Alright, I'll go ahead and call this uh Tuesday, October 20th work session to order.

Um, I'm gonna ask uh Commissioner Underwood if she don't mind lead us in the blessing followed by the Pledge of Allegiance.

Uh uh Commissioner Gruber.

Please stand and let's bow our heads.

Thank

you.

Dear Heavenly Father, we just thank you for all that you do, God, because you know, God, we know that you are good, and God, we know

that

the goodness of you is something that you don't have to prove because you are good, and we just thank you and praise you for all that you do for us here in Ballin County and Lord be with us today as we conduct the business of this county.

Help us, Lord, to make the right and best decisions.

In Jesus' name we pray, amen.

Amen.

Pledge liberty.

And for which it stands.

One nation under God, indivisible liberty.

Thank you.

All

right, so uh right now what we are gonna do is is work on um putting our consent agenda together.

And um, I want to welcome everybody here today to this beautiful morning and great work session that we're about to have.

So, on our consent agenda, um, commissioners, we have our administrative items.

Um, I think uh on a couple of these we can we can um go ahead and consent.

There's um item CA3.

There's another monetary donation uh coming from the Fly High Goose Foundation, and I think they will be at the uh 10 o'clock

meeting

to talk about what they're gonna be uh wanting to do around the same area that we did the playground at.

So we can stay tuned to that.

But Frank, we're alright.

Go ahead and if we consent on that, they can explain it.

We'll let them have a chance to talk at the 10 o'clock meeting.

So are y'all good with these items?

There's a lot of lot of uh red writing.

So if it's something that we need to state for the record, um, I'm gonna leave it up to our team to my right to tell me what needs to be done.

So, we're good with these items.

I think it's

good.

All right, so uh next up, we do have um somebody here that may want to speak on behalf of this is that acceptance of a sponsorship from Rayonir Inc.

for the 2026 and 2027 Christmas lights at Bicentennial Park.

Um

we

have Miss Sean DeRome here with Rayonir that um is present.

If if her the Felicia, do you want to come up and say anything or

good morning commissioners?

I'm pleased to introduce Miss Sean DeRome, representing Rayonier.

She will provide additional information about herself and an overview of the company, and also present their interest in sponsoring the Christmas light show at Bicentennial Park.

Thank you.

Good morning, Commissioners and staff.

My name is Sean Durham.

I'm the director of public affairs for Rainier.

Um, and I'll say we have land across the country, but this is a particularly special um opportunity for us.

This place holds a very special place in my heart, and um I'm really really proud to be standing here today.

Um, we're we're a proud member of Baldwin County.

We've been here for over 30 years.

We've kind of sold and bought some land over the years, recently had another um 11,000 acre acquisition closer to this area.

Um, but total we've got 39,000 acres here and um a certain seedling nursery in Alberta that's got about 30 million uh pine seedlings.

Um so we've supported the Gulf Coast Center for Ecotourism and Sustainability over the years, the Weeks Bay Pitcher Plant Bog and the Magnolia Springs Arboreta and they have their fall fundraiser this Sunday if anybody's interested.

Um so we've we've been working really hard at finding different ways to deepen our relationships and our community involvement here.

So

I met with Jeb Ball a couple years ago, and he brought up the opportunity to work with um Miss Felicia, and so at this time um we want to express our gratitude to Commissioner Ball for his years of public service to the community and for pointing us toward this initiative.

On

behalf of Rainier, um I am thrilled to formally present our commitment to partner with Baldwin County as a sponsor for the Christmas-like show.