Parks safety concerns and citizens ordinance advisory committee

1:28:08Thank you everyone. I appreciate your support in helping service these children in the area. Um another concern that I had is going out to specific parks and seeing a lot of the safety concerns. I am working very diligently with Parks and Rec. Um I did not provide photos today. If you truly will like photos, I could provide them, but I prefer Just uh if everyone can keep in mind if we need to direct more and appropri additional funding to these parks, there are safety

1:28:38concerns and I do not want to see any children get hurt and due to liability just to maybe start thinking on expanding the budget for parks and rec so children can be safe. And if we can invest in our youth today, maybe they won't end up with addiction, mental health and homelessness. So I really truly feel we need to start Focusing on our youth to prov provide a better quality of life in the future. And so they can become productive members in society. Lastly,

1:29:10I would like to discuss or bring up if we could have a citizens ordinance advisory where citizens can come in and have an advisory, put their input. A lot of the times when citizens come to us while we're at the dais making the decisions, they've already gone through all of the processes, jumped through all the hoops, already have entitlements and again I find it difficult to take somebody's entitlements away once they already

1:29:40have them. So I really feel that citizens want to be involved. They really need to come in on the ground floor. So I would like to have their voice be heard. possibly at a citizens advisory committee.

1:29:52So that's interesting because I served on one of those for years. Um um and it was called the Citizens Ordnance Review Committee and it was a county uh committee where we um where and we were like the first we were the beginning We did the sign ordinance, the tree ordinance, the landscape ordinance, the right-of-way ordinance. We did a whole bunch of of ordinances. Um and so I I'm okay with that. I think that's a good thing. The the

1:30:23only thing is is uh our staff is pretty burdened on time. And uh And so it it it it is a staff commitment to have the quork we call it Cork. But we functioned pretty well for years, so

1:30:35Madam Chairman So historically you had cork Cork was dissolved when the LD when we were starting the major rewrite of the land development code. and an LDC stakeholders committee was formed. Um That worked for a while and then because most of the people that were on the LDC stakeholders committee were involved in the development community. They requested

1:31:05to be disbanded because they didn't they wanted to talk to each other because of sunshine concerns. So that went away and In its place the horizontal and vertical round tables were put in place where staff brings to the development community new L D C ordinances. Now That being said.

1:31:33Citizens are not on on those things. Now, on the other hand, you've got a planning commission and that's really their job is to vet the ordinance before it gets to you. But You can I mean you can have a a and you can reinstitute court if you wish um But that's historically that's sort of how you got to today. I don't know,

1:31:58a manager. Yeah. And I appreciate the comments, but but Right now, I mean our staff is overloaded. I don't see how they can take anything else on. They're trying the hardest to get through permits and review processes and things. If we pull any of them off right now, this in my opinion is just not the right time. Maybe down the road when things settle down. look at this again, but we can't pull one staff member for one minute of the day off anything. I mean we're so backed up right now. It's insane

1:32:29and I see the county administrator saying yes, we're backed up. I think Sally would agree we're backed up. I mean I just and we can't hire anybody 'cause it's not we're not in the new you know, you gotta wait for the next budget cycle to actually find somebody and put it in the budget to hire. So

1:32:41Well we have additional seats that have not been hired, so there are full time employee openings. We just don't

1:32:47it's well it's hard to it's hard to it's hard to hire right now. Commissioner's paying on

1:32:52work and roll work and really hard to hire. I don't think I don't think we need to start a new committee up either. I mean frankly Our county attorney has got so many things with difficulty even hiring people to go do these things. He's outsourcing things with the salary money he's got. So to take even put put another thing on his shoulder right now, it's just gonna push other stuff back down the road. I find if citizens have an issue they bring it forward, we can bring it here, they can come right to here, we can discuss it, get it going forward quickly and easier if we think it's worthwhile, rather than going through a committee to

1:33:22again take up more staff time. It's it's hard enough to get What they gotta get done already.

1:33:28I agree that there is a backlog. I also agree when citizens come the day of And it's come to the point, it's almost at the final decision and things are already completely in place and they've already been through planning and they're coming to their board for their final hearing. if they want to be involved, they would really need to be involved at the ground level. So something to think about.

1:33:57There's such a variation of what ordinance is and what they're going to do though at the same time. So you ha you if you have an ordinance, there may be a large amount or a small amount of people that actually that might impact or may not impact. But ninety-five percent of the rest of them aren't gonna care about it 'cause it's not gonna have an impact on them. So also it could be difficult to find that makeup of people that are really gonna be um truly engaged through the entire process because again it may

1:34:28not have an impact on on them. But that's just my opinion. But again, I appreciate the consideration. I just don't think now's the right time to Especially with staffing.

1:34:37I understand what staffing. I appreciate the conversation. I know I couldn't discuss this behind closed doors due to sunshine, so I appreciate the c open conversation today, but the citizens are aware.

1:34:46Yeah, so I I am sympathetic to that opportunity because that is how I was able to advance some initiatives that were important to me, like landscaping, signage. cell towers, billboards, all that kind of stuff. Um And I I hope that we can find a way for more citizen input. Um as as we, you know, grow. So I I think it's important. But but I too think our

1:35:17staff can't handle one more thing right now. So so we need to look for a creative way for for citizen input, in my opinion.