Commissioner Fitzpatrick reports Cogan grass, MSkills, and Spokane planning

1:56:40I'll try and do this in four minutes. Um first um driving here and driving around the county, I'm reminded about the Cogan grass that's continuing to spread and um as I passed C P E B, the land some of the land that I think we're gonna be voting on, and notice some of the some of the land is just covered in Kogan grass. And I wondered if we have restrictions so that when uh land is cleared that has an invasive

1:57:11plant on it, they don't take it and um fill use it as fill somewhere else. That's actually how it got into my neighborhood in Aristida. The develop our development partner um brought it in and built the swales that were required in the back and so now we have uh a number of homes that have coven grass in it and it's uh really difficult to get rid of. So I I do think we need some kind of regulation so that you don't make the problem worse by bringing uh bringing

1:57:41that into your neighborhood. And I th I think what they do is they pile it up and then they burn it. Um but I'm not sure but we we need to have a regulation that you can't take The um that that and put it on someone else's property. Um I have some photos I wanted them to load up uh Uh I I was recently in Mississippi. Okay, this one I was in Spokane last this last week. Um my son in law took command of uh refueling squadrons, so it's very

1:58:11cool. Um but Uh and then the other photos are from a real estate project I went to see two weeks ago in Mississippi. Um well I didn't mean to show that house. That's a nice tree. Um that if you go back to the sidewalk, um you'll see what and there should be uh like eight pictures. Um you should see what This is Mississippi, Ocean Springs. What communities are doing so they don't tear out their trees, but they still

1:58:41have functioning sidewalks is they do the sidewalks in these squares where they have these trees with tree roots. So So rather than tear out the tree, which I think this, you know, I I hate seeing. They they do the sidewalks like this. And it's interesting that in two places I I I've seen where they're they're doing this and I think we should look at repairing sidewalks differently than ripping out the trees. Uh I had a question on the landscaping on Ridge

1:59:12Road. I know that when we um widened Ridge Road, we put aside $75,000 for a landscaping plan and funds, and I was told that it was sitting somewhere waiting for the the litigation to finish, and so I just want to know when we'll see that really nice landscaping along Ridge Road. Um also 52 in the Sun Coast. Still waiting. I guess that maybe that'll be an MPO question, but there's no landscaping on the Sun Coast yet. Um, and

1:59:42uh we talked to to the turbike people a long time ago. We really want to see that landscaping come. Um, yeah, I want to thank our legislators. I'm very happy that MSKills received uh 450,000 and I'd gone up and talked to DER. and Enterprise Florida and everybody about what we're doing and they're all very excited about it. So it might have been a little misleading because the way we were funded was in two different pots. So we we had we had a request in for $550 and it was divided from

2:00:12$100 and $450. And we did get the $450, and that's going towards renovations of the building. Right now the Tampa Bay Build um TBBJ, Tampa Bay Business. journal is doing um a uh meeting or uh I don't know what it's called. They're having a panel right now in the state of manufacturing and I I just heard that Amskills was uh our plan to taking training to the community is a brilliant strategy. So

2:00:42we're getting a shout out right now online with the Tampa Bay Business Journal. And Lindrick, 3.8 million, very exciting to help improve the uh water quality and the the um water delivery and the whole aging sewer system over there. That um This is going to go a long way to helping uh the county deal with the problems as they acquire Lindreck. So we're very grateful to to

2:01:13the legislature and especially a shout out to my friend who is the incoming state Senate president because he put the placeholder in that allowed us to stay alive. So um I'm very thankful to him. Um on short-term rental I think that's a workshop that we need, you know, we need to discuss with our citizens and with our attorneys and with everybody what it means if we stay or if we get rid of our ordinance and um Because I know the community's divided. My

2:01:43Dulf Harbor's neighborhood is is divided. We'll never get consensus, I think, but I think we have a we have to have a good talk about what it means if we get rid of our ordinance and which in my opinion isn't working. And lastly on on the planning side, when I was in Spokane um visiting again the the uh my son in law's command ceremony Uh it's my second it's their second time being

2:02:13stationed there at Fairchild, but they live they live in Spokane. It's a really interesting planning exercise to drive around this beautiful community um called well I'm not sure what the whole name of it is, but where my daughter lives. Were you stationed at Fairchild? No.

2:02:29No ma'am. Okay. I

2:02:30have a way

2:02:31for a child.

2:02:32Right. You you could be driving along and it's beautiful homes and you saw one with the the tree and that's one of the little homes. Um and then boom, it's a bakery. uh or an ice cream shop and then Two houses down on the same street, it's a quadruplex, and then there's ten million dollar homes, and then there's a duplex. And it's it's just beautiful. It's just all mixed in and woven and the schools are all in in you know, it's just really

2:03:02woven with a lot of uses within a community. And you know, uh we here it with our new stuff we s to me we seem to com compartmentalize everything and I just really found that to be just a Uh you know, if I lived in Spokane I would love to live there. You can just walk to your bakery and have your morning coffee. And it just I just wanted to say it is possible that to live in a wonderful place that has a bunch of different types of people living in there and

2:03:32workforce housing uh and affordable housing woven in to a community in a really s smart way. And yes they're all the roads are on a grid even though going up a mountainside so pretty cool. That's it for me.