Board of County Commissioners - Regular Meeting

Recording in progress

Okay. Good morning, everyone. And welcome to the Lake County Board of County Commissioner meeting this September 8th, 2026. We welcome you to the meeting. We're glad you're here. And we will open the meeting with an invocation given by Lake County Fire Chaplain Rick Spence and will remain standing afterwards for the Pledge of Allegiance.

Thank you, Commissioner. I appreciate this opportunity to be here. I love being chaplain for Lake County Fire Department. It's a lot of work, but it is very rewarding, and I appreciate being a part of it and being a part of this assembly. This Friday is going to mark 25 years since the horrific attacks on our nation, September 11, 2001. And usually around this time of year, I'll get questions saying, where was God on September 11th? Why did God let this happen? Why did God do this? Why did God allow this? And it's a very pointed question, I feel. It's almost like they assume that God is AWOL or on vacation or wasn't paying attention at that particular time. My response has been and always will continue to be that the presence of God was there in New York City, in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, and at the Pentagon. Why do I say that? When you go back and look at the videos of those trucks, hundreds of fire apparatus responding to the World Trade Center, over 1,000 to 1,500 firefighters getting off of those trucks, each of them fully packed out. They were all carrying forcible entry tools, extra hose line, extra air bottles. And they were told, make your way up those dark and smoky stairwells and try to find the people that are in that building. And they went. They didn't question anybody about doing that. They went straight up in those stairwells and started getting the people out of that building. They knew, and the people in that building knew, the only hope that they had was those firefighters coming up the stairwell. That was the only hope. And those firefighters realized that. They also realized enough that they probably thought to themselves, this may not end very well for us. But they kept going anyway. And on that plane, United Flight 93, heading to San Francisco, a group of flight attendants pulled together a group of men and told them how to access the cockpit to go in there and try to take control of the plane. That group of people knew, the only hope they had of surviving or preventing a further catastrophe was to get into that cockpit and take control of the plane. They too probably thought, this won't end well for us. But they did it anyway. They kept going. Where does that come from? That's not something you read about in a book. That's not something that someone teaches you. It's something that you have in your heart. It's something that comes from Jesus Christ that God gives you in order to demonstrate unconditional sacrificial love to go into a situation that is detrimental to you in order to help someone else. That's what those firefighters did on September 11th. That's what that crew and those men did on Flight 93. That's the presence of God. that's in our lives, that's in us, that makes us do things that we normally would not be able to do. And that's how I know the presence of God was there, because he was with those firefighters as they went up those stairs. And God was with those people as they rammed that cockpit door. Let me pray. Most gracious Heavenly Father, I just pray that you'll be with us through this meeting. We're thankful that we can gather and assemble like this and to be able to direct and control government situations and improve the lots and the lives of the people in Lake County. We're thankful for the people that are here who have that heart that are in the audience and that are on this panel to improve the lives of other people, Lord. And we know that that comes directly from you. We just ask for your wisdom and your presence to be here today, just as you were on September 11, 2001. Just pray for that spirit of cooperation, that willingness to get along. We'll still be present today as it was then. We're thankful for this opportunity to be able to assemble, and just thank you for this great nation. Continue to be with the men and women that are serving on the line today, and police and fire and EMS. Watch over them. Be with the men and women of our military, and we ask that you'll keep them from harm's way. In Jesus' name, 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 very much, Chaplain. Appreciate those words. It's hard to believe it's been 25 years. It truly is. There will be a ceremony this Friday. Jennifer, are we starting at 9 a.m.? Is that correct?

Let me confirm that for you.

Okay. But it will be in the rotunda.

In the rotunda. Yes, ma'am. And yes, that will be at 9 o'clock.

Okay. So anyone in the community that is looking for a place to go to commemorate and to remember and to contemplate on this anniversary of 9-11, please join us on Friday at 9 a.m. in the rotunda. Agenda update. Jennifer.

Yes. Good morning, Madam Chair, Commissioners. First, tab 20, the Transportation Construction Program document was added. And tab 27, the tentative budget book was added. All right.

OK. Minutes approval. Mr. Cooney.

Good morning. I have one set of minutes for your approval this morning.

Move to approve. Second.

All right. All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Those minutes pass. July 28th, 2026. Citizen question and comment period. We're entering the portion of our meeting when the public can discuss items that are on today's agenda with the exception of zoning items. Anyone who's joined the meeting through Zoom using their phone may press star 9 and then if you'll click the raise hand button to let us know that you wish to speak. Everyone has three minutes and If you're in the middle of a sentence, we ask that you just try to wrap it up and sometimes you don't hear the buzzer go off, but I'll remind you if it went off just so you can try to conclude your comments and we can treat everyone fairly. Moving now to our comment cards. The first comment card is Pat Kelly.

You have an overhead? Is there an overhead?

Yeah, they'll put it on.

There you go, right on the end.

I just probably should look.

Good evening commissioners eat morning commissioners. I'm used to evening meetings, Pat Kelly, one, one, one, four, Wendy bluff. I'm not sure if I'm supposed to tell you that many all of Florida. Um, I'm here to ask for consideration for a future agenda item, and that would be adopting, um, Florida statute one 93, seven Oh three, um, assessment reduction ordinance. I know we're in the middle of tax season, so this is probably a good request to ask, but what this does, if you read this and look at the policy, Essentially, it's a granny flat. They call it granny flat reduction. Recently, my mother-in-law ended up in a home, which was costing my family like $5,000 to $7,000 a year. And we didn't know really what to have, so we were gonna move her into our house and modify our house. That didn't happen, and then we decided to move to my daughter's property. Well, I found out when I moved to my daughter's property, she has 23 acres, so it's all legal, we're going through zoning for that, that I lose all my portability of the house that I've spent 25 years here in Lake County, I just start over. This ordinance was put in place and it allows you to get a assessment reduction of 20% of the value increase of the property while the grandparent lives there. I'm just asking you to read this, consider a future, I know we have a lot of exemptions already, but this would help some, especially for those people who, don't need the additional tax burden, and people who lose deportability. So it's just something that I want to put out there. I didn't really know how to go process. I needed it on the agenda, so I figured this is the best way. I know they'll actually be taking a day, but can you consider putting this in and making this exemption? It's only 20% of the value of whatever the increase is, but it would help those people who need any of the tax breaks they can get on stuff like this. So okay, that was it.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thank you, Pat.

This is the first time this has been brought to the board's attention. I'm just curious if this is like a older issue or anything.

I don't think we've ever had anybody come and explain how it's affecting them directly.

Gotcha. Okay.

It's just that I'm cheap, and I just don't like taxes. So it was an opportunity, and I was just frustrated, and so this was brought to my attention that this was passed by the Florida State, and it has to be adopted. I reached out and found out that the county had to adopt it before it could actually go in play. But I'm just trying to get the ball started. I know it's a process. You can't do it today.

Yeah, so just for the record, I'd be in favor of the staff bringing this up as sort of an item that would be formally presented, and, you know, we can talk about the numbers and the properties we think it would, you know, affect and all that. I'm in favor of that.

Yeah, just due to discussion. But I appreciate your consideration, and thank you all for everything you all do. You all have a great day.

Thanks, Matt. Yeah, appreciate it. I mean, what we could do is add it to the agenda and have a discussion about it and get as much information as possible and go from there.

Yeah, the key thing I just want to say is once you adopt it, my understanding is, I'm not a lawyer and you'll probably understand this better, is it's not retroactive. So if somebody had done this four years ago, they don't get the experience. This has got to be in play. So I'm holding out on my plans to see what y'all do.

Thanks a lot. We've been supportive of the generational housing and these kinds of ideas. ADUs.

Yeah. Yeah, there's a couple of counties.

Are you living in the granny flat or are you going to be?

I am going to be the granny flat. So that's going to be me. But thank you very much. Thanks.

I mean, it would go hand in hand with the ADU policy we have on promoting the use of accessory dwelling units, particularly reinforcing the family unit. So, okay.

How difficult would it be to get the numbers, the amount?

we'll work with staff it should it shouldn't be difficult i guess the question for the board is is this something you want to bring back before or after november because if november passes then you're going to see substantial decreases in your homestead property tax i would say we bring it up once we have all the information which i'm assuming is going to be after november okay okay yeah i'm for just having it done as soon as we can then we'll make the decision post november all right um lucina alvarado

Good morning, everybody. My name is Lucina Alvarado, and I'm one of the owners of the property on the Florida Turnpike on Mineola in Monteverde area. We own a radio station. It's called On the Mexicana Radio. And we've been facing problems since the construction of hills of Monteverde and easement. that it was allowed for us to use. Like the meeting says that allows someone to, other than the owners, to use it for a specific part of the property for a limited purpose. Hills of Monteverde has been blocking the easement access to our property, and we've been addressing this to court enforcement back and forth with emails with Mr. Glenn Guzman, but I feel like he responded, but not concretely for the matter of this situation. Hills of Monteverde, they blocking the easement with trees and spectacular signs promoting their houses for rent, but three weeks, four weeks ago, install a fence, so it's even worse. Back in March of this year, we had a situation with a radio station that it was vandalized and robbed. And when we called the sheriff's department, they didn't have access to the Eastman because it was blocked. So we have to meet the officer through the hills of Monteverde property, which is not a good idea for me owning a property to... and a bad situation to meet an officer on another part of that is not my property. I'm asking you to look and review this case because back in December of 2025, I received an email from Mr. Robert Halecki and he reviewed the case with Public Works with the role manager in the engineering And they came to the conclusion that prior to this problem, they gave us the easement access that is on public records. And according to the book 1494, page 14, and the official records of Lake County, also on page 24, It says the runs adjacent to parallel with easterly boundary of the turnpike southerly to your property, and because of those prior discussions, it was agreed that a stabilized driveway connection was granted. So that's my point today, that I have no access to my property.

Okay, thank you for bringing that to our attention. Melanie, do you know anything about that? I do.

Public Works was out there last week. We have Mike Holka here if you have questions. They did do a survey of the easement. They overlaid it where you can see the landscape buffer for that subdivision. My understanding from speaking to Mike this morning is that the trees have been removed. There is a sign that is in the easement and they've been cited by code enforcement. So it's being handled through the code enforcement process.

Okay. So it sounds like we're getting somewhere and they're going to make that accessible.

Okay. And what about the fence? Because it was just installed. So I don't know if they pull out a permit or they just, you know, using that easement access like their property.

Right. So it sounds like, I mean, the fence, if there's a violation with a sign, there would certainly be a violation with a fence.

I'd have to ask Glenn or Mike to come up. I don't know about the fence, but if the fence is in the easement, they'll have to move it.

Mike is going to come up just because he knows firsthand what they've been dealing with so far.

Thank you very much.

For the record, Michael, Kootenai County Public. As far as the fence, I was not aware of a fence. If a survey shows a fence, then it'll get removed from that right-of-way. There has been prior discussions with the resident regarding access and that they are supposed to be accessing through the platted right-of-way that is shown on the exhibit before you all, then using that to access their ingress and egress. Glenn is informing me that if there is a fence, we'll make sure that it also gets removed so that they have their access.

Okay. And you all will work on this today so that they can make sure that they can get in and out of their property. Okay. All right. Thank you. I appreciate that. Okay. Let's see. Farmer, Banks, Helfrich.

I am farmer Banks Helfrich. I live in the Clay Road District. Farm tip of the day, did you know that earthworms eat everything organic? Kitchen scraps, cardboard, paper. They also eat old clothing, cotton clothing. This is one way of keeping our landfills smaller by feeding them to the worms. Mayor, I'm sorry, chairwoman, board, distinguished guests, can our political discourse coexist with kindness, compassion, and decency. Kindness is that unlimited supply that every single one of us has. And every time we take a breath, we are replenished with kindness. When we are on our beds, our last beds, our last breath of air, we will not be remembered by the cars that we drive. We will not be remembered by the homes we lived in or the gadgets or toys that we had or the wealth that we acquired. We will be remembered by the kindness we showed to each other and to strangers. Compassion, at a very young age, we are taught to love our neighbor, love our enemy, to clothe the naked, to house the homeless, to feed the hungry, and also to welcome the stranger. Compassion is in us at the beginning of our lives. Decency. Decency is the light in the midst of darkness. It is the calm in the arena of chaos, and it is the love in the presence of fear. So I go back to the original question. Can our political discourse coexist with kindness, compassion, and relentless decency? My answer is, of course it can. It's happening already. I am Farmer Banks Helfrich, may you all be blessed, candidate for State House District 25, and I am kindness, I am compassion, and I am relentless decency. On a side note for the 55 seconds, question, who pays for our police, fire service, EMTs, paramedics? We do. Our property taxes do. I for one, love to pay less taxes, and I'm not the only one. Most of us do. Every person I've ever met has said, yes, I would love to pay more taxes. I support tax cuts, yet not at the expense of our first responders. I oppose Amendment 3, which will be on the ballot, and stand and support our first responders, our firefighters, our police officers, our EMTs, our paramedics, our dispatchers. Thank you.

Thank you. OK, John Labriola with the Christian Family Coalition. And there are several speaker cards that go with this. So I'll let you all decide whether John can serve as a spokesperson or whether everyone wants to. I think we have about seven cards that go along with this.

Good morning, Chairwoman Campione and commissioners. My name is John Labriola. I'm with the Christian Family Coalition. We are a statewide organization that lobbies not only Tallahassee, but also school boards and county commissions, as yourself, to defend religious liberties and to promote family values throughout the state of Florida. I've been here before. Back in 23, we asked you to cancel your subscription to the American Library Association, which, as you know, promotes Drag Queen Story Hour. And you did that, so we thank you for that. in 2024 we asked you to pass a resolution to oppose a pro-abortion amendment for uh commissioner campeon uh sponsored that we thank you for also approving that unanimously we were able to defeat the amendment thanks to um your your support and the support of many county commissions throughout the state of florida so i wanted to thank you for that but um today you heard the chaplain talk about the fact that it's the 25th anniversary of the the 9-11 attacks and I just wanted to remind you that of course this week is also the one year anniversary of the assassination of Charlie Kirk. who, as you know, was killed on a college campus on September the 10th of 2025. And we wanted to thank you also, Commissioner Sabatini, for sponsoring the resolution to create a road, to name a road after Charlie Kirk and Lake County was the first. And then in the legislature, when we were up there, there was a bill, the Charlie Kirk Day of Remembrance Bill, which would have declared a day of remembrance for Charlie Kirk in the state of Florida. It passed the House. There was a lot of leftist, hate, you can say, rhetoric that was thrown at Charlie Kirk. But it did pass the House, and it went over to the Senate. It passed all the Senate committees. However, the rules chair decided not to allow it to come to the floor for a vote. So we've been asking different county commissions. Several have already agreed to do a Charlie Kirk Day of Remembrance to remedy that situation, and it includes Sumter County, Flagler County, I'm forgetting the others, but there was like two others. So we're here today to ask you if you could pass a resolution to declare October the 14th Charlie Kirk's birthday as the Charlie Kirk Day of Remembrance, going along with your decision to name a road after him. And also, since whatever authority you have over the library is to ask if there could be a library display, showing his books as a historical figure during his birthday week. He wrote eight books, so that would be something, that's basically what we're asking you to do, and if you could make a motion perhaps today to put that on a future agenda, maybe the one before the October the 14th meeting. So thank you again, and look forward to your response, thanks.

All right, and then I've got one, two, three, four, five, six, seven cards that are making the same request. I don't know if everyone wants to get up and speak or if you just want to indicate that you're in support of that request.

Good morning. If it's okay, I would like to add. Yes, what's your name? My name is Susan Collins. Okay. I am here. I'm the lead of the Salt and Light Ministry at the Church of the Lakes in Leesburg. And our primary focus of our ministry is civic engagement and faithful citizenship. And I'm here today to also request that you name October 14th as a day of remembrance for Charlie Kirk. Charlie has been an inspiration to our ministry, not only because of his steadfast Christian values, but also because of his respectful, open way. He modeled dialogue with people across all walks of life. And to carry that mission forward, we are hosting a community event in early October called Truth, Grace, and Coffee. We're going to bring together people of all generations to watch some of Charlie Kirk's discussions and practice the lost art of speaking truth boldly yet with grace, something that our country and community desperately need today. And by officially recognizing October 14th as a day of remembrance and partnering with our community by featuring Charlie Kirk's books in the library, as John mentioned, we think that we can take a meaningful step towards bridging the divides and fostering unity. So thank you for your time. Thank you for your service and for considering our request. Thank you.

Yes.

Hello, my name is Jonathan Walker. I too would like to request the remembrance of Charlie Kirk's birthday, and for a couple of really important reasons. I'm a son, a father, a husband, a small business owner, and what I can tell you that I've experienced through my life is there is a never-ending supply of ideas. Ideas are great. Not all equal, but great. Ideas are how we learn. I'm sure all of you or most of you have had kids and they come up and they say, Dad, I've got this great idea. And you're like, keep going, son. Keep working towards it. That's not quite where you want to be, but keep going. And ideas are how we learn. Some good, some bad. Charlie had a unique ability to look at everybody, no matter where they were in their walk of life, no matter their religion, no matter their belief, and invite them to explore what they think, invite them to take an idea, a path they were pursuing, and actually say it out loud in a peaceful way, a way that you could actually think on it and encourage growth, not just condemnation. And today, more than ever, I think, we see a culture of condemnation. If you publicly come out and state an opinion or an idea, your entire life can be ruined forever. They'll take a clip and put it on the media, on your social media. They'll record an idea, a stance, a moment in time, and label a person forever. never allowing redemption, never allowing growth, never allowing forgiveness. And how many of us have made a mistake or thought we wanted a certain thing, and then as time goes on, we've changed our mind, and we've realized, you know, there is a better way. I used to think that, but I've learned something since then. Whether you agreed with Charlie on his stances or not, the unique thing that Charlie brought to this country was inviting young people, old people, bridging the gap between generations to feel free to engage in discourse. And today I think young people particularly are either emboldened too far to be harmful, engaging in demonizing and labeling forever someone, or they're terrified to engage in conversation, terrified to have an idea because of what they feel the consequences would be. So whether you agree with Charlie on his issues, topics or not, I think what we all could agree on was that he encouraged us to speak. He encouraged us to think, encouraged us to not just follow what we've been taught, but to really test what we've been taught and to see if that is the best way to proceed forward or if this is the next lesson that we need to learn in life. So thank you so much for your time.

Thank you. All right.

Good morning County commissioners. The Bible says in Proverbs 22 one, a good name is rather to be chosen than great riches and Romans 13 seven render therefore to all their dues honor to whom honor. As we approach the one year anniversary of Charlie Kirk's assassination, I'm here to ask you to declare October 14th the Charlie Kirk Day of remembrance in honor of his birthday, as Sumter, Marion, Gilchrist, Jefferson, and Flagler counties have already decided to do. and to instruct your library staff to set up a week-long display of the eight books he wrote. Thank you so much for your time. Bye.

Then we need your name.

Oh, Kristen. Kristen Nelson. Thank you. All right. And I have the rest of the cards, and you can just raise your hand if you just want to concur or if you want to get up and speak. Lauren Millard. Oh, okay. Okay, and your name is? Your name? My name is Molly Coletti. Okay, gotcha. All right, thank you. All right, next one would be Lauren Millard.

Madam Chair, I...

Obviously, I respect everybody didn't want to come up and do the cards, but I'd like to just make a motion that we recognize Thursday is a day of remembrance for Charlie Kirk, and if it passes, then obviously I think everybody will be in support of that, and they'd probably rather see that than try to persuade us. So I'd make that motion for this Thursday.

Okay, so we would need to put it on the agenda. It would have to be a motion to place it on the next agenda. Commissioner Sabatini, is that the motion you'd like to make?

Sure, yeah, that's fine. So, and it would be in retrospect, then obviously, because it'd be past the date, but that's fine. I would include that in my motion, thank you.

Okay, all right. Do we have a second? Second? Okay. All right. So we're entertaining a motion and a second to place this on the agenda that we would actually create October 14th as a day of remembrance in honor of Charlie Kirk's life. We can certainly ask the libraries to include books and do a display. That's not something we can, like, require them to do, but they can choose to do that. So with that in mind, do you want to continue to speak as we deliberate on the motion or

Thank you.

I think my mission is accomplished. Thank you. Okay. All right. Also, Cindy Carson, if you just want to acknowledge with a hand. Okay. And then Gary Conyers. Okay. Excuse me. We'd just like to mention that October 14th is the day we're looking for.

Yeah, we have a board meeting on October 13th.

All right. Sorry, I thought it was his birthday is what I thought because that's this week. So I'll amend the motion to include that date.

Okay. And Gary raised his hand. And Kayla. Yeah. Okay. All right. So we have a motion. We have a second. All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That passes unanimously. Thank you for your participation. And we appreciate you coming today. All right, next, now there's a card for Suhail Shabra.

Thank you, Chairman, Vice Chair. Just representing the hospitals, expressing my gratitude for the LPPF amendment, and that'll be all.

If you have any questions, we'll be happy to- Okay, all right, well, thank you. And Igor Emery.

Commissioners, for the record, Igor Emery, District 4. I rise today to thank you for the educational opportunities these commission meetings have provided. The last several meetings I've been to have been really educational, starting with the whole process about the CUP. I used to think differently of them and the whole airport questions brought forward that there seems to be a rather significant weakness in the CUP process, that a single word can render it useless. And that was important because then we had started to have discussion about the hyperscale data centers. And you indicated that the commission was considering using the CUP process to protect us from the dangers that these installations present. And so now I no longer have any confidence in the CUP process. But I was also educated that maybe the industrial part of the comprehensive plan doesn't really protect us since if one of those came forward it would pretty much immediately be approved or not even need to be approved and I'm concerned about any installation that uses the kind of the quantities of water that seem to be used by hyperscale data centers and maybe there are other industrial installations I'm not aware of that use those kinds of levels of water use and then of course there's The air quality issue, apparently a lot of these facilities need diesel backup generators or other means of generating electricity, which I'm sure is true for what is considered to be critical infrastructure for large-scale warehousing or other industrial sites. So I'm concerned about the water use, the land use, and air quality. So I think we need to look at our planning process to allow the commission to protect us from these undesirable uses, whether it be industrial or through the CUP. I just don't have any faith in the CUP anymore. But thank you for your time.

Okay, and I don't see anyone online, so we'll bring it back to the board and proceed with the rest of the agenda. We have two proclamations.

Chair, I'll move.

Turn this over to Commissioner Parks.

Chair, I'll move for approval of tabs two and three proclamations for Orlando Cat Cafe and the Workforce Development Proclamation as well.

Second. All right, Sabatini got it first. All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? All right. And Commissioner Parks and I did have a discussion about whether I should be the one doing the proclamation on the cats considering that I have five cats. Now don't consider me a crazy cat lady. They all come to the house and they want to live with us for some reason. But we're drawing the line at six and at that point we'll have to find another place for them to live. Maybe I'll get Commissioner Sabatini to help me with that.

Yes, you definitely beat me with the cats. You had six. I only have two. We only have two.

I am going to add they're all fixed and they're chipped. They were all rescues, every single one of them.

Absolutely. That's the way we do it. Good morning, Chair, fellow board members, residents, those that are guests this morning with us. It says a lot about or what will tell you a lot about a community is the way that we treat our animals, both animals that maybe are inside the house as our family members and those that are outside as well. And it is something that this commission, this current commission and past commissions has taken very serious. I know the chair has led, an incredible effort through the years to build on the great culture of our animal welfare. And she's done a great job, and here we are, and this is a great effort that we have to respect our animals in Lake County. And what has been emblematic of this, especially over the last couple years, is the Orlando Cat Cafe. This is, as I always say, this is a perfect morning to do this. positively positive proclamation. Yes, I got the puns out early, but the Orlando Cat Cafe has been asked a couple of years, why do we do this? Well, because through the great effort of Sandy and Jeff standing behind me, they have kind of mixed a business idea that has drawn so many people from the central Florida region, or really around the state of Florida into our county, to adopt over 3,500 home, 3,500 shelter cats and kittens. So think about that number, 3,500. 3,700 now, as of today, cats that have found a home. I mean, that's amazing. So this is a great opportunity for us. I get monitored to do this every year, last couple years, to acknowledge their efforts. So this is a proclamation we just approved, and if you don't mind, I'll just go ahead and read it. It says, whereas the Orlando Cat Cafe is a cozy coffee house serving premium coffee, tea, and pastries, and 15 to 30 cats roaming freely in the spacious 1,000 square foot cat play area, and whereas the Orlando Cat Cafe opened on September 8th, 2016, and whereas the Orlando Cat Cafe located in Lake County located in Lake County, is the first of its kind to open in the state of Florida and has welcomed over 240,000 visitors. That is incredible, 240,000 visitors to come to Lake County from all over the world. Whereas to date the Orlando Cat Cafe has found forever homes for over 3,700 shelter cats and kittens through its partnership with SPCA Florida. And now therefore it be proclaimed the Board of County Commissioners of Lake County, Florida that September 8th, 2026 is hereby designated as Orlando Cat Cafe Day. The board celebrates the Orlando Cat Cafe's 10th anniversary and their success in finding forever homes for over 3,700 cats and kittens. Let's give them a round of applause.

Good morning, Council. I will be very brief. I realize you have a full agenda today. On behalf of everyone at Orlando Cat Cafe, thank you for this incredible honor. We are deeply grateful to accept this proclamation. This recognition is especially meaningful because it comes as we celebrate our 10th anniversary today. When Orlando Cat Cafe first opened its door a decade ago, I might want to say Commissioner Parks looked exactly the same, whereas I now look and feel like my mother. We had a simple dream to create a place where people could enjoy a cup of coffee while giving homeless cats a second chance. at finding loving families. Today, that dream has grown beyond anything I ever imagined. Over the past 10 years, more than 3,700 cats and kittens have found their forever home through Orlando Cat Cafe. Each adoption represents a life saved, a family made whole, and another reminder that businesses can succeed while making a lasting impact on their communities. We would not be celebrating this milestone without the support of Lake County, and I truly mean that. From welcoming business environments you've created to ongoing partnerships and community initiatives, such as our annual pet oxygen mask donation to Lake County Fire Rescue, you have helped us grow into a destination that attracts visitors from around the world while making a meaningful difference right here at home. Because the commission seems to have a full agenda today, I will now give a brief biography of only the first 3,500 cats adopted since our inception. This proclamation belongs not only to our team, but also to SBCA Florida, our dedicated staff and volunteers, our loyal guests, our community partners, and every family who has opened their hearts to an adopted cat, including you, Chairman. Thank you for believing in our mission and for recognizing that compassion, entrepreneurship, and community service can go hand in hand. We are proud to call Lake County home and we look forward to continuing our work of saving lives. strengthening our community and proving that sometimes the smallest pause leave the biggest footprints. Thank you so much for this honor.

I get the honor of reading the proclamation for our workforce development partners and I'll read the proclamation and then we'll have them come up and have Pam say a few words. Proclamation 2026-84, whereas fostering a skilled, adaptable, and competitive workforce is essential to strengthening businesses, creating economic opportunity, and enhancing the quality of life of the residents of Lake County. And whereas workforce development creates pathways to employment by connecting job seekers with education, skills training, career advancement opportunities, and employers with the qualified talent necessary to remain competitive, and an evolving economy. And whereas through its partnership with CareerSource, Central Florida Lake County continues to strengthen its economy by investing in workforce and business development initiatives that during fiscal year 2025-2026 supported the creation of 397 jobs, provided workforce services to nearly 1,700 residents, partnered with 120 businesses and delivered innovative career exploration opportunities for young adults demonstrating continued impact of workforce investment across the county. And whereas the Career Source Central Florida continues to strengthen Lake County's workforce by providing rapid response services to workers affected by a major employer closure, and expanding access to training, credentials, and career opportunities through the Future Ready Lake program supported by a $360,000 investment from Lake County and helps residents gain industry-recognized credentials, prepare for in-demand careers, and overcome barriers to employment. Whereas 2026 marks the 30th anniversary of CareerSource Central Florida celebrating three decades of collaboration among workforce professionals, educators, employers, government agencies, and community organizations dedicated to preparing individuals for successful careers and strengthening America's workforce. And whereas CareerSource Central Florida together with educational institutions, employers, workforce professionals, and community partners continues to expand access to education, training and employment opportunities that strengthen Lake County's workforce, support local businesses and foster long term economic prosperity. Now, therefore, be it proclaimed by the Board of County Commissioners of Lake County, Florida, that Lake County does hereby proclaim September 2026 as Workforce Development Month. That was a long resolution, but you all do a lot, and you mean a lot to the community. And I know that with the Kroger situation, that was a huge one, that you all were able to step in and help those that had lost their jobs and to offer a path to training and find them other employment. So just want to thank you for that. Thank you.

And turn the microphone over to you. Yes.

OK.

Thank you so much, Chair Campione, and members of the commission for recognizing and proclamating September 26th as Workforce Development Month in Lake County. We are so grateful for Lake County's partnership and are proud to stand with you in our shared commitment to strengthening businesses, supporting residents, and enhancing the quality of life across this community. We also have a surprise for you. We have a special recognition for you because your leadership has provided a steady hand following the news of the Kroger closing its Lake County operations. That announcement, as you know, impacted hundreds of workers and families in this community, and Lake County stepped up when it mattered most. Through the Future Ready Lake program, we were able to help many impacted workers prepare for new careers, still are, and access support and overcome barriers during a time of transition. Your investment helped create a pathway to new opportunities at a critical moment. So in recognition for your leadership partnership and lasting impact, CareerSource Central Florida is honored to present Lake County Government with our Community Impact Award. This award recognizes Lake County government for making a meaningful difference through community partnership, advocacy, and action. And we look forward to honoring you all alongside our other award winners at our Rise and Thrive event on September 30th, honoring our 30th anniversary and in front of the Central Florida business and leadership community. I thank you so much for your partnership. I have been at CareerSource Central Florida for about 15 of those 30 years, and they have truly been rewarding, but I will tell you that working with Lake County has been one of the best parts my experience because you all really truly care about your businesses and your residents and their workforce efforts or their workforce needs and I thank you again for your partnership and I look forward to honoring you on the 30th and thank you so much for recognizing September as Workforce Development Month. Thank you.

Very nice. Chair, can we have that prominently displayed somewhere? Like, yeah.

Also want to thank Meg and Kathleen for working on the Kroger with the workforce development people. It was a challenge, and y'all met the challenge, and I greatly appreciate it. Thank you, yeah.

And thanks, everybody, from your team coming today. We appreciate that. Oh, we didn't get that. All right. Well, thanks again. And we look forward to continue working together. And we'll see you on the 30th. All right. Moving along to the clerk of court's consent agenda.

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

Do approval. Second.

All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? All right, then moving then to the county commission's consent agenda, tabs 5 through 14.

Move for approval.

Second.

All right, all in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That passes unanimously. Now moving on to tab 15, we have a presentation. John Simpson, Office of Fire Rescue, Deputy Chief.

Good morning, Madam Chair. Good morning, commissioners. Unfortunately, I did not bring any balloons with me, so it'll just be me. So for the record, John Simpson, Deputy Chief, Office of Fire Rescue. This morning, I am here representing the Lake County Opioid Task Force as the vice chair for that group. And I am here to discuss the Lake County Drug Treatment Court budget for fiscal year 2027. So I want to provide you with a quick overview and a little bit of history, the fiscal year 2027 proposed budget, and then also a recommended action. So as you know, the opioid settlement money was divided among the counties. Lake County is going to receive just over $12.9 million over the next 18 years. When that money was assigned to Lake County, an opioid abatement plan was established, and it came in three parts. The first part was establishing and implementing a drug treatment court, and then expanding medical and direct services, which include, but are not limited to, warm handoff programs such as peer-to-peer support through the emergency departments, treatment, recovery, and support services, and then also public information. So just a little bit of a reminder of history. So the Lake County Opioid Abatement Plan to include Drug Treatment Court was approved by the board in December 13th, 2021. During that time, we had COVID and other issues that delayed the work of the task force. The task force was reconstructed, I'm sorry, reconstituted and reconvened November of 2024. Year one funding was approved, year one funding for the Drug Treatment Court was approved by the board in July of that year, of 2025 rather. Following that, Administrative Order L-2025-33 was issued by Judge James Baxley that established Drug Treatment Court in Lake County, which is allowed by Chapter 397.334 of the Florida Statutes. The funding agreements were approved by the Board April 28th of 2026. Following that approval, Drug Treatment Court was instituted and is currently operational. In the audience today, we have public defender, Mr. Michael Graves. State's Attorney's Office Chief Edward Moffitt, Lake County Courts Administration, Jenna Quash, and Livestream Elise Morse, should you have any questions about drug treatment court throughout the presentation or when we get to the end. So on the slide before you is a synopsis of the administrative side of the court administration of the budget. You'll notice that all line items except for one are exactly the same as they were last fiscal year. So no increases there. The one line item that is increased is for the administrative staff. That amount that is increased is 5.6%. That recognizes the county wage increase as well as the benefit cost for that position. All other line items remain the same. On the other expenses item in the budget, again, all items remain the same. Temporary housing remains at $25,000. And then the part-time FTE, one for the state's attorney's office and one for the public defender's office, both at $20,000, remains the same. All in all, the budget request for 2027 is $444,462, which is an increase of $3,912, or 0.89% for fiscal year 2027. All of the expenses that are in the budget are approved for use under Section, I'm sorry, Schedule A and or Schedule B. Some of those are under both, and so they'll be fully funded out of the opioid settlement money. So the Opioid Task Force recommends continuation of the Lake County Drug Treatment Court under operation of the Office of Court Administration and the direction of the judiciary. The fiscal year 2027 budget, as we discussed, is summarized on the slide, but as we discussed, is fully covered by the opioid settlement dollars. If approved, this proposed budget will be included in the fiscal year 2027 budget. And with that, I'm turning back over to the board if you have any questions. Again, we have Public Defender Michael Graves, State's Attorney Division Chief Edward Moffitt, Lake County Courts Administrator Jenna Quash, and Livestream's Elise Morris in the audience, should you have questions.

All right, did anyone have questions for John? Any questions about the program, what they've been able to do so far? We appreciate the good work that everyone's doing and all the thought that has gone into this and the efforts that have been made so far. So thank you very much.

Thank you.

So being part of this, there's a lot of work that's put into this. And with that, I would go ahead and make a motion to approve.

All right. We have a motion. We have a second. All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? All right. Very good.

Thank you, Commissioner.

All right. Moving along then to Jamie Stewart, Office of Management and Budget Director.

Jamie Stewart, Office of Management and Budget Director. Good morning, Commissioners and Madam Chair. I have actually four public hearings for you guys today. The first two I'm gonna start with is the solid waste and fire assessments. They are both going, actually. They're both gonna result in a public hearing and requested action. The solid waste, oops, I'm sorry, public hearing. that I have for you today is the assessment used to fund the collection, management, and disposal of residential solid waste and recovered materials in unincorporated Lake County. The assessment rates must be set annually and are included in the trim notice. Vacant lots are not assessed, and the assessment cannot be used to fund county-wide services such as landfill operations, convenience centers, and hazardous waste. Solid waste assessment rates reflect the adjustment to match increasing contract costs for hauling and disposal. The rates that you see here on yellow are for this year's proposed budget for fiscal year 2027 and are $37 increase from this year's current rate. The second yellow box is twice a week. Those are also increased by $37.

Back to you for the public hearing.

All right, this is a public hearing. Anyone from the public wish to speak? Bringing it back to the board.

Move to approve.

Second, and I must also say that this is an enterprise fund, so it's exactly costs transferred from the delivery to whatever cost is what it is.

Yes, sir.

OK. All right. We had a motion and a second. All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That passes 5 to 0. Moving then to 17, tab 17.

This is the fire assessment. The fire assessment is used to fund the protection services including fire suppression, fire prevention, and fire building inspections and basic life support services or BLS. The assessment cannot fund advanced life support services or ALS. The assessment rates are calculated based on call data and the distribution of incidents, the allocation of resources and the budget, proportionate share to each land use. The total of revenues for fiscal year 2027's estimate is $54.5 million. Here's a breakdown of the most recent fire assessment fee study, which was presented back in May by Banesh. Staff is recommending to implement a tiered residential category for the fire assessment based on the most recent study with no further changes to the current assessment rates. Back to you for the public hearing.

Okay, and just to be clear, we kind of swapped these. We had solid waste first, and on the agenda it says fire first, so now we're moving to fire. All right, this is a public hearing. We open up to the floor. Anyone in the public wishing to speak? Seeing none, we'll bring it back to the board.

Move approval. Second.

All right, any further discussion?

Yeah, I'm gonna do like I always do. I do not agree with the assessment of the vacant land on the fire assessment, so I'll be voting no on this one.

All right, all in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Aye. Okay, moving then to the next tab, which is the MSBU for internal subdivision roads, tab 18.

Okay, so the purpose of today's presentation is to hold a public hearing on the non-advalorum rate schedules and assessment rules for two municipal services benefit units, or MSBUs. I'll go over the background, proposed rates, and then we can do the public hearing and requested action. First, the internal roads MSBU, which was adopted by the BCC in September of 2023. Its purpose is to create a process to impose an MSBU for internal residential subdivision road maintenance and a method by which to assess the cost of that maintenance to the residents in that subdivision. This MSBU ensures a good state of repair for the roads, sidewalks, and associated infrastructure. This is the third year of the MSBU and one additional subdivision has came online. That's the trail side that you see there for $272. These are the rates calculated for each subdivision. The MSBU rate is calculated individually for each subdivision based on the length of the roads, sidewalks, and the number of lots in the subdivision. I'll turn it back over to you.

Okay, all right, so on tab 18, this is with regard to the roads, the subdivision internal roads. I'm asking for any comment from the public. Anyone wish to speak? All right, bringing it back to the board.

Chair, I'll make a motion. There's a benefit in these neighborhoods to having roads that are resurfaced in a timely manner with the funds being derived from those that are using it instead of the rest of the county, so I think I'm gonna obviously make the motion to support, and that's why.

And I'll second it, just reminding everybody, these are yearly numbers, not monthly numbers. Correct, yes.

Yes, and when we put this into place, I mean, it was, as Commissioner Parks stated, to make sure that subdivisions themselves, after they'd been put into place, that the people that lived in the neighborhoods would be the ones that would be essentially contributing to maintaining their roads going forward, as opposed to putting that burden on the public works budget and the general fund. So we have a lot of subdivisions in Lake County through many, many years. Some of them go back so far that... They're even hard to locate, the old plats. And so we have a lot of responsibility there and this is, I think, a much improved way going forward to create a more sustainable way to maintain those roads. So all in favor say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed? All right, moving then to the, uh, MSB you with regard to the DWTS, which is distributed wastewater treatment systems.

Yes, ma'am. Lastly, we have the distributed wastewater treatment system, which was adopted by the BCC in July of 2023. This MSB use for the residents who adopted into the program and covers the annual fee for the costs associated with the installation and operation of their system. The annual assessment amount is increased by 3% from the previous year. This annual increase is the maximum amount the contractor is allowed to increase the rate per the contract. Right now it's at $700.19, and that's up from the $679 from last year. Back to you for the public hearing.

All right. Anyone in the public wishes to speak? Bringing it back to the board, do we have a motion for approval?

Move to approve.

I'll second that discussion.

Is there any discussion?

I'll be voting no because I don't believe that we should be collecting money on this. I believe in the process of DWTS. However, I don't think we should be the one responsible for collecting and paying.

You want to respond to that?

I was going to say no. Obviously, I made the second to support it, so I'll be voting for it because I think the benefit of this, again, is We have a BMAP, Basin Management Action Plan, that the county and even cities are on the hook for. And that's gonna be, could be quite costly to meet those goals. It will be costly. And that's the cost of water resources and repairing the damage that's been done. to water quality and this is just another tool previously just like the roads where at least now this is being put on new it's voluntary or new developments for this to as opposed to having the benefit or having the cost spread about across the entire county as well so it's a long way to go it's going to be very expensive to do it but little steps like this get us there.

So I'm still on the fence about this because the state approves these septic tank permits. The state is the one that came up with the BMAP. It's my personal opinion that the state needs to pay for this. instead of giving us an unfunded mandate of saying, hey, Lake County, we have B-maps, and now you've got to follow our rules. But we're not going to give you any help to follow those rules. So I'm still on the fence on that. I'll be voting for it this year to see where our assessment goes next year.

And I appreciate that. And I'll say that they are helping us in one way. We're getting grant monies. We're starting to get grant monies for DWTS for voluntary users.

We'll see if it keeps up.

I know, we need a lot more.

No, I think it's a really good point. I think you raise a good point about the fact that this does come out of the state of Florida. It is one of these things that we see quite frequently that are unfunded, but we're required to do them. But I think as long as the grant funding is there to help people make that transition, so they're getting off of those old septic tanks and they're actually getting on a system that's protecting our water quality, that at least we're moving in the right direction, but I'm with you. I think it needs to be something that's backed up with ongoing assistance. Yeah. And I think we have a wait list. I mean, people are wanting to do this. People don't want to be a part of the, you know, they want to be part of the solution, essentially. But having that assistance, that financial assistance, is the difference between, you know, continuing to do something that is not necessarily great for the environment, but helping them make that change so that we help the water quality at the end of the day. All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed?

Aye.

All right, moving then to the next item. This is Bobby Bonillas, Assistant County Manager, and this is with regard to our Transportation Improvement Program 2027 through 2031.

Good morning Madam Chair, Commissioners, Bob Iovine, Assistant County Manager. Today we're before you for the fiscal year 2027-2031 Transportation Construction Program. The purpose of today's is the presentation and public hearing of fiscal year 2027-2031 Transportation Construction Program. The outline is the transportation construction funding sources. the South District major projects, the Central District major projects, and the North District major projects, followed by the public hearing and requested action. Some of the main funding sources, legislative appropriations and grants, row impact fees, funding partnerships, sales tax capital projects, and the CTT, County Transportation Fund, along with some of the general fund and MSTU as needed. Fiscal year 26 was one of those challenging years for the Public Works Department. We've had five new emergencies. As you can see, four of them have been completed in fiscal year 2026, with red rope coming along from year 2025. The current layout for the Public Works Department, As you can see, the five commission district, the rural impact fee district, so what we've done is mirror the impact fee district to maximize our efficiencies and stay focused. The north part of the county is led by Seth Lynch, central by Jeff Earhart, and the south by Mike Walker. With that, I'll be turning it right over to the respective representatives for their presentation. This one includes, obviously, the rural infrastructure, the asset and revenues.

Good morning, Commissioners. For the record, Mike Olka, Lake County Public Works. The Gova South District completed projects in 26, included the Green Mountain Connector and the Citrus Grove Phase 5, which provided continuity from Montverde into Mineola. Real quick summary of the South District bridges. There are 29 bridges, four bridge culverts, and two tunnels in the South District. Just so everybody's aware, a bridge culvert is a series of culverts with a total opening of 20 feet or more in total width. We have the Wellness Way area of Claremont. We've had a lot of construction activities going on, including the construction of the Signal at 27 Wellness Way. There's a future four-laning of Wellness Way from US 27 to Hancock, including the Heartwood Marsh Project, which we are working on advertising this fall. Dig in a little bit on County Road 455. Phases one and two were complete. Phase three A, which would be from Lost Lake to Johns Lake, we have acquisition completed. We are looking towards receiving construction funding to get that project moving. Continuing with 455, we have the extension from Heartwood Marsh down to Schofield Road. There was a PD&E study completed in 21. It's approximately five and a half miles. We have some right of way. We do have to cross Conserve. We are looking to get funding to continue that project forward. Next is the Heartwood Marsh. This is the widening of four lanes starting from US 27 to just past Hancock. This construction project estimate was $29.3 million. We are working with DOT to secure the approval to bid this fall. An additional project would be Hook Street at US 27. This would extend the eastbound left turn lane to provide additional capacity and to do some access management with the Minnehaha Avenue. We have additional on Hancock at sunburst. We have an intersection design. We've completed the design in house. It was very limited right away and we're looking for kids construction funding for that project. The next project is the hammock Ridge road and Lake shore drive roundabout. The consultant was selected on 26 with final approval pending from dot construction costs is estimated $4 million. There will be some right away construction funding needed for this project. The next project is our 561 in Lakeshore Roundabout. The project has been completely designed. It was completed in 25. All right-of-way has been fully acquired. There is possible construction agreement with the developer. Another intersection is the 561A at Jalarmi intersection. A project was originally designed as a roundabout. It was determined to be infeasible for this location. So now we're going forward with a signalized intersection with turn lanes. Estimated construction costs about $1.5 million with potential cost funding shares with FDOT. Next project is construction safety project for Villa city road. This has three possible phases or three alternative bids. This project is out on the, the out for bid currently, and we're hoping to be able to do all three phases, which includes, uh, turn lanes, shoulders, and drainage improvements. Just Grove road phases one, three, four, and five have all been completed. Five is currently under, or two is currently under construction. This is a list of the signals that were completed in Lake County and South District area that included 33 and Austin Merritt, also known as Bridges, and then we have proposed signals at Old 50 and Mohawk, Wellness Way, and Five Mile Pedestrian Crossing. Other projects include sidewalks, such as the Blacksdale Lake Road from Highland Ranch Boulevard to Old Highway 50, Hancock Road, Pine Valley Boulevard to Bond, and Wake Forest from Kagan to Woodsong. I'll hand it over to Jeff Earhart.

Good morning, everybody. Jeff Earhart with Public Works. I'm glad you guys are listening so well because we're going very quickly through this. Moving a little bit further north to the Central District, we have a lot of accomplishments. We've dealt with some pedestrian improvements there at East Orange and 44. We've added some signals. such as the one at County Road 33 and bridges. We've done some stormwater work at Sunneaton and you may be aware of this small project called Eudora Roundabout that's under construction right now. This is a picture of the mini roundabout to kind of facilitate MOT with that project. In the central area, we have 11 total bridges and I'll talk a little bit about the Haynes Creek Bridge a little bit later on. The Adora Roundabout is currently under construction. It's jointly funded through DOT and the county. The cost is approximately $9 million. It includes some utility relocations by Mount Dora. The construction is expected to be complete by the end of 27. Another big project that Commissioner Morris is excited about is the County Road 466A, completing that widening project. The estimated cost is about $14 million. It is scheduled to be bid in November with a cost share of about six or seven million from DOT and the feds and the remaining from Orange County. From, let's see, wouldn't it be nice if Orange County did it? I think Lake County will do it though. COUNTY ROAD 452 SHOULDERS, YOU GUYS RECENTLY APPROVED THIS ONE, ADDING SHOULDERS AND TURN LANES. IT'S ABOUT $4.3 MILLION. IT'S A SAFETY IMPROVEMENT. IT'S BEING FUNDED BY DOT OF ABOUT 3 MILLION AND THROUGH COUNTY FUNDS ABOUT 1.3 MILLION. Another project that is just now starting is the intersection improvement at 33, 470, 48. This is a developer-driven project. It's about $2 million. The developer will be paying to build all of this. They'll be getting impact credits back. We're working on the bond right now. Construction should start in earnest the beginning of next year. They are doing some utility relocation right now. the haynes creek bridge at 44. uh this is about uh as you know we had some emergency repairs we put some steel plates out there currently we're in about a million dollars rehab to replace some of the some of the decking the long-term solution of course would be to do about a do a complete deck replacement of between 10 and 15 million dollars associated with that there are one lane out there it should be done within the next 30 to 45 days for this section and get the road reopened. There are a variety of traffic signals that we've worked on. You can see some of the ones that are in progress. The Harbor Shores, you may have seen that one. The poles are up there. Duder Road is also about ready to open. Some of the big ones for next year are at Sadler and 448A, as well as we're working on a pedestrian crossing for the bridge at North, for the trail at North Lake, for North Lake Trail crossing 19. In addition, there's a variety of sidewalks. It's really priority driven. The main one that we're looking at is on County Road 473.

Good morning. This is Seth Lynch with the North District. So completed projects in the North District are at Round Lake East Flood Compensating Storage Pond. That's where we were having, we bought the property for the house and we dug the pond there. Another is the Wolf Branch Repair. We provided three pipes there and armored up the sides of the slopes. And then we did additional swale and ditch conveyance maintenance in Astor in preparation for storm season. And the North District bridges, there's four bridges and there's five box culverts spread throughout the North District. So one of our big projects in the North District right now is the Round Lake Road extension. It's fully designed. We're in the right away phase. There's two segments of it and we are currently working through that. Right now we have the first property that came to the board, but we have more coming forward soon. The next one is 437, the realignment portion around Sorrento. We are in the right of way phase for it, and we are currently in talks with the property owners. Another thing is a roundabout at Sorrento Avenue and Orange Street. This is the entrance into Sorrento coming from Mount Dora. That is in design, finishing up the design, but the right-of-way and the construction are not funded. Sorrento Avenue sidewalks, CRA request. We are designing the sidewalks in-house from Orange Street to Vine or about where the trail comes across, the Wakaba Trail. And we also have a sidewalk in Mount Plymouth side from the old fire station down to Deal Drive. Another one to put on the radar is the 439 culvert and wetland crossing. This is not funded, but we have done payment subsidence report analysis on it, and it's settling of the road. There's some muck and other unsuitables underneath it, so we need to put this on the radar for design and further analysis of it, what's the best way to fix it. traffic signals completed in the north districts where the 444 a 437 we have a development developer one that's at 437 Salerno and we have some proposed evaluations to do at 444 a and 439 upgrading to mast arms 44 a and Thrill Hill Road and 439 and State Road 44. And some sidewalks that we have in the north side are 437 going from the Orange County line to Sorrento Avenue. And then we have the two there that I just talked about in CRA and Mount Plymouth and Sorrento.

So as you can see, a lot is going on in Lake County. In addition to all these capital projects, there's a variety of road resurfacing. Over the past seven years, we've resurfaced about 190 miles of road, about $44 million worth. This next year, we're looking to resurface over 30 miles at a cost of about $8 million from a variety of funding sources, as you can see here. Looking at the unmet need, if we look at all of our low-rated roads, four and five, there's about $169 million to resurface all of the four and five-rated roads. That includes about 140 miles of our bigger roads, the collector roads, about 313 miles of local roads, and some of the worst roads, about 50 miles, need this full-depth reclamation that really get in and fix the base and the end of the sub-base. So we're looking forward to enhancing some of these as the future comes. You may have also saw a new emphasis on bridges in this presentation. You can see over on the right, we have a variety of bridges. We have some tunnels that are, we have two tunnels that are pedestrian tunnels. You can see the culvert bridges. There's a sample of the, you can see the culverts and then you see the normal bridges that you're kind of looking at. And in those, we're looking to make sure that they stay maintained. A lot of our bridges are older, like the Haines Creek Bridge was 46 years old and it's got a 50 year to design life. You can also see bridges have two elements to them. They have the superstructure, the decking that you kind of see, and the substructure, the legs that are kind of holding up the bridge and the foundation. So with all this, the transportation program really encompasses most modes of transportation, whether it be sidewalks, traffic signals, widening roadways, adding lanes, building new corridors, and building new bridges and maintaining those bridges. We get a lot of funding through impact fees to kind of pay as you go. As you can see, there's quite a lot of funds down in the south district, about $30 million in the bank there. We have about $8 million in the central and northeast, Wekiva, and about $5 million in north central. And you can see we collect about $6 million in south and then a little bit less than $1 million in the other three. For a total of about $50 million in the bank right now and collecting about 8 million a year. There's a lot of nuances when you kind of look at these numbers. We kind of want to point out in 2027, we're looking at spending about $120 million. A lot of that is carryover from last year's with grants as well as sales tax funds. A lot of times the current fiscal year is a lot higher. because of those carryovers. I believe a lot of these projects will be completed this year, including Heartward Marsh and 466A. The outer years generally see us as falling off, which we're going down to about 25 million for the next couple years. And if you notice, the DOT grants has gone significantly down. There's very few grants associated with that. And other funding sources related are lowering. And I believe that's going to be, you're going to kind of be seeing that throughout the year. or the coming years from DOT. So with that, we'd like to open up for the public hearing, and we'll be available for questions, but you know we'll have Bobby answer them all.

I'm glad to see he's nearby, because I know I have a whole list, and I would imagine everybody else does. Great presentation. The only thing is, you went so fast. But I figured that you knew that we were going to ask questions. That would take a while. So I'll open to the public first, see if we have any speaker cards. I don't see any. We'll bring it back to the board. So who wants to start?

I'm good. I got a question.

Okay.

Unless.

Yeah. Mike, can you move back to slide 10? That traffic signal on 27, isn't that FDOT?

It's DOT-owned, yes, sir, but we maintain. And we construct it.

So we paid $800,000 for some FDOT it's responsible for? I'm trying to get why $800,000 was expended on a traffic signal at 27 and Wellness Way.

It was part of our connection permit to be able to connect Wellness Way to 27 and our need to have the signal so that the traffic could get off of Wellness Way onto 27.

Okay. Jeff, slide 32. I got the wrong slide down there, okay. Well, that's fine. We'll go on to Seth. 39. I'm just wondering on this sidewalk improvement or the sidewalk construction that we're doing, when we do work on 46, will those sidewalks get pulled up?

Yeah, so we're trying to put them in the right place. There is a vision or plan by the CRA and community services department, what is the department, for a complete streets curb and gutter, but that's not funded and we've been on the lop list with MPO, trying to get grant funding for it, but we're putting it at the outside edge of the right of way, but there's no guarantee that it's not going to be, but it can service the people now. We'll do our best not to tear it out.

Well, I would just hope that we would take into consideration a work that we're going to be doing on Sorrento Avenue in combination with spending $250,000 on or more than that on sidewalks. So if there is a way that we can ensure that the sidewalks will not be destroyed while we're doing the road construction, that would be beneficial for everybody.

We'll do our best, sir.

Thank you.

Just so I understand, you're talking about like the road construction that may or may not happen in the future with Complete Streets because it may or may never happen. But we do have, we're hoping.

I completely understand, but I just don't want to see $250,000 just thrown away. No, I get. As long as that consideration is put in there.

I get that. It's just that just trying to be realistic to create some walkability in the community. Hopefully when we start the process with the... with the roundabout at Orange, which will hopefully address a huge safety issue in that area. That will be the beginning of a few other things that happen with that Complete Streets. We know that if and when, whenever Hillcrest goes in, which is where that 437 Realignment is that they also are doing a big segment of road improvement Is that part where they're doing their road improvement? Does that affect these particular sidewalks?

No, okay, the realignment doesn't affect these sidewalks.

Okay. All right So fortune and but what about when they do that, you know where the commercial district of Hillcrest is that is up on 46 Would this be in that same?

no it would be in between these two okay and this is um and when you describe this it was more like where the trail would actually yeah so the top one the top view is from the roundabout on the left and then it goes to the east We'll take it to the trail across, we'll cut a trail in Segment 2 plan, or actually Segment 2B. We'll cross 46th or Sorrento Avenue. We're gonna tie it in there, or get it close to so we can tie it when the trail comes. Because the sidewalk will be in place first. And then all connectivity will be there.

Okay. No, I think it's certainly legitimate. You don't want to put something in and have to tear it out, but I also think that you're maybe talking many, many years out, so with the trail coming in and with some of the improvements that will happen when and if Hillcrest happens, we're going to be piecing together some walkability.

Which is 100% the reason why I didn't request these sidewalks to be removed. I just requested it to be looked at to ensure that we don't waste $250,000 if we don't have to.

I had a couple questions, and we'll just keep working our way down the line. This is over in Commissioner Morris' district, I believe, the Pixiola Cut-Off area. It's not one of the items here, but I did want to bring it up. I don't know whether anyone else has received a request about this, but this was from a mother whose son was killed and tragic accident and I'm just asking that we make sure that we're taking a look at that Pixiola cutoff to see what could be done that's in Fruitland Park area. If I could just, I just wanted to elevate it to everyone's attention to see if you could take a look at that and maybe bring something back to us for ideas or putting on an MPO list but not just to make this something that gets put on a shelf somewhere that we actually look at what could be done and I don't know if that's a joint project potentially with Fruitland Park or what that might look like.

That would probably be a better idea is MPO and get some help from Fruitland Park. I understand and I did receive the email from her and my thoughts and prayers go out with her and we'll move it up a priority or try to move it up but it's not as high a priority as other items so but we'll work on it

Well, and it could be that if we collaborate, you know, with Fruitland Park and we take a look at what might be able to be done, you know, it could be that it's not, you know, there are certain things that might be able to be changed. Maybe it's not the full-blown, you know, everything that you could do, but we could create additional.

We're going to be looking at Pixiella Cut-Off, and it does have limited right-of-way, but we'll look at that and we'll coordinate with Fruitland Park.

Okay.

I don't think it's a bad idea to get the MPO involved in that either.

Absolutely. We'll talk to the MPO. We can get it on the list. It may be in conflict with that 20-year plan that we just developed, but we can definitely talk to him about it.

OK, back to the slide on Highway 452. I just wanted to talk about this a little bit. This is mainly for the curves, where we know we've had multiple accidents. And Seth and I have met with some residents out there, a husband and wife. And the husband had been in a horrible accident, airlifted, barely survived. And he was in the 452 area, a little bit closer more on the east side down where it kind of makes that right over in that area. The city of Eustis has approved a neighborhood down in that area as well. But the big concern on 452 is speeding. notorious for speeding. And we have in the past put up some signs that are the solar signs that let everyone know what their speed is. We've got some flashing lights. But I just think that we need to do a safety study of this stretch and formulate some traffic calming to try to prevent these ongoing accidents. Now I know that putting the shoulders in is going to help with the accidents where people go off the road, overcompensate, flip, those kind of accidents, just looking for ways to address. the ongoing speeding problem. So I just wanted to get that on everyone's radar and ask for what we could do to actually study that issue.

We can look at that. A lot of the improvements here were based on a safety study done about five years ago, adding the shoulders at the curves. Some of the big things it's also doing is adding turn lanes at Goose Prairie and kind of fixing Fixing the, that Falcon's turn, we're kind of fixing that. But we can look at radar signs and speeding and looking at that.

Yeah, maybe just more awareness to drivers. And these improvements certainly will help hopefully people not be as impatient. Have you heard any more on what Marion County is doing with FDOT at the intersection with 42?

Yeah, they were talking to DOT. They were going to be... adding a signal or roundabout, I forget which, that was a little bit ago, but yes, they are moving forward with something over there. I have to look up to see exactly what it is. I think it's like a year out maybe, but I'll check.

Okay, you mentioned Thrill Hill and 44A as something that's under review.

Yeah, so we're gonna look at possibility of signalizing that, so evaluating it.

Okay.

Something better than the two-way stop, because North Thrill Hill and Thrill Hill, they have stop condition, but 44A doesn't. A roundabout takes a lot of room, but if we signalize it and put up some additional signage, maybe we can help improve that.

Okay. I mean, it's such a dangerous location and so many accidents, and I worry about a signal from the standpoint of T-bone accidents and the reason why we go in the roundabout direction as opposed to signals, especially in a place where sometimes it's busy, sometimes it's not. People are traveling that at all hours of the day and night, and having to stop at a signal can be aggravating when you're on a road that otherwise seems like... You shouldn't be stopping a lot.

We do have LED signs that we're going to put up for the stop sign, where the LEDs are around the sign. Those will be put up on this next, this coming here, to help that on the thrill hill sides. But if we can shave down that hill, it might be a way to look off to the west on 44A. We can shave that down. It gives a better sight line to the whole intersection, coming to and looking from the intersection.

OK.

Chairwoman, I'd be more in favor of a roundabout than I would of signalization at that area.

I mean, it would be like such a huge improvement to have a roundabout there, and it would keep traffic moving, and it would prevent, you know, anything is better, I guess. I guess I could say anything is better than what is there now, but I do worry because often signals and T-bone accidents, those are way more deadly, right?

You're saying you have easement issues on a roundabout?

A roundabout will require a lot more right-of-way versus if I signalize it, I may only have to get one or two corners.

Could we at least study the concept of the right-of-way and make inquiries to the property owners to see whether they would be cooperative?

We can look further at that and talk to all four property owners.

Okay. And then 439, I've been talking about this a lot with Seth, and we had another deadly accident on 439 and 42. The area that Seth showed earlier, that creates some problems there. So I'm glad that's on the list. But I think that when you look at the Round Lake Road extension, whether... I know that there's not anything planned for 439 to be widened or changed or to become a regional, that was put aside a long time ago. However, we know that our phones are going to take people on that route. They're going to bring them down to that Round Lake Road extension when that happens. 439 is only going to become more dangerous the more traffic that's on it. I feel like we've got to look at ways that we can slow traffic and make 439 safer. It's just all these accidents are linked to high speeds. So anyway, I know, I mean, I've talked to Seth a lot about this, I just feel like it really needs to be elevated as we move forward, the closer we get to that Round Lake Road extension as well, if we don't start working on something now, I mean, it needs to be done now, but that's going to make it even worse when Round Lake is extended. Okay, I think those were all my I know you wanted to talk about the things that you had on your list, and we're adding more things to your list, but these are all really important things. And then you'll be bringing back to us the, we call the Stavros intersection, the 452 and 44. You're looking at ways to maybe alleviate that. I mean, it's such a choke point right there. Yes. Yes.

Yeah.

And I know that the MPO put 44 widening as a study for the 44 widening is on the MPO list. And I would assume that part of that is looking at issues, things that could be done in between or incrementally maybe, and maybe that's the better approach. if a project of that magnitude is just, you know, outside of our reach, that why couldn't we incrementally, you know, work on things that would be shown in a study?

We're just now commencing that study. We've gotten the fundings. We've selected the consultant to look at 44, the whole stretch. Okay. And to give us recommendations on safety improvements in those areas, which would include the intersection that you just discussed.

Can we, when that comes back, can we schedule that on an agenda for a presentation? Yes, definitely. Okay. All right, Commissioner Parks.

Thank you. I don't think I have any new requests, but can you, 455, Phase 3A? You went through this. I guess I could pull it back on my iPad here, but... That's the, we just got the right-of-way for this? Yes, sir. In the past, okay. So that's about a 2.5 construction, it's unfunded. I will say this, so you know what we get calls a lot about in the South District, the Hook Street is another one, the Palisades, which great work on Palisades is a situation where we actually had to I don't say settle, but we had to go back to using a signal because the roundabout there with the topography would have been eight or $10 million and it just didn't work out with the cost analysis that you did, especially over 25 years. So that's gonna come soon, correct, the Palisades? First of all, before I ask about this, Palisades is?

Okay, I know we talked about that, but we get asked a lot from the Palisades community when it's coming. It's under design right now.

Gotcha, okay. Now, back to this. I'll just stress that this is a pinch point. That's 2.5, and that's a lot of money, and the terms in the world of building roads is really not, but... That is a pinch point. We would probably get a lot of bang for our buck on that. A lot of traffic will go through that instead of being back on Hancock Road, which is really bad right now. I mean, it's just been bad. I mean, we get the people from Claremont that come in and talk about Hancock Road. So there's a real big bang for our buck on that. Everybody wants us to widen North Hancock. from Heartwood Marsh to 50, that's a $60 million project. Maybe more now, just for that little stretch. But this is 2.5 million, I think is gonna be pretty good bang for the buck. It'll be a lot of people that'll use and go up that way instead of going Hancock, am I correct on that? Yes, sir. Okay, all right, so it's unfunded now. I don't know what, if there's a particular ask, but I would love for that to be, like many of you with some of your projects in your district, I would like that to be funded. But that, like your projects to be funded. This one is one that, we can continue to look for how we're gonna maybe make some money work on that as well.

I would say that the intention is once Heartwood Marsh is bid, and we see what those costs come in at, then you can see what Heartwood Marsh doesn't use, and that would probably be one of the top projects that any unused funds would go towards.

The Heartwood Marsh project, where we might get some, well, no, that's not, we're using, that's going out to bid, but Hancock Road South, though, we did get some significant savings because we used the builder that's already building there in the neighborhood, in the neighborhood, in the area, that's saving us a lot of money sort of on Hancock Road, correct?

Yes, we did. We got public-private partnership there on the south portion of Hancock as well as public-private on the section of Hancock up near the hospital. Okay. Yeah.

Well, thank you. I appreciate it, Mike. Great work. South, I know it's every other day that we're communicating about something, so I wanted to thank you publicly about that and some of these other areas that are definitely issues and problematic. I guess one more final comment, I don't know if this might be more for Jennifer, but how much money do we spend at a general fund now, have the last couple years, transportation. I know General Fund is a lot more flexible. They can go towards a project on this list or resurfacing. Gas tax is limited to resurfacing, but it's kind of all the same pot of money. The penny sales tax, impact fees, which have to be, people always, there's still some confusion over that, understandably, in the public. Impact fees have to be used for new construction or something that increases capacity related to the development. But how much from the General Fund did we do and how much is proposed? Just remind me how much is proposed this year? Because I know we're trying to get to the up to 8% goal of general fund allocation for road projects.

So general fund, I believe in the current year, we transferred about $4 million to bring the total up to $8 million in the current year that was used for resurfacing projects. Next year for 2027, and we'll see it tonight, but if I remember correctly, I think it was about the same, around three and a half to $4 million transferred from the general fund over for road resurfacing projects.

Okay, and I ask the question just because it's, and some may take it the wrong way, but it's a very factual point of view, and we all have concerns about property taxes, and personally, you've heard me through the years say that we do need property tax reform. I just would wonder, what do you think will be the, so obviously if Amendment 3 passes, this is, it could be affected. It's just a factual question. It's not a whether you're for or against Amendment 3, is that, how much is that, that could be potentially a big impact?

So Amendment 3, based on today's estimates provided by the property appraiser, if it passes in year one, it would have a $47 million decrease to the revenue to the general fund. In year two, when the threshold increases to a 250,000 homestead exemption, it would be an additional 30 million. So over the two years, it would be a decrease of $77 million to the general fund. What's affected by that is anything that is not mandated not a mandated service that we have to provide so some things that are mandated medicaid costs for example we have to pay that we pay about 6.2 million dollars towards medicaid costs that's a mandated cost so things like that would not be affected they would be fully funded it would be the things that are not mandated that would be affected which would be parks roads libraries any transfer that we provide to Fire Rescue, any transfer that we provide to any of the constitutional offices, we would work with our constitutional office partners and look for reductions in their budgets as well.

I appreciate that, and again, it's not to get into whether you're for or against it. It's strictly facts, and I just wanted to know that. I think as we struggle with the 169 million that you said, just for the resurfacing of fours and fives, those are bad roads, by the way. It's just something to think about, and now's the time to have the discussion out there as the voters will decide on Amendment 3, rightfully so. I just wanted to say that I think that weighs significantly in my mind the property tax question which is understandable versus the roads and the pain points there and trying to keep up with that and the cost that's associated with that. I guess the final question would be along those lines is how much, what is our percentage of increase in cost of building roads? I know asphalt is what, what's the, over the last four or five years, just let's say five years,

Over the last five years, I would say it's doubled over the last five years. It's kind of stabilized in the last couple years.

Right, okay. Yes, but I don't, I mean, some of these road projects I see have gotten, maybe they're not getting more expensive, they're maybe not getting cheaper, but they're not getting more expensive, is that?

Right, in the...

I was going to say stabilized at the higher rate. At the higher rate. They have not come down.

Yeah, so during COVID, everything, I would say, pretty much doubled, if not more. And, of course, asphalt is driven by petroleum products, so the price of oil does not help us there. The aggregate shortage is not as bad as it was, but they have – they have stabilized at the higher numbers. They might be going up or down a little bit, but we're not seeing huge increases. Like we're not seeing 25% increases a year currently.

Yeah, and I just point that out because it's, I mean, it's a fair discussion to ask, a question and discussion to have. You know, there's discussions or points being made about, well, we've had all this growth and percent, you know, budgets have gone up certain amounts or whatever, but, you know, has it been, Has it been able to support the great increase in the cost of building roads? I mean, I would say from what I know, no.

That was probably just an anecdotal question, but gas tax and funding has remained relatively the same dollar amount. Maybe we get $10 million a year, and the costs have doubled, but you still get the same number of dollars. So you can do about half the roads that you were able to do previously.

I think that's, you said it better than I did.

I doubt I said it better. And I think the cost currently, the DOT estimated cost to increase the capacity or widen a two-lane road to a four-lane, correct me if I'm wrong, I believe is 5.6 million per mile, correct?

Yeah, that's the lowest number. When you start adding curbing and stormwater pipes and all this stuff, it can go up to 8 to 10 million.

Per mile. Per mile.

Yeah.

To parlay on Commissioner Parks, we had a report come in from clerk's office August 26. We had budgeted $1.6 million of interest income. We had a great year at $7.6 million, so I asked the county manager if we could find a couple million dollars in there somewhere that we could use in the roads area. She was gonna use a lot of it for our reserves. It would take us to 13%. However, if we take the 2 million, we'll still be at 12.5%. And, of course, we're going to have FEMA funds come in, too. So, you know, why not take a couple million out of a good year and spend it to better the road system?

That sounds like a great idea. I'm always open to.

So she's done an analysis, and I don't know if you want to bring it tonight when we meet or.

I can provide the information, but in summary, we did receive an additional six million in revenue from interest earnings that was unbudgeted. That is not for just the general fund. It is for all funds throughout the county. The only ones that are up for grabs, so to speak, for road resurfacing or road construction projects would be the penny sales tax. and would be the general fund. Between those two funds, there are $2 million of unrealized revenue that we could allocate towards road projects. In the general fund, if we were to take $2 million out of the reserve that we currently have recognized for the upcoming fiscal year, It would reduce, as Commissioner Morris said, the reserve from 13, I believe it's at 13.25% in reserves as a percentage of the operating budget. It would reduce that number to about 12.5%. Currently, the policy of the board is to have between seven and 12% in reserves for the general fund. The recommendation by GFOA is 16.5%, which would be two months of operating funds in the reserve. So that gives you a little bit of reference of where the reserves are in relation to the recommendation by GFOA as well as the current board policy.

Just a suggestion. We had a good year.

It's a good one.

All right, any other questions? All right, we need a motion to accept the 2027-2031 Transportation Improvement Program.

Move approval.

All in favor say aye. Aye. That passes five to zero. Thank you very much. Appreciate all the work that went into that presentation. All right, moving along then to tab 21, Melanie.

This will be an ordinance of the Board of County Commissioners of Lake County, Florida, amending Chapter 13, Article 4, Lake County Code, entitled Local Provider Participation Fund to comply with the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, Public Law 119-21, providing for severability, providing for inclusion of code, providing for filing with Department of State, and providing for an effective date. If you choose to approve it today, it will become Ordinance 2026-41, and this is just making minor changes to our existing code to comply with federal law.

All right, opening up to the public, anyone wish to speak? Seeing none, bringing it back to the board.

Second.

All right. All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That passes 5-0. Tab 22, Melanie.

This will be an ordinance of the Board of County Commissioners of Lake County, Florida, repealing and replacing Section 22-17, Lake County Code, entitled Administrative Fees, providing for fees to be established through the annual fee resolution, providing for severability, providing for inclusion in the code, providing for filing with the Department of State, providing for an effective date. If you choose to approve it today, it will become Ordinance 2026-42. And this is just cleaning up some outdated language in our code.

Move to approve.

All right, okay, let me just check for the public. Do we have anyone that wishes to speak? All right, seeing none, back to the board. We had a motion and a second. All right, all in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That passes five to zero.

Just out of curiosity, if amendment three passes, this will turn into an enterprise fund, possibly? Departments?

Yes, in theory, yes.

All right, moving along the tab 23, Meg Brew, Office of Tourism Economic Development. And we're going to hear about the UCF Business Incubation Program.

Thank you. Good morning, Commissioners. For the record, Meg Brew, Director for the Offices of Tourism and Economic Development. As you will recall, Lake County partnered with the City of Eustis in 2023 to bring the University of Central Florida's Business Incubation Program to Lake County. The city manages the agreement with UCF, and we've provided 75% of the funding for the program through an interlocal agreement with the city. Per this agreement, the business incubator is housed in Eustis, but serves the entirety of Lake County through both in-person and virtual services. The agreement also calls for an annual update from the business incubator to the Board of County Commissioners, which is in part why we are before you this morning. I am delighted to be joined here this morning by Miranda Burrows and Mike Bishop, representing the city of Eustis, along with George's body and by Brian Bedrick with the UCF Business Incubator. I'll now turn the podium over to Miss Burrows to introduce Mr. Bedrick and share some updates from the city of Eustis on their partnership.

Good morning. For the record, Miranda Burroughs, Deputy City Manager of the City of Eustis. Good morning, Lake County Commissioners, County Manager, and County Attorney. Thank you for inviting the City of Eustis to join you this morning and for your continued support of the UCF Business Incubator. We value the partnership and the shared commitment to strengthening the economic opportunity throughout Lake County. We have a lot of great things going on with Lake County and the City of Eustis right now. A lot of efforts underway, public safety initiatives, land planning, trail development, community events, and what brings us here today, economic development. Although the reach of the business incubator extends far beyond the municipal boundaries of Eustis, we are proud to serve as the home of one of the county's most significant economic development assets, and we're excited to continue building on that momentum. I'd like to extend our thanks to Lake County staff, especially Kathleen Dial and Meg Brew, and the Office of Economic Development and Tourism team for their continued collaboration and support. They are such a positive force in our community. I'd also like to recognize and thank UCF Brian Bedrick for their leadership, programming and hands on support of entrepreneurs and small businesses in Eustis and throughout Lake County. I'd like to recognize and thank Commissioner George Asbody, who's with us here today. Mega Workplace is a wonderful private partner, private sector partner. for the downtown Eustis location. And if you guys haven't been to One Million Cups, which is an event there, you gotta go. The energy, it is just incredible. We're getting, I would say about 70 people there. It's really great. If you haven't been, I'd encourage you to go. The UCF business incubator is a vital driver of entrepreneurship, business growth, and long-term economic development for both Eustis and Lake County. In fact, as we prepare to launch our new PR and marketing initiatives for our economic development department, entrepreneurship will be a central identity pillar for the city of Eustis. Before I continue, I'd like to take a quick minute to introduce Mike Bishop, a new member of the City of Eustis leadership team. He is our new economic development director, so you'll be seeing him around. He's hit the ground running. and has had lots of great collaboration with your staff, so thank you guys for that. Mike will serve as the city's primary point of contact, working closely with UCF, Lake County, and our local business community. We're excited to have him on board and confident that he will help strengthen and expand the partnerships that make this incubator and our broader economic development efforts so successful. The city of Eustis values the partnership with Lake County and the UCF business incubator, and we look forward to growing the program's impact. With that, I'd like to introduce Brian Bedrick with UCF and the Lake County Eustis Incubator Site Manager Program for the program update. Thank you guys so much.

Thank you.

Thank you, Miranda. Thank you, Meg. And thank you to Ray Villegas from LEED, Commissioner Asbadi. economic development team that you just heard from, the county economic development team. Thank you all for your continued support and your support today. Good morning, commissioners and board members, and thank you for the opportunity to be here today. I'm Brian Biedrich with the University of Central Florida Business Incubation Program. Rob Panepinto and Rafael Camano are sending their regrets. They're unable to attend today. There was a family medical emergency this weekend and another one that occurred this morning, but they are available. Should you have any questions, contact them at any time. I see, there we go, all right. So I was here a year ago to give an update on the program, and the focus was on building that foundation. bringing this business incubation program here to Lake County. And thanks to your funding and support, we've been able to work another year on it. And this year, 2026, has really been focused on helping those businesses grow and refining the programming that we're offering. Really three of the areas that we focused on this year are here on slide. It's helping those businesses move forward. And I'm gonna spotlight a couple of them next, which is Smart Tracker and Garden Global. The second part of this is deepening our roots here and having that boots on the ground support of the local businesses and bringing some of the resources and programs from UCF here to Lake County. and collaboration with all the people I mentioned here supporting us. And then we're always looking for continuous improvement. So we have some innovative things that I can tell you about and the ideas to not be stagnant and continue to improve this program. All right. So let's talk about one of these businesses in our program, which is Smart Tracker. It's a software program for health and human services departments, to summarize it. If you look at this slide here, their journey was one that started off a little rocky. They had won a number of contracts, and due to a number of reasons, the payment for them was delayed six, seven, eight months. The reason I bring this up is this is one of the ways that we, within the incubation program, can support businesses. Often, when faced with a crisis like that, businesses can go out. We were able to be there and play a part in helping them to survive. And once they got through that, once the money came in, they were able to enter that growth phase where they did, in fact, hire a couple of local employees here. And then our role shifted to really promoting the work that they were doing, such as getting placement of articles in Orlando Business Journal for the work they were doing during the World Cup with the city of Kansas City. And then this is kind of the... nature of business incubators, right, it was time, we got them to a point where they were able to leave the nest, right, and graduate from our program. If you look at the numbers there, they're through July of this year, they're over 700,000 in revenue, they're well on the way to continuing to grow and succeed. And what we've advised them to do, the next phase of their plan will be to raise outside funding so that they can scale this business. What we've advised them to do is work through this $7 million pipeline that they have, win some new business, and be able to negotiate that outside investment from a position of strength, at which point they can come back and we can help them with the scale-up part of their journey. And that's kind of where the second business I want to spotlight is about to enter that scale up. This is Garden Global. A little bit different type of support with them. Theirs was a company that had dozens of opportunities and frankly they were diluted, right, in their attention and part of what we offered was be an accountability partner to help them prioritize and focus on what was important, which led to winning a very large number of government contracts, including these NASA soup contracts, which has taken them to over a million dollars in revenue so far in the first half of this year. They've also increased their team. They're now up to 13 employees. They've hired from Lake Tech. They've hired from Lake Sumter. I mentioned the scale-up part. They're going to stay with us. They're going to shift into this scale-up process. Their plans are to hire up to 20 more people to execute on those government contracts. Those are two success stories to give you an example of the kinds of businesses that we're dealing with in the program. I mentioned the incubator cycle earlier, right? The idea is we're bringing the business in, growing them, graduating them, refilling that pipeline with new businesses. So in this calendar year, we did have four businesses graduate, including Smart Tracker that I just mentioned. We've got Garden Global entering into that scale-up phase. With the two that just graduated last month, two that are gonna start in October, that leaves us with four clients in the program, which is less than where we wanna be. We try to run between six and 10 clients throughout the year. So we're in the refill the pipeline phase of this. And we do have 10 active businesses that we're evaluating that some of them should be coming on board over time. And then we're also making changes to improve and increase that pipeline. Some of them are technology-based, so we have refined the website, the application process, and it seems to be working. We got 11 new applications in the month of August, which is much more than we've had in the past. And so we're used to applying or approaching it from a technology standpoint, but also kind of the old school method of we've identified 100 potential candidates and I'm out essentially cold calling on them and talking about the program and to see if we can help. If we move to the second area of focus, this deepening of the roots. I had the pleasure of meeting with 170 local businesses throughout the year, which resulted in about 160 hours of coaching. I spoke at 27 events to talk about all of the business support services that are available in Lake County. Held 15 events, which were attended by over 300 entrepreneurs throughout the county. So just kind of give an idea that we, you know, I'm here not only in city of uses but throughout the entire county talking to real businesses and giving them real practical support. This slide is talking about an event we held last year which was called Excellence in Entrepreneurship and I have it here as an example of this is a historically proven program coming out of UCF. We did it last year, it worked really well. We're doing it again this year, starting October 7th. So I wanted to kind of give that as an example of some of those events that we are hosting. And then kind of to dig in some more to the numbers. The graph here is showing the revenue from this portfolio of businesses in our program. And you can see it's an upward trajectory here. And what I want to point out is if you go back to this idea of the cycle, right, some businesses are coming, are graduating, and when they get to the point where those numbers start escalating, that's kind of the time we move them out of the nest and they're replaced by new businesses. So all of these numbers are going to fluctuate over time. So I just want to kind of set that context. Throughout this same time, if you look in terms of jobs, the numbers do fluctuate, but currently it's holding between 30 and 35 jobs throughout those companies. So these are not huge numbers, but they're real and they're significant. It's a good base, I think, to build upon with the program. And apparently we are doing something right. because Time Magazine did a nationwide study of accelerators and incubators throughout the country and UCF program was ranked the top incubator in the state of Florida. So we're very proud of that and I'm very proud and happy to represent that program here in Lake County. And then the third part that I, mentioned at the beginning is this idea of continuous improvement. So from a programming standpoint, we're doing a bit of shift to make sure the businesses in our program have what we're calling readiness, right? So we picked out 15 areas. If you're in a good shape in these areas, you should be, you should succeed going forward. We will have done our job. We can graduate you to, in hopes that you'll succeed. I also, on the innovation part of this, I launched a new part of our soft landing program, which is primarily geared for companies outside the state of Florida that want to establish operations here. Many of those are international companies. I launched a new discovery and validation program, which helps businesses learn about the area and because I designed it, I've baked in a part of it where I'm able to introduce all of these companies to Lake County, make sure they understand what's going on here, not just in Orlando, which is where most of them initially focus on. And so next week there's a German company, Greywater Recycling, that will be here meeting with several people and take a serious evaluation of operating here out of Lake County. And the last part, just on the technological side, we have streamlined that application process that I talked to you about, and essentially all of this is to be more productive with the same headcount, which is essentially me with the support of the centralized services out of UCF. So here are just a couple of visual representations of that technology and the The point of that is to, again, just show that we are continuing to work to be more productive and it's important to do this and we'll keep doing it as the program continues. And so what's next? We really, the hope is to continue this proven cycle. I mentioned refilling the pipeline. We've got a couple events coming up. I mentioned that excellence in entrepreneurship in October. We've also been doing an event in the city of Eustis at the end of this month. And really, if you go back to the beginning, the foundation's been built, the cycle's in place, it's kind of time to continue turning the wheel to keep the program rolling. And while doing that, continue to improve. So one example, we put together a beta program that takes some of that information that makes those, if you think of those 170 meetings that I had, this particular tool makes them more effective, where I don't, I'm able to give them more information and more resources with the same amount of staffing and headcount. So those are the kind of technological improvements that we are working on. And... Yeah, one thing I will say is please continue to share any ideas for what Lake County needs and I will do my best to continue to make them happen. So with that, I'll turn it over back to you if anyone has any questions.

All right. Anybody have questions?

I've got a couple of questions, and first of all, thank you to UCF for bringing this in. It's a great program, so when I ask these questions, it's nothing to do with the program whatsoever. I'm a firm believer in the program. The first question I have is you are requesting $382,500 over a three-year period. Have you gone to any other cities requesting payments or made the same presentation requesting help for funding? Because you're not just helping Lake County residents, you're helping each individual municipality. So I wanna know, have you gone out and solicited assistance from the other cities?

I have not. We have had discussions about that and the decision was to leave the arrangement as it is.

So I would suggest highly that you go out and you ask the other cities to help. The second question is, how much is the city of Eustis actually putting toward this? Are they putting in the same 382,500?

No, and I think Meg Brew will have the numbers in a moment, but I believe it's a 75-25 split. Yeah, I can speak to if the questions are contracted.

Could you come to the microphone, please?

I can speak to any contract related questions. We have traditionally funded it at 75%, so originally the amount was $200,000 a year. The county paid $150,000 and Eustis paid the other $50,000. However, over the first three years they actually did not expend all of their funds. And so we were able to carry those forward. That's why the amounts have decreased slightly. So they came in with $90,000 left from the original agreement. And so we applied that moving forward to the agreement we're in now, which is why and I can go to the the request slide. It went from $150,000 a year for the county to 127 500. That's great. But we have not gone to any other city asking for

They have not, not we, because it's not our job, right? So I'm thinking that when we started this, we helped prop them up and then they become self-sufficient or they show the benefit to the other municipalities that say, hey, you need to start participating in this because it's good for everybody. And with the lack of them not even trying to go to other municipalities and to put us on a hook for $127,500 a year for a three-year commitment with Amendment 3 pending, I'm not comfortable along with, I'll be comfortable for matching what USIS does.

I think because the agreement is between Eustis and UCF, so we don't actually have the agreement with UCF that's held by Eustis, and then we have the interlocal with the city of Eustis.

Okay. I'll be more than happy to approve whatever Eustis. would fund, that we would fund through the county, and then any shortfalls, it would be the UCF business incubator to go to the other municipalities, and I'm sure the other municipalities would love to join in on this because it helps everybody within the community, especially their people in their municipalities.

We can certainly discuss that with the incubator and Eustis. Thank you.

All right. Any other questions? All right. Do we have them? Yeah. Um, the requested action is to approve the existing, the proposed interlocal agreement, um, the modification to the contribution from one 50 to one 27, 500 for the county. Um, do we have a motion to proceed?

So moved.

I mean, do we want to have any other discussion? I, I, commissioner Smith brought up some important concerns. I'm leaning towards supporting it, but. I mean, what's our timeline here? Do we need to do something on this quickly with UCF?

October 1st is when our interlocal renews or would expire and need to be renewed. I am not privy to the date from the City of Eustis with UCF.

Commissioner, let me just ask a question. Because my thing is, obviously, I agree with Commissioner Smith on the fiscal conservatism of it. they should look at other cities. But if Eustis has really gone all in on this, and it seems like they have, and they're really using it to showcase their city, and they're very passionate about it, and we have a commissioner here, I'm just a little skeptical towards pushing back on the agreement, considering the fact that it's really not that much money for something that they take very seriously. How did it start with Eustis, and why is it so important that other cities aren't? Eustis is sort of running it and taking control, but not other cities. I'm just curious about that.

That's a good question. So I did want to speak at some point what it was. So let me take you back through some of this and address Commissioner Smith's concerns. So about four years ago, this idea was a vision of myself and my wife had to bring UCF and to have a successful entrepreneurial ecosystem in Lake County. That was long before I was a commissioner in the private sector. And my belief has always been when you look even at chambers of commerce, I think our world has evolved where chambers of commerce look at their boundaries. But small business, economic development, entrepreneurship knows no boundaries, knows no municipal boundaries. So our vision, my vision, and my wife's vision was to create an ecosystem. And we knew we needed a foundation. So after much talking, we came up with UCF and we began to call them. I can tell you Pam probably called them 35 times and they didn't return her call. And she kept calling and calling. Finally, Rob Papinto, the head guy, picked up the phone and said, look, I'll meet with you under one condition. You never call me again if we don't go forward. So Pam said yes. We met and brought him to Eustis and showed him a building that Leslie Campione is well aware of was a real hub for economic development which was the lake mechanical building with johnny and evelyn smith uh... had been there for decades and decades i see her picture up on the women's hall of fame nobody else wanted to do anything in response to uh... mister smith's question i did i reached out to Quite a few municipalities. And you know, when you start a ground roots thing, it looks good and everybody has their little baby they want to support and their little funding projects they want to do, and those are all great. But this was a private public initiative. So myself took a million dollars, bought the building, renovated the building to the specs that UCF wanted to have a successful incubator program, to house in-house at least 15 offices for incubators, and to have remote access. From that, we brought in SBDC, From that, LEED came to join with us. SBDC, just for you to know, as a result of the UCF incubator being where it is, has won the 2026 National Small Business Award out of 1,000 SBD centers. And Lake County is the reason.

Not Eustis. So let me ask this. So in addressing Commissioner Smith's concerns, you know, making the deal contingent on this project achieving funding from a different municipality would you say, and again, I'm not like trying to lead you here, but like, would you say that that's because you don't really want that because Eustis is using it to create a better brand for Eustis or is it? No, no, no, no. Okay. In that case, would you be contingent to that amendment to the contract to say, okay, maybe this year we'll fund it at this, but contingent on another municipality stepping up to the plate for that extra 25%, taking the load off the counties back, you know, so it expands. And that I think makes it a better program. I'm just curious.

Yeah, I think I've got pages of notes that I would want to share. I'm going to spare you some of that, but doing that would derail the whole system. It would end it. We would be like all the other incubators that have come from UCF as well into Lake County. They just didn't make it across the finish line. This is the first one that is growing, growing like crazy, touching so many people, touching so many lives and changing business. And sometimes You know, the people who lead the way take the arrows. And if that's the private sector with me, if that's the city of Eustis, so be it. But we have a lot in Lake County to be proud of what we're doing. The outcome from what's going on in the UCF incubator as a foundation, and SBDC now has a record amount out of there, along with One Million Cups, which has been astronomical, is now part of South Lake. And you've got people in South Lake going to One Million Cups and getting directed to the small business incubator to come in and sit down and talk, getting directed to all of the other resources, to the fast tracks that we're talking about. So why other municipalities don't join in on it? You know, the city of Eustis, and I'm speaking as a private person, probably can't go force them to do anything. And they've got their own things that we're doing. But this is a Lake County initiative. This is helping the county. And even some people outside of the county, not many, but SBDC is a state organization, and they see more people than they've ever seen. So this is something that the five, well, some of you weren't here then, that the five commissioners at the time, four years ago, we sat together and had this dream, and it brought it to be where it is. And I sat with... Smith, Kirby, I've sat with Sean Parks on it, Leslie Campione, and we've got something to really be proud of here. So shame on the other municipalities if you want to say that for not joining us. I agree with you, but we're not stopping.

So let me go back to the first thing that I said. I said that I'm a big supporter of this, right? And that we agreed for the first funding to help it get off the ground. It's off the ground. It's showing success. You asked the other municipalities before you had a track record. Now that we have a track record, maybe it'd be a good time to go back. Not you personally, not the City of Eustis, but the UCF Business Incubator Program to show exactly what it does. I'm okay with the 27-5 this year. I'm not okay with the commitment because we have no clue what's going to happen with Amendment 3, and I would hate to put the citizens of Lake County on something that would have to degrade from either police, fire, transportation, or something else to fund this past that level. I'm also very concerned that a city of use, it's not a city of use, should be extremely proud. But the city of Eustis should at least contribute more than what they're contributing, more than a quarter if we're contributing three quarters. So I would just ask that UCF Incubator, by the way, we had a great game the other night, go to the other municipalities to show them the great things that the UCF Incubator Program has done and will continue to do. That's my only request and I just think there needs to be, you need to go back and ask now that you have a track record. And it's a little disappointing that it's September 8th and we're getting a now during budget and you gotta have this thing before October so now there's a big push to get it through. This could have been discussed in July. And you could have gone to the other cities, had presentations during their budget hearings to help with this incubator program. So I will not commit to a three-year agreement. I will commit to a one-year.

I have spoken to other municipalities even recently about it. and you get the traditional stresses and moans and aches that you get. They have their ideas, their things, it's working good, on and on. I think I was able to spend a lot of hours convincing the city of Eustis to step up and be a leader in the county along with you guys. I think you guys have been the leader with the biggest contribution, though if you really factor in population, the City of Eustis does contribute quite a bit. But the impact is countywide. If you go to our meetings, the people that are in there are countywide. We now are inviting in all the Chamber of Commerce. We've got Chambers of Commerce from all the North Lake people coming forward, participating in it. You know, Kirby, we can only beat so much out of them. So we can either call this a great success and lock up the doors and move on and chuck it to a failure, which would be devastating, catastrophic. If you take a look at the number of people who we've touched in there, the businesses that we helped, and you divide it by your contribution, it's $28 a company. 28 bucks, the impact that your input has made is something you guys really need to be proud of and take a look at and see. So this is phenomenal what the county has done, used this through, My initiative has come forward, but I don't seem to have the same influence on other municipalities. I mean, I would look at each one of you. I would be happy to meet with each one of you and let's go around and let's go sit with these guys and you could hear what I hear. So we're moving forward. UCF could become a bigger part of Lake County. That's our end goal.

So I was just going to.

It would be devastating if we don't go past three years. The program cannot be a year to year program.

So going back to the past when we actually had a lease for a building for the SBDC, which serves anyone in Lake County that's trying to get a business off the ground or they're struggling, they're trying to get technical support, trying to get capital, whatever it is, but they need help. We used to pay an annual lease, and I'm trying to remember how much that was. It was some property that was over on 441. um but but anyway it was i mean we we paid for commercial lease space so that they had a location so that physically they could meet with people it would be interesting to see how many of the people that have come through the sbdc and have gotten resources and help are where they're from in lake county i don't think it's just a eustis you know group and I think that it's UCF's involvement that has taken this to another level and historically the county wanted to have an incubator and of course then when George and and used to stepped up and said hey we got this location we're willing to put money in and so forth I mean I I feel from an economic development standpoint economic development Lake County needs to lead And I like the idea of reaching out to cities and making the cities feel more a part of this and seeking contributions. I just hate to make it look like, well, nobody went and asked them, they didn't contribute, and therefore we're going to shut the thing down. Let's go in that direction and see if we can get cities to be more involved. Maybe you have their name displayed as part of their participation or something if they agree to participate. Maybe you show them the numbers to show them how many businesses in their own cities came through the incubator or or residents or businesses came through the incubator or got help through the SBDC. We just make the case and see if we can go make it. But I would hate to lose something that's working because of this narrative that, well, the cities didn't step up. Nobody was really focused on getting the cities to step up and contribute.

And I will say that if you get any, I will personally go with you to the municipalities in my district to help support the UCF Business Incubator. Like I said at the very beginning, I think this is a great program. I just feel it's a shame that the UCF hasn't gone out to the other municipalities now that they have a track record of success.

in the past with any of the incubators that were in use?

No, in the past I did because it was a thought. It was unproven. Now that it's a proven success, now is when you go out and you ask for help. And I like Chairwoman Campione's request to show how many businesses in each municipality have participated and have gained experience from this. I know of one personally that has gone to the UCF incubator and has gotten questions answered and actually getting some assistance, and he's right here in the city of Tavares, and I don't see why the city of Tavares wouldn't be more than willing to put in at least some monetary funds to help their citizens out That's all I'm saying.

Yeah, it would be beneficial to Eustace because I believe it would then lower the city's budget contribution, but I'm committed to making sure the city of Eustis doesn't take its foot off the gas pedal, regardless of what anybody else does. If we've got to take the arrows as leaders in it, you know, I'm prepared to do that. But, yeah, I agree with you that it would be nice to bring them in, and maybe with the help of the five of you, we'll go around and try to get into somebody's budget, which you know as well as I know is about the hardest thing to do.

Especially right now.

Especially right now. And Eustis has a lot of county mixed in the middle of it. We probably have the largest amount of county enclaves within our city. So that's a factor, too, in the math formula. So the one big most successful on our way with a fiber optic company that we recruited out of the Czech Republic that's coming to Lake County. They live and they're planning to have a warehouse and it would be an unincorporated Lake County, so.

I just wanted to add to the discussion because I've obviously made the motion to support this and again, four years was mentioned and it isn't just three years ago. I'm saying four years ago when we had this, but again, to add to the discussion, The chair touched on this. It isn't even just four years ago. This has been in our plan for the county to do this for 10 years or more, and I think it's been touched on as well. The reason why this is working is because the county is taking leadership with it, as well as what, and I remember meeting in a business with you, Commissioner Asbade, to talk about this, as well as your great commitment fiscally, financially to this, meaning the business community was what's gonna separate this from some city just doing it by themselves that has not worked in the past. So I think it's really working for us and that's why I've obviously been full support and I appreciate you coming from the business community to be so involved in it. I don't think there's any harm in asking other cities to participate. That's something we should do. And as far as the three years go, I mean, if Amendment 3 passes, I'm sure we can, we'll have to look at this agreement at that point and a bunch of other stuff as well. It's just factual. And we'll take it at that point. But I know you need to, for planning purposes, you need to move forward with at least three years, so. Three year minimum.

Right. This past three years flew by.

My concern is, Commissioner Parks just mentioned, is the three-year commitment. And I'm reading through this contract, the agreement. What happens if Amendment 3 passes and we start looking at all this? What options do we have?

So this agreement essentially has a 150-day notice of termination for any reason.

Okay. Okay.

Yeah, so that way I think you answer that question. You can plan moving forward three years. If Amendment 3 passes, we might have, within 150 days, we might have to, this and probably maybe other things, I don't know, we'll have to look at.

But I think we should look at this. I agree. I think everyone is on the right path here. I think we're looking at all the different contingencies, all the things that may or may not happen. We've got to wait and see. But I really like the idea of this being part of Lake County's overall economic development plan is being a leader. 15 years. Yeah, and having an incubator, so it happens to be in Eustis, but it's the Lake County UCF incubator. And I think it's awesome that Eustis has stepped up to be a partner and that you on the private sector has stepped up to be a major part of this. And we just need to do a better job of trying to get our cities involved in it so they can feel like it's their incubator too. And with that, I think, could potentially come the financial side.

contribution so I think we should just use this as this whole discussion as a positive launch to try to get our cities more involved so it is our incubator our 14 cities and Lake County government absolutely we would love that I mean I've probably contributed over a hundred grand of my own personal money in just the last three year period to help continue operations and stuff so this is a vision this is a give back this is a a beautiful thing for all of Lake County.

And it's a really cool building. For anybody that hasn't been in there, you guys did a great job with, I mean, it had all the great bones to begin with, but with the brick walls and the different, the floors, and I mean, it's just really, it lends itself to the type of environment that you want for an incubator.

I would challenge anyone to question the impact of the county's contribution to the amount of people that it's helped to that 20-some dollar impact to anything else in economic development for small businesses and a one-on-one face-to-face resources that we give in there. And I think the record shows itself for them being number one in the nation, in the nation, out of a thousand locations, Lake County.

So you guys, um, commissioner 17, you made the motion to have discussion.

I would just say, I'm going to second the motion, but I would say that commissioner Smith's, uh, you know, his comments are very well taken. And obviously with amendment three, we have to be very careful, but I do support it. And I applaud uses for taking the lead.

All right. So I will, I will, um, I will say that since we have the 150 day, um, termination clause within there, if amendment three passes, then we have another opportunity. My, my, my, Whole point is, one, we need to get the other cities involved, and as the chairwoman said, so they can feel a part of this great movement. At the very beginning, I said I have full support of the economic incubator program. I just had monetary concerns. Those are going to be answered, and I'm expecting a call from you to go out to the cities within my district to get them on board as well.

Look forward to it. All right. From all five of you. Thank you.

All right. We have a motion. We have a second. All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? All right. Great. Thank you. Appreciate the presentation. We'll be working together. Thank you.

Appreciate it.

All right, moving along then to tab 24. This is with regard to an application that came in for the sales surtax oversight committee appointment.

If you don't mind, can we table this? And I would really like a list of everything that we have open because these keep coming to me and I don't really know this individual. I know people that are very astute in the world of business, and I would love to have the opportunity to find somebody to do that.

I agree, and I would not support this candidate, so I think that's a good suggestion.

Approach, so.

Oh, I'll make a motion that we table this item, get the information to the five commissioners of what all's open in the boards.

We can do that. Thank you. That's not a problem.

Okay. All right. So this is a table until we get additional applications, and we also get an update on what's open right now. I know I've got a couple in District 4, so I'd like to probably get those on the agenda at the next meeting. All in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? All right. Moving along then to Commissioner Reports, Commissioner Sabatini.

I would just like to request the board's permission for me to vote remote. I don't think anybody's voting remote tonight, and I have to leave very early in the morning tomorrow. I'd rather fly out tonight, so if I could, I would appreciate that.

What was your question?

Be able to vote remote tonight.

Oh, on the 5 p.m. budget hearing? Yes.

Well, I don't know if he can. Can he do that?

So you can add it to the agenda today as an emergency item to authorize him to vote remotely tonight. So it would be two actions, add it to the agenda and then vote on the.

And you're basically saying you're leaving, you've got to get to the airport and you're.

Correct. If not, I'll have to leave the airport very early tomorrow. So it would just be very helpful for me in my sleep. That's all.

Okay. All right. So. I need some sleep.

I'll make a motion that we do an emergency second thing to have Commissioner Sabatini be able to vote remotely tonight at the 505 meeting.

So you can do one motion to add it to the agenda and authorize him to vote remote if you want to do that as one motion.

That's what I did, and he already seconded it. Okay, so to add it to the agenda and to allow him to vote, we have a first, we have a second. All in favor say aye. Aye. Okay.

All righty then I just want to say that I'm leaving Thursday morning at 4 in the morning so you could have joined me Thursday morning if you'd like. Well, he might not like where you're going.

That's how early I would have had to get up to, by the way. We don't know where you're going. Are you going to sit next to each other?

All right. I will say one more thing. Just a commission report.

I went to, I did a family vacation this weekend, and we went to the Norman Rockwell Museum in Massachusetts. Do you guys know the four freedoms, the famous illustrations he did and the one guy standing up at a meeting? Does anybody know the history of that? You guys popped quiz me last week, so I'm going to pop quiz you.

Well, why don't you tell us?

No, it's super interesting. I think about it now every time somebody comes up to this mic, and I just figured the board would appreciate this story. So the guy who's standing up in the church, a school had burned down, and this is the only thing that Norman Rockwell did that year for the Four Freedoms that was based on a true story. It was a guy who was up to speak at the mic, and the whole town wanted to rebuild the school that had burned down. It was very popular, and to be against that, you were crazy. How crazy can you be not to be against that? And that was a real farmer who stood up and he was the only person in this Vermont town hall meeting to speak against it. And it moved Norman Rockwell very much and he took a photo and he painted it and it became obviously one of the most iconic pictures. So I brought it up just to say, if you ever get the opportunity, go to that museum, but also see the portrait. But remember that, and of course I don't need to remind this board, I'm really just saying this for the crowd, that sometimes There's something so magnificent about a person who is the only one to speak against an item. I thought about that when I saw that. Obviously, it just takes such courage to do it. And if you look at that illustration, you see the reactions on everybody's faces. How could this guy be against this? Everybody's for it. But it's just such an American thing. So anyways, just brought that up to your attention. A lot of people have never been to that museum. It's pretty amazing if you ever get a chance to go up there, Western Massachusetts.

Okay, I skipped over the county attorney and the county manager. Do you have reports? No? Okay, all right, Commissioner Parks.

Nothing to report.

Commissioner Smith.

Nothing.

Commissioner Morris? Nothing. Commissioner Campion. Okay. All right. I have two things. Well, I went to the retirement for Chief Swanson and Eustace, and I appreciated the gracious welcome that I had from the city. He was retiring after, what, 10 years? But 11 years with Eustace, 38 years career experience. in firefighting services and first response services and one of the amazing things that they set up was when a person in public safety retires they have the last call that goes out for them and his daughter is actually a dispatcher And so she was the one that was on the call and that was telling about his incredible service to the community and all he had done and his dedication. And it was his daughter. And I looked over at him and he was extremely emotional. It was quite the moment. But it was just a wonderful recognition that the City of Eustis put on for their fire chief and of course they had the swearing in of the new fire chief. Great job. You all did a wonderful job. It was great to be there. I also wanted to mention that on Sunday I went up to the Ponceana Cemetery so that I could see it firsthand and I could see the easement road which is a road that is the forestry service road that goes into the forest. It bifurcates the cemetery property although the part where it bifurcates is undeveloped And then on one side is where the existing cemetery is located. And you can see how what happens, people pull in to go into the forest. They unload their ATVs, their horses, what have you. They leave them parked there and they're literally pulling up into the areas where the tombstones are. And it's a real problem. So I know our staff has done a really great job getting out there and helping get trash cleaned up. working with the forestry service to get a dumpster out there. But we've got to continue working on this issue of the road and the easement. And it seems like a relatively easy fix. At the very least, at the very least, fencing along the road. There are other places to get into the forest to use your ATVs and to put your trailers for your horses. It doesn't need to be at this cemetery. And so I just would ask that us as a board that we actually adopt a formal resolution asking the Forestry Service to either vacate that road or relocate that so that it's not impacting that cemetery. Incidentally, there's a lot of vacant, I mean, there's a lot of space still available in this cemetery.

I'd be okay with putting that on the next agenda.

Okay. Let's talk about that.

Okay.

And the space that's available, too.

Yeah. Yeah, and how maybe the county could somehow, you know, I know the association really struggles just like most cemetery associations do. This one is kind of unique because you may know that Walt Disney's grandparents are buried there at the cemetery, and it's marked with, you know, there's a designation and so forth. Yeah. But still, it's an interesting cemetery. One thing I learned yesterday or on Sunday when I was there was that unlike some cemeteries where they have very strict rules about what you can put at the grave sites, this is a little quirky in that you have this space and you can pretty much be as creative as you want. And it does make it unique. But I think it's special, it's very different. And then of course it's surrounded by, you know, you've got the forest land around it. So it's a really, it's got a lot of historical significance as well as being an unusual type of cemetery. That would be great if we could put that on our agenda and I appreciate all of our staff work. Angela, the great work that you've done and your staff, you could tell that a lot had been done already. I know there's a solution here and I think that us speaking as one voice might be able to help with regard to the forestry service. okay and that was um that was all i had on my um report so we're going to go and i'm going to turn it over to the county we missed kirby i'm sorry go ahead i thought did i say kirby well he's got his day yeah okay i've got my day i'll wait till after

So your first closed session is a time certain at 1 o'clock. So you have two options. You could just break for lunch. We can come back, reconvene, and immediately go into the closed session at 1 o'clock. Or we could pull up your collective bargaining closed session and do that now and then come back in here at 1, at which point then you would be finished with the meeting once you finish that closed session. That makes sense.

I prefer to go. Yeah, let's do that. Is everybody good with that? Let's go ahead and use this time to go into the bargaining session.

So we are going to do that across the hall in the conference room, and then we'll come back at 1 and finish out your day with the final closed session.

Okay. Does anybody to be inspired to move forward with the rest of this day and all of the hearings that we still have? Commissioner, it's going to tell us. Absolutely.

This is a wonderful day. Everybody, everybody probably knows that the passing of Dolly Parton, what a lot of people don't know is Dolly Parton started an imagination library. It's a wonderful program to have kids from zero to five years old receive books in their mail. I'm a big supporter of it. I donate to it. But in case you're wondering, and the reason why I'm bringing this up, is today is International Literacy Day. Awesome.

All right, that's a good one. Madam Chair, if we recess and meet across the hall in 10 minutes, that'll give us time to gather the staff. Okay. And then, again, we'll be back in this room at 1 o'clock for the closed session.

Okay, so we will recess for 10 minutes, go into collective bargaining, and then we'll reopen the meeting at 1. And then close it and go back. And then close it for our closed session. Okay. All right. Star Trek? Star Trek?

Live long and prosper.

Well, how are you doing?

We're going back into session the September 8th, 2026 meeting and I'm going to turn this over now to the county attorney.

Okay, so as you're aware, I previously requested on August 25th a closed session as authorized by Florida Statute Section 286.011 to discuss pending litigation against the county. This is the case of Mark Dickinson and the Florida Carry Inc. versus Lake County Fair Association, Lake Agriculture and Youth Fair Association, Lake County, Florida, and Peyton Grinnell in his official capacity and individual capacity. Once the closed session starts, it will be confined to settlement negotiations or strategy sessions related to litigation and its expenditures. Once we start, the court reporter will record the entire session from when we begin to when we end and will include all discussions in these proceedings, including the names of all persons present at any time and whoever speaks. None of the session can be off the record. The court reporter's notes will be transcribed and when the litigation is concluded, they will be made public. At the beginning of the session, the entity is required to give notice of who is going to be there. We're required to do an advertisement, a copy of which I have in my possession. The ad ran on August 28th, 2026 in the Daily Commercial. Persons who are attending the meeting today are the county commissioners, Jennifer Barker, the county manager, Rachel Bartolowitz, senior assistant county attorney, and myself. I anticipate that we will spend no more than an hour in this closed session. At this point, we're ready to begin, so I would request that all the recording equipment be shut down. The board can stay up here, and we will give them a minute to shut it down before we begin.

Okay, we're on air and we are back in our meeting and we're going to recess until 5.05 this afternoon, this evening when we will be having our budget hearing and one other item that is on our agenda. So we will see everyone at 5.05.