PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE: Commissioner Thad Altman, Chair, District 5

Commissioner Feltner led the assembly in the Pledge of Allegiance.

Commissioner Delaney welcomed everyone to District 1, and expressed her appreciation for

everyone coming out; she thanked the Titusville City Council, City Manager, and City staff for

opening up their home to the Board tonight; there are some are some Titusville City Council,

the Mayor, and some of the City staff in the audience this evening; and she thanked

Commissioner Feltner for suggesting multiple meetings and having one in the north and one in

the south.

Commissioner District 1 Katie Delaney , Commissioner District 3

Kim Adkinson, Commissioner District 4 Rob Feltner, and

Commissioner District 5 Thad Altman

Present:

Commissioner District 2 Tom Goodson

Absent:

C.1. Presentation - Natural Resources Management Department - Virginia Barker

Vice-Chair Adkinson stated she is going to get straight into it and she introduced Virginia

Barker, Natural Resources Management Director.

Virginia Barker, Natural Resources Management Director, stated for all those who are not

regulars in this room, she is going to do a PowerPoint and it will be on these two screens and

also on the slightly larger screen behind the audience, so if someone cannot make things out,

he or she might want to turn around and look back there. She stated she has been tasked this

evening with a presentation on what the Save Our Indian River Lagoon (SOIRL) program has

been doing, the progress that they have made with projects so far, and the Lagoon’s response;

she will start with the 2016 ballot language which provided staff with their marching orders, “To

restore the Indian River Lagoon (IRL) through projects and programs designed to improve

water quality, fish, wildlife, and marine habitat, remove muck, and reduce pollution, requiring

deposit of all revenue to a Save Our Lagoon trust fund solely for such projects with citizen

committee oversight and annual independent audits.”; as she said, she is going to talk about

the projects and programs and then Vinnie Taranto, past Chair of the Citizen Oversight

Committee (COC), is going to talk about the role of that oversight committee and the annual

audits that they have had; and then there are a number of other speakers that will represent the

broader community interest and perspective in this program. She went on to say the project

plan, program, they are built around what is staff calls the four R’s, reducing the amount of

pollution that comes into the Lagoon, removing excess pollution that has built up in the Lagoon

over decades of putting too much in there, restoring the natural filtration systems, and

responding to new information and new opportunities, and revising the plan update accordingly;

in 2016, they were tasked with winning a race to save the Lagoon, but the lifeboat, much like

this cardboard boat here, was sinking; and when one's boat is sinking, one has to reduce the

water that is swamping the boat, i.e. reduce the amount of pollution that is going into the

Lagoon, one also has to bail water as fast as one can out of the boat to keep it from sinking, so

removing the decades of pollution that has accumulated there. She continued by saying they

would really like to restore the bilge pump, the natural filtration system, the filter feeders that

help provide balance when there are shocks, storms, and extreme rainfall events, and then

respond with inspections, checking out how they are doing, if they have popped a new leak that

needs to be addressed, or if they need to adjust the duct tape on the vessel. She stated the

dollars are rough for the four Rs, there are portions in the pie chart on the left; over half of the

money is going to reducing the pollution that is coming into the Lagoon, a little over a third is

going to removing the excess pollution that is already in the Lagoon, and then there is a two

percent sliver for restoring the bilge pump, and a two percent sliver for responding to new

opportunities and adjusting the plan with annual updates; the bar charts on the right show that

they have spent about $100 million of the funds so far; they have acquired $111 million in

grants, and spent about $64 million of the grant money; right now, they are managing over

$330 million worth of projects that are either in design, engineering, permitting, or construction;

when adding up the spent SOIRL funds with the dollars for the projects that are in progress,

that equals the bar that says $430 million; and they have currently collected just shy of $500

million and the projections by the end of the current tax in December is $586 million. She

mentioned the difference between the $431 million that is spent and in progress and the $586

million that is expected in total collections, those dollars are allocated to projects in the plan,

they just have not started yet; the chart on the left shows the green area, that is what has been

collected, about 85 percent of the dollars that are anticipated in the 10-year tax; the pie chart

on the right sort of shows the adage that it takes money to make money; and because this is a

sales tax, when money is collected at the checkout counter, for every dollar that the residents

are putting in, tourists who are visiting here and spending money here, are chipping in another

$0.26. She stated the grants that have been acquired so far, that provides another $0.24 and

then they are partnering with the municipalities, with other entities, with NGOs, with all sorts of

people in the community that are providing additional dollars to help get these projects done;

the utilities in particular, both stormwater and wastewater, they have funding to maintain and

operate current facilities, but the SOIRL dollars provide the extra needed to actually upgrade

those facilities to make them better instead of just continuing to operate the same old

infrastructure; on the next slide she pointed out on the left is a map and all the tiny dots are the

locations where completed projects are; one can see they are from the north end of the County

all the way to the south end of the county, they are on the mainland, Merritt Island, and the

barrier island; the list on the right side of the map are all the partners who have helped

complete these 119 projects, thus far; one can see it really takes a village; in addition to all of

these projects that are sort of neighborhood or community scale projects, they have also

partnered with over 2,000 homeowners on septic and sewer projects; a lot of people say they

do not see the projects, but that is because most of them are underground or underwater; and

if it is a stormwater baffle box or a septic to sewer project or a septic upgrade, or removing

muck, it is all underwater or underground, so the projects are not highly visible. She continued

by saying how do they decide what projects should receive funding, the first challenge is to

know what the sources of pollution are; on this slide these bar charts represent the scale of

pollution coming from each of the known major sources; the biggest bar there, the black one, is

muck flux, which is the pollution that is already in the Lagoon that has accumulated in the low

spots as muck; and as the muck breaks down, it is releasing pollution into the water column

above, and it is the single biggest source into the water column; if it is not cleaned up, it will be

there and continue to pollute the Lagoon, and they will not succeed; however, they cannot just

focus on that because if all they did was clean up yesterday’s pollution, and not stop putting too

much in, they would also not succeed; they also have to look at the at these other sources, the

smaller bars, and figure out which of those to do; the funds are allocated sort of roughly

proportional to the scale of the load, with the exception of that orange bar which is septic

systems; they are allocating more funding proportionally to addressing those septic systems

which are now actually the subject of new State rules; and she brought a copy of the plan, it is

350 pages, not many people have time to read a 350-page plan but there is this document that

is a little annual report, and there are copies of it available in the hallway. She noted what this

little annual report shows is the 14 types of projects that are funded in the plan and it goes

through each of those types and talks about how many projects there are of that type, how

much money is allocated to those projects, how much load reduction benefit is expected from

those projects, how many are completed, how many are underway, and how many are

remaining; and it is a nice little summary document that can be picked up on the way out. She

went on to say she is not going to talk about the 400 projects that are in the plan; she is not

going to talk about the 14 different project types that are in the plan, she is going to talk about

five that get the most interest and the most questions about; she will start with preventing

sewage overflows, on the slide the graphs show the runtime of lift station pumps during

different size rain events; the further to the right on each graph is a bigger and bigger rain

event and one can see when it rains, the pumps have to run longer; there is rain leaking into

the systems that the pumps at the lift stations are having to pump and when it exceeds the

capacity of the lift stations, or the conveyance pipes to keep up, that is when overflows happen;

Hurricane Irma hit Brevard County in 2017, less than a year after the voters started this

program; they were barraged by people saying how could anyone let this happen; they turned

to utilities and said the County just allocated $140 million for the last three years and frantically

lining pipes, improving infrastructure to prevent overflows, and how did this happen; they said

yes, they have lined the public infrastructure, hardened the public infrastructure , but

everybody’s individual home and/or business, they own the pipe from their structure out to the

road right-of-way; a lot of that has been in the ground since the 50s, 60s, and 70s during the

space race, and it leaks; they really need to address that and how do they do that; the answer

smoke testing, so they hired smoke testing contractors and smoke tested over 50,000 homes

in the County; when looking at the run times, after that smoke testing, one can see that they

are basically flat no matter how much it rains, the pumps are running the same amount of time;

and they are very proud of how that program has worked. She explained on the bottom right

graph, one can see it does not have the red line yet, and that is because it is special; that line is

higher because during the time that they were conducting all the smoke testing and making

over 1,200 repairs, new development happened, including things like this large senior living

facility, so the run time went up because there is more sewage in the system being addressed

by the lift station; next she will talk about septic systems; what they hear and read in the

headlines is the focus on failing septic systems, but it is not just failing septic systems that are

the problem, even a well-maintained septic system can pollute; when one flushes the toilet that

sewage goes into the tank, the solids settle at the bottom of the tank, the liquid goes out to the

drain field, and the drain field is nothing much more than pipes with a bunch of holes in them

and sand; that sewage trickles down out of the pipes, through the holes, through the sand till it

reaches the groundwater, which is constantly moving to the Lagoon; whatever one flushes or

washes down their sink is entering that ground water; and whether it is nutrients, chemicals, or

pharmaceuticals, it is polluting the Lagoon. She added that is why septic systems are

particularly important; the County has 62,000 of them and it would cost billions of dollars to

connect them all to sewer, so they set about calculating the load of each individual septic tank

in the County and then highlighted them based on how much load was coming from each one;

they gave hot colors to the ones that were polluting the most; and they looked at the map for

clusters of these hot colors. She continued by saying if one sees that big yellow patch with

some red in it, that was a cluster; they have identified over 100 clusters; they have calculated

what it would cost to bring sewer to that neighborhood, what the load reduction would benefit if

they did that, and then they could calculate the cost per pound; then they had 100 projects with

the cost per pound, the cost effectiveness, and they have prioritized and funded the ones that

give the best bang for the buck; they have also installed groundwater wells because they

wanted to make sure the models used to determine which locations were the worst, and it was

giving good information; they have placed a few wells in natural communities and that is

represented by the green bar on the slide; they have put over a dozen wells in the backyards

that are on septic; septic definitely pollutes the ground water, and then place another dozen or

so in the back yards of those people that have sewer; people can see those houses that are on

sewer have much cleaner groundwater; it is still more polluted than the green background

condition and that is because people are fertilizing their yards using all sorts of lawn chemicals,

pet waste, and car wash water, but it is much cleaner than the septic situation; for every four

homes that gets converted from septic to sewer, they produce enough treated water to provide

irrigation water to one home; and when they put wells at the homes that are receiving that

irrigation water, one sees that that one home is just as polluted, if not more polluted, than the

four septic homes that were just addressed with septic to sewer. She stated the initial plan, they

thought this might be a problem and had allocated funding to upgrade these two facilities,

including the Osprey system here in Titusville, and after that was implemented one can see that

the groundwater within months cleaned up to the same level as a sewer community without

reclaimed water; based on those results, through annual plan updates, there are now 10 sewer

plants being upgraded with similar technology; based on the difference between the red bar for

septic and the blue bar for sewer, dozens of additional septic to sewer priorities were added to

the list; they have already been identified and prioritized, they just worked their way down the

list in adding new projects; and stormwater followed a similar scenario. She explained they are

looking for the biggest bang for the buck; there are over 1,700 outfalls that drain flood water to

the IRL; each of those outfalls drains to a specific land area; they calculated the pollution for

each of those land areas, asking questions like is it developed or undeveloped, is it on septic or

on sewer, is there a stormwater treatment already there because there it is a new development

that had to put in a stormwater treatment, and based on all that information, they have

identified the land areas with the greatest pollution and those are the ones that are allocated

funding for stormwater treatment projects; moving on to much removal, after decades of putting

too much pollution into the Lagoon, pollution now fills the low spots of the deep areas with this

organic muck; it smothers the bottom and as it decays it uses up oxygen that the fish need to

breathe, feeds algae blooms that cloud the water above, and when it gets stirred up by winds or

waves, it creates dirty water; it can be vacuumed up, which is what dredging is, and when that

is done one can see cleaner water and less harmful algae blooms; and not just at the site or

adjacent to the site, they have seen water quality improvement at water quality monitoring

stations up to four miles away, and three to five years after completion of the project, there it

has longevity. She mentioned that is what this graph is, it is showing the brown as the severity

of the blooms before dredging and the blue bar is the severity of blooms after dredging for the

Eau Gallie River Muck Dredging project; the last project type to address is oyster restoration; in

addition to contracting with Brevard Zoo to construct these sites, they have then contracted with

the University of Central Florida researchers to provide an independent assessment of whether

these projects work; the first few projects were done following the State’s criteria for living

shoreline permits; and those really struggled, the oysters did not do well following the State

criteria. She noted they had reached out to old-timers, multi-generational families that have

been working the waters in the Lagoon, and talked to them about what the designs needed to

be, and they got individual permits to do what they had hoped would work better; over the

years, they have gone from 80 percent success to last year being 100 percent success of these

oyster projects; and when adding up all the completed projects, the 14 different types, one can

see the crescendo of nitrogen load reduction, each year more and more reduction. She added

this past year they went beyond a million pounds of nitrogen reduction. She went on to say one

can see in those first four or five years, they were really busy with design, engineering,

permitting, bidding, construction, and it was not until the project was finished that one can

actually see the nitrogen load reduction; not until 2021 and beyond that one really started to

see the load reductions adding up; and that is a bunch of project delivery but she asked if it is

working. She stated the map on the left is from Satellite imagery, with multiple satellites going

overhead multiple times per day, week, or whatever, and this particular image is from last

week; one can see the orange area which is a bloom that cropped up right there in the

southern part of the Banana River in Newfound Harbor; hopefully, it will go away in this week’s

bloom mapping; this technology is used to go back in time and analyze imagery all the way

back to 2016; one can see in this graph from 2016 when that horrible fish kill happened, 2018

brown tide went for nearly a year, and then that peak in the middle of the graph is the 2020

blooms and fish kills that happened at Thanksgiving to Christmas time frame; conditions in the

Lagoon continued to get worse, blooms continued to get worse because there was not much

delivery in the way of load reductions yet, as they were just trying to get projects built; and after

that 2020 bloom, things really started to settle down. She continued by saying if there are less

blooms does that mean the Lagoon is healthier, and for that question they look to seagrass; the

next slide, she explained is data from the St. Johns River Water Management District

(SJRWMD) and the green bars are the area of seagrass; one can see the area sort of peaks in

2007 and 2009, as shown in the middle of the graph, and then tapers off with the 2011 super

bloom and more blooms after that; that aerial photography is only flown every other year; the

black dots and black line sort of follow the same pattern; these are transect and they swim the

same transect every year at about 100 different sites and log how far they go, how far the

seagrass goes before running out of seagrass in deeper water; the longer the line is with

seagrass, the more area of seagrass there is; now, she has zoomed in to the peak in

2007-2009 to present and one can see the loss of seagrass with the 2011 super bloom, the

2016 bloom and fish kill, and the 2018 brown tide, the 2020 bloom, and since their projects

have actually been getting completed, the load reductions have been occurring, the blooms

have settled down, the seagrass transect lengths are getting longer; she hopes when the 2025

green bar appears it will be much higher than the 2023 green bar; one can see, the black dots

for 2024 and 2025, the last two black dots are actually higher than the black dot for 2016, so

they have already recovered the seagrass that was lost between 2016 and 2021; and they

hope this upward trajectory continues. She added she was supposed to show this overlay of

seagrass continued to decline while the blooms were getting worse, and then the seagrass

started getting better when the blooms subsided; and one can see that trajectory down and

then back up. She went on to say why seagrass is important, they can either have a Lagoon

that is covered with an underwater rainforest of seagrass or underwater desert; seagrass

supports up to 40,000 fish per acre and that seagrass provides food, habitat, and oxygen; the

IRL is an ideal place for seagrass because it is huge, shallow, and protected; it is that

combination of huge expansive sea grass right at the ecotone boundary between temperate

America and the subtropics that provides and made the IRL a sport fishing capital of the world

and makes it worthy of national estuarine program status; and in summary, the SOIRL program

is working. She noted after decades of pollution, one can see progress, but restoration takes

time, and hope is on the horizon.

C.2. Presentation - Save Our Indian River Lagoon (SOIRL) Citizen Oversight

Committee - Vinnie Taranto

Vinnie Taranto stated if anyone has a printout please do not look at the first slide, it has the

punchline printed on it; it would be like going to SNL and having the a printout of all the skits,

but that is cool, everyone will have a good time; the people from Titusville have amazing

eyesight, he cannot see the screen so he has a printout of his slides in front of him; and he

asked if the text is not there.

Commissioner Adkinson stated she can read the text, it says, “Failed portrait model.”

Mr. Taranto replied, yeah. He went on to say, Ms. Barker talked about back on August 23,

2016, the Board of County Commissioners at that time created an Ordinance; he wanted

everyone to think where he was in 2016; this slide shows where he was, he had way more hair

on his head, actually that was 1993, he dated himself a little bit longer, but still had more hair

on his head; he is the immediate past chair of the Citizens Oversight Committee (COC), what

an honor that was; he served on the COC for eight years and was one of the original members;

and what he would like to talk about is the COC and to explain what it has done and how it has

done it. He went on to say, this slide shows the ballot language that was in the Ordinance; in

there it says, citizen committee oversight; therefore, the residents of Brevard County who voted

for this saw that in there; also in the Ordinance, it stated that the COC was to recommend

updates of the Save Our Lagoon project plan to the Board of County Commissioners annually

and also to provide public oversight and a transparent process that allows and fosters

development and implementation of better tools; those are the two things that the COC was

designed for and charged to do, annual updates and look at the efficiency through tools and

processes; the County Attorney, Morris Richardson, and other attorneys may get upset with

him, but ordinances are made up of words or letters, letters are make words, words make

sentences and paragraphs, and so on, but they end up with an intent; there is an intent of the

Ordinance; and what he wants to talk about is the brilliance of the implementation. He

continued on by saying he once heard the COC is the best thing since sliced bread; this is

science so to dive in and look at that, what is the structure of the COC, and he explained there

are seven areas of expertise with one voting member and one alternate representing those,

which makes 14 members in total; as someone who has had the honor of being a chair, it was

very important for him to make sure everybody had their voice and their opinions heard; half

are appointed by the Space Coast League of Cities, those are the municipalities; the other half

are appointed by the Board of County Commissioners; there is a two-year term with possible

reappointment, with an eight-year limit; this was new and created after the Ordinance; it is an

example of how the process changes; and there are also now two ameritus non-voting

members, which is another change in the process to improve it and make it more efficient and

to add tools. He stated when does the COC meet, and answered that they meet monthly on the

third Friday at 8:30 a.m. in Viera; it is also broadcast live on Space Coast Government

Television (SCGTV), on Brevard County’s wellsite and Facebook, and the SOIRL Youtube

page; if one adds up all the minutes over the past nine years from the SOIRL Youtube page, it

is now 14,445 minutes, with 84 meetings; those are just public meetings; members, such as

himself, would reach out and do research in between the meetings or meet with citizens; this is

a process that over the past nine years has gone over nearly 15,000 minutes of meetings; what

the COC does, he explained while providing another slide, the COC is in orange, and there is

blue, what is done every month is to take the latest science with expert presentations; here is

an example of the list of presentations through the first four years; Dr. Windsor put that list

together to him; at every meeting they receive expert presentations with up-to-date science;

then they take a look at new technology, again written in the Ordinance; this next slide is an

example of what Ms. Barker showed of satellite imagery that is used to get a look at where the

muck deposits are and this one also shows the algae blooms, so they can look historically if it

was just a wet summer or a dry winter, or if it was compared with another one; this is one of

those tools that the COC has been able to utilize to make better decisions; and this slide was

another and really cool, it is a model of the Lagoon, and if one thinks about other bodies of

water that have been repaired like Chesapeake Bay or Tampa Bay, but Brevard County’s

Lagoon, especially the County being 72 miles long, does not have a tidal flow, it has a wind

flow, and this is a super cool model where it showed little probes in the water and where they

went at different times of the year. He stated one can see the Mosquito Lagoon in the photo on

the left and how it had more of the water in it and then on the right one can see all the water

that has come out into the body; again, they were able to take tools and new technology to be

more efficient with the process; then the COC had advisors from Natural Resources

Management Department and also the COC staff and what they did was they would give

updates and project progress so the COC could see and he displayed a slide stating this is an

example of that; these are the monthly revenues; they would chart the monthly revenues, and

Ms. Barker did not say anything but she has a crystal ball at home that tells her finances

because at the beginning of every year she would chart where they are in the State charts and

where they think they would be, and she nailed it every year off by a million; and if anyone

needs financial advice, to talk to Ms. Barker. He went on to say every month they look at the

monthly revenues; they have quarterly project reimbursements and this slide shows the update

on the quarter of the projects and where they are; they also have quarterly grant acquisitions

where they have been able to utilize this money to go after other grant dollars; they receive

those on the quarter and also receive quarterly project progress; lastly they receive the yearly

audit; this slide takes a look at the entire process from the Request for Proposals (RFPs) that

are submitted through the reimbursements and monitoring on a yearly basis; he noted they

have the presentations, the advisory, and the last thing is the citizen input which is done

through public comment and also citizens; the bylaws state that they take comment on a

proposition before the COC; each chair has looked at that differently; he looked for public

comment when he was the chair, on the Agenda approval and meeting minutes; he wants to

hear from the community that the COC is representing; it is an honor, so he always asked for

public comment on those items; and then there is general public comment on all the meetings,

if someone looks at some of these meetings, public comment can run long and that is okay

because they need to be heard. He stated finally, citizens talking to citizens; this is one of the

best parts for him; he has personally spent hundreds of hours talking to citizens about the

project; his information was on the website where people could call or email him at any time;

this slide is of a patch that a gentleman gave to him who was so passionate about the Lagoon

and he had an idea to meet and talk with this gentleman; they met multiple times and spent so

many hours together talking about his project; and with 14 citizens on this COC being out in the

community, that makes the community more accessible to the process. He stated this slide is

the yearly project update, the thing from the Ordinance that the COC presents; they take RFPs

and open it up every year to look at new projects and new project types, look at which ones are

more efficient, and go ahead and put that project plan together; the final stage is then

presenting it to the Board of County Commissioners (BoCC) to decide because the COC is an

advisory board, an oversight board; they spend the year learning the best they can, talking to

the community, and then present an update to the Board; one can see that arrow on the slide

goes two ways, from the update BoCC and from the BoCC to the update; back in 2019, through

public comment and science, the allocation changed, and that was already three years into the

plan; the COC presented it to the BoCC and through the public comment they said they were

not happy and asked the COC to take it back; the COC then took it back, talked about it,

looked at some different project types, and that was the result; one can see the gray which was

muck, the lighter gray is interstitial which was combined in the first one, and was 63 percent; in

the new pie it is like 43 percent; the other thing is new project examples and Ms. Barker just

talked about laterals and smoke testing; that was not in the original project; they have been

able to come up with new ideas to be more efficient and to take care of more; the brilliant part

is the project plan does change because as Ms. Barker said, in those first five years they were

working on permitting and planning, but they have the money so just like in other people’s

expenses, when one is saving for something it can take time; one wants to be able to move

and bob or say maybe that item he or she wanted to buy may not be the best so change it, and

the project plan does change; he is very proud of his service and those other 26 members that

he was able to serve with, citizens who turned passion into progress, the current BoCC

members, and Natural Resources Management Department staff; and it really has been an

honor to work with the people and driving up here seeing the Lagoon.

C.3. Presentation - National Estuary Program, Dr. Duane De Freese

Dr. Duane DeFreese stated he is going to take two perspectives tonight and a little liberty; he

has been a resident of Brevard County for 47 years; he has had the amazing good fortune of

having his career parallel to what he calls the best examples of local government leadership

investment, citizenry support, and vision for conservation; he was the County’s first Director of

the Environmentally Endangered Lands (EELs) Program and he is now over 10 years the

Director of a new body that was formed in response to much of what people have seen already;

he can say without reservation, both as a citizen, as a scientist, and somebody who has been in

the County for almost 50 years, he brags everywhere he goes about the SOIRL Program; it

was well thought out, science-based, and people saw the data that is being used to generate,

and it not only answers the questions, but adapt to changing conditions; and both Ms. Barker

and Mr. Taranto have given him a really easy task and that is just to provide some highlights

about what makes what the IRL Council does, thanks to the public support, of national

significance. He explained on the left of the slide the IRL is one of 28 estuaries in the nation

that were identified by the US Congress, as estuaries of national significance, brought into a

network of estuaries that includes one estuary in Puerto Rico, the IRL is administered within the

US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), but what is remarkable about the congressional

authorization, which is now over 30 years old, is that national estuary programs are

non-regulatory, science-based, and Congress envisioned that this work would not happen from

the top down that it would happen from the bottom up; it is place-based, community-oriented,

and are closely aligned with all the activities at every level, from City, County, nonprofit, and

even the industry sector; to look to the right, one of the things people did not hear is why it is so

vulnerable, but of such national significance, and it is not just the environmental assets, the

high biological diversity, it is the unique location in Central Florida on the Atlantic coast,

bounded by water; looking west is the St. Johns River, the IRL and three different lagoon

systems, all three represented in Brevard County, but people often forget the human aspect of

this; just in Brevard County there are two national wildlife refuges, a national seashore, the

busiest cruise port in the world, Kennedy Space Center the nation’s gateway to space, and new

decade of growth, and all this growth, people are attracted to live here because it is

exceptionally unique in the nation because of those human, economic, quality of life, and

environmental assets; but it is also really vulnerable, it is narrow, it is shallow, there is a very

different watershed, and the Indian River Lagoon National Estuary Program has authoritative

oversight even though it does not do regulation, from Ponce Inlet, as the north end of Palm

Beach County, all the way to the northern end of Volusia County; but he is going to focus just

on Brevard County. He continued by saying in 2015, after 25 years of having the national

estuary program administered within the St. Johns River Water Management District

(SJRWMD), changing an organizational structure priorities and a system that hit a tipping point

that not only caused catastrophic harmful algae blooms, loss of seagrass, manatee mortality

events, and six of the County’s along the Lagoon, therefore, not just the five Counties adjacent,

but Palm Beach County also came together and said to think about this in a holistic system,

and Brevard as a leader of one of those commissions that move that coalition forward that

ultimately resulted in a reorganization of a 25-year program, under a brand new independent

district of the State of Florida, called the IRL Council; that Council is represented by a board of

five County Commissioner council men and women with an equal vote, two water management

district with a governing board member from each, a Florida DEP and that is a the voting policy

board for the IRL National Estuary Program and the US EPA unlike many other places, is an

ex-officio member; at the time they felt that they knew best about how to move this forward and

that the EPA, while they are a funding entity and authorized by Congress, they are also the

grant agency so they are very active with them at both region four and headquarters, but the

leadership is local and State; they have moved that; and in that interlocal agreement, which

gets renewed and revisited every five years, each of those policy board organizations brought

money to the table and have been doing so each year for the last 10 years. He stated point

one, he cannot understate and it is the national perspective that he has about how important

the SOIRL program is because there is the right amount of revenue and there is recurring

revenues for tough projects; many, including their programs with NEP, rely on annual

appropriations, congress, and the State of Florida; that is a tough way to do the business that

Ms. Barker just showed that it is doing right now; people should be really pleased; that 10 years

sets up a whole different model for doing really hard infrastructure improvements and projects

that sometimes take years to go from concept to completion; there is also an authorization by

Congress, which is remarkable when thinking about Washington D.C., thinking locally; they

said one of those authorized mandates is going to create a management conference of

stakeholders; and that is very much happening in each of the 28 NEPs around the nation, but

somewhat differently, this one is unique, it currently is over 100 volunteers, scientists, citizens,

leaders from the community, and representatives from industry coming together on a quarterly

basis in multiple committees, who advise the council as a policy board on all business that

moves forward through this program. He noted he would say, and he has no data to prove it,

but he would argue with anybody to find a coalition of scientists, citizens, industry leaders, and

community leaders that are as robust as this who have met regularly over 10 years with a lot of

commitment to do the right thing; they dovetail closely with the SOIRL program, in fact, there

are days he feels that he is one of the staff members for Ms. Barker, that is how closely; they

make sure that what they are doing on the higher end aligns with support and also helps move

the agenda forward at State and federal levels; they also recognize that having great scientists

in the region was not enough, they had to work together because no one could do this alone,

no single organization, no single city, no single municipality; this is a very complicated, very

large system; people saw the complexity of just addressing the infrastructure issues of nutrient

reduction here in Brevard; and so the mission statement was changed which caught a lot of

eyes among the NEPs, they are all scientific, it is one Lagoon, one community, and one voice.

He advised there are participants in Martin County who are just as vested in Brevard County's

success and Volusia County and it makes this County strong, not only at a Statewide level but

also at a national level; Brevard County has a lot of plans; there is a 10-year Comprehensive

Conservation Management Plan that was developed by the management conference, vetted

through that conference and EPA; the SOIRL Program and Brevard County’s priorities align

very closely; the other two plans that are a little different than this County’s is that when looking

at Brevard’s plan it is project driven; there is a list of projects, they are prioritized every year,

there is an oversight committee, the County can adapt, and on the lower corner, in 2017 and

also as recent as 2024, Chris Peterson might talk to this, the Water Management District has

been looking at stormwater feasibility and treatment projects ranking those projects, prioritizing;

his second message, besides this partnership, is that having a project list matters; the only way

to move this agenda forward is having enough money; and the only way to understand what

that is going to cost is build and prioritize a project list and then deliver that project list because

the time value of money is something that has been seen over and over in the State of Florida,

and the longer they wait to do the work the more it costs. He stated he throws this slide in only

to show what they do in the National Estuary Program in a context of what others are doing; the

10-year cumulative investment with NEP and IRL council money is about half of what the

County has to do the hard work; where the IRL Council focuses its efforts is in the projects that

do not meet SOIRL’s mission and criteria; he just wants to name a couple of projects that

would have never happened without having a NEP; they received $9.4 million to do multiple

projects with multiple partners from the Noah’s Fishery group; part of the delivery of that is an

update of the economic value of the IRL; what is remarkable is how much work it takes to

understand seven counties, 38 cities, and a watershed that is complicated; when one looks at

the plan, he or she will be as shocked as he is of how big the contributed economic value of

this system is; they have also created a network of seagrass nurseries, hard infrastructure in

five different locations that are supporting the seagrass work; in the lower right, one can see

that they also invest in innovation and high-risk projects that may or may not deliver what they

want, but deserve at least a pilot study to see where they go; and it is all done in a competitive

grants program. He went on to say they are evaluating Fiscal Year 2027 grant proposals as he

speaks; this slides shows how it breaks down over a 10-year period, county-by-county; often

the County Commissioners and City Council people ask how well their own county or city has

done; not a single decision that they have made in 10 years has anything to do with the location

of those projects; the balance among that distribution is the really good work that County staff

does writing proposals, securing additional dollars, and as Ms. Barker mentioned, how much

they are leveraging the half-cent sales tax to other revenue sources, that does not happen;

going to Tallahassee or Washington D.C. with an empty hand, looking for legislative budget

requests or earmarks is not a powerful place; but going and saying as a community it has

invested for 10 years this amount of money and this science-based plan, that catches attention,

and also delivers matching funds. He continued by saying there have been historic levels both

at the Federal and State level of funding over the last years and he gives credit where credit is

due; a lot of this is due to the current Governor, Ron DeSantis, who made water one of the

pillars of his two terms; people have seen the IRL now recognized in statute with the IRL

Protection Program; the Governor’s budget just recently released it is requesting $100 million

for IRL and also for Biscayne Bay; those dollars are one-time dollars; when one has recurring

funds like Brevard County does, it can leverage position and make a case that those State and

Federal dollars should flow here; lastly, just to throw the numbers out, because they are

shocking even to him, he made a phone call to the contractor and this is a year’s worth of

economic data analysis by the Balmoral Group in Winter park; when they showed him the draft

he called and asked if he took them to court on their analysis because he does not believe the

number what would their response be, and their response was they were really conservative in

the estimates; they did not look at a lot of non-marketplace issues, but compared to 2016, what

they did look at is real estate value, they looked at this emerging marketplace of industries that

are either directly or indirectly connected to the IRL; they are looking at a system that delivers

economic output of over $28 billion annually; the one number they wanted for a long time, the

data was not there, it was difficult to get, they used the National Oceanic Atmospheric

Administration (NOAH) proposal, which had hard costs clam restoration, seagrass restoration,

wetland restoration, and built that cost base into an analysis for ecosystem services; and he

knows the City is plagued many times with flooding, but when one builds good infrastructure, it

not only protects the Lagoon, but it protects the citizens from those dramatic events of 10

inches in 10 hours. He added people have seen bomb rainfall events enough now in the last

five years; he does not call it an anomaly, it is not about if, it is about when; the infrastructure is

not ready for that; what both Ms. Barker and Mr. Taranto have shown is that the County,

because of citizen support, are fixing the infrastructure; and when the plumbing is fixed, it fixes

the Lagoon. He stated he will leave with this, recurring funds is essential, the job is not done,

and when the full revenue package is complete in this first 10-year Half-cent sales tax, there

will still be a lot of work to do; the IRLNEP will continue to work with Congress and the Florida

Legislature, and work with County staff, but he has never been more proud, as a scientist or a

citizen, than when he can go to Mobile, Alabama, which he did just a month ago, and brag

about what is happening here thanks to the citizens vision and this political leadership to move

this agenda forward.

Scheduled Workshop Break

*The Board recessed at 6:05 p.m. and reconvened at 6:23 p.m.

Commissioner Altman is in attendance.

C.4. Presentation - Business Community - Laurilee Thompson

Laurilee Thompson stated she will give a break from all the tiny numbers and show a lot of

pretty pictures; this picture looks really different than the first time National Aeronautical and

Space Administration (NASA) revealed a view of Florida’s nighttime sky from space; there are a

lot more lights in the landscape now; that little, tiny, black gap along the coastline with the

yellow arrow, is a very special area, the Northern Indian River Lagoon; except for the extreme

northeast corner of the State, this is the only place where one can stand on the west shore of

an eastern Florida estuary, look towards a barrier island, and not see the lights from houses,

hotels, and condos; before spaceships and cruise ships made their way to the community,

citrus and fishing were Brevard County’s biggest industries; net fishing was a profitable

enterprise; and in 1922, the Indian River fishing industry was bigger than the world famous

Indian River citrus industry. She added the region thrived on commercial and sport fishing;

numerous fish houses and tackle shops operated along the river; and by the 1950s, pier fishing

had become a major activity for tourists, as well as locals; and every coastal town had a fishing

pier. She went on to say her Thompson grandparents operated the Titusville fishing pier and

her family had the great fortune to live right next to it; a pioneer in the fiberglass boat building

business, her dad built his first 16-foot teacraft runabouts under the apartment where she lived;

there was a small basin by their house and when the wind blew out of the east, large mats of

seagrass drifted in and then the manatees would come; they could sit on the dock and touch

the backs of grazing manatees with their bare feet; they welcomed a summer when clouds of

moon jellies floated into the basin; sometimes there were so many moon jellies that it seemed

as though one could walk on them, and they filled the water column from the bottom to the

surface; and bottle-nosed dolphins fed outside the entrance of the basin every evening and

they could see them tossing the fish in the air and leaping after them. She continued by saying

watching the dolphins from the pier was better than being at Marine Land because the dolphins

were in the wild, in their home, in the river; on summer nights the bioluminescence was

spectacular; staring into dark waters was like peering into a fairy land as tiny luminous

creatures scattered through shimmering seagrass like flickering stars; when she was 11, her

grandfather told her something that was so profound she has never forgotten it; they were

standing on his fishing pier looking down the river at the cranes, barges, and dredges used for

building the NASA bridge and causeway and he told her that all the new development was

going to kill the river; her grandfather only had a 7th grade education, but he knew that the

causeways and the development were going to be very bad for the Lagoon; that was about the

same time her dad built a fishnet and started dropping her, the net, and a rowboat off at

Haulover Canal on summer days so she could catch shrimp for her grandfather to sell at his

pier; and like many kids from families who made their living from the river, she was expected to

work and that suited her just fine because all she ever wanted to do was hang out on the river

and fish. She stated later she built 150 crab traps and started running them every afternoon

after school; when she was 17 her grandfather co-signed for her first bank loan and she bought

500 yards of Gillnet, and a bowrunner boat so that she could fish for mullet, there were massive

schools of mullet back then; the same school of mullet could pass under her grandfather’s pier

for more than 20 minutes; she made a lot of money as a teenager fishing for mullet; being on

the river was a magical time for her, the water was crystal clear and close to shore the bottom

was carpeted with rippling and waving seagrass; a walk along any shoreline revealed fiddler

crabs as far as she could see; when she approached they raced toward their holes, and the

motion of hundreds of fiddler crabs running for cover looked like water parting as she moved

along the shore; and with the coming of spring, hordes of bigger crabs made their presence

known, as any sandy beach with a hard onshore wind was covered with spawning horseshoe

crabs. She went on to say flocks of hungry shorebirds feasted on their eggs, gaining weight for

their long-distance flights to the arctic tundra to nest; she did not know it then, but she was

experiencing the end of the grandeur of the IRL before her grandfather’s prophecy came true;

the 2000’s were a period of intense focus on the Indian River as a world class fishery,

particularly for its abundant prized red fish; anglers came seeking the high quality of the fishery,

particularly for sight fishing opportunities in clear shallow waters; the area became a premier

destination for competitive angling; it was a regular stop for the professional fishing league

worldwide red fish tour and prestigious local events such as the red bone large celebrity

tournaments; guides who consistently performed well in these tournaments gained recognition

and some ended up with their own television shows and a large platform for conservation

messaging and promoting the Lagoon; and regardless of whether a fishing tournament is a

local event or a major professional tour, fishing tournaments are a big business for the

hospitality industry, as hotels and restaurants fill to capacity for days as anglers scour for the

best fishing spots. She noted the economic worth of unpolluted water through the creation of

jobs and fishing, tourism, recreation, and other industries is well documented; these assets

make it easy to attract a good workforce for the economy; people come here to enjoy the same

magical experiences she had while she was growing up; bioluminescent kayak tour operators

put hundreds of people out on the water every summer night relying on schools of mullet for

their quests’ experience; Manatees often swim right up to the kayaks and fishing is a

widespread activity; popular past times for visitors and residents include birding and wildlife

photography; without a healthy Lagoon, the unique nature would not exist; it has been shown

time and again, property values increase in direct proportion to their proximity to clean water;

and a huge portion of ocean seafood relies on estuaries, and their salt marshes, with estimates

that over 70 percent of the U.S. commercial catch and 80 percent of recreational catch depend

on these vital nurseries of the sea for critical life stations. She mentioned generations of her

family and many others have depended on a healthy Indian River to make a living; this map of

Florida salt marshes shows the critical importance of the Mosquito Lagoon and Space Center

salt marshes as recharge areas for fisheries; very little salt marsh acreage exists along

Florida’s southeastern coast below Kennedy Space Center; she knows that the Lagoon is

getting better, the water is clearer and algae blooms are generally spotty, smaller, and do not

linger as long as earlier blooms; there is a lot more bait now and fishing continued to improve;

seagrass has started coming back strong in the southern Mosquito Lagoon in 2022 and in the

northern Indian River in 2024; in 2025, this year, it has expanded south into the basins between

the Titusville railroad bridge and NASA Causeway; and with better water quality it should

continue it southern movement. She commented one way to measure the character of a

community is to look at what one protects, one protects what it values; the IRL is more than a

beautiful body of water nestled inside coastal barrier islands, it is one of the greatest estuaries

in North America; its diversity of life is unmatched and its total annual economic value is more

than $28.3 billion, a staggering economic impact that affects communities and economies

throughout its entire length; everything about the way of life here in Brevard County is

enhanced and given greater value due to the influence of the Lagoon; she still likes to fish, but

she does not keep them to sell any longer, she throws them back so others can catch them

too; and due to development and a growing population, the Indian River will never again be wild

and free like it was when she was a kid; but it can be brought back to a condition where

people’s children and grandchildren can enjoy it as much as she did; it needs to be treated like

it is a giant aquarium that is always going to have to be managed; and there is still a long way

to go, but it is the responsibility of the people to leave a restored IRL and a funding source to

keep it healthy as a legacy for future generations to enjoy.

C.5. Presentation - Municipal Perspective - Frank Catino

Frank Catino stated he has had the opportunity to work in the municipal end for many years,

realizing in doing so that votes are never 5:0, people do not always agree on everything, but

they always seem to try to make sure they are working together for a better community and

better environment; the other end of it he will show a few slides like Ms. Thompson just did; he

has had a great honor, his real job is a fishing guide and this is his 50th year; he started fishing

many years ago and this is year number 50, and it is an amazing place; it has given him a

perspective of the area that it is of tremendous importance that the people work together; he

expressed his appreciation to the County Commissioners for the hard work on this, and Ms.

Barker and her staff for working with the municipalities on these projects; and he noted it is a

thankless job and in a lot of cases, people have a different opinion on what works better, but

again, working together. He continued by saying working together and the half-cent sales tax

brings in more reoccurring dollars where grant dollars are available to municipalities to do and

complete more projects; again, the half-cent is so vital and it is not just all paid for by the

people who live in this community and this area; it spread out that people will come use the

environment; in the mid-50s, approximately 25,000 people lived in Brevard County, today, plus

650,000; the municipalities and County infrastructure is aging and as a society, people cannot

go back to living the way it did in the past and expect the environment to change, everyone

must work together; the cities have worked closely with counties to complete important projects

funded by the Lagoon tax, such as septic to sewer conversion and funding that also helps

offset trunk line replacement projects, muck removal, and stormwater ponds; many of the cities

were built in the 1950s, to go back and retrofit these is very costly; and most of the cities would

never be built the way they are today, if they were to start from ground zero, and unfortunately,

it is not practical to go back and knock things totally down and try that. He went on to say

everyone has to work together; he thinks this bloom and the half-cent sales tax have done

some good things; it has brought together County, municipalities, along with community

organizations that are helping educate and ever-growing population for a better environment; a

lot of the cities have created sustainability boards and are putting out information to the citizens

on better ways to live, how to manage one’s yard, landscape, and so forth to help lessen

pollutants in the Lagoon; it is not over and he does not believe it ever will be over;

municipalities, the County, and the general public must always work towards a cleaner

environment; and everyone needs to use the best available technology, have funds available

for this, and remember that this technology has a lifespan and will need to be upgraded

someday when better technology comes along. He added for instance, in the city years ago a

gentleman came to Satellite Beach and asked if anyone was interested in doing baffle boxes

and they were one of the first cities, in the mid 90s, to put them in. He stated they are not in

there today because they were outdated; with the SOIRL project they have been upgraded

because the baffle boxes are much better today; just because something is done today does

not mean it is done and over; the best science and technology must be used. He noted the

river system has been dying for a long time, and he is not being sarcastic when he says this,

but the bloom in the long run might have been Mother Nature’s wakeup call; until the fish

washed up on people’s backyards and floated in the river, most people did not know or care,

out of sight out of mind, that this system was in dire need; these funds are being used for

meaningful projects that directly benefits the IRL; none of this would have been possible

without the tax; a strong collaboration among the County and participating cities, everyone

must remain committed to working together to continue advancing these critical projects while

there is still much work to be done; and funding is often the key factor that determines how

quickly progress moves forward. He commented he does not know if a lot of people knew this

but the sawfish used to be very prevalent in the river and he had a pretty cool picture of one;

the reason he wants to show this picture is for people to keep it in mind while he goes through

the few pictures that he has; the bottom used to be spectacularly clean; the seagrass and

amount of life was amazing; this one is the algae bloom and is at that spot in the previous

picture; this slide is the same are within 10 to 15 feet after the algae bloom; this slide is that

same area a year ago; and this last slide is today. He stated the sales tax and the hard work

with the County and the cities is starting to show; it is not over and is never going to be over,

but to him it is more than worthwhile for the funds that are being spent to better the

environment; and it is definitely working.

C.6. Presentation - Economic Impact of the Indian River Lagoon - Chris Peterson, St.

Johns River Water Management District Member

Chris Peterson stated although he is the secretary of the St. Johns River Water Management

District (SJRWMD) he is in attendance as a private citizen and a Brevard County business

owner; he would thank the Board the allowing him to speak about one of the most important

issues facing Florida, the health of the waters; from the Everglades to the IRL, from the springs

to the St. Johns River basin, the story of Florida is the story of water; today he would like to

share with everyone what is being done by the legislature, the Governor, Florida Department of

Environmental Protection (FDEP), the Water Management District, and importantly Brevard

County, to restore and protect these vital resources; first he would like to take a moment to

explain why these issues matter so much to him; he loves natural Florida; he spends time

boating, fishing, and it is more than a pastime, it is a way of life; he has been so passionate

about it that he built his career around it; and today he has the privilege of serving as the

president of Hell’s Bay Boat Works where they build the finest shallow fishing skiffs in the

world, right here in Titusville. He went on to say the economic impact of just recreational

fishing, according to Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, saltwater recreational

fishing alone generates about $9.2 billion of economic impact and supports 88,500 jobs, and

when combined with freshwater fishing the total estimated is over $13.8 billion and about

120,000 jobs across Florida; that is why he feels it is important to spend valuable resources on

fixing the water and saving the Lagoon; the truth, without clean water there are no clean

estuaries, without clean estuaries there is not good fishing, and without good fishing no one

needs him to build the world’s finest Skiff, which means all the families that depend on Hell’s

Bay Boat Works would be impacted; and clean water is not just about the environment, it is

about people’s livelihood, heritage, and their future. He continued by saying this current year’s

State budget, 2025-2026, includes $1.4 billion dedicated to Everglades restoration and other

projects in water quality; the same budget declared since 2019, Florida has invested nearly $9

billion in restoring and protecting the State’s waterways; in the 25 proposals, the Governor’s

budget includes $600 million for targeted water quality improvement and spring protection

efforts; also in that budget, $25 million was allocated for the Indian River Lagoon Protection

program for priority water quality projects; and that same budget, $382 million, a part of a larger

chunk is set aside for expanded water quality projects, including wastewater, stormwater, and

septic conversions. He mentioned closer to home, the State has also recognized the crisis in

the IRL; since 2019, nearly $390 million has been invested in Lagoon restoration; in a most

recent budget, over $100 million has been set aside for water quality projects in the IRL basin

from septic to sewer conversions, wastewater treatment upgrades, and stormwater retrofits;

people know the Lagoon cannot be saved by one project or one year of funding, it takes

consistent long-term commitment; that is exactly what is being seen; long before the State level

commitment, Brevard County voters took a bold step in 2016 approving a half-cent

infrastructure sales tax specifically dedicated to restoring and improving the IRL; this half-cent

sales tax referendum, often called the SOIRL program, was designated to raise up to

approximately $586 million over 10 years to fund local restoration efforts; through that tax

Brevard County has already planned and implemented hundreds of projects or put them into

process, all designed to reduce and remove excessive nutrients, pollution that undermines the

health of the Lagoon, reduced and prevented nitrogen phosphorus from entering the Lagoon

which the projected annual pollutant reductions are measured in hundreds of thousands of

pounds once these projects are completed; and they also support upgrades to the septic

systems, stormwater improvements, sewer expansions, and innovative approaches to reduce

pollutant inputs. He mentioned some of the standout local projects funded through this tax

include the Crane Creek M1 canal restoration right here in Brevard County, that project is now

complete; for decades the M1 canal sent polluted water east into the IRL and today with a new

operable weir, pump stations and treatment wetlands west of I-95, the flow has been redirected

and the project will prevent 24,000 pounds of nitrogen and 3,100 pounds of phosphorus from

entering the Lagoon each year and restore up to seven million gallons each day of flow back

into the St. Johns River where that fresh water is badly needed; another one right here in

Titusville is Titusville Causeway multi-tropic restoration and living shoreline; it is another project

set making the difference of a living shoreline, instead of hardened seawalls, they are building

oyster reefs, planning mangroves, and marsh grasses, and using nature to restabilize the

coast; Brevard County alone has helped fund reef and living shoreline projects that stretch

more than 2,300 feet filtering water, reducing erosion, and providing habitat; the Titusville

Causeway project is a standout, 650 wave attenuation devices, four acres of seagrass

restoration, and millions of clams have been deployed to help clean the Lagoon; but none of

these projects are possible without partnerships. He stated through the State’s cost share

programs, local governments and utilities, bring forward and the State helps fund them; it is a

model that stretched taxpayer dollars, rewards innovation, and ensures both State and local

priorities are met; these projects not only improve the water quality, they support he economic

and recreational value of the Lagoon, strengthen property values, and protect the livelihoods of

residents who depend on clean water, like himself, for tourism, fishing, and quality of life; the

synergy between the State funding and local investment represents a powerful model for

environmental stewardship; the State’s historic water budget brings broad and strategic support

to communities Statewide; and local investments like Brevard’s half-cent sales tax provides

targeted, community-driven action where water issues hit home. He added the combination of

State leadership and local incentives is what makes Florida uniquely positioned to tackle the

complex water challenges from nutrient pollution to water supply sustainability and ecosystem

restoration. He noted as the SOIRL sales tax approaches its sunset this year, the community

faces important decisions about extending and refining this successful effort; public

engagement and support will be crucial as they continue confronting legacy pollution and build

on the progress that has already been made; together, with this partnership between the State

and County, scientific experts and engaged residents are setting new standards for water

stewardship in Florida, one that protects the waterways today and preserves them for

generations to come; one point that is especially important to understand, and cannot be

understated, local investment is not separate from the State funding, it is the key that unlocks

it; across Florida, a vast majority of water quality grants, restoration funds, and infrastructure

programs operate on a cost-share model which means that the State dollars are awarded

competitively and require local governments to bring real funding to the table; and in Brevard

County the half-cent sales tax is not only a local commitment, it is a financial foundation that

allows it to compete and secure State funding. He stated Brevard County has been able to

meet the required local match threshold often by 50 percent or more for State water quality

grants; projects funded through SOIRL program are structured to align with State priorities

making them eligible for funding from the FDEP and the water management districts; every

local dollar invested through the half-cent sales tax has been leveraged to attract additional

State dollars, multiplying the impact well beyond what local funding could achieve; and without

this dedicated funding source, many of these projects simply would not qualify for State

assistance, regardless of how urgent the need may be; in practical terms, this means that the

half-cent sales tax turns local taxpayer dollars into matched State funds and allows Brevard

County to move forward projects years sooner than waiting for State funding alone; and it

ensures that State funds are spent on shovel ready, engineered, and accountable projects,

rather than sitting idle. He noted this partnership model is intentional; the State has made it

clear that communities that invest in themselves rise to the top of the funding list; by approving

the half-cent sales tax, voters sent a strong signal that this community is serious about

restoring the IRL and the State responded by becoming an effective partner; the success that

is being seen today, cleaner water, reduced nutrient loads, major funding infrastructure

upgrades, is not a result of one funding source alone, it is a result of an alignment of State

dollars, local investing, scientific planning, and public accountability, that is why they are

maintaining a strong local funding commitment remains essential; it is not just to continue the

work that is already underway, but to ensure Brevard County remains competitive for future

State grants and cost share opportunities; when one steps back and looks at the big picture,

the message is clear, Florida is investing in water like never before; and the Legislature, the

Governor, the water management district, and local governments like Brevard County are

backing that up with billions of dollars of innovative science and real results on the ground. He

mentioned the money and projects alone are not enough because whether it is the Everglades,

the springs, St. Johns River, or the Indian River Lagoon, these waters do not belong to any one

person, hey belong to everyone; the Indian River is the lifeblood of Brevard County and fuels

the economy, supports people’s way of life, it defines identities as Floridians; and thousands of

pounds of harmful nutrients have already been removed, thousands of septic tanks have been

converted, oyster reefs have been restored, living shorelines have been installed, and decades

of decline have been reversed thanks to the half-cent sales tax; if people want clean water,

strong property values, and a healthy future for Brevard County, then everyone must keep that

sales tax going; he commented to keep pushing forward together to ensure that Florida’s

waters are clean, abundant, and alive for generations to come; in Florida the water is the

golden goose that drives economies; and Florida water is Florida’s soul.

Scheduled Workshop Break

The Board recessed at 6:55 p.m. and reconvened at 7:00 p.m.

Commissioner District 1 Katie Delaney , Commissioner District 3

Kim Adkinson, Commissioner District 4 Rob Feltner, and

Commissioner District 5 Thad Altman

Present:

Commissioner District 2 Tom Goodson

Absent:

PUBLIC COMMENTS

Robert Pickert stated he is a lover of the Indian River Lagoon; he supported the initial SOIRL

tax and offer conditional support for a continued tax; he offers a general observation for

improvement of the SOIRL Program and a specific proposal that would be good for the

Lagoon, good for the watershed, and good for Brevard County, providing long term

supplemental or other funding to reduce the need for the SOIRL tax; a muck fact sheet on the

SOIRL project plan website states in part that dewatered muck can be used for beneficial

purposes if deemed to be safe and cost effective or disposed of in a landfill if contaminated; the

County ‘muckeneers’ did step up and arrange for four samples of the Grand Canal muck from

the Pineda dewatering site and the results indicate that the muck is likely to serve as a good

base for a pelletized biochar-based fertilizer soil amendment; the utility of a biochar amended

muck comes from the incredible properties of biochar to absorb water, absorb nutrients, and

make them bio available to plants while dramatically reducing the leeching to surface and

ground water and improving drought resilience; and adding 60 to 70 percent biochar and other

ingredients to the muck would transform the muck into a slow-release fertilizer and soil

amendment, distribute the high quality and permanent source of carbon to landscape soils that

would reduce the flux of nutrients and other contaminants to the Lagoon and provide a way for

Brevard County residents and businesses to learn about soil health that would contribute

directly to the restoration of the Lagoon and replace or supplement the SOIRL tax with a

non-tax revenue from the sales within and beyond the watershed; and thinking of it as adding

the activated carbon in the water pitcher in ones refrigerator to the soil. He mentioned the sale

of two million bags of slow release fertilizer and soil amendment at $45 per bag, the typical rate

for biochar, could generate $100 million in sales and provide the County with the $20 to $40

million in net proceeds to pay for SOIRL programs; this could be implemented as a pilot project

to demonstrate the commercial viability and scale up through greater investment; it would

require a focused marketing campaign that would likely build quickly and the result would be a

Brevard industry creating jobs and reducing taxes; on people do not have to take his word for it,

Sally Scalera of Institue of Food and Agricultural Sciences (IFAS) County Extension called the

idea fantastic; fertilizer companies are adding biochar to their products; and biochar also makes

an effective stormwater treatment media. He continued by saying this would require a lot of

biochar, fortunately, the Solid Waste Department is in the process of developing a plan for the

reuse of the County’s woody waste and could eventually produce all of the biochar needed for

this effort; he would support a renewed tax if it was supplemented with a parallel effort to create

a commercial soil health initiative featuring IRL muck biochar and other local ingredients; and

with regard to the programs, he would suggest the program drop its exclusive focus on funding

efforts of only municipalities and non-profit organizations and engage the private sector. He

added in addition, he would recommend reviewing the directives in the original ordinance that

says not only allowed, but to foster tools and techniques for restoration of the Lagoon and to

identify and develop long-term funding sources to preserve, protect, restore, and enhance the

Lagoon.

Vincent McDermott stated he is from Indialantic and his background he is a retired 50 years in

city planning and retiring in Florida; he would like to commend the Board, the oversight

committee, and staff for setting clear objectives, transparent process through the COC, and

establishing metrics for identifying what is successful; changing plans for the better when better

techniques are found; he has one major concern going forward, it took 75 years to screw up

the Lagoon, it cannot be fixed in 10 years; people need to look at processes to prevent the

causes going forward; his pet peeve is something he learned 50 years ago in college, it is

called Low Impact Development (LID); and he learned about it but it was not called that, that is

just smart growth management planning. He mentioned urban runoff has been shown to cause

about 12 percent of the pollution that is in the Lagoon; looking at smart growth management

plan, recognizing both and balancing development with measures to reduce the impacts on

environmentally sensitive land is important in going forward; the County needs to adopt strong

LID practices curing the planning process as required by the 2028 stormwater management

plan that comes into effect on that date; the County should be requiring green infrastructure for

the implementation of the development plans, both for new development and redevelopment

projects as they come aboard; and this is not new it is just going to be smart. He noted he

would encourage the Board and staff to place great emphasis on growth management going

forward.

Laura Wilson stated she is the Executive Director of Marine Resources Council, an

environmental non-profit, to protect and restore the IRL; she thanked the Board for the

opportunity for the public to learn, engage, and share their voices about the SOIRL program;

the IRL is essential to the economy, the environment, and people’s quality of life; she is there to

support a ballot measure to renew the SOIRL half-cent sales tax; it took 35 years for

Chesapeake Bay to show signs of recovery after significant efforts to address pollution where

initiated; she echoes Ms. Barker and Ms. Thompson’s assessments that the improvements that

the improvements being seen recently in seagrass are related to the years of effort through

SOIRL; however, with only nine years under the belt, there is still a long way to go; one of the

greatest strengths of the current program is the Citizens Oversight Committee (COC); they

provide a vital mechanism for listening to residents, reviewing projects, and ensuring

accountability in how public dollars are spent; and this level of public engagement and

oversight should remain a cornerstone of the program moving forward and could actually be

expanded to help with public communication and education on projects and fiscal decisions.

She went on to say they need to make sure that they are sharing the process and not just the

results; at the same time, any long term restoration effort must evolve; there are opportunities

to strengthen the program by leading more intentionally with science and using the best data

available to prioritize projects that deliver the greatest results; this means to incorporate

long-term monitoring to gauge project effectiveness and ensuring the use of the most

up-to-date baseline metrics on primary nutrient sources and how that might vary from region to

region; Brevard will continue to grow and there needs to surety that today’s investments

anticipate future development pressures; skills have been honed to be reactive and now is the

time to be more proactive; incorporating low impact development priorities is a key part of this;

preserving natural resources, utilizing existing wetlands, creating engineered wetlands, opening

up impoundments, and using green infrastructure can reduce pollution at the source while

saving money over time; these approaches that work with nature instead of against it should be

the foundation of the program going forward; and finally, flexibility remains essential, a

successful lagoon restoration program must be able to adapt to new information and emerging

solutions, while staying focused on the restoration goals. She went on to say collaborating with

aerospace companies that are actively bringing scientists and engineers into the region is just

one way to accomplish this; she appreciates the Board’s leadership to date; and she would

encourage the Board to approve a referendum that continues this important work and

strengthens what has made this program successful thus far being science-driven,

forward-looking, and responsive to the community.

Kay St. Onge stated she is speaking on behalf of the Titusville Tree Team which is a citizen’s

environmental advocacy group; like many, she has a personal commitment to the Lagoon;

beginning in 1998 she lived on her sailboat anchored in the Lagoon and sailed the Caribbean;

that is when the water was clean and safe to swim in; seagrass was widespread and dolphins

and manatees were abundant; that is no longer the case; septic tanks, sewer leaks, and

clear-cut development have sent excess nutrients into the Lagoon fueling algae blooms,

degrading water quality, and resulting in hundreds of manatee deaths; and swimming in the

Lagoon now jeopardizes tourists’ health. She went on to say stormwater runoff is a major

source of pollution to the Lagoon; when trees are cleared and land is paved for development,

rain no longer soaks into the ground sending polluted runoff into the Lagoon; in 2019 a group of

retired scientists, engineers, and educators formed the Titusville Tree Team to advocate for

stronger tree protection in the land development regulations; their efforts led to Titusville City

Council’s 2021 adoption of a tree protection ordinance prohibiting clear cutting by requiring 25

percent of the area of subdivisions in tree canopy; they also advocated for Low Impact

Development ordinance which was adopted, and an urban forest management plan that is now

in progress; the Tree Team has planted 220 native trees in City Parks, reducing runoff,

providing wildlife, and cooling and beautifying the community; in 2022 the Marine Resource

Council awarded the team its achievement of the year for outstanding service to the Lagoon;

the Titusville Tree Team supports extending the half-cent sales tax to fund SOIRL’s many

projects restoring the Lagoon with an independent science-based oversight committee; and

she thanked the Board for its commitment in protecting the Lagoon.

Michael Myjack stated he is the Chair of the Environmental Commission, the Vice Chair of the

Friends of the Enchanted Forest, and a founding member of the IRL Roundtable; he is going to

talk about the stormwater in the Indian River Lagoon; there is a program that his co-partner, Dr.

Jeff Greenberg and he started, working with Astronaut High School and the local Eastern

Florida State college to try to get some of the students to come out and start looking at the

pollution in the stormwater; they have high goals because he wants to be able to measure the

volume of stormwater that has been put in, so they can know exactly how much they are

reducing salinity in the Lagoon, which is a major factor in the seagrass not coming back; there

are projects taking place in and above the community that are also in addition to what is being

done with SOIRL; and there are many things the Board can do in addition to approving SOIRL,

demanding for LID everywhere in the County, stopping the runoff that is going into the Lagoon

and redirecting the fresh water back to the St. John River away from the IRL. He noted he

knows salinity is the major problem that they are having in recovery right now; the only way to

fix that is to fix where the stormwater is going; everywhere that one can put in rain guards, slow

down the water, redirect the water, or where it can get into the ground, or as Ms. St. Onge

stated, put it in trees, above ground because every oak tree can put out 10,000 gallons of

water; and there are so many things that can be done to protect the Lagoon besides SOIRL;

but SOIRL is critical, vital, and absolutely necessary. He added the Lagoon would not be where

it is today without the SOIRL program going. He noted when he first came to Brevard, like

Laurilee, there were fish in the Lagoon; he remembers the sawfish when he was eight years old

and went to Marineland and he wanted to become a marine biologist because he did not know

what a sawfish was and he was face-to-face with one; and these are the kind of things that

bring people to this County. He went on to say can one imagine what the space industry would

be like trying to get people to work here if the Lagoon is crap; if there is a dead environment

who is going to want to come here to work; the space industry is going to be the future here,

but how the County manages it is going to be critical to how people survive.

Vince Lamb stated he is the past chair of the IRL Coalition and he currently serves on the

board as Treasurer of that coalition; in 2016, he served as the chair of political action

committee supporting the passage of the SOIRL Program referendum; the referendum strongly

passed in every precinct in Brevard County and provided a majority of votes in favor of the

SOIRL Program; he has been deeply involved with the Lagoon protection and restoration for

more than 15 years; he is a Lagoon waterfront property owner for 50 years and he has watched

the Lagoon water quality degrade for many years; and in the last few years, it is clearly getting

better. He mentioned the IRL Coalition held an event in Titusville in October with an emphasis

on fishing and Lagoon restoration; speakers included members of the fishing world, boating

community, a boat builder, a research scientist, and a commercial fisherman; their stories are

quite different but they all reported some improvements in the IRL that were influenced by the

SOIRL Program; all expressed similar views that the program should be renewed; the original

SOIRL Program featured multiple approaches to restoring the Lagoon, including muck removal,

stormwater improvements, living shorelines, and much more; he is hopeful that the 2026

renewal will continue much of the current plan with some differences in emphasis; perhaps the

stormwater improvement projects should be chosen to reduce flooding as well as reducing

nutrient pollutants; the Florida Legislature passed a mandate to remove basic septic systems

from the Lagoon watershed; and the renewed SOIRL Program should include funding to assist

homeowners with that effort. He went on to say the Bowen Aquarium and Dr. Duane DeFreese

Coastal Conservation hub should be completed and opened in 2029; he inquired how this

renewed SOIRL Program can utilize this facility for the maximum benefit to the Lagoon; he

mentioned he looks forward to hearing the public comments tonight and the Commission

discussion following these workshops; and he thanked the Board for providing the opportunity

to speak.

Craig Wallace stated he is the current chair of the IRL Coalition; he retired here 10 years ago

on the shores of the Lagoon to enjoy his favorite hobbies, sailing, wind surfing, and recreational

boating; he was shocked in 2016 when his backyard was filled with dead fish; he had to find out

some answers; fortunately, he was not the only one in search of a solution; he quickly learned

about the SOIRL Program and attended Lagoon science seminars at Florida Tech Harbor

Branch Institute, which helped him understand that there are many different causes and

solutions to the problems with the Lagoon; and he also found other resident volunteers that

were seeking the solution, so he joined the IRL Coalition. He commented people must use

science to guide them; the Space Coast is attracting the world’s smartest space scientists and

engineers and the SOIRL Program has attracted some of the best environmental scientists; let

the people challenge this talent to find better ways to dispose of biosolid waste, identify more

cost effective methods for muck removal, and improve stormwater retention as has been heard

tonight; also the aquarium and the conservation hub would be a great place for scientific

collaboration, so get it built; public engagement is critical to support the continued funding as

has been heard tonight; and this meeting is a good first step. He mentioned the Citizen’s

Oversight Committee (COC) provides a continuing forum for public input; people need to attend

those meetings; volunteer programs, like the Zoo’s Restore the Shores Program and shoreline

cleanups create opportunities for public engagement and learning, this is critical to this program

should it continue going forward; and Lagoon Loyal is an excellent platform for public education

and engagement, but it could use some additional funding investment. He continued by saying

this community is fortunate to have many known nonprofit volunteer programs that help with

community engagement; the County should use them to expand the reach of the SOIRL

Program; educated citizens are the best way to assure a long-term preservation of the Lagoon;

they have proven their support over the years, so entrust them with the future; the Coalition

encourages continuing the SOIRL Program and investment in scientifically proven solutions

while encouraging sustainable public support; and working together they can restore the

Lagoon.

James Nelson stated he is a very concerned, grateful, humble, and hopeful citizen; all the

speakers that have talked tonight are a lot more experienced and knowledgeable than he; he

wants to discuss some general things, speak a little about the past, present, and what happens

tomorrow; he was in Brevard County in 2016 when the Ordinance came out; he was very

happy; he was thinking someone has an idea and wants to help so he voted for this tax

increase; he read the articles in the paper later about people on that committee having issues

with contracts; he thought they would learn they are smart; he remembers them getting their

first contract lit and saw the first articles about cleaning the Lagoon out and he thought they are

making progress; and here it is a few years later and they come up here and spoken about

what has been done, but what he sees is they have just gotten started. He noted there are

some dams that have been taken down in the western United States, the Elwha dams were

taken down a little over 10 years ago and they are still learning and the salmon are still

increasing in the river compared to Brevard County, where the people here are still learning

what will happen with that Lagoon; that is a look at the past; the present, he thinks the people

who spoke tonight are telling what is going on right now, but what happens tomorrow; tomorrow

he would like for the tax to remain, for the people to keep working because the way he sees it

is when people touch on it, the Doctor spoke about a rain event that was had in Titusville a few

weeks ago, and that is going to happen again; there is water in the Lagoon, stormwater issues,

development, all these suburban yards, he calls it fake Downton Abby front yard, need to go to

away; he needs to support that sales tax; and he thanked the Board for coming to Titusville and

listening.

Sandra Sullivan stated she runs a group called Wavesaction; as an environmental advocate,

she is not for renewing the sales tax; the County has a huge infrastructure crisis and the last

meeting when the Board was giving $12.1 million for a developer’s garage, essentially, it talked

about raising people’s taxes and talked about the cost of infrastructure; there is a $168.5 million

yet unallocated according to the graph on the County’s website; she would suggest the Board

put that to critical sewage infrastructure and stormwater; Brevard County has the largest

number of Manatee and Dolphin deaths in the entire State; and looking at what has happened,

according to Marine Resources Council (MRC), there were 1,600 workers laid off in 2010, with

the passing of House Bill (HB) 981 in November 2010; looking at the seagrass maps that are

publicly available, including on Wavesaction going through the timeline, all the seagrass had

disappeared in 2011, corresponding with that change; the muck did not change, the sewage

systems did not change at that time, what changed killed all the seagrass in one year; almost

all of it died since; in 2024 that sea grass had not recovered, as of last year; and she has

posted Brevard stops spraying in 2024 where it drains to the Lagoon because she saw that at

State Road 513, where she lives in South Patrick Shores on South Patrick Drive, and in other

areas in Brevard. She noted they can say the Lagoon tax is working when the seagrass

improves in 2025; that is her allegation; “Repetition does not transform a lie into truth,” by

Benjamin Franklin, so when one follows the science, and she has read all of the Florida

Institute of Technology (FIT) studies that the County has been paid them over $5 million for, it

says most of the muck flux sites are the causeways, fix the cause; the other one, Turkey

Creek, it says the muck is coming from the sewage treatment plant; she calls it the tax; and

there are over $1 billion worth of muck projects. She added there is a $250 million muck project

coming up on there for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the

Banana River. She inquired why the muck tax, and answered one can go back to when the

Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS) report came out from Patrick and put this burden

on the people; she continued saying Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP) is

fining Brevard County for dumping a lot of sewage they have not reported; in 2022-2023

Brevard dumped 21 million gallons of sewage, most people do not know that because they do

not tell people that, they talked about the seven million gallons before; and in conclusion, she

wants to say the County is not matching the SOIRL tax to the State grants like was promised

and what she would suggest is that the County rethink this tax, look at the critical needs in

Brevard County, and find a way. She noted it is called the infrastructure surtax, State Statute

212.055, and that means it should be going to infrastructure; and a lot of that tax, like grass

clipping marketing is not infrastructure, and it does not fulfill the State Statute.

Matthew Nylon stated he is a Rockledge resident and lives in precinct 37 right on the IRL; he

has been a resident since the 1980s; he is also an avid fisherman and has watched with great

dismay as the Lagoon has deteriorated through time; he retired in 2019 from Lockheed Martin

and bought himself a nice flats boat and then watched the IRL turn into a green slimy mess

right after that; he is so very saddened by that because he was looking forward to that; he

thinks the greatest jeopardy to this renewal getting passed is people being skeptical about the

projects and the decisions being made on how the money is being spent; and there have

people who have claimed that this money has been used to subsidize further development or

people have claimed that the money has been put to projects for political reasons rather than

scientific reasons. He mentioned he does not know if those things are true but he thinks a

robust COC process that is very transparent in a very transparent process at the County

Commission level is essential in maintaining people’s trust to want to keep funding this

program; the greatest jeopardy is people losing trust in that decision-making; and he thinks if

the Board keeps it open and keeps it transparent, then it can pass the tax again and continue

to clean up of the Lagoon.

Toni Shifalo stated she moved to Titusville and bought the historic Norwood House which was

built in 1895; indoor plumbing arrived there about 1925, therefore, the pipes in the ground were

very old; she was lucky enough to benefit from the lateral line grants that SOIRL made

available; not everybody is lucky enough to have a project that impacts the IRL impact

themselves as well; she has a special interest and is very interested in Sandra Sullivan saying

to not continue the tax, whereas she thinks it is probably a good idea; however, she does agree

that there needs to be a lot more education so the citizens of Brevard County, instead of

complaining about that half cent sales tax and that the river still stinks, that they understand the

types of things that are going on like the lateral sewage line grants. She continued to say muck

farming is a strange thing to her, spending so much money on it, and then what happens with

all the muck, they are taking it over to the St. Johns basin waterway and distributing all of the

toxins and all of the built-up phosphorus, PFAS, and all the bad things and just distributing

them over there; there has got to be a different kind of solution; Mr. Myjack stated people have

got to start thinking outside of the box; one of the places that the Board should really start

thinking about is with that space industry over at the Space Center; they are wanting to ship

their sewage across the IRL to a sewage plant that the taxpayers put up the money for to pay,

on the mainland; she thinks they know how to deal with recycling and reusing water in space,

why can they not figure out how to do it down here as well; and she knows that is outside of

SOIRL, but she thinks the collaboration between Brevard County and the space industry would

go a long way and help people paying that half cent sales tax seeing something really is being

done. She noted the other thing that Ms. Sullivan mentioned was that in 2010 the State

changed from requiring mechanical harvesting of water weeds and things to allow spraying of

herbicides, if the Board could stop that it would help a lot, and make the landscapers and the

maintenance people pull those weeds like she did when she was growing up on Lake Susanna.

Jason Miller stated he is not a native Floridian but he moved to Titusville and bought a house in

2017 when he got stationed in Port Canaveral with the Coast Guard; despite only being here

for a couple of years, he got transferred away, and then retired in 2022; there was no question

that his family was coming back here; he considers himself lucky because he came in when the

Lagoon was at its worst and now he has been able to see a lot of the recovery efforts; he is on

the Titusville Environmental Commission as well as the County Environmentally Endangered

Lands (EELs) Selection Management Committee; a lot of the information presented he has

already seen through those organizations but he really wants to stress how amazing and

unique SOIRL is; being in the Coast Guard for 22 years he lived his life on the water, not only

professionally, but recreationally as well, and he got to see a lot of very diverse and very cool

bodies of water throughout this Country and Puerto Rico, including a few of those national

estuary programs that were talked about earlier; none of the water ways that he was ever

stationed on or boated on had the kind of organization or commitment that Brevard County has

here for the Lagoon; he still keeps in touch with people and some of those estuaries are still

actively being destroyed while Brevard County is actively making very positive efforts in

recovering this one; and he just wanted to give his advocacy for this sales tax and for SOIRL.

He added he thinks Brevard County is moving in the right direction on this thing.

Warren Edwards stated he would like to acknowledge the Board and those sitting up there, this

is really public service to take the commitment to listen to the people and really get what the

citizens see or are doing; listening to those presentations that were provided this evening, it is

impressive what has been going on; how proud the people of this County should be as to what

has been done thus far; and he is totally in support of continuing this half-cent sales tax. He

went on to say he is a resident of Viera and he has been here over 20 years; he is a sailor, a

kayaker, and a biker; one example of improvement that he has seen as a biker is going up

Rockledge Drive, there was one place every time he went by where he wanted to hold his nose,

it was funky, and he would say he is glad is does not live there, but eventually it cleared and

low and behold he found out it was one of the septic to sewer conversions; they had taken a

whole block that they knew was an area with a problem, and they went ahead and put sewers

in, and now it does not stink; that is just one small example of what SOIRL has done for the

community; he thinks the elephant in the room is development, ultimately the amount of

development that people are seeing in the County is just a stress on not only the Lagoon but

the whole society, and he would encourage the Board to really think about how to tie

infrastructure into development, in other words, not stopping development but how can there be

a way where development is tied to having the proper infrastructure; and he thinks SOIRL, as

well as all the other programs that are involved, are what is important; he also has concerns

with learning about Blue Origin and the 490 million gallons of water a day of fresh water being

put into a retention pond, where the retention pond eventually gets into the Lagoon, where

people have heard salinity is a problem; this is a private business and these people are making

money, this is not NASA; he does not think the County has planned for as much development

that is being seen out there; the County has to take a look at that; and he asked how about the

aquafer, they are sucking the water out of the aquafer. He continued by saying if they are doing

it, what about the other companies; and he thanked the Board.

Elizabeth Neville stated she represents Save the Manatee Club as Director of Environmental

Law and Policy; she is in support of renewing the half-cent sales tax to support the SOIRL

Program; in deciding the future of SOIRL, it is essential to recall why the program was created

in the first place; in 2016, Brevard County voted to implement the half-cent sales tax to

generate money for IRL restoration; she expressed her appreciation to the Board for its

leadership in establishing this important program; she noted since the program began, the

funds from the sales tax have supported the implementation of more than 400 projects

Countywide, working to remove and prevent millions of pounds or excess nutrients from

entering the Lagoon; and these nutrients, mainly nitrogen and phosphorus, feed harmful algal

blooms, which create toxins and block light that seagrasses need to grow. She mentioned

seagrass loss in the IRL, driven by such algae blooms, contributed largely to the 2020-2022

unusual mortality event for manatees; during this tragic event, over 1,200 manatees died, many

due to starvation from the seagrass loss; this was also a concern for tourism, as well as quality

of life; in recent years people have seen seagrass recovery in much of the IRL thanks in large

part to restoration programs such as those funded by SOIRL; however, now is not the time to

back away from this important work; and industrial and population growth are increasing the

pressures on the precarious health of the Lagoon. She continued by saying the SOIRL

Program focuses on implementing projects like septic to sewer conversions, muck removal,

and stormwater and wastewater treatment upgrades; these projects actively reduce and

remove pollution in the Lagoon, supporting seagrass recovery and overall ecosystem health;

these projects must get done to protect the health of the IRL, wildlife like the Manatees that call

it home, and the many people who live in its watershed; and without SOIRL providing

guaranteed financial support to these projects, IRL restoration will be slower if it is able to

happen at all. She noted to save the Lagoon, people must support the program that makes

these amazing projects possible; and she asked that people continue this program for the sake

of the IRL and its residents.

PUBLIC COMMENTS

Stan Johnson stated he is a registered professional engineer, registered land surveyor, and

this is his area of discipline; but he does not go too much; he was going to be an ocean

engineer, but he changed it to civil engineering; he is happy to be here and is going to say

something different than what he had planned to speak; it just so happens that he went to a

meeting before this and he was wearing this shirt and decided to just keep it on because what

is happening right now in the City of Titusville is a horror story of politics; on October 26, 2023,

he had a phone call from a friend saying, “Hey listen, the Titusville Police Department, they got

a scanner saying that you are to be arrested” he said, “Oh really?”; he called the Police the next

morning and said he was ready for them to arrest him up, but they said they had no idea of

anything to arrest him; another phone call later he talked to a police officer and he said they

would arrest him unless he bothers the contractor over on a site; he said that sounds good and

that he would be there at 4:30 if they need to arrest him they can; he went there at about 4:30,

got his samples of what appeared to be a sewage spill and on his way a police car pulled up

and the officer said he got him; he asked got him for what, he does not know; he took him to

the Police Station, interrogated him, and took him to jail, but never told him what he was

arrested for; and anyhow the story gets more worse. He mentioned according to his pastor, he

said the City Manager and the Chief of Police have gone to his church and talked all kinds of

stories about him going back to 1985; anyhow, going back a little bit further, 1952, he came to

Florida and visited his family numerous times with his family on the west coast; he came here in

70 or 71; this is called an estuary but it is not an estuary, an estuary is where things are born

and then nursery; Brevard County does not have that here, it is way far behind that; he is

hoping that the politics will be better; and he is wearing this shirt that says to fire the City Mayor

and also get rid of the Chief of Police for what is going on. He noted Politics is a problem, same

with Flint, Michigan, there are big, big problems and they have had them for years.

Lew Kontnik stated he lives in Melbourne; he wanted to start by thanking the Board for holding

this meeting; this is the kind of meeting the County has to have to get the knowledge out; he

and his wife retired to Brevard County, excited about the amenities and the beauty of this place,

in 2016; they bought a house two weeks before the big March 2016 fish kill, and moved in two

weeks later; he has had a keen interest in the Lagoon ever since; he spent eight years on the

board of the Indian River Lagoon Coalition and help to found the IRL roundtable; and here are

his thoughts. He went on to say the Lagoon has improved; there is more work to do; water

visibility improved, seagrass returning, and no major fish kills; SOIRL has been a game

changer providing focus, funding, and understanding; SOIRL gives the community a focal point

for understanding and seeing the action on the Lagoon; the COC meetings are excellent; the

Commission Meetings for the annual review and approvals are perfect; and project completed

documents as provided now. He mentioned that gives a method for the media and other groups

to follow along; funding, the plan is for 412 projects that were reduced by more than a million

pounds, maybe more than that, of pollution; so far 212 complete or in process; that is based on

the $417 million of SOIRL funding; but that is leverage, as has been heard, by $110 million in

additional outside grants and then even more matching of local projects; and understand,

careful planning and professional execution has led to better understanding of the problems

and solutions. He went on to say trailer park package plants were not it initially; excess fresh

water, salinity and seagrass problems, smoke testing repairs, and of course the 53,000 septics

in the watershed; he wants to continue living in here, so do the increasing numbers of space

employees and tourists that join them; the County needs to keep up the work to keep people

here and keep them happy; and people need to pass this SOIRL tax. He added he wants to

make one comment about an example that is worth looking at from his point of view, and it was

mentioned earlier, and that is Chesapeake Bay; 35 years and really highly improved, but it

takes commitment; and he expressed his appreciation to the Board for what it is doing.

Tracy Phillips stated she is representing Florida Wildlife Hospital’s Board of Directors; she

supports the efforts to improve the overall health of the IRL and the extension of the SOIRL

program; please accept the Florida Wildlife Hospital’s 2024 annual report, the 2025 stats are

still being compiled; the annual report illustrates how the Hospital’s mission, what they do every

day, rescue, rehabilitate, and release, is connected to the overall health of the Lagoon; and

going forward, as the Board has discussed authorized work, remember that Florida Wildlife

Hospital can provide a supportive messaging in their outreach and education programs.

Kimberly Newton stated she serves on the COC in the voting seat for education outreach and

advocacy; it is a position that she takes very seriously and she is very privileged to serve on

after years of being an advocate in the community; she was asked to apply and after some time

she was offered the position to fill in for Mel who left once upon a time; she was not sure if it

was the right use of her time; she definitely lives wise and wanted to make sure that she was

using her time wisely; after being on the committee for five years, she can tell people it has

been the most beneficial opportunity that she has ever done in public service; and she learns

constantly from the FIT community, the County, Brandon’s videos, and the entire team with the

County is spectacular with getting back to the COC with information. She noted she definitely

submits questions pretty regularly and they always get back quickly and extensively; it has

been a great opportunity and she really cannot imagine not giving the community an

opportunity to vote if they want to tax themselves again; she knows the Board is in a position to

decide whether or not that is offered to them; she hopes the Board acts wisely, as it always

does, to give the community an opportunity to vote and get this tax approved again; and for the

record she is not pro-tax, but she is pro-Lagoon and if the community chooses to put this

money towards the conservation, it should have that. She continued by saying with that, some

people call it addressing the elephant in the room, she thinks the County needs to increase its

accountability and transparency with the projects; specifically for her, that comes with herbicide

sprays; she proposed at the last meeting in November in accountability, if one is an entity,

County, City, homeowner, golf course, that is requesting funds through SOIRL to remove

pollutants, specifically nitrogen and phosphorus, that he or she is not permitted to intentionally

put those nutrients back into the Lagoon; she became involved in advocacy in general 20 plus

years ago; her son did a 4H project on Monsanto and herbicide and it is old science; it is not an

anomaly to think that people are poisoning themselves; it is proven, its banned worldwide

outside of this country; billions of dollars in lawsuits have already been paid out in California, as

one specific local example; and she would encourage that conversations continue to hold

everyone accountable. She mentioned the LID aspect, as well, goes hand in hand with that

green space; a lot of accomplishments in Titusville have occurred; and she thanked the Board

for being there and allowing the community to talk as SOIRL and the County listen to what

people are saying and leaving it up to the voters to choose whether or not they want to tax

themselves again, which is obviously the right choice.

William Klein stated he is from Titusville and is very pleased to hear all the work that the

County has done with SOIRL, funding it and keeping it going; one thing he has not seen

happen yet is to let the people and the public know if the water is safe to swim in and recreate

in; several counties in Florida have a program where they test the water, sometimes it is on a

weekly basis and sometimes more frequently, and publish what the readings are so people

know when and where it is safe to swim; this is what was done in Palm Beach County where he

used to live and where he used to swim; if there was a problem it would be posted; they use the

federal EPA standards for recreational water safety; and this is on the internet, in the papers,

and it is posted at the beaches where people swim. He noted the one thing he would like to

request since he lives in Titusville and the only place that he can swim in the IRL in Titusville is

over at Parrish Park, there was a big public beach over there at one time, and they had

lifeguards there back in the 1950s, there is still a small beach there with a parking area, but no

one knows where it is safe; some people have gotten infections there from the water; one boy

in 2020 or 2021 became paralyzed from swimming in the area; and he has checked to see

what the cost is to test for EPA standards and it is like $50 a test. He mentioned that does not

sound like much but it begins to add up when it is maybe a full year; it is still small amounts of

money compared to all of the other projects; and he would like to see the Board sponsor

somebody or ask some group to come test the water where people swim, kayak, sail boat, and

fish as it would be very beneficial to the public. He noted he hopes the Board keeps SOIRL

going; and he would like to see it funded for many more years because they are doing a great

job.

Keith Winsten stated a lot of the people know the zoo has been involved with SOIRL from

inception; they were there initially when it was going on the ballot and they have been deeply

involved in terms of boots on the ground and ecosystem restoration work; they have a really big

megaphone in Brevard County because the Zoo will see just under 600,000 this year; he came

tonight to listen and hear what everyone had to say about SOIRL and what the citizens of

Brevard County think of it after all of these years; and he is really heartened by what he has

heard. He noted he is going to repeat back a few obvious things; first of all, it is vastly

overwhelming support with only one person tonight who thought this was not worth reinvesting

in; that is an amazing thing to hear; he thinks the people understand what makes SOIRL a

great program; the latest science, it is being able to be reactive, it uses science to base its

decisions, and then a great two-part COC; for all of the people who are worried about fraud on

their computers, that double check is so critical, and this program has it with the COC and then

the Board of County Commissioners; and he thinks the people really understand what makes

SOIRL effective and they also understand the opportunities for the future which is continued

flexibility, the ability to react to the latest science. He continued by saying he thinks it was heard

from quite a few speakers that more investment in communication and getting the word out with

people and engaging them so they understand where their dollars are going; he learned tonight

that people understand the program and they see the incredible thing it has done, and the

potential for the future; he salutes the Board for giving folks the opportunity to be there and to

sit here and listen, like it is going to do again in a week, to make sure people’s voices are

heard; he reiterated he is heartened and needs to look at all of the Board, all of the people who

work at SOIRL, and all the members of the COC, people get their work, not just the impact, but

the incredible rigor everybody shows in having it done; and he takes this opportunity to hear

what the people here are saying and what the people in Palm Bay have to say because he

feels like everyone has a responsibility to react to that and to make sure those who are working

in this field are listening to folks and doing the best work they can.

BOARD DISCUSSION

Chair Altman thanked the speakers and the audience members for taking the time to come and

be heard; the final Item on the Agenda is Board discussion; and he will open it up to any

discussion.

Commissioner Delaney stated she will start with thanking everybody who showed up tonight, all

the presentations, all the citizens who showed up to let the Board know what their thoughts

were, and the Board for traveling to District 1, she appreciates that also; she has a lot of

thoughts about SOIRL and what she thinks people are calling it SOIRL 2.0, and what it could

look like; some things she has heard from across her District is people would like to see more

emphasis on infrastructure and stormwater; she thinks the Board heard some of that tonight;

that is where her thoughts are with that; there is definitely a lot of great work that has happened

thus far; but she thinks things have changed a little bit where before a lot of the septic tanks

were causing a lot of the nutrient flows out to the Lagoon, and now that is has finally gotten

through a good chunk of those conversions to the sewer plants, she thinks that there is a new

problem and the sewage plants need attention. She continued by saying not that the County

should stop the septic to sewer conversions, but in her mind she feels as though the plan

needs to be shifted a bit as far as the sewage plants, the stormwater, stormwater retention,

stopping some of that freshwater from getting to the Lagoon, which helps in two ways, not just

with the Lagoon, but with flooding; and those are just her initial thoughts for now.

Commissioner Adkinson stated at the moment, she has always believed that the voters should

decide; with that said, she has some questions and this will be the first time that the Board has

gone through this kind of process; her understanding is that the Board is going to have this

discussion, it is going to do this again in Palm Bay, and staff will put together the wording,

should the Board decide that it is going on the ballot; and that for her will be interesting on how

the wording is decided based on the public’s comments, because that is what the Board is

doing it is gathering the public’s thoughts; and she reiterated she is interested in hearing how

the Board puts all of the comments together that are being heard from this workshop and the

next, together in the wording, should the Board decide to place it on the ballot.

Commissioner Feltner stated first he wants to thank each of the presenters; he called each one

of them and asked if they would do this, and they each accepted; he then said he wanted them

to do it in two places, not just Titusville but also Palm Bay, and they were all very gracious; he

thinks everybody gets an A+ tonight; he expressed his appreciation again for all of them

coming to Titusville; he thanked staff because they had to take the concept and actually turn it

into a meeting tonight; he advised he worked in Titusville for a long time; and he used to walk

by these chambers almost every week day, twice a day on his walk, so he knows this area very

well. He went on to say there has been a lot of interesting things this evening; he appreciated

all the comments, it has been great; the Board has talked about stormwater before and if it is

really clever, in the future, and this is a big County, and if stormwater retention also means that

there is flood control and keeping it out of the river, then that is doing two good things at the

same time; he does not think that is an impossible task for up here; he heard some things that

he will certainly take back to staff to look into further; and he appreciates all the other folks who

maybe he did not talk to but came out to speak tonight, including Marine Resource Council

(MRC); and there certainly will be a lot more conversations. He continued by saying many of

the speakers he has met with in his office and it has always been a good discussion and

obviously food for thought; there are a lot of smart people who are looking at the river and how

to make it better; someone had said earlier that it has taken 75 years to get to this point; he

days it similarly; and in his words, it took three generations to make the river dirty, and it is

going to take this one to clean it up, it is not a five or 10-year plan it is definitely a 20-year plan.

Jim Liesenfelt, County Manager, stated that everybody will be back in Palm Bay next week at

5:00; what the Board has directed for staff is to work with municipalities to amend the sales tax

use and distribution, and interlocal agreements; they will have to work with that with everybody;

they will havet o work with the municipalities and the community on a project plan that identifies

the most cost effective pollution reduction opportunities; unfunded needs restoring the health to

the IRL ecosystem, implement it with funds raised or leveraged by the extension of sales tax, if

renewed by the voters, solicit public input, which the Board is doing today, and then direct staff

to develop ballot language for the November 2026 general election; and about April or May to

bring it back to the Board.

Chair Altman stated this is just the beginning; it is an effort that the Board wants to make sure it

has the maximum amount of public input; this is not the final, there will be many meetings and

lots of public discourse as this moves forward to the possibility of placing this on the ballot; and

he thanked everyone for being there.

Commissioner Delaney stated she has a couple questions for Ms. Barker and one for Mr.

Cantino; and one of the things in Ms. Barker’s presentation, the pie chart on one of the first few

slides, it had the 37.1 percent, and she asked if that was muck removal.

Ms. Barked replied yes, and interstitial treatment.

Commissioner Delaney asked on the slide that had all the projects listed, there were a bunch in

the Scottsmoor and Mims area, it looked like, are those considered Titusville projects.

Ms. Barker responded by saying yes some of them are City of Titusville projects, some of them

are in the unincorporated area, County projects.

Commissioner Delaney stated the chart that talked about pollution source, the one that had

very little on the left side that was point source, she asked if that was considered sewage

dump.

Ms. Barker explained it was wastewater discharges.

Commissioner Delaney asked when that analysis was done.

Ms. Barker answered initially it was done based on data that was available in 2016; it has been

being updated over the years; and it was just updated again in the last month or so, they try to

keep it current.

Commissioner Delaney stated in preparation for this meeting she was looking through the

Ordinance, doing some research on that; one of the things that she has heard some gray area

around is the ability to use SOIRL dollars for updating sewage plants, even expanding capacity,

things like that; and when reading it, it sounds like there is a little bit more freedom to do that

versus just AWT expansions.

Ms. Barker explained the Ordinance language is written broadly enough that there is quite a bit

of flexibility; when the planning began, the Board direction at that time, the COC concurrence,

was that these funds would be used to do what utilities could not do with the rates that were set

at that time; not using this half-cent sales tax to replace what rate payers should be covering in

their rates, and complying with State rules, but using the tax dollars to go above and beyond

requirements; over the nine year life so far a lot of the rules have changed and the wastewater

treatment plants, utilities, the stormwater, the bar has risen and the rate that people had does

not count for that; one of the things that was talked to the COC about is for them to have a

discussion; that will probably happen in February of how they perceive that changing

environment and how the program should adjust to those rule changes; but that is certainly the

Board’s authority to look at how it might want to broaden the use of the tax going forward.

Commissioner Delaney stated she is wondering about the thought process or foresight of all of

the septic to sewer conversions because she was not watching government meetings back in

2016; she asked if that was ever translated into, “oh wow, these sewage plants were planned

and maintained to a rate before all of those requirements happen, so now there is all these new

septic tanks that now go to sewers”; that is part of the reason why the capacity has risen; and

she kind of feels like it is fair to assume that the sewage planning was not really expecting this

type of a mandate to come down.

Ms. Barker replied she thinks there have been a lot of changes in State rules that were not

anticipated; there were septic to sewer project areas where the capacity did not exist, so those

projects are not funded in the plan; or some of the ones that were very important, they

coordinated with the utility directors and said that such and such improvement is happening, or

about to happen, and there will be that capacity, so they said they just will not put that septic to

sewer project in years one to three and place it in years seven to 10, after that capacity is

available; and they have looked at the timing to accommodate capacity issues.

Commissioner Delaney stated she was reading something about the wetland action plan and

the objective is preserve, protect, restore, and enhance the wetland resources of the IRL

region; that was really interesting to her because not only does it have this allowance in the

Ordinance, also thanks to the voters, have an EELs program; between these two programs, the

County might be able to do some cool stuff with stormwater parks, retention, rehabilitating

wetlands, and that kind of stuff; and she asked if there is anything in the plan now that goes

towards this part of the action plan for the wetlands.

Ms. Barker asked towards using wetlands to store and treat stormwater.

Commissioner Delaney clarified yes, or preserve, protect, restore, and/or enhance the wetlands

that are in the IRL region.

Ms. Barker stated they have partnered with the water management district on wetland priorities

and share priorities with the EEL program as well; there are rain garden type programs and

bioswale type wetlands that are funded that have stormwater projects in the Lagoon plan; and

several that have been constructed so far.

Commissioner Delaney stated that is it for her for now.

Commissioner Feltner inquired in 2016, when considering the referendum, was the 2030

mandates from the State there.

Ms. Barker responded in the negative.

Commissioner Feltner stated he thinks that is a clear distinction, so the public understands; he

thinks maybe a question he might have heard from Commissioner Delaney, but he will say it a

little differently, he thinks the Board considered a couple of different things recently, and he

does not know the answer; and he asked if SOIRL could partner with EELs on a property that

could turn into or restore a wetland.

Ms. Barker responded by saying she thinks so.

Commissioner Feltner stated he does not see why those two things would be in conflict with

each other; and he asked if that was a better answer to that question.

Chair Altman stated that is a good question that generates a thought; the Board will have that

process once it gets through with this initial stage where it actually workshops, writes, develops,

and public hearing on the Ordinance; there will be a lot of opportunity to do the very thing that

Commissioner Delaney is doing, talking about the guts of the Ordinance, what the Board is

going to do, what will be kept the same or what will change, or not do at all; and that is part of

this process and that is why they wanted to get started very early on with this process so the

public is engaged with the staff.

Commissioner Feltner stated the referendum language has to go to the Supervisor of Elections

from this Board, at the beginning of August; and the Board does not want to be that late in

getting the language over there and that is why it is doing these in January.

Chair Altman stated that is a great point.

Commissioner Delaney stated she knows there are no Board Reports on the Agenda but this

something she would really like to bring to the Board’s attention and it is kind of time sensitive;

she appreciates Ms. Barker, who reached out to Florida Department of Environmental

Protection (FDEP), to try to get the meeting in Viera where there is more parking, it is just a

better situation for the Blue Origin conversation with the FDEP, and basically they responded

with a thank you but no thank you; she asked her staff to correspond with the FDEP to see if

there is any consideration because the AG extension has very limited parking; and the

response was, “The DEP regulatory has conducted public meetings in open house forums for

years and it has proven the most effective and efficient way to properly engage and have

discussions with the public, as well as receive and log public comments.” She mentioned she

has a little bit of an issue with the way that they are holding their meeting because it is an open

house forum and not everybody gets to hear the questions and responses in that type of a

format; this is basically in her mind, she is thinking this is basically an evening of sidebars and

what is needed is public solutions, not sidebars; that was the whole point of asking for this

public meeting; she is coming to the Board and the County Manager to see if there are any

steps that can be taken to make this go a different way, a better way for County residents; she

has been to countless of these types of meetings and they go nowhere, they write down the

public comments, and nothing comes of it; and she feels like it is such a disservice to the

community, especially when the Board asked for the public meeting. She continued by saying

the Board is talking about SOIRL and dumping hundreds of millions of dollars into restoring the

Lagoon, and here they are doing something that is going to greatly affect that and the County is

supposed to clean it all up; that is just very frustrating; and she did not know if the Board could

empower the County Manager to push back, if the Board wants to push back, or if there is

anything that can be done.

Mr. Liesenfelt stated Commissioner Delaney saw the email that was sent out last week or the

week before; that was Senator Mayfield and she called, so that was them working together with

her to say they could hold the meeting here and gave the reason it was better for parking, it is

set up so they could have comments like this, it is better than an evening of sidebars; with

30-plus years of experience, it comes better from elected officials to push on that than it does

from staff; ultimately, they report to the Governor not him; they do not have to follow up; they all

have their processes, whether it is good or not, that is what they follow; staff has been there

and a couple staff members talked to Senator Debbie Mayfield to try to help with whatever she

can do to get it moved and if there are other legislators who the Board members can get in the

background; but honestly, it has to come from elected officials representing the people to let

them know that the Board is unhappy with the set up they have proposed.

Commissioner Feltner stated the Board knows what he has suggested and he has been pretty

vocal with legislators who will listen but he is going to echo what the County Manager said;

Commissioner Delaney should call her members because that is who DEP answers to; that

would probably be the most fruitful thing; he shares the sentiment that he cannot imagine an

open house on the issue; that is why he originally suggested the Cocoa campus Simpkins

Center because parking, being off a major road, close to the interstate, it is set up with

cameras, mics, everything, all one has to do is show up and turn on the lights; but they opted

for Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (IFAS) Center. He commented he thinks they will

have tremendous public turnout and the parking is a legitimate issue that he thinks they will run

into; ultimately, that is their call; and he does not think it would hurt if the Board calls members

call their members and suggest an alternative to that meeting site.

Commissioner Adkinson stated she is going to echo a lot of what Commissioner Feltner just

said because she has been very disappointed in the way they decided to schedule this meeting

and run it; she will also say that she was heartened because FDOT did the same thing when

there was an issue in her District and it went surprisingly well; she thinks it was because of the

overwhelming support of the people who showed up; she thinks DEP will see the same thing;

she also knows because of her relationships with the representatives, she has been reaching

out to let them know, as this is her job; she was elected to make the phone calls that her

residents cannot because they are at work; and her job is to relay how her residents feel, to the

people who need to do something about it. She noted that is how the Board has to get this

done.

Commissioner Feltner stated he will go back to what he said at the Commission meeting, he

thinks that the legislators will probably hear about this during session, January 30 is session; if

the public is not satisfied with that meeting they will probably for the next natural course of

action would be contact members; he has suggested that too to a few who would listen on that

issue; and he restated for the public to keep calling their members.

Chair Altman asked Mr. Liesenfelt to remind him of the date.

Mr. Liesenfelt advised it is January 30 at 4:00 p.m. at the UF Extension Center on Lake Drive;

and it is from 4:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m.

Chair Altman asked if DEP has time to change, he does not know what the notice requirements

are with the State.

Mr. Liesenfelt commented he would not know enough, but it is still three and one-half weeks

away; and staff has pretty good relations with Eastern Florida State College.

Chair Altman stated that is good, there are a lot of seats there.

Mr. Liesenfelt noted they are very good to work with.

Commissioner Feltner asked what the County’s notification requirement for a meeting.

Morris Richardson, County Attorney advised it is reasonable under the circumstances.

Commissioner Feltner asked if the County notices like Thursday before a Tuesday meeting and

that sort of thing.

Attorney Richardson advised dates are noticed well in advance, but that is when the Agenda

comes out.

Chair Altman stated what he has heard with petitions is that they may need Space Coast

Stadium. He thinks the Board needs to reach out to the Governor’s Office; ultimately, DEP work

for the Governor, he runs the executive branch; all of the Board Members should probably

reach out not only to the delegation members but to the government liaison with the Governor’s

Office; he thinks he would want to be responsive; and he thanked Commissioner Delaney for

bringing that up. He mentioned in the old days the Board used to have meetings all over the

County and alternate Commission meetings from Melbourne to Titusville; they were a traveling

road show; and this brings back a lot of good memories.

Adjourn