Board of County Commissioners - Regular Meeting

If you wish to speak to any item on the agenda or during the public comment portion of the meeting, please fill out a speaker card. Each person addressing the board shall have three minutes to complete his or her comments on each agenda item for which he or she has filled out a card. The Chair has the discretion to determine or alter the time limits on any agenda item. The Board of County Commissioners requests that speakers appearing under the Public Comments section of the agenda limit their comments or presentations to matters relating to county business that are within the Board's control, authority, and jurisdiction.

I'd like to call the meeting to order. Our invocation today will be delivered by Donny Legg, Second Adam Ministries.

I just want to thank the commission. Years ago, I talked to my granddaughter, who's 25 now, living in Virginia, who came up here with me years ago when I was doing the invocation, and you all said, well, you may have not been there, but you said, come up and stand with your grandpa. And she stood next to me, and she was a little girl. She remembers that today. You made memory there. So I just wanted to thank you for that.

That's awesome. She could have been watching.

Yeah. Let's pray. Father, we are so humbled and thankful. that you're a God that allows us to come directly before your throne because of the price that was paid for us. And Father, we don't take that lightly. We recognize that you're a God that hears all and sees all. You're a sovereign God that is strong and in control. And this is why we need you. And Father, I come to you today because we just celebrated our country's 250th year anniversary. Father, we called it Freedom 250. and freedom it's been. We live in the greatest country in the world and all of its faults and all of its downsized things that happen. Father, we still have the greatest country in the world. And we thank you that you orchestrated us to live in this country. May we be led by the correct people Father, we thank you for the commissioners that are before us, and Father, the elected officials, and we ask you not only to bless them, but give them wisdom, Father, in the decisions they must make. Bless their families, Father, because I think of the military, men and women of our military, and our first responders. who Father have fought and reacted to things, Father, to give us these freedoms that we have. I personally fought next to some who gave all, Father, so that we might have the freedoms that we have today. And so, Father, I thank you for those. And I pray for those behind me who, because of that freedom, because some has paid it all, because some have made it back, and some are even in this room that fought in wars. Father, I pray, thanking you, we live in a country that can have different opinions and voice those opinions. Father, I ask you Father to bless them and their families as well. And so Father, I also ask you to bless those that are behind the scenes here to make this meeting work. I think of Kathy Lively, who in my personal opinion, is my first impression of these commissioners that sat before me right now. So bless her and her family, and we'll thank you for that. So as the meeting continues today, may it be conducted in such a manner that brings honor to you, Father, and we'll give you the praise for it in Jesus' name, amen. Amen.

Our Pledge of Allegiance will be led by Commissioner Atkinson.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

OK, I'd like to officially call the meeting to order and to acknowledge that Commissioner Goodson is on. Do we need a motion for that? I'll make a motion for Commissioner Goodson to participate by phone. Motion second all in favor say, yeah, yeah passes and then passes unanimously OK first order business minutes. We have the minutes for February 10th 2026 February 24th 2026. March 17th March 19th. April 2nd April 7th April 21st. And another April 21st. The budget meet workshop and may 5th. Make a motion to approve motion to approve those minutes second all in favor say, yeah, yeah, yeah.

There's unanimously.

Okay, we have resolution awards and presentations resolution honoring community legal services on the 6th 60th anniversary of the bar by this for.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. As you said, I have a resolution tonight honoring the 60th anniversary of community legal services. And we have Joe Colombo and Adriana Tran. You're welcome to come up. I'll read the resolution. We'll vote on it. And then the chair will recognize you to speak. Thank you for being here. Whereas many Americans are one civil legal problem away from falling into poverty or further into poverty, annually, three in four low-income American households experience at least one civil legal problem, and yet 92% of these households do not get any or enough legal help for their civil legal problems. And whereas Community Legal Services has served the residents of Brevard, Citrus, Flagler, Hernando, Lake, Marion, Osceola, Orange, Putnam, Seminole, Sumter, and Volusia counties for six decades since its founding in 1966, through the provision of no-cost legal services for those who could not otherwise gain access to counsel. And whereas the communities served by community legal services include low-income Floridians and their families, seniors, veterans, survivors of domestic violence, children with disabilities, disaster survivors, and other at-risk individuals facing critical hardships such as the potential loss of a home fraudulent contracts financial instability denial of benefits barriers to housing challenges in disaster recovery and the need to obtain legal protections and whereas through its dedicated staff and the hundreds of pro bono attorneys who have volunteered their time over the decades Community legal services have served our clients with more than 300,000 civil legal cases and committed more than 1 million hours of direct legal assistance for Floridians over the past six decades, embodying its commitment to legal access for all. thus strengthening communities and economic stability across its service area. Now therefore, be it resolved that the Brevard County Board of County Commissioners does hereby recognize and commend Community Legal Services for its 60 years of service and dedication to its mission to provide no cost legal services to the most vulnerable in central Florida and help them protect their families, health and livelihoods. Don't order adopted in regular session the seventh day of July 2026. With that, Mr. Chair, I'll make a motion to approve a second motion and second.

Any discussion? All in favor say, yeah, yeah, yeah. Carries unanimously. Thank you.

sir thank you uh once again joe colombo i'm the uh board director representative of our county board association and uh i'm here with miss adriana tran who's our government relations director came over from orlando uh just very briefly uh thank you uh mr chairman thank you individually commissioner feltner and thank you to all the commission and all the staff from the county for this wonderful proclamation. It's much appreciated. Once again, we've been working for 60 years in Central Florida in 12 different counties. We're the largest legal aid in the state of Florida. We work here in Brevard County in conjunction and in concert with Brevard County Legal Aid. We fill some gaps or some areas that they don't do work in, but we work in concert with them. and safety, human safety, right to shelter, food, these are basic human rights and oftentimes people have to walk across the street to the courthouse to address certain issues involving those rights and we're here to make sure that people aren't alone in court. There's mechanisms to have people represented in criminal court, but this is in civil court where lower income people have an attorney to help them out, whether it's an eviction, a domestic violence issue, a veterans benefits issue, a tax issue. There's a whole host of them that we're involved in. and we're proud to be involved in. And once again, we thank you for this proclamation. Our executive director is a colonel in the reserve, so he's big on the challenge coins. So he's got challenge coins for all the commissioners we'd like to hand out tonight. Thank you. Thank you. That's commemorating the 60 year anniversary. It's a nice coin. Thank you. And hopefully we'll move on 60 more years and onward and upward. Thank you.

We like challenge coins too. And this is a beautiful one. Excellent. Please tell them that. I have a frame of resolution for you to take back. It's not as pretty as this. Much appreciated. I hope you'll accept it. Thank you.

Much appreciated. Thank you. Thank you for the proclamation.

Thank you so much for what you do for our community. It's so important to help those who can't afford an attorney. And our society is so much based on the ability to have representation. And I can't say enough how much I know I appreciate how important it is what you do. Thank you. Okay. We will now move to the consent agenda. I have one item that I'm just want to pull for a little discussion. That's F4. Is there any commissioners that have anything they would like to pull? I think that's the only item. Okay, we do have some cards. We'll listen to the cards. Item F3, Rick Heffelfinger. 15.

Real careful finger, District 1, 2000 Juniper Drive. I had one question on this one. This is a big number, and it's a transportation impact fee. And my question was, I pulled the, I looked at all the attachments like I'm supposed to. So I pulled all these, the memos and stuff, and I know that we go through and we vote on this stuff with Titusville, got Public Works involved. It never says how much is in that fund. Is that typically we don't want to disclose that or we don't know that? And it also says the North Mainland area. And I was wondering if anybody could, I don't know if anybody's here for that one, could describe that because this is doing some good stuff. I'll say that right now. It's doing some good stuff. It's previously, a couple months back, it's paving some of the roads in Canaveral Groves and the people in Canaveral Groves are excited to hear that. It's also improving, this one I guess is, yeah, the one from... 317 paved some roads in Canaveral Groves and did some Grissom up farther north. But this one right here is also putting in the, we're modifying the street lamp, or the signal, rather, at Canaveral Groves and Grissom, and I think a lot of people will appreciate that one. But I don't know how much is in that and whether that's fenced to D1, or is that just one big fund that all those impact fees go into? So those were my questions, and if you could answer them, that's about all I had.

Is there one question or what?

Well, one question is, well, you're right. There's one. Okay. Well, what's the balance in that fund? Because I guess they look at that balance and say, hey, do we have the money to do this from the impact fees?

All right, I'll write that down and we'll have staff answer it. Okay. But we'll move on and then we'll have all the questions.

And then the other one is, is the North Mainland a fenced, is that fund fenced by districts or not?

Okay.

So that was the other question. So that's it on F3.

All right, F8. Oh, is that me too? Yeah, I'm going to hear yours while you're up as well.

This one was an interesting one. I mean, I know we go through, this is all about the as-is deed for the board where we had a problem with a pumping station, I believe, and the fence was 30 feet too close to the county or was giving up 30 feet. My question was, I thought we always went through zoning and all that stuff and we pulled permits, but somebody built a screen room four inches away from the property line. And I don't know how that got through. And then did the county install the fence in the wrong place? Or was that the homeowner's fence? It's not clear. But it just shows me a little bit I'm concerned that we do all this stuff with permitting. We do all this stuff with you're supposed to have a plot plan. And I don't know who screwed that up. But the county was very, very nice. And they sold that piece of property so the guy would still have, I think, three feet so he could go beside his screen room. So that was a nice thing, I think. But how did we get into that situation in the first place? I don't know if there's any corrective action that we need to look at what we're doing with permitting. But either the county screwed up and put the fence in the wrong place, the homeowner assumed that's where it was, and then the homeowner pulled a screen room permit, didn't pull his own survey, and so he went into the easement. So just trying to find out why that happened and why we had to. Although the county made what? Made $332 by selling them that little plot. So that was revenue. So I just didn't know if anybody wanted to look at that and figure out why that happened.

You want to get through on the answer?

I could answer this maybe really fast. Okay, cool. This is a lift station in, it's in Indian Harbor Beach, but it's a county facility. And so Indian Harbor Beach would issue the permit.

Aye.

So do they need to get- But we're working with the homeowner. We don't want them to have to take down fences and they have a, I think they have a pool, et cetera. So for $300, we were able to get this.

Yeah, you're going to move the fence, I understand, but you're not going to move it all the way as far as you could. You're going to sell them that little piece.

I think that's right, and I think it's about three feet.

So that would have been an Indian Harbor zoning or planning? Not zoning necessarily, but permanent?

I think it's just a permit issue there.

Yeah, well, I don't know who owned the fence. Did the county own the fence?

No, I think it's their fence.

Ooh, they tried to steal your property then. Right.

I think we're working with the homeowner to.

Yeah, well, they shouldn't have put that fence there, so I don't know why they were allowed to. All right, that's, again, that's, I just don't know if somebody's gonna give a heads up to that district that they didn't permit that very well.

We can get you a meeting schedule for Indian Harbor Beach if you wanna go.

Oh, no, no, no. I don't want to go. I just figured when we get caught in a situation like that, we ought to ask them, hey, how did you let that fence get put there 30 feet on your property, our property?

Yeah. F11. F11.

This one was, I think, just a review to standardize utility service department operations. But I flagged it because it said approximately $3 million annually is spent on utility service operations. I don't know what, does that have some bearing on what we did with this update in the document? Because I always flag those for money. So that's the only reason I'm up here, $3 million. But it doesn't sound like we spent $3 million. It sounds like it's a big item and we're trying to standardize it. Did I get that right?

We'll get through all these. Okay.

I don't know if that's... Yeah, that came from utility services, so they're doing a good job updating all their control documents. I like that. Am I moving to F12? Yep. This one is an interesting one. This is about an emergency purchase order. This is utility services again. We had a problem with the... the front side of the water processing facility, the head water, odor control and structural assessment. And I pulled all the purports, because this is an emergency, right? And I wanted to see what this emergency was. And water's a hot topic these days. So it says, I pulled the report by somebody in Veach. Who's the report here? Anyway, those guys, they were called in to do a report. There's an annotation in that report that says the first indication of this problem was 2021. And I don't know if that's a typo or when was Veach brought in, but that's only two years after this water plant was updated. And the liner was coming off inside. And so from 2021, then 2024, they came in, they took some pictures, they had some before and after, and then again in 2026. And by the time you get into 2026, it's an emergency. And it's gonna cost us a lot. 1,130,635 as an emergency. And it looks like I think we even skipped the multiple bidders because this has to happen sooner than later because it's an emergency. And I was just wondering, did we drop the ball and not catch? Because I would have thought two years after something was built, we might be able to get a warranty claim on that. Because somebody built it wrong. And the evidence is somebody went back through in the notes and said, yeah, the liner was improperly applied. So this was a manufacturer or an installer defect. And I don't know why, if it was actually detected in 2021, why it took until 2026 and it became an emergency. Because it's quite clear in here that I think everybody knows that hydrogen sulfide gas produced by part of the leachate that's in it and the nasty stuff that's in the processing water It creates hydrogen sulfide, which is why you have to put that odor detection system in, right? So it stops. But the stuff's also colorless, corrosive, toxic, and flammable. And they measured readings that were way too high, which has probably helped along with the liner. I just don't know how we got here into an emergency when it looks like, to me, that thing was breaking down in 2021. And it was only two years old. I mean, right now, it's only seven years old. And it's a big project. And they're talking about It actually says that the secondary system is not even working at all now. I guess water's still going through it, but I don't, maybe it's not screening anything. So that one concerned me because it appears like we didn't catch that or we did catch that because the report says it was updated. I don't know when it was originally done, but if it was in 2021, then I would have thought that all those warnings would have been there. So that's all I had on that one. 14. 14. Yeah, 12 had a lot of attachments, a lot of pictures. 14. Let's see. The only comment on that one is that this house that we're doing this $20,000 septic tank for is in District 1, not District 2. So there's just a, I don't know if that matters. I don't know if that, who is it, the home agreement with home grant costs, if it matters where they do that work or not. But that's District 1. I'm done with that one.

Okay.

F-15 is next. Again, the fiscal impact caught my attention on this one. This is all for buying more buses and whatnot for Space Coast Area Transit, I guess. And I don't know whose money this is. It says they're Federal Transit Administration Fund. And I can add those up, and you add the two of them. I did some of the math, and I'm sitting there. But the fiscal impact says that you're using $30 million I think that's $30 million. Yeah, $30 million. And the cost of the project is only total cost is only $22,838,920. So I don't know why we're liquidating or utilizing more expenses than it costs to do the bus stuff. Well, it's buses, it's security systems. So just a clarification on when you say fiscal impact, usually it will say, hey, these aren't tax dollars, these aren't. And some of it does say that. Florida Department of Transportation toll revenue credits, it sounds like we get some, but they don't have any monetary value and we can use them to get grants. I think that's how that works. But again, that one's just a question of where's that money coming from? Because they're buying a lot of buses and whatnots. I'm done with that one.

So I think I'm done. I think that's all the consent item comments and questions.

That I flagged, yes.

Do you want us to maybe have staff? Yeah, that way we can answer them rather than get it. Okay. Okay. So we're going to defer that somewhere. We're going to get some answers.

Yeah, yeah.

OK. Cool. Thanks.

Mr. Chair, you want us to go through them now? Yes. OK. Yep. Thanks, sir.

So I believe the two questions on F3 were what was the fund balance on the North mainland benefit district project fund? And the second question was whether that fund was fenced. Um, the first question, I don't know the answer to at the top of my head. I'd have to get, have to get back with, uh, uh, the commenter. Um, i i obviously there's adequate funding for the 3 million 598 000 that's part of this request on the second question the answer is generally yes there's five transportation impact fee districts generally wherever it's whatever district the money is collected in is where it has to be expended and so the north mainland benefit district the reason why the advisory committee is made up of titusville and brevard county is all the all the impact view benefit districts the advisory committee is made up of the municipalities within that district as well as brevard county so in the north mainland benefit district is the city of titusville and brevard county okay thank you f8

that we did that one i got it checked off good job yeah thank you f11 that's why i have a check there okay uh so commissioner with regard to f11 as we stated our objective is to standardize equipment for a consistency across our utility um Exhibit A discusses what we're adding to our standardization with regard to the $3 million reference. Those are big ticket items. The clarifier equipment alone, I think, believe go for close to a million each for each clarifier. So I don't, we're comfortable with that number where it stands. Okay.

Disc F4. What's that? F12, I mean.

F12, yes. So item F12, Commissioner. So the dynamic of this is that there was a condition that occurred years ago as referenced in the agenda report. It was observed that it was minor. Along the way, we did have a turnover in staff that the communication with regard to this item may not have been conveyed over. However, recently, as it stated in the agenda report, we not only had one, we had two. Engineering firms independently do an evaluation that was consistent. Given South Central is the largest wastewater plant in our service area, We are, you know, in the headworks is the first point of entry for sewer. It's unsafe as it speaks. So we've gone through the collaboration of finding the most expeditious way in order to get this repaired and back online. And that's the necessity of that emergency PO.

I think there was a question also, is it under warranty?

Yeah, and we do have the county attorney's office. We've provided it on many of the documentation, and they're going through that review.

Okay. Maybe some good news will come out of that. F14. Oh, that one was corrected. Yeah, it was in the wrong district. F15.

I do this nine years old knowledge but I think I have it down. The $22 million in change, that is federal transit administration money. That is money from the federal government that comes through the Department of Transportation. MR. HEFFELFINGER IS CORRECT. THE 4 MILLION TOLL REVENUE CREDIT IS JUST A PAPER CREDIT, SHOWS OUR MATCH FOR THAT 22 MILLION. AND THEN YOU SEE THE COUPLE OTHER NUMBERS, TRANSPORTATION BLOCK GRANT, WHATEVER THAT ADDS UP TO ABOUT 3.7 MILLION. WHEN YOU LOOK THROUGH ON THE PAGES, OUR OPERATING ASSISTANCE REQUIRES A 50-50 SHARE, SO THAT'S THE STATE SHARE OF THAT 50-50 SHARE. SO THAT'S WHY THE NUMBERS, WE'RE APPLYING FOR 22 MILLION IN CHANGE OF FEDERAL MONEY, BUT THEN WE'RE SHOWING THE IMPACT IS WHAT WE HAVE TO MATCH WITH SHARE.

OKAY, GREAT. Okay. That's all I have my item. And I think we can just have a quick discussion on, I don't think we need to have a separate vote. Um, but I thought it was interesting. We had some interesting conversations, staff did a really good job in their briefing, but the issue came up something I think we need to be aware of maybe in future meetings or. thinking of a future policy. This is a final plot approval. It's in district four, but I think I pulled this because it applies to all districts. It doesn't matter where it's located. But as we put more and more of these developments in roads and public ownership, our present MSTUs are not adequate for the maintenance. We're digging a hole for ourselves every time we do that. Now, if there's a gate, the streets may be private, so they're maintained by the private developer, but perhaps we need to do an analysis and see how deep a hole we're digging and maybe try to adjust. I don't know if it's more private streets or have an MSTU that's adequate to cover, but I just think the point is these plot approvals come and go, but we know that we're building ourselves in a debt situation or inability to maintain the roads. Can I ask a technical question? Sure.

Can they, when we're at this plat approval process, can they be designated private roads if they're not behind a gate? Is that something that can be done? I'm just wondering for the future going forward.

typically the roadway maintenance is discussed during the preliminary subdivision process so at that point they could be private you don't necessarily have to have a gate for for the ownership and maintenance of the roadway But typically they are gated. The reason they want the gate and if they have a gate, then they do have to be private. So it's kind of they want to have the private road. They want to have the exclusive, you know, being exclusive or being where they can limit access to their neighborhood. So that's what they typically do through development.

And that's sort of been my working knowledge since I've been here is that if it's behind a gate, that's pretty good indication that that's it's private. But do they have to? Because there is some maintenance with the gates. I live in a neighborhood like that, and it's surprising how much they spend on that. And so going forward for these, they don't necessarily have to be behind a gate for them to be private. That's just an agreement early on with the county.

Right.

Yes, sir. Yes. All right. That's my question, sir.

Thank you, that's good questions. Okay, I think we can go ahead. I'm sorry, may I? Sure.

I don't want to pull anything. I just wanted to make a comment. On F-19 and F-21, we have a new IT director, Lois Boisseau. Congratulations and thank you. And we also have a new River County Fire Rescue Department director, James Stables. Thank you, sir.

Ask him to stand.

Will you guys stand?

Lois, are you here? Is Lois here? James, you get the best dressed award here tonight. Okay, a motion would be in order. I'll make a motion to approve the consent agenda.

I'll second.

Motion second on the consent agenda. All in favor say yay. Yay. It carries unanimously. Thank you. Okay, we will now move to public comments. I think we have some public comment cards. Matt Albert is our first card.

Good afternoon, Commissioners. My name is Matt Alberts, and I'm a resident at the woods at Crook and Mile in Merritt Island. I'm here today to continue the discussion started by my neighbor, Adrian Vargas, who spoke before this board on May 5th, 2026, regarding the growing peafowl population affecting our neighborhood. Adrian Misvargas is out of town today. At the May 5th meeting, Adrian provided a packet documenting the issues including sounds, photographs, resident signatures, and information showing the impact of these birds are having on our neighborhood. Since that meeting, she and we have made multiple attempts to follow up by both email and phone with Commissioner Gordon's office. Unfortunately, we have not received a response. We understand that this is not a simple issue and we are not expecting an immediate solution. We don't know whether anyone is looking into the issue or what our next steps should be. Over the past several months, our neighborhood has contacted Animal Services, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, the Sheriff's Office, our HOA, and so on. Each agency has either said the issue falls outside its authority or referred us to someone else. Meanwhile, the peafowl population continues to grow and the impacts on our residents goes on. Today we're asking for communication about status and any next steps specifically. Has this issue been assigned to a county department or staff member? Is anyone currently evaluating possible options? And if the county is unable to assist, could you please let us know so we could further focus our efforts? Our neighborhood has approached this through the proper channels. We've documented the issue, gathered community support and followed every recommendation we've been given. At this point, we're asking for a response and some guidance on what might come next. Thank you very much for your time and consideration and I respectfully ask that A member of the county contacted Ms. Vargas with an update on the status of the issue. Even if there isn't a solution yet, we would greatly appreciate knowing where things might stand. Thank you very much.

Okay. I don't know if anyone has any comments. I know I made an inquiry as a result of our meeting. We've got an issue with FWC and animal control and the peacocks are sort of in the middle of a no man's land legally, but we probably need to give you more information. So I'm glad you're here and we will get on it and we'll get you. Do we have anything else? But I think we definitely, it's an action item we need to act on.

Yeah, and there's a bunch of discussion. The minutes happen to be there. I haven't got to the end, but it didn't kind of look like it just went there, but we'll come up with some kind of follow-up for you.

Okay. We need to respond to you. I appreciate you bringing that. Thank you. Okay. My aide is back there. I'll make sure. I know our staff is here. We'll get you an answer on that. Our next card. I hit one with my car one afternoon right in front of me. I couldn't sleep that night. I felt bad. I think it survived. Those are tough animals. Dent in my car and I got out of the car to find it and it had run away. I'm like, wow. Okay, but we'll follow up. Okay, our next item speaker, Sandra Sullivan.

Good evening, Sandra Sullivan, and happy 250th anniversary to our great nation. As Ben Franklin said, a republic if you can keep it. And so there's a lot of people that share my concerns about data centers. and the mass surveillance and the digital currency risks that that would bring to our society. And so now there are 20 counties and municipalities that have done moratoriums on hyperscale data centers. I'm requesting Brevard County to consider a moratorium on these data centers. EDC is in emails for data centers in Brevard, and we're hearing potential plans at Tyco and perhaps Palm Bay Compound. EDC gets 12 months of records request exemptions. We're hearing about NDAs in Titusville. So Brevard County... officially voted to approve legislative intent and permission to advertise an ordinance excluding data centers from receiving economic development property tax abatements on April 7th, 2026, but you have not advertised legislative intent. So if you could give an update on that. Did Brevard violate the law when it did not go to legislative intent before the vote on December 17th, 2024, which gave data centers 20 years tax exemption. Under Florida Statute 196.1995, when Brevard County voters passed the referendum on November 5th, 2024, they voted for very specific strictly bound constitutional authority. The statute says any ad valorem tax exemption granted by a county board under this program cannot exceed 10 years, but you did 20 years. On November 5th, 2024, the voters approved the tax exemption abatement for EDC. Would voters have voted for the EDC tax abatement if it included 20 years tax exemption for data centers? I think not. It looks like a bait and switch. Right after that referendum, on December 17th, right before Christmas when everybody's busy with their holidays, with Felder then on the EDC board and was chair of the Brevard County Commission, they changed the ordinance for a 20-year tax exempt for data centers as established by Florida Statute 125.66, which says you cannot change an ordinance without first going out to legislative intent for a voter referendum. Brevard County Board of County Commissioners quietly granted data centers an unprecedented 20-year timeline without a formal advertised public hearing cycle alleged in violation of Florida law. And so I would like your consideration to correct these things and if we could also get a moratorium on data centers, hyperscale, hyperscale.

Okay. Thank you. All right. That's our first public appearance section. We will move on to public hearings. Item H1. We have no cards.

Good evening, Board.

H1 is a petition to vacate a portion of two public utility and drainage easements. This is in District 4, Vera and West of Morrell Road. It is for the ability for an existing pool form board to continue being constructed after discovering the pool had encroached into an easement area not shown on the original survey.

Okay. It's my district. If there aren't any questions or comments, I'll make a motion to approve.

Motion and second to approve all in favor. Say yay.

Yay.

Yeah. Here's unanimously H two.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Um, Brevard County love you. He's a local provider participation fund, non ad valorem assessment on hospitals to fund Medicaid payments for those hospitals who provide services to low income and Medicaid eligible Citizens, hospitals pay the assessment to the county and we transfer the funds to the state where they qualify for federal match. This assessment costs local taxpayers nothing and the hospitals actually requested that the county implement it because the benefits flow to those hospitals, increasing reimbursement for Medicaid services and eligible care. this ordinance updates the assessment structure in order to address the one big beautiful bill act which affected how states can finance medicaid programs it incorporates certain waiver provisions that exempt some facilities from provider taxes it also allows for the opportunity to participate in a new managed care quality incentive program in addition to the existing medicaid payment programs already funded by the assessment it does not affect the assessment rate which is set by resolution after a public notice and a public hearing And the same hospitals that requested the county's enactment of the assessment in the first instance have requested this ordinance and the updates it would make to the program. And I believe someone representing those hospital interests is here and has submitted a speaker card if you have any questions.

We have that card. Colleen, questions only. We have another card, Stephen Lord. Did you want to speak?

We've been supported.

Wave in support. Oh, I like that. Okay.

Hi, Colleen Ernst. I'm the technical expert on this item, so if there are any questions from the board, I'm happy to answer those. But otherwise, just happy to be here in support.

Fantastic. Wonderful program.

I'd like to make a motion to approve as written.

A motion. You have a card? Okay. Can you hand us the card before your speech so we can get it in the pile? Thank you. Sandra Sullivan.

I'll be quick. Sandra Sullivan. So I just want to just remind you, when this was initially voted on as a formal hearing, the proper notice wasn't given. And the date that it was advertised on was a later date than what the hearing was, actually. So there does appear to be some impropriety there. That's it.

OK.

I'm not.

There's an allegation of an impropriety. Is there any substance to that? Okay. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Any discussion? All in favor say yay. I think you need a second. I'll second it. Oh, I'm sorry. Second. Okay. Thank you. Motion is second. All in favor say yay.

Yay. Yay.

It carries unanimously. Thank you. Okay. Let's move on. Next item, unfinished business, I1, discussion stormwater utility assessment rate, design credit removal, and minimum fee adjustment.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'll handle the first part. We're bringing this back as staff. Back in February, you all voted to remove the design credit off the folks' stormwater fees if they were eligible for it and begin the process of that. That would generate about $850,000 a year. We're in the process. We're about ready to start the process to notify the homeowners in between the February vote and what happened on June 1st, 2nd, and 3rd. The legislature have put the amendment number three on the ballot. Now the stormwater credit, their stormwater assessments helps us build projects, but a good majority of our funding for maintenance and drainage comes from our road and bridge MSTUs. Let me slow down there a little bit. And based on some of the numbers we see from the property appraisers, the voters voted for amendment three, we would lose about $2 million in revenue from the MSTUs. and that's how we maintain a lot of our stormwater and drainage so as staff we want to bring this back for your discussion to see if you'll be willing to talk about putting off the design credit notification in the process till after we see what with the november vote will happen i could tell you if the november vote happens there's going to be a lot of changes structural changes we'll have to do to our budget and the county and how we provide some of the services luckily this is a core service but there may not be enough funding to go around so i We have a number of options, but we're looking at option number one, asking if you could direct us to schedule an item during the fiscal year 26-27 to consider adoption of stormwater assessment rate amendments following the referendum.

Okay. It looks like we have cards on this. I lost my voice on that. Let's go ahead and hear from the public, and then if any commissioners have a question. Sandra Sullivan.

Sandra Sullivan, South Patrick Shores. So what I just heard you say is that you'll wait until after the referendum to decide about the rate increases. So there have been a couple conversations here on the dais about increasing stormwater fees to address flooding. So a lot of flooding identified in District 1. We had flooding up there just you know yesterday and in District 2. And so I think we also need to have some real conversations about cause and effect and looking at not just putting the burden of rate increases on we the people. So there's been some conversations here. In fact, Commissioner Feltner mentioned when it was brought up by Katie Delaney about addressing putting some funds from the budget to addressing that, there was a commitment made to allocate some funds from the lagoon tax, reprioritize some of that to address that need. And that conversation did not ensue. So that's, Certainly one avenue. I would like to note that there's $9 million plus in appropriations for some stormwater projects up in District 1, which is great to see. It's very important to address stormwater, especially as it affects the lagoon because it lowers salinity that seagrass doesn't grow. So where the lagoon tax can be adjusted, I think a lot of the scientists agree that the freshwater impacts the lagoon and those are funding that could be utilized. The other thing is space. So I've been at meetings with Commissioner Goodson and plus there's a half a million dollar hydrology study showing tremendous impact, millions of dollars of impact of flooding coming from as Space Florida brings in fill and how that is affecting the flow to District 2 in North Merritt Island. And I think it's time to have a real conversation about space paying stormwater fees and for the impact that they have on their neighbors. It's not fair for people who are saying that their property is becoming worthless. So there's some conversations that we need to have on this and then it goes back to impact fees is the last point. is that you had an opportunity prior to July 1st to increase impact fees with the feasibility study and by delaying it until after July 1st. You have taken away an opportunity in limiting how much you can increase that which has not been increased in over 25 years. Okay.

Greg Heffelfinger, District 1, 2000 Juniper Drive. This one is really very complicated and confusing because it stemmed from a discussion that we had back in February, the 24th meeting, it was I-2, and you put forward this idea that we were going to do possibly five, oops, wait a minute, six things. The result of that vote, if I'm correct, is decided not to do anything with one, three, four, and six, but did decide to eliminate the design credit only. So you didn't raise the fee on everybody that was gonna create 2.4 million. We all went, yay, we're not getting more fees for paying for this stuff. And the design credit is a weird thing because it seems that, and I think I remember right because I did watch the movies on this one to prep for this, it's really weird how the design credit impacts district one, district four by 593,000 and it only impacts district one by 37. And I think that's, I guess a bunch of people in district four are getting those credits somehow. Do they have ponds on their property? I don't know, but I don't think the commissioner felt right. You weren't in favor of that when we voted for number two. So we did, we waived off three, which was 2.4 million. Well, we also had a conversation about the revenue split. So when those MS2 values come in, and I think Commissioner Atkinson, you had brought that up, and Katie was interested in that. But then it was said that, well, we can't really decide that now. We need to have more conversation because it may be legally you're changing how that money is spent and you need to notify or something. I think Morris had some input on that. So if we vote on this now, are we ever going to talk about the split issue again? Or should we wait? My recommendation is to wait, pick option number one, which I think is to put this off, and then when we bring it back up again, is to already have that split conversation decided. Why do a legislative, why spend, geez, what are we gonna spend here? $120,000 on mailings when we're not addressing the split. So I don't think we ought to waste that money. And we're only receiving $857,000. I mean, that doesn't even buy a nice house anymore, right? So the return on investment is not very good, and I think we need to discuss the split. Maybe we, oh, I hate to say it, but you want to talk about jacking up the, no, let's not do that. So that's all I had just about that one, because it was very confusing the first time we addressed it, and what we actually achieved is not a lot. So that's my recommendation, option one, don't do anything.

OK. I think that's kind of what the recommendation is.

I have some discussion.

Okay.

So I stand by my vote last time, which was to remove the design credits and increase the minimum collection. But A lot of what people have said in the conversations that I've had, I'm wondering if we shouldn't do a little bit more right now. Because justifying the increase, talking about the split, maybe we need to find out some more facts before we decide what we are actually going to do here. I mean, what's the sense of increasing it now and then later having to do it again if it's not enough? So dare I say it, do we do a study to get some facts before we do this? I don't know. Like I said, I'm just having a conversation right now. I don't know if we have anybody on staff who wants to comment or what my fellow commissioners think.

Maybe we have staff to give us a little bit of information, background.

We did have a rate study the last time the board changed the stormwater fee. We could do that again. We could include in the scope to look at the maintenance needs that the county manager described with the MSTU. We could take all of that into account, and it would probably take about six months, cost on the order of $150,000, bring that back to you early 2027 in time to send notices out by next summer.

Could I clarify something? That's just a rate study.

Yes.

which is largely a survey of us or other municipal governments, surrounding counties, all of that sort of thing to figure out that we are somewhere in the middle, we're low, we're high. I mean, is that how we assess it, all of those kinds of things? Is that what the rate study does?

Sorry, do you want to? It's all right.

assessment rate study looks at the benefit that's conferred by the program the cost of providing the program and then how you apportion that among the payers into the program so what slice of that benefit are they receiving so it decides you know how you apportion and it could be based on things like pervious square footage on a property or the the drainage improvements existing on the property, like the current design credit, all those factors are taken into effect and they try to do rough justice to apportioning the cost of that program to the rate payers who pay into it.

And they can do forecasting, looking at more of the long-term needs and how to apportion that and provide alternatives. And they can also assist with public information workshops, if you want that. So those rate study scopes vary from community to community, depending on what all you want included.

Are there any of those that are done by another county, municipal government, DEP, St. John's, any of those kinds of things that we could adopt and not have to spend over $100,000 for a separate study?

I mean, I understand they're very area specific. So, um, the most recent similar one was clay county last year that cost 148,000. That was also an, you know, it's a county, it's an existing stormwater utility, not trying, um, looking at establishing a new one. So they did a rate modeling and public outreach.

Yes.

Virginia, when was our last rate study done? 2013, before the board adopted changes in 2014.

And it's possible that rather than a study, we just need to look at the overall cost of the program. And you can keep the methodology of the existing study and assessment and just look at what rates should be in order to fund the cost of the program today.

Right. We have the roles. We have the impervious area. So we might be able to pare down the scope considerably. I'm not sure what all Clay County had.

I'm not crazy about spending money on studies at all. But I'm also not comfortable just saying, yeah, let's do this without having it specific to us. If the last one wasn't done in 2013, that's a while ago. I don't know.

Commissioner Feltner. If we're done with questions, my comment on this is I think tonight I would go with option one, and then we could consider some study in the future as staff mentioned after we, it's not just even just the referendum, but all the implementing language that'll come in December, and we can better consider things after that, so. I would go with us. And of course, I was on the other side of this vote, as you know. So it wasn't something I wanted to do at that time. So if we don't do this and we agree on that tonight, that's where I would be. So I'll make a motion for option one if that's where we are tonight.

I have a question. There's a motion and a second. We don't need a motion for reconsideration, do we? I ask our council and the parliamentary procedure has to be from the prevailing party.

Technically, under Robert's rules, that applies at the same meeting, a motion for reconsideration. What we have done in the past to prevent items from coming up ad nauseum, and I think this one, the posture is a little bit different because there are intermediary steps, and I think the staff is looking for direction now on whether to do the mailer or not, so I wasn't inclined to say that's required. However, if the board wanted to, just as a formality, you could say, for purposes of entertaining this, we're going to waive Robert's Rules of Parliamentary Procedure for this item and entertain a motion to reconsider.

but i i think i'll leave that to the discretion of the chair i'm fine we have an intermediary and time has passed and things have changed so i'm okay with with the motion i have a question so i have a motion second discussion a question on the motion so my question would be um if we're going to come back and talk about this like actually doing a study when would that conversation happen

You're asking me? I'm asking anybody. I think after we know both the referendum, but more importantly, I think the legislature has said that they'll have implementing language in a special in December. So I think we'll know a lot more after that special session. So we could do it in early January,

So why couldn't we say that we were going to do a study if, in fact, this thing does pass in November?

You know what? I'd like to know what the implementing language is and all the other consequences that we have to deal with. I made my motion.

OK. Is the motion second?

Is there any other discussion?

All those in favor say yay. Yay. Yay. Okay. It passes three one. Okay. That's a tough issue cause it affects districts so differently. All right. We'll move on to J one. Permission to advertise a public hearing to amend the utility service rate resolution encompassing South Beaches, Merritt Island, North Bavard, Port St. John, and South Central mainland service area. We have a couple cards. Sandra Sullivan.

Sandra Sullivan, South Patrick Shores. So I have some heartburn because we were first promised with the lagoon tax for advanced wastewater treatment, which is to remove the high nutrient loading, which of course, you know, goes into the wetlands, goes into the lagoon when we dump and goes down in deep injection, et cetera. So we were promised AWT with the lagoon tax. We got less than 3% of going to that. So then in 2021, we got a 46% compounded rate over five years to again tax us to put money towards advanced wastewater treatment. And now we're looking at another 46%, whether it's gonna be over one year or two years or three years or five years, you guys are gonna decide. So, I mean, that works out to roughly, depending on your decision, but roughly 113% increase. I just like, I think we need some accountability when we're talking about we've been taxed now, this will be the third iteration essentially for the same thing. In the last five years, 66% of that money was supposed to go to capital to the projects that were identified. These are from documents that you uploaded to these agenda items that you passed. I take issue in particular that in December of 2024, there was a discussion here where all of you, all of you, all of you, all of you promised that you would not put on the rate payers the burden of the $130 million for Space Florida. You made that promise, but you didn't keep it. So now that number's $197 million. You don't have funding. You don't have state funding. We doubled how much money we're paying the EDC from $700,000 to $1.4 million. They didn't deliver on bringing you money. So now you want to raise our rate while Space Florida pays no property tax, as of 2026, pays no sales tax. So they're not even helping offset what they do to the lagoon. And now you want to insult us by putting the cost of Space's connection to Sykes Creek on our rates. It's despicable on all of you. You made a commitment. Mr. O'Felden, your eyes are cast down. You guys all made a commitment that you're breaking.

Rick Heffelfinger. Is this chair one? Yeah. Yeah.

Rick Heffelfinger, District 1, 2000 Juniper Drive. I'm going to object on this, the grounds that this is a mess. This packet is a mess. If I pull the J, because this is what I learned to do, right? Because when I come up here and I don't shoot from the hip, I pull the information and I look at what J1 says it's all about. And it says that the fiscal impact is an estimated minimum fiscal impact that Justin's made to the water and sewer connection fees, 4.8 million. And you look at that and you see a chart of how we could phase it in or we could drop it all at once, and that's great. Then it says the proposed adjustment to the service fees are projected to increase 15,000 per year. I don't know where that number came from. Because this thing is all about the rate payer is getting nailed hard. And if you look at the packet, I cannot create a valid timeline to figure out what the hell you've been doing over the last couple of years. I think Sandra just mentioned, well, it was a couple years back and it was a progressive rate and it was 46%. And then this one drops, it's another 46%. So I have no idea what the revenue actually is. And this doesn't say. So how could I approve this when I don't even know how much money it's bringing in? I do know that it's bringing in like a big chunk of change, $4.8 million for the connection and the, what is it? The chart's got, we're connecting water and we're connecting wastewater. And boy, I'll tell you what. It doesn't specify, I don't think, there's a differentiation between a single family residence and a mobile home park. Are you telling me if I put a mobile home park in the future like this, I'm going to pay $8,500 for water, and I'm going to pay $4,500 for sewer. And I bought a mobile home. That hurts. The previous schedules had something in there that was an offset that said, because that's low income housing people, isn't it? Or it could be my retirement home, and I have a property, and I want to put a mobile home. Now I have to pay that? Now, that's an impact to everybody that's growing. So that kind of slows everybody down. But boy, I'll tell you what, if it doesn't have a rate differential for four bedrooms, five bedrooms, this all bases the rate on what it was for a single family three bedroom, I think. It had a higher rate for fours. It had a higher rate for fives. It had a whole bunch of other crap for condos and whatnot. I don't see any rate schedule. Nail them with 45 and 85. Boom, boom, boom. Everybody who builds anything. Now, that's really great. I think it'd be great if that was all, every apartment building, have to pay that for each unit. That would be, that'd be some serious revenue there, right? All new building. You miss the big building boom though. That's kind of, this thing's a mess. The financial disclosure. If I was a citizen, looked at J1, I'd say, yeah, nail them. All the new people nail them. And then you look at it and go, wow, what are you going to do? There's mobile home people and all those, whoa. So this is misguided from the get-go and it's a screwed up package. I'd say, Dismiss this, bring it back with the right documentation. You can't even get a clear copy of the previous resolutions. They're half marked up from one year and then half, it's terrible. That's what I got.

Okay, that completes the cards. Bring it back to the board. Yeah, we'll have staff give a report here Good evening commissioners.

So this is a this is to get permission to advertise the rate resolution and I'll touch a little bit about what this rate resolution revisions are. And I'll tie that in with the fiscal impact as it was mentioned previously. The bulk, we did some in the resolution, we did some cleanup work with regard to some of the definitions and languages. As it associates to the fiscal impact associated with server fees in Exhibit B, those are really related to water turnoff, towing fees that we were just adjusting from like $55 to $75. It's minor incremental service fees that are done for the residents. With regard to the connection fees, Commissioner, they do function as impact fees. So these are the fees associated with growth. This is for new construction. Nothing is related to the existing rate payers because once you pay your connection fee once, it's for perpetuity. So the intent of this is understanding what the growth is in Brevard County and making the adjustment We went through an analysis to determine what the appropriate rate would be for now today in order so that we are making sure that future development are paying their fair share of what the growth or the expansion of utilities would be needed. And if I may, Commissioner, with regard to the line item, on the exhibit what we do is we represent, when it comes to different criteria of development, whether it's a restaurant, a mobile home, or whatnot. What we had previously in the resolution that went back 20, 25 years, there was a table in there that quite honestly was not correct. In the exhibit of the rate resolution, we're referencing the Florida Administrative Code 62-2.008. This is what the state of Florida uses as the ratio of homes. So it is a reference, the starting point of a connection fee is a reference to a one to two bedroom home. But depending on if it's a bigger entity or a smaller entity, it would be listed in the Florida Administrative Code 62-6.008 that we would use as the guidance to provide the correct rate ratio and the adjustment of any connection fee for other than a single family home.

Okay. Do we have any additional questions? I do. Yes.

So if I may, so just two questions for me. Um, First of all, we have an increase since 1993.

That's correct.

I'm wondering why. My second question is, isn't this making us come in line and comply with some federal standards here? This is not just us increasing because we feel like it?

This is basically, we know we have to, in order to provide for the future development, we have to expand our capacity in order to service that. This fee is a calculation for every equivalent single-family home, and I used the word equivalent. It's what their initial payment would be for the capital cost to provide the capital for us in order to provide that expansion.

In 1993? How come we haven't gone up since then?

It hasn't been brought to the board, so this is our opportunity to get it corrected.

Okay.

ANY OTHER QUESTIONS? I JUST WANTED TO HIGHLIGHT ONE POINT. THESE ARE CONNECTION FEES. IT IS NOT AN IMPACT FEE BECAUSE IT IS A CONNECTION FEE AND THERE IS A LEGAL DIFFERENCE. BUT WE ARE LOOKING AT GROWTH, PAYING FOR GROWTH. CORRECT.

OKAY.

I KNOW WE HAVE HEARD A LOT ABOUT THAT, HOW IT SHOULD. OKAY. ANY OTHER QUESTIONS? The motion would be in order.

So I'm sorry commissioner. So if we could also get some guidance in terms of the advertisement on which of these options and again, these are just some suggestions and if any of the commissioners wish to talk of a different option, we may have a question. Okay.

Representative Atkinson.

So Eddie, I'm wondering if we did a phased approach, do we need the money right now? Or if we did a phased approach, is that going to be sufficient to get us where we need to be?

I think obviously the sooner you get it, the better. Because as construction costs are going up every year, it may have an impact on this. going with a phased approach is still getting the rates in the right position.

Thank you.

Okay, I'll read the options while we're thinking. Option one, adjust fee once from current fee to full amount to the recommended fee. Two, spread increase over two years to achieve recommended amount. Three, spread increase over three years to achieve the recommended amount. Four, spread the increase over five years to the recommended amount. Five would be any additional direction provided by the board. So maybe while we're thinking about this, what is the real life impact of spreading it out or putting it at?

full year option one? The more you spread it out, as I said, Commissioner, so every new home, every new connection that's on the service, that's a lost opportunity for the adjusted rate. That's really the impact of it. There's one opportunity when it comes to getting a connection fee. And once you pay the connection fee, as long as that structure remains the same, the connection fee is paid per perpetuity. So it's really, we're comfortable with the phased approach as we've shown here, and we'll take direction from the board.

So it's a big fee up front and done or just the recurring fee.

That's going to be, this is a one time fee coming. And this is typically, this is typically paid by the contractor, not the homeowner. So, um, that's typical. Okay.

Okay. Um, But if it's a phased approach, you're going to have to pay it over a two-year period. Explain the phase.

So the phased approach would be if you did it over, per se, three years, whoever builds, who's ever asking for a connection fee on year one are going to pay that amount, and that's it. So it's not, and then whoever builds during the year two period would pay that amount.

Right.

So whoever pays in year one would not pay the fee of year two or three. So it's a one-time fee. So as I said, if we, you know, the longer we spread it out, you know, once people in year one or year two are paying that connection fee, we don't go back to them and say.

Okay, I see what you're saying. Okay. And what's the disadvantage of spreading it out?

The disadvantage is just it's a form of lost revenue. The calculation that we've come up with is the 8500 and the 4500 for water and sewer. So you're just receiving a lesser revenue because they're getting it at a reduced rate because of the phased out approach. And what is the impact of the lesser revenue? It's, I mean, that's a function, that's quite honestly a function to the amount of connection fees for that given year. But like I said, Commissioner, you know, given where we were currently today, if the board does decide to do it over a period, we're comfortable that, you know, once it gets to the desired rate, that we would be in a better position than we would today.

Okay. OK, we have a few options here.

With that said, I'd like to make a motion. You can't talk from the audience.

Let's finish the dialogue that we have here amongst the staff.

Commissioner, by no means is this a study or this agenda is associated with water or sewer user rates.

Well, if you want to ask a couple more questions, come on up.

Exhibit B.

Direct your attention to Exhibit B. It's redlined. And if you go to page 12, you will see that this is taking a base charge of 1740 for a 5 8th meter, taking it from 1740 to 2540. It is taking a one inch line from $29 to $42. And then you get, that fee covers you for 3,000 gallons on the five eights and that will cover you for 5,000. Then you got the overage, the rate has a scale. All those scales have increased. They went from five, tier one went from $5.44 to $7.96. This is, the people that are paying the water bill are getting nailed by this. Is that true or false?

Commissioner, if I may explain. When this resolution was approved in 2022, it was also approved with an annual index. Every time we go through and do an update to the rate resolution, we are merely taking those rates to the current of the indexed amount that was already pre-approved by the board. So rather than go back and provide you a rate resolution that was referencing 2021, so the fees are redlined, that is correct. However, the fees are appropriate on the annual index that was approved by a board and not a penny more.

So this is a restatement of what we did in 22?

Yes, sir.

So there's no rate increase on the users? This is a result of the phased four years that Sandra was talking about, I think. So this is not a user rate fee. It's just that it's the big connection one, right? I don't know why this was in there then. It's confusing. I guess maybe you took the opportunity to fix the 22 resolution because it wasn't in the, I don't know what the original 22 resolution looked like. It looks like you marked up one. from 13 and then half marked up the one from 22 to this year. So I don't think the resolution was ever right. That's why I said this is so confusing that now you had me thinking and Sandra thinking that you're raising the user rates. But we're not. Everybody understood that, right? Because we're only talking, I don't understand why these documents were in there, I really don't. Thank you.

Sandra, did you have a question?

I didn't print it out to bring it here.

And what I read in the document written of the agenda item, but the rates that were increased in the last five years were 9.5%, then 8.5, then 8.5, 8.5, and then 7.5. Then it says after that, each year after that will be CPI. And, you know, I'm pretty good at reading this stuff. I can't find, I didn't print it out to come here, but I'm pretty sure that it was talking about a rate increase on our water usage and our sewage usage. But I'll go back and I'll... dig down, you know, the files are downloaded and go take a look at it because, and you guys have even talked up here about increasing our rates, but if you're, you know, I'm all for the impact fee part of it being up, and presumably this is coming out of that impact fee study? Is there a report that should have been attached here where you got these numbers from?

I think this is separate than that.

Well, no, he said this is essentially an impact fee, right? Let's explain the difference between a rate and an impact fee. Is this from the impact fee feasibility study?

i'm sorry commissioner what what is this this is not from the impact fee study this is a rate increase this was an independent exercise that we did as utility services beyond what the county is doing and from the collective and there's a technical difference between a rate increase and i know it's a big it's a legal thing but in the vernacular they're the same but there is a legal difference all right Okay. All right. Any other questions or comments?

I was just going to say, you know without being a builder or a contractor like you were saying eddie if if we do the progressive approach right then all of the connection fees in the first year are going to be less they're going to be paying less than those people in year three or five or whatever right so I'm of the opinion of the feeling that we do it all at once or we do two years. That's where I am.

I agree with that. I agree with that. If we're going to do it, we might as well get it done in the most efficient way and go with year one. And then, of course, if we had a fallback, year two would be the second best.

So I'm prepared to make a motion if you're ready to entertain it.

Yes.

I'd like to make a motion to approve the requested action with implementation date being just the one year option. That's my motion.

Okay, let's... Okay. All right. Maybe we'll have staff clarify that. He said the chart doesn't show the year one rates.

He's actually correct, sir. However, we do state what they are within the agenda report.

Why don't we get that number before we vote then?

So the number is the 8,500 and the 4,500. So as you look at the chart, any implementation plan, it always gets to the total of 8,500, 4,500. OK. So it's really a question of when do you want to achieve that? And I think you're discussing one year. Right. OK, there's a motion.

Is there a second? I'll second. There's a second. Okay. Do we have any discussion? All those in favor say yay. Yay.

Yay.

Motion carries unanimously. Thank you. Okay. We will move on to J two. No cards on J2.

Good evening again, Board. J2 is a contract for sale and purchase and addendum for Fire Rescue Station 90. It's west of Derry Road on the south side of Eber Boulevard in Melbourne, District 3. It's located at 1207 Eber Road. and it is strategically advantageous site for fire rescue for the placement of a rescue only station. The value is $365,000 and it's got an amendment to the contract which states that if it is not rezoned by the City of West Melbourne, we do not have to go forward with this request.

Questions a motion to make a motion to approve his motion to approve a second second by commissioner Atkinson OK all in favor say, yeah, yeah. There's an honestly J 3. We have cards on J 3 was have the staff. I'm sorry. WE GOT THREE. YEP, WE GOT YOU.

COULD WE TAKE A MAYBE FIVE-MINUTE BREAK? SURE, ABSOLUTELY. LET'S TAKE A 10-MINUTE BREAK.

6.35, WE'LL BE BACK. PROBABLY TIME WE DO THAT. Okay, we're on J3 and we're gonna have staff give us a report, an update.

So Commissioner, this is a legislative intent and permission to advertise an ordinance to sunset the Barefoot Bay Water Sewer District on December 31st of 2029. So just a little bit of the background behind this. The last bond payment for the Barefoot Bay is December of 2029. December of 2029, there will be no debt service associated with the district. And as a result, while we are currently working on the replacement of the water and wastewater plant of the Barefoot Bay, that will actually be outside of the district. So compound that with... compound that with the fact that with the legislature of the mandate related to discharges and the integrity of pipes and whatnot, It also gets restrictive in the Barefoot Bay Water Sewer District because it's a dependent district, which means we can only generate, we can only spend what we generate within that district. So, you know, the way we see it is that service in 2020, at the end of 29, it'll be paid off. It'll be transferred over to the countywide system, which we're still operating currently, and it'll give us more freedom to transfer money for expenditures that are needed within the district without the financial confines of the dependent district.

Okay. Let's go to the cards. We have Sydney James.

Okay.

Okay, thank you.

The information that I handed you is a good faith estimate of accurate data that I was able to research. I have focused in my document on base wastewater rates because Barefoot Bay water rates are similar to other communities, but our wastewater rates are not. The Barefoot Bay water and sewer system was purchased in 2000 from the Florida Governmental Utility Authority. The residential customers who are serviced by it are the only customers in unincorporated Brevard County who pay for our own specific water treatment plant. It is neither fair nor equitable. The base wastewater rate for approximately 5,000 Barefoot Bay customers is currently $54.28. For the other 69,400 residential customers in unincorporated Brevard County, their base rate is $28.17. The agenda item tonight is to integrate into the countywide system on December 31, 2029, after the current debt obligation is fulfilled. The question of when to make this happen, integrating us, should not be about current barefoot bay debt. It should be about deciding when you will eliminate the inequity. the disparity, the unfairness, call it what you will, it's all of these things that the Barefoot Bay water and sewer plant have to be burdened by only 5,000 residents when the other five plants serviced by 69,400 residential customers, they get to divide that up amongst so many more people. The rollback to 2025 rates indicate in the press release amounts to a decrease of only $2.66 a month on sewer rates. It's too small of an amount to have any meaningful relief. If Barefoot Bay was immediately integrated into the countywide system, The customer's base sewer rates would increase everybody else, not Barefoot Bay, by approximately $1.58 a month. That's it. Not even noticeable. But Barefoot Bay would decrease from 54.28 or the proposed lower rate of 51.62 to only this 29.75. This decrease would make a profound impact to the lives of many customers in Barefoot Bay especially those who only live on a Social Security income and are struggling to get by. We're not asking for a handout. We're not asking for special treatment. All we ask is that you remove the yoke tying us to the Barefoot Bay District and treat us like all the other residential customers in unincorporated Brevard County. Many cannot bear the heavy weight of this yoke until for three and a half more years. Please do it now or at the very latest, December 31 of this year. Thank you.

Okay, thank you. John Requa? Very good. That was it.

I've been here twice, said the same thing. She said it much more eloquently than I did. And I spoke to this man over here to my left before. I even sent him by registered mail four questions that I never got answered. What was the price of the bond when you started? How much has been paid in? How much do we owe? And did we get the upgrades that I was told was part of the deal of the bond? Really like to have them answered. The other thing is for Ms. Atkinson to hold true in what she said in the Tatler October of 2025. The cost of the bond should be spread across the district. We're District 3. Barefoot Bay doesn't own that facility. We don't run that facility. You do. That's what we're asking. That's what legal counsel has asked you from Barefoot Bay. That's all we want. We are suffering under these fees. People are leaving. Price of the water. homeowners on modular homes and taxes, you're gonna turn us into a trailer park and then maybe Ashton Park will take it over. But that's how bad we're hurt. So I hope you listen to me, I hope you respond, I hope you talk to one another. She's absolutely correct. Spread the cost of the bond over the district. That's all we want. I don't have any hope in a new plant. I don't have any hope in that reducing our prices or anything. I don't believe that. I don't believe you. Not one bit. I have no reason to see any good merit that's going to come when you won't listen to us and you won't act on our police. I'm going to surrender the rest of my time. I've said it twice before.

I LIVE IN BEARFOOT BAY. I WOULD LIKE TO ADDRESS THE MONTHLY RISING COST OF OUR WATER BILLS.

I BELIEVE THEY ARE BEING ESTIMATED. We have had several customers that are getting $200 and $300 bills that are just older couples, and they don't understand why their bills are so high. They go to the water company. The water company says they have leaks. They get plumbers out. There's no leaks. I am on Social Security Disability. I live on $1,400 a month, which is not easy, especially with the rising cost of our insurance as well. I have the same routine every month. I don't do anything differently. I am a one-person household, and we're being told that there's one meter reader for approximately 5,000 homes in our district. There's no way one person, even with the new digital meters, can get to 5,000 homes to read these meters. I have three bills here. I have May, June, and July. May and June were $92.59. They were the exact same amount and they had the exact same water usage. I find that to be physically impossible. You can't use the exact same amount every month or two months in a row. Then in... July, my bill jumped from $92.59 to $100.08. What I have found is happening is every two months, I am getting duplicate bills. And then the third month, they just arbitrarily raise my bill anywhere from $8 to $10 a month. When I first moved to Barefoot Bay, my bill was $50. Now I'm looking at over $100. I am literally drowning. I cannot afford it any longer. So I'm asking, I don't know all the details. This is what I came to talk about. I'm asking that you please address our community and try and do what the customers are asking you to do, if at all possible, because we cannot afford $200 and $300 water bills. As of next year, this is totally... not within the scope here, but as of next year with the insurance crisis, because we're all under citizens, I'm probably going to lose my home. I'm paying $4,000 right now. Next year, we're going to have the flood assessment, even though we're not in flood districts. So these bills are just getting astronomical and ludicrous, and something's got to be done. There's a lot of lower-income families there. And I would like Ms. Atkinson, if possible, to address the fact that We would like to see exactly how many employees they have going around and doing the reading of the meters. One of the ladies told us that they were short-staffed, and they didn't know what to tell us. So I appreciate it. Thank you.

Sandra Sullivan.

Sandra Sullivan, one of the things that Katie Delaney brought to this board, which I really appreciated was her transparency. And when it comes to this, okay, so district three is in the process, you just, were had approved buying a parcel next to this facility to put in presumably a toilet to tap water to sewage to drinking water. So I got that around the wrong way.

Sewage to drinking water facility.

Now that was estimated to be, as I recall, $319 million if I recall correctly from last year. And when I looked at legislatively out there on what counties were asking for, what I didn't see for Brevard was any appropriation requests to any of our state reps for that. Obviously, if you keep putting the burden on the people, because to their point, Barefoot Bay, when we had the increases, ours was 46% over five years. I did not calculate Barefoot Bay's. Theirs was way more. They were like over 10% a year increases. I don't know. I don't know. this is just a question, does all the rest of the county for sewage and for your water systems, are they at the same rate? Like all the other sewage, because you've got certain plants that are in worse condition, sewage plants on that side. That's not sewage, that's water. But you have even up in Titusville, their water plant is, you know, there was something on the agenda tonight. You have issues with plants, water, sewage, and different critical needs to be addressed. And so to that point, is there validity? It's just thought to have everybody on the same rate for equity. I mean, you guys manage things. You took it over. I remember the vote when you guys took over that facility as a special district. It doesn't need to be a special district waiting to 2029. Is there a way to get out of that earlier? I guess questions more than anything given the comments that were made because it is a very high rate compared to what everybody else has. But I would like to see some transparency regarding your plans for funding the new facility because this agenda item says this plant is at its end of its life. you can't you can't like recoup it and keep it going it's end of life and so what is your replacement plan how do you plan to fund it and you know what are you going to do to try to mitigate that so it doesn't all end up on the people thanks rick out helpful finger

Rick Heffelfinger, 2000 Juniper Drive, District 1. I am glad this is my last item because this is just a, hey, man, it's utility services department again. This whole water situation, I never have been able to understand how many water plants, who pays for them, how people are rate increased and how they're not. I don't know who controls this one. It sounds like the Barefoot Bay facility is part of the big Brevard system. But they're obviously charging different fees. Now it turns out we're going to sunset them after they pay off their debt. But they're going to collect fees from now until then. And I guess they haven't been saving anything for a plant because the plant's shot, right? So do they have a fund that they've accumulated money so that they can give it to Brevard County so that we can work on that other plant? I don't know what that other plant is. Why don't you just shut this one down, run a pipe to that new plant, and just put that one over capacity too? Because this one, I don't know if it's over capacity. Is it still 1 million gallons per day? Or has that been upgraded from that? Don't know. This chart that's on the county page, I already know it's out of date because it says that we were going to have the South Central Park completed in 2019. Well, it was. It's at 12 million. So this hasn't been updated, so I can't use the county webpage to figure anything out. So when I try to figure out what's going on, but I did pull these service billing rates, and this is the most convoluted thing. I have to try to figure out what zone and area I'm in, and there's no connection fee or anything. I don't know if anybody's building a new place in the Barefoot Bay, but are they gonna get those connection fees too? Are there any empty properties in there? We could get some serious cash just by nailing them with those connection fees right there. So that might go into the coffers. So I don't know. Why are you waiting to pay off debt? They're collecting services. They're not putting any of that service fee money into an account. Because they haven't. They haven't maintained the plans. It's dead. It's way past its use. So nothing was reinvested. Was that their job to reinvest? Or was it your job to reinvest? I don't know. I don't know what they did. They just stood around and managed it? Don't know. The water system here sucks. Thank you.

I think that's all our cards. I believe. Did you fill out a card?

You're under public comment.

Did you want to speak on the Barefoot Bay issue? No, no, no. Okay.

Okay. May I?

Yes.

Thank you. Eddie, I have a couple questions, if I may. So I understand that the new plant that we're going to have down there is going to service Barefoot Bay, Snug Harbor, and the rest of the residents who need servicing. So can you tell me what the total debt is for Barefoot Bay?

Currently? Currently. I think it's approximately as good. Uh, it's somewhere around, I believe 4 million, but I'd have to double check that if I could.

Approximately 4 million. Can you tell me how that debt occurred very briefly?

Uh, so barefoot Bay from its existence, um, was operated as a development with their own private water sewer system.

Um,

I don't know, I think it's late 60s, early 70s where this occurred. And as they grew, my understanding is around the mid-90s, mid to late 90s, the people of Barefoot Bay were complaining of the service that the private utility was providing them. Based on that, and again, I don't know much of the detail. It made it to the board, and the board, I believe in 97 or 99, agreed to bring Barefoot Bay as part of the county system on the condition that it be done as a dependent district. Why it was decided to do it as a dependent district, I don't have the background. I think there was discussion that there was fear back in 93 that People of Barefoot Bay were concerned that the revenue generated there would go to other areas.

Right. So that's how the debt happened. And that's what the debt was, how it was incurred.

So in order for the county to get ownership of the Barefoot Bay Water Sewer District, and again, Commissioner, I apologize for not having the number with me. There was an amount that had to be paid to that entity of, I believe, 25 or 30 million in order for that transaction to occur.

Okay. So clearly we hear tonight that people would like to just be on the county system because they feel that it will be better. So my question to you is, if I said, hey, Eddie, could you please sit down with me behind closed doors and and help me concoct an argument that I can give to the rest of my commissioners, how would you help me convince them that all of the other residents in Brevard County should take on a debt? Could you help me with that argument?

Commissioner, I think that's more of a legality question about how user rates in the countywide system can be used in that regard. We can have a further conversation.

Maybe that's a Morris question if we're talking about legality. Sorry to put you on the spot, Morris.

No, it's fine. I think you're absolutely right about the discussion that happened back then. It was viewed by the county commission and by county residents as a bailout of this private system. And so they did want to wall it off. They created that district, but because of the bond issue, the revenue bonds do not constitute a debt liability or obligation of the county. They're an obligation of the, they're payable solely from the revenues that are generated from the district. And that's part of the reason that even if you were inclined to say, you know, forget the history and forget the bailout and let's try to reset and just make things on equal standing. Now, you can't use revenues from other parts of the county system to pay those bonds. Those bonds have to be payable and secured by and the rates have to be sufficient. You'd violate the bond covenants if the rates were not set at a sufficient amount to service that debt. That's why Eddie had to do the study. While he was trying to get them some relief, the study sets the parameters of what relief you can afford but still generate enough revenue to be able to satisfy and service that bond. Now, fortunately, we're very close to the end of the road. It's been a long time. It was 1999 when all that was established. So it'll be 30 years when we get to 29. But by providing an ordinance that sunsets the district now and then following up with a rate resolution that affords whatever relief he can, which is rolling back the rate somewhat, but also freezing those rates at that rolled back rate so they don't continue to escalate every year, there will come a point when it's sunset where it will be rolled in, new plant, one county wide rate. But right now legally and because of the structure of the debt and the bond obligations, The debt service has to be from the revenues generated.

So my next point is I asked you, because I'm hearing barefoot bay, I asked you could you please figure out how to make this better for them rather than what originally was continuing to rise over the next years. And you checked, you did some recalculation and you're telling me that we can freeze it, roll it back and freeze it for a while.

So commissioner, assuming the board, if we go down the path where we get the approval to Sunset Barefoot Bay, Then the calculate the user rate for Barifa Bay, the calculation changes because it's no longer an entity for perpetuity, it would be an entity for four years. So we have done that where we can roll it back to the 2025 rates and flatline it from that point on until the sunset period. And just Commissioner, I know you asked me this question and thank you to Jill for fact checking. There is 4.5 million left in the bond.

Mr. Chair, may I ask? Yes. So I don't know the answer to this, but are costs estimated down there, or do we have someone reading them monthly? How does that work down in Barefoot Bay? And I know you might not know, but maybe you do.

So one of the things we've done in Barefoot Bay, because again, we're taking over a really old utility. So one of the things that we've invested in Barefoot Bay is to replace all the residential water meters. So it's all by radio read. One person can do more than 5,000 readings because all it consists of driving down the road and going, I believe, at 25, 30 miles an hour and it records it. So there's ample, there's ample personnel in order to do that. If any of the residents do have a discrepancy in the bill, to please let the department know. But again, without going through the dynamics,

So if anybody has a serious concern about bills being wildly wrong, if they brought them to me, clearly they can bring them to you guys. But if they brought them to me, I could also bring them to you. Could I ask you to look at them specifically?

Yeah. And because of the radio read, it provides a diurnal of what the water flow is. I'll say this. I'm a homeowner. I had a high water bill and I had the water department for where I get served. They pulled it from our water meter and the guy literally asked me if I'm throwing parties at two in the morning because I had a slow leak. We have that data now that we can check that.

Okay. All right. Thank you. That's all the questions I have. Can we read our own meters?

Why don't you come up to the...

I'd like to clarify if we could read our own meters. I don't believe they're being read. I mean, our maintenance department hangs out under the trees all day, and they still get paid. I don't see how elderly couples have bills of $200 and $300. And like I said, my routine's never changed in the six years that I've been there. And it started at $50, and now it's $100. So I'd like to know if we can read our own meters.

Commissioner, we're unable to, it's not like an old school meter where it would have a dial on it that you could actually read the numbers. Now it's all electronically. If any resident wants to see the data of that, we can provide it. But for the circumstances, we get a variety of issues or dynamics associated with bills, so it'd be tough to kind of say this is the reason for any high bill.

And how would we go about requesting monthly that data?

The billing office.

They would just need to contact the billing office and request that? Okay, thank you.

All right, thank you. We have, did you fill out a card? Did she? She did, okay, good.

Commissioner Atkinson, if I may give you a tiny bit of that argument that why the other commissioners might wanna go along with this plan is both groups would then have more people, more residential customers to share the costs associated with repair and maintenance throughout the county. So it's truly a win-win. And I know you guys are creative and imaginative. And I believe you have a strong moral compass to do the right thing. I think you can figure out how to create a new pay the step bond off and create a new one. And again, it's barely anything more to the residential customers throughout unincorporated Brevard County. But for the barefoot residents, it would have a profound impact. Thank you.

Could I ask a question just from my own knowledge here? I also had a small leak and was able to basically turn everything off to the house and could see that the digital meter, there was still flow and I was actually able to find it and then we had someone come out and fix it. It wasn't a terrible thing for us, but I was able to do that. Can they do that, their meters? Are they digital so that they can see that in real time? I don't think your mic's on.

Sorry, Eddie. The radio read meters provide an actual diurnal and I can't remember, I think it holds, I think it's two weeks or three weeks. So we can actually look and see what the water usage is on a 24 hour period over that duration to see. Okay.

So if they know that they've turned everything off, like what Commissioner Felton is saying, if they know on these days or whatever they've turned everything off, if you say, if they ask you for these particular days, you can see if they're still, okay.

My name is Kevin. I'd like to ask a quick question.

How is your data? Kevin, we need you to fill out a card. Oh, I'm sorry. If you can go in the back and fill out a card, and we'll have you come up and speak. Okay Let Kevin fill out a card you sure no we want to hear from you You can once you go speak and you can fill out a card after the fact That sir that's just for the record okay, so we can keep it but you can do it later I

Yeah, my question is, just how is it all being managed? All these sites that I've seen all over Brevard County, all over Florida, all over the country, I don't think we really know where we have strategically placed them. Your water pipes are breaking everywhere. I see leaks everywhere I go. Your infrastructure is really bad, and we have to protect the people. Someone could be... tampering with that stuff you know water is water someone puts i don't know i don't want to go crazy but iran and all that stuff is going on we have to be careful and protect ourselves at all costs so i just like you guys to think about that and how important our infrastructure is and maybe we do something where the whole state works together to fix this issue or your issues thank you

You know, this is a very difficult issue. I remember when I first came on the commission 84, the commission had just completed implementation of the Clean Water Act. And if you multiply this problem by probably 100, or maybe 1000, That was the magnitude of the issue they had to deal with. They had dozens of rickety-rackety old sewer treatment, water treatment plants that developers had put in in the 60s when Wild Wild West of trying to build for the Apollo program and they had to clean them all up, had massive rate increase. I don't know. I don't know if they averaged those rates or each is when we built Sykes Creek in the South Beaches plan. I don't know if they were able to to combine the rates so they could share the impact of the overall cleanup. And when the question was, can they average in with the rest of the county? I thought of that. I thought of that historic time where they and they were they were massive rate increase but they did fix the problem hats off County Commission back in the 70s and 80s made it a lot easier for predecessors but I just wonder if there's any precedent precedent there in the way they handled that that we could apply today yeah

I mean, I'm reading right now the minutes from the meeting, and it's the exact same discussion about the equity of the rates where the base rate in Barefoot Bay is higher, their water use on average is lower, but because the base rate's higher, they still at the time had a higher overall bill than customers outside of the system. But the issue was all about what the county inherited with that system that they took over and bailed out was the term that kept being used back then and the debt associated with that and we have bond obligations and we have to comply with those bond obligations and that's why everything is staked to the retirement of the debt and that's when we can level things out and they can come in and be just part of the countywide system I see so eventually we can get there but we can't initially and this ordinance is the first step to that because it puts a sunset on it establishes a hard date at which the district will be dissolved when the when the debt is satisfied so we may be able to achieve ultimately what okay that's good to know this is a this is a affirmative statement by the board that you will get there and this is when we will get there okay

You guys have discussed slow leaking data. What about the large leaking data? I've seen in different areas and all over the states, not just Florida, so I don't want to pin it on you, but I've seen areas where there's water running, slow leaks, fast leaks. No one's checking on it for days, days, months. Who's paying for that? Thank you.

Commissioners, if there's no further discussion, I would like to make a motion to approve the statement of legislative intent set forth below and direct staff to prepare an ordinance implementing the intent and schedule and advertise the ordinance for public hearing.

Okay, I'll second.

Okay, do we have any discussions, any debate? If not, all those in favor say yay. Yay. Yay. A motion carries unanimously. Okay, thank you. Thank you for your input and hopefully we'll get a final conclusion to this. And we can help the residents in Beaufort Bay. Okay. J4.

Good evening, commissioners. J4. It's a creation of the opioid misuse abatement advisory committee and amending to the together and partnership citizen advisory committee to remove opioid funding and responsibilities. On December 7th, 2021, the board approved an amendment to the tip resolution to establish two subcommittees, including representation from municipalities. Under the tip advisory board, the two subcommittees were charged with making suggestions on which approved uses to address and fund with opioid settlement funding, oversee the RFA process, and make funding recommendations to the Board. After several years of administering the opioid settlement funds, Housing proposes removing the Opioid Review and Recommendations Committee from the TIP Advisory Board structure and establishing a standalone advisory committee to be known as the Opioid Misuse Abatement Advisory Committee. This will be in line with our other advisory committees. The opioid misuse abatement advisory committee shall serve an advisory capacity to the board and to county admin regarding planning, implementation, and oversight of opioid settlement funding activities. The structure will be as such to make sure that we remain a qualified county, a representative from the city of Melbourne, city of Palm Bay, a representative from the Space Coast League of Cities, a representative from Brevard County government, a representative from Bavaria County Sheriff's Department, and the four remaining at large seats will be chosen from citizens who, from the community involvement. With the approval of the creation opioid misuse abatement advisory committee as a separate standalone advisory committee, it is further requested that the existing opioid review and recommendation subcommittees be removed from TIP, including the standing committee seats that were added for the qualified county purposes.

If there's a motion to make a motion to approve a second motion a second to approve all in favor say, yeah, yeah. There's unanimously thank you. K J 5. Let's live in 10 and permission to advertise an ordinance creating the Bavard Berry Island, a critical state concern land authority. The 2 cards March answers. Okay.

Are you Larissa? Good evening. Board members, 7302 South Highway A1A. I'm here tonight to ask for a formal deferral of this item. The summary item states that the funds will be acquired from the Sebastian Inlet Park for the next six or seven years. That's going to be under construction, specifically with the lay down and temporary parking going to be roughly half of what it is now. So the question in front of us is how is it going to get funded? So if we have the legislative intent this evening, shouldn't we also have an idea of how it's going to get funded in real? Has this been considered? There's nothing in the summary statement, nothing. It was advertised, what, the 26th, today's the 7th. So I don't know if this really is the time. I'm formally requesting that you defer the item until a later date. Thank you.

Okay, Mark Shantis.

Well, the end product is ditto that. But I'm Mark Shantzis. I'm the executive director of BIPA, which is the Bayer Island Preservation and Protection Association. We were formed in 1990, which is over 35 years ago, to help balance the population growth. on the beaches with the natural habitat and wildlife. A great deal of it, the sea turtles, which is the largest area of sea turtle hatchlings, loggerhead sea turtle hatchlings in the world. I'm concerned. I'm trying to be positive about this. It's always new things. I'm an entrepreneur. I've spent my whole life doing new things. But we just haven't had time, really, to review. We only found out about this four days ago or five days ago, accidentally. We haven't had time to review anything. The area of critical state concern was put together by BIPA, which is our organization, the community, CTO of the Conservancy, Thousand Friends of Florida, legislators, and a bunch of people that have not viewed this at all, and we would like, and I think they should have the opportunity to review this before it goes to advertisement, or before we spend any tax dollars for the county to use their employees, which are our employees, our tax dollars, to start developing an ordinance. The ordinance in Monroe County It's interesting, it was formed in 1986. Well, anybody gone to the Keys lately? Do you notice that it's an area of critical state concern? The development there, the vacation rentals there is a mess. So we get down to the issue of who are going to be the people or the five volunteer advisors on this. Who's going to oversee them? And then there's this issue of bonding. This organization, this land authority is a specialized authority. It's going to have the ability to do bonding. bonding to an extremely small area of people. You've got 5,000 people that are going to pay off some bond that might, this commission may not approve it, but a future commission may approve something that is outrageous. And then we're going to end up with some general obligation bond, possibly. We don't know what the ramifications are. What we do want is we want to know that the state supports it, The state has not been notified, in our opinion, or that we know. I've spoken to people there. They say they don't know anything about it. STC, I don't think, has been supported. Community has not been contacted. We also noticed that there was no core mission of this, and we think there should be a core mission, Kim, rather than it just be wide open to whatever the land authority is. And in the end, we have to talk about the funding mechanism. The inlet is not going to be able to fund anything. There is very, very poor funding mechanism. There's not much tourism going on down there. There's three or four little motels. hitting them with additional taxes is just not appropriate. We think you should defer this to a later date. We can get everybody in a workshop, get everybody sitting down at a table. The people who developed the area of critical state concern can get together and develop the land authority with the proper input from everybody who started the thing in the first place. So give us time to all get together and do that. That's all we're asking. OK, I'm trying to be positive about it because I think it's a good idea. You know, I just don't know what the negatives are. I don't know what the tentacles look like. So thank you very much.

Yes, you got a card. That's right. Sorry, I was reading the agenda item. Come on up.

Sandra Sullivan. So you're just talking about Barefoot Bay with 5000 people paying off bond. That's about the same population size for for South Beaches, but with a special district, just do an analogy in order for a special district to do a bond. It has to be by referendum. You guys can't take a vote and create a special district and then do a bond. it's not the way it works. You remember Scott Ellis sued the county over that, over the bond that was created for Blue Origin. So when it comes to creating an entity to do that has the ability to issue bonds, I think if you're going to do a land authority, this should go out to referendum to District 3 for the residents in that area to vote on because you're talking about potentially creating debt. I was at the meeting for the area of critical concern. There were hundreds of people there. A lot of community engagement was part of that process, respecting the people down there. They were very passionate. about the area of critical concern. It's a wonderful thing, and thanks to Representative Altman then, now Commissioner Altman, that spearheaded this and got this across the line. It is just a phenomenal, it'll be one of those things 20, 30 years from now that we will go as one of the most remarkable things, like the creation of the Archicara Preserve. It's very impactful. I would just say that there needs to be communication about what the intent is to the people down there. And if you do decide to do a land authority, I think you should strongly consider that it goes to referendum because you're talking about debt.

Thank you.

Okay, those are all our cards.

Commissioner if I may yes go ahead so I have been in contact with lots of the South Beach residents which is kind of how this all came to be so the idea originally of the area of state critical concern was to protect and preserve that area recently the state has taken some steps which makes that a little bit more vulnerable so my intention with this is to have an advisory board by the people who live there, be five people, an advisory board who live in that area, who will be advising this commission on steps that they can take to safeguard their community. People who live outside will not be on the advisory board. So it's really important to me that the people who live there are the ones making all of the suggestions to this board of five people who may not live there. The idea is to make sure that they have control as much as possible of their area. Because the way I feel is that the state is slowly kind of taking that away. Now, how we decide to pick those five people, that's yet to be determined. What I'm asking for right now is just legislative intent. I think while it might be new to some of the residents, this has been ongoing for quite a while. I have been talking to lots of residents because I live a quarter of a mile from the beginning of that area. I grew up down there. So I have lots of ties and contacts to the people who still live there. Again, I'm asking for legislative intent. And the idea of how to fund it, Sebastian State Park may not be the only way that we fund it, but to put it off doesn't make any sense, even though there is going to be construction, yeah. But again, why would we put off even funding it a little bit? If we can do that now, why put it off? So any other discussion?

Seeing no other discussion. Just say real quick, I didn't know that Sebastian Park, it's going to be under construction for a while?

Yeah, the bridge.

Oh, the bridge. Yeah, the bridge. Yeah, the bridge. Okay.

which is interesting because the, we will only be able to collect revenue on the North side. Exactly. Even, even after the bridge is complete, because even though the area of state critical concern extends past that into Indian river County, I think we did ask Mike to, to check into his counterpart part down in Indian river, but these are all the things that the legislative intent will allow us to, to look at and figure out, um, going forward.

I'll tell you what I would split with you today. Creating, I think, the advisory board would be one thing, and then maybe with their help, you could come up with some funding mechanism a little bit later that takes into consideration what's happening.

I think the statute says that we have to create a funding mechanism in 90 days. Am I, Morris, do you know? Somewhere in my notes it says that, I believe, that we have to...

So I think it's, if we create a land authority, the state has to begin remitting that surcharge at the state park within 90 days.

Within 90 days. So what are you suggesting, Commissioner Fuller?

Hold on. I'm getting there, OK? So if it's not a land authority, it's an advisory board maybe in the first stage, and then say they create their charter. But let's think of it like that. You have the advisory board. Their first mission is to work on a charter, and that contains several things funding mechanism, potentially scope, some of the other stuff. And then you call it the land authority. OK, you upgrade it after you have your sort of charter and in there.

I'm sorry before you get too far down the road the Board of the County Commission Board of County Commissioners is the land authority by statute yes you just put on a different hat and you are a land authority there's an advisory board that advises receiving written notice regarding the creation of a land authority you create the land authority but you are the governing board of the land authority and then there's an advisory board to the land authority but the advisory board is not the land authority right

I guess I was looking for a step in the process. So you could have appointed people.

Once we create the land authority, though, then we can decide how we're going to create the advisory board. And then that advisory board can do exactly what you're saying, which is advise us how maybe they want to proceed, how they want to have their goals, their mission statement.

I guess the issue is we have to decide from the beginning how they're going to be funded. Right? I mean, tonight.

We don't have to fund them, I guess. But I think that's the smart thing to do if we're going to create it. We need to fund it.

Well, I guess that's what I'm trying to figure out. Because I think there's some legitimate questions with that. And if you could come back later on the funding part of it.

I can come back later if you if if that would make you more comfortable funding. I can certainly come back. Well, you might.

OK. Would you come back with that, sir? I think if you don't fund it, you sort of got the intent. I think this is a really good thing for the South Beaches. And I haven't been very much involved in the South Beaches for much of my life. I like the idea. I can understand why everyone wants to be a part of it and have input, but that opportunity will arise. We'll have to advertise an ordinance and get input. But what this does is it creates an entity It creates a land authority that has the mission to preserving the South Beaches and it has the ability to make recommendations for land use changes and has the ability to do land acquisition. It does all the things that those who supported the area critical concern wanted to see. So I'm kind of excited about it.

As advised by people who live there.

Right. It gives local control. And the other thing is, the fees are modest. Yes, they are. It is a visitor to the Sebastian Inlet State Park. Unfortunately, most of those visitors are on the south side. But the influx of people coming to the park are from all over the state. At one point, I think it was the single largest visited state park in the whole system. And they do have impact on the South Beaches. And so it's a fair use that they participate. So I don't have any problems with it. I think I would support moving ahead with an ordinance which requires advertising. It gives ample opportunity for the residents down there to give feedback. And I think it's a wonderful proposal.

Okay. The area of critical state concern was created by the community because of a commissioner that was going to pave everything over. And all the other commissioners sat there and didn't say anything, and they sat there and watched it happen. We did not want to be bothered to have to go to the state. We didn't want to have to go and have the state override the commission. We had what we thought was an unthinkably bad commission. You all are not that. You're a great commission as far as I'm concerned. But we have no guarantees in the future that that will be the case. We could have somebody who comes in and we're not, Kim, we're not helping the decision by advising. You're the decision makers. You may not be there. You will not be there in the future. It's guaranteed. And there'll be other people there. And no matter who advises them, they're going to vote the way they want. The reason that we went to the state in the first place. We don't want to have to do that again. We just don't. And it will happen. This is the most developable area in the entire United States. Everybody wants it. There will be a commission in the future that will bail. It's not you. We don't want to be in that situation. We do want to put in, and I think it's not a bad idea, but we want to put in the caveats in the beginning before we start advertising and spend tax dollars creating an ordinance where everyone's going to just kind of go the merry way and you're not going to end up with a workshop, you're not going to end up with anything. Commissioner Feltner, you can set up an advisory committee of these five people and these different organizations first. Have the workshop, have them create the guts of what this is going to be to protect us since we are the ones STC, Thousand Friends, the community, BIPA, and you too, Thad, okay, created this around the commission, okay? That was the idea. Don't put us in that situation again. That's all I'm saying. Postpone this just long enough. And by the way, with El Nino, there's a really good chance we're not going to have a landfall this year. And if we don't have a landfall by the hurricane season in 27, 180 is gone. So why are you going to jump ahead and create this when it's conceivable that it won't be necessary? And then you're talking about bonding for a small number of people if we get a bad commission. 5,000 people, who knows what they're going to want to do there.

I think if you ask 1,000 Friends of Florida, I have a strong inclination if we ask the 1,000 Friends of Florida, they would strongly support this.

So ask them. Hey, if you ask 1,000 Friends and you ask STC and you ask BIP and you ask the community, listen, Kim, you haven't talked to 5,000 people, guaranteed. You haven't even talked to 1% of 5,000 people. OK, we're talking about we had 1,000 people show up at the commission in order to talk about vacation rentals. We're talking about BIPA activates the community. We were not contacted. I think that was a bad move, okay? Does it mean it can't be corrected? Does it mean it can't be corrected? I think it can be corrected.

I'm going to stop this. We allowed you to come out and speak. We've given you three minutes. I'm trying to be as positive as I can. But if you move forward with this thing.

I don't want to create a point-counterpoint type situation. I'm just telling you there's more risk to this thing if you move forward now than postponing it. You can always do it now.

I think it's a great thing.

I will be brief. I want to read into the record the powers of the land authority. The first one is to sue or be sued. This is from Florida statute within 380-0553 Brevard Barrier Island Protection Designation Area of Critical Concern. The powers of the land authority are broad, and they're vast, and they're permanent, and they're written in the Florida State statute. To be sued or sue, to undertake carryout studies, obviously, to acquire or dispose a real property, personal property of any interest therein, such acquisition is necessary or appropriate to protect the natural environment, which is great. provide public access, that's great too, but there's also the area of bonding that's also written into this statute, which allows all the future boards then to bond our little small population. So thank you very much. Please defer this tonight.

So I want to say, and Mark, this applies to you too, and Kim, I love you both. I think the world, if that's why I don't want to see you get in an argument. I find it incredibly ironic that we have the same goal.

Yes.

And I think proposing this hurts the South Beaches. I mean, we both want to get there. We just have a difference of opinion.

Mr. Chair, if I may, I don't know if it's helpful to the conversation or not, but the bonding that people seem fixated on, you can only secure payment of bond debt with the revenues that are generated through the statutory mechanisms, which are the surcharge at the state park and the incremental tourist tax that would be imposed on a few facilities down there. So the ability to bond would be virtually nothing. could never be a general revenue bond obligation that's payable by the taxpayers of the south beaches or something like that so to the extent that's been voiced as a concern that's that's not a thing likely there would never be a bond issue because those revenue sources are so limited that they wouldn't be sufficient to service bond debt one of the things i like about the authority is the ability to seek out grants uh ability to really

to qualify for state funding and special projects and federal funding, environmental programs, partnering with other environmental entities.

This also gives the residents of the South Beaches a direct voice to the commissioners. As an advisory board, they're being requested And the commissioners want to hear what they have to say, and they have to hear what they have to say. Right now, we don't have to listen to anybody in the South Beaches if we don't want to.

We had 300 people in the meeting that the commission didn't listen to.

Mr. Chair, I mean, I think I agree. very small limited ability to collect revenue to service debt in the way of a bond. I think your TIF funding is going to be next to nothing. And I'm sorry, the not TIF, the TDT. So why don't you just take the financial part of it out? There won't be bonds. There won't be There won't be that, because it's going to be next to nothing. Then you have the rest of it. What if you did that tonight? I know what they're talking about.

I don't think putting something together and not funding it is appropriate. So I'm ready to make a motion.

OK.

I move to approve legislative intent and permission to advertise an ordinance creating the barrier island area land authority and direct staff to draft the ordinance.

Okay, there's motion. Is there a second?

I'll second. I'll just say that I think probably you're going to get very little revenue. So we still just to clarify, we have to prove any sort of bond. Do we not as a board?

You are the land authority, so the board would be the one seeking the bonding, and it would be limited to?

The revenue, which is gonna be next to nothing. So I'll second that.

Okay, all in favor say yay. Yay.

Yay.

Motion carries unanimously.

Okay, thank you for your input. And we'll have an opportunity, we'll have a second bite of the apple of this one. So this is just the beginning. I think what this does it gives an opportunity for the public to have input and that we talk about the desired input we're going to advertise a public hearing and get an input of all the people in the South Beaches so I think it's a good thing so are we done oh we got public comment and we made a mistake and we apologize we we left out three cards They were in G, the first, so we'll hear them first if they're still here. Mark Shapshire? Shapshire? Mark's still here? Mark, we apologized. You had to sit through this wonderful meeting. Maybe you're going to do that anyway.

I usually start with a joke, but I just don't have nothing. My name is Mark Shapshire. I live at 4645 Allen Shepherd Avenue. since 1988. One of the things that's on the agenda in the scope is the intersection at Canaveral Groves Boulevard and Grissom. And I'd like to start with an antidote. I know it's not a good way to make an argument, but many years ago at Thanksgiving time, coming home late at night, My family come across the car turned over and smoking and dust everywhere and it was kind of a nightmare situation. I sat for about an hour with two small children while their mother died on the other side of the car and they still had to be airlifted out. It's appalling to me after living there for so long how many deaths happen at that stretch of road. And I think it, I've been thinking about it for many years. I think it has to do with the people coming through that intersection extremely fast. My story would be anecdotal if it wasn't for other deaths, numerous deaths that happened at the intersection and along the road. All my family members have come across something horrible at one time or another. My appeal is that you consider a traffic circle. Now, I know everybody hates a traffic circle, but nobody dies at traffic circles. And that's my main point. Please consider it. I don't think it's a big expense to change. So thank you.

Well, I just want to thank you for sitting through the meeting and bringing such a important issue.

I mean, I felt like it was worth it.

Absolutely. And we will definitely, we'll direct staff. Unfortunately, you don't have a district run commissioner at your disposal, but I mentioned this, I think to Katie, but, Well, and we've all committed to pull together to help support district one during this period. So let's ask staff to maybe get together and look at potential options that we have and also to reach out to the sheriff department and see what's happening in far as, uh, enforcement. And you're talking about traffic calming, which is a wonderful way of gaining control. But I know that area well. My wife used to teach Challenger 7. It's a wonderful place and want a lot of young families. So let's see what we can do to help out. And my staff's here. We'll definitely follow up with you soon. Okay. Rick Helfinger. I can't believe you didn't speak up, Brooke, when we passed over you. You're slipping.

Can you get back to me?

I know you take a certain amount to keep the meeting moving, so I was okay with that. And you knew I was going to stay to the end anyway, didn't you? Got to hear those board reports and see what you guys vote on during them. Impact fee study. We're still going to get it, right? The what?

The impact fee study that we... Let's have staff, you know, I'm not a big fan of impact fees.

I'm not... Well, I know you're not, but we already kind of did a big impact fee with the water kind of. Yes. We are? Are we going to get that next meeting?

Where's my August?

Yeah, because Mark Bernath gave a presentation to the Citizen Budget Review, and he said that they were still working on it because the staff had to give them inputs in order to do the study. So now I realize that that's probably going to come by events, but there was transportation impact, you know, all that stuff. I mean, we're going to hit them hard on water already, right? We voted for that. So I would hope that we would consider that as getting the new people instead of getting the old people. One of the... Topics that you talked about was how do you get money for MSTU from these big developments? You might want to look at what they did at Windward Preserve down the end of my street. Of course, it required a lawsuit, but part of that lawsuit made the developer have to pay for road improvements because they're county roads. And you guys did a right-of-way transfer to City of Cocoa, and then City of Cocoa said that the DDC or whatever, it's kind of like a homeowners association, they have responsibility for the feeder road, although it's a public road. So there are ways to work around making a community like that pay for stuff. I don't know that it takes a lawsuit. And again, that was a play, played a game with the county and city, but it was a mess. But, you know, they put speed humps down a county road, paid for it. Got guardrails. Rita made sure they put guardrails, too. So that was not paid for by the county, I hope. Somebody said it wasn't going to be. It was part of the settlement. but they also paved that they built that road for their development so hey good right they put sidewalks on it they'll pay for those too i guess yeah because they're required maintenance so there's one way to do it you just have to stipulate when the development comes in that they're going to take us making road improvements right so Theoretically, they could have paid for a wonderful, well, a roundabout was looked at at one point, but you could do anything you want that says a feeder road, make improvements, or pay MSTU. They're in COCO, and they have to pay county MSTU as part of that agreement as well. So the county used that lawsuit opportunity. They didn't file it. A private party did. But the county got involved and said, hey, you're going to give us MSTU, too, as part of the settlement. They didn't start collecting them until just now, until people move in, but the mechanism was there and it was instilled as part of that lawsuit. So that's maybe something. What I really wanted to do is ask a question. I became aware of a letter written by Thea Thorn, and she had some wonderful suggestions for the county about water. and District 1 in particular. And I think it went to the, Jim, you got that, and I think that you forwarded it to the staff for District 1, and I think that it may have gone to Mark Renath, I don't know, but I would love to find out how we're going to get feedback from that. That was just, I wanted to make sure everybody's aware that there's this wonderful letter. Thank you.

Thea Thorne, okay. Okay, that's all of our cards. Oh no, we have one more, William Porter. Sorry, William. You've been patiently waiting.

Hello, my name is William Porter.

I live at 1389 South Bonetta River Drive, Merritt Island. I'm here because of a situation that I have. I'll make you try and get right straight to point. This is in 5-4 of 2021 where I have an approval of two RVs that are on the side of my home that have been there for 15 years, right about. Been there as long as I have. In 2023, some neighbors that had purchased property filed with the county to have the RVs removed. And I'm pretty sure they filed that first case where they were approved to be there. They had been an ongoing thing and had already been approved in 2009 also. So in 2023, it was found in the transcripts that I no longer had enough room due to the setbacks for the side yard. There are no setbacks for side yard. So they used a different code. They used 1340. Well, I won't go into the depths of it. Regardless, so I went through quite a spell. The RV has to meet a setback and it's not. So it says parking locating RV and meeting the proper setback of seven and a half feet from either side of the line. So line for RV is a stored side yard next to a black chain fence so it doesn't have room in the setback at all. So the trailers would have to be removed, the two RVs. well later because of the 2021 and the 2009 approvals i already knew that that was incorrect so i went through quite a bit of money and quite a bit of And then in this date is 2-6 of 2024 was found to be that the RVs were in fact in code. So where I'm at now, is they're still there as they have been they as i said they were in code the whole time but now i'm sitting with a 900 fine i've already paid 695 dollars in fines and fees some i don't have a clue about what and then i have another to pay the costs of this, the RV sitting there, of $3,647. So it comes up to where now I owe the county for the RV sitting where they are now for the time frame it took to find that they were in code after all. I'm, I'm being fine. I owe $4,500 to the county now because I still have the RVs where they are because they're in code. They were in cold after all. And I'm not sure if I need to be right here to discuss this because I don't understand where these actual costs. of all this money come by. They never come by. I mean, all they need to do to drive by would be to look at...

I think that's a legal issue. We probably won't resolve it here tonight, but we should look into it unless the staff feels they can. I'm looking at a picture of your property right now, and I see the RVs. Okay, there you go. Yes, sir.

They've been there for 20 years now.

If we'll get his contact information, we'll have somebody call Mr. Porter to see what's going on.

I would definitely appreciate it. I mean, I don't have $4,500 anymore.

Let me ask our attorney, if you prevailed and you were found within code.

Yeah. Yeah, we need to look at everything too, yeah.

Yeah, I think he can be in contact with code enforcement folks and we'll figure it out.

Okay, good. We'll follow up. And so I go which way?

Go talk to Mr. Persaud.

I'll go to the guy that's waving.

He's the guy that, he's the first contact, sir. Thank you all very much. Thank you for your patience. Thanks, Billy. Okay, that's our final card. We'll move to reports. County Manager.

Thanks, Mr. Chair. I have two shout outs. One is we had a pretty long meeting last week with representatives from the Sheriff's Office. In the middle of the meeting, they talked about how well and how wonderful it's been to work with Linda Allison from our Risk Management Department all over the years. not often risk management gets called out for good work, so I want to thank Linda. Other one is Eddie received an email last week. There's a gentleman at a broken sewer line, a longer email, but we had a crew out there. Gentleman wrote, they encouraged each other, looked out for each other's safety, kept me informed on the process. Let me add the icing to the cake. I did not hear any cursing from these men, not once. That and all I've mentioned is sign of character. I'm not sure if they get recognition for a daily job well done, but I want to ASKED THAT THEY WILL FOR THEIR GREAT JOB REPRESENTING THE COUNTY, SO HEADY'S WORKING ON RECOGNITION. THE NAMES OF THE TEAM ARE ROBERT QUIGLEY, MIKE FIELDER, ALLEN GIBSON, LATERAS DRAKEFORD, CHRIS GREASON, TRIVER KEN HONSON, AND THE SUPERVISOR ANTHONY ROBINSON. SO I HOPE I CAME CLOSE TO ASKING THEIR NAME, BUT QUITE PROUD OF RECEIVING THE NOTIFICATION THAT OUR FOLKS OUT THERE ARE DOING GOOD STUFF FOR THE COMMUNITY. ABSOLUTELY. THANK YOU.

GREAT.

THANK YOU.

All right. County attorney.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. We've discussed with the board a couple of times now a matter involving change health care who handled billing for the county EMS system and had a massive data breach that grinded things to a halt for a while. And we talked about, you know, seeking to recoup what we can from them in terms of losses because of delayed billing and billing that didn't occur appropriately. There's litigation pending as part of a multi-district class action litigation in Minnesota. I've talked before to you about the possibility of joining that. The operative class complaint there now expressly excludes governmental entities, but it's looking like we anticipate that there will be a time when governmental entities will be included in the class complaint, and I talked to you about retaining class counsel to represent us there. There is a group of... class representative attorneys that I would like for us to engage. We do need, though, as part of that, Morgan and Morgan, who is known sometimes for suing us, they have a complex litigation group that is a part of this consortium of attorneys who's handling this class litigation. Because they have pending cases against the county and like to sue us occasionally for very unrelated matters, we would have to waive that is a conflict. So I'm asking the board tonight, again, just to reaffirm your authorization to retain class counsel to represent us in the multi-district litigation in Minnesota, because that's outside of what I can do now. And to waive the conflict, if it is a waivable conflict, which it should be under all of the applicable ethics rules with the Morgan & Morgan Complex Litigation Group. And if I can.

I'm fine with that. Is there a motion?

I'll make a motion. Is it a waiver? Is that what we're supposed to say?

It's just authorization to retain class counsel and to approve the waiver.

Okay, I'll make that motion.

I'll second that motion.

All in favor say, yay. Yay. Opposed? Opposed? Opposed? Opposed? Opposed? Opposed? Opposed? Opposed? Opposed? Opposed? Opposed? Opposed? Opposed? Okay, that it?

Yes sir, thank you.

Okay, district two. I think we've lost the commissioner, okay. District three?

I have no report.

District four? All right, we're gonna try to make this quick. I have a question for Eddie.

You're a proper guy tonight. Yeah.

So, as you all know, we're working with Jacobs Engineering on the Phase 2 report. We've been doing a lot of shareholder meetings, and part of that includes the U.S. Air Force, the Space Force, and NASA and Space Florida. Recently, I would say in the last three, four weeks, the U.S. Air Force and I I differentiate between the Air Force and Space Force because it is a Space Force station, but the wastewater plant on the facility is an Air Force asset. So with that being said, the Air Force has made an announcement that they're going to build a new wastewater plant adjacent to their existing plant. with the intention of providing capacity needed for the future associated with NASA and it also seemed like Space Florida would have capacity there. We've done this at, you know, the meetings at the EDC. We've got confirmation from the two colonels, one representing Air Force and one representing Space Force. We have asked Space Florida to provide us what their new direction is because now this dynamic has changed their It's changed their direction on whether they want to connect into the Sykes Creek plant. In the meantime, we have fallen through on the commitment to draft an agreement for Space Florida. That is, a draft is ready to go. I will say it's a solid draft. And the only thing that we're waiting for Space Florida is to confirm if we are still on the direction which the board was, I believe in February of 24, I believe if that was the date, where this was the discussion in the board direction about the $130 million investment. If Space Florida's intending to connect into the Air Force wastewater plant, there is no need for the magnitude of pipe needed for Space Force to come down to our wastewater plant. Even if they wanted some sort of redundant, it would be much smaller. and I think it would provide a minimal, it wouldn't be the $130 million impact to our wastewater plant based on those flows. So we have reached out to Space Florida to seek confirmation on what direction they're going. Once we can get that direction, we can come back to the board to get authorization from the board to proceed on that new direction, and then from there we can proceed.

Thank you. That's the end of my board report, sir.

All right. One short item. I just want to give a big shout out and thanks to our county administrator, Jim Lessenfeld, and to Tom Mulligan, our solid waste management director. I mean, that project is possibly holding out there. And that's the only thing I have. And meeting adjourned.

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