%, and water quality at 25%, which were the top two factors. This will be in the report, but it just breaks down a little bit more all the different aspects that we used in our analysis. This is a map of basically the flood plains in San Juan County. As you know, there is quite a few used for our flood protection metric. Evaluation criteria of water quality. We work with our environmental protection team at the county. And looked at the BMAPs, the Basin Management Action Plans, and decided on which were high priority, especially the ones on the west side of the county where there are more outstanding springs and things like that, which has downstream effects. So we worked together with the county to develop that. And also upstream basins, if they're upstream of a river, then obviously we try to give them more credit for benefits upstream so that downstream effects are lessened. Ease of implementation and O&M. We looked at maintenance records, you know, over the years of flooding complaints and things like that, as well as different opportunities such as public right-of-way, public parks and things like that, and different areas that, you know, we could make it easier to implement construction. Water augmentation, this is a map of the water recharge areas in Semo County where there is a special criteria from St. John's where these areas help replenish the aquifer more. And so you see the dark blue. Those are important areas where it's better for water augmentation so that it's more of a one water approach when we do our projects. And those projects in those areas had certain points involved. Community enhancement, mostly for areas where there's parks and trails and things like that. So Parks and Recreation Month. So projects that help to enhance living conditions in those areas were also given points. And so we took all those different criteria, and there was a weighting factor applied using GIS, and then it resulted in a total benefit score for the benefit scoring. And once we had all the benefit scores, we also took into consideration the cost. We took a normalized cost based on the most expensive project and compared it to that project's cost and applied a factor to the benefit score to get the overall benefit-cost ratio. And that's how the prioritization was used for this plan, where it was most cost-effective and also most advantageous. And so that's how they are ranked. And so that's how we have our project prioritization list. There are, as Ms. Tani said, over 106 projects. 85 of them are strictly flooding projects, but there's also water quality benefits with the flooding projects, of course. And then there's 21 strictly water quality projects, as mentioned previously with those lake nutrient studies. for a total of $328 million in projects. And also as a part of this study, we created project sheets for the staff to use where we summarize information from the studies. So that's easy for staff for future project studies and whatever next phase there is with information about the project, nearby parcels. and also cost estimate as well. Just a lot of information that will be helpful for the county in the future for the next steps. And so, activities to date as we discussed, the data collection, project screening, evaluation criteria, site assessments, benefit scoring, cost estimates, and project prioritization has been completed and in draft form. And, yeah.

And with all that being said, we would have a recommended action that the board approve for acceptance and disservice the updated stormwater master plan as recommended by staff. And with that, we conclude this presentation and we're ready for any questions.

Thank you. Do we have any public comment? No, ma'am. All right. Commissioners, any discussion?

She wants to go first?

I don't need to go first.

Go ahead, Bob.

Okay. Just trying to be polite.

That's very nice.

Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. As you said in your presentation, water does not know jurisdiction. I get that. We all know that. And we also know that there's limited dollars to do all the things that need to be done. But yet the public always looks at where they live, and that's their biggest investment, or one of their biggest investments. and they want to make sure that they are working with us and we're working for them to protect their biggest investment. You also said that this is for the unincorporated part of the county, not any of the seven cities. So my questions are around that issue. What dialogue or conversation we've had with the seven cities, because what I'm concerned about is the downstream effect if and when it does go into a city, because water does flow in certain directions, that if the cities are not prepared or we're not working with the cities, we could flood areas. So how do we prevent that from happening, number one? Number two, when you talk about benefit-cost ratio, if the cities are partnering with us, we get the biggest bang for the buck, which will change the benefit-cost ratio, which would also potentially change your priority list if a city is partnering with us. Can you discuss that first? And I have a couple more questions, but that's basically where I'm going to go. And I have two more questions after that.

Sure. So you're exactly correct. Those are all very important points. During the basin studies, we did discuss with the cities the various projects which we would have those downstream effects. So, for example, the Little Lake House project in November, which is our number three on the list. We had a discussion in November of 2024 with the city of Winter Springs because in order to implement that project, while our piece of it for the unincorporated section was small, to get that from Little Lake Howell to the final discharge point would essentially cross the entire breadth of the city and would require them to upsize the pipes. So we met with them, we met with their consultants, and they were very eager to continue this discussion as we progressed through the basin study through the stormwater master plan. And so they said when we had gotten to essentially this point where we're ready to start, you know, putting things in onto the list, that they would want to come back and have that further discussion with us. And other projects similarly, we know they're with Castleberry, for example, for the Forest Brook project, which also requires coordination with DOT. because we'll have crossings under 434 to make that an implementable project so we have had those discussions with them they are logged in the basin study for which the product is contained and um yes so the and the funding question as well the the ranking you know that those seven criteria that we had it wouldn't affect that but it would obviously affect the speed at which we could implement a given project if we were to get more funding partners on board that were able to cooperate with us and advance those projects

So what I'd like to see, if the board would agree, is that in your analysis or your spreadsheet, that there's something in that spreadsheet that actually identifies if there is a downstream effect with the city and that we need to make sure that we're coordinating. Because at some point, these dollar figures are so high that we don't know what year we're going to be implementing this. So hopefully we'll all get this done within the next year, but that's impossible. So over the years, People do change, and I'd like to make sure that as this master plan has been updated, that we identify in the master plan the downstream effect and that the partnership is needed so that it doesn't get lost. Those are my concerns.

No, we can definitely make sure that that's noted in the plan.

Commissioner Lockhart. I think Commissioner Delarcy had two more questions.

No, that was it.

Okay. But thank you.

Okay. I want to ask a couple of questions that may wind up being a little bit of a rabbit trail, if you're okay with that, Chairman. It's relevant. It depends. They are relevant.

But yes, go for it.

Okay. So looking at your evaluation criteria sheet, water augmentation, slide 18, the... the issue of recharge areas. And I picked up in the in the fine print in the bottom, where it says, stormwater can provide benefits to the county's water supply by integrating into their water management approach. This integration is done in three ways. Providing a source for groundwater recharge, water for landscape irrigation, and direct augmentation of stressed wetlands and lakes. Okay. There can be... things working at cross-purposes here. When we are talking about augmentation of water to stressed wetlands and lakes, if that stormwater is not being treated in some fashion, then we are creating water quality problems. And now we're in an NPDES TMDL issue. Are we suggesting that people who live on lakes or water bodies irrigate from those lakes? Because we're saying that this is helping to provide water for landscape irrigation. Walk me through the prioritization of a citizen who has stormwater that is flowing across their property into their backyard or somewhere near their property where there is water We're saying as the county, we want these to be water recharge areas. This is a good thing. It can be used for irrigation, stressed wetlands, lakes. How do I as a resident, as a property owner in that environment, respond to that intent?

You want to take that one? Sure. I'll try to help respond. In terms of these stormwater projects, for example, when they are providing flooding benefit, that's the number one item. Regarding stressed wetlands and lakes that are possibly nearby, for example, there's been development and maybe they're not getting that replenishment. typically, you know, the stormwater would have to be treated before, you know, it gets, you know, left out, you know, discharged into said wetland as part of St. John's River Water Management District ERP requirements. And so any project that, you know, we implement, you know, we'll have to follow, you know, DEP and St. John's requirements of water quality especially. So hopefully, you know, obviously with the these projects, whether it's upsizing pipes or having new stormwater ponds for places that don't have treatment already. I think they usually would have it. For example, downstream of that neighborhood, there's usually a pond or something like that. That would get to the pond better. And then also from that area, after it has the pollution abatement you know, mechanisms, then it would be able to discharge clean air water into these lakes or recharge the groundwater. Or for landscape irrigation, that was more for like, for example, golf courses that have already these systems in place and they can use their ponds, you know, to kind of like stormwater harvesting that St. John's has been promoting recently. As a citizen, I think the number one thing is flooding, the flooding effects. And also, obviously, too, once they have these projects permitted, they will need to meet those water quality, especially the new statewide stormwater quality regulations. And so that will provide cleaner water for our wetlands and aquifers and things like that.

I think I loved hearing that all of the stormwater that is being dumped into our lakes and streams is supposed to be treated. I am here to tell you it is not. It's not.

Where's our code enforcement folks next?

Yeah. No. Really? Well, so this leads me to my second question, which is we have had – stormwater master plans in this county for decades. There have been subdivision retrofit projects identified that were supposed to help with the discharge of that untreated stormwater into our lakes and streams. And those projects have not been completed. It's been over 25, maybe 30 years some of them have been identified. I'm looking to the back row because there's someone who was here back in the day when those were identified. So how... In your evaluation criteria, how many of those previously identified subdivision retrofit projects that were supposed to fix water quality and quantity issues in these older neighborhoods, how many of those were evaluated and did they make it into the criteria? Was there a weighting established for those projects?

I can't tell you exactly how many were from the previous ones. We can take a look into that. Regarding the weighting, I do not believe that that was part of the criteria, but we can take a look closer and get you that answer.

I just think it's incredibly important that one of the things that local government, government in particular, gets accused of is you do studies, you spend all this money on studies, and then you put them on the shelf and you don't do what it is that the study tells you you're supposed to do. And we have decades of histories of that specifically related to stormwater in this county. And so while I know needs change and evolve and priorities change, I think there are some antiquated neighborhoods in this county who have been waiting literally for decades and have been acting as the county's retention ponds for years without any type of remediation. And I think we need to acknowledge that and at least look at that. The other thing that I want to ask about on slide 24, also in the really fine print.

This is the outdated version. I do apologize. We've been updating them, but we've been waiting for the final.

Well, I don't know that what I'm pointing out is necessarily outdated. Oh, sure, sure. Okay. So down in the bottom where it says you have all the different criteria, likelihood of right-of-way acquisition requirement.

Yes.

Both of these in this example say unlikely. So how did we determine whether likelihood of right-of-way acquisition is likely, unlikely? How many other variations of that? What's the scale? And how did you decide that these were unlikely? As an example.

Yeah, so we put that in there to help with the county staff, because obviously that's a huge time constraint and also budget constraint. We took a look at the available right of way. For example, if the project is just within a lake or something like that that has county right of way. If it had to do with private property and other things like that, then yes, that will be more higher likely. And if it was like, for example, public road, for example, county streets and things like that, or DOT, for example, it was less likely. There's also consideration if there was like wetland impacts as well. And so there's like wetland involved. As you can see, there's something there. There is potential for, you know, right-of-way issues with that, with wetland mitigation.

I hope that when our team looks at these sheets, they don't see the word unlikely and skip over it.

Yes, we could probably better word that so that they can say, hey, even though it might be unlikely, there still is likelihood.

I'll speak to that. Again, the two top criterion were, of course, the water quality and the flood mitigation. So just because we need to acquire right-of-way for something or that it's likely we need to acquire right-of-way for something doesn't mean we're necessarily going to not do it. So I think that that's something to say is that, again, it's one of seven criteria. We had to assign some kind of a metric to it because we don't have... let's say, complete site survey. We don't know to the millimeter what we may or may not need in terms of the land. But we just wanted to say, hey, just so everyone knows, we will likely have a land acquisition component, and that will involve time and effort. but it's not something that's a deal-breaker for us. We will proceed. We have proceeded with projects. I mean, you talked about historical one that's been on there. Midway Community has been on there forever, and we went after that thing regardless of the massive effort it required to acquire that right-of-way. So I'll say that, yes, it may say likely or unlikely, but that doesn't mean a yes or a no to that project.

Okay. That's very, very good news. Thank you for clarifying that. Those are all the questions I have for now. Any further questions, commissioners?

Madam Chair. Yes. You might want to use has challenges as opposed to unlikely or something. But I just, you know, my environmental steward commission has already said everything. And I don't have to say much of anything except an overall big picture. And that is We don't have the funding to do this. And let's be realistic. That is what is the elephant in the room, and that is what we have to address. Ultimately, I've had long discussions with the county manager. I'm sure many of you have also, that this is something that is coming. I am not suggesting the horror story that happened in the past when none of us except for Bob was here.

So you're saying it's my fault?

No, I'm saying that you had to put up with it. But I am saying we have to bite the bullet and start looking at real opportunities to pay for these things because there's so many aspects to this. The water quality is extremely important, as is the flooding. And if we do not take care, we cannot, as Commissioner Lockhart suggested, we cannot continue to let water flow into our lakes freely from the streets. And that's what's happened. And I see it every day. We all see it every day. Every single day. I live on a lake, and it makes me sick to my stomach. And we've got to do something about it. Thank you very much. With that, I guess I will make a motion. Mr. Ghilari had to stand up. I'm sorry.

I'd like to make the motion, Madam Chair, if that's okay.

I'd like to do a few clarifying comments before you do that.

Absolutely.

I may be reading this wrong, but I think on your project sheets, it is the likelihood of requiring right away, not the unlikelihood that we can't get it.

Correct.

So I just want to get that on the record that the scoring happens earlier. Yes. I think there were two additional requests that were added, and that is that older neighborhoods and older studies are somehow taken into consideration for those that have been waiting the longest. And then the second request was to add somewhere in the documentation whether city involvement is needed, appreciated, or required is what I heard in that commentary. So you figure out how to do that. And with that, Commissioner Dilary, would you like to make a motion?

Thank you, Madam Chair. And I was going to go along those same lines. I'd like to make the motion to approve and accept into service the updated stormwater mask plan as presented here today and to address the comments that were made by this board at this time.

Second. We have a first and a second. Any other discussion? Oh, Kate's just raising her hand by herself. I thought you were. I'm sorry. All those in favor?

Aye.

Opposed? Hearing none. Passes unanimously. Thank you, gentlemen.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Joe, always a good job.

Thank you, ma'am.

We appreciate it. Is there any other further public comment? No, ma'am.

Can we keep going? I didn't think so.

We cannot. There are rules. We cannot, but we can all find productive work in our offices to do that doesn't occupy staff and take them away from the productive work that they need to do while we're all in this building. So with that, we are adjourned until the afternoon session.

you Thank you. Bye.

for everyone but it is 1 30. it is 1 30. I'm going to call this meeting to order welcome to the afternoon session of our bocc June 23rd 2026 meeting thank you everyone for being here uh we are going to I'll look for proof of publication All those in favor? Aye. Passes unanimously. Anybody have any ex parte communication to share with the clerk?

Yes, I do. Done.

So Commissioner Constantine has already done it electronically. Yes, I will. Commissioner Dilary is doing it on paper.

I received a phone call from a couple of citizens on the Rosenwald project. Those were, I believe, submitted electronically.

And I have none to submit. first item on our agenda is the rosenwald community center rezone this will be presented by annie silloway our principal planner and we appreciate you being here this is our second public hearing excuse me chairman would you like to read would you like me to read the rules for quasi-judicial i certainly would not like to read the rules i don't even know that i want to follow the rules but if you read them we will all follow them how about that

I will read them.

We cannot keep her together.

We do have one quasi-judicial hearing, so I will, and it is this one, so I will read them. You can read them now, thank you. While the board welcomes comments from all persons with an interest in these proceedings, Florida law requires that the board's decision in quasi-judicial actions be supported by competent, substantial evidence. presented to the board during the hearings on the applications. Competent substantial evidence is such evidence as a reasonable mind would accept is adequate to support a conclusion. There must be a factual basis in the record to support opinion testimony from both expert and non-expert witnesses. Persons presenting testimony may rely on factual information that they present on information presented by county staff, information the applicant presented, or on factual information included in the county staff report to support their testimony. All persons who present written materials to the board for consideration must ensure that a copy of such materials is provided to the clerk for inclusion in the board's record of the proceedings and the official minutes.

Chairman. Thank you. Thank you very much. And I was kidding in the for the record category. Ms. Silloway, please proceed.

Yes, ma'am. Good afternoon. Annie Silloway with Development Services. This request that is being presented today is for a rezone from R1 single family dwelling and R2 one and two family dwelling to PLI public lands and institutions. The reason is to allow for the development of a public park and community center. Subject property has a public quasi-public future land use designation, which permits a maximum floor area ratio of 0.65. This designation is intended to identify locations suitable for a range of public and quasi-public uses, including but not limited to public and private recreation facilities, educational institutions, and libraries. And since this is the second reading, I'm just going to go ahead with the request. The Board of County Commissioners met on May 12, 2026, and voted unanimously to adopt the ordinance rezoning a property from R1 single-family dwelling and R2 one- and two-family dwelling to PLI Public Lands and Institutions on approximately 12.96 acres located on the north side of Merritt Street and approximately 0.25 miles east of Ronald Reagan Boulevard upon the first reading. Staff requests the Board of County Commissioners adopt upon the second reading of an ordinance rezoning the property from R1 and R2 to PLI on approximately 12.96 acres located on the north side of Merritt Street and approximately 0.25 miles east of Ronald Reagan Boulevard. And that concludes my presentation.

Thank you very much. Is there any public comment on this, Ms. Drager? No, ma'am. There is not. With that, I will go to the District Commissioner.

Well, I want to thank you all on behalf of the community for all the support in this project and continuing to see it come to fruition. And so with that, I would like to make a motion to approve the rezone as presented.

Second.

We have a motion and two seconds. Is there any further discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Passes unanimously. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Our next item is the Public Hearing Legislative, the Land Development Code Amendment. This will be Maya Athanas, Principal Planner. Thank you.

Hi, good afternoon. For the record, Maya Athanas, Principal Planner, Planning and Development Division. And I am here today to present the Land Development Code Amendment. This is an ordinance, and I'm sorry, this is the first reading of two readings for this item. This is an ordinance amending Chapter 2, Chapter 5, Chapter 20, Chapter 30, Chapter 35, Chapter 70, and Chapter 90 of the Summit County Land Development Code. So just some quick background on this. The last major update that we did to the Land Development Code was in January of 2024. That was a significant reorganization of the zoning chapter. So since then, we have identified some other things that we need to clean up. Most of those are outlined on the last four slides of this presentation and are fairly minor. But in addition, We're also proposing some updates related to compliance with state regulations, application and variance trends, streamlining of processes, housing needs, and updates required by the comprehensive plan. And just a quick note, a majority of these topics have been discussed at previous work sessions, so this presentation is going to highlight the major updates. So first up, we took a look at updates for compliance with state regulations. We are proposing to update the separation requirements for alcoholic beverage establishments. This is not required for us to do by the state, so we're doing it voluntarily because we think that it makes sense for the infill projects that we've been seeing as of recent. So we're proposing to remove the separation altogether from churches, residential, and like establishments, and decrease the separation to schools by 500 feet, down to 500 feet. Additionally, we are recommending to remove the requirement for Seminole County to track the communication tower master plans. It's not something that we do now, and we're not required to do it. The next category is application and variance trends. We did take a look at our accessory dwelling unit regulations. As of right now, all residential properties can do, they can have a accessory dwelling unit up to 35% of the gross floor area of the main home or up to 45% through an administrative adjustment. We do see a good number of those administrative adjustments come through and they do usually get approved. So what we're recommending is just to go to 50% because we also allow up to 50% for accessory structures. So instead of 35% or 45% or 50%, we're suggesting to make it 50% across the board and keeping it at that 1,100 square feet. I apologize. We're also recommending up to 1,600 square feet for accessory dwelling units in our agricultural zoning districts when they are greater than three acres. The next topic is streamlining processes. A number of these updates are again shown in the last few slides for general and additional updates. The major one here is updates to our plan development regulations. We are recommending that we clarify the permitted uses for plan developments in the higher intensity areas. airport future land use designation. So we did take a look at what is allowed in that future land use designation as well as the joint planning agreement with the City of Samford and the Samford Airport. We took their recommendations into account and compiled the list that's in the ordinance. One note I would like to make is that we are also going to add mixed use projects to that list of permitted uses. That is not in the ordinance. That's before you today. Unfortunately, it just for some reason wasn't in there. So we are going to need to add that before the final version that you'll see in July at the adoption hearing for the second reading. We're also recommending a general reorganization of this section and to add the following greater benefits for PDs as an option, undergrounding of utilities, water star practices, dark sky lighting, and substantial native plantings. The next few slides that we'll go over are related to housing needs. So this slide is about the density bonus for affordable housing. In our comprehensive plan, all of our residential land use designations allow a density bonus for affordable housing. So we are not recommending to change that. So we are not recommending any changes to the allowable density. What we're looking at here is establishing the ratio for how many affordable units need to be provided to get that bonus. So I have two examples on the slide here, but there are other options for it depending on if the project is doing very low income or low income units or if they're doing rental or ownership units. So for example, if there's a project with the low density residential future land use designation, and they are providing one affordable unit, they would get two additional market rate units. And that would be the ratio for the density. I will say that the recommendations for this program are based on a market study that we conducted with Kimley Horne last year, which took into account housing quantity and the overall needs for housing in the county. And we did work with community development to determine the process and how we're going to implement this, when and if this gets approved, so that if we do have any projects that would like to use this program, we have a straightforward and easy path for them to follow. These projects would be required to do an affordability agreement with the county, which would be approved at a public hearing, and that would outline how long those units need to be affordable for and how those would be tracked. Another update that we are recommending to in the housing needs category is the alternative design standards option. So what you see on the screen on the left is what you would expect today with a standard subdivision using the standard size lot widths and lot sizes with no open space requirement. What you see on the right is what we would be proposing through this alternative design standards. This would be optional and voluntary for projects to do they would be able to have slightly smaller lots in exchange for an open space requirement. The important thing to note here is we're not proposing change in density again, so they would still be limited to whatever the density is that they are entitled to through their future land use designation. We are not really recommending significant changes here. So, for example, in the R1AA zoning district, The standard size lot width is 90 feet. We would allow them to go down to 70 feet in exchange for that 20% open space, so on and so forth. This would only apply to the R1B, R1A, and R1AA zoning districts. We selected those because those are the zoning districts that have the most land left available for future development. One last thing to note on this is that because of the reduced lot sizes and lot widths, we do recommend decreasing the setbacks for some of these zoning districts so that we're not seeing a huge influx of variances. We do see a good number of variances now for setbacks, so we feel like this would also decrease some of the staff time that goes into reviewing those. But we, again, wouldn't be talking significant changes. It would maybe be from 10 feet on the side down to seven and a half feet, something along those lines. The last topic for the housing needs category is missing middle. I do want to preface this that we have been anticipating these changes that you see on the screen here pretty much since right after we adopted missing middle about two years ago. These are not significant changes and don't take into account any changes that may be discussed right now. What we're proposing is to change the terminology from a final development plan to a conceptual plan at time of rezone. We think that's a more appropriate type of plan for them to present at that stage in the process. And then we would also like to add a option for the development services director to waive some of the connectivity requirements when feasibility for that connectivity is super limited based on wetlands, water bodies, or other types of barriers. And then, like I said, the last few slides are the additional updates that have been discussed at previous work sessions, as well as the updates to the definitions. I would like to mention that top one that's highlighted because it is not in the version of the ordinance you have before you, but we do anticipate it to be in the final version at the adoption hearing on July 14th, which is to add vocational schools as a permitted use in the C3 zoning district. And with that, that concludes my presentation. Staff request the board approve the first reading of the proposed ordinance to amend the Seminole County Land Development Code as per the following motion. Thank you.

Does anybody have any questions for staff at this point?

I'd like to hear from the public first.

Chairman, can I just make a couple notations? Absolutely. So there's a couple additional amendments that staff is asking for. I don't know that you caught both of them because they were in the presentation. So I just want to make sure we have those placed on the record and everybody knows what we're doing. The first one is a revision to add language to 38.5 . And that is in the HIP AP. We took the uses, as you know, there was a list of uses which is allowed in the zoning category in the comp plan, which is strange to have a list of uses in the comp plan. So they're being moved over to the land development code so it's easier access for people to just see them all there. It also allows for mixed use in this category. So we just added in... we want to add in a provision that allows for multifamily units, such as condominiums, apartments, townhomes, and above-store flat housing units, that they're permitted in mixed-use development only, and that if you're going to engage in these multifamily uses, it's limited to 20% of the total net buildable area of any development and 49% of the maximum total floor area for the development. So that just ensures that it's not only multifamily residential, that it has to be mixed use and putting the threshold in there, which is mixed use is already permitted under the comp plan in this portion of the code. And then the change to the use table 5.2 to allow for vocational schools within the C3 zoning category.

Thank you. Yes, Commissioner Lockhart. And was that only for HIP Airport, or was that for HIPTI and other HIPs as well?

It was just for HIP Airport.

Is there a reason why we wouldn't consider that in the other HIPs?

So HIPTI does already allow the same thing for the mixed-use residential, and in HIPTI it would be limited to 49%. of the floor area for the project, which is what we would be proposing for this as well.

I think the question was about the vocational schools. No, it was about the HIP.

Okay, thank you. I'm just, what I'm looking for is consistency. So are now all of our HIP zonings consistent with one another, or is there something where there is a one-off where someone thinks that because it's in HIP TI, it also is HIP airport, or are there still caveats in one of them that is not in another?

Well, they do have different lists of uses based on the designation. The target industry uses are different from the airport supportive uses. There are some overlaps, but they would both allow the residential mixed use component.

With the same percentages?

Yes. The difference would be in HIP airport, it would be limited to 20% of the net buildable area that is not in the HIP TI.

So they're not the same?

They are not exactly the same, no. Okay. And we should note, too, for the record, that you could only have these multifamily uses that are in HIP AP but outside of the airport noise zones. So there's not many properties that this is going to apply to. It's very, very limited.

Yeah, they do have different intents. So the target industry, we would be more encouraging of some residential components because of the target industry employment-generating uses, whereas with the airport, we're really looking for those airport-supportive uses and residential.

Which are people.

Yes.

We need employees at the airport. Right. I don't know.

I mean, if you would like to give direction as far as keeping them consistent. I would like to better understand why we picked the numbers we picked.

Why is it that we think that that's the magic number for that particular zoning and yet we didn't pick a different number? I just want to understand the methodology behind it before I say, yeah, that's great. I think that makes sense. When at some point in time, A developer will come, as we may have later on today, and say, why is this allowable here and not here? And I need to know why. I need to understand why we made the decision that we made. And if there's a good, solid reason for it, I can support it. But I think I'm leaning more toward consistency unless there is a really drastic reason for it to be different. That being said, I may be only one of four people who feels that way, and it is completely a moot point.

Do you want to attempt to explain that? Now I see a conversation going on back there that may or may not pertain to this.

I will give a little bit more context for the HIP airports. As you know, the comprehensive plan was also updated in 2024. The old comp plan only allowed up to 10% of the entire future land use for HIP airport to be residential uses. So we actually would be increasing that allowance up to the 20% for each site. So it is a little bit more lenient than it was in the past. So that was the compromise we were trying to make with it, but we can always discuss it more if we feel like we have some other ideas for it. Dagmarine.

Thank you.

Dagmar Issegar, Deputy Director for Development Services. The other consideration, that's one of the ones that I was going to mention, but the other consideration is the fact of the actual uses in the T.I. and the A.P. The T.I. allows uses more of offices and technology, which you have a greater dense population in regards to employment. The airport uses are more into industrial and manufacturing of uses, which typically are uses that will require a certain amount of employees, but not as greater as the office and technological uses. That's why the percentages are slightly different. But if the direction of the board is to have it the same because of consistency, we can definitely do that. We just didn't want to take too much of the space that it is designated for the airport uses as we don't have a lot of land in that area for these type of uses to be dedicated for residential.

Commissioner Constantine.

Just a question.

Didn't we want to avoid residential around the airport? So what's the logic in increasing it?

My recollection is some people wanted to reduce it and some people thought it would be good to increase it. Maybe there was a difference of opinion at the time.

Which is exactly what has been done. The staff, as always, is threading the needle. The teeny little hole that we create up here

We've discussed density in various places. I don't recall us, and maybe we did, but I don't recall us disagreeing on residential at the airport. We understood that there was a necessity, but we also knew or know we're going to be causing a problem by having more residential around the airport. We're inviting people to move there, and then they'll call up and complain about the noise of the airport. I don't know. To me, I would want to avoid that problem.

I would tell you that from my perspective, I think we have... Fewer and fewer opportunities every year to create economic development in this county, and the airport is our largest one, and I would like to see housing elsewhere. So putting some housing out there to accommodate the workforce out there, but increasing it beyond what has been recommended by the staff, I don't have an interest in it.

And Madam Chair, if I could add one thing. We did the same thing with HIPTI over at International, and what has been the ongoing... battle is that more people want residential, and we are losing and losing more opportunity. Now, we understand conditions of the market and everything, but again, I would suggest, like you said, we limit the amount of residential at the airport.

Mr. Ghilari.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I would agree that with the limited space that we have around the airport, it should be more industrial and commercial and not residential. So whatever we can do to promote that I think would be advantageous, especially with what we're doing there with the indoor sports complex and potentially other venues in that area. I think it more leads itself to commercial, industrial, and not residential, as I think some of the comments we had here. But I'd also like to ask the question about density bonuses. And we've had some issues with it in the past about how it affects existing housing elements from the cost perspective and about the – And I don't see anything yet how it addresses that. And because what we're doing is one size fits all about density bonuses. And it should be in key areas and not just blanket across the entire county. Unless there is another way to look at it that there's been some neighborhoods where people have looked at it and now we have a room full of people. And we look at it and, like, okay, it is affecting the neighborhood. There is not enough road capacity. There is less infrastructure. And yet, by doing it, we're given the right to do that.

I think that's a really good question.

So I'd like to have staff address it.

Okay, absolutely, if I understand the question correctly. When a project comes in for any kind of development, as you know, we do verify that they have the ability for retention and access, and if they cannot meet those standards with the density bonus, they would not be able to do the density bonus.

Yeah, we've seen a project, one or two, that actually people made it to here, or P&Z, and it was density bonuses. They were looking for X amount, and all of a sudden, We voted it down. It shouldn't have been there because no one talked about how much the rate was going to be and the fair market value and how it was going to depreciate the neighborhood. I'd like to have information on that.

Okay. I have one more question and then we'll go to public comment and I think it's on page 1398 which is titled Housing Needs Alternative Design Standards and I think In the presentation, I heard you say that we are not increasing the density, but if you look at one of those pictures compared to the other, there is an increase in density, at least by my read.

Okay, yes, I do understand that. So let me clarify. We would not be increasing the maximum allowable density, so it would still be limited to whatever the future land use designation is. The difference between the densities here is, I mean, what they were able to fit on the site. But in this example, they both would have been allowed to do up to four units an acre. So, I mean, as you can see, even with the alternative design standards, this hypothetical project still didn't get close to the four units an acre.

Thank you for the clarification. I just really wanted it clarified. Commissioners, go ahead. Commissioner Constantine.

I have a few questions. Thank you. The changes, it's on page four for my turn. When I was having the staff discussions earlier, this was not something that we discussed, and I was concerned looking at it. I understand that it cannot be, when we're talking about accessory dwellings, In one case, we're changing it from 35% or 1,000 square feet, and we're going to 50% or 1,100 square feet, whatever is less. It just seems like 50% is, you know, it seems like arbitrary based upon you want to make everything 50%. That was the way you said it. But this was accessory dwelling units, not... potential primary dwelling units. The concern I have and question, it can be up to 1,000 or 1,100, but it can't be more than one. Is that correct? Yes. So we're not going to have two or three small houses on there.

Right. It would still only be one.

Only one. The second question is, and what I'm concerned about mostly, is we still haven't figured out the question of ownership. ongoing ownership. We had a lot of discussion about that in the past where who buys it, who puts it in. We were talking about primary owner and we were talking about the mother-in-law, if you will.

Residency, meaning that the owner resides in the main dwelling or the lower dwelling.

Correct. We still haven't decided that and it is not in here. I don't know if it's judicious to go ahead and start changing this without coming up with that answer first. Because that was the main question that all of us had concern about. It's not a big change, saying that it's 50% or 1,100. But it still sounds like a larger than just an accessory dwelling when you put it at 50%. So I have concerns about that.

Well, I believe it's up to and it's the lesser of. Yes, that's correct. And so the clarification is a clarification by today's standards. We still have the open issue of residency of the owner.

Well, I can clarify that today, as of today, in the code now, we do require that the owner live on the site in one of the two units.

Yes, and this was discussed at a previous meeting when we talked about accessory uses and the direction from the board was to maintain it at the status quo so the staff did not touch that provision in the code.

And that's great. I think what we were concerned about and what we hadn't had an answer for is what happens when they leave.

When who leaves?

When the primary resident sells the house and ongoing ownership of that property and how it's used.

When the primary owner sells it to a REIT. or to a landlord that intends to rent out both.

And you have a vacation home there instead of. And this was, you know, we had some debates about that. And I just wanted to throw that out again because we still have to resolve that. I have another question.

So before we move on to that, can you answer that? Sure. So, you know, we cannot prohibit vacation homes. That's been preempted by the state. The requirement for the ownership to be, you know, the use of the accessory structure, you know, to have an owner on the property and not be rented out, that is an existing requirement in the code, as you know. But as we've talked about before, it's very difficult from an enforcement standpoint to make sure that that continues to occur. talked about we can try. We can try to have code enforcement look at it, check rental sites, things like that. But without looking at the deed and IDing the people that live there, that is going to be a challenge from an enforcement standpoint.

Commissioner Lockhart.

I have that exact scenario in my district, and it is very difficult to follow, and I feel bad for staff that has been tasked with trying to keep up with that. There's a lot of transiency. It is not an easy thing. And it really, I think, only becomes a problem when someone behaves badly. If everybody is behaving and they're good neighbors, then really no one cares if the owners are on site or if it's a relative of an owner or what have you. I do think we need to be very careful that we are not... overstepping our bounds as local government and the rights of private property owners to use their properties as they see fit. If I have my mother living in an accessory dwelling unit and I have to move out of town for some reason for a period of time, does that put me out of compliance? I think the owner occupying one of those structures is very hard to keep track of. Do you do it by voter registration? Do you do it by where your mail is being delivered? I mean, maybe I still have my mail delivered to my main house, and I took a job out of state for a while. I just think we need to be very careful, although it's good intention, that we're not micromanaging people's lives and doing something unintentionally prohibitive for families.

Commissioner, I agree. I do not want to micromanage, but we are giving two private property rights an additional opportunity that they did not have before when we add the auxiliary dwelling unit. The concern in your scenario you just had, I don't have any problem with it. What I have a problem with is when that person who has built that, mother-in-law lived there, father-in-law lived there, whoever lived there, and then they sell the whole property. Somebody comes in, and then it becomes two separate rental units in a neighborhood that And I understand that that is a problem. I mean, a problem in enforcement, but it also is a problem for the citizens that already are living there. And that was what I was... We did have a good debate about it, a discussion. We were all... concerned about it. And one of the tasks that we made is how do we do a better job in controlling that? And all I was saying is I still haven't heard a way to control that or at least minimize the concern that we'd be having. And I do see this as an opportunity that in the real estate market, great idea. Buy a house, now you got two rental units. Buy a piece of property, you got two rental units. And if I'm their neighbor, I'm going to have a problem with that. And so that person's private property rights are now being violated, if you will. So that was the concern I had on that one. And I was trying to point out that That is still an ongoing concern that I have, and I would love to see if any innovative ideas, creative ideas that we could do to minimize that ongoing problem. Because once we do, we have done it, but as we go along, this is going to become, as the chairman said, it's going to become very smart and start doing and buying them up. In fact, they're doing it now, just not here so much. The only other thing that I had is when we discussed the compliance with state regulations on page three, we talked about minimizing it to 500 feet. Not to say that I'm against it, but we never really discussed removing it from churches. And I just wanted to bring that out. We said 500 feet minimum. instead of 1,000 feet. But in this one, it's removing any distance from a church. I disagree with you.

To make it consistent with statute.

Well, we talked about it because we have instances where in strip malls, there are churches moving into large spaces, and then we have existing restaurants, and so the setback doesn't exist. And we've seen that occur numerous times. So State statute doesn't require any step back. We're trying to navigate these kind of new situations where our open land is becoming less and less available, and this was one of the ways staff was trying to do that.

Naysa, you answered the question for me. I was just concerned that we were causing, you know, now all of a sudden somebody's going to be coming in here and complaining that we're doing it, because I do remember, you know, the 1,000 feet, we all agreed that was too much. But I don't ever remember saying removing it completely. If we did, fine. And your example makes all the sense in the world.

So the problem still exists that if you have a freestanding church that's not in a shopping center, you will have somebody coming in with a problem. So maybe that's a takeaway for future language.

Considering the two office changes, yes.

Yes. I do want to go back to the accessory dwelling discussion and say that That somewhere between those two discussions is where I lie. I do think that the neighbor's property rights are, and I know you think the same thing, are equal to the property owner's property rights. I think there is value to us having regulation that says that there should be an owner-occupied operation when you're renting out the accessory unit. If for no other reason is to prevent a national firm that is looking for these opportunities that doesn't want to violate a local ordinance, they will go somewhere else. And I'm good with that. And where we see these problems crop up primarily is in any town that's got water. So if you go to the East Coast or the West Coast, this is a problem in all of those localities. And it changes a neighborhood. The residents typically end up leaving, and it becomes a rental community. And that's an entirely different thing from an infrastructure requirement perspective, from a law enforcement perspective, from a drain on local infrastructure perspective. It's a whole different thing. So that is my perspective. Mr. Rhodes, did you have a comment?

Just Chairman and Commissioners to add, and again, for the record, Mike Rhodes, Director of Development Services. We have had conversations with the County Manager's Office and the County Attorney's Office with regards to how we're managing vacation rentals. And we do expect, we hope to be able to bring some amendments to our current ordinance. and processes to try to make that a little bit better and more effective than it has been. We hope to bring those back to you later on this year. So just stay tuned for that. But we've heard the concerns loud and clear, and we intend on trying to correct some of those.

And the chairman articulated it very well. And the more that we are becoming the place that people want to live, the more this is going to happen to us. And therefore, we've got to be proactive in this.

All right. Are we ready for public comment, board? Public comment. Ms. Draeger.

There are two speakers, Jim Hadaway and Dave Axel. Mr. Hadaway.

I think there are three speakers now.

Madam Chair, members of the Commission, thank you for your time and good afternoon. I'm here before you in my capacity as chair of the Seminole County Development Advisory Board. We are a private organization made up of professionals who live and work in Seminole County serving the real estate and development community. We are... We are lawyers, we are brokers, we are planners, engineers, contractors. And as part of our work, we have worked with your staff who are truly the gold standard for this region. They have allowed us, as they've allowed other stakeholders, to participate in the creating and drafting and sculpting of this as it comes along. And the bottom line is, we love it. We very much like it. We think it serves our community well. We recommend that you approve it. We are especially fond of what you've just been discussing on the components that address affordable housing. We think this is truly innovative, something we've not seen before. It is market driven and This is something we've looked at proposals going back to the Kemp Commission that existed during the first Bush presidency, and this is something truly new. And I think, Commissioner DeLauro, you raised interesting concerns. It certainly seems to address just new development, but it's better than what's out there now. I agree with you. Just thank you for your time, and we recommend your approval. And if you have questions, happy to answer them. But otherwise, thank you for your time.

Thank you very much for being here and for your service. Next speaker.

Dave Axel.

Hello, my name is Dave Axel with Axel Real Estate, 1757 West Broadway Street in Oviedo. I stand in front of you today with, I think, a relatively modest request for a change in the alternative design standards section. I represent the owner of 66 gross acres at the northwest corner of Celery and Cameron that is right now proposed for development by Pulte Homes, who has it under contract. When we attended a pre-app in December of 2025, we were made aware that there were alternative design standards. The understanding we had at that time and my understanding from looking at the record is part of the reasoning for these standards, as you saw in the staff presentation, was under current lot criteria, it's not possible to achieve or get close to the allowable land use density. The pattern of development along this road has been gated subdivisions with typically 50-foot lots, and that's what we're proposing with a mix of 60s around the perimeter. which would achieve a density of roughly three units an acre. The property is bounded on the north by wetlands, on the south and east by roads that would be connected to, and on the west by a gated subdivision. There's also a gated subdivision across celery. So I'm just requesting that... in Section 3573-1C1, which states under connectivity, projects using these standards shall not be gated, be stricken, In this section, there's still a requirement for connectivity. So if connectivity is possible, it'll still happen. In this particular case, it's not possible. And I don't want the client forced to go through or the county forced to go through a PUD process to achieve the same density than would otherwise be possible with this alternative standard. So that's my request, and I'm here for any questions if the board has any of me. Thank you.

Thank you. And last is Allison Yerko.

I have a map I'm going to be referring to. Put that up. We've got a couple of handouts for the clerk if we can pass this on.

Please give your name and address for the record, and you have three minutes.

Yes, Allison Yurko, PO Box 2286, Winter Park, Florida, 32790. You may recognize my name. My family owns an eight and a half acre parcel near the corner of Orange Boulevard and State Road 46. We're here today not to talk about the litigation that's been filed against us, but rather to thank the staff for working with us in connection with tweaking the ordinance to ensure that the vested rights determination that we had received in 2022 related to the baseline density of 13 density units per acre is recognized. And I did just want to point out for the record that we have property that is in a highly urban area. It's on a four-lane, six-lane arterial in the front. It's been assembled with the corner piece there for a total of 11 and a half acres. There's a limited access highway in the back. Utilities are available there. And it has no ecological or hydrological connection to the Wekibe River. As you can see on here, it's over three miles from the Wekibe River. very close to I-4 and the 417. There's pictures in your packet, too, that outline that we're at a signalized intersection there with convenience stores at two corners. We are in the Wekiva River Protection Area at the outermost perimeter there and the Wekiva Study Area. That is legally significant. My dad got a comp. plan amendment in 1995. We've been paying taxes on this property since 1995 as a commercial use. The statute does allow the highest density and intensity in the Wekiva River protection area to be furthest away from the river. And the project that we are looking at with the consolidation at the corner there is consistent with the recommendation that was made by your staff in 2022. They actually told us to consolidate with the corner and they were supportive of a discretionary future land use amendment that would have allowed more than the 13 density units per acre That's obviously not necessary now in light of live local, but I just point that out so you have a little bit of history and background. I also just wanted to make it clear, this is a taxable parcel. If you look at the Viridian project about a mile away, that's returning eight to $900,000 a year in tax revenue to the county. About $300,000 of that is to the general fund.

Ms. Sheridan, you're running out of time.

Please get to the ordinance. Yeah, so we support the ordinance, and we thank the staff. And to the extent that in your packet, if you want to look at use of funds to clean up septic tanks near the river or provide revenue for Seminole Forever, that would, with all due respect, seem to be a potentially better use of funds. of revenue here and we've over the years had people living in the woods on our property and we're very committed to seeing an affordable housing project go there thank you very much and we do support the ordinance thanks thank you i'm going to turn it to miss borkert now for the question with regard to connectivity and gated neighborhoods

So currently that section of the code, and this is in the additional use standards that Maya referenced earlier in her presentation, it requires that it prohibits gating of these projects that are using the alternative standards. I believe what Mr. Axel is requesting is this be removed. He also, and I don't want to speak for him, but at one point he sent an email that said, that maybe we prohibit gates, but we say, unless you can establish connectivity per a further subsection down, which says, hey, if you can't connect because there's some type of obstacle, such as a wetland, such as a canal or something like that, if you can't connect, then you're not required to connect to the neighborhood, but you are required to connect if you can. So it's up to the board as to what they want to do with this suggestion. Because the change that's being asked for, I guess, is not substantive, if you still required gates and that's what was noticed in the ordinance and it's proper, I don't think it would need to go back through. As with the other two amendments that staff is requesting, I don't think it needs to go back through to the Planning and Zoning Commission. So the board has an option here is what they want to do. They can strike the prohibition and say, well, no, you're allowed to gate these communities, or you can say, no, you have to gate unless you can't connect, or you can leave it the same. It's up to the board. You may want to ask for staff's insight on this as to why they put this together in these standards. I think that would provide much more insight than I can do.

Maya, would you mind giving us insight? Yes, so I know we've had some previous discussions on the gating requirements, and it seemed like at some of the work sessions there was direction to decrease gated projects where it makes sense. So when we were drafting the language for these alternative design standards, which are voluntary, they're not a requirement for anybody to go through this process, we did draft it to prohibit gating. However, if the will of the board is to allow some leniency on that, there is already the clause that allows the development services director to waive the connectivity. There could be a nice compromise in the middle of allowing the director to waive the gating requirement as well, if that was how you wanted to move forward.

This one happens to be in my district. I think we're all going to learn things about our new code every time something comes into your district. It doesn't make sense to force connectivity when connectivity can't happen. From my perspective, gating is okay if you can't have connectivity. They were related in my mind. Obviously, you can't have connectivity through a gated neighborhood, but if the neighborhood can't be gated, can't create connectivity, and the surrounding neighborhoods are gated, it doesn't make sense to limit this property to a different restriction. So I actually would be in favor of giving staff the leeway at the point that the programs come through your review to make intelligent decisions around when it makes sense, you have to do it, and when it doesn't make sense, you don't have to do it. So I would love your input. Yes, Commissioner Lockhart.

The missing middle code allows, confirm or deny what I'm about to say. I'm telling you what I think I know, but I may be wrong. The missing middle code allows the development services director to waive things such as the gating provision and the connectivity provision, correct?

That is correct. I do not believe that the missing middle prohibits the gating. I don't know that 100%, but it does have the same language as what's proposed here to allow waiving the connectivity portion.

Yes. Okay. Because I think this is where my consistency brain kicked in for a couple of items in this agenda, is that if we allow it for the missing middle, why would we not allow it? in this instance as well. And just, again, have there be some consistency so that when a developer is coming in and they are looking at their Chinese menu of options available, they don't have to go, well, this one has this and that one has that and this one has that. Let's just provide some relief where we can so that there's consistency and flexibility is my thought process.

I would have no problem leaving the director have the option.

Mr. Constantine?

Under the circumstances of not being able to have connectivity, I think that's the case. But just walking in, I don't want to gate it, or I want to gate it, I don't think that that's legitimate. But if there's circumstances that avoid the connectivity to allow gating, I wouldn't have a problem.

All right. Have we given all of the input that we can possibly give? And we're ready to make a board action. So board, further discussion or a motion?

So the question that I have before we move on, Madam Chair, there's been a lot of comments up here about what we like, what we don't like. When will they be addressed?

Mr. Rhodes? I think that was a question to you.

To somebody.

Walt. Commissioner, I don't know that I heard clear direction on specifically what you want to change in the ordinance aside from the conversation you just had.

I mean, we've just been talking here about items, and we haven't made any decisions on any particular changes.

Well, stop's ready to take direction.

Okay.

So let me ask the question hypothetically. I think we are, I'm reading the room probably inaccurately, but I'm doing the best I can, reading the room thinking that we are ready to pass this as it stands today, knowing that there was further input that was given from the dais today, one with regard to the gates and the connectivity, which we think we can already do. The other was with regard to managing accessory dwellings and rentals and all of the stuff that goes along with that. And there was one other that I don't think I recall. But at what point would those come back to us, and what's the form for that happening?

So right now, your second reading is scheduled for July the 14th. Assuming the changes as proposed are... not too problematic with regards to our legal requirements for advertising and all that good stuff, then it's possible we could get those prepared and presented to you on the 14th. I defer to Naysa and to Kate as far as the legal sufficiency but it sounds like they're all within the framework of what we have going now, and we should be able to keep it on track. It's obviously of concern for us to try to get it back before you in a similar state, a largely similar state, for the July 14th hearing so that we can get these things passed. There's been a lot of folks, as you all know, waiting for the changes, so...

I probably can, in my mind, here's how I see it. There were three specific, there were two amendments requested by staff, which I went through earlier. And then what I heard is consensus from the board as far as what Mr. Axel brought up and not requiring gates, but having the development services director be able to waive that requirement under certain circumstances. Those three changes we can make happen before July 1 and show you what they are specifically. July 14th, I'm sorry, the second reading. The other three things that I heard, and I think Commissioner Constantine's gonna have to help me with one of them, but one of them was regarding the ownership requirement. It sounds to me like that requires a little more What I heard from you is you want some more teeth in it or maybe not, but maybe you just want to talk about it more and want some more input. So that will not be ready by July 14th, as you can imagine, but we can bring that back with more information. The other thing was from Commissioner Constantine talked about the accessory dwelling units, but I think you're okay with the increase, but it's more of the ownership that we just talked about. So you have to verify that with me.

is the ownership, it is the residency. Right. The real concern is that was both given by the chairman and myself about, you know, What happens next, basically. Right, right. What they do now, fine, but what happens when the owner is gone?

Right, an enforcement standpoint. Yes, an enforcement. Okay, so those two.

The 1,100 or less, I'm fine with it.

Okay, so that's okay. And then the third one was Commissioner Delary and his conversation.

Density bonuses in existing neighborhoods.

Right, he had a concern about density bonuses in existing neighborhoods. This density bonus program that's been proposed was initially provided by Kimley Horn, did a study and said, hey, this is how you can get here to make it more of a viable density bonus program and allow for actual affordable housing units. to the threshold set forth as proposed. This is how you do it and then staff took that and put together the framework based on that study from Kinley Horn. Now that's the only one I'm struggling with as far as if there are any changes to that section depending on how we I'm not sure, and maybe staff can help me, how we prevent that from impacting existing affordable housing units. I don't know how we do that other than to apply it now going forward so we can get more affordable housing units, which I thought was the goal. But if you could help me just kind of zero in on what more you need from us on that, that would be helpful so we know what to bring back.

We've had some existing neighborhoods that had some small vacant pieces of property, two or three acres, and people want to do density bonuses to get above the LDR density, and that's caused some problems.

So you mean like as far as setbacks and having more dense pieces in a neighborhood where the lot size is bigger?

We do. There's nothing in there that talks about value of the homes. And people are concerned that their value is going to be going down based on the affordable housing aspect of it.

And I think we're referencing the latest one that came through in Commissioner Constantine's district. Sandy Lane.

That's exactly what I'm talking about.

Madam Chair, if I can, the concern is that all of us had, because it was a 5-0 vote, was that the missing middle had more teeth into it that called directly for affordable housing and not for just increased density. And it was something that I think was very clear to the staff, and they said that they would bring that back. It's just not included in this amount of amendments. Is that not correct? Yes, sir.

So what you're trying to – That's true, but they have not said that on the record here today. Yeah, and that's why I'm – And so I'm just trying to connect the dots. And if they can't do that this time, that's fine. But there has to be some expectation of when that's going to happen.

And that was what I was getting to, Commissioner, that he would say that they're working on that.

So let me take the meeting back. I think Naysa was answering the question and got to the last point. And that was the last point. So I'll give it back to you.

That's correct. That was the last point. And as far as the status of the missing middle, staff is looking into that. We are preparing some thresholds that are gonna be put in the application so we can address that now and have the proper review for what's in the code. We are working on that now. And if we do find that any changes need to come back on the missing middle, we will bring them back. I just want everybody to make sure they understand too that we are still operating under Senate Bill 180. So all the changes that we have here today are more permissive, are not, more restrictive or burdensome. So we just need to be careful. you know, with ultimate changes to missing middle, whatever they are, that we are not violating Senate Bill 180, but that expires in October of next year. So those are kind of the timeframes that we're working with.

Unless we have a hurricane.

All right. Unless there's a hurricane. I think, yes. So I think we pray for good weather. I think we have answered all the questions. So I'll bring it back to the board for a motion.

Motion to approve the Land Development Code amendments as presented by staff with the caveats of the three items that were just identified to be brought back with the modifications at our next meeting July 14th.

Is that unacceptable?

Yeah, if you could just say the next meeting of the Board of County Commissioners at 1 p.m., 1.30 p.m. or soon thereafter.

July 14th at 1.30 p.m. or soon thereafter.

You've met the statutory requirement for the second meeting. Thank you.

I'd like a second to the statutorily required statement. Thank you. We have a first and a second. Any further discussion? All those in favor? Aye.

Aye.

Any opposed? No? Passes unanimously. Thank you for all of your hard work on this. Oh, and by the way, thank you for all your future hard work on this. All right. That takes us to the county attorney's report.

Thank you, Chairman. I have three items to discuss with you this afternoon. Two are litigation items I need direction on, and the third is a follow-up item. I'm going to start with the county's litigation with Benchmark Construction Company and Liberty Mutual. This is related to the Country Club Heights sewer and water main replacement project. We are in litigation with these parties for just about a year now. Recently, we received a proposal for settlement from Liberty. This is a statutory procedure by which they file a notice in court that they're offering to settle with the county for X amount of dollars. Their offer was for $1.4 million. This starts the clock ticking. You have so many days to either approve or reject the offer. Because of the abbreviated time frame, it was my desire to have just a high-level discussion here at this meeting instead of trying to schedule a closed session. It's staff's opinion that this offer falls far short of the county's current damages, and also it only would resolve the litigation with liberty as the surety. And so the litigation would remain with the other parties, including the construction companies. So staff and the county attorney's office and our outside counsel are all recommending that the board reject this offer.

Thank you. Move to accept the recommendation of staff and the county attorney. Second.

All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Hearing none, passes unanimously.

Thank you. My next item has to do with a request for reimbursement that the county submitted to FEMA for work that was performed on De Leon Street following Hurricane Ian in 2022. Basically, my non-engineer description is that the road completely washed out after the hurricane. Major repairs were required. Major expenses were incurred last week or the week before. FEMA denied in its totality the county's request for reimbursement. And so the Office of Management and Budget has indicated that they would recommend appealing this decision. It's a federal administrative appeal procedure. So because of the formality of the process, I just felt like I needed the board's consent before we filed this appeal. two-tier appeal process, so this would be the first appeal.

Madam Chair.

Commissioner Dilary.

I'd like to make a motion to accept the recommendation of the two-tier process and allow staff to appeal the decision of FEMA and move forward and keep us updated.

Second. Can I ask a clarifying question?

Sure.

If for whatever reason we needed to file the second appeal, can I get your consent here now?

I was trying to conclude both of them.

Thank you. That's what I wanted to clarify. Thank you.

So the motioner has included both? I did. Seconder approves? All right. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Hearing none, passes unanimously.

Thank you. My final item is follow-up from a discussion after the last board meeting. We had a member of the public at the end of the meeting talk about data center moratoriums that were being implemented in neighboring jurisdictions. There was a brief discussion, and Commissioner Lockhart posed the question, could we in Seminole County even do a moratorium? And at the time, I expressed a little bit of reservation because of Senate Bill 180, because of just the restrictions it puts on the county on things like moratorium and other land use regulations. So the County Attorney's Office researched the issue. And just as an aside, there is legislation that was adopted this year. It goes into effect on July 1st, where the legislature said, hey, local governments, data centers, they're up your alley. under your land use regulation authority and your comprehensive planning authority, you get to deal with these large load customers like data centers. You're a large load customer if you use a certain amount of electricity and utilities every month. The definition expressly includes data centers. So you do generally have the ability to regulate data centers under your land development regulation authority and comp planning authority. But the short answer to the question that Commissioner Lockhart posed is that Senate Bill 180 does not prohibit you from implementing a moratorium. However, you don't just... implement a moratorium. You have to build the groundwork to support the need for it. So if that was something the county wanted to pursue, I'd recommend that there be a significant amount of research put in by staff to see if there's even a need for this. Do we have Do we have these uses in our county? Do we have regulations on the book that need modifications or updating? To establish, do we need this? So if that's what the board wanted, I think that it would be appropriate to direct the county manager to have staff start this process to see if it's even warranted.

Commissioners, I would be more than happy to say yes, we should direct the county manager to determine whether or not this is needed. We can't be the county that doesn't do this and therefore the landing spot.

Madam Chair, is there an alternative to that? Because the only land that we have that would be large enough to do this would be in the rural boundary, from what I understand. Am I wrong about that?

I see it.

Well, so that's not how I see it either. I think there's a lot of land out at the airport. And I would also tell you that the land requirement for a data center today may not be the land requirement for a data center a year from now. This is moving very quickly.

then I will accept that I was just trying to think that, was there another way to do it? Yeah, I think that's fair. Like, say, you cannot, you know, zone, and zoning, that you can't put one in this area.

Well, I think that would be part of the analysis that needs to take place at this time. That's great.

I support it.

Mr. Lockhart? So, years ago, before you were here, and... I'm going to throw it back to solar panels on International Parkway. we had a lot of discussion about the fact that our code did not really help us to say no. And we started talking about, this is just solar panels today. What could there possibly be tomorrow? And I believe the board at the time gave direction for staff to come back with some type of language or some discussion around What types of utilities do we want to manage, or not manage? Put guardrails around. How many solar panels or too many solar panels, right? And that never came back to us. I think we've had quite a bit of transition in staff, and of course some other things have taken our attention. But this would be a great time to not only do the research on the data centers, but also look at... the what's next, what is the utility, what is the solar power, whatever thing that might be coming our way that people might want to place in our county that we could do something that's more comprehensive and covers a broader spectrum of items for us so that we're not playing whack-a-mole, if possible.

Commissioner Dory.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Instead of diving into the deep end of doing this big, massive study, because it's going to be a big effort, there may be ways of doing this in tiers, just as Commissioner Lockhart talked about. I think that's what you're talking about. And taking the first step to see, is there really a need to do this before we dive into it? And, you know, where could they potentially go at this point?

I don't think that's what I heard you say, Justin. Maybe clarification.

Well, I think the study tells us if we need to do it. Right. That's right. Right? And so I think that'll be part of your staff analysis or whatever company, if we have to hire, go out for RFP to hire someone to do the analysis for us. I think there's so much we don't know that we need to press pause while we're figuring out what's going on? What are the actual parameters and what do we have? So if it, yes, data centers should be the primary concern, but I think there are other layers that we might want to add on to that in addition. But I feel like if there is nothing other than a moratorium to allow us to press pause so that we can do that research, then that's what we need to do.

Well, and I think that would be part of the research. Chairman, I think there's like two levels of research. The first is, you know, directing staff to take a look at our code and see what our regulations are. If one of these came in today, what they would be. And if, you know, depending on what that answer is, that's going to give you the ability to say, okay, we need a moratorium. because we don't or we don't have sufficient regulations whatever the answer is there but that's kind of the preliminary analysis to put the moratorium in place we need to do that it's you know and then with the intent of having more study done looking at our code specific provisions that that aspect of it and then coming back with some code changes if necessary when we're allowed to, again, and then you guys voting on that. So it's kind of a two-tiered process. The first is just identifying, do we need this? And that's, I think, what your direction of staff should be. Do we need this? What does our code say now? And then if we come back and say, yeah, we have some stuff we need to work on, here's language for a moratorium, then you can move forward with it. And then the deeper analysis will occur after that and any potential drafts of code changes.

Thank you for explaining it better than I did.

Commissioner Lockhart. So I'm going to sound for a minute like I'm talking out of both sides of my mouth, and I assure you I am not. At least that is not my intention. I think we also have to be careful that we are not hindering business development and where there is an opportunity for economic development that does not negatively impact our citizens and our environment, we need to figure out how we can be a part of that. So far we haven't heard that there are data centers that can be positive in a community. I think we've only heard the negatives. But as the technology evolves and as, you know, I don't want us to be, quote, closed for business, but we need to be open for business that does not negatively impact our community. So how, again, threading the needle from my perspective, I don't.

Well, moratoriums are required by their nature to be very specific and very specific in what you are doing. So they can't be broad swaths. And especially under Senate Bill 180, you're restricted from doing moratoriums if it's going to inhibit the ability for someone to rebuild or repair or... you know, their building, upgrade their building, their existing building. So, you know, it will be, if we do get to that point, we can specifically tailor it to address some of those concerns so that we're only really doing what's necessary to make sure that we're protecting the county of any potential impacts that may come through our land development code regulations.

So you have enough direction to, so I'll rephrase this to say we're gonna do what Naysa said.

Yeah.

Sounds good. Fair? Sound good? Patricia? Yes.

And pray for no hurricanes. Yes.

All right.

And that concludes my report.

All right. County Manager.

I have nothing, Madam Chair. Thank you.

Terrific. The next item on the agenda is a board appointment for the District 5 Parks and Preservation Committee. A gentleman by the name of Robert Young was recommended to me by Rick Dare and team. His term will be from 1-1 of 26 to 12-31 of 27. So moved. Second. I have a first and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Hearing none, passes unanimously. And that takes us to Commissioner Constantine for district report.

Thank you very much. And before I start, I just wanted to say, if anybody has anything on theirs that needed a vote or discussion, let me know. Because after this, I beg your indulgence, I'm going to have to leave to get to the executive committee. uh for thousand for florida association counties but um the few things that i have number one i think all of you have heard but i just wanted to on the record um orange county voted not to do the mccullough road project which i think all of us are rather happy about at on the 18th the manufacturers association awards was done at the florida uh hotel commissioner deloria and i attended along with our staff and we seminole county won numerous awards in that event also the value adjustment board will be meeting on the 30th of june and i don't have to tell you that red hot and boom and Our 250th anniversary is coming up. I do want to tell you, though, that we received new cougar cubs at the zoo.

That's fantastic. That is fantastic.

That is pretty cool. And that's it. Thank you very much.

I thought he said cups. I thought he said cups, too, and I did not know what that meant. So I was really at a loss.

We were doing brews around the zoo with cougar patterns.

I'm sorry. Cougar cubs are coming from the north. And they're coming to, we've received them. And they are in quarantine, like they do with everything else. But they will be a great addition to the zoo.

Even better than cups.

Yeah, it's better than cups.

And that concludes your report?

That concludes.

So I'm going to take an indulgence right now before Mr. Constantine leaves and say that the airport has announced that Bermuda Air Service is moving from MCO to the Sanford Airport on Halloween, so you can now go to Bermuda directly, and they will eventually be opening up flights to Belize. Great. Aided him to know that before he left. Great news. Yeah, it is great news. All right. That takes us to you, Commissioner Lockhart.

I don't remember. There's a lot on this report, and so I'm not sure if it's because we haven't met in a while or I've just been super busy. So I'm going to skip over quite a few of these things in the interest of time. I did want to point out that on June 3rd, the Florida Division of Emergency Management, Florida Disaster Foundation, hosted an event as a part of their conference bringing local elected officials together to meet with FEMA agency and state elected officials and members of that division to better collaborate and build relationships before the storm, whatever that storm may be. And it's a brand new initiative. They've not done this in the past. I think it was very well received. And so I want to give a special shout out to Kevin Guthrie, who is the... Secretary of Emergency Management for the state of Florida. He's done an exceptional job. And I know Alan Harris, they work seamlessly together. And I did probably overstep my bounds and came close to threatening the Secretary that he was not allowed to poach Alan Harris. So I just wanted to get that on the record. It was a great event. Thank them very much for hosting that. participated in the Legacy Square wall raising that Habitat for Humanity put on their newest project in Commissioner Herr's district. Unfortunately, I know you were out of town. You couldn't be there. I was honored to fill in your shoes. Very well attended. Great to see our community services staff, the private sector, nonprofits, just everyone coming together. Fantastic use of those $1.4 million of ARPA funds that we designated to continue to be reinvested into affordable housing opportunities. Some of the families who will be receiving houses, who will be working their tails off to receive houses, by the way, they are not given to them, they work very hard to earn these houses, were there and it was wonderful to see that happen. Commissioner Dilary and I attended, along with members of our staff, Ms. Dilary and others, the FDOT groundbreaking for the I-4 truck stop project. That's something, of course, our board has been talking about for years, and it was fantastic to have members of the current administration from D.C. here as a part of that project, the hundreds of millions of dollars of InfraGrant funds that are being dedicated to the Central Florida corridor, the I-4 corridor for truck stop, additional parking spots. One of the comments that was made to me by a community member recently, though, they are concerned that it is going to bring more traffic to the surface roads, although they don't live in the immediate area. And so any type of communication, community focus that we can do to help talk about where the ons and offs of these trucks will be and what that traffic impact may or may not be would be really helpful. I know it mostly impacts Commissioner Herr's district, but it will definitely be a much safer environment for everyone on I-4 when these truck stops are completed. And that's it. That's all I'm going to say for today. Thank you.

All right, Commissioner DeLaurie.

Oh, no, I lied. No, I wrote it on the back. And so I didn't see it. OK, you have popcorn in front of you. And they're all cute, little themed popcorn. This one is a white cheddar go-getter. This popcorn is a result of a fundraiser for the Brawner House Museum. For those of you who don't know, the Brawner House is a piece of... It's a home that is attached to the Evergreen Cemetery in Castleberry. The Bronner family donated acres of land back in 1890 to allow for a black cemetery. That was back, of course, when blacks and whites could not be buried in the same cemeteries. And so they dedicated, I believe it was 16 acres, specifically for black slaves in the community to be buried. And so this is a grassroots community effort to help raise money to preserve the cemetery, to improve the museum, and combine American history and local history so that the community is aware of how far back our roots grow and how far we've come. So if you all ever are interested in supporting the Bronner House Museum, I encourage you to do so. Terrific.

Thank you. We did go to the truck stop ribbon cutting. There was an individual that actually started that movement about the truck stops. And I know that Commissioner Constantine knew him very well. Dominic Selfie, Judge Selfie, that's what it was. He was a judge. I don't remember what years he was a judge, but I think it was in the 90s. And he's been working on that for many, many years. In the 80s.

I can tell you that because Mrs. Herr, the first Mrs. Herr, my mother-in-law, was his clerk.

Okay, didn't know that either. But okay, since he's been working on this for 30 plus years and he's no longer with us and I wanted to thank his legacy that his dream of actually moving those truck stops out of the Longwood area is finally coming to fruition. So I want to thank Dominic for all his hard work even though he's no longer with us. Commissioner Constantine and I did go to the manufacturer's president's dinner, and we do have three companies here in Seminole County that did get awards. There's only three awards, and it was Osceola, Seminole, and Orange County. And out of the three awards that are available for Central Florida, Seminole County and the manufacturers won all three. The small business was Herndon Manufacturing. Middle business was JST Power. And the large manufacturer was Lumen. And so it's pretty special to have three manufacturers to sweep all three awards for the Seminole County area in such a large area. The one thing I do want to bring to our attention is Loomis is trying to get a permit through the city of Altamont, the city of Sanford, excuse me, the city of Sanford. And they've been trying for quite some time. I'm hoping that their permit will come through because if it doesn't come through soon, they're going to lose several contracts and several millions of dollars worth of revenue. Staff has contacted Sanford quite a few times. I've actually contacted Sanford once, and I'm hoping, and I actually texted them this morning, the status on their permit, they do not, or I did not get a response yet. So I'm assuming that the permit has not come in yet. But I'd like to ask staff when they do talk about the JPA to talk about wait time and responses to permits because it is becoming a problem in and around Seminole County with those businesses in Sanford.

Commissioner, if I may, county manager Darren Gray has a meeting with the city manager, Norton Bonaparte, in about a week. So I will share that for part of their discussion.

Because I did talk to the president of Lumens at the manufacturer's dinner that night. And the business, if he doesn't produce it by a certain date, will be going to California, just FYI. And it's in the millions of dollars. I did go to the Sanford Airport work session and the tour. That was last week. And I also went to the Summit for Florida for Better Transportation. Secretary Perdue was there. He gave a wonderful presentation about working with local government and in the environment today. And it was very uplifting to see Secretary Perdue and quite a phenomenal speaker. And he is all excited about SCOUT. And I know July 4th is right around the corner. Wish everyone a happy, safe July 4th. And we'll see each other back in second meeting in July, end of my report.

All right. I will be extremely brief. I don't know that we've ever said this out loud, but congratulations to our own fire department. Out of 80 submissions nationwide, the Community Paramedicine Program has been named the Program of the Year at the Atrium Health Mobile Integrated Health and Community Paramedicine Conference in Chicago. that's pretty cool very cool pretty pretty cool pretty pretty cool and I won't go into all the details about the program but we have 250 people enrolled in it and that is 250 people that are a lot less likely to have to dawn the doors of an emergency room because of the services are brought right to their home I appreciate you going and covering for me at the habitat wall raising I would have been there I was out of town visiting Lake Butler Florida which is an amazing place that I have never been to before for business. And yesterday, Commissioner Lockhart and I did attend the Celery Avenue Trail ribbon-cutting ceremony right out front of our building, and this is the next portion of the trail to create connectivity that eventually will all connect to Volusia County. You'll be able to walk from Sanford to Volusia County should you ever have the desire to do so, which, Bob, that may be you, because I don't see the rest of us doing that.

No, ma'am.

tapping out on that. And that does conclude my report. It is time for public comment. So I just want to tell you, you guys didn't get to see it, but I said it's time for public comment and they went, yes it is. Come on up, gentlemen. The speaker is Mr. John Murphy. Who's after Mr. John Murphy?

No more speakers after that.

Oh, I think we do have two coming up, so.

Good afternoon, commissioners. My name is John Murphy. I live at 2060 Hunterfield Road in English Estates. And I'm here today to express my concerns as a professional and the concerns of the HOA about not speaking for the president who's sitting back there. on the Oxford Road sidewalk stormwater improvement project, which has fallen, fallen, fallen way behind schedule. As of today, we have 120 some days left on a 500-day project. To date, nothing has been completed on this project. The contractor has not completed one item of work. And it's very disturbing. The other disturbing thing is that the representative from Seminole County, it's your project and it's your money, has been negligent in attending the public, I beg your pardon, project meetings that today was number 52. And I believe he was on the phone, but I'm not sure. And so it appears to the residents, to myself, and to others, that you kind of let go of this project. It's an old neighborhood that needs developed. It was developed starting in 1959, and the infrastructure is shot. And so it's being restored, but it doesn't look like there's a whole lot of backing from the commission one thing i observed today was the contractor is to provide a safe walking zone from south boulevard which is at the english estates elementary school to domrick road no such thing exists he parks his equipment he parks he dumps dirt on the lawns the place is a disaster area but today this morning 9.30, there was a gentleman walking his dog on Oxford Road because the sidewalk or any area to protect him was not available. I have a whole list of items that I'll send to Commissioner Lockhart that are just general concerns, but I think some of you are up for re-election, and this may go against you that this project has gone to heck in a handbasket. Thank you.

Thank you. Sir, did you turn in a form?

No, ma'am.

Okay, we do need you to fill out a form. You're there and you're standing there, so we want to hear from you, but we need you to turn in a form. Okay. Name and address for the record.

My name is Mark Hardin. My address is 2460 Markingham Road. I'm in Commissioner Lockhart's district, as this HOA is. And my concern is the same that Mr. Murphy was speaking of. He is advisor to the HOA on this project. and it is the oxford road sidewalk and drainage improvement project set number zero two one zero seven zero nine four so there's fifty 557 properties in our uh corporate boundary where this project's located in the southwest unincorporated seminole county and the purpose of my appearance here along with my other two gentlemen, is to urgently request that the county exercise more control over the contractor, Mercon Construction Company, who is responsible for this project in our community to resolve several ongoing problems. I'm gonna state these in summary, and I'll give a copy of this to you, Commissioner Lockhart. First of all, there's no production schedule. There's no milestones. Not one has been met. There's insufficient manpower to finish on a timely basis. There's use and destruction of private property for construction equipment and material storage. There's incorrectly installed slot drains. They're too high to drain, so they've got to be taken out again and redone. There are storm drains that are closed for months, awaiting completion, causing local flooding, making passage difficult after rainfall in our streets. I just went through this two Saturdays ago at night in the middle of a torrential downpour. I thought I was going to get flooded out myself. There's garbage consisting of chicken bones, toilet paper, wrappers, et cetera, and destruction debris of various kinds in the right-of-way throughout this project. There's poor maintenance of traffic when we do have that. And even so, still people will come in opposite directions on a one-way road. There's a lack of knowledge of buried gas lines in this neighborhood that needed relocation identified early in the year. And nothing has happened on that. There's a lack of access for school children to get to and from school during the school year. So our once beautiful community looks like a war zone that Mr. Delari has been in a few years ago. And he's seen that it was a very nice community.

I've been there a time or two myself.

Yeah, as you have too, Commissioner DeLarge. I mean, Lockhart. So I'm here again to urge urgently for the county to look into this and provide some oversight. Thank you for your time.

We appreciate you coming in. Are you about to raise your hand? Yes. Commissioner Lockhart's going to make a comment. But I also see our Director of Public Works is walking up, Ms. Tawny Allure. And she is going to more than likely, are you wanting to take the microphone? Are you wanting to speak to the individuals? I can do both, Madam Chair. We would appreciate you doing that.

Yes. Tony O'Loury, Public Works Director. I will have to rebut. some of the things that we've heard today. Our contractor, well, yes, we do have a gas line, TECO, that has delayed in the removal, that hasn't stopped the work. Today, we've got three crews out there. We have somewhere between three or four crews out there. So saying work, nothing has been done is not a correct statement. I have personally talked to TECO about getting that gas line removed. And, you know, sometimes during design we do miss utilities. There's a lot of utilities out there, and we try to get every one of them. But with construction projects, there are some utilities that are missed. I did speak to TECO. They are working with their contractor to move that up quicker. The other thing that we have done prior to school letting out, we had to limit the amount of time that our construction crews would be on there to make sure that the kids can get to school, that we were not hampering that to school and home from school. We have just given, since school has ended for the summer, given our contractors additional time of about four and a half hours to work on the job. I did check with our construction manager. Our contractor schedule is to provide these services by the end of the year. We are still as of right now on track to do that. We cannot provide meeting the methods, as you know, to our contractor. If they want to put more crews out there, if they fall behind, that's their prerogative to do so. As of right now, our construction folks are saying we are on time. Now, I would love to get the itemized list and we can address those points. bullet points. I know Mr. Murphy goes to every one of the progress reports to say we don't have a representative on that. It's inaccurate as well. I take exception to that. But I would be more than happy to work with Mr. Murphy and the HOA to address their other concerns.

Thank you very much.

Commissioner Lockhart. As soon as our office was notified of these concerns and we were provided pictures, I actually took took a tour. I didn't necessarily let anybody know that I was going. Sometimes that's not the most productive thing to do. But I saw what you're referencing and it was completely unacceptable. Our office immediately reached out to staff. Of course, no one reports to us but the county manager and the county attorney. So our staff was, my staff at my office was kind enough to reach out to Public Works and make sure that all of the coordination that was necessary was occurring. I am I have seen firsthand how horrible the conditions are and anything that we need to do as a county to make sure that our contractor is in compliance is what we will do.

And I'll round out the conversation by just speaking on behalf of all of us. This project, I came onto this board in 2020. And this project has been talked about as a priority from that time on. And I know it was talked about for years beforehand. And the amount of work that led up to the mess that you're living in now has been significant. And I realize that what you're living through is not optimal, but there has been a significant amount of work and a significant amount of investment to get us to this day. It is unfortunate that the construction project is leaving the taste in the mouth of the residents that it is. But to think that we don't care about this project is the furthest thing from reality. We do. We don't live in it every day. We will admit that. But we appreciate you bringing it to our attention. I think our staff has heard loud and clear. And I will tell you that Ms. Solori is one of the best in the industry. And I would suspect that the contractors will work very nicely with her to accommodate the needs of our citizens. So we appreciate you being here. Thank you for your patience.

Thank you very much, guys.

Any other comments? No, ma'am. That concludes public comment. Anything for the good of the order? Commissioner Constantine's about ready to leap out of his chair. All right. Meeting adjourned.