Board of County Commissioners - Regular Meeting

I notice that we have a bunch of folks here that may or may not wish to speak. If you do, we will only call on you if you've filled out a public comment form. They look like this. They are yellow. They are in the lobby. And then you turn it into Ms. Dominique Draeger here. She is the clerk of the board, and she will take care of getting you called up when it is time to do that. If you would, please silence all of your cell phone devices. We would appreciate that. And I am going to start the meeting, as we always do, with a prayer and leading the Pledge of Allegiance by Pastor Andy Searles. Thank you for being here.

Thank you. Let us pray. Gracious and loving God, thank you for the privilege of calling Seminole County home. a place where growing cities and welcoming neighborhoods, beautiful lakes, natural spaces, thriving businesses, dedicated schools, and people who care about our community. Grant wisdom to our commissioners and all who serve in public leadership. May they decide with discernment, lead with integrity, listen with humility, and steward every resource with care. as they consider the continued growth and development of our county, help them pursue what is wise, sustainable, and beneficial, not only for today, but for generations to come. Keep before us those whose voices can easily be overlooked. Children, families in need, seniors, veterans, first responders, neighbors carrying burdens that we may never see. Teach us to act justly, to love mercy, and to seek the flourishing of every person who calls Seminole County home. We pray for the upcoming elections, protect the integrity of the process, grant voters wisdom, and raise up leaders who seek to serve rather than be served. Even when opinions differ, help us to remain quick to listen, slow to anger, and committed to the common good. Bless our Lord, our county. Shape and develop us as we need to be shaped into a stronger, kinder, safer, and more united community. And it's in your name we pray. Amen. Join me in the pledge.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic

Pastor Searles, thank you for being here. Thank you for representing the church together so well, and thank you for all you do to support our community. We will kick the morning off with what could be better than this, a legislative update from Mr. Anderson from the Southern Group. Good morning. Well, I'm going to correct myself. It does get better than I just announced because we're going to kick this off with Ms. Kaylee Slattery, who is here from the Southern Group as well. Thank you. Good morning, Commissioners.

We're here to talk to you about session, plural, sessions.

Sessions, yeah. We're glad to be back home. It was a crazy time in Tallahassee, and we're glad to be home, for sure. We're not going to focus, we'll mention it, we're not going to focus on the property tax thing too much since we've already had a conversation about that, but just didn't want to go past this without mentioning that. I can make this go. I always like to put up the session stats, because it gives you some good context. There's always so many thousands of bills filed every year, and thousands of amendments that are filed, and only a very small percentage ever passes. As we've talked about it before, it's kind of a winnowing process, and so these things keep getting combined and dropped off as you go through the process. So it's always an adventure to keep track of all the issues that affect counties particularly. There's so many every session. And we work with the Association of Counties hand-in-hand to try to help them on issues as we go through the process. Go ahead.

We'll start with the three special sessions that we had. So outside of the regular session, which started on January 13th and somewhat ended March 13th, we saw three additional special sessions, one for the budget, one for congressional redistricting, and one for property tax reform. Starting with the congressional redistricting special session, that was really – The intent was to change the landscape of Florida's congressional districts, pick up a couple more Republican seats. We have a super majority in the House and the Senate, and we have a Republican governor, so that was the intent of that special session. It created a lot of chaos. I'll leave it at that. And then we went to our special session for the budget because the legislature did not wrap up the budget in time. They had to call a special session that lasted for about two weeks. And then we moved over to the property tax reform, which I know you haven't heard enough of. So I'll also leave it at that. And then diving deeper into the budget, we came in, the legislature came in at about 118 billion as their proposed budget to the governor. With his line item veto power, he vetoed approximately 1 billion projects. So came in right around 117 billion. Of note, our advanced water metering infrastructure project made it through the legislature. Thank you to Senator Broder, and Representative Plaken, but we did not make it past the governor's veto pen. There were a couple other counties, cities that also had similar projects that were vetoed.

All right, moving on.

So we're going to get into the bills and policies that we tracked this session. I'll give a few highlights. Oscar will give you a few highlights, but feel free to jump in with questions or whatever you have. Starting with property tax, again, haven't heard enough of it. Obviously, we will see that on the ballot in November. And then moving on to... Sorry, moving on to sovereign immunity. So this was vetoed by the governor. This was a, once again, another stab at the sovereign immunity policy. It attempted to raise the caps from 200,000 to 300,000 and also cap attorney's fees at 25%. It was vetoed by the governor. His veto letter really doesn't get into it besides the fact that he didn't, he thought it imposed a new tax on taxpayers. And then moving on to the DEI bill, which we were tracking pretty heavily this session. It really just prohibits any city or county from putting any kind of budget towards DEI officers, initiatives, programs. especially with respect to any vendors that a county or city may hire for a certain event or a certain purpose, just making sure that that specific money does not go to DEI initiatives. We worked really closely with the sponsors on this bill this year just because the language started out a little confusing. So a lot of it was the confusion was because federal holidays and just kind of normal holidays holidays that we celebrate here were at risk, you know, National Women's History Month, stuff like that. So we really worked with the sponsors to hone in the language and that all of those federal holidays, anything that has anything to do with a monument or is recognized by the feds is exempt from the bill.

On to me, thank you. If you have questions as we go along, please ask or we can hold them in the end. It's up to you, however you'd like to do it. Code inspector body cameras, they wanted to put a little framework around that issue this year and so they passed a bill that just basically created some general standards for how they would, if you allow, if the global government allows code inspectors for their body cameras, kind of what the public record retention is and it's subject to all the rules. It passed, not a complicated bill. The Firefighter Cancer Benefits Bill, if you recall a few years ago they extended cancer benefits. This one basically said those benefits have to be good for a year. It was kind of a simple extension. It was also, these were all passed. Public hearings, this one was related to the Burr-Harris proceedings. I don't know if you have any or might have any, but they weren't necessarily exempt, the conversations you had with your attorneys, and so this created an exemption from those conversations. They still have to be recorded and everything, and once the issue is settled, either by a court or it's dropped or whatever, they become public record, but at least during the negotiation phase, those meetings are exempt from public records. Oh, that's you.

And then moving on to the municipal utility bill, this is kind of referred to as the no taxation without representation bill. So essentially if a municipal utility is interested in offering service to an unincorporated area or an area outside of its jurisdiction, it has to hold a public meeting with that separate jurisdiction and discuss things like rates, fees, surcharges, anything like that. It also notes that the rates that are going to be proposed for gas, electric, water, wastewater, cannot exceed 25% in excess of what current utility customers pay inside those jurisdictional areas. This has been ran a few times, so we'll start to see throughout the next couple sessions more bites at the apple. It's addressing a larger issue in a different part of the state, but also very relevant to Seminole County. And then the local government spending bill, this is the DOGE bill, big priority of our current CFO, just basically means you have to post all of our budget, anything that has to do with the county budget online so that it's more accessible for residents and taxpayers. Notably, there is a section of the bill that requires local governments to hold an annual budget reduction workshop and show the state how they plan to reduce costs by 10% without cutting essential services. So that'll be fun.

On that 10% reduction exercise, that bill doesn't take effect until January, so it's not something that impacts this budget cycle, just so everybody knows, but it will be something you'll have to deal with in the future, for sure. House Bill 399, Land Use Development Regulations. This bill ended up becoming sort of the catch-all at the end of session for a lot of weird issues. fight down down state with the fountain blue and the local government down there and a few other things it was originally created to address compatibility issues the bill you know right now when you make a lineage decision you can you can say it's just not compatible with the neighbors and this will require local governments to sort of put some structure around that and say well what does that mean and produce a report and and so it'll it'll It was a negotiated language with the cities and the counties and the legislature to try to tighten up the use of the compatibility when making land use decisions. Building permits and inspections, House Bill 803, it has a bunch of little things in it. It deals with a lot of post-disaster and how you handle permitting and inspections post-disaster, so that's included in there. There's a couple pieces of The legislation included language related to offsite manufactured homes. It showed up in a bunch of different places. But probably a most significant note to you all, as of I think by January, July 1st next year, the Florida Building Commission has to create a statewide uniform permit for residential and commercial applications. And so obviously there'll be a question of how you implement that and everything else, but they at least want them to create one and make it available to everybody. So that was probably the most significant part of that piece of legislation. Affordable housing, 1389, this is live local part four, continuing to tweak it. It took the original concept of allowing it in commercial industrial mixed use and it added local government lands and religious institutions. Didn't do a whole lot more than that, but it included exempted farmlands and farm operations as places you could use Live Local, so they continue to tweak that. This obviously was a priority of Senator Pasadena. She's now going to be out of the legislature, so it'll be interesting to see what happens with all the Live Local stuff without her presence there. What's next? This is you?

All right, it's you. Sorry, we're really popcorn-less. And then we went to local business taxes, which just in and of itself just completely attempted to eliminate business taxes. It did not pass in the House or the Senate, but we will definitely see this again. The sponsor is a huge fan of promoting business, and taxes are not his favorite. Everyone's favorite bill, House Bill 27, was filed this year to establish term limits for county commissioners and school board members. 12-year terms. You can sit out for four years and then return to office after that. Was not even given a hearing in the House. Didn't even have a Senate companion. So I think we did pretty okay on that one this year. And then e-bikes, which is all the rage right now. This is not having to do with scooters. I know that that's kind of a confusing part of it. The intent was really just to make sure that pedestrians are safe when it comes to people that are riding e-bikes on sidewalks. It might have gone a little far in terms of the language just because it was really strict on if you're going over 10 miles per hour, you're getting a... you're risking $100 non-moving violation. Really hard to police that. Just overall, it could have been a different bill. So the governor vetoed it because he honestly didn't think it was fair to fine someone $100 for going over 10 miles per hour.

And then lastly, some other topics we expect will come back in the land use world particularly. If you remember the Blue Ribbons Project Bill, which I think we've talked about once before, that basically created a separate process for any large acreage, anything over 15,000, ended at 15,000 acres, started at 10, went up to 15,000. We anticipate that to come back. There's a larger conversation about land use and growth management and this constant conflict and preemption that we're seeing every year. And is there a better way to move forward? So it'll be interesting to see how all this kind of unfolds here over the next year. The rural boundary amendment, which everybody's familiar with, was actually attempted to put on 399 and it failed. As I said, it became sort of the catch-all at the end of the process. You know, Senator Martin has indicated it's not going to go away. So we'll have to see how that, again, fits into this larger conversation that's occurring around Chapter 163 and growth management. Data centers, that's a lie. It slides a lie. It did pass. You've all seen the articles about it. It didn't fail. My eyesight's going. But as you know, it creates a framework, right, and basically says you can't overcharge companies You can't require your neighbors to pay for the usage of that and put some parameters around water use. Interesting, there's been a lot of chatter this week about that. The CEOs of the big IOUs have all said, well, this is actually creating a framework now. We can actually move forward. It answered some of the ambiguity. So it'll be interesting to see how that goes forward from there. Those were the main issues we wanted to highlight. Do we have any questions on those issues?

Not necessarily some questions, but some observations with questions intertwined with it. For the public's benefit, on the budget bill that passed, I would say that here in Seminole County, we've always published, at least since I've been here, a line item budget in the public realm. We hold multiple hearings. This commission, since I've been here, has given direction to staff each and every year to go find reductions and cut costs wherever it can be, whether that's in personnel, overhead costs, or projects that do not need to be performed or benefit the public. So this really does not cause us any heartburn, if you will. We have an open checkbook. I mean, right down to a line item right online. So I let the public know that. So other jurisdictions may have been not behaving or been as transparent. We've been very transparent. The permitting is yet another issue. attempt, at least in my opinion, of what we've seen, the raid on home rule, and putting a structure together that now permitting we may be controlled from a centralized location in Tallahassee. which then impacts the citizens of this county's ability to set their own destiny and what they want their community to look like and be like. We continue to see this with this affordable housing bills that you all have been tracking and helping us with, the preemption in land use. Our citizens live here for a reason. They desire to have their community have a certain flavor, but yet we continue attacks from Tallahassee to preempt us, which then ties our hands When our citizens want our community to be a certain way, we cannot fulfill their wishes. And so for me, one of the big things that I want to push for when we have our discussion for legislative issues this year is we really have got to get serious on home rule and pushing back on Tallahassee and saying, look, whether it's educating them and letting them know what impacts it's really causing, but it's going to take our citizens from our county to weigh in with those elected officials in Tallahassee as well and just say, stop. Enough's enough. And that's really what it's going to take. So with all that said, it all comes wrapped in what I call sheep's clothing. Affordable housing sounds great. We need affordable housing. But when it preempts the ability of the local government to set their own destiny of what their citizens want, that's where they cross the line. So hopefully we have some sane people in Tallahassee coming up that understand the benefit of home rule in a local community. Or otherwise, none of us really need to be here. Tallahassee can just run the whole show. And I'm afraid centralized government is what some of them have in mind, which is a problem. So thank you, Madam Chair.

I don't know that there was a question in there, Oscar. I was listening for it, but I didn't hear it. I didn't hear it. Commissioners, any other comments? Yes, Mr. Constantine.

Would you believe, is that the question?

Would you believe? That's right, yeah.

No, the interesting thing that you did not mention is, was the two things that I think they're the most pressing to the citizens truly in their lives. And that is health care and, of course, homeowners insurance, things that they do control now and have the right to control. you know, tackling something that they have control of, they divert and deflect and worry about property taxes, which they don't have any control over, and then can go back to the citizens and say, look, we tried to cut your taxes, when really all they're doing is shifting it to some other cost. But, you know, this is one thing that I want, you know, if the citizens take anything from this and hopefully they will after November. More people pay more money, the vast majority, on homeowners insurance than they do on property tax. And what they can control in the legislature, they refuse to tackle and try to, again, divert your interest and say, oh, look at what we're doing. Yes, you're not taking care of property tax. I mean, you're not taking care of homeowners insurance, which, obviously, would be a great benefit to the citizens and not something that would take away the quality of life. In fact, it would improve their quality of life. That's all I'm going to say.

All right. Commissioner Dilary.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Let's phrase it in the form of a question.

I'm not making a question. I'm going to make a statement. Is that all right? Yes. I want to thank all the folks at Sutton. In particular, I'd like to thank our staff, Tricia Johnson, and our legal team, because during this whole process, they keep us up to date. and very much engaged. I wanted to thank Tricia and her team, as well as Nacer and those folks on the legal side, as well as Southern, because we're constantly getting updates and emails regarding all the issues that are happening, and it is a lot to keep straight, and it's a lot for us to understand, and it's fluid. It's constantly changing, and I want to thank you all publicly for all the great work that you all do. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Commissioner Delari. All right, I will round this out. I know you have a few more slides. So I'm going to look at things just a little bit differently through a different lens. I actually am very appreciative to the legislature for putting parameters around the posting of budgets publicly, the conversations around tax reduction every year. It is something that we already do, and this organization has done it for many, many years. But it doesn't happen everywhere. And so I congratulate them for that. And I actually welcome the fact that there's a better framework for us to do it as consistently as everyone else does it. and they should continue to improve that legislation so that good work happens in all 67 counties and all of the cities. I'll look at the permitting process from a positive lens as well, and that is that if we can get some similarity, anytime you can do that, that's a good thing, as long as they don't crush local creativity. And so if we can manage to lobby to get that not to be a takeover of the process and to be open to what is the best part of our form of governance in this country, and that is that competition drives the best behavior and let us do that for the best possible outcome. So if we look at it through that lens, I think I'm actually encouraged by some of the things that have happened. I'm discouraged by others. I'm not the total Pollyanna up here. I never am. But I continue to see the good in the intentions. And it is our job and the citizens' job to make sure that the unintended consequences don't happen by virtue of our voices positively reflecting our opinions. to those who can impact this. So if, I think you have more slides, you want to keep going? Just a couple. Tell us what the future holds? Yes. Yeah, this is the predicting of the future portion of the program. Yes, that's right, yes. Yes, look into our ball.

Our crazy ball. Our crystal ball. I guess I would, I would go off of Commissioner Zimbauer's comments about home rule. It's been the last couple of years have been particularly challenging in Tallahassee, probably more than the last couple of years on that topic. I can tell you, because I've had the conversation firsthand, the incoming Speaker of the House, Sam Garrison from Clay County, he represented local governments legally, and he has a good view of... of what local governments are. And so I'm hopeful we'll have a lot less in the preemptive world because of his leadership, candidly. Senator Boyd will be great. He's from Manatee and Sarasota County. He doesn't come from the same local government flavor that Speaker Garrison will have. But I'm encouraged. And I think either... Well, I think either of the two frontrunner gubernatorial candidates also don't have the same bent of let's just command and control from Tallahassee, if you want to say it that way. And so we're... interested and excited about the next couple years because of that. I think it's, I think, maybe I'm hopeful even that it'll be better. We've definitely been pretty dysfunctional up there. Yeah. Probably get in trouble for saying that, but the last couple years, I'm hopeful it'll get returned to at least some sort of normalcy. Preemptions are still going to happen because other local governments around the state keep doing crazy stuff. Right, right. But if we can keep it, you know, narrow and focused on, that's usually what we try to do the most of, so.

Thank you. We appreciate you. We appreciate everything you do. We appreciate you being available to us at the spur of the moment at midnight when we're panicked about something. You're getting five panicked phone calls. It never happens. And you are always a phone call away. So we appreciate both of you and your firm. Thank you. Thanks so much. Thank you. All right. That brings us to the County Investment Advisor Report. We have Mr. McIntyre here for a presentation live. Welcome.

Good morning. Morning. I'm not used to there being so many people here. I get nervous.

No one's watching.

As usual, this has kind of become the case. There's a Fed meeting this week. Right after your meeting, there's a Fed meeting. And this is one of the Fed meetings where it's the second one for the new chair, Kevin Warsh. So we're not really sure what to expect. The press conference is going to have a lot of ears on it. It makes the outlook even more cloudy than it is already. So I'm not going to go through all this. I know you guys are a little bit pressed for time. And you know most of the story right now. The memorandum of understanding, which was in place six weeks ago, seems to have unraveled, at least for the time being. And that's pushed energy prices back up, oil and gas prices, which immediately affects inflation, not only on the energy side but on the transportation side. So expectations that the Fed would be on hold for a longer period of time are now, is the Fed going to raise rates to slow inflation? My opinion is no. I don't think raising rates is going to have the effect that they would ultimately like. I think it's going to affect the people on the margins, the folks who are – Taking out small business loans are going to be a quarter higher. So I think the Fed is going to think long and hard before they make those moves. But again, we're going to hear some discussion from the press conference tomorrow. So I think the Fed is going to hold for longer. The labor market seems to be doing better, although the last labor report was a little bit weaker than the previous three. GDP in the second quarter looks like it was around 2%. First quarter was around 2%. The economy's doing okay, but right now, obviously, things are pretty fragile because as prices for businesses go up in terms of energy costs, profit margins go down. So I think the Fed is likely on hold until at least September. This is the payroll report over the course of the last four months. You can see that it got quite a bit stronger. And then the most... recent month, which was for June, payrolls were a little lighter than they had been. I still don't think there's a problem with the labor market on the whole. Obviously, if you've got a graduating senior from college right now, there's a number of occupations that are having trouble finding jobs. I think this is another sector of the economy that's being watched very, very carefully. You can really see what's going on here. This is CPI, Consumer Price Index. There's both the core and the headline. And it's a little bit difficult to follow, but the green line on top on the right-hand side of the bars shows that headline inflation moves sharply lower. during the month of May. And that, again, has to do with oil and gas prices. And we already know what's happening in July and August. So despite the fact that the market was really happy with the move downward, we all understand where it's going forward. Brent crude oil, which is Europe's oil, moved above $100 a barrel a week or so ago. WTI, West Texas Intermediate, is probably $5 behind that. might be closer to 10. But nevertheless, oil prices have moved higher, so we know the direction that this is moving. This is the two-year Treasury note yield going back one year. So whenever your tax monies came in in January, the expectation was the Fed was going to cut between two and four times this year because inflation seemed to be under control. The bottom line that I've got the arrow pointing to is February 27th. That's the day that war broke out. So you can really see the effect on inflation on the previous slide, but this is the two-year Treasury note yield anticipating higher rates. This is hard for most people to see. You guys can see this. I'm going to keep it up here very, very briefly. This is the Bloomberg survey. The Fed expects that the Fed is likely to raise rates once this year. They're going to reiterate that or work through some of that in the meeting this week. The market expects the Fed is going to raise rates twice this year, so it's built into the market. These are 80 economists that are weighing in on the most recent Bloomberg survey, and I will tell you that I literally counted of the 80 that there were six, actually seven, that expected a rate hike this year, five expected a rate cut this year, and the rest of them don't think anything's going to happen this year. That's what we believe is going to happen. I think the Fed is going to wait and see what transpires. You know the drill here. I go back a couple of meetings, show you the path of rates. So with the exception of the overnight rates, overnight rates are what the Fed moves, but the rest of the curve moves in reaction to expectations. So yields have been moving higher. Upcoming maturities, there's actually quite a few. These are between now and the next meeting that you guys will have. But $35 million is maturing. We're actually in a position now, after having talked to the clerk's office, that there are some funds that can be reinvested. For the most part, we're going to try to keep higher liquidity than we have in the past. That's kind of been... theme for the last couple of meetings anyway, but I'm recommending some purchases. I'm going to explain it very briefly. A one-year term purchase right now is probably pretty close to $440,000 actually, so relative to overnight, it's around $370,000. There's some value there. Also positions in a one year where you'll actually be spending. And then this is a bit of a shift. I'm recommending two small purchases of new agency callables, which I don't think we've done much in the past. The reason why is that spreads are so wide. For the option to be able to call away security, agencies have to pay quite a bit more. So we can put on a three-year, six-month, actually approaching today 470. I expect that probably gets called in six months, but I don't expect the Fed moves between now and the next six months. So your overnight rates are at 370, and this is actually close to 470. So this is just a yield play on a small amount of money. There's a two-year call I might recommend and also a three-year call, but again, I expect they'll be called. In the event that rates rise and we have to keep these on the books, we're keeping a 440, 450, 460, 470 on the books, which is pretty appealing. And then recent transactions. A palm term investment was actually done at a 438. So what's happening here is that securities are generally maturing and being reinvested at slightly higher yields, which is not a bad thing. Your overall portfolio yield is almost 4%. It's moving slightly higher as you're eating away your cash, which is the lowest yield, and putting it on higher securities. So I'm going to come back and ask for some help on the recommendation, just so I don't stumble over this.

We got you. And I see Commissioner Zinbauer has his hand up already.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I'll move the motion to implement recommendations of our financial advisor based on the report submitted today and recommend the clerk implement said board recommendations. Second.

We have a first and two seconds. Any discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? None. Passes unanimously. Thank you for your good work.

Thank you all. Appreciate it. You guys have a good morning.

All right, this brings us to our consent agenda, which is our items 3 through 18, and I'm going to look to our county attorney to give us the rules of public participation.

Thank you, Chairman, and good morning to everyone in the audience. Florida law provides that members of the public shall be given a reasonable opportunity to be heard on propositions before the Board of County Commissioners, except when the Board is acting on emergency or ministerial matters or conducting a meeting exempt from the requirements of the Sunshine Law. Individuals shall be permitted three minutes each for public comment or six minutes when the individual is an official representative of a formal association or group. The chairman may modify the maximum time for public comment at her sole discretion when appropriate. Public comments on other non-consent agenda items will occur during the board's consideration of those items later this morning. Public comments on pending procurement matters or on non-agenda items shall not be permitted at this time. members of the public desiring to make public comment must fill out a speaker form and present the form to staff and forms are available in the lobby chairman thank you all right so this is only public comment for items 3 through 18. i believe we do have some people wishing to speak madam chairman if just one change to the consent agenda if i may uh now is item number four i'd like to pull

So we don't need to be discussing that this morning. All right. And that's the only change I have.

I have a feeling no one's here to talk about item number four. I could be wrong. I could be wrong. All right. Ms. Drager, our first speaker.

The first speaker is Charlene Santos. This is regarding item number eight.

All right. Ms. Santos, please come up. And who is the speaker after Ms. Santos? Next will be Kevin McCann. All right. So you're on deck, Mr. McCann.

Good morning, commissioners, and thank you for the opportunity to speak this morning. My name is Charlene Santos, and I live at 713 Holbrook Circle in Lake Mary. I am here to ask a simple question, and this is in regards to item eight on the agenda. Why is the county moving forward with purchasing additional land for the proposed indoor complex while simultaneously warning residents of a potential $119 million budget shortfall if the proposed property tax amendment passes? The county is proposing to transfer $1.3 million from the 2024 Infrastructure Sales Tax Fund reserves to purchase this parcel. While those funds may be legally designated for capital projects, they are still public dollars. And every major capital commitment should be re-evaluated in the light of the financial risk ahead. Before residents are asked to accept higher fees, reduce services, or fewer resources, the county must first examine every major discretionary project. including the indoor sports complex and the new office building, to really determine what can be delayed, reduced, or eliminated. Residents should not be presented with a choice between paying more or receiving less, while costly projects continue moving forward without a complete and transparent review. I am asking the board to pause this land purchase and conduct that review before committing additional taxpayer dollars. Thank you so much. Thank you.

This is not a discussion, so thank you. Thank you. Before we move to the next speaker, I will point out that property tax dollars can only be spent for certain things. Tourism development tax dollars can only be spent for certain things, and that falls into that bucket. And so we manage budgets. Your eyebrows are up here, and you're smiling at me. We manage budgets that are like very small ice cube trays, and you cannot move the water from one hole to another, and that is the reality. And, County Manager, I'll ask if you have any further comments with regard to that.

Thank you for that clarification, Chairman, and the Board as well. The property purchase will be out of our infrastructure sales tax fund as well that the Board is authorized to move forward on. And just to, again, emphasize, this is not out of property tax dollars. It will be not coming out of our general fund. The board knows and the public knows that when we went through extensive discussions regarding this facility, that the hoteliers were the ones who actually taxed themselves to help move this property forward, that folks that actually visit our county and go into our, visit our hotels are actually the main contributor to this.

Thank you. Mr. McCann.

Good morning, everyone. And thanks for allowing me a couple of moments. I am Kevin McCann. I'm the mayor of the city of Winter Springs. But I would like to be clear, I am not speaking on behalf of the commission. I am speaking as a resident. I did not get their permission to speak to this point. I am here to talk about item 18 in Jetta Point. The reality that I've been asked to share from reading social media and emails that I've received or phone calls and talking to neighbors on the street that the vast majority of Winter Springs residents appear to be against this move. having said that i would like to make a couple of i i really do have three asks if i can one is that if this moves forward that the the wetlands on that property be protected those sensitive wetlands in any way that we can work together to preserve those wetlands would be greatly appreciated second I know after Hurricane Ian and over and over again that there are properties along the border of that Jeddah Point property that have been flooded and have suffered from water damage. I would ask that we all work together on a hydrological study, that we work together on stormwater resiliency before anything is ever done with that property. I think it would be a reasonable ask for the residence and protection of those folks that live adjoining that piece of property. Then the third ask is to please keep Winter Springs and our staff involved in negotiations where allowed and were permittable with anyone that's looking to purchase that piece of property and making sure that they understand that we are going to be pushing for that stormwater resiliency. We're going to be pushing for the protection of those wetlands. So really allowing us to have our say, or allowing the residents of Winter Springs to be involved in this. I guess in the end, I would like to thank you. And thank you, Commissioner Dilard, where we crisscrossed the state working to move forward the high Oaks Ranch acquisition. We've worked diligently all together to preserve the rural boundary. In Winter Springs, we have our own preservation of the conservation easement on the old Winter Springs golf course. I would just like to say thank you for all of that work that we've done together. I'd encourage us to continue working together. The preservation of Winter Springs and Seminole County, there cannot be a greater good. We make a decision that is irreversible. It will affect generations in the future. I just look, in the end, thank you for working with all of us on all of those different land acquisitions and preservation. Thank you.

Thank you. I'm going to actually look to our county attorney, Naysa Borkert, to give us a little bit of a clear clarity around what this item actually is and possibly what this item is not.

Sure. Thank you, Chairman. Nasa Borkert, Deputy County Attorney for the Record. What this item does is it transfers the Florida Communities Trust grant restrictions that are currently on the Jetta Point property to the Rolling Hills property. This is a transfer that was approved back in 2018. The county had to go through many steps to get to this point on the Rolling Hills property. The conditional approval required us to remediate the property, to do additional testing on the property, mapping on the property, surveying, prepare deed restrictions for the property. for the Rolling Hills property and get those in place. We finally got our approval of that, of the Rolling Hills property to close out the site in March of this year. And that was the step that needed to occur to effectuate the transfer of the Florida Community Trust exchange from Jetta Point to put those restrictions on the Rolling Hills property. That's all this agenda item does. It doesn't dictate how the Jetta Point property will be used in the future. If anything, it dictates how the Rolling Hills property will be used in the future because it includes the restrictions on the Rolling Hills property. the Jetta Point property will remain as it is until the board determines what to do with it next. So this item merely, like I said, effectuates that previous FCT approval to transfer the grant restrictions onto Rolling Hills from Jetta Point from almost nine years ago now. Thank you.

I think the fact that Last piece of that is very important, that this is the effectuation of a previous commitment in preserving the Rolling Hills properties. All right, we have more speakers.

Ms. Drager? Mark Greenwald, and after Mark will be Lisa Roney and George Penna. Thank you.

If you were called, would you please come and line up? Thank you. Sir, name and address for the record. My name is Mark Greenwald.

I'm at 129 Redtail Place. I'm right across the street from Jetta Point in Eagle Watch subdivision. Good morning. Good morning. It's cool to see you all. I've voted for most of you. It's good to see an action. Good to see you. Yes.

Most of us are appreciative. Yeah.

Yeah. I recognize all your names from the ballot. I'm a Florida native and a Marine veteran. I've lived in Seminole County the past 25 years. It's a great place. Natural choice. That's one of the reasons why I love it. It's safe. It's a great place to raise kids. I'm for development. I'm not against development. But I want it to be done smartly. Aesthetically, Winter Springs is being decimated. The trees are just being leveled. And it's done aesthetically, environmentally safe. Water goes downhill. So I want to make sure that those studies are done right and not hurried. When Ian came through, I had eels in my front yard. Ew. Crayfish. We were flooded pretty bad. It was running downhill. I never thought I would see that. I would just encourage that the studies are done. Water flows downhill. And another question about the hotel that's proposed for there, I want to make sure that that's not a low-rent type thing and make sure our community is kept safe with good quality people. So thank you.

Thank you for being here.

Thank you.

Thank you. Name and address for the record, please. My name is Lisa Roney, and I live at 1705 Seneca Boulevard in Tuscawilla. And I'm responding just a little bit to your attorney who talked about the length of time this has been going on in terms of Jetta Point transferring the protections to Rolling Hills. I don't really care about that. I'm sorry that I'm a little late to the party, but it's an urgent matter for me. It is my understanding also that the County Commission wishes to switch these restrictions from Jetta Point to Rolling Hills in order to be able to sell Jetta Point for development, that these restrictions do continue to protect that property from certain kinds of uses. I'm here to speak to potential related stormwater issues. First, I want to thank those in the city and the county who have been trying recently to help us, help myself and my neighbors, City Commissioners Caruso and Resnick, Mayor McCann, County Commissioner Dilary, the staffs of the offices, several offices in both the city and the county. I am here in a spirit of cooperation and respect. I know these issues are complicated. We have been having increasing yard, roadway, and home flooding due to runoff from the Cross Seminole Trail over about the past six years or so. We are now sometimes having major problems even after regular thunderstorms. This became very bad after the rains on July 4th and 5th. Water runs through our properties like a floodgate has been opened. Sometimes hours or days after the storms are over, thousands and thousands and thousands of gallons of water. It has been acknowledged that in spite of a known issue along much of the Cross Seminole Trail, there is currently no comprehensive master plan for stormwater in the county. I find this appalling when so much commercial and residential development continues at such a rapid pace. I hope you are all familiar with the MIT study recently released that shows Florida homeowners have lost $1.6 billion in property values due to the flawed use of mitigation credits for uncontrolled development of wetlands. With a friend who is a city and land planner elsewhere, I have reviewed the ARDURA report, which is your first step toward creating a master plan. And we have found it woefully inadequate. First, they did not include any Florida Department of Transportation data or any roadway data beyond new right-of-way information. And second, they did not conduct careful study of community ponds or survey local homeowners near known problem areas. In the Jeddah Point section, it mentions flooding in Howe Creek Reserve near us, but goes no further. Yet in a few days of talking with neighbors, I have discovered at least a dozen homes in Chelsea Woods that have significant threat from rogue runoff and numerous more with more moderate threat. These include people on the west side of Vista Willa where Ardura proposes to dump rainwater from Jeddah Point development. as well as those of us along the path to that area. If the Ardura model for future stormwater does not accurately represent the existing conditions, It is hopelessly inadequate.

Ma'am, if you could wrap up, that would be fabulous. I am.

The problems we have been having are not individual homeowner problems. Commercial development at Jetta Point will almost assuredly make this worse. I am calling for three things. We need a team of city, county, and watershed experts to determine the sources of the excess water that is regularly flooding properties. We need a meeting and follow-up meetings with this team to apprise us of plans and steps. to create an effective stormwater system. And at the very least today, we need a continuance or a no vote on the issue of transferring current restrictions away from Jetta Point. But really what we need until there is a comprehensive plan in place is a slowdown, if not a moratorium, on the rampant commercial development that threatens, not enhances, our property values and roadway and community safety. Thank you.

Sir, name and address for the record.

Hello. My name is George Penno. And during Hurricane Ian, I lived at 148 Peregrine Court. And I now live in 109 Marsh Creek. I moved from Eagle's Watch to Howell Creek Ranch, I guess. And the title of what I'm saying here is, Why Did My House Flood? My house had over $100,000 damage. We lost a car. We had 18 inches of water in Peregrine Court in front of my house. I had a stream of water down both sides of my house for four days after the hurricane. I said to myself, and I would say ditto to the three previous speakers, including the mayor and all, is that the hydration study is absolutely the most important thing that needs to happen. I walked that area back there and talked to the city engineer with some people from our homeowners association, and it's real clear that you've got both governmental and geological boundary issues that are crossing over, like I said, make it a very difficult problem. If you look at the drainage that came into my house, it came out of the drain alongside the Seminole County Trail. jurisdiction one. I'm in Howell Creek Homeowners Association, jurisdiction two. You've got 417 which is behind that like this which feeds into some drainage things that drain into the drains alongside the trail. Their overflows are into that trail and the actual output of all of that near to the other gentleman's home like this is a drain that's in the middle of a swamp area. Part of the reason my house flooded was that that grain wasn't designed to handle that kind of overflow. The Homeowners Association has taken on itself to change at least some of how that grain operates. The comprehensive problem is that what happens if my high school geology, if I dump a bucket of water in Jetta Point, where does it go? theoretically. It goes to those drains along the Seminole County Trail. That's the one. Then it goes into, if it flows through those drains, it goes into a drain that's in the swamp that goes underneath the entire section of the Homeowners Association to Howell Creek. Literally, it goes almost a mile underground. It's probably a two and a half, three inch pipe. It's not designed to handle that volume of water. The idea of building something on there that's going to increase the flow of water to that system like this is just entirely inadequate. That's enough for me to say.

Thank you for being here. If you would, please call the next three speakers.

Jesse Phillips, Stephanie Billups, and Victor Westall.

Name and address for the record.

I'm Jesse Phillips, 1124 Duncan Drive. Thank you, Chairman, and thank you to the folks who are out here today to speak on this important topic. I'm just going to reference a letter that I sent to you guys where I think a solution to our issue here is for the city to come to the table and buy the land. And I would like to see that discussion happen. The purchase of the land could be to preserve it for stormwater use as we're committing to some upgrades to our stormwater master plan as a city. And so my request in that letter was for you guys to direct your staff to reach out to the city and see if an interlocal agreement could be reached or at least some kind of memorandum of understanding could be reached to where the city could commit to pursuing that as an option. And I think that's my understanding of the statute is that penny sales tax funds can be used for the acquisition of land which is necessary to perform certain infrastructure projects. and i think part of that interlocal agreement could be to work out some sort of financing arrangement that would be agreeable both to the county and to the city as well this is a priority there's a lot of people in greenchurch talking about this today as a priority i'm thinking about solutions i agree with what has been said about the issue seven years ago we started the winter springs water quality initiative to address what was originally some issues my family was having with our drinking water and then kind of started to look at our entire water infrastructure after that And we hear about this on a regular basis. I've spoken with two or three neighbors in the area ever since this agenda topic came up. And working towards a solution, I would just love to try to bring the city back to the table, talk to the leadership there about whether or not the city would be willing to commit some future penny sales tax funds to acquire this land and to maintain it for its stormwater purposes as we implement the upgrades to our stormwater master plan. So thank you.

Thank you.

Good morning. Good morning. My name is Stephanie Billups, and I live at 672 Vista Willow Drive in Winter Springs. Six weeks ago, my husband and I moved to the state of Florida, Seminole County, and the community of Winter Springs. So I can confidently say I voted for none of you, but I am registered to vote now.

Well, welcome to Seminole County. We're glad to have you. Thank you very much. I'm very, very pleased.

So the move so far has been lovely. And our proximity to the Cross-Seminole Trail is great. We're on that trail multiple times a day. And we're close enough that we experience the wildlife. I just had a bald eagle visit my property this weekend. So we are in the boundary of Vista Willa and Seneca. And on July 5th, we woke to a flowing stream in our backyard. It took about a week to dissipate. And of course, we're new to Florida, so we thought, is this normal? That way, we actually got to meet our neighbors, learned about the flooding over the recent years. So we are calling it intermittent rogue water, and I appreciate the mayor or commissioner engaging with you in the county because it is a city and county issue. So I do have two requests. First is for your continued engagement, and I think some of the solutions that have been proposed today are worthy of a discussion. But I appreciate your continued engagement in this water situation because it's intermittent and it's not going to go away. And then to the point of the JETA point, I guess, protection status that's being discussed. That's my second point. I would just like to request that you're responsible for protecting the community, which does include our natural world. So I would like to reiterate those two points, the water situation in Winter Springs, especially along the trail, and to protect the nature as best as possible. So thank you very much and happy to be here.

We are glad to have you as well. If you would call the next few names, that would be fabulous. Victor Westall, Isabella Ayamada, and Sabrina Terrell. And if you'll just indulge me for one minute, I just want you to know that there's opportunities on the county website for applying for committees and being active. We welcome that. So there's lots of opportunities to engage in this community, and we appreciate that you took the first one today. Yes, sir. Name and address for the record.

Good morning. Victor Westall. I'm 152 Peregrine Court in Winter Springs in Tuscola, Eagles Watch Development, along the Seminole County Trail. And I'm reiterating what our previous speakers already said. And just want to encourage the board to please do not sell the property until all drainage issues and storm runoff have been sufficiently addressed. And also along the trail, if you do not sell the property, I would like to keep it natural. If you're going to sell a property, at least a 250-foot buffer along the trail itself to keep that natural look there and preserve allowed there. So that's all I have to say. Thank you.

Thank you so much for being here. Name and address for the record.

My name's Isabella Posalauma. I live at 296 Dalhouser Lane in Oviedo, Florida. Good morning, everybody. I have been a Seminole County resident for only a year. I am a rising junior at the University of Central Florida, and I'm studying environmental science. One of my favorite parts about living in Seminole County is being north of Orlando and experiencing lots of green spaces, like Little Econ River runs right behind my apartment. I love Sylvan Lake Park and Lake Joseph, which most of us probably drived over this morning. I'm here to speak against the proposed development of the park. I believe that it's a great location to absorb rainwater and it controls stormwater naturally and of course very environmentally conscious because it is natural and I believe the standard here for a new development only absorbs 1.5 inches of stormwater and as we know, Florida is a hurricane state and I believe past hurricanes have resulted in over 10 inches of rain, which, of course, 1.5 is not enough. I believe keeping the park protects taxpayer investment and development and avoids costly infrastructure, of course, saves money. And it will cause, protecting the park will avoid the displacement of different Florida wildlife, such as the aforementioned bald eagles. There's only one active nest there in the park out of roughly 1,500 in the state of Florida. And while the population is now stable for almost 20 years, conservation is still necessary. And it's also home to over 25 gopher tortoise boroughs, which are a threatened and protected keystone species in Florida. Their boroughs are used by over 360 other species, like owls, mice, snakes, and even alligators. I believe overdevelopment is one of the leading causes of habitat fragmentation in Florida, and preserving Jetta Park is in the best interest of Seminole County residents. If development does go forward, I believe, of course, stormwater should be taken into consideration, maybe creating some sort of lake or any body of water to absorb stormwater, like the Orlando wetlands are manmade, but they're still very necessary and efficient. And I believe if development goes forward, just to preserve some of it environmentally or at least be in the best interest of Seminole County residents and protecting, of course, other stormwater mishaps from happening because of all the finicky weather. Thank you so much. Thank you for being here.

Name and address for the record. Good morning. I'm Sabrina Terrell of 1700 Seneca Boulevard. And I'm actually reading a letter from my neighbor who couldn't be here. She's at 1703 Seneca. As a lifelong resident of Seminole County, Florida, I know the beauty of our area. and have seen the negative impacts of irresponsible development. We ensured our property was not in a flood zone before purchasing. We get standing stormwater, but our property handles it. This changed when Ian, in 2002, a racing river moves southwest from the trail through our property, it swept a vehicle attempting to leave Seneca into our yard. The floodwaters used the trail to move this dangerous surge of water. We thought a clogged trail drain and nearby retention ponds banks being compromised were culprits. The drain was cleared and subsequent rain showed improvement. However, the weekend of July 4th, we received rainfall totaling about three inches. The evening of the 5th, we had standing water. Hours later, Another fast southwest moving river was in our yard. We were terrified. Clearly, stormwater was being mismanaged to send this volume of water into properties on the south side of the trail as you approached Vista Willa. We spoke with Commissioner Cade Resnick and Mark Russo regarding this issue. The City of Winter Springs has a legal responsibility to the people who live here. In Seminole County, municipal and city responsibility for flood management include maintaining public stormwater systems and regulating local development in flood zones. The responsibility is not being effectively managed. Given the location of Jetta Park in relation to the trail, we cannot have a conversation about development on a sale of this land until the city resolves the mismanagement floodwaters using the trail as a vehicle to endanger the property and safety of Winter Springs residents. Our local government is responsible for the infrastructure and maintenance of stormwater systems to prevent flooding and protect public property. You have a legal duty to act, including partnership with local governments that have jurisdiction for trail maintenance and stormwater infrastructure. We need reliable plans and draining so that the negligence is not causing destruction of residents' property and safety. This is a priority. An effective, proven solution must be in place prior to discussions of Jetta Point development or sales. The water is flowing southwest on the trail. Jetta Park is northeast. This is approximately a 12-foot elevation drop from Jetta Park to the location near Seneca and Vista Bella. where the water is ending up. Developing this area without first resolving the misdirect water issues is a guaranteed disaster. And I just want to add, we are 1,700, so we are on the end of it. We're on Vista Willa and Seneca. So during Ian and others, our yard got flooded from both sides. So, yeah, so the water definitely is an issue. So thank you so much. Thank you.

We appreciate you being here, and I appreciate you being such a good neighbor and sitting here all morning so that you could read your neighbor's letter. That is Seminole County. She better be baking you cookies.

Next speaker, please. The last speaker is James Futch.

Good morning, Madam Chair, Commissioners. My name is James Fudge. I live at 119 Goshawk Terrace in the Eagle Watch subdivision of Istawella. I am the president of the Howe Creek Reserve Homeowners Association, and I'm not here to repeat what has already been said, but to add a few other facts that in the long run I hope are considered. Commissioner Zimbauer mentioned earlier about home rule and how some of our... decision-making has been taken out of our hands because it's ended up in Tallahassee and at times certain bills are proposed where more of that is taken away. Those of us in the Howe Creek Reserve Community Association have a bit of that feeling. Over the last four years our homeowners association has spent over a hundred and fifty thousand dollars of our community's dues and fees to maintain our retention ponds and our drainage areas that takes water from our community and transfers it to Howe Creek. That was all developed by the developer when it was first built to accommodate our 263 homes, the roadways that run through our communities, and the immediate surrounding area, not including all of the vast amount of growth and excavation and dredging and buildup that has happened since the early 90s when that system was done. We have a 36-inch pipe that goes from our conservation area to a weir on the east side of Vista Willow Road. At that weir, it breaks off into two 24-inch pipes, which goes underneath Vista Willow Road on the south side of the Cross Seminole Trail and proceeds westerly for about 100 yards. At 100 yards, it makes a left-hand turn to the south to go into the conservation area on the south side of the Cross Seminole Trail. Nothing has been done at that junction when it makes that left to go south under the Cross Seminole Trail in over 15 years. That area is presently clogged. It hasn't been scoped via an underground TV camera to determine whether it needs repair, whether it needs to be cleaned out. We have done all of that in our community, including the television cameras, the companies coming out, clearing it out. My point to all of this, you have the county who's going to own the land and going to be involved at some point in time in negotiations to sell it or preserve it, whatever is ultimately decided. As somebody mentioned earlier, you've got the state of Florida with the 417 and how they deal with that and the water that runs off of that into Jeddah Point. You have us, who our HOA has done our utmost to try and do what we could do to eliminate the problems we've experienced. And now as you get down the trail and it hangs a left, you've got the city of Winter Springs and you've got the St. John's Water Management District. Before anything needs to be done or can be done with that property, all of these entities should and need to be brought together in a comprehensive, grouping so that all of them can have input as to what their responsibilities are and what their expectations can be in the long run. And unless all of these entities are brought together and allowed at the table at the same time to work comprehensively, no matter what you do in terms of that property is not going to resolve the issues that these people have talked about regarding flooding their homes or flooding their yards. I caught four catfish in my front yard during Ian and I didn't even have a fishing pole. I'm only asking that you be very, very cautious as you proceed forward, and please bring in as many of these entities as possible so that we don't feel like we're being neglected like you sometimes feel you're being neglected by what Tallahassee does. I thank you very much for your time and your attention.

We appreciate you, and your Homeowners Association is very well represented. I'm going to, that concludes the speakers. I'm going to actually turn to the county manager to see if you have anything to add or any team members that you'd like to add anything. And I would like one thing to be addressed is just some clarity around the jurisdictional nature of this piece of property.

Absolutely. And if you will, Tanya Laurie, our public works director, she's ready, she can be on standby, her and our assistant county engineer, Joe LaFosso, to answer any stormwater questions that the board has. Just to clarify one thing, the Florida Communities Trust is a grant program that the state has for parkland acquisition. My understanding, you know, I've been in this position close to four years now. So when the park was first thought of, the property was purchased for Jetta Point, we were going to put a park there. My understanding that the city of Winter Springs, as well as the residents of Winter Springs, did not want that park there. We had already went through the process to have the state assist us to develop that park. So the board, and you all can correct me who was here at the time, when they heard from Winter Springs and the residents that they didn't want a park, we're not going to put a park there. When we went to purchase the Rolling Hills property, we made a request from the state of Florida to move that grant over to Rolling Hills to help acquire and develop that park into a natural park. The thoughts just for clarification for some of the residents who said don't transfer this, we have to transfer it because there is no park there at Jettle Point. And so we have to move that or we would just lose the money from the state for that. So I just wanted to correct that. As you know, the board, well before I got here, actually started on basin studies. When Hurricane Ian was happening, we know that a lot of floodplains, everything had changed due to that hurricane. We have done multiple basin studies throughout the county. We just completed all of them. The board will prioritize stormwater projects based on those basin studies. There is one that was done around the Jetta Point area, and I could have our team address any questions that the board has with that.

Thank you.

That's it.

Thank you. I'll look to the board. Yep, Commissioner Zimbauer.

As the... district commissioner i heard a lot of things from the public which and i could identify for those that said i just recently moved here don't know the history a few things omitted from the county manager only because he's only been with us for the last four years this is similar to a conversation that we most frequently have when we have new residents that don't have the history and don't understand. But let's start with the basin studies. The basin studies have been, as your district commissioner, I've been to three meetings on basin studies and flooding in the Winter Springs, Castleberry, Lake Howe Creek, and all those tributaries through there with citizens invited, citizens noticed, on our website, through the city website, Whatever we give to the city, I can't speak to how they've advertised it, but I can tell you city elected officials were at those meetings, and so were city officials and staff who would be responsible for interacting with stormwater or any other concerns. at those meetings also were consultants and engineers both from the city side county side and the consultants themselves to answer any specific questions that a particular homeowner may have or any homeowner information that would be valuable to the basin study so all that has taken place in the last year to two years. I know Commissioner Glory has been to some of those because we share parts of Winter Springs and our districts overlap. So this is not something that has not been talked about from a basin study, flooding and so forth. In fact, after Ian, this county assisted the city of winter springs in finding contractors to open up and repair the bridges that were washed out on northern way and so forth so the traffic could move through tuscawilla so this is not something that's unknown in talking to many of the residents the concern about the flooding I don't know how you do anything, including with your own homes, when you have a catastrophic rainfall event. We can't control that. Engineers can't control that. There's only one superior power that can control that. It's certainly not anybody sitting here. But we do communicate with the city of Winter Springs. There is cross-jurisdictional communications. There are basin studies. And in talking to some of the residents, I think we might be able to do a better job in informing them what a basin study actually means and what it indicates. Some improvements were identified on this property that could be a possible solution for some improvements, but that's the scope of what the contractors are supposed to do. That's not a means all to ends all. That's just an identified area that could be done that may help these things. The bigger problem that we've always talked about and I've been on the table about for the last six, seven years is, and to Mr. Fletcher's point as the HOA president, absolutely, when that was first built, your subdivision had a civil engineering drainage plan that you all are now dealing with and have to pay as private homeowners. Here's what everybody soon forgets. After those 263 homes were sold and developed, You all decided to put swim pools in, detached garages or sheds, widened driveways and paved things, changed the topography of your ground, which then completely defeated the original civil engineering plan for the drainage for that HOA. That's something that I have pushed on that we need to have a better sense, at least on the county side, When somebody comes in and wants to double the size of their driveway or add a swimming pool or add a shed or whatever and change that impervious area, we have to recognize that has now changed the whole civil engineering drainage plan for that entire community. Everybody wants a swimming pool. A lot of people want detached sheds. A lot of people want paved sidewalks instead of the grass in the front yard going to the front door. All those things add up and make a difference. All of that said, pushing forward to the elephant in the room, we had decisions to make whether we were purchasing Rolling Hills Golf Course. When I arrived here, that discussion had already been taking place. We lived through people coming into these chambers saying, why are you buying a golf course? Don't spend our money to buy a golf course. We went through those hearings. We had the folks from Rolling Hills who wanted the golf course purchased. We told them they could do at MSBU a special taxing district for them to facilitate part of the purchase and improvements on that golf course. Part of that commitment was transferring these rights, this easement, from Jeddah Point to Rolling Hills for all the reasons you've mentioned and what we've committed. But we also committed to surplus the Jeddah Point property to the taxpayers of this county to help fund the improvements on rolling hills and the folks in rolling hills relied upon that promise in deciding to tax themselves in msbu for that golf course So as this discussion goes on, we've continued to have this discussion now for seven years. It's been no secret. There's been public hearings on this about the purchase of the golf course, the public hearings on Jetta Point being put on the market and surplused as far as the county is concerned. But then it boils down to the city of Winter Springs controls the development and what could or could not happen on that property, not the county. That's the city of Winter Springs. We happen to be the owner of that. We've promised the citizens as part of the Rolling Hills it would be surplus. There's been a lot of discussion about whose water is going where and this and that. I can tell you as a district commissioner, I have been out to three subdivisions since I've served for the county on allegations that the county is flooding HOAs in Winter Springs. We've worked with the engineers in Winter Springs and our engineers and consultants, and in each and every one of those cases, it was not the unincorporated water from Seminole County going to Winter Springs. It was either a homeowner's issue or it was a civil engineering problem that was overlooked during the permitting process when that subdivision was actually built and did not have adequate drainage. I'm not saying that's what's happening here. What I'm saying is this notion that there's no cross-jurisdictional communication, it happens. Now, once we communicate and they communicate to us, I can't speak to everything that occurs, but typically our residents are not shy of picking up the phone and calling my office and saying, hey, there's a problem. I've talked to several of you, and it sounds like Commissioner Deloria has talked to several folks in the community. At the end of the day, We have guidelines we have to go through as far as drainage concerns. St. John's Water Management, FDEP, EPA, all those things, we've done these basin studies. Those basin studies should not be taken as gospel as the projects that are delineated. Those are projects that could be done. Those, again, have to be ranked on how they best help a certain area. And funded. It's correct. It's funded on a benefit basis. If an improvement benefits 500 residents, that's going to happen before an improvement gets funded that only helps three residents. And there are literally hundreds of those projects across this county, and that's the whole reason we did the basin study. And why... We now are going to have, based on the basin studies, properties that are now in a floodplain and other properties that are going to be removed from a floodplain as those maps are updated. And we know what kind of heartburn that's going to cause residents from the standpoint of you may not have been to a floodplain, but now you're fixing to be in a floodplain, which means you may have to be required to purchase flood insurance. Others may come out. They'll be thrilled to death. But that's just a matter of what goes on with this. So just to try to clear that up and understand, the promise was made to the taxpayers of this county, not once but multiple times, this property would be surplused for helping fund that Rolling Hills Country Club improvements to that park.

Commissioner Constantine.

Thank you for the...

history lesson because it was very complete and correct in the sense that you said something that I recall very vividly in the discussions with Rolling Hills that it was almost universal that we buy that land and build the parks. And in fact, many of the residents from other areas of the county were, especially in this area, were excited that we weren't going to touch Jetta Park at the time. So here we are now that the Florida Communities Trust has turned the money that they had given to us to help develop the community park at Jetta Point. We moved that money over to Rolling Hills and that's what we're doing today, the final agreements. And so now we're going to have Jetta Park as a piece of property that's at the current time not being used. It seems to me that an idea that I suggested to you yesterday, County Manager, that we might look into is that this county has a very far-reaching conservation program known as Seminole Forever. That program uses 6% non-advalorum general revenue to purchase property throughout the county to put into Seminole Forever. The property can come from anywhere. Individual citizens, groups that have property all bring it into a committee known as the Acquisition and Restoration Committee which is made up of citizens throughout Seminole County and as I've might recall two or three of them might live in Winter Springs or be near Winter Springs. That program also allows other entities, such as cities, to provide dollars to help purchase that property to put into Seminole forever, which is to be protected in perpetuity in conservation. Now, it has to go through a process. We have a lot of property on this year's list as like it does with Florida Forever at the state level where they have a number of projects. But it also has an opportunity that if others are helping purchase it, that it could be moved further along to the front of the list. But it still has to go through the process. And as I said, any entity can offer their property, or the acquisition committee can itself look into it and say, we would like to purchase this property. If we get to the point that we are going to sell this property, quite frankly, we don't care who we sell it to as long as it's developed correctly and in the process that Commissioner Zimbauer has just indicated with all the agencies looking into it and ensuring all the proper protections, especially when it comes to flooding. But I would suggest that we... offer this property for the acquisition committee to look at, to consider them putting this on the acquisition list to Seminole Forever, especially with the fact that it would be smart for Winter Springs to consider finding a way to help facilitate that purchase by putting money into the process. It's just an idea.

We appreciate that idea. Commissioner DeLaurie.

Thank you, Madam Chair. And I appreciate a little bit of the history, especially Commissioner Zimbabwe. But I'd like to go a little bit further because I think the history is very important. First of all, the only conversation I've had with some of the elected officials in Winter Springs, they didn't speak to any of the residents, just elected officials. But Jetta Point was a piece of property that this county was going to put a park on. And it was around 2013, I believe, or the end of 2012 when we were discussing this. And this room was packed from various individuals in and around the Winter Springs area that didn't want that to happen. So we put the project on hold, and we tried to figure out what to do. And that's where... Boomba came from. Boomba is the facility that we purchased and built over by the airport. That's how all that happened. In 2014, we did purchase Rolling Hills. In the deliberation of that purchase, we were trying to figure out how to pay for Rolling Hills. Rolling Hills cost us roughly plus or minus $4 million. 5.5 with the repairs. There's a lot of different numbers floating around. If you include environmental, then it goes up to five, five and a half. But the actual raw piece of property was around $4 million, and we were surprised it was costing that much. In fact, there's a lot of issues about that. In fact, Commissioner Constantine and I deliberated that quite a bit. That's where the new ordinance for the height of the grass came from. Isn't that right, Lee? But in 2014, the county did purchase it, and we came up with the idea of taking the restrictions off of Jetta Point, moving them over to Rolling Hills. That was never happened before in the state of Florida. We had to use our state lobbyists and a couple of other individuals to do that. It took several years for us to get the state to understand the importance of moving that. It took approximately four years. In 2018, the state agreed to move those restrictions from Jeddah Point over to Rolling Hills if we did certain things and clean up the environment. And so from 2018 to just recently, all those things got signed off. So what we're doing here today is taking those restrictions and moving them over to Rolling Hills. It's a process that we've been working on for well over 10 years. almost 12-plus years, that our staff as well as our consultants have been working on it. So I want to commend everyone for doing something that said couldn't be done. I will tell you that I know that various commissioners, I know Commissioner Zimbao, Commissioner Lockhart, Constantine, went up to Tallahassee many times. Also, Commissioner Horan went up to Tallahassee many times to speak to the Florida Trust folks and went out there pushing that our staff and the individuals here locally, that would not have happened. So I'm glad that this is actually the final of the hard work of the last 12 years. It's amazing how long things take. and to actually get something done when we said it couldn't be done. It's the first time it's ever happened in the state of Florida, so congratulations. We need to be celebrating that. What happens with Jetta Point, that's another agenda item. Right now the agenda is to move these restrictions over to Rolling Hills. I think that this board has been very proactive over the years. The Basin study is proof of that. We've worked with the City of Winter Springs, as Commissioner Zimbao pointed out, to make sure that people don't get flooded. And however we move with the next phase of what we do at Jetta Point, I truly believe we'll be working with the City of Winter Springs as well as the residents. So as we move forward, I think it's prudent that we do exactly what this agenda item says, taking these restrictions and moving them over to Rolling Hills. That's the end of my short history.

Commissioner Lockhart. I know time flies when we're having fun. And I think it's interesting. It goes way back further than we recall because the Florida Communities Trust grant application was actually 2004.

That's when everything started getting purchased.

Yep. And then in 2016 is when the county filed a request for the land exchange. So this, I mean, it... talk about the epitome of bureaucracies moving slowly.

Especially when you get several together.

Right, right. But I just wanted to put the dates on the record from the findings, in fact, from the documentation through the state. But, yeah, so 2004 for the grant award and 2016 for the exchange.

Madam Chair, I'm just trying to expedite the process. As hard as that may seem, we've actually gotten out of our typical routine and protocol.

We're a little out of order, and that's intentional.

We've gotten further off on item 18, which I intend to pull for this full purpose. I understand. So with that understanding, I intend to pull 18 for further discussion if it helps this board move through the consent agenda and then we can get to 18. If that's your will.

I don't know that we need to do that. I think we have discussed 18.

Well, I've got some more concerns.

You have more concerns.

If you want me not to pull it and discuss it now, I can do that.

I think we're going to keep going right now, although I would like to be cautious around the amount of time that we are here. Sure. And I would like to wrap up. I have not weighed in as a commissioner on this item, and I will do that. But go ahead.

So my further dilemma with 18, we've heard a lot of things today when I think we've addressed that to nauseam. But as a core principle, I made a promise as a commissioner to the folks in Rolling Hills and the taxpayers of this county that this would be moved as well as surplus in this property to help pay for the Rolling Hills improvements. So if I don't support moving this easement and the board decides not to move the easement, We put ourselves in a little precarious situation, not only with the state on the funds being moved, but to the promises we've already made to the taxpayers. So we've got a conundrum that's got to be worked out. You've got promises that were made years ago. and continue to promise to these taxpayers. And then you've got some taxpayers here today that want just the opposite. And I assume and would suggest that by the time this is all done, we're going to have the people of Rolling Hills on one side of this, chambers, who are saying, we decided to tax ourselves for a commitment you made to us. And we're going to have people from my district over here going, yeah, well, that's not our problem. Commissioner Constantine's idea may be something to look at, but I will only say my concern with that, Commissioner, is as you're aware, That is not guaranteed funding year to year. It can go away at any given time. Is that correct, Mr. County Manager? By a supermajority, yes. And we've already identified an array of projects or properties that the board has suggested we purchase, and I think there's a handful of properties that still are for future consideration and have not been committed. So there's all that going on. The longer this takes, the more wrapped around the axle we become, right? so that's my concern that we don't get in this one part of the county was made promises and taxpayers are made promises versus another and again we're not here to talk about how this property will be used but how the easement will be done but the two are actually tied together at the end of the day if I may yeah wrap this up

I actually think we're conflating two issues. And while we continue to say we're not here to talk about how the property will be developed, we're talking about how the property may be purchased. We're down that path in terms of the discussion. Good ideas being presented, but I think we are confusing the issue. I personally support the agenda item. It is the closing of all of the promises made in the past, while at the same time acknowledging that what happened on July 5th in your neighborhoods with water running through was not a catastrophic rain event, and we can't ignore that. So for purposes of the folks that are here today that are living through these events, flooding events or problems, feeling like you're about to be flooded event because they're not it's not coming in the house but it's significant please don't take the notion that we pass this as a lack of acknowledgement for what's happening out in your area in terms of water and same to the homeowners association Our team has already reviewed it. We do work with all of the cities on a regular basis. We are in constant contact with the St. John's Water Management District. This is not my district, but I have similar issues in my district, and we all will work together. We want the right thing to happen out there for the property and for the people that already live here. And at the same time, we want to be able to welcome UCF students from other parts of the country that may be here and doing great things in Central Florida and new neighbors to the community. That's the tight rope we walk. So don't for one minute think that if we pass this, that that doesn't mean that we're not equally as focused on the issues that you brought to our attention today. It is critical that we do both.

So, yes. Well, I know Ms. Elori, as our Public Works Director, is sitting ready to address some of the comments that were made earlier. And I don't want to belabor the point, but I do think it is important. Our DORA did not ring a bell to me, so I went through our agenda items. They did do the basin study for Howell Creek, but we just passed a stormwater master plan at our meeting last month in June that updated our 2018 study. And that was done by Jacob, CH2M Hill, So we had multiple basin studies that were done by different consultants. Our DORA did do the Howell Creek one, but the overall master plan, which we do have and have had a stormwater master plan for decades in this county, was done by Jacobs, CH2M Hill. So I don't know what else you want to add, but I just wanted to get that on the record because stormwater is critically important in this county, and we all know that, and we would not not have a stormwater master plan.

Thank you, Madam Chair, Commissioners. Tanya Lurie, Public Works Director. I did want to just address something. We do have, because I think it's important for this board to know as well as the residents that are here in the audience, we do have our roads and stormwater crews going out to the area. the second week of august to take a look at that ditch that is adjacent to the cross seminal trail to look to for debris as well as to clean out any potential clogging that occurs in the existing system so i think that's important to note just with the rain events we're getting right now as well as you know the hurricane season so i just wanted well that's not associated with anything we've been talking about i did want to make sure that you all were aware of that In terms of all the commissioners, as you spoke, are correct, your memories astound me. So, yes, Odora did our basin study, which was then incorporated into our stormwater master plan that was presented by Mr. LaFasso on June 28th. We do have a project in this area. Within the Stormwater Master Plan, it actually ranked number 68 out of 103. So, Commissioner, you're correct. Hundreds of projects over $348 million worth of improvements that were identified. This project is not currently funded. As we stated on June 28th, that will be the purview of this board. to determine which projects we move forward with and the funding. This system, the residents that spoke are exactly correct. This water sort of flows to the west, southwest along that Seminole Creek ditch. So what this project does is actually puts a lot of that water into a 24 inch reinforced concrete pipe along that cross Seminole Trail and then drains into a wetland that's about southeast or southwest of the property, the Jenna Point property. It is not without its challenges. As Commissioner Zimbauer identified, there are some new stormwater rules that went into effect at the end of June, which sort of heightened our things that we have to do. Also, the challenge of putting more water into a A wetland that has historical flows are a challenge for us as well as that's a private wetland area. So there is a project that has been identified. It's around $2 million, but there are certainly challenges associated with it as well as the funding hasn't been identified. So if you need additional information, I'd be more than happy to bring the brains up, Mr. LoFaso.

I think we're good. Okay. I think we're good. Thank you. And I appreciate you bringing that up because there was a reference to the fact that we didn't have a master plan and that we can't let that sit on the record. So you crossed an item off the list. So I appreciate that, Vice Chair Lockhart.

I do have a question for Tonya. Yes. Have we published that online yet, the master plan? Has it been uploaded?

It has not been uploaded, but we will do so.

Great. Okay. Thank you.

Mr. Constantine.

Thank you very much. I think we have talked to this quite a bit. As the chairman indicated, these two issues are mutually exclusive. I think we can satisfy both sides. I know Rolling Hills is excited, and I do believe that in the end, with the cooperation and help of... winter springs that can be solved also and with that i would move the consent agenda item number three constitutional officers consent and county manager consent agenda 5 through 18. second we have a first and a second any further discussion all those in favor aye opposed hearing none it passes unanimously that takes us to item 19

This is the taxes part. Stay for this. Don't leave. This is the millage rates for the trim notification, and Mr. Jex is making his way through the crowd to get to it. Take your time, Mr. Jex. We appreciate you all being here.

For the record, I'm Timothy Jecks with the Office of Management and Budget. This is our annual Truth in Millage Agenda item to approve the fiscal year 27 proposed millage rates. As defined in Florida statutes, TRIM is a legally mandated process to notify taxpayers of their property tax millage rates and set the timeline for the upcoming public hearings. These are the trim deadlines. The property appraiser issues the preliminary tax roll by July 1st. We are here today for board approval of the proposed millage rates. Once approved, these rates will be included in the notice of proposed taxes that will be mailed to property owners in August. And then two public hearings will be scheduled in September for final approval of the millage rates and budgets. The proposed millage rates are 5.3751 mills for the general fund, 2.649, excuse me, 2.7649 mills for the fire district, and 0.1107 mills for the road district. The proposed rates for fiscal year 27 are the same as the current rates for all districts. Once approved, these rates will represent the maximum amount that can be levied next year. The board will have the option to reduce these rates at the public hearings, but they cannot go up. Staff is proposing to hold the first public hearing on September 15th at 5.30 p.m. here in the BCC chambers. That concludes my presentation, and I'm happy to answer any questions.

Thank you. Do we have any questions for Tim?

Madam Chair, I'd like to make a motion to approve the proposed millage rate and set the date and time. and the place for the first public hearing to tentatively adopt the fiscal year 2026-2027 county budget as presented here today. Second.

We have a first and a second. Is there any further discussion?

Public.

Oh, I'm sorry. Public comment? No, ma'am. Thank you. First and a second. Any further discussion? Hearing none, all those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Passes unanimously. Thank you, Mr. Jax. Next item, Office of Economic Development and Tourism. We have Mr. Guy Cunha, Office of Economic Development and Tourism.

Actually, Madam Chairman, it would be our call center update for Mr. Ocala from our information technology. Oh, I'm sorry.

Thank you.

Item 20.

I was looking at Guy and got all off track.

Switched it.

I did.

I did. I was going to say, it kept me on my toes. I'm like, oh, did I miss something? Okay. All right. Hey, we could.

This is great.

I may have gotten carried away in a stormwater discussion.

All right. Well, thank you. All right.

Today's purpose of our presentation this morning here is to present our proposed pilot project to enhance our county's call center this morning here. To give you a little bit of background, so in late 2025, we partnered with Curium Solutions to evaluate how artificial intelligence could improve county operations and resident services. The assessment included leadership interviews, employee focus groups, a countywide survey, and a review of organizational processes and technologies. The findings were presented to the board during our March 10th, 2026 retreat. There they identified several pilot opportunities for AI implementation. Our call center modernization and automation was identified as one of the county's highest priority use cases because of its potential to improve customer service, increase efficiency, and support future growth. So where are we today? So today the county has 12 call queues that support the county services, county departments, and constitutional offices. The focus of this pilot project is our Citizens Engagement Center, which is our 665-0000 number. And during the first six months of this year, so from January 1 through June 30, that line has averaged a little over 3,200 calls per month. And across all of our call queues, We've had over 192,000 phone calls during the first six months. The current system is effective at routing calls. However, it is limited in its access to caller information and integrated county data, making it difficult for staff to resolve inquiries quickly. We researched some available AI customer service solutions and conducted vendor demonstrations to evaluate capabilities, scalability, and ease of implementation. Based on that evaluation, we've identified a solution to improve customer service and support future modern efforts. So what are we proposing in this pilot? The first thing is a 24-7 conversational AI agent in English and in Spanish. The engagement center today does offer both English and Spanish, so we're looking to expand that capability outside of our normal business hours. It has the capability to offer faster answers to common resident questions. We can improve our scalability to meet our dynamic call volumes. It does offer the capability to offer seamless handoffs to a live agent with a track of the conversation history that that caller had with the AI agent. So you kind of get that handoff where the live agent has the opportunity to get an understanding of what was previously discussed with that AI agent. And finally, residents can request a live representative at any time. Now, it should be a little asterisk there to indicate during normal business hours. So I just want to make that clear. Representative.

Representative.

All right, future growth opportunities for this pilot. So where can we go in the future with this? So we can expand to additional communication channels such as text messaging and web chats. We have the ability to integrate with our business systems to provide faster, more personalized service. Enhanced reporting around analytics to improve operational performance. Measure customer satisfaction through post-call surveys. You've probably all participated in some of those when dealing with other businesses. And finally, expand our AI capabilities to support additional county departments and services. So next steps. Next steps are to implement this modernization project into our customer service area to enhance operational efficiency and evaluate future expansion opportunities.

And Chairman, if I could just add one, and Commissioner's just on here, one of the questions could be how, this is estimated around $80,000 if I'm not correct, and we're looking, we're not asking for the board for more funds for this, we're looking to fund this through attrition, through vacant positions that we would not need to recruit and hire to see how this pilot program would actually work. It was one of our seminal moments, as Joe mentioned, efficiency programs, and we have a lot of call centers around the county, and by First stepping into this, we could see how effective this actually could be. However, I didn't want to move forward with it without letting the board know. I know you've heard about this through several presentations that we have done, and so we just want to get the board's blessing on moving this pilot program forward.

Did you mention the duration of the pilot?

The time frame? So I think once we get it operational, probably three to six months, I would guess to venture. Obviously, we'll be looking at the metrics associated with deflection rate and how many callers can self-address their own questions type of situation. So, yeah.

Okay. And then what about reporting back? So during the pilot project, you'll keep us informed how?

Yes, and we'll actually bring this back to the board and give and do a, you know, I'll speak with Joe to see the time frame on it. Between three to six months, we'll give you a report back to the board on how successful or not this program is.

Yeah, probably be a little bit longer than that. We've got some back-end infrastructure we need to do some work with and then training and programming, so yeah.

And then unanticipated. Yes. Unanticipated. Any other questions, commissioners?

I'll look for a motion. Madam Chair, I will move the implementation of the call center modernization pilot project to improve customer service, enhance operational efficiency, and evaluate future expansion opportunities. Second.

Thank you very much. We have a first and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Thank you. Thank you. And just for the record, there was no public comment on that.

Correct.

We're going to do an update on microtransit. Mr. Christian Swenson, the microtransit expert.

Thank you, Chairman. Chris Svensson, Assistant County Manager. Good morning, Commissioners. I'm here today. I have Jason Spiegel with Freebie here, and I also have Gee and Tim that'll be backing up should there be questions. So we're here today to talk about the county's microtransit system. And we're really doing a review of six months after the Lynx routes discontinued. So you'll see this subsequently, but just as a refresher, we started our microtransit system in October of last year. However, we did not discontinue some Lynx routes, the unproductive Lynx routes, until January. So we're really focusing on the period of time since then. So with that, this is the standard agenda. We're obviously going to go over some background, some progress. I've got some fair modifications for consideration, and we'll talk about just some next steps and recommendations. So you've seen this slide before. This is just a history of what's happened. So going back to sort of the beginning of things, at the budget work session in June 2024, the board heard from LINCS, and there was some concern over the cost. and what the cost growth was going to be as we go forward. So the board provided directions to look at things, work with LINCS, and come up with some alternative ideas to control cost and to look at service. We did that. We came back to the board in November of 24 and presented some different ideas. At that meeting, the board directed staff to proceed with a request for proposal to do microtransit services hosted by the county. We put out a solicitation for such, and in February of 25, that solicitation closed, and we awarded the contract to Freebee in May of 25. And as I just mentioned, we started a service in October of 25, and then the link shrouds discontinued. Obviously, a very compressed timeline. A lot of things happened last year with that. So just going through the history of things again, this was the LINCS system prior to these changes. We had 11 routes and two microtransit zones and some map of all that, and then obviously LINCS provided and still does provide transportation disadvantage services. This was the slide that was presented during the 2024 budget session. It showed the growth of LINCS going forward. It shows the partner contribution. I know, as all of you all know, we're one of three partners in LINCS. It's us, Orange County, as well as Osceola County. So taking the slide you're very much familiar with, we did a little audit to it and we've added the red box, as you see on the screen, and it trued up what the contribution forecast was. As you'll see, those numbers are a little different from the contribution line at the top because we're adding in the budget stabilization. For those that may not remember, during the COVID times, there was some funds provided, the counties had prepaid for things, and as a result, was then kind of put in an escrow and used to defray costs subsequently from that. So we add those back in to come up with a contrast, to come up with a total contribution. As you see, they are actually trending a bit higher than was initially anticipated. We're currently in fiscal year 27, $5 million higher than the estimate. So there was some concern over the growth, and we're actually trending $5 million higher than that as a linked system. So going back and looking at the fees specifically to 2025 when the changes were made, the Seminole County funding contribution amount was $14 million. Again, we realistically need to add that $3 million back in of budget stabilization money. So we had about a $17 million cost. So as mentioned, it was suggested that we go forward with a microtransit system run by the county. And in conjunction with that, it was directed to eliminate the unproductive routes. In the November meeting, that links came here and we proposed options to everyone. They showed us a series of charts and in those charts they identified which routes were productive and which routes were unproductive in Seminole County. So the decision was made to remove all the unproductive ones, that's fairly standard in the industry, and leave behind the productive ones. So as you see, it basically kept the 436 and adjacent routes as shown on this map. So what did that do to the cost that's going forward for this year? We eliminated the eight routes. We eliminated the two neighbor link zones. And that equated to 82,000 hours. The value of that service today would have gone from the $17 million to $20.7 million for those hours. The savings for the reduction in today's dollars would be $9 million, leaving us with a funding contribution that we have of this year of $11.7 million, and you saw that during the budget presentation for links. So now let's look at what Scout costs. The gross cost of Scout is almost $9 million. However, we've received half a million dollars in FDOT service development grant. We'll talk about this in a bit. We are going to be adding some vehicles as a result of that, and that's coming in the next month or so when we get the authorization to move forward with that. We also have collected almost $1.2 million in fare box revenue from running our system. approximately $110,000 in ad revenue. So the net cost of Scout is $7.2 million. So truing that up to the slide you just saw previously, $9 million cost for link savings plus a $7.2 million cost for Scout, that gives us a net savings of $1.7 million. I want to linger just a little bit on this slide. Tim and I, we did a series of presentations that led us up to the decision to go this path at y'all's direction. And in those presentations, we cautioned that in the first few years, we could be upside down on this. Most transit systems are not a pay-as-you-go. You get federal funding, and you get things like that. So we knew going into it that the first few years until those things got in place, it could be an upside-down cost. We could be paying more. This is a massive win from at least my perspective, the fact we're not upside down. We actually are 1.7 million to the good, and we're still pretty much cash paying everything outside of the FDOT service. So with that, I just want to go over what is Scout. Again, this is just a refresher. I know you all are very familiar with it. It's a five zone system. It operates in Seminole County outside of the rural boundary. It was based upon the city of Arlington's model. If you all recall, Arlington's similar in a number of ways. It's a flexible system, even though it's five zones, many microtransit systems. You're kind of caught in the zone. You have to stay in the zone, and you can't go from one zone to the other. The board provided direction that you wanted this to be flexible and be able to travel amongst zones. So these five zones were put together. They were based around sun rail. Four of the zones have a sun rail station in it that runs north to south. And then, of course, the econ zone, which is the Oviedo area, doesn't have sun rail. However, all of them were organized, taking into account medical facilities, grocery stores, government offices, things like that. The idea was to live, work, and play where you reside and try to keep the trips prudent and shorter in nature. So with that, let's look at how we've done after six months. What does it look like? So this first slide takes November all the way through June. And the reason I just mentioned that October 15th is when we started, but November is the first full month. So that's why I have this on here, just to do full month to full month comparison. As you can see in November, we went from 18,000 passengers to now we're pushing almost 31,000 passengers. The sun rail pickups and drop-offs have grown drastically. I've got some slides that will go over that in a bit more detail, but as you can see, we went from almost 900 to now we're approaching 3,100. The wait time started at just below 30 minutes, but I do want to call your attention to January and February time. The Lynx riders that were very loyal to Lynx stayed on Lynx, and they didn't transfer over. We did the three-month overlap. We expected everyone to kind of cross over, and we would just be picking up a few people that didn't. But it didn't really work that way. Folks that used Lynx stayed on Lynx until really the end. So there was a slug of customers that came in January. We knew that. We presented to the board. You all graciously approved additional vehicles. But as you can see, when they came on in January, there was a massive uptick in wait time. And you see that here. The corresponding service rating, albeit pretty close to one another on a one to five rating, it did take a little dip. But as you see, we've done a number of efficiencies. We'll continue to work through that. I'll go through this in a minute. We constantly meet. We go through this. I can't say enough good stuff about Freebee. They've been an amazing partner. There's just been a lot of back and forth input. It has been a big lift. But through all those efficiencies, we have not only increased ridership, we have gotten the average wait time down. We're at obviously just below 42 minutes. The other thing I'd like to call your attention to is the net cost per passenger. We've gotten it cheaper per time. It started out at just below $22, and we're now 16.5, right there, a little bit below that. And you can see the same thing in the fare box revenue, from 13.9 to 15.8. I'll have some slides coming up in a minute that will address that, to how that compares about other systems, so it just doesn't look like it's there statically. This next slide has to do with discounted riders. If you recall our fare discussion, You know, the board provided direction that said, hey, we want to make this cost appropriate. Those that can afford it should have a fee that is corresponding to that. And those that are part of a vulnerable population need to have a reduced impact. So we looked at that and brought back a series of heavy discounts. presented to the board, obviously I'll approve those. These are those discounts and this shows the growth of them. As you'll see, we have two low income discounts. They're based upon the level of low income. One is a food subsidy level, if you qualify for that. The other is a housing subsidy level. We also have students, seniors, and people with disabilities. As you can see, these have all grown massively. There's huge growth in these numbers. Several of them are at 90%. Obviously, the lowest low-income tier is at 113% growth. So it's just a huge number of people that are discounted are riding the system, which was desired. Now looking at the riders and the fares. So there's been media coverage, and it gets presented in the media that our fares range from $4 to $14, which is 100% accurate. Those are our base fares. They don't take into account those discounts that you just saw. So when you add the discount ridership to it, It drastically changes. If you book through the app, it changes. If you go to Sunrail, it changes. You know, there's some things that come down to it. So this takes the average fare across all of our systems. So keep in mind base fare 4 to 14, the actual fare is actually $3.86 is what we've landed at. We start at $4.59. It shows the discounts are working. It shows we're getting the discounts to the people that need it. Also, the number of unique riders has grown from approximately 1,500 to 3,500. Now, these are individual people, unique individuals that rode during that month. So it's not the number of accounts. It's someone that has an account during that month, and they booked a ride. So that's what you're seeing there. Now let's look at that. How does that play across the county? You have a couple things that are overlaid here, and bear with me if you would as I just kind of walk through it. So the underlying map here is a heat map from Freebee that shows where levels of intensity are for pickup and drop-offs. Overlaid on that are links routes. You'll see a series of lines. There's gray lines and blue lines. The gray lines are the unproductive routes that were removed. That's the eight that we talked about. That's out of there. As well as that, there are the productive routes, which are the blue lines. Those are still in place today. So in the transit industry, they say the service area for a route is approximately a quarter mile distance from that. So you'll see a shaded area that is over the top of those lines. That represents a quarter mile in either direction. So that's a half mile swath. That is the service area of those routes. So putting these two types of data points together, the service area of links is the shaded line. The service area of Scout is everything either in that or outside of that. So you'll see there is a lot of blue outside of that area, which shows we're serving people that were previously in a transit desert. You'll see it here in a second, but if you look over to the right, for those kind of familiar with the map, there's the rectangular area to the south of that is a Samford Orlando International Airport. Previously in a transit desert, you will see it has a level of intensity there now. People are using it to get to the airport where it previously wasn't there. So digging into this a little deeper, I won't linger long on these slides, but just zooming in, this is the Monroe, which is the Monroe zone, which is Sanford area, and also the Lake Mary area. You can see the levels of intensity there outside of the link stuff. Obviously, it's easier to see the airport here. Going to the next slide is the Howell zone. This is Castleberry, Winter Springs area. along with that area. And then the next one is the Econ Zone. One thing I want to call your attention, you don't see many dots here, this isn't unusual. When Lynx was in Oviedo, it just has not been a transit heavy area. For whatever reason, they're just not real transit dependent. We're seeing the same things here, but there is some use outside of where it was previously used before. And then finally is the Brantley area, which is Eltamont Springs. and the areas around that. The interesting thing about this is the heavily blue lined area, which is the links routes that are still in place, and you'll see overlap. You'll see us dropping off in those zones as well as a lot of area in and around that. I'm going to get some stuff talking about the cities and the usage here in a few minutes. But the thing that's important to know about Altamont Springs is there's really three transit systems that serve that area. There's Scout, obviously, as we're talking about today. There's Lynx. And then there is Crane Rides as well. So there's three areas there. And as you can see, we're still doing a lot of usage despite there being three areas. So looking at another discounted area, I want to just talk about students. This is the student ridership and how that goes as corresponds to the discounts that you saw earlier. This is the top four schools and how they rank for ridership. So as you can see, Seminole State is the largest user with 36%. It then drops down to high schools. That's both public and private. Effectively, these are our under 18 users. And then University of Central Florida, one thing to note about UCF is we do have a drop-off point at UCF. It is also a super stop for links, a scenario where transit comes together. And then the fourth one, which is interesting, is Southern Technical College. For those of you all that may not be familiar with this, it's a technical school off of 1792. They do HVAC and other things like that. And as you can see, it's helping them as well. And then, of course, there is a massive number below that of all others. And this was kind of interesting to me when I asked Jason to provide me the university data where everyone was from, all the email addresses I started going through. There's students here at Northern Arizona University, Ball State, Arizona. And these are people from out of there. There's obviously FSU, UF, and things like that. But you start looking at it, and then you look at the usage. These are kids that are coming home during spring break and Christmas. They're at schools afar. They come back, and they don't have cars. And they're taking microtransit while they're here. So these are Seminole County students as well. It's an interesting number. So now Sunrail. I think this is a massive winner here, just my opinion. It's a lot of things on this slide. Let me, if I may, just walk you through it. The pink titled area, that's links usage. The green titled area is scout usage. These are pickups and drop-offs at Sunrail Station. You'll see in the top part of it, you'll see an area that's grayed out. That is the overlap when we had both scout and links at the same time. So if you go below that, you will see the dispersion or the division between the two during that combined time. So a couple things just for analysis, I'm going to ask you just to omit. These are all the SunRail stations. I don't want us to focus too much on Altamont at this point, and the reason I'm saying that is because if you'll recall, we moved the SuperStop from Pern Park to the Link station. So looking at this from a SunRail perspective, It adds other variables in there. Looking at Lake Mary, Sanford, and Longwood, they're just sun rail stations. They're relatively by themselves, so they're pretty clean. As you look at... The usage between links, October 25 and before, and then you look at Scout from February 26 forward, you see massive jumps. The number of people that were getting to and from SunRail stations is huge. That was one of the board's priorities. We just needed to work in conjunction with SunRail. I think these numbers show it. When I first saw it, I said, well, let me verify it. So what I did was I went to the CFCRC. and pull the SunRail data for their ridership, the average day ridership. This was presented to the Commission to show the ridership. These are actually their slides. I'm just overlaying them onto ours. As you'll see, the orange slide is 2025. It shows ridership, average daily ridership for April through June at about 5,100. You fast forward to the blue title slide, and you see the 26th date. It's not exactly the same period, but it does fall into those things. And you're looking at 5,700, 5,600 in there. These numbers show there's an increased ridership in SunRap. I'm not going to be as bold to say that we're solely feeding that. But I do believe, looking at the previous slide and this, there's an extrapolation where I think we're helping the growth in SunRap. So now, as I mentioned previously, let's look at cities. When we talk about transit, transit's often thought of as an urban service. So I wanted to focus, okay, what trips involve cities here in Seminole County? First thing I want to do is I want to call your attention down at the bottom of your seat, 122. 122%. So it's over 100. These are trips that involve cities. So why would it be over 100? Well, if the trip started in, say, Samford and ended in Altima, you would fall in both buckets. But the important thing about this slide, as you see, there's a lot of usage that involves cities. Whether they're picked up or dropped off there, there is a lot of usage. Our municipal partners, and these are city limits, by the way. These aren't These aren't mailing addresses. These are city limits. There is a lot of destinations in the cities that we're feeding. I want to drill down just a little further into this. So we're looking at data now that just shows if the trip started in the city limits. So basically you requested the ride in the city limits. You'll see there's a reduction in that. It comes down to 76%. But as you see, City of Sanford, 39% of all of our usage is starting in the City of Sanford. City of Altamont, again, three systems, 12%. Now, the next slide I like to call Cities in a Vacuum. I couldn't come up with a better name. I thought it was kind of cute. So these are trips that start and end within the city. They don't leave the city. They don't go in the Incognito Incorporated. They stay completely within the city. And these are still pretty substantial numbers. 18% of all of our rides stay right here in the city of Sanford. 4%, again, three transit systems, but 4% in the city of Altamont. They stay in there. These are a fairly significant amount of our rides are serving city customers. This next slide shows the top pickup and drop-off locations. There's two charts here. On the left side is drop-offs. On the right side is pickups. These are the top 15. You will see similar customers in both groups. You'll see SunRail stations. You'll see grocery stores. you'll see different things as far as schools and things like that. To me, the takeaway from this is these are the top 15. When you total up both of them, it's less than 10%. So what that tells me is people are going everywhere. It's not just they're going to one place. This is a service that's dispersed around the county. We're taking people to places they need, and that's shown on the heat map. All right, now let's talk about what we've done. As I mentioned earlier, Freebee and Jason have been great partners. There's been a lot of change. We meet with them weekly. We go through. We've looked at it. There's been some tough times. And candidly, I have to give hats off to Jason. As our numbers were going up, he's like, Christian, let's just buckle in. It's going to get rough, but let's figure this out. That's a great partner. He could have just said, throw me more vehicles. We wanted to get efficient. Again, I can't say enough good stuff about him. So this is not a full list of everything that we've done over those weekly meetings. However, this is some larger ones. I've put them in three buckets. So let me kind of run through them if I may. I'm going to start on the left, user changes. So the first thing we did, or one of the first things we did, was implement a user trip planner. So it's very common in on-demand transit, microtransit, that people get angst. It's on-demand. If you're busy... It's going to come slower. If it's not busy, it's going to come faster. It's different than a scheduled bus. A scheduled bus arrives regardless. Sometimes it's supposed to arrive at a certain point at a certain time. It may or may not be the case. But to try to reduce that angst, we developed this trip planner. This takes two weeks. The previous two weeks were the data you put in your destination, and it tells you what your wait time should be. It's very fluid. It helps planning. It should help take some of that angst out. We also... There's questions and direction from the board about what about booking for Sunrail. So normally, when we started with Scout, and normally when you book it, it'll take a booking from 1,500 feet from where it's currently seeing you're standing. When you're on a train in Orlando, you're more than 1,500 feet. So we took and we expanded that. We allowed bookings on the Sunrail corridor all the way down to the further southern point of the corridor in Orange County and the furthest northern point in Volusia County. So if you're on Sunrail, you're at the station, those corridors, you can book your Scout ride. We also, as the board will recall, we were getting crazy cancellations from users maybe not completely understanding the system when the Lynx riders came over. We limited the cancellations to two. So you can take two. After that, you're locked out of the app and you have to call in. We didn't want to leave anyone stranded, but we needed to stop that. That actually did improve things. We also looked at some system changes. So when we started this, we had vehicles distributed across the seven days of the system. Very quickly we realized, okay, what the usage was on the weekdays versus the weekends. We realized that we had surplus. We could move vehicles and vehicle hours from the weekends to the weekdays, and we did that. We also increased the pool max ride time. So what does that mean? As we talked about it before, There were, you know, we talked about a 10 minute detour time and it'd be in a shared ride service. It needed to be a shared ride service. It wasn't, you weren't getting a private taxi to somewhere. It needed to be a shared ride. So we started at 10 minutes. That was what we talked about here. We continued to keep increasing that. We've increased it to 18 minutes and 30%, got 30% of the ridership. The average time people are in the vehicles is 20 minutes. And that seems to be getting about 30% of shared rides, which is fairly significant. We haven't really got any complaints at that level. It seems to be flowing nicely. And we've also continuously optimized the algorithm. Jason and his team, they've looked at how people pick up how they pick up and drop off people in addition to how drivers go on break, how shift changes are happening. All that's been optimized in the app. They've loaded an AI agent into the app so as we're coming up with crazy ideas, it can quickly analyze data and see what changes can it make and how will that impact things. So that's happened. There was also a system expansion. As mentioned, there were seven vehicles added when the Lynx customers came over. We also secured the FDOT Service Development Grant, as you'll recall. This will add seven more vehicles. We were awarded that last year. It was for the state's fiscal year that starts into July. But we can't just start running in July. We have to get an authorization letter that says, yes, go forth and do good things. We are waiting for that letter. They are telling us we should get it by the end of this month. We're closing into that, but we think it's coming very soon. And at that point, we'll go forward with beginning the driver selection as well as the purchasing of the seven vehicles. So this slide, as I promised you a bit earlier, this takes those fare box revenue percentages as well as the cost per passenger. and compares it to others. So let me just go through a couple things here. The top portion of the chart are Florida transit system, microtransit systems. The bottom part are national. You're going to say, well, why are you looking at that? Well, I want to call your attention to the green line. And that's us, Scout. And when you see it, we're at 189 square miles. We believe we're the second largest microtransit system in the country. So because of that, we needed to get a pool of larger ones. So there's only so many of them in Florida, and we wanted to do that. So that's why you're seeing some of the national ones. So these numbers were taken from the American Public Transit Association's database. This is where transit agencies publish their numbers and things like that. These are demand response numbers. So demand response is mostly microtransit. It can include some paratransit numbers. because it's demand response as well. And like all things transit, data tracking is a bit cloudy. So you're going to say, well, we don't have paratransit. Well, we don't, but we do have some of those customers. As you saw from the discounted, we're utilizing access links. Customers, they get quite a discount. So we have a segment of that population. So this is probably the cleanest comparison that we can get. And we picked systems where there were known microtransit systems, legitimate microtransit systems, and they're listed there in the segment name. So as you go through and you look at this and you do our comparison to it, I'm going to first look at fare box recovery. We're at 15.8. There's no one on this list that's getting a fare box recovery at that level. The closest is the city of Arlington. We're about a percentage point above them. As you remember, we based it off of Arlington, so this is kind of par for the course. Looking at the next one is our cost per passenger. This is our subsidy per passenger. When you look at our numbers, $16.31. And you go, okay, where are we on that? Well, we do better than everyone on here with the exception of the city of Arlington. And we're close to that. So we have a goal to set. So in the briefings, I had a question that was, OK, how do we actually compare to the links routes that we completed? So I said, no problem. I have those numbers. I can go through the ridership. So I spent a few hours crunching numbers, and I couldn't get there. And I'll tell you why I couldn't get there. I couldn't get there because the number of riders was shown massively because it has the unlinked route. So even the routes we deleted, they have to buy tickets to transfer, and they get counted on multiple buses. And our ridership would have to be two and a half times the amount that it was to even equal the ridership that was shown on there, which, you know, going, you know, pressing the rewind button and we had conversations that how many Lynx riders are there? We took that data and we estimated it using APTA data to try to figure it out. And we said 3,500 to 4,200 is what our 80% math is. We think that's there. That number, I think, was far off the mark. I think realistically it's probably around 1,200. Going back and doing the exercise of trying to take the ones that we took away and look at it, knowing what our ridership is and seeing it, it's just hard to compare that number. So I'm sorry I went down that rabbit hole, but in full disclosure, I just wanted to let you all know about that exercise. So now let's talk a little bit about fare modifications. You've seen we get a good fare box revenue. You see how we rank with that. You've seen our discounts. I would like to suggest a couple minor tweaks to what we have. I think we have a good system. These are the fares that are in place. You'll see those are the $4 to $14. It depends on how many zones you go forth in. that you cross and so forth. There's also some extra charges. So if you go at peak times and you're a non-discounted rider, you know, it's a dollar. If you have extra passengers, it's a dollar. And then the next one is, I call it the bring along my tuba one. If you need a seat for some massive item to put in there, you've got to pay for the seat. So that's the charge. This is what was approved. I'd like to make just a little adjustment or suggest a little adjustment to that with y'all's approval. Obviously, our busiest time is during peak hours. That's when, if you start getting behind in the system, it has a ripple effect through the system. So we'd like to increase that a slight amount from $1 to $2.50 for non-discounted riders. So what does that mean? That means if you're part of the vulnerable population this was targeted to, you're not affected. You don't get charged for that. If you have a means to possibly do something else, and you're close on the bubble, we'd like you to maybe take something else to free it up for the vulnerable population to be able to get places during the peak times in a timely manner. So that's a suggested change we'd like to make. The next one's on the discounted side. You may be thinking, well, hold on. We got a lot of discounts. Why are you suggesting that? These are the groups that you've seen before. You've seen all this. They're very steep. I want to make a slight change on the SunRail. So what you just saw on there was SunRail. Their discount amount was their fare was capped at $2. I would like to suggest reducing that to $1.50 and then removing the peak surcharge for them. So even if they're a discounted rider or not, if you're going to a SunRail station, you don't pay the peak surcharge. So why is that? You're saying, okay, well, the SunRail numbers, we're already putting a lot of people on SunRail. Microtransit often works as what you'll have heard is a first-mile, last-mile solution. It's normally with buses where you take a fixed route somewhere, you get on this microtransit, and then you go to a zone. Our system is kind of based off of Sunrail, so our fixed route is effectively Sunrail running down the corridor. There are scenarios where by the time you buy a ticket on Scout to get to Sunrail, to buy the Sunrail ticket to go to another zone in Seminole County to get Scout again, it becomes more expensive than just changing the zone, especially when you add in the the cost of the, sorry, the peak surcharge. Sorry, just had a brain freeze there. So we would like to make it so it's economical to be SunRail. So SunRail becomes a partner. So part of your trip possibly could be you take Scout to SunRail, get on SunRail, take it somewhere in the county, get off and take Scout again. We would like to look at this. Do we know how many customers this is? We don't. Just like we didn't know how many customers we were going to feed this underground. We don't know how many people would possibly take this model that would have previously taken Scout the whole way or say, hey, it's more economical. But we'd like to try it and make a modest decrease here to free that up a little bit. So that's the other suggested item. So now looking at next steps. So one, if the board is agreeable to those changes, we would obviously implement those and begin the implementation process. You've heard me talk a lot about these FDOT service development grants and waiting for that letter to come. When that letter comes, we want to get those seven vehicles. We want to continue to pursue additional funding opportunities. And albeit I didn't have a slide for it here, there's been conversation and direction in the past about looking for us to become designated or direct recipients to unlock the federal funds, which was kind of the upside down conversation we had a bit ago. We are working on that. We've got an application that we've produced. We've sent it to the attorneys once, and our attorneys being our attorneys. Sent it to them once. They made comments. We made those comments. We've sent it back. We're waiting for them to review it. Once they feel comfortable with that, I'll be bringing a resolution to the board, getting permission as part of the process to submit these to FTA. And then we will submit that to FTA and see how it goes. And if we get that designation, then there's guaranteed funds that come on an annual basis. That $1.7 million savings will increase considerably. And then additionally, we're going to continue to build service efficiencies. As I mentioned, we get together weekly. There's a team of us that get together. We really dissect this. I think this makes it different from other transit agencies. We haven't taken the set it and forget it stance. We get together and we debate things out and say, OK, what's going on? What's not? How can we make things better? And so many changes have happened. We are going to continue to do that. We're not at the finish line. We've just barely gotten started. I think it's good numbers, but I think there's better numbers to even come. So with that, obviously, I would love to have some questions from you all. But with that, we would also like your approval to approve the fair suggested hearing.

Would you really like to have some questions?

I can talk all day about this if you want. I can probably wear you all out with it.

Commissioner Zimbauer.

Thank you very much. Your slide with the $1.7 million savings, I think what needs to be added or considered is that we're servicing much more individuals. at a better service level than we ever did with links yes and so you got the benefit of the savings but you got the better service level and servicing more citizens within this county which is a win-win at the end of the day as well and what we all suspected would occur likely if we go into this model so i'm good with all that i'm happy to make a motion if

Thank you, Madam Chair.

First of all, to you and your staff and anyone associated with it, this is not just a massive win, it's a huge, massive win. So a lot to be complimented to everyone. I love the fact that you were talking about the Fairbox recovery and that Fairbox recovery is extremely important because it shows how efficient you are. And I think that's great. I do want to have a conversation. If you can go back with those proposed fair discounts. There's two slides back from the end. Oppose fair discount changes?

I don't click and talk at the same time, so I have great people helping me. Sorry for that. They're assisting with that, but we go.

I know you're limited, so we'll allow that. No worries. The thing that I'd like to discuss, I love the idea that we're pushing people, not pushing, but we're asking people to use Sunrail more. And I think your numbers show that. And I think that's a huge win across the boards. The second line item in red that you show there is the discount if you stay and use SunRail as the spine to going across the county and using freebie again or Scout again going down to $1.50. I like the way you came up with that because I think because if you're using Scout to go to SunRail, you use Scout, SunRail as the spine and then you use Scout again, i don't know why we wouldn't just say okay we're using on two sides to just go to a dollar so we can understand what that really is to really push people to sun rail yeah so the number was just a slight decrease there's nothing behind it other than just a slight decrease the discounts that the board

The board approved their very big discounts. I didn't want to start slashing and burning.

I'm not trying to slash and burn, but since you're going to be using Scout twice, I can see going down to $1 to actually push people to SunRail.

I think that would work exactly the same as this. I think it would further send that message. We only just took a small, modest bite for the only reason was it was a small, modest bite. Certainly taking it to $1 accomplishes the same thing and makes it more attractive to more people. I think that would be an excellent idea. Additionally, you may say, well, why not go further than that? I can tell you when the – You've got to have something. Yeah, and that's what the economist said. Don't make things free. That's a big problem in transit. And so probably a dollar would probably be the bottom I would think.

I would encourage the board to do that because let's see how many people we can push to SunRail. But I'm fully in favor of all your suggestions. I think it's a great job that you've all done. And the staff behind you did a great job, as well as Freebee. But I think let's try to encourage people more towards SunRail by doing a bigger discount. And so I would urge the board doing that.

Commissioner Lockhart. I'll echo the thanks and the hard work and kudos on the collaboration. I'm not sure we would be where we are had we not had this partnership working as well as it has. There have been bumps in the road, certainly, but I am so excited to see that the improvement that has occurred. And hopefully people will, as we've seen by the ratings, they themselves, the riders themselves, have shown that they are seeing greater value in the system. I agree with Commissioner Dilary on taking that SunRail fee down to a dollar. I was thinking about it from a marketing perspective. You know, what can you do with advertising something for a buck or, you know, a dollar? I don't know. It's just a round number. It's... I'm not sure, but I asked Christian the same question. Where did you come up with the $1.50? What was the math behind that? He was like, that just sounded good. It's less than what it was. All right, well, let's go a little less. That's personal opinion. I do think that pushing, truly, I know you said I don't want to push people to SunRail. I do. As we see those SunRail numbers improve, the ridership numbers improve, and they are improving, in addition to the Scout... contributions, they are improving along the entire system. So, period. And that new paragraph. I really want to see us start presenting at our SunRail board meetings what the Scout ridership is. LINCS presents, VO-RIDE presents. As you know, there's been quite a bit of narrative around Scout and its proficiencies here in the Central Florida area, and some of the narrative has just not been terribly accurate. So to have, because our transportation partners in the region need to know what we are accomplishing and what is happening here from us, not from Reddit.

And that, just so you're aware, so we have been providing those numbers to FDOT and stuff. They have invited us to come. I think there's been a little lull in meetings. We are on schedule to start at the next meetings to start doing that. I think G will be the one, him or Tawny will be the ones presenting them. So we just got to figure out who that is. But we are tracking it, as you can see, and that will be something that will be occurring at those meetings.

I think that'll be critical because we are still in partnership with all of the other counties in the region in transportation. That was a question that was posed to me last week. How does this work? Are you still a partner? Absolutely, we're still a partner. Transportation around this region is too important to become isolated, and SunRail, I think, is the great opportunity for us to continue to improve that.

Commissioner Constantine. Thank you.

Thank you very much. You know, I tend to agree. I certainly agree. Let's get more people in SunRail. If the bottom line being $1 instead of $1.50, I can go along with that. But explain to people the $2.50 from the $1 again. I think you were very clear to a lot of us in our briefings, but we kind of breezed through that. So just say that a little. I mean, explain that a little bit more.

So the dollar to the $2.50, it's the other slide, if you would, the fare strike, the one before that. Okay, so what it is, it's an extra charge. So if you're riding at peak time between 7 a.m. and 9 a.m. or 4.30 and 6.30 p.m., it's a peak time. That's when rush hour is happening, and arguably from our data we can see it's actually happening earlier than that. We get a lot of people requesting it that way. We want to try to focus it on the folks that need it the most at the time they need it the most. So if you don't have to book your ride at that time, we would like to have a price in there to discourage you from going at that time. If you are randomly having a hair appointment or something like that and you can make it whenever or you're going to the park, for instance, and you can go at a different time, we would encourage you to go outside of this. So this fee increases the fee to encourage people to book those non-essential trips outside of those peak hours. Additionally, what it does is it takes people that perhaps could take another method. Perhaps they could afford to take Uber, and they're just taking this. I don't think there's massive numbers of those people, but there is a segment. There's about half of our customers that are non-discounted riders. So they have means. Does that mean that they have means that they can afford to take Uber? Maybe, maybe not. It may mean they don't qualify for a discount, but things are still tight for them. So those ones that are less tight, if they have an alternate method where it's more feasible to do something else, we would prefer them to do something else during those times. If they don't, we have a charge to, or they don't choose to, we have an additional charge during those times that adds to the ticket price for those times. If they don't want to pay it, they could wait. But if they want to go at that time and they're not a discounted rider, it would add $2.50 if the board approved it. Right now it's $1. It would increase another $1.50 during those times only.

And Christian, to be clear, is this for everyone or just for the non-discounted riders?

Non-discounted riders. And if the board approves, as it's shown in here, albeit at the dollar level, the SunRail customers, people going to and from SunRail, would also be waived from that charge.

So this is only for non-discounted, and this is what I was trying to get to, non-discounted riders.

During those times, yes, sir. During those peak hours. Yes.

Non-discounted, non-SunRail.

Non-sun rail, yes. Did you say non-discounted? He did.

We're driving it home. We want to make sure. Everybody heard.

Please, Commissioner, that's the point that I'm trying to make. Everybody, you know, it was breezed by. It needs to be pointed out. Yes, non-discounted, okay?

And, you know, non-Sunrise. Headline alert, that might not get reported. Just saying.

So, the only other thing, and I, like everyone else, The passion is wonderful. I see you've just taken this, Christian, and this is just something that's embedded into your whole DNA now. You're loving it.

I don't know about embedded. I'm a hammer and nails guy. This is a foreign country for me, but I have been enjoying it.

You are enjoying it, and your passion is admirable. The only thing that I see here that we can, other than the suggestions... that has been, again, breezed by that we can really improve is the marketing guy in me says we can make a lot more money in ad revenue. A lot more money. And the more it's getting there... Look, I see them everywhere now. And I think everybody else does. And so, therefore, those people that love to put their names all over places, should really take notice, and we should get out there and really do a much better marketing to sell, because $110,000 is minimal to what we could make from this.

Agreed. So I will bring this home before asking for a motion. I just want to point out, I don't think it was represented up there as a single number, but If you look at SunRail drop-offs, not from us to us, but from links to us, it's five-fold increase. It is a 500% increase. And that SunRail investment was significant to start out with and rubbed a lot of our citizens the wrong way when people weren't riding it for a variety of reasons. And now we are leading the region in getting people onto the SunRail that's already, I won't call it paid for, but being paid for. So it's a significant factor. And you've been thrown a lot of compliments to the freebie team, but I'm going to throw one more. Your desire to be in the data is significant. It's what's driving the efficiency. You're creating the availability of data for us that we never had before. The fact that we can identify a rider in the former system is really stunning to a lot of us. And it looks like we were at about 1,200 riders, and now we're at 3,500 riders from links to this in the current iteration, and it's probably only going up. So congrats to the whole team. Christian, thank you for leading this, letting us ask you 1,000 questions. And I just want to point out that if you haven't been on a Teams call with Christian, His background is him in a Lynx. Scout. Oh, my gosh. Him in a scout ride, yes, in a non-Lynx ride.

Chairman, could I add one thing real quick? Yes, please. And I won't belabor it. It is working, and I know we're in it day in and day out. Christian is. I also want to thank G back here, too. He's our transit manager. But working with a great partner like Freebie, Jason, and Claudia, we work with a lot of people for them to take Christian's call as much as they do. I thank you for that. But the highlight, I recently watched the mayoral debate in Orange County. It was a couple weeks ago. Two of the four that were running, they complimented Scout on how innovative it is about getting out, not getting out of the buses, but adding alternative transportation. So you know when you have candidates that are running that are actually complimenting what we're doing here in Seminole County, it's meaningful in the region. Thank you, Christian, and thanks to the board for your support about moving this forward.

So we've doubled ridership and we've saved about $1.7 million. Do I hear a motion?

Move to approve Scout Microtransit service fare and discount structure changes as presented herein with the reduction to $1 for delivery to SunRail instead of the proposed $1.50? Second.

First, we've got a public comment, Chairman. Thank you. Thank you. Public comments, please. One speaker, Leslie Grubel.

She needs to just wave those things in front of you.

I can't possibly have any more reminders, and I still miss it. I'm just going to own it. I can't possibly have any more reminders.

Leslie Grooval, Longwood, Florida, 32779. I can't keep my mouth shut. I have a couple of thoughts, but on microtransit, I did have a concern that was brought from one of the missions up in Sanford, trying to have their homeless population be able to get to jobs. and the comment was their concern that they have not consistency in terms of the time picked up. Not that I think the microtransit is absolutely fantastic as for its individuality, but for those who are trying to look at consistency to be able to utilize its services for jobs, just a thought. A comment also on how amazing watching the JEDA conversations. To those who listen in to these meetings, just a comment about how Home Rule and how these discussions are an absolute example of how it is so important that we have home rule and we allow our public to be able to come up and speak to you all and see the responses and the concern that you show. My last comment will be on the legislative issues, perhaps not in this time period for public comment, but just that I am so hoping that our legislative lobbyists are looking at the mandated Issues that are being sent from the state and I've mentioned this before but looking at those slides and those Those things that they're telling you to do that some of them we already do like you say when you were publishing What's the budget and that kind of thing? But they do these things, and then they ask you to do them. And whether it costs you anything or not doesn't seem to matter. And I'm hoping those public who watch this will please speak to your representatives about these mandates. And the last thought is I'm hoping that LINCS has addressed somewhere along the line their costs that they initiated on the system for this county. And I hope that they have come to some reconsideration. Thank you. Thank you.

We appreciate you being here, and I'm going to wrap that all under the microtransit subject matter. So we appreciate you not having to wait anymore to say those last few little things. With that, we have a first and a second. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Hearing none. Passes unanimously. Thank you. And in reference to your comment, I do sit on the Homeless Board, Rescue Outreach Mission Board, And we do have ongoing discussions with that. It's a planning situation.

And, Madam Chair, that is correct. As soon as the Public Safety Council Board, that was brought up about the jail and how they get transportation. And we've had discussions with them that they would be best served to do better planning to schedule their rides.

Right. It's a planning situation. Well, I guess we're on to the next item. Bringing it home. Come on, Tricia Johnson. Talk to us about boards and committees, our favorite topic.

Right. I'm not sure I'm quite as passionate about boards and committees as Christian is about Scout, but we'll give it a shot. So thank you for the record, Tricia Johnson, Deputy County Manager. Today I'd like to discuss several proposed updates to the county's boards and committees program. The purpose of today's discussion is to receive your direction on a few policy questions before staff finalizes an administrative code update. Over the past several months, staff have listened to your feedback and reviewed our boards and committees program in its entirety. We've identified several opportunities to improve consistency across boards, clarify appointment procedures, and modernize some of our practices. I'll begin with a brief overview of our current boards and committees program, followed by an update on our legislature appointment interface. We'll then discuss three policy topics, board member term limits, appointment processes, and membership requirements. What I would like to do is go through the presentation in its entirety and then go back to the discussions that require your direction just in case some of them tie together and may assist you with some of your decision making. Seminole County currently has 15 advisory boards and committees administered through this process. To clarify, this process only includes these boards, not those boards that are appointed by the chairman or this commission on an annual basis, typically in December. These boards provide valuable expertise and citizen input on a wide variety of topics, including planning, historic preservation, tourism, libraries, housing, and agriculture. Collectively, these boards are made up of approximately 120 members. The appointment process is administered by the agenda and board services coordinator, Ms. Dominique Draeger, in collaboration with your offices, and your aides have been involved in various conversations about this process. I just want to mention that similar to the operating policies and procedures that this board has, we are endeavoring to create a section of the administrative code specific to boards and committees. Many of you and your aides have said, I can't find information in one spot about boards and committees. I find it in statute. I find it in ordinance. I find it in admin code. Can we just put it all together? So that is our intention, and we're hoping to finish that process once we get your direction today. Regarding the Legistar interface, commissioners, staff, and members of the public can view this system. It requires no login, and it covers board membership, vacancies, minutes, agendas. And so if you have questions about what boards may have vacancies or would like to view the minutes from a last meeting, you can access them at the Legistar interface. You'll see here that this is a list of our planning and zoning meetings. Here is a schedule of those meetings along with the agenda and minutes attached. Not all of our boards and committees have agendas and minutes attached on Legislature yet. That is part of the training process with our directors and board liaisons. And finally, you can see the members of Planning and Zoning and their attendance records. You can also go to another location in this interface to see board vacancies. Next, I'd like to talk about term limits. This will begin the slides where we will request some feedback from the board. Through various discussions, the topic of term limits for representatives of various boards have developed. Only three of our current boards have term limits. That's the Parks and Preservation Advisory Board, the Libraries Advisory Board, and the Committee on Aging. As part of the admin code update, we'd like to get your feedback regarding whether term limits should be implemented when possible. We've outlined three options for your consideration. First, being maintain the existing approach. The second, standardize where appropriate, meaning we would, in that administrative code section I just mentioned, have a standard term limit for all boards that do not already have one in place. We have not recommended what that standard would look like yet, could be four years on a board and then a year off, and then they could be reappointed again. We just at this point want to talk about term limits and get your thoughts on those in general. And option three is customize term limits by board. We'd work with the director of the county manager's office to come up with recommendations and then bring them back to this board. So that is the information regarding term limits. Next, I'd like to talk about the appointment process. Today, appointment methods vary depending on the board. Some positions are district appointments, others are appointed by this board at large, and others rotate among commission offices. For the members of the public watching, let me just explain this slide to you a bit. This represents some boards that we currently have rotating seats. So if a board has more than five seats, five of those seats are appointed by each district commissioner. If a board has seven seats, those remaining two seats are currently appointed through a rotational process. So I won't go through each line for you, but one commissioner may appoint to planning and zoning in a year through the district appointment. And then per this chart, they may have an appointment to planning and zoning two years later through the rotating process. The challenge with rotational appointments is by happenstance you will have some commissioners appointing two seats in one year. That's just the way this falls out. And so we have received feedback that that may be a concern. So one remedy to that is if a commissioner has a district appointment to a particular board in one year and it happens to fall the same year as their rotational appointment, We skip that commissioner for the rotational, go to the next commissioner in line, and when the next rotational appointment opens up, we would then go back to the commissioner that was skipped, and they would appoint to that seat. So that is one option. Now going back to appointments overall, we have three options for your consideration. Additional seats are considered at large to be selected by the BCC. Any applications we receive would be given to the board, and you would vote on them. to pick an individual for that open seat. Option two, use the rotational process that we just discussed. Option three, department staff in the accounting manager's office can evaluate applications, select an individual for that open seat, and then bring it back to this board for ratification. You do do something like this with the Committee on Aging. staff in community services and the county manager's office makes recommendations and you ratify that, that would also be the same for the building code board of approvals board. Or option four, limit the number of seats on each board to five or 10 when possible.

That seems easy.

I'm sorry?

That seems like the easier path of least resistance.

I wish that was true. Yes, in some circumstances, taking a board from seven seats to five is the answer. The challenge with that is meeting quorum can be a challenge. I feel like I'm saying challenge too much, I apologize. Doubling to 10 seats would mean every commissioner has two district appointments. That is possible in some boards. Some boards, the number of seats is set by statute. So what we would do, if that were the direction of this board, is to come back to you and show you what boards, where it's possible to go to five or 10, So I'm going to use planning and zoning as an example. Right now we have seven. We couldn't go up. I don't believe we'd go down to five. So we just would have to consider what that would mean in terms of meeting a quorum. These are the appointment process options. And finally, membership requirements. Currently applications, the applicants complete an application online and they also must be county residents. Some other requirements for them could be board specific. You're familiar with the Tourist Development Council. Three of those seats have to be hoteliers. The Building Code Board of Appeals requires certain type of contractors for seats, but not all boards have those type of requirements. This board has brought up some thoughts on doing background checks and or requiring that individuals who would like to sit on these boards be a registered voter. If the board is interested in pursuing background checks, I want to provide some practical considerations. Background checks require applicants provide their social security number and do result in an additional cost of about $32. We currently require our volunteers to go through a background check, volunteers for various departments. We would work with the supervisor of elections office to ascertain voter registration. With that, I can go back to the areas for your feedback, but just want to finalize by saying our goal is to bring back an updated section of the administrative code to you for your approval. We then want to ensure that all of our boards have bylaws and that they are standardized, and some of that will go through the admin code process and some of it will be specific to board. We also have heard a lot of feedback from this board about training for our directors and board liaisons with respect to building relationships with their board members, helping filling those vacant seats, bringing recommendations forward to you. And we certainly intend to do more of that training as in particular with Legistar as well. And then also board member training. We know it's important that our volunteers understand why they're on a board and what their job is. Sometimes they feel a little confused in that space, so that is a priority as well. So I will go back to our first topic, term limits.

So I'm going to... jump in here just with a comment that I think there's a step in this that I would also like to get your indulgence on, and that is that, and I think it's been asked on the dais before, so this should not be new, but it's the concept of taking it back to 100,000 feet What's the value of the board? Does the value still exist? What have we done as a result of that board involvement that we wouldn't have done without that board involvement? And an evaluation of, do we even need all of these boards? Especially as we go into this concept of what we need to cut in terms of services, these are expensive to manage. It's not the $32 for the background check. It's the amount of staff work that goes into staffing these meetings, et cetera, et cetera. So I know I've had a lot of feedback from several of the boards, as I think others have had, that they didn't feel like anything they did actually moved the needle any. And that could be because we can't move the needle here. And so why are we putting them through that? Commissioner Zimbauer?

Thank you, Madam Chair. I'm happy to have that discussion and review. I don't know that I'm prepared to do it today. I would like a lot more information regarding that.

Well, that wasn't the request. It wasn't to do it today. It was the request not actually that we do it. My request was that the team does it, the directors of the departments that have these committees, boards, all of it. It starts with that team and then comes to us. So that's the request. I think it's for us to decide on, but I don't think it's for us to evaluate at the beginning stages. Commissioner Constantine? Did you have your hand up?

I didn't know if he was finished. But if he is, then on that note, it's kind of like the flip side, although I agree, and that is having meaningful responsibility.

Exactly.

That they have meaningful responsibility. Yes. Flip side, cost, yes, but meaningful responsibility. And if that board has it, then we should provide it. On term limits, I'm just going to say this. So hold on. We're not there. Okay, I'm sorry.

We are not there. We are going to do this in order because there's a meaningful process here. Yes, Commissioner Delaney.

I would agree with your statement, and I have no problem with staff reviewing it and bringing it back to us at a later date.

Awesome.

Would love staff review.

Awesome. All right, Tricia, take it away and take us orderly through the concepts, and we are going to nail this thing.

I will say, to your point, that part of the evaluation will be with our director meetings, but also some of our boards just may meet too often. We have some boards that meet monthly, and bi-monthly or even quarterly may be a better option for them to have more robust agendas. So that will be a part of the discussion as well. So where we need your direction first is with respect to term limits, these three options for your consideration, or if you have a fourth.

Okay, you want to go?

Yep, we'll start with you.

I'm not a hypocrite. No term limits if we don't need them.

Option one. One.

I think we should have either term limits or the ability to have very meaningful input from the board around just continuing people on these boards.

Let me give some thought to that.

Can I get to Commissioner Lockhart first? Thank you.

So which are the three boards that currently have term limits? Library Advisory Board, Parks and Preservation Advisory Board, and the Committee on Aging.

And what was the rationale behind giving those three specific boards term limits? Do we know? I'm afraid I don't know that answer.

Okay. I'll bring it back to you. If anyone does happen to know that history, I'm not quite sure. Okay.

i'm i hear commissioner constantine loud and clear it feels hypocritical to have term limits when we don't have term limits we can certainly replace people on boards and appoint people you know every four years we come up for reelection we can be voted out every four years or some of these are two years we can appoint new people um so in in terms of being consistent and having a standardized approach, could we evaluate or have staff evaluate whether or not term limits on those boards have been valuable? Because I feel like it should be consistent. And if we currently have three that do, but most do not, maybe we need to look at the consistency of that and not just do it because we've always done it and we don't know why we did it.

And Madam Chair, if I could, personal experience. The best person by the staff talking to me that was on the library board, I had to replace because of term limits. Same thing with parks. The very most active person on parks, it was term limits. Now, one of them also said, Lee, I'm just through. And that's just like elections. We can replace them. So I think a standardized approach of either if we don't have to by statute or by our own governing body ordinance, I don't see we have to have term limits. We can do that ourselves. That's our responsibility.

So I agree. But I also think that Commissioner Herr has a very good point that we need to be very intentional about the appointments that we put on these boards. Because frankly, sometimes Some individuals play well in the sandbox with others and some don't. And the intent of these boards is to bring a cohesive, collaborative spirit that supports our staff, that gives us good recommendations, where the collective work coming out of these boards is positive. And I've just heard more than a handful of anecdotes from people who serve on these boards that some of our appointees are cantankerous, and they're hard to work with. And so I think we owe it to the other volunteers on these boards to make sure we're appointing people who really work well with people. They don't have to agree, certainly. We have diversity of opinion constantly up here, but I'm just hearing it more frequently than I would like to hear it.

Well, and I'll add that I think So we're at no term limits. Then we have to have an official feedback loop on our appointees.

Meaningful responsibility.

Meaningful responsibility, exactly. Measured meaningful responsibility. And that includes the cantankerous nature of some. That includes, do they still live here? That includes, because right now it's a free-for-all. We have to figure it out. And that can't be how this works.

And also reporting back attendance to your offices.

And I should be able to go into Legistar and figure out what the attendance is. And I think we're headed in that direction. Exactly. But I'm messaging that out because not all directors are on there yet. So we're getting there. But that's going to be the expectation.

Okay. Thank you. Next, the board appointment process. We have laid out four options. Again, we are open to suggestions or a hybrid of any of these.

Which way are we going to go? We'll start on this end. Thank you for that offer, Commissioner Constantine.

Oh, gosh. I do think that there's value in having district appointments. I don't think that every appointment should be a board appointment, but then that brings calls into question, why are we all voting to ratify one another's appointments? So the process that we have in place is this is your district appointment, but then we have to bring our district appointment for approval and vote by the whole board for that ratification, which is where things, it's either the district commissioner's purview or maybe it's not. I mean, I think we're in a hybrid weird spot right now with the process. So if we're going to do district appointments, don't ask me to ratify somebody else's appointment, right? Back at you. Right? I mean, you may love John Q. It's true. I may not love John Q. Public. But it's your appointment. And so don't ask me my opinion and my vote unless you want to hear it. You may not want to hear it. I think we've experienced that so far this last year. So I would just say let's be consistent about what we're going to do. If there are at-large appointments that we have to appoint people at-large because of whatever process, then we can figure out, we know how to deal with that. The rotational appointments, I think, are a nightmare. I do not envy Dominique or whoever it is that has to figure that out. I think that's just miserable. So however we can do away with rotational appointments, I'm up for that discussion. I think that was it. Does that help or does that just muddy the water?

No, I'm ready. I'm with you.

Commissioner Constantine, go for it. No rotations.

It's a nightmare. I agree 100%. It's also asking you to ratify somebody else because they'll come back to you. I was appointed by this person. Now it's your appointment. And you may have somebody else that you want. know that I see 5 and 10 as a great option, 5 if we need them, 10 if we have to have more people to appointments. If a committee needs to have a guarantee odd number then make the one person at large and i don't see that as a problem but five and ten is great therefore i have one or i have two i know it i know every year or every year comes up i have it i'm not looking at you know having to appoint commissioner zimbauer or commissioner deloria or anybody else's rotation that i may not know nor understand whose turn it is

I'm option three. I think the people that are running these committees need to be making the recommendations of people that have interest, et cetera. That's not abdicating our responsibility, but it's putting it into, in essence, an accountability level that's different. We still would have the ability to vote. We still have the ability to say no. In my instance, I would say we should be submitting several names for consideration, and that works well in the places where we're doing it. Some of that is because we have to do it that way. Some of that is because it's actively happening that way for the betterment of the committee. We're not in these meetings. So I think that's the most effective method. It's probably the least political method, which I'm also a fan of. Commissioner Delary.

Thank you, Madam Chair. I think a hybrid would be appropriate, where we actually have five district appointees, and then the two, because there are seven, they're at large, and then we all appoint those two.

And do away with the rotational.

Do away with the rotational. I mean, there's still seven. Where each person appoints one, and then the two that are potentially rotation, they're appointed at large by the board.

And I want to understand, Commissioner, your suggestion. See, a lot of these boards are the subject of ideas of the people. And therefore, I don't want the department staff who already have an inordinate amount of authority over those boards to then pick the people that are going to give them recommendations. And I didn't know if that was what you were suggesting. That's not what I was saying. Okay, good. I was misunderstanding, so please.

Again, not giving responsibility away for that selection. I still, as the appointing board member, want to make that selection. But I would welcome their educated involvement in that process. And it Absent of formalizing that, that is going to happen happenstance.

Like the fact that I will call them and ask them before I make an appointment? Well, not all of us would, number one.

And number two, not all of them would feel comfortable saying, I am going to continue to search for folks to be in the queue. I mean, really, the pool of talent ought to be as big as possible as opposed to what we're doing now.

I don't know if I would feel comfortable in formalizing that, because then it's putting another layer, if you will. I mean, it should be a common sense to ask them. And you're right. And you're right, probably. I can't speak for anybody else, but I do. But still, formalizing that then puts them in a position. potentially uncomfortable for them, but potentially where I feel uncomfortable, I have to ask them, well, is this person all right for you? That's all I'm saying.

Yeah, I wasn't doing it in reverse.

Okay.

Yep. Did you get what you needed on that one? I'm afraid not.

I knew the answer to that.

Rotations are out.

You didn't get that. Rotations are out. I'm super excited about that. And we skipped commissioners in Bauer, so I'm sorry. I do have a clarifying also for you.

I'm not a fan of three. I am a fan of two. If you want to do a hybrid with two at large when necessary, I'd be fine with that.

So item number two, Commissioners and Bowers, utilize rotational appointments.

Correct.

So you're a fan of rotational appointments.

Absolutely. If the will of the board is they want to do... How would you suggest that? Same way we currently do it. Just track it.

I think we have four no's on that and one yes on that one. And we have the inverse on number three. We have four no's on that number three, so I'm out on number three.

Yeah, everybody doesn't climb Mount Everest. I got it. So as far as staff direction and oversight, when we get to the next one, I think we're going to have that already, which is gathering the applications, I'm going to be an advocate of one of those when we get to that at least. I think that gives staff some oversight vetting the process for us. But for the same reasons Commissioner Constantine mentioned, I'm not a fan of formalizing option three.

So let me. make an attempt to provide clarity. And you guys, I know, will stop me if I'm not right. But we like the notion of five or ten when possible. When five or ten are not possible, then we go to five and at large for the others. Is that kind of where we are?

And sometimes the governing documents dictate on those boards how that is done.

Understood.

Which is in contrast to something that's already here. So that's going to have to be dealt with as well.

Yes.

And I will say the two boards that I think All of them, you know, have varying degrees of success. The two boards that we are depending on the most for the most important suggestions right now are the five and the two. That's correct.

That is ARC. Board of Adjustments.

And that is, well, I'm thinking ARC, and I'm also thinking of the planning and zoning. And so, you know, what you suggested, that makes sense. What Commissioner Delory suggested makes sense. If you don't need to go to 10, then the 5 and 2. If you do need to go to 10, then the 1, 11.

Yeah, I would not be an advocate expanding to 10. It's hard enough getting a board put together with 7 or 5.

I said if you have to. And I'm not suggesting you have to, but I'm saying if you have to, then it would be the 10 and the 1.

Yeah. Back to you, Tricia. I believe so. I believe so, yes. Thank you. And finally... Membership requirements. What we're looking for, your feedback on our background checks and or registered voter confirmation.

I'd keep the required current requirements. I wouldn't have to go into the additional options. Oh, I'm a fan of background checks.

I'm a fan of both.

Ditto. If their privacy can be maintained when it comes to voter registration, even though we can get it any way. It's public record. I think they should be registered voter in the county.

And a background check?

I'm not taking out the background check. I'm just saying I think that they should be registered voters. If they are going to be volunteers for boards that will be back to the people of Seminole County, I think they should be voters.

Can we do a survey with them? Because I imagine if we start asking for this, people are going to be dropping off. We're going to have a harder time to get people to volunteer.

I'm not a fan of the registered voter requirement. I'm not either. All right.

Let's do them independently. Background check. All in favor? All right, you got three. Registered voter, all in favor? You got three. You got three. Okay.

We work together.

And then I do think we need to create a feedback loop.

County resident, everybody agrees with that?

County resident's a requirement. Yes, that is, yes.

I have a legal question, if I may, to the county attorney. With these two issues, background check and voter registration, you see any issues with it?

That's a very broad question, but I don't have any legal concerns with it.

At my point, legally you have no issues with it?

Correct. Okay.

That's my question.

Madam Chair.

Yes.

The one thing that's not on here that I would like to address is the way we show appreciation to these board members. You know, it's not lost on me that we write a thank you letter, and sometimes it's after they've served on multiple boards or multiple terms. I would really like this board to consider doing something more significant, whether that's an annual luncheon or... We used to do that. Some kind of means of letting these board members interact with each other as well as staff and us and really show that appreciation. I mean, it's hard enough to get people to give up their free time to attend these boards. And I think with this process... There'll be less of that because if we actually get the boards working, whether we need to meet quarterly or once a month, more effective and efficient, then those people will be more apt to serve and their time's not being wasted. So just a thought process. I'd like us to consider some kind of... appreciation more than just, hey, thanks for being a citizen and serving on this board. Thanks for the memories.

Agreed. And Madam Chair, one last thing for me. On the application, have any of you really seen the application? Keep it simple. I think it's too extensive. I'm not going to be specific about it, but I just think the application right now is a little bit more extensive than we need.

I find it valuable when I don't know the individual for me to pour through that data. That's my only benefit from it. I mean, if I know the person either from business relationship or social relationship or whatever it might be, I have a pretty good idea of who they are, what they do, and what their capabilities are. I find that information valuable.

But I'm taking it from what Commissioner Lockhart has said and said, you know, maybe you all shouldn't have to appoint, approve my person. Sure. You know, vice versa. And, you know, I know everybody's different. I have a very extensive personal, extensive process. And, in fact, if I don't think anybody's qualified, I don't appoint anybody, period, until I find that person. So that's why I'm sitting there. I don't know if we – the application – In deference to you, if it's helpful, it just hasn't been helpful to me.

I find it helpful as well. I find it helpful as well in the current iteration. And I truly do believe that if you want to serve on one of these boards or committees, that you ought to be willing to answer those questions.

I just thought it was too extensive. That's all I'm saying. I have no problem with an application.

Anything else we can do for you today? No, thank you very much. Greatly. Thank you. You're ahead. Leave while you're ahead. Thank you for all the work on that.

Yes, thank you.

Don't for one minute underestimate how difficult that is. How many times have we discussed it?

Too many.

Do we need public comment on that item?

No.

That takes us to the county attorney's report. I have no report today. That's awesome. Wow. County managers report.

Oh, you're not going to say I'm awesome. But just one item. You all a month ago had asked regarding the moratorium on data centers. Just want to give you an update. I have our team over in Development Services researching that. We're going to review it with the county attorney's office, and I will be bringing that back to you very shortly. So just to give you an update. Thank you.

Fabulous. Thank you. Commissioner Lockhart, you're up. I had the opportunity to go down to the Orlando Economic Partnership for the changing of His Majesty's Consuls General. Yeah, I didn't know that was a thing until... Did you wear your Scottish outfit? I didn't. I should have. There were folks there in kilts, and I felt very, very left out. But it was also sponsored by the British American Business Council of Central Florida, talked about all of the trade that is happening in Central Florida between us and Great Britain. And just by happenstance, this event had been planned, and it wound up being the same day as the World Cup game between England and... Was it France? Who was it? Argentina. Argentina. So Darren was whispering me the wrong country for the record. I felt like it was Argentina. That's okay. Anyway, and fortunately or unfortunately, depending on how you looked at it, I left before the game was over, so I didn't get to stick around. But it was a wonderful event and great to see so many business leaders there talking about how much we do outside of our borders in terms of bringing – economic development to Central Florida. I'm gonna skip a couple, well, I'm gonna say one thing that is really kind of silly, but Patty put it on my report, so I have to share it because this is for Commissioner Herr. Today is National Milk Chocolate Day. I am not a milk chocolate fan. I am a dark chocolate fan. But Commissioner Herr loves milk chocolate. So today is your day. A celebration is in order. That's right. So I do want to talk about see if there is interest in pulling together an executive session on collective bargaining. I know we've had a couple of letters that have gone back and forth. We have, as a board, not had an opportunity to talk to one another and give direction to the county manager, and I think it would be very helpful for us to have some conversation, bring our labor council to the meeting so that we can ask questions of him directly and all of us hear the answers that are given. I think that we would all benefit from that.

Feedback?

Oh. With all due respect, I think the letter that was outlined by our county manager to them in the collective bargaining agreement was sufficient. I think it is also proper because it is starting in January of 27. And in the light of the property tax, I think I would be opposed to opening up anything at the current time.

For clarification, I'm asking for an executive session for the five of us to have that conversation with our bargaining team and our labor attorney.

I'm sorry, I misunderstood.

That's okay. That conversation hasn't been had by us collectively. That's all I'm asking for.

Does that qualify for a shade meeting?

Yes, there's an exception, an exemption from the Sunshine Law for meetings between the board and the county manager regarding collective bargaining.

So question. Purpose. Do we have a concern that management has not been capable of putting these negotiations together and been successful in such? Well, we're not in negotiations.

We're not in negotiations.

Understood.

And so I think I have not talked to our labor attorney. I have some questions I would like to ask, and I think it would be beneficial for all of us to be there as a part of the conversation. Our county manager and the bargaining team are bargaining on our behalf. but without our collective direction right now. So I just think it would send a good message to everyone that this is important for the five of us to have conversations about it so that we can give direction to the county manager and our bargaining team so that they know where we are. I'm not suggesting that anything has been improper or not done well in any way, shape, or form, but it's... It is odd to go, for me, having been a part of two other organizations that actively collectively bargain with multiple units, to not have had a session with management, the five of us, and our team to give direction. It is a very unique situation from my perspective.

Understood. But by default, this board is blessing whatever terms Whatever management through negotiations have ever had, we have to bless that, correct? No.

They have to bargain what we direct.

Correct, but it comes before the Board of County Commission to be approved.

Right, but I think we're missing a step. Would the county attorney care to address or someone care to address what the order of process is?

Quick. I have seen it both ways. So other organizations that I have worked in, it's not unusual for the board and the bargaining team, including the county manager or county attorney, to sit down and lay out the strategy with the board and how you want us to move forward with the union. So that has happened in a couple organizations. This one, I just never have. They've never done it. However, as you know, when the negotiations happen, I brief each and every one of you for your input. So what Commissioner Lockhart's requesting is not unusual with bargaining units. Understood.

Commissioner Constantine. Can I just ask? But that was usually when negotiations begin.

Correct.

When the contract's expiring and we are planning to do that. At the current time, that was planned to start in January of 27. Correct. Because it is still under contract and not even to the point that we would start negotiating. And I appreciate what Commissioner Lockhart is asking for, but I think it should be done at that time that we should have the sit down with, okay, it's coming up. Here's the strategy. And not, it's almost like, you know, a football or baseball negotiation when they want, okay, I got a year left in my contract, but I want to start a contract for the next contract two years from now, now. And I'm saying, no, in my personal opinion, we have a contract now. That contract negotiation for the next contract should begin in January, and I think what she's asking for should be done then.

I'm sorry. Some deference, if you don't mind. I think there are some things we need to talk about with our labor attorney that we are not all fully aware of between now and January.

So what I was going to say was, I actually think the notion, first of all, is not business as usual anymore. The state has changed that. And that's driving the behavior on both sides of this equation, of this negotiation. So having the opportunity to sit down with our team, with the labor attorney at the same time, is probably a very healthy process. The timing of that, I would suggest, would be partially driven by our team in terms of when the most effective time for that would be. And I would suggest it probably should be driven by the labor attorney to some degree. So I don't necessarily want to dictate timing from here, given that we haven't put too much thought into that. But the notion of sitting together and understanding where it is we think we're heading, given new legislation that's potentially happening and maybe has already happened is probably a good opportunity. I actually think it will in the long term when the contract comes back help us actually move the thing along better.

Madam Chair?

Yes.

In the past, when we did have a contract expire, almost similar to what Commissioner Constantine said, we had these meetings where it was the year that we started negotiations. Before we started negotiations, we actually had a shade meeting to discuss what the premise of that negotiations could be or should be. But that's almost a little bit too early right now. But if the legal team feels that we should be meeting sooner, I understand. I think that it's a little bit too early to do right now because you have the contracts come and due in 2027. In the letter that I read, it said that they'll be meeting early, either January or February. I would imagine as we get close to January or February, we would have this meeting to understand what the negotiations could be or should be. But since we're a couple of months before that, I think it's just a little bit too premature.

I would only say if there is, and I'm not saying it does, but I've served with this group of commissioners for quite a few years. It sounds like the commissioner has a concern and has some awareness that I believe She thinks it's important enough that we understand what that is sooner rather than later. So if that's genuinely the case, I'm fine with that. Totally fine with that.

Thank you. All right. Back to you for the rest of your report. Is there consensus? Do we have direction? I think there's consensus. I think there's consensus that we are having the meeting, and I think there's consensus on sooner rather than later, depending on the labor attorney's availability.

Okay, thank you. I genuinely appreciate that. That's all I have for my report.

All right. Commissioner DeLauro, you're up.

I have one item, Madam Chair, and I wanted to put out a huge kudos to our county staff. Last Thursday, they had the high school football media day. It was phenomenal. This is the second year that they've done it. I think our staff has done a phenomenal job. I know Commissioner Lockhart was there. I know I said hello to you, but I couldn't spend much time with you because I had another engagement. I heard you did a phenomenal job on your interviews.

He dropped me like a hot potato is what he did.

What do you mean? I'm complimenting you.

Thank you.

I think you did a good job from what I've heard. I think the staff's done a great job. I think it's nice to see these young people understand what Media Day is and how to promote themselves. I think there's a lot of kudos going around. That was at Seminole State on the ground floor, and it was amazing to see all the different vendors and to see all these young people there. And I just want to say kudos.

Well done.

End of my report.

All right. Commissioner Zimbauer.

Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I don't have a whole lot to report. I've been enjoying my grandchildren for 10 days outside the country on a fishing trip. Enjoyed chasing a three- and seven-year-old around. Reminds me it's not for people my age to be doing on a daily, all-day basis. Outside of that, I attended the state of the school luncheon yesterday. I know that some of my fellow commissioners were there. That's some good news out of the school system. They're doing well and performing at high standards and better this year than they were last year within the rankings. So all that's good news. The one item of concern that I do have that I want to speak to my fellow commissioners while we're here and the county manager while we're in session. even though we discussed Jetta Point today, I'm not certain that our management has full direction on what's happening with Jetta Point. You know, I go back and I understand the agenda item was not for the surplusing of the property. I got all that. Right. The two sort of go hand in hand as you saw the public's interest today. But we've made a promise more than once that it was going to be surplused. I think it's unfair to leave today without either a plan or some direction to staff. Are we going to... uphold the promise we made to the taxpayers and what's to happen with that property, or are we going to do something different or some hybrid version thereof? I think our staff needs – fairness needs direction. This has been lingering now. I know Commissioner Lockhart and I voted on this in the first or second year we were here. It had been going on long before that. So I would just like – us to give direction to staff to either you're doing nothing with it now and we can tell the public we're doing nothing or we're going to uphold the promise we made or we're doing something different there in between.

So from a framing perspective for the conversation I think it's a little bit different than that. I think the promise that was made a million years ago to surplus a piece of land is can be upheld in a lot of different ways. It doesn't necessarily have to be upheld by liquidating the property immediately. I personally would like for the team to take away what we heard today, interact with all of the other places that were involved in this, because it's extremely complicated based on the location and the jurisdictions and the nature of the land and all of the stuff, and come back with what some good solutions may be. I don't know that we have to give a directive right now on this is how it should be based on just lack of information that we have.

Okay, so the next question I have is how are we funding the improvements at Rolling Hills? Where's that money coming from? Because it was to come from surplusing this property as well as transferring the easements Do we have an answer or an idea at this point?

We brought that to the board a couple months ago that we would be using the one penny for the development of Rolling Hills. In its entirety. I believe, where's Tim? Is he here? Did we have any ARPA funds for that? can't remember but we have it slated for the one penny i know that was on on our list for the okay and if there's other any other funding i'll let you know i'll we'll check that but right now our direction was to move forward with the penny okay i'm sure can i answer commissioner i believe that commissioner zimbabwe is correct our staff should be given some sort of direction

I, for one, would like to see a plan put together with all the different options so that we can understand all the pros and cons, almost what you said. I'm saying the same thing.

And then give direction.

Yeah, we're just giving different words. But I'm just trying to help it along a little bit, Madam Chair. I think there's a lot of different options. about Jetta Point and Rolling Hills was to cover the basic cost of the acquisition and then some of the improvements. So there is that $4 million worth of the acquisition that we still have to figure that out. But I think that there are a lot of different ways to do this. I would like to have staff give us the options. work with all the different departments that are out there, as the chairman said, and bring us back a couple different plans, and we can actually articulate it amongst ourselves to give you full direction.

And in there, I think, could be a liquidation opportunity to another entity. Absolutely.

City of Winter Springs, absolutely. What kind of time do you think is fair for staff to bring that back to the board?

I mean, we could do this as quick or as, I mean, there's only a couple other options, so a good 30 days or so, 30 to 45 days, we could come back, or even two months, we could come back with options. 60 days. Yeah, 60.

Okay. Fair enough. I'd like for you to report back to us at the next meeting how much time you think you really need. Sure. There may be a little more issues here because there's an entrance issue, there's a drainage issue, there's wildlife issues. I want to make sure that we understand all of that. Cool. Yeah. Fair enough. Okay. Yep. That's all I have.

All right. Commissioner Constantine.

Yes, and I'm only going to discuss one thing today, and that is I wanted all of you to be aware that the National Association of Counties meeting was a week ago. A lot of discussion was on AI. John Slott was there with me, going to various meetings. And he can report on, if he wants, not now, but whenever at the time that's appropriate. But I really thought that it's always meaningful to see how many diverse the 3,000 counties in the nation are. The problems are so similar. Oh, yeah. Land use. Everybody, every state in some form or fashion is trying to take away the local government's rights, trying to reduce property tax, not their taxes, but our taxes. And so AI, also I made a report at part of the thing was on the Opioid Summit. And Seminole County was one of the counties that was highlighted. And I made a report on that and talked to a number of people that came up that were interested in what we are doing. And then also, in addition to Chocolate Milk Day, it is World Nature Conservation Day.

Chocolate Milk Day is a different day. I'll celebrate that as well.

Oh, I thought it was chocolate milk day. I'm sorry. Milk chocolate. Milk chocolate day. Oh, well, that was also Commissioner Zimbauer's best day of his life in that, but also World Nature Conservation Day.

You could eat your milk chocolate while out in nature.

Protecting the wildlife.

Protecting and conserving wildlife.

As long as you don't litter.

There you go.

All good. Thank you.

That's it. All right. So congratulations to the Seminole County Chamber and Seminole County Public Schools. That was a great event yesterday. I think it was the most broadly attended, a sellout event. Also, a big congrats to the Seminole County Chamber. They have been named one of three Communications Excellence Best in Show winners by the ACCE, the Association of Chambers of Commerce Executives. for its Chamber Works video series, which was a unique campaign that they ran. We are the only chamber that has ever won that without being a regular attendee of that event, which is a fairly significant international event. And it recognizes a lot of our own community partners, like Pet Rescue by Judy, Hollerbox, the Zoo, In Bloom Florist, Mechanical One, and the UCF Business Incubator. So pretty cool operation. And then I'll switch to the chairman's report and just let you know that our one and only Mr. Paul Partica has accepted the role as alternative to the canvassing board. So we have that base covered.

Great.

And that concludes my report. I think that concludes the meeting. If there is no other public comment. I'm just going to be consistent. I'm going to give you a big stick. It won't matter. It won't matter. Public comment.

That raising the yellow flag worked pretty well. Yeah.

One speaker, it's Manuel Ruiz, if he's still here.

I think he walked out.

And I believe I know what that issue is, so I'll follow up on that. Okay.

Going once, going twice.

Going once, going twice. Manuel Ruiz, are you out in the hallway? All right, meeting adjourned. Thank you, guys. Great job.

Thank you.