Board of County Commissioners - Regular Meeting

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the Charlotte County Board of County Commissioners Board Workshop for September 15th, 2026. Let the record show all commissioners are present except for Commissioner Deutsch, who is absent. If he comes in, we'll make sure we recognize him. Please stand for the pledge.

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.

Mr. Flores, any comments, any changes before we get started?

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yeah, just to update, normally we don't have a change of memo since this is a workshop, but we did update the presentation under item number one, the initial impact fees discussion, and then per board request, we did add item number three, that's the hurricane update fund. And then just really want to thank everybody, our teams that are here, and our consultants that put the work into the products that you see today. So look forward to some good discussion. Thank you.

Thank you, sir. And just so the board understands, there are a couple of commissioners who are going to be traveling today, so if we can work through the agenda, that'd be great. Okay, you're recognized, Mr. Cullinan, to present.

Good morning. Thank you, everybody. Sean Cullinan, planning and zoning official. We are here to talk about one of our favorite subjects, impact fees. This is the initial draft of the newest impact fee study. This was commissioned by the board at the end of last year. This was commissioned, I believe the contract was signed at the end of December. One minute, yeah, let the record show Commissioner Deutch is present. Thank you, sir. This was commissioned by you folks at the end of December. Staff just has been working closely with the consultant, the representatives are here for their slide portion so i will try to get through my portions as quickly as possible and turn it over to them so just just some recap why are we here so the last impact fee increase was 2022 which was based on uh extraordinary circumstances the last study was completed in 2021. The code and ordinance stated the impact fee study would be redone after each sales tax referendum, roughly every six years. You folks, as I stated, instructed us to move that up so that we could have some different scenarios with and without the sales tax passing. The previous one, the basis of the current fee schedule is the Duncan Associates document. That study began in late 2019 and was adopted in 2021. The data was based on the previous year's costs ncip at that time all these studies and all these things are snapshot in time you recall what happened after 2019 so again nothing wrong with the with the current study the current numbers it's just based on data that was pre-covered pre-storms and we since then we have had unprecedented cost increases in inflation What are we collecting currently? We're currently collecting 100% of transportation, fire EMS, law and jail, and community parks. We're collecting 25% of the total number for public buildings and 0% for regional and library. So some current amounts for a single family detached, it's about $7,800. Fast food restaurant with a drive-thru, about $68,000. per 1,000 square feet, general retail, just shy of 9,400 per 1,000 square feet, and a one- to two-story multifamily, about 5,200 per dwelling unit. So what are they? They are very, very, very, very heavily regulated by statute. They are a funding source. They are one of many funding sources that are used to fund infrastructure necessary for growth. They have to be based on data analysis and science. We cannot just create a number to be the highest in the state or just make up a number out of the air. It takes a very time consuming and difficult mathematical study of projects and costs. it again very heavily regulated how we collect it and how we can spend it one of the biggest issues as well is that every year it seems legislation changes to throw another wrinkle into how we can how we can change these so as i said heavily regulated can't be used for operation and maintenance can only be used for capital it can only be used for capacity increases in capital So what do they do? Well, they must be proportionally and reasonably connected to the rational nexus test with the need for additional capital facilities and the increased impact generated by new commercial or residential construction. The funds are specifically earmarked under the impact fee for use in acquiring, constructing, and improving capital facilities. Again, can't be used to staff them, maintain them, anything like that. Can't be used to pay for debt or for previously approved projects unless the expenditures reasonably connected to the increase impacted by So what can we do again? Expand and I feel like broken record I apologize that I know you folks know this but I'm trying to make sure that those that may be watching are fully understanding this We can only use it for increased capacity and expansion What we can't do, as I said, we can't utilize a random fee. We can't utilize them for operation and maintenance. We can't utilize them for projects already funding, including sales tax funded projects. We can't utilize them to pay for previous deficiencies. As I've said before, they're not intended to pay for the sins of general development or the old platted lots. We can't require a developer or builder to prepay them. We can't say we're not approving your project until you give us the fees. Statute specifically states we cannot collect the fees until just prior to CO. We can assess them at time of building permit, but we cannot collect them. We cannot adopt them immediately. We have a 90 day, as I like to call it, cooling off period before they can be effective if we're raising them. We do a lot of community notice and things like that. But we can adopt them immediately if we're suspending, eliminating, or lowering them. This is all statutory. What are they based on? Infrastructure. I'm not going to read the whole slide, but as I said, it is solely for infrastructure. They're based on the adopted capital improvement program that you folks put in, the estimated construction costs contained therein. They're based on the latest ITE generation, trip generation manual. And they are proposed sales tax projects or alternative funding sources, but only for those things in the six year CIP. So we've had impact fees for quite a long time, first enacted in 1986. We've had nine increases in impact fees, six decreases, eight technical studies over the years, and only 26 months of the 35 years, just a little over two years of history, had implementation rates of 100% of the technical studies. The range in fees for single-family homes have ranged from $946 in 1986, previous high of $77, $7,800 in 2006, to the currently adopted rate of $7,804. And again, that was based on the extraordinary circumstances finding a few years ago. So with that, I'm going to turn it over to Ms. Negancamp. She is the primary person here with Benesch, and she will go through her slides and I will play Vanna here.

Are you going to run the slides? Sure.

Unless you want to come up here, it's totally up to you.

Can I come there? Yep. Good morning, Commissioners Neig and Kemp with Banish. I also have my colleague Morgan McLeod with us. The presentation starts with a brief background review, technical study, and next steps. And Charlotte County, with a permanent population of 228,000, is continuing to experience growth. Out of 67 Florida counties, you rank eighth in annual population growth rate projected through 2050, and ninth in residential permitting in 2025. I will skip this slide. I think Sean covered it. Impact fee definition he covered very well. Really the purpose of impact fees is to maintain the level of service. They calculate the cost of growth and they are most useful when there are high growth rates and limited alternative funding. I think legal requirements Sean covered it. So as you know, we had several changes over the past however many years, and one of them in 21 and 25, we had some limits put how much we can increase the fees and how that fee increase has to be phased. So fees cannot be increased more than 50%. and that increase has to be phased over four years. There's an exception clause for jurisdictions who have increased their fees over the past five years. If the community shows the most extraordinary circumstances, holds two public workshops to discuss these, and the increases approve unanimously, then it could be more than 50% or the phasing could be different. we had another bill passing in 24 mainly coordinating transportation impact fees between the cities if both city and the county are charging and also put some limits on how time frames to complete the studies and also the data used for the studies And then this year, we just had a bill signed that basically said that any impact fee increases after July 1st has to show a demonstrated needs study that uses a plan-based approach, meaning review the 10-year projections, growth projections, capacity needs associated with that, and also establish a list of capital projects to be constructed and purchased with the impact fees. So technical study is using a consumption-based methodology to calculate the fee, which charges new growth based on the value of the infrastructure that is consuming. And fees are calculated in a way that we are ensuring that the new development is not being charged for existing deficiencies. And now we are using the plan-based methodology to demonstrate the need for impact fees. the new bill that was signed into law. The basic impact fee formula looks at cost and capacity. That's the value of the inventory that the community accumulated up to this point. So that's the investment to a given infrastructure. From that, we subtract any future contributions of new development from other revenue sources so to the extent that the county is using sales tax or other taxes a portion will come from future development and we subtract that amount to make sure that we are not charging him twice once through the impact fee once through tax and that net cost gets multiplied by demand which is measured in terms of population for all the fees except for transportation which is measured in terms of travel And again, we are updating fees in these service areas. And in each one of them, we start with documenting the inventory, capital inventory, service area, level of service, existing achieved level of service versus any standards. Cost component estimates the value of that inventory. Credit component accounts for any contributions from future development. And demand distributes that net cost between the land users. Just before we get into the details, just wanna show you some summary slides. Again, as you know, we calculated two different scenarios. One is assuming the sales tax will be renewed, one is it won't. So if the sales tax is renewed, then the total calculated fee for a single family home ends up being about almost 28,000, and then the maximum allowable is about 15,000. The reason that is more than 50% higher than the current fee is because right now you don't have a regional parks fee or a library fee, you're not charging any. So those are considered new fees and this 50% limit doesn't apply to them since there's nothing to calculate a 50% from. So they could be adopted all the way at 100%. Without the sales tax, the fee is higher at $31,000 for a single family home, and the maximum allowable fee is about $16,000. When we look at it by service area, you can see that transportation and regional parks are the two larger categories, transportation by far. This is for a single family home. In the non-residentials, transportation is definitely the dominant infrastructure. It's the most expensive infrastructure that you have, and the fees reflect that. and again it's the same type of distribution when we look at maximum allowable fees as well and now we included some phasing examples so this A slide assumes that the new fees, regional parks and libraries, will be phased as 25, 50, 70, 500% over the next four years. All the other existing fees have to be phased over two to four years, depending on the level of increase. So in this example, the fee would increase from 7,800 to 9,900, then 12,000, then 14,000, then 16,000 maximum allowable. And then this phasing assumes that the new fees will be implemented at 100% right away, so then the initial year jump would be higher from 7,800 to 13,000, and then it would phase to 16,000. And these are, again, just some examples. The board has the ability to do something in between and different, especially regarding the new fees. These are some comparisons to other jurisdictions. So you can kind of see the yellow bars are the Charlotte County, current is on the low end. The maximum allowable would be sort of in the middle, and then the calculated would be toward the higher end. Even though we are showing this some of these counties are currently updating like Orange County They just came out with their transportation impact fee. That's 20 to 22,000. So that's going to add the 10,000 right there They're also updating their other fees. So some of them are Will change over the next year or so So if we start with fire rescue EMS, and I'll go through the first one in a little bit more detail, and now you'll see a pattern. I'll go quicker in the interest of time. But the inventory includes 16 stations, 137,000 square feet of building space, 45 acres of land, and vehicles and equipment. When we estimate the building costs, we reviewed any recent construction by the county, any bids estimates for upcoming construction, insurance values of the current buildings, and data from other jurisdictions. And in the case of land value, we also reviewed any recent purchases, if you have any appraisals for upcoming purchases, vacant land sales throughout the service area from the property appraiser database. the value of the land where the current facilities are located so with these in the case of fire EMS stations station value was estimated at $600 per square foot and then the maintenance building at 550 per square foot and land at 90,000 per acre Level of service for impact fee purposes is measured in terms of population per station. You have about 15,000 for fire rescue and about 18 to 20,000 for emergency medical services. So when we add all the assets, building value, land value, vehicle and equipment, all together for fire, total asset value is about 114 million. That divided by the population gives us a value of $570 per person. So that represents the investment the community made up to this point into fire rescue infrastructure. And that's our starting point to charge the new development. In the case of EMS, that's $143. There are other revenue sources that are being used for the fire and rescue facilities. There are ad valorem being primary revenue source other than the sales tax. So these are generating a credit. So with sales tax, once we subtract the credit from the cost, we're coming up with about $370 for fire rescue on a per person basis and $78 for EMS. Without the sales tax, then it's higher, it's $520 for fire rescue, about $130 for EMS. So these values multiplied by residents per unit gives us the calculated fee. So you can see for fire rescue, if we have the sales tax contributions, then the rate is about almost 600, while maximum allowable rate is about 417. So its current rate is 278, 50% higher than that is about 417. With EMS, full calculated rate ends up being 123, and the maximum allowable is about 113. This is under sales tax. Without the sales tax, calculated rates are higher, but maximum allowable is still the same since it increases more than 50%. You can kind of see that. And then this chart provides a comparison to some of the other jurisdictions. You can see calculated fees are on the higher end. Maximum allowable is sort of middle. And in these slides, we try to put the date of the last update study of each jurisdiction so you can have a sense of how old the data is, as well as adoption percentage, if they adopted a reduced percentage. Law enforcement and correctional, there's about almost 230,000 square feet of law enforcement related buildings and the correctional is about 340,000 square feet. We have the land and vehicles and equipment going with that as well. Primary buildings are estimated at $600 per square foot, and sport buildings at $250 per square foot, and land value was estimated at 80,000 per acre. For law enforcement, level of service is measured in terms of officers per thousand residents, so that's about 1.6. For correctional facilities is beds per thousand population, so that's about 4.5. So the total asset value for law enforcement is about $145 million. That divided by the population gives us a value of almost $690. And for correctional, it's about $201 million. And the value is about almost $850 per resident. Again, these reflect the investment the community made up to this point into these infrastructures. So that's, again, our starting point to charge the new development. There are other funds being allocated to these services, primarily to law enforcement. So those generate a credit. under law enforcement with sales tax the net cost is about 560 without the sales tax is about 640 correctional facilities has no contributions from any revenue sources whether sales tax or other so that would typically means you are funding everything with impact fees therefore we don't need a credit but just to give the county some flexibility we added a 10% credit so if you use something else you you know it accounts for it if it ends up being quite a bit different than that we would have to update these calculations And then these net costs multiplied by the residents per unit gives us the fee. So for law enforcement, it's about $900 for single family home, the full calculated fee. But the maximum allowable fee is about $420.

Commissioner Constance, you're recognized.

Thank you. Just real quick, great presentation so far. So when you're talking with and without sales tax, the other reductions in the columns are coming from other sources like Ad Valorem and other fund sources. So that would cause a reduction. That's the reductions that we're seeing whether we're using sales tax or without sales tax.

Correct.

I just want to make sure I get that correct.

Exactly, yes. So for example, in the case of law enforcement, you're also using some ad valorem taxes, some litigation mitigation fund, and then sales tax, yes. Yes, so basically we assumed if the sales tax program goes away, what does your CIP still show?

Okay, and then I guess go forward. three slides right there so we make your study will calculate the impact fee of 903 dollars our current fee is 282 just using the top column for an example so we can't go higher than 50% more unless you use demonstrate extraordinary circumstances and you have the unanimous vote of the board no

But there's a way, because for counties that updated their fees within the past five years, there's that extraordinary circumstances clause that allows you to increase more than 50%. It requires that there's a study showing that, and then you hold two public workshops discussing it, and then you need unanimous vote for that.

Okay, and then one more question. We do this every six years because we've been doing this in every six year sales tax. If this next one passes for 20 years, would you recommend that we revisit this every four years because they allow us to do that? Yes. Okay, thank you.

Yeah, because especially with this, you can't use this clause unless you increase your fees within the past five years. It's becoming more important.

Thank you. I know we're trying to get through these slides, but I just wanted to establish those things. Thank you.

Sure. Under correctional facilities, the total calculated fee is about 1,200 and maximum allowable about 416. And again, without the sales tax, total fee for law enforcement is about 1,000, but the maximum allowable is still the same, 420. And same thing with corrections. So these combined, when we add them together, the total fee is about $2,200 or $2,100, depending on the sales tax. But the maximum allowable is about $840, and you can kind of see how some of the other jurisdictions are ranking here and here as well. And this is your current adopted. Public buildings, these are general government services, courts, and so on, and there are about 560,000 square feet, 160 acres of land. Primary building value was estimated at $500 per square foot, and sport buildings at $300 per square foot, and land value at $80,000 per acre. For impact fee purposes, we measured the level of service in terms of square feet per resident. That's about 2.7. So the total asset value is about 337 million. That divided by the population is about $1,400 per resident. Again, measuring the investment into this infrastructure up to this point. There are other funding sources that are being used, ad valorem grants, gas tax, tourist development tax. So overall, these are generating a credit of about 10.7 million per year, and then there is sales tax potential investment of about 4.5 million per year. So these generate a credit. then the net cost ends up being about $450 per person with the sales tax contributions and about 690 without the sales tax contributions. So those multiplied by residents per unit generates a fee of $715 for single family with sales tax. Your current fee is about 260, so that cannot increase more than $392 under that 50% limit. Without the sales tax, the calculated fee is about almost 1,100, but again, the maximum is about 390 for a single family. So this chart provides some comparisons. You can kind of see the calculated fee would be toward the higher end. Maximum allowable is really toward the lower. Part of the issue with this is last study was adopted at 25%, so that's why you are on the low end. Libraries, this is considered a new fee. Right now, you're not charging for it. There are about 77,000 square feet of library facilities, seven acres of land, materials, and equipment. Building value was estimated at $500 per square foot, land at 75,000 per acre. And we look at the level of service in terms of square feet per population, materials, and equipment. And then the total asset value is about 44 million divided by population gives us $195 per resident. For libraries, there are, other than sales tax, there are no non-impact fee contributions. So if the sales tax passes, that's about three and a half million per year allocation is being planned toward library facilities. So that generates a very large credit because it's basically doubling your inventory. So then under the sales tax, net cost is about $4. without the sales tax there are no other revenue sources again just to give the county some flexibility we added a 10% credit so net cost would be about 175 so you can kind of see with the sales tax there's almost no fee because the investment in relation to the existing inventory is very large Without the sales tax, it would be about $334 for a single family. And again, because this is a new fee, there is no maximum allowable calculations. So this chart is providing a comparison. Without the sales tax, you'd be sort of in the middle to high, and then with the sales tax, it would be very low. Parks and Recreation, that inventory includes about 42 parks. They are community, regional, special purpose parks, altogether 956 acres. Current achieved level of service is about 4.3 acres per 1,000 residents. You have a standard of six acres. We use lower of the two because if we haven't achieved it, we can't really charge for it. And if we achieved it but we don't intend to continue, we don't charge for it. So in this case, we use 4.3. Land value was estimated anywhere from 550,000 to 300,000, depending on the park type. And then we had site development costs added to that. So overall, that generated a value of $157 for community parks and $730 per person for regional and special purpose parks. And then in addition to land, we have the recreational facilities that also provides additionally a component of the total assets. So that's about $490 for community parks and about $1,600 for regional and special purpose parks. So altogether, total asset value is about $650 for community parks and $2,300 for regional and special purpose parks. Again, we have credit from sales tax as well as non-sales tax revenue sources. So with sales tax, community parks, the net cost is about $70 for community parks and about $1,800 for regional parks. Without sales tax, those numbers are $310 for community parks and $2,200 for regional specialty parks. And park facilities and libraries are charged only to residential land users, so you can kind of see this is the scenario for community parks with sales tax. So calculated fee would be about $134. Current adopted is $304, and that would actually decrease the fee again because of the sales tax investments. community parks without the sales tax, it would increase almost double. But again, the maximum we can increase is 50%, so that would increase the fee to about $456 for a single family. And then regional parks, just like libraries, this fee is at zero right now, so this was considered a new fee. So the single family fee for regional special purpose parks with sales tax is about 3,400, without sales tax is about 4,300. And then this chart provides a comparison combining both fees. So the county would be at the high end at the calculated rates. And then the maximum would sell, even with the maximum allowable, would still be a healthy rate just because regional parks can be charged at 100%. So in this example, we are putting 100% of regional park fees. Transportation is calculated a little different. So I'll just really quickly go over the formula. We start by estimating the cost of building a lane mile. So that's at 8.7 miles. So if you have a one mile of road, that's two lanes, that'd be almost 18 million. That lane mile carries a capacity of 8,400 cars. So cost divided by capacity gives us $1,000 of vehicle miles of capacity. What that says is every time we add a vehicle to the roadway system, for them to travel a mile is costing $1,000 of infrastructure, which is kind of a unit cost. An average home generates 21 vehicle miles daily, so those two multiply, gives us the total cost of almost 22,000. From that, we subtract the credits, about 1,200, so the net fee is about 20,600. The main component of the transportation impact fee has three components, number of trips each land use generates, how long those trips are, and how many of them are percent new trips. Meaning if you are going from home to office and you stop at the gas station that's right on the way, we don't charge that gas station because that wasn't a new trip, that was on the way already. And the data sources are the National Institute of Transportation Engineers reference book. Your last study was based on 10th edition. There were two more iterations since then, so that caused some changes. We use a Florida studies database. Those are studies conducted in Florida at sites, both counting the trips as well as interviewing the drivers to saying where did they come from, where are they going, to measure all three variables. And then also the travel demand model that's used in the development of long-range transportation plans. This is kind of showing you the cost trends going forward. And you can kind of see we had the cost increases in 05, 06, 07. We had the big boom. Then we had the decrease during the Great Recession. And then costs were being increased after that. But the level of increase heightened after the pandemic significantly. So your last study, the report itself is dated 21, but it started early in 2019. So it was looking backwards to probably 17, 18, 16 data. And since then, you can kind of see how the cost increased. And this is the same type of information with various cost indices, looking at it since 2017. And costs were increasing, but it was more stable. And then the level of increase became much more significant since then. In the cost estimates, we reviewed the local projects. You had projects, you had about 10 recent or ongoing projects along with estimates ranging in cost from five million to 15 million per lane mile. We excluded anything over 10 million to be conservatives and that gave us an average of 6.6 million. We reviewed data from other counties. So more suburban counties range around five and a half million. So we use something in between at six million. So we think this is actually a conservative estimate given that you had several projects more than 10 million. On the state roadways, there was only one project that was recent at 4.3 million. When we look at other Florida counties, state costs usually averaging about 9 million. So we stay with the same 6 million. We don't typically see state building cheaper than the county. So we said it's going to probably be at least 6 million going forward. So with other components designed right away, CEI, and also accounting for the roadway design factors, whether it's curb and gutter or open drainage, overall, county roads ended up being about 8.7 million per lane mile, and the state is right around 8 million. lane mile we then blended those two by how much of the future roadways will be County Road versus state based on the long-range transportation plan and then overall cost that was used in the calculations is about eight point seven million We then review again, based on the long range transportation plan, what kind of capacity these improvements are generating. And that cost divided by that capacity gives us a cost of a little over $1,000 per vehicle miles of capacity added. On the credit component, county is using obviously impact fees, sales tax, fuel tax, and grants, as well as state funding. Without the sales tax, annual contributions are about 17 million, and about half of that is from the state. And then including sales taxes would be about 25.6 million, so that generates a credit. One thing we'd like to emphasize here is that even though transportation has a dedicated revenue source of fuel tax, that is a very inefficient revenue source. As you know, it's on a per gallon basis. So state taxes are indexed, but local pennies are not allowed to be indexed. So between inability to index and fuel efficiency, A local penny in mid-90s is worth maybe 40% of its value today. On the state, also there's some loss due to fuel efficiency, but they are able to index their pennies. So you have a situation where your costs are increasing, but your dedicated revenue source is losing ground. And that's kind of why you are having to put all the other revenue sources into transportation. So with that, the calculated fee without the sales tax is about 20,600 for single family, but the maximum allowable is about 9,200. With the sales tax is about almost 20,000, and maximum allowable is obviously 9,200. So this is kind of showing, again, comparison to other counties. Calculated fees would be at a higher end, but we are seeing more and more that range. Like I was mentioning, Orange County's new fee came at $20,000 to $22,000 also. Your maximum allowable would be around the middle, and then these are more counties going. And then in terms of revenue projections, We lost the chart here basically we were showing you permitting here and past five years your residential permitting average 4500 units and 10 years is 3200 units so based on those those ranges we prepared Revenue estimates with sales tax without sales tax so for the next 10 years with the sales tax if at the full rate the county could generate 722 million to 1 billion with the maximum allowable rates assuming the new fees are um adopted at full it would be 382 million to 534 million mr constance recognized thank you mr chair can you go back to the single family comparisons again so um yeah that the second page

So Brevard has not updated since 2000 and City of Northport have not updated since 2011?

Yes. Brevard is, we just finished, but they haven't adopted and they are debating when to adopt it. So they accept the study, but they haven't set the rates.

But I didn't realize Northport is 15 years since they've updated their fees?

That's the, at least transportation. Yes, transportation, I can tell you this. They updated their other fees. But transportation, so we did their study 2011. They had another study done. The transportation is still based on 2011 study. All the other ones are updated.

Got it, okay, thank you.

And without the sales tax, the figures are higher. So this is again going back to the summaries showing you in total how the, for some example land uses, how the fees increase under calculated rate and maximum allowable rate without sales tax. This is again showing you the distribution and basically transportation and regional parks are the higher fees. And then these are the phasing. And again, this is comparing to other counties. I kind of want to show one more slide. Just think, okay, so maybe it got lost. We had a slide that kind of shows you No, okay, I'm sorry. We tried to show you why sales tax is not making much difference in some cases, and it's really the relation to the asset value. So in the case of libraries, there's a big difference because basically the sales tax contributions is almost doubling the inventory. In the case of, say, transportation, other example, even though there's like 200 million being allocated, total asset value is maybe a billion or something. Like when we take the eight and a half and multiply with your lane miles, it's a significant inventory. So that 200 million is only 4% of the inventory. So that's why it's not making lot of difference in the in the case of transportation and the other thing to remember we are giving credit only for new developments contribution most of the sales tax will come from your existing population so you know if you are we divide the whole sales tax by the entire population not just an added population so that's the other reason and now I lost my space

You're still recognized, sir. Okay. So another quick question. So when you value the assets, do you value them in 2026 dollars? Yes. Yes. Okay. So if we were going to put all that infrastructure in today, what's the cost of doing that?

Yes.

Okay. and the comparison slide i think your summary of fees uh on ours slide 121 you know it i think it demonstrates when you look at the new fees yeah uh good thank you you know there it is i mean there's the charlotte county full rate and there's with sales tax it's only about a $3,000 difference I mean with sales tax it's still $27,000 or it's $30,000 without sales tax so you know I'm understanding how we got there and your explanation is very logical makes you know it's based on fact so

It's again, your biggest fee is transportation and because transportation is so expensive.

That's the most watered down fee because we have so much value in our current infrastructure. Yes. Got you. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you. So again, we are here to get your input, answer any questions, and then move forward based on your direction.

okay any any questions on the study yeah thank you thank you for the presentation um can you explain to me the the different population numbers that are being used and why because it's I know that we're paying uh Metro forecasting for an update every six months and we know that our population is over 237 000 and I only saw that number reference once so I'm just trying to get how this is extrapolated and get an understanding

yeah so we are using really three different population depending on one is your permanent population all the residents and we are using that mostly for libraries and parks because your adopted standards are based on this resident population to match that for all other fees we are taking into account both the seasonal as well as workers coming in and out of the community throughout the day what we call a functional population so that looks at you know you have your seasonal population you have hotel motel visitors and then also you have people like some of your people leave the county during the day some other people come either to visit or to work And the reason we are doing this is because we have to distribute that population between residential and non-residential land uses for demand component to see where the people are throughout the day. So the fee is related to density of people at each land use. So a retail location per 1,000 square foot on average has a density of 2.46 maybe throughout the day. So to be able to do that we need to look at everyone coming in and out. So that's that's kind of the reason we also compared We did use beaver because the most recent data like they published something in February that seemed more recent than the Metro study, but we compared them and they were within the range of beavers high, especially when we add the seasonal, there was no big difference. We tested for the fees, fees weren't affected which population we use consistently. But we could always, for the final report, we can always switch to metro study as well.

Well, I'm just interested because we have to provide services, roads, whatever, for the full population. Correct. No matter what day of the week it is, no matter what I'm saying. So I don't understand why we're using different numbers to calculate costs when we have to, we're servicing the whole 237,000 people.

Right, it's not even that, you are servicing other people on top of it. Right. Yeah, that's what the functional population captures and that's what we use for most land uses. Transportation is vehicle miles of study, so those studies capture anyone coming there. Coming to go. It just counts all the trips. Right. So I think we are capturing what you are looking to capture.

Okay. Thank you. Mr. David. Good morning, Tom David, county attorney. For the purposes of the statute, this report is a demonstrated needs study under the statute, right? Yes. Yes, right?

It has a separate section in the report that does that.

Okay, I appreciate that. And the study is not completed yet, right? No. We're expecting to complete this study in approximately November, is that correct? Right we once we get all the comments and any changes I think we need two three weeks to finalize it Right just for the board's edification those those terms are terms of art in the statute and the completion date will be approximately November which starts another clock of 12 months for it for a

if the board decided at some point in time to do an extraordinary circumstances analysis I think the statute says the study needs to be adopted within one year from start

Yes, that's another point, is that it must be adopted by the board if the board intends to increase impact fees within 12 months of the initiation of the study.

Right.

I've got that date as December 11th, 2025, which is the date of the contract.

I think we started first week of January, but December 11, your last meeting before you exceed that is my understanding. Yes, ma'am.

Sean can correct me.

So which date is it then? Is it December or January? We're using the date of December 11th, 2025 as the date of initiation of the new impact fee study because that's the date that the board, that's the date that the county entered into a contract with the consultant.

Okay.

So that's the other issue. It doesn't define what the start date is. It could be when we got the PO, it could be when we got the data, it could be when we had the kickoff meeting. So kickoff was January, and then data collection took a little longer. So depending on the interpretation, but that is probably the most strict version.

The word the statute uses, initiation of the study. So you can decide what that means. Okay.

Commissioner Constance, you're recognized, and Commissioner Daugherty.

Yes, thank you. And I know this is kind of nuanced, but going back to the very beginning, a net impact fee is the cost to add capacity minus the credit, which is non-impact fee revenue from future development.

how do you define that because that's that's pretty nebulous number one and number two so what are what are go give me again what those those items are so the cost is value of the inventory today if we had to build everything today what would it cost us as best as we can estimate credit is and we look at how you funded CAPACITY PROJECTS PAST FIVE YEARS, WHAT'S PROGRAMMED IN YOUR CIP, AND WE SAY ON AVERAGE COUNTY IS USING $2 MILLION PER YEAR FROM ADVALORUM SAFE TOUR FIRE STATIONS. SO THAT 2 MILLION DIVIDED BY THE POPULATION GIVES US ON A PER PERSON HOW MUCH EVERYBODY IS CONTRIBUTING. AND WE JUST GIVE THAT CREDIT ON A PER PERSON BASIS.

So what if those non-impact fee revenues are from sales tax, but you can't guarantee that those are going to be recurring?

Again, we just take all the sales tax, divide by population. On average, each person is contributing that. But that's why also, as far as passing, not passing, that's why we did two scenarios. Is that what you mean?

Well, but just to work on the net impact. So what you're saying is you're looking at this equation as, if we're doing it as cost, there's really not much minus credit there might be some ad valorem and stuff for the so the wood without sales tax that's that calculation and then use the same formula adding in the sales tax and then okay yes I got you all right thank you Thank You Commissioner direct nice Thank You mr. German yeah the population numbers are kind of echoing what Commissioner tricks and saying are so fundamental to the calculations you know which which one are you gonna use Bieber or Metro forecasting

I've really developed a lot of confidence in Metro you know so I think personally just for consistency I'd like that to be our basis for population now unless you find something jumps right out that Bieber's better for some reason then let us know but I just for consistency I'd rather use Metro

Yeah, we'll be happy to update that. Just for today's discussion, we did test it. It made almost no difference in the fees, and we will update it. But at least for your consideration of the fee levels, that will still be about the same.

But that's the population methodology that we're getting used to, right? Right, right.

No, I agree. We'll update that.

Mr. Constance? Yeah, just a point of information is we actually had, I think Mr. Farmer here from Metro, and they actually went to Bieber and fought to get the numbers changed because they felt theirs were more accurate and they were successful. The state agreed. Okay, we definitely should use Metro.

I guess they're still arguing.

Absolutely right. The attorney tells me we're still arguing, but I think they've got good data and good information. That's why we're sort of leaning in their direction. Thank you.

Nobody's in the queue, so I'll jump in. Is the Metro forecasting, since they're a third party, like independent, are they legally defensible? I mean, if someone was to challenge the numbers?

Sean Cullinan, playing zoning official. Yes, they have been deemed by the state, which is why we were able to challenge the Bieber numbers last year. So a couple of points on that. Her study, the Benish study, was going on at the same time as the updates from Mr. Farmer. You heard from him just before your break, and now you're hearing from her. These two studies were going on at the same time. That's why the numbers could be different as well. she went by Bieber those numbers were the ones that correct we challenged Bieber last year we actually last week I think it was or maybe two weeks ago got our Bieber numbers in again from the state and we had to challenge them again because they were still low so we're actively doing that right now as well so there because of the very compressed time frames under statute where you've got to be done within one year of initiation if you recall the last one it was probably about pushing two maybe even two and a half years be of you know discussions and study and and things like that statute being so tight it has everything is so compressed but yes that those numbers there are many many variables that i cannot wrap my brain around but bieber has been accepted by the state as They will accept their- Metro. Or Metro, I'm sorry. Metro, yes. Definitely Beaver would be, but Metro is as well.

Thank you. I'm going to accept that December 11th is the date as the most conservative, I think. That would be the date you said we entered into the contract. I would say we initiated. If the statutes say when you initiated the study, I would say entering into a contract is the initiation. Just so we get our date straight, so we're not. know we're all on the same page is it january is it december i would say that would cover us that would be indisputable you know as the most conservative date um board also approved um a change order for amendment three and i think there was a notation on here um i'm not sure if this has anything to do with items one and two have been reordered per direction of the board on nine eight twenty twenty six it was a change no that was that was okay okay i'm sorry i'm sorry yeah this is to get this item first yeah so where are we with that change order so that's the ad valorem

impact yeah right for that we need boards but we need just like sales tax we need a list that says if this thing passes these are the projects we are going to cut and just to give you a perspective transportation correctional facilities and libraries have no ad valorem or general fund contribution right now so unless you take some of the sales tax away from them or some other source they should not be affected you know there's no ad valorem going already fire rescue ems law community parks are the others to some extent public buildings and little bit regional parks. Those have ad valorem contributions or general fund contributions. So if the board decides this cut is going to come out of those capital projects, then we can calculate with without just like sales tax.

So no work's been done on that change order?

No, we don't have the information to be able to do that.

Okay, well I would say since we're so, so you're not going to be doing anything until

Well, if the board knows what is out of these capital projects, if anything is going to be cut, we can do a calculation between now and November for sure.

Yeah, well, I probably wouldn't do anything because we're so close to November now. If it doesn't pass, then we didn't spend the money.

Right, you didn't spend.

Yeah, so I would suggest we don't do anything with that change order now this close to November. I thought you were able to bring us information like you did with sales tax. No sales tax, there'd be a column for Amendment 3. I was unaware of what you just explained. Okay. Let me see, also I've noticed other counties, you had a schedule there of what their impact fees are, but I looked at some of the other counties, and the mix of categories is different, because everybody's capital is different. Some of them have a few categories, some have an expanded palette of categories.

think it was Lee County I think they have an impact fee for schools right I think most of its schools yeah there are about 35 counties with school impact fees and that's this usually that's only on residential and it's usually if if either the highest or second highest fee Schools and transportation, when we look at communities infrastructure, capital infrastructure, schools and transportation make up 70 to 85% of the total value. So those two are the, and the fees reflect that, so yeah.

So one of the ways we can manage this gentleman is we can look at our categories. It may be an adjustment of the mix of categories. And we start looking at what these costs are and how we want to manage them. I know there's a glide path already built in with the statute, but I mean that's another thing. Because these categories were determined decades ago when they started impact fees and they haven't really been revisited other than we asked Parks and Rec when we zeroed some of them out last time we did our update. because you know it was determined at that point it was wasn't necessary there were other funding sources so we kind of changed those categories so i'm just thinking through that same prism going forward you know what the category mix is what are the top priorities of the county um obviously amendment three is going to be big um it's probably going to if it passes it's going to put much more pressure on the impact fee but I look at what the state's been doing. I mean, since COVID, the population of the state of Florida, I think grew over 2 million people in a compressed time. And Charlotte County has been the recipient of of those population increases putting demands on our infrastructure. But yet, we're getting revenue potentially cut to deliver services for that population. And then you look at the impact fees and how we can roll them out. It's going to take years before we can actually realize what the impact fee study is telling us we need to get today. Because of the 50% rule and then it takes so many years to roll it out. extraordinary circumstances, if that is exercised, that's more time, more study, more public input on that. Yeah, I think what we're going to find out as we navigate the rest of this agenda on this item is, you know, we're kind of painted in a box here on how we can roll this out. I have Commissioner Constance in the queue. You're recognized, sir.

Thank you. So if you don't do anything with regard to giving us an update, including the Amendment 3 cut, once the election occurs, we have a month.

till December 11th of 2026 how quickly can you pivot and incorporate data and give us a new you know a new schedule if you give once we have the projects like what is cut what is not cut we probably can turn it around in a couple weeks couple three weeks But I mean, when you look at sales for many of these, the maximum allowable is lower than either option with the sales tax, for example. So it's already cutting it so much that it may not make a huge difference what you cut out of the capital program for ad valorem. And again, like some fees, like the transportation and so on, is already not getting any.

Right, and that's a fair, it's a sizable portion. Right. Yeah, I just think, you know, you've got to be ready. I don't know the first meeting in December, but... i've got those dates later in this presentation yeah it's the eighth so yeah i mean yeah so i mean that's it that's that's the date that this all has to be decided and voted on now implementation i think we're going to find out has to happen later but at least for the one year for this we could always have a special meeting yeah if we had to yeah okay thank you thank you sir any other questions okay mr cullen you recognize to continue

Thank you, Sean Cullinan, planning and zoning official. Touch on a couple of things, a couple of questions that were asked. One about population and Rick Arthur from fiscal reminded me of this. I think a lot of those different numbers were under fire and possibly law and those items. they may be different population wise because of Englewood Fire who provides the fire service as well as the city of Punta Gorda and their fire department and their police department so those items that's why those populations that we serve as a county for fire may have been different

Mr. Truax thank you sir but we still provide support and rescues in those districts to some degree so I'm just understand I'm just trying to wrap my head because I wanna make this as accurate as possible. And there's errors in here, I wanna make sure that they're not. And some of them are defensible, but if we're gonna do something, I don't know what this board's gonna do yet. But we wanna make sure that all of our I's are dotted, all of our T's are crossed, and every decimal place is perfect.

Categories.

Okay, going on to my slide again. So for collections, we did the past five years of collections. Oh, I apologize, before I get into this. Look like, oh, well, we can just, you know, well, we want to be at the top, so we can just go to those high numbers. well why are we only mid-pack they can be very very misleading as i as we've said and i beat on it you cannot just randomly say well we want to be at the top so let's go to you can't compare to 10 year old numbers right there's a whole lot of variables it's just for illustrative purposes we So as you can see from the impact fee collections, 21 was prior to the extraordinary circumstances as well as 22. You can see they jumped pretty significantly after 23. 24 was a very high collection year and 25 is pretty much on par with 23. So how do we enact them? Statute, again, it's so heavily regulated. The impact fee is based on the study with the most recent and localized data available within four years of the current impact fee update. So the six years, Commissioner Kahn, since you touched on this, the six years it was written in was prior to these provisions being written into statute. And so, yes, those will be adjusted with the ordinance. You can choose how frequently you want us to do that. As was stated, the new study must be adopted by the local government within 12 months of the initiation of the new impact fee study. Your January meeting is January 12th. So that meeting, even if we went by the initiation of when we had the kickoff, January 11th, that would still be after that? December.

December. You keep saying January.

No. I'm saying January based on Negan's numbers. So December 8th is the last meeting that you've had in statutory timeframes. Okay. There are a lot of restrictions on enactment. Negan went through a lot of them. The glide path, as they like to call it, must be no more than 25%. Yeah, there's a lot of regulations. So what can we do? We can increase it beyond the phase-in limitations by establishing the need based on the criteria of the demonstrated needs study justifying an increase in excess. we have to hold at least two publicly noticed workshops dedicated solely to the extraordinary circumstances the impact fee ordinance is approved by a unanimous vote of the governing body and the even under that the increase must be at least two but not more than four equal annual increments so we're still hamstrung even with exceptional circumstances to go past the 50% as I said Just reiterating that. So it must be accompanied by the declaration stating how in the time frame during which the proposed impact fee will be used to construct, purchase, or purchase the necessary improvements. And again, must use the localized data. That's the thing. Every community has their own localized data. They have their own needs and wants. So this is where we really have some issues that very recently to the tune of last month SB 180 we've been talking about SB 180 since Hurricane Ian that was the bill that stated that we cannot enact any more land development or any more burdensome or restrictive ordinances or land development regulations it was retroacted to the date of Ian It has since been extended. It is still in effect until October of 2027. Two recent challenges to impact fee increases have been found to be violations of SB 180. We're currently waiting on a decision on the Manatee County case. The most recent case determined that they stated in their order that impact fees, the various impact fee ordinances, constitute land development regulations. They determined a fee to be a land development regulation. So there are other provisions of statute. We're currently looking at other fees that were mandated to change, but if an impact fee is a land development regulation, it stands to reason that a permit fee may also be deemed by a court to be a land development regulation. So there is a lot of inconsistencies and a lot of issues that we're trying to work through right now. So as always, we provide you options. Do nothing. We keep the existing impact fees in place. Could adopt a new study and the fees. There's significant potential liability. There's arguability that it could possibly extinguish the current fees as a new ordinance would supersede it. Would we follow the glide path? Could we? under the current cases not sure would we undertake the extraordinary circumstances route these are all things that you folks need to decide in the very near future i will say we don't typically make recommendations but if you are adopting a new studying fees so the ordinance must be adopted by december 8 2026 bcc meeting that is within the one year of initiation of the study so as I just explained December 11th was when the board voted to say initiate the study we started January 11th with the kickoff again December 8th is the last meeting before either of those triggers are hit anyway then still have the cooling off period and they would become effective March 8, 2027 now some of the issues even if we adopted but kept the brought the numbers down to match what they currently are we may not be able to do that either because you're required to have all of the land use categories be reduced by the same percentage so doing that it's possible that some of our impact fees could go down from what they are today again the sb 180 provisions expire october 27 assuming no extensions based on executive orders also there is a session another legislative session coming up in the new year we could initiate a new study and by new study i mean a technical update to the study because we just completed it it would just be updating some of the numbers and we would adopt it within one year of the initiation date and then again the 90-day period so with that i'd be happy to answer any questions and negan as well as here to answer any more questions Commissioner Deutsch, you recognize?

If we look at the extraordinary circumstances we've done in the past, what's the additional time requirement to meet those regulations? How does that fall in line with the December date?

Honestly, the demonstrated needs study that we already included takes care of most of that. It's not a big effort to move it up to extraordinary circumstances. The biggest, I guess, hurdle on that is it's unanimous vote requirement. If you don't have that, then why even?

So it isn't a substantial additional amount of work or a time factor that would slow things down?

No, and also these two public workshops, different jurisdictions did it differently. Some did it as board workshops, some did it just like public workshops. Some did it within the same week, one morning, one evening, so they can be done very quickly. They don't have to follow your board workshop schedule if you need it, as long as you have the votes.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, sir. Commissioner Costa recognized.

Yes, thank you. Sean, can you explain again how some fees could actually go down? You went through that pretty quick.

So I'll probably need to bring Negan back up here as well because math, I've stated it God knows how many times. It's not my forte. All of the land use categories have to be reduced by the same amount. So, for instance, we can't reduce transportation for a single family by 80%. but only reduce transportation for commercial by 20%. It would all have, transportation would have to be reduced.

So each silo in the category has to be reduced or raised by the same amount. Correct.

That's to protect.

Get up to the mic, please.

Sorry, that's to protect the equity between land users, so we can't give somebody a bigger discount than the other. And then because the fees, because of demand changes, they are not all increasing by same percentage, so.

so if so in other words if i don't see how they could decrease but in other words if they go up if you can only go up twenty percent in a certain silo others would be higher but that's it you're capped you can't if you're bringing up that one commercial part twenty percent doesn't matter the other ones could go higher that's where the

If you are trying to match to your current schedule, like say single family, let's say you adopted at 40% to get to the current. But when you look at light industrial, maybe it's going to be 20% of adoption. But you have to reduce 40 everywhere. Right, it has to be 40 all the way across.

Thank you, that's it. I have another question for you, ma'am. Since you've worked closely with other counties, and other counties are coming up against the same issues we're having with statute, legislation, and these laws, what strategies are others or have you worked on to overcome these obstacles?

So regarding SB 180, over and over and over again, every county we work with that adopted the fees, their attorneys give the opinion that impact fees are not a form of land use regulation. They don't tell you how to build, what to build, not to build, it's just a fee. And they also mention in one case, for example, the county attorney, they are mentioned in the bill one time to say if somebody's home was destroyed and they rebuild the same home, same square footage, you can't charge impact fees. But that's already the rule anyway. Right. For anything. Other than that, they are not even mentioned in the rule. So I don't know how. We are losing this case because it's so obvious to me. But they basically said we're going to increase and then if this ends up being an issue, we'll address it then.

Okay, so basically they're moving ahead and unless they're challenged, they're just going to keep

Unless the court case comes back very black and white saying you cannot do that, then at that point they may stop.

Okay, so they're adopting the new study against the advice of their respective county attorneys?

No, no, their counsels are saying impact fees are not a form of land use regulation, you should be fine. That's what they are saying.

Okay, so then there's a division amongst county attorneys.

Right, well, yes and no. I mean, for the most part, I don't know who thinks it's really land use regulation. Courts seem to, at least one court did.

Yeah.

Two courts, but the other court is still Manatee, right? Manatee is still going, so I don't know.

Yes, so that there was an injunction in a for the record David County attorney there was an injunction entered so it's two courts but it is without a doubt there is a division of opinion among the county attorneys around the state for the most part I would say them the majority over 90% believe that the SB 1a that that impact fees are not a land use regulation under the statutory definition but That has not worked out in at least two courts, though we do not have anything in an appellate level, and we definitely don't have anything at the Supreme Court level. So it's an open question.

And I know Palm Coast is appealing.

So there's going to be appeals, it's going to go on. And the issue, the big concern is that the statutes, SB 180 says that the enactment is void ab initio. And what that means in Latin is that from the start. So what that means is that if you adopt it, adopt this ordinance, a change in the impact fees, and two years later, three years later, a Supreme Court, SB 180 says that a impact fee is a land development regulation. Refunds. You lose all of it from the start. So every year of collection from that point forward and probably everything that you would have gotten if you would have not made the change. So that's the risk.

Yeah, it could be repayment of impact fees plus interest, who knows what other penalties the court may deem.

Yeah, I mean that happened in the trade cases. The US government is refunding improperly imposed fees, so.

Yeah, so what I'm trying to do is, since this is so technical and you're technical, you know person i'm trying to figure out you know these options we've been given you know if you have anything i mean you've seen them what staff has proposed do you have anything else to add for options tools in the toolbox for this board i i was wondering and i think you'll consider this but if you adopt whatever you're going to adopt and say make him effective october 1st 27 when sp 180 expires

Instead of 90 day notice, you are giving larger notice, which is your right.

Okay, so they could be adopted, but only effective- After SB 180 expires, which is October 1st, 27- Assuming they don't extend it. Unless there's another- But then we can extend again, okay. So the new study can be adopted to a future date, but we can still operate under the existing schedule.

Okay, well that's- Sean Cullinan playing zoning official. That is a potential option. I have concerns about that because of the provisions of statute that state that it must be based on the most recent localized data. So if you have adopted more recent localized data but are still collecting fees under the previous study and the data at that time and the numbers at that time. You know me, when it comes to legal, I'm very, very cautious. I always err on the side of caution, but I want to make sure that I put that out there, as that's something that I've been looking at, is do we have, would that then be new localized data?

I don't find the risk unreasonable, though, on that strategy. I have Commissioner Constance, then Daugherty.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. so talk to me about how many counties have you done and cities but counties I guess have you done impact these studies for roughly probably like 40 or so 40. Talk to me about the fee categories, because that's something that the chairman brought up, and I think that's very interesting. Again, why do we do it this way? Because we've always done it this way. Is that the best way? What are the best practices? What are the standards? What, in your opinion, is it cleaner to not have seven or nine or 11 categories, but just to have three? And then the next question is, well, if we were to tell you to reorder this into those new categories, does that constitute new, meaning we don't have to worry about a 50% increase, that we could actually right-size the fees right out of the box?

So the categories, there's usually about eight major categories. But for impact fee purposes, the infrastructure that benefits most are transportation, schools, and parks. Those are the capital heavy. When you get to fire and so on, their operating costs are so much higher than their capital costs that even though it helps some, it's not as important. Library has lately been a challenge also because it's hard to find projects. Correctional facilities, same thing. So part of it is do you have projects? So that kind of helps you define what categories you need most and how are they going to be funded. As far as combining them, we cannot do it because it's supposed to be for a specific infrastructure. We don't want it to look like general fund. specific to a given infrastructure collected for that, who's benefiting and so on.

Okay, so if I can go further. You tailed off on correctional facilities. Let's say there's a jail expansion that's going to be planned. So doing these studies every four years, you can incorporate that planning into an expansion at the jail, or a medical facility, or a new library, or a new park. that would be added because there's a growth in population in a certain area. So now we can focus those impact fees on exactly the purpose they're supposed to be used for and gear the projects much in the same way we would do that with sales tax. But now we're actually looking at focused projects that absolutely are to make way for new people coming into town.

Yeah, if you have projects, absolutely. Yeah, that helps determining.

Okay, thank you.

Mr. Doherty recognized. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Yeah, my preference, looking at all this stuff and the risk and so forth, I'd like to see us get an ordinance to get the study wrapped up, finish up everything, make some adjustments, population changes like we talked about, whatever else needs to be done, and get that done by ordinance by December 8th and keep the fees where they are right now. Just adopt the fees that we've currently got. The attorney's office needs to review that based on Sean's concerns, but then we've got the study done. And then after October of 27, we can revisit. We've got the basis, the foundation for adjusting the fees, I believe, after that in October of 27. But we've got to get 180 past us. We can't be monkeying with and have some kind of Supreme Court ruling. on on you know what we've done uh that would be disastrous i mean it just so i think we as long as we can take and adopt the current fee schedule in a new ordinance i think we can i i need some help from you guys on that but if we can do that and then have that all ready to look at in the future after october 27 uh raising the fees appropriately so anyways that's my thoughts commissioner

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My question is for Hector. Hector, in the past, we had gotten a spreadsheet that had all the categories and all the silos, if you will. So if it's parks for commercial or residential or whatever, that spreadsheet, I think Claire did it last time or somebody did. It's a big spreadsheet, but it's extremely informative. It is what we end up posting online. I would like to make sure that we go through that process. There's a pretty good one on here now, but it's a summary version in the actual study itself. And if we can get the breakdown on that, I would like to see the full detailed report. on all these numbers and the same categories, so it might have to be a couple different spreadsheets to get there, so we can see it with the sales tax, without the sales tax. Okay?

Yes? Yeah, so if you go to the attached report. I'm in it. And you go, no, no, the. I'm in it. I'm in the attached report. Table D4 and at the very end, like the.

Oh, it's already there?

Yeah, like go to the very end. I'm at the other one, I'm at the summary table. No, no, no, go to the attached. the attached actual report the the impact fee study update study from dated august 28 and it's like page 200 and it's in the 200s yeah i'm in the 200s yeah dang this computer

i believe there's a lot of tables commissioner directs i mean there's a lot so it's trying to find one yeah this isn't what this isn't what i'm talking about though it's not the same okay sorry the one the one that we got from the last one is it is this is close but it would yeah i think it's the second to the last slide i think or Well, I'm on G2 right now, table G2 continued. That's the one that's closer to what I'm looking for.

But I know what you're talking about. Yeah. Yeah, it was a very tight spreadsheet.

Yeah, because this has detail in it, and that's on the transportation. It's a summary, yet it's detailed spreadsheet.

Yes, sir. We know which one you're talking about. We will have that when all the numbers are finalized and decided on, yep. we we know that also we are working Negan is working on a one of those dynamic Excel spreadsheets like we had used last time to be able to see what different percentage changes would do to the overall numbers I have another question for Megan see that's got the calculated that's right another question oh there it is

In reading the update, if the board doesn't adopt your study, it's gonna require an update. How much is the cost of that update?

I think it depends on how long time passed, but it should be maybe three quarter of what current fee is, something there. I can't remember the full fee right now.

So it's significant. It may be $100,000.

Yeah, probably with this many service areas, yeah.

Okay, well, if we were to adopt that strategy you mentioned, adopt your study but make it effective after October, would we be able to bypass the update at that point?

Yes. I mean, that's my thought. I'm not an attorney, so I would definitely listen to your county attorney. I don't see why not because many governments do give more than 90 days just to give the development community time anyway. So how is that different than making it effective October 1st?

Yeah, well, that's what I'm saying. I'm coming back to that strategy that you proposed. That's why I'm asking about it. We can save a lot of money. And I think we're not really at as much legal jeopardy, if any, by doing that that way. So that's going to be where I'm going on that. Commissioner Constance.

So we adopt the strategy. Study. Study. Study. And then we reimpose the current. FEE STRUCTURE MOVING FORWARD UNTIL OCTOBER 27 WHEN THE NEW FEE STRUCTURE WOULD COME IN PLACE.

RIGHT. EVEN WITH THE 90-DAY NOTICE, YOU NORMALLY SAY CURRENT FEE SCHEDULE IS IN EFFECT FOR 90 DAYS. SO INSTEAD OF SAYING 90 DAYS, YOU'RE SAYING UNTIL OCTOBER 1ST.

SO HERE'S ANOTHER FLY IN THE OINTMENT IS, OKAY, SO Sales tax doesn't pass in November. Now we've adopted the old fee schedule that includes sales tax effect, except it's not there anymore. So do we get to use the non-sales tax numbers? No, we don't.

In our study, honestly, for the most categories, the maximum allowable is below both numbers.

So it's not making a huge effect Yeah I mean we've been handcuffed Sean Cullinan playing zoning official we would bring whichever scenario happened after the November election, that would be the item that would be attached to you for voting, so.

Right, but what I'm saying is, even you, and so let's say it doesn't pass, you would give us that updated, which is, you know, it's not that much more, but it is higher. But I'm saying we still would be adopting a fee schedule

from sales tax being applied even though it's not there so and it's it's kind of and we will do whatever the board directs well i think what you've heard though is that strategy at the appropriate time bring that strategy back as an option once the dust settles after the election because there's a lot of timing issues that we have to take into consideration so again as commissioner doherty talked about and i talked about you know we're talking about adopting this new study

Are you looking to do it as the extraordinary circumstances whereby we will start scheduling those two required public meetings?

Is it actually required, extraordinary circumstances? That's if we exceed the glide path. And I don't think there's been any discussion about exceeding the glide path. I mean, I'm not looking to do that at this point. I think there needs to be a roll out of this thing. I don't think we can do it all in one chunk. So I wasn't looking for extraordinary circumstances. I wanted to follow that 50% rule and the glide path. That's where I'm at on this. Because it is a big number. We can't just drop a number like that.

One decision is at what rate to adopt the regional parks and libraries since they can be adopted all the way to 100%, so that's.

I think my perspective is, we talked about a category, and we did this before where we zeroed out some categories. I think the board needs to take a look at these numbers and talk about the category mix, right? But what I was hoping to do is, so we don't lose out on the study that you've done and have to pay for an update, adopt it. We can always reduce it. That's the whole key. You know, you can't go above, but we can always come down. So that's kind of my strategy. Commissioner Doherty, then Truex.

Yeah, Mr. Chairman, I just wanted to repeat what you said as far as no need for the extraordinary circumstances right now. Let's go with the 50% rule, normal glide path, and have that available at the end of the broad day. Thank you. Commissioner Truex.

he really hit what I was gonna hit. But I wanted to say that these I tables are, I think are it, but I wanna make sure that we keep as many categories as possible because I don't remember in the last one if we had jails, the jails separated from law, law enforcement. And so I think the more categories we see, number one, the more transparent it is. And number two, if Amendment 3 passes, we're not building any new parks, guys. No way. It's not going to happen. We're going to have to start really looking about what do we really need to charge impact fees for because we're not going to have a lot of amenities around here to be able to afford to support. So I want to keep as many categories as possible for that reason. Thank you, sir.

Commissioner Doherty, recognize.

Yeah, on that point, though, I think that it would be a really good idea for administration to kind of look at our CNA, CIP, and CNA and just see if there's a need to, I think previously the reason we didn't have, like regional parks, is we didn't have any in the CIP. i believe was community parks only and so that's i think that was our rationale we'll ask around we may in the cna though you know have that so again maybe the need for additional categories so we'll see got some work to do yeah all right mr cullen uh sean cullinan playing zoning official uh we can bring an item back to you on your first meeting in november as well for

further discussion I believe that is right the first meetings right after the election so that way we can get further clarification it will be a tight time frame we'll have to also set the public hearing so there will be a consent item probably in November to set a public hearing for this

Commissioner Constance. Thank you. I'm looking at table I, and so the calculated- Table I. I1, I2. So I1 is the current fee schedule, and I2 is the future. I'm noticing, though, that I get our increases, right? But you also have the other categories of City of Punta Gorda, Englewood Fire District, and Babcock Ranch DRI. why are their impact fees going up is it just the county portion of their impact fee okay gotcha so we don't know what the city appointed but this is where the city point of guard fees are

Okay. Is your mic on? Yeah, the mic has to be green. I might as well just keep that right on.

Yes, these numbers don't include the city's own impact fees.

Right. Yeah, this is just the county's portion.

Okay, thank you. Yeah.

Okay, there's nobody else in the queue. Any more comments on this? No, sir. All right, staff, you got a lot of discussion here. You need to pull it together for the next meeting to make sure we've got the options and we can make the decisions necessary to move forward. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Okay, we're going to move on to item number two on the agenda, Ackerman MSBU. Mrs. Jubb.

by the next meeting you mean in one week i'm sorry at the appropriate time i'm sorry at the earliest possible time yeah whenever when you're ready before these deadlines well that's the thing i know i know the deadline meeting is december 8th but if you want to bring it back in november as soon as possible as soon as possible whether it's the first meeting or the second meeting all the commissioners are going to need as much time to keep talking about it before they make their decision on december 8th and if we have to a special meeting in november specific to that item it's it's that important you know okay

Good morning, Commissioners. Claire Jubb, Assistant County Administrator. So this item on your agenda is us bringing back the Ackerman MSBU discussion. There are a couple of tasks that we had from our last conversation. One of those was around the affordability study, and the second was around potential rate options, extension of time scales, things like that. So as the first part of this conversation, I'm going to ask Jones Edmonds and Giffords Webster representatives to come up to go through their updated affordability conversation, and then we'll have county staff come in and go through the rates piece. So I am going to hand it over to Tom.

Good morning, commissioners. Dennis Croyle, Giffles Webster Engineers. We've been working on your septic to sewer projects with the county for several years now. And at times with Jones Edmonds and Associates, I think last May they gave an update on the affordability plan. And today we're going to give another update to that same plan. So with that, I have Mr. Tom Friedrich with us. Hand it over to him.

tom friedrich uh jones ems associates so yes thank you mr chairman commissioners and staff um so as they said we did the original master plan back in 16 sewer master plan was updated 23 and we did update on affordability in may of 25. so we want to do today it was really update this and talk about the project area again which is ackerman but also affordability indices and what we looked at back then we're going to look at a couple two other ones that we were asked to look around and see is there other affordability and then talk about ackerman census tract talk about escalation as we all know if things are getting more expensive then we'll we'll close so with that ackerman here's the census tracts from the septic sewer program ackerman is in red It also is the priority area for FDEP. So that's why it's in the top five year program. Again, countywide medium household income. This is in 26. So we've updated these since last year and earlier. And so you see Ackerman on the left side. And so you see the median household income for the whole county is around $69,000. And then you've got the median of $80,000 for Ackerman there. And then median income is about just under $90,000. So with that, Affordability, when we did it in the master plan, we were working with Raftalis, original one, and they were looking at Stratus Consulting, and 4.5% was the affordability index for the utility bill. So when you look at the sewer component of that, it's 2.5%. And you look at back in 23, the census data for medium household income for Charlotte is 66,000. So if you do 2.5%, was that 1654? So when you look at that, along with your average sewer bill, about 808, it leaves about 846 left for assessment. So with that medium household income allotment, we also talked about the MSBU fee, which is 11.5, 575. And so when you look at that, along with the sewer bill and MSBU fee, excuse me, we're about 2%, so we're under the 2.5% total. Then we looked at it with water sewer, 2.93%, so you're still well under the 4.5%. across the county. So then what we did is looked at your updated utility bills for 26. And we looked at, based on an average monthly usage, about 3,300 gallons of usage. So when you look at that usage rate, you come down to the bottom of the page, you're really looking at monthly fee about 118, updated to this fall, 62 a month, or about 1,423. we're just kind of updating these numbers for you so as we get into it you can see the comparison um so then we looked at 2026 data uh so now uh affordability for medium household income has gone up obviously so it's 69 000. so the new number there you can see is 1737 average you know 834 for the sewer bill so it still leaves 903 for assessment Now, countywide, again, MSBU allotment, same thing, looking at what impact it is on the medium household income with water and sewer only, and then it's water, sewer, and MSBU feed. So you still see it's still below, well below the 4.5% and 2.5%. countywide so then we looked at Ackerman specifically for this project and we're really you know Ackerman's mean household income is a little higher and updated data 79,899 but again you still see with sewer MSBU fee and then water sewer MSBU fee we're looking in that 1.76 or two and a half percent so again well below the two and a half and a four and a half there so that's what the stratus consulting numbers So, but, you know, affordability, staff brought this up to us and said, hey, is there other affordability indices we should look at? And so, you know, there's no single approach to, so we looked at multiple things, EPA, also United Way and a couple other things, but we came up with two that seemed appropriate here, the lowest quintile, the LQI we'll call it, And the other one is called ALICE, and I can't remember this acronym, so I have to read it. Asset Limited Income Constrained Employee. So we'll just call it ALICE from here. But that's what that one is. And so we're gonna compare those real quick. So LQI, basically the LQI is the lowest 20% income, mean household income for the lowest 20%. So that's really what that is. you know we looked at it for countywide and then for Ackerman and it's appropriate here for when you have retired community like you do fixed income and so when you look at the form in the basically is the utility bill divided by the lowest 20% and so when you look at here the average utility bill and then which is 118 and the two thousand twenty five thousand is your annual the lowest 20% the estimated LQI for the county countywide which is 2,083 a month, so that comes up with that 5.69% for the utility bill, which is greater now than 4.5%, and then also 3.3% for a sewer bill only, so now slightly greater than 2.5%. So again, it's suggesting some affordability issues for the lower 20%. When you look at Ackerman specifically on the newer 2026 data, in the lowest 20%, you can see here that's basically to the left of 35,000. So that 20% is on the left side there. So for census tract Ackerman, it's about 35,000 is really that household income there compared to the medium household of 79 and the mean of 92,000. So when you look at that, on the LQI then, for that Ackerman specifically, you can see, again, these are the same analysis over and over, but you're still, now you're seeing an increase, right? For sewer and MSBU fee, It's about 4.64 on a countywide versus acronym 4.03. And then countywide, it's about just 8% and acronym about 5.71. So there's some, again, demonstrating some burden potentially for lower customers in that 20% bracket. so now the other affordability index we talked about Alice so what that really is is basically it's looking at the survival budget so when you pay housing food health care taxes child care transportation medical and you know contingency expenses that's really what it's looking at and what's left would be this just a simple way to talk about it So when you look at that, again, for the county, the countywide survival budget is $37,392. A monthly bill of $3,116, or about $18.70 equivalent wage. So again, they're looking at those people that would be impacted with this. And when you look at the county-wide, about 42% are below, or at the ALS threshold, about 28,970. These are households, 970 households. So we looked at that now specific to Ackerman. So a little bit higher survival budget there, 42,938. And so that higher equivalent wage in monthly survival budget. i'm looking at that now we put these same numbers in here again and county-wide uh 3.77 versus the 3.28 of ackerman for msbu and sewer and then when you look at the water sewer and msbu fee you know for ackerman they're just above the four and a half at 4.65 and county-wide it'd be 5.34 so again less of an impact potentially but still some impact And we compared them all. So for comparison, you know, alternate affordability indexes. So you can see, let me just go to the right side. I mean, utility bill elements, BU fee. You know, when you look at just the median household income like we did in the past, you can see well below the 4.5%. When you start looking at it, the LQI, obviously, they're above 4.5 for both countywide and Ackerman. And the same with Alice. It's 5.34, and it's closer for Ackerman to the Alice. and then what we did here these are again the comparison indices but it's saying okay if you look at what the medium household income is the lqi and the alice in ackerman and countywide and you say what's it what's the annual sewer fee to stay below the two and two point five percent that's what this the bottom line tells you basically it's saying to stay below two and a half percent income level you know an Ackerman or in countywide has to be you know obviously 1737 for mean household but 625 for uh you know LQI and 935 there for Alice Commissioner Constance you recommend thank you Tom thank you uh didn't want to break in except to ask this question at the very beginning yeah you talked about financing over 20 years so is this still over 20 years yes all right so

and your staff's going to do a better job than me at that next right and i and i think you know you're setting up you're setting us up for we're going to have to extend the timeline because i think that's that's going to make it more affordable i think that's that's the staff like i said they got the harder job well we help them with the harder job but it's just but the but the point is that you know it's not that bad but right to make it better i think that's going to that's the direction we're going to have to head right because yeah

Another question?

No, that's it, thanks.

No problem. So here you see the NSBU fee is just broken out. You can see what's in there, the 575, 834, and the 1409 for those numbers. The other thing we looked at, just to close, is we talked about two kind of escalating factors for construction costs. ENR index, we use it all the time in construction for years. It's the old index and then also the consumer price index. This is a real quick example. What's the ENR do? So basically it's taken the NSE versus the current ENR value and multiplying it by your current cost so if you look here 10 million at 2015 if you use the enr indices it's basically in 2026 it's about 14 million 263. so now we compare that to um see i'll just this is just seeing showing how we use these indices they go back I'm not sure, many, almost 100, it might be going close to 100 years now. I don't know, 80 years? It's somewhere back there. So we didn't go back that far. But here again is the ratios, just showing what the cost would be in today's dollars. From 17, we use this MSVU for 17, that would be 15,340 in today's dollars. So when you look at just a comparison consumer price index, So when you look at that, it's a very similar approach. They have their indices. We used it 10 million back in 15. It was 13 million. Sorry, I got $24 there, but we updated it here. Again, for this, you got 11.5 with 15,615. So they're really close, basically. E&R and consumer price, really close. Those are the major items today that you guys asked us to look at and present just to see where we were on the affordability. And with that, you can see there is some potential impact for some of the lower brackets. But with that, we can take questions.

Any questions for Tom? Okay, no questions for you. All right.

All right, next.

So commissioners, Claire job assistant county administrator, you'll see as Rick moves into his presentation, talking about potential fees, and how we we work through this, how we've utilized the data that we we've got from the study to really come up with some options there around around some solutions, some paths forward for you. So I'm going to hand over to Rick to take it away.

good morning commissioners Rick Arthur fiscal services apparently I get the fun part of the job this morning so just a recap of our workshop back in May we had received some direction from you to get updated affordability number so now seeing that updated presentation and then also to develop some options and scenarios for you all and so we're gonna go through that now and then eventually get to community engagement after we kind of get some direction on where you want to go with the different rate options okay so this slide is just back from May this was just kind of showing the overall project costs as and the total amount of Lots and as well as the deferred Lots now last time we had direction to separate it and look at it from two msbus one for zones one and two and ones for zones three four and LPS so we've updated that chart just to kind of split out the cost as well as how those lots fall including the currently deferred lots so again this is just updated numbers and split into the two MSBUs. Any questions on any of this information? Okay, so getting into the fun part, we brought back three rate options for you. Number one is, okay, if we were to keep the MSBU term at 20 years, we're seven years in already, so if we were gonna just do an additional 13, what would that rate need to be? The second rate option is looking at the affordability number. So we used the 903 per year from the updated number from Jones Edmonds' presentation. And then rate option three was the, okay, if we kept it at what we're currently charging or close to that, 575, how many years would we need to do that? So those are the three options we brought back for you. now we split it into two scenarios just to make this more complicated scenario one is if we maintain deferred Lots okay what are those rate options look like if we maintain the deferred Lots and then scenario two is all right what does it look like if we roll in those deferred Lots and bring them on so Before I head into those rates, I wanna kind of talk you through how we decided to set this up. This is very nuanced and attached to the agenda is a very detailed sheet, looks like this, with all the costs and information on the rates you're gonna see on the next couple slides. You're just gonna have the high level and I'll be happy to answer any questions, but there's detailed information attached if you'd like to look at that. but the way that we decided to set this up is we'll look at it from three different perspectives okay if it's a lot with a home on it if it's a lot that is vacant but currently assessed and then a deferred lot and then we'll look at each one of those rate options and scenarios for from each one of those perspectives Okay, so first perspective is looking at this for a house. Okay, so for scenario one, we've got the three rate options. a that's if we're gonna keep it a 20-year term what would the rate need to be so for zones one and two you can see the rate there and three foreign LPS you can see the rate there and just under underneath those two and the blue column you see that the years are 13 so that's what the rate would need to be if we were going to keep keep the term at 20 years okay scenario two you see the same thing to a okay so if we bring in deferred units or deferred lots what would the the rates look like then for for a house if if we kept it at 20 years So same thing here, we've got the rate option B, which is the affordability, if we target the affordability rate of 903. And same thing, scenario two, if we target 903 for, or target 903 for the, annual assessment and fold in deferred lots what does it look like so you can see on those two one thing that's important to notice is the difference is the number of years needed and you and you might say you might question okay on on these rates why why does that not look like 903 if you're targeting 903 keep in mind that this is from a house perspective they've already been paying in so we're giving them a credit for the for the seven years that they've already paid in at that 575 a year okay so that's offsetting the 903 target okay then the third option is oh yeah if we target the 575 a year which is what we've been charging already and you can see the important part on those is how many years you need to extend the msbu so those are additional years so for instance in one c for zones one and two you need 23 years and for zones three four and lps you need an additional 30 years and and those are the rates with the credit for the seven years they've already paid in And then you've got the same thing in 2C, which would be the exact same thing, trying to target that 575, but giving them a credit for what they've already paid in. Each one of these calculations is very nuanced. So I'm presenting this at a very high level, but I'm happy to answer any questions you might have.

Any questions, gentlemen? Mr. Constance?

Yeah, thank you. I get that you're targeting 903. But I guess for simplicity, why didn't we just make it 30 years? I mean, there's, you know, we don't have to, is it that you need more of the capital up front or is it because the financing gets more expensive as you go further out it's just you targeted that number and then this is the number of months to make exactly we wanted to just present the number of years if we went with what jones edmund had calculated as the affordability number per year okay but but based on whatever option we pick um you know let's say we're we're gonna fold in the deferred lots which would um make the numbers or maintain deferred it's confusing to me so that so making the deferred lots pay lowers the overall number no it does not and that's what's weird it is weird yeah and i asked my staff the same question i said how is that possible so here's how it's possible

remember when you fold in the deferred lots what you're doing is you're charging the deferred and vacant lots for the line cost and then you're charging the homes that are connecting for the connecting cost so you're now taking the entire connection contracts cost and you're allocating it only to those homes that are paying so now that are connecting so those those per unit per per lot connection costs are being allocated just to those connected homes in scenario one you're putting all of the costs together into a total project cost and you're allocating it across all the all the lots whether or not they're connecting now or not so it actually comes out a little bit higher when you bring the deferred back in to break out that line cost

Well, I think it would be helpful if, let's say we looked at, what is it, slide six? Yeah, okay. So if we looked at scenario one, but you were able to give us all of those numbers for 30 years so that we had the same timeframe. Sure. And then we could look at how everything drops, because I think that really speaks to affordability. Then I think it's easier for us to look at it apples to apples and say, okay, Those are the numbers. You can't do it on the fly, but I think that'd be nice. Well, it's in the detail sheet there. Oh, is it?

Oh, good. Yeah, that's why we had the details. All right. So the full, which one did you ask about specifically? Did you say 1C?

I would say scenario, let's say we did scenario one, and it was all 30 years. for 30 okay yeah sorry we did not run yes I'm saying just extended yeah yeah so you've got you've got the detail there and that's great I don't expect at this minute but if you could furnish that I think it's make it an easier decision because then you can kind of figure it out and and it makes it you know more more palatable thank you

commissioner doherty thank you sir uh yeah i think i think that i like that approach having a standard additional number of years with whatever the scenario we're looking at it's going to boil down when we go out into the community go out into the community what's going to be more important the number additional years or keeping it at 575.

So just, because we have the options here with the additional years, so are you saying, okay, we're at 20 and at the same rate, so like 575, or what rate are we talking about?

That's why we need to hear from the neighborhood, really. We're going to go out into the community, I understand, have some community meetings. We've got to boil this down to a couple of different options. If we give them a half a dozen different scenarios, I don't know that you're going to get any answers. You know, clear answers. So I think we need to boil it down to is it time, additional time, more critical to that neighborhood? Or keeping the assessment as low as possible? It's like as close to 575 that they, you know, something like that, Rick. These are all good. I appreciate all the hard work in there, but it is confusing. To a certain degree, it's confusing. Go ahead.

Mr. Constance.

Yeah, I mean, so just I guess for simplicity, you know, if I'm looking at... Thank you. Thank you. For simplicity's sake, you know, looking at scenario 1C, I mean, that pretty much is way below the 575. It's going to add – it's going to be another 23 years for zones 1 and 2 and another 30 years for 3, 4, and LPS, but the rate's down, and as you get out into those later years, you know at the rate they're printing money you know 450 is going to be what it's going to cost you to fill your tank right so i don't really you know i don't really know that that that for me that's not a hard decision just push it out as far as we can drop that numbers as so all of a sudden though the max rates 575 or whatever it is but all of a sudden they're going to see their bill decrease oh what happened well we're just deferring payment out over a longer period of time because we got to get this done and the guy you sell the house to is going to help help pay that yeah Yeah, exactly. That current owner is unlikely to be paying the bill eventually.

Thank you, Mr. Chair. Commissioner Truex. I think a couple things. I'm on board with that. And them having certainty in the future is going to be good. So if they're going to sell their home, they know that this is where it's going to stay. And so that gives them, I think, some comfort, as well as anybody buying is going to be like, yeah, I'm good to go. But I have to go back to one of your charts, Rick, because now that you've explained how this worked, if you go to page seven, go to slide seven, this one goes up and down.

Yeah, it's very – so remember the costs are – for scenario one are inclusive of all lots right and then scenario two you're breaking out just the line cost and in this one they actually this one would would benefit the most because they their their line costs would they would not be incessant connection costs anymore so they would only be paying a line cost their connection cost would be borne by the ones that are connecting and then whenever that lot develops in the future then they would pay the cost to connect to that line and and so we know connection fees are going to go up in the future right should we offer an option

I'm not an option to, if we say we'll fold in the deferred lots and they're paying the line. Should we offer them an option to pay more, to pay their connection? In other words, commit to a connection fee and add that to their bill.

just another option to put in there I know it's gonna make things more complicated but I'd like to see it if that's if it's an option if it's not an option then that's fine just tell me I think that's you know your decision keep in mind we set these up as three rate options so number one is okay if we just keep to the 20-year term so what's that what's the you know what's that look like that's obviously an expensive option The second option is affordability. We've seen Jones-Edmonds presentation and we've used that 903 number, so that's an affordable number. And then we've said, okay, what about, so that affordability number, how many years would it take? That's an important piece to remember here too. And then in that third one was the target of 575, so that's the longer, you know, keeping it, affordability has gone up somewhat from what we've seen before. So this is really the longer, kind of what you were suggesting, pushing it out, keeping it as low as possible. And in fact, for the homes that have already been paying in for seven years, they're getting the credit for that. So it's offsetting that 575 and they're getting the lower rate.

Commissioner Constance.

Yeah, and I just did the calculation to remind everybody. So 575 is the number because over 20 years that's 11-5. Yes, yes. And if you increase it to 15-5 and divide by 575, you get 27 years. So that's the math. But I mean, I think extending it out over time and actually dropping the rate makes a lot of sense.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, some of the feedback I've heard, I mean, obviously affordability is number one. That number, the 575, in my mind, we have to stick to that number. But people who have already paid into the system and signed on, signed on to 20 years. And then moving the bar and extending it, what I've heard is it's a bait and switch. We promised 20 years at 575, that's what we sold, that's what they signed up for, and now we're moving the bar on them. But the point that has been brought up is a time horizon. People aren't going to be there 20 years, let alone 30. I think the average turnover on a home in Charlotte County is seven to eight years. I don't know if that's right, but there's a natural turnover just of homes. So it's probably going to get passed on to a future homeowner. That's kind of a side argument, but I think the biggest hurdle is for the people who have bought into the system as paying their 575. With the assumption it's only going to go 20 years, and now we're bumping it up. But overall, again, now let's put that argument aside. Keeping it at 575 is a must. If we start changing that number, that's a problem from an affordability standpoint, which was part of the sewer master plan, that would be a component that we would consider. So to me, that number is very, very important in this whole discussion, sticking to that number. Commissioner Constance, you're recognized, sir.

yeah and i think we have to remember right we're seven years in this is taking a lot longer than it was supposed to because there have been um just engineering issues and come back yeah disasters okay i'll accept that as an adjective and it's taken time to put it in correctly and it's a multi-phase project it's got different engineering aspects right different components some gravity some lps so at the end of the day if it were being built new, that's another story. We're having to go back and figure this out on the fly. And so that in combination with all of the inflation that's gone on in the construction industry of 40%, there are aspects of life that we can't control. So I think coming back and saying, yeah, we're extending the term, but we're going to be dropping your rate, I think it makes it an easier pill to swallow.

Thank you. Commissioner Doherty, recognize her. thank you mr chairman i think the other aspect too is to educate the community the neighborhood is to the fact that you know i hear a lot of them say well go get some federal money go get some state money well there isn't any bottom line is drying up so that we have to keep the program going we have you know responsibility on environmentally to take care of this walk from a water quality perspective so i guess you know that's really the bottom line that 575 is for me or lower depending on how we throw their numbers together. I think what we'll probably hear from the neighborhood coming back is what they'll be happy with.

You know, on another note, we talk about, you know, the feedback from the public when we did the first pilot program, and then now this. People have hooked up, and I have spoken to people, and I've asked them, how's it going with the sewer, any problems? We had some glitches in some areas just dialing in the vacuum system, but I have had positive responses from people after the fact, now that they don't have to deal with their septic tanks anymore, that every time they flush, they know it's going. and it's gonna get processed, right? It's not, they don't have to worry about it. So there is a positive note that the system is working and even some of the people that I personally know that were against the program years ago when it first rolled out, that pilot program, I've gone back and I'm like, hey, let's have a conversation. How has it been? It's been working fine as designed and they're not complaining about it and I haven't gotten droves of emails even after the pilot program. So it's working. I think it's doing what we said it was going to do in terms of processing the waste And again, to put in a new septic tank when those older ones in these older communities were failing, just to do a new drain field and tank if it failed. I mean, you're talking about 15 grand right there, that there is no financing. You gotta stroke a check. When you have to get repairs, the health department gets involved. So there's another side of the equation too, is the product that we're putting in, is it working? And that's some of the feedback I've gotten from people who've hooked in and paid the fee and are still paying their annual assessment. You're recognized to continue, Mr. Arthur.

All right, so I think I've heard direction on you like the rate option C of 575. So I want to go to this last perspective because this is where that option gets important, is whether or not you want to do scenario one or scenario two. Because what will happen is if you do scenario one, then deferrals just stay the same. They don't pay, and they pay the full project cost and connection cost when they connect or develop and connect. in scenario two you start folding them in they're gonna start paying their line cost okay and then that's where they are the closest to the 575 target in fact you can you can see it's just slightly above but pretty you know 581 or 595 we're talking about six to twenty dollars difference per year so that's where the impact really comes in with that rate scenario is do we want to fold in those deferrals and have them start contributing to the to the line cost or do we want to just leave the deferrals as is and and you can see there on scenario one it's just They stay paying nothing until they develop at some point and connect.

And then they pay full fee. Correct. Yeah, they're going to pay whatever the costs are at the time, and we determine that based on our cost analysis. Yes. And it could be who knows what at that time. Yeah, I mean, the issue with that is we laid out a program with the lot deferral. Some people have taken advantage of it. I mean, we have to unwind, I mean, it was part of the program. for this phase. I don't know if we address that at future phases going forward. We'll have to have that conversation. Yeah, because that was part of the program. I don't know, do we want to start unwinding that for this phase? Commissioner Constance, you recognize?

Point of information on slide four, that's the total number of deferred lots is 140?

No it's a 140 and the 226 because keep in mind we have unity of title too so there's lots that were folded in and unity of title so it's the math on that's 392 66 or something like that somewhere in that yeah somewhere in that number 366 so it's the 226 and the 140

But the total lots is 2,144?

Yes, that's correct. That's all lots.

So 10% is deferred?

Yeah.

Potentially somewhere in there. You good, sir?

Okay.

Okay, Commissioner Doherty recognizes.

Yeah, I agree, Mr. Chairman. I think for Ackerman, at least, we maintain the deferred lots, scenario one, because that's what the program was. That's how we laid it out. Now, we go to Midway Lakeview, different story. A whole new, maybe a couple of MSBUs there. Who knows how we'll set that up, but that is a whole different ballgame there. i think changing as little as we need to you know this one would we're trying to keep the 575 try to keep the fur lots all that probably for ackerman just get let's get ackerman done and then move ahead with some some fixes to the program yeah thank you commissioner constance yes

so how many lots so some of the vacant lots are paying yes okay so whatever that breakdown is we're just going to keep it the way it is and these two scenarios tell us so we do one c the people that are paying are paying that amount and the people that are not paying are paying zero yeah exactly and here's the rates for one c for the vacant lot depending on which msbu they would be in yeah i think keep it simple and and scenario puts one c and c i think that does a lot of a lot of

checks a lot of boxes okay great so i have a direction slide after this slide but um because i think we've got it one c so we'll work with that but i want to give you a heads up and now that we have some direction we want to bring these back at a separate time there's a lot of unique circumstances in this msbu we've got people who have prepaid and paid off we've got some of these unity of titles where things have happened with those We've got some partial lots that community development has told us might be buildable. There's some different things going on. But now that we know what rate option you want and scenario we want, we'll start looking at what the impacts of these are. We'll bring that back at a future date.

I got a question on the properties that have paid off. I'm sorry, Commissioner Conchita. No, no, I'm done. Thank you. Okay.

I think, yeah, okay.

There's been an issue now with these payoffs, I understand. We offered the payoff scenario, are we now not accepting payoffs? I think we stopped payoffs. Because that was part of the original program for this, that if somebody wanted to stroke a check and pay it up front.

Sorry, good morning. Glad you have Assistant County Administrator. Yes, if you remember earlier on this year, I think we brought that back to you and we stopped doing the payoffs at that time. We were under no obligation per the resolution to do the payoffs. It had just been one of those things that had continued and it was causing some issues and I see Tom.

I was just going to say there was a date on the notice that they were only going to accept payoffs through a certain period of time, and that time expired.

Yeah, my understanding is if people were paying off, it was throwing off the repayment of the interest and

way that was structured it was causing us some challenges and becoming very very confusing as you can see from all the work that fiscal have done on this this is already confusing adding in the payoffs laying in the layering in the payoffs as well it makes it a lot more confusing for the public and for staff but if the board chooses to to you know allow payoffs again we can certainly do that and we just need to bring you that program back yeah we're gonna have to figure out how it works so for future

for future expansion programs that we do, we'd probably have to look at that. I'm not sure if we want to touch it because the notices went out and there was a time certain then on this. But I'd want to learn more about that because I know there are people who just like to pay it off and have it clean and no assessment. And then if they sell their house, hey, the assessment's been paid in full, it's a benefit.

Yeah.

And they don't pay the interest, because in that 575 is an interest component. Some people just don't like paying interest.

Correct. And I think as we're navigating Ackerman, we're building the next program. So we're taking note of all of these options and all these comments that you're making, so we can bring you back when we get to Lakeview Midway, a program that addresses all of these issues that we've learned, and things that we've learned from Ackerman, from LGB and from East West Spring Lake, to bring you a great program moving forward.

I have Commissioner Deutch, then Constance.

Yeah, I think, as I understand it, payoff is always going to be an option. There's always that option of payoff, but the reality is, and Joe touched upon it and I was going to expand on it, as properties turn over and are sold, at the closing, some are going to negotiate to pay that fee, and there probably will be a number of them that will be paid off up front. and that has to be an option because it may be part of a closing uh agreement and the sale of a property that that's people didn't want to carry that on they wanted to pay it off so commissioner that's that's what we brought to you and and the direction was that we didn't continue with those payoffs and so the assessment continues

From my recollection.

So you're saying because of that, there's not going to be the option for people to pay this off?

At the moment, they don't have the option to do a payoff when they sell the house. Because remember, the assessment is based on the $11,500. So the $575 a month, the $11,500. So with the escalated costs, if you allow those payoffs, then it's based on that lower amount, and you're not getting full cost recovery.

So that brings another question then when properties transfer because that'll technically be defined as a lien on the property which may affect one way or another a person's ability to finance the property It's not a lien commissioner it's an assessment

what was that it's not a lien on the property it's an assessment so it's an assessment on the tax bill it's not we don't place liens on the properties for these i think what you're thinking about is mandatory connections which we're discussing at the 22nd meeting which yes we do place a lien on there for a mandatory connection i'm just wondering and i don't know the answer if if that assessment

as a tax bill might be considered when people are applying to purchase a home. In some cases, depending on their income and the ratios that you utilize when you close on a property, it may affect some people in a negative way.

I can't speak to that, Commissioner, I don't know.

Tom, I think you probably know what I'm talking about in terms of the closing of a property, that you have that additional assessment out there that's going to have some effect on transfers if people are getting a mortgage, because those numbers would have to be included when they're trying to figure out their monthly fees and their affordability and their qualifying, don't you think?

We're following the board policy on the payoffs at this point. So the board wants to change that policy.

We'll certainly- Yeah, that wasn't, my question isn't the policy. I understand that. You reminded me of that. I got that. What I'm bringing up the question is, may this quote assessment affect some purchase and sale agreements because it's an additional number that's gonna be thrown in for a period of time when they're qualifying people for a purchase and I wouldn't wanna see it negatively affect a transaction and limit a person's ability to either buy or sell a home. I'm just throwing that out for discussion because I think it is a factor.

Mr. Chairman, point of information. Yes, sir, you're right. This is like any other MSBU. It is an MSBU. It has no effect on closings.

Yeah, it's like a street and drainage assessment when you pay into your storm water MSBU or street. It's another assessment. There's no lien placed on the property. You still recognize you have the floor, sir.

I respectfully disagree because it's a cost of purchasing the home and it's real. And I believe it would be considered in someone qualifying for a mortgage. I haven't done real estate in a while, and I figured, Bill, you'd be closer to it, but I think in somebody qualifying, it would be considered. And the only reason I brought it up, might there be something we might want to collectively consider in those situations not to make it more difficult for someone to buy or sell a home. That's why I brought the idea up.

Thank you, sir. Commissioner Constance, you're recognized, and Commissioner Truex.

Thanks, Chair. I mean, $50 or $100 a month utility bill is not going to keep you from buying a house. So if we look at these numbers, it's interesting. 2,144 total lots, 1,765 total ERCs for the entire Ackerman. but only 20 people have done prepayment in zone one and two and 12 people in three, four and LPS. So that's less than 2% of the entire area. It's pretty negligible. I, you know, I'm glad we stopped it because it just, we needed to make it as easy as possible for staff to roll these things out. So, you know, if it were hundreds, we'd have an issue. But, and then the other thing is, remember, we charged 575 for 20 years, which is 11 five. Where's the charge for interest? But that but I'm but I'm just saying finance costs there I think we even have a separate financing and administrative costs, but if you do is the mic on Yes, sorry, but if you do the math 575 times 20 years is 11.5 so then the actual cost is 11.5 minus the interest so they're getting their system for 9000 or way below so it doesn't make sense to me because we established 11.5 as the cost of the infrastructure if we were going to go ahead and do the plan then it should have been 575 a year plus interest so they're already not they haven't been paying interest on this has been a zero interest deal for them forever

Is that not true? No, the way that you're talking about it, yes. We do have financing to pay for government construction costs. I get that, yeah. But for their portion, correct.

Right, so I mean, if you look at it that way, the cost of money has escalated through the roof. This all has to be, you know, reconfigured. And the fact that we're just extending the term and lowering the yearly payments, I think it just makes total sense. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Yeah, Commissioner Joyce, your point, I was thinking about it. The only way I think this would affect somebody is when you look at the tax escrow, when you go for a loan and how much your monthly payment could be. It's another 575 on the tax bill, so if you're paying 2,000, I'm just gonna pick an even number, 2,000 annually in taxes, now this assessment comes on, you're paying 2,575. that may impact, you know, $10 a month in extra escrow or whatever the number is. So it could affect it that way, but there is no lien on this thing. It could only affect maybe that escrow payment and how that impacts your ability to borrow. It may be very negative.

Yeah, and qualifying. You know, it may... it's not maybe a lot not a lot but there's probably going to be some situations where it may limit a sale or inhibit someone from purchasing us I don't think the number is going to be great but it's going to happen sooner or later thank you sir you recognize Mr Arthur okay so we will bring these uh special circumstances back for further discussion um we'll go and evaluate the impacts based on the

rate and scenario that you've directed us. And so you've already given us the direction. I'm going to hand it off back to utility staff to talk about the assessment lookup tool.

Before you start back, Claire, I was looking at some other communities. I think Cape Coral's running that program right now. I want to say it's $30,000 and I think they have to pay up front. Were they offering even a payment plan there? i'd have to check commissioner i'm not sure yeah so you know when we developed this program you know i think it was 2015 or 16 with the pilot program i mean we're trying to keep this plan one of the most well we're trying to be conscientious obviously of the cost But when you compare it to others that are rolling out sewer programs, I mean, what we're charging right now, it's bargain basement. I don't think anybody, even if we look around the state, can touch what we're doing. How long we can keep this up, I don't know. I think we're going to hit a wall soon with construction escalation like we talked about. But this, I think, for affordability purposes, I don't think there's a place in the state who's doing a program right now that can match what we're doing for affordability. Commissioner Constance.

Yeah, I just looked it up. Cape Coral Sewer and Utility Expansion Project typically cost homeowners between 26,000 and 40,000 total per standard residential parcel, depending on specific zone and lot size. Yeah. 26 to 40.

Yeah. Yeah.

Okay.

And we're talking about 575 a month over time. Yeah, $15,000. How can we do it? Well, this board has been bending over backwards to look at grants, the state revolving fund, other low interest opportunity subsidies, appropriations, sales tax. We've been taking small chunks of that. I mean, we've got multiple buckets here working to keep that number down. But as I think it was Commissioner Constance O'Doherty said, Federal and state, potentially we could see that start to dry up and that those subsidies are what's making this happen. I see that as one of our biggest challenges plus the construction inflation. Okay, Claire, you recognize?

Okay, so as we talk about our next steps around this, and thank you for your direction today. This really helps as we start navigating this with the public. We've had staff working on an assessment lookup tool, which will help folks take a look at what their assessment is going to be, what their payments is going to be over time, and what it looks like long term with kind of an amortization schedule that we'll place on our website.

And I don't know, do we have a...

We don't have an example of this, but it is something that we're working on, just kind of an information tool to really show the public what they'll have to pay. And we will use that as we move into our public town hall meeting around this topic to really try and help inform the public. As it says on here, it's no login, it's just something that will be available on our website so they can have a look at things.

Commissioner Constance.

I had to keep looking. So they are offering financing of 20, 25, or 30 years at 6.5%.

Okay, I don't know what our interest rate is. And I don't know what that, since it's a higher amount, I wonder what those payments look like. They're not 575 in a year, I can tell you that. No, they're not. Yeah, they're not that.

every two weeks so just to remind you commissioners future community engagement now we have some direction from you and we will go ahead and start lining up at least one public outreach meeting with with the community we hope to hold it within the Ackerman area so we're looking for a location within that area to to host this um just to see if we can help educate folks and really talk through the issues and get some feedback for you um ahead of moving into next year where we'll bring back obviously they've the whole msbu and go through that whole process but in the meantime we'll also bring you um the the special circumstances that rick talked about um believe me staff has a spreadsheet of pretty much every parcel in this area

there are so many different combinations and scenarios in there it's it's a lot to navigate but we will bring those special circumstances back to you as well you know I also suspect there's gonna time where the state's gonna mandate we start doing sewer septic to sewer conversions and you know whether they provide funding for that in the future I don't know but the way Florida is growing I can't imagine with some of our areas that are high density where they're going to allow septic systems to exist. With the Florida Department of Health and Environmental and everything else going on and the big water quality discussion. I just see it coming and I think we're going to be ahead of that with these programs. Commissioner Constance, you're recognized, sir.

Yeah, I'm looking at the numbers for the 20-year term in Cape Coral. Potable water is $950,000, wastewater $1,740,000, irrigation, I guess, reuse is $773,000. Then there's also a capital facility assessment 20-year component of potable water $150,000, wastewater $450,000, and irrigation $300,000. So you're over $4,000 a year at Cape Coral. That's the payment plan? That's what it sounds like. Wow. Yeah. That's for 20 year, 25, it's a little bit lower. But it's very expensive. Yeah.

You recognize Ms. Jeff?

I had nothing left for you.

Okay, any more comments, gentlemen, on this item?

Okay, thank you.

Okay, thank you. We're going to move on to item number three, Hurricane Update Fund.

Good morning.

Good morning.

Good morning, Commissioners. Francine Lisby, Assistant Budget Director for the record. Nice to see you all again.

Good morning. Yes, long time no see.

Today I'll be providing an update on the financial impacts to the most recent hurricanes. We'll start with an overall summary. The total projected cost for the storms listed on the slide is approximately $334 million. The FEMA cost share has been identified at 206.3 million. Insurance claims at 45.9. Other sources, which I will go into in detail on a future slide, 48.5, and our county share at 33.3. I do want to emphasize that this is a snapshot in time. So these dollars and figures are changing regularly. We continue to provide you an update when we submit our monthly report to you all.

Mr. Constance, recognize.

Yes, thank you. So, God, I would love a summary slide of where we were, like what was the total, and then what's been paid so far. This is still what's out there, correct?

all-inclusive of everything that we are anticipating for the entire program but for the all of these storms not just the FEMA program insurance as well right but it doesn't show us what's been paid I do have a slide on what we've received in reimbursement we're gonna get to cash flow and that's where the reimbursement comes into play let's talk about that thank you So if we translate those dollars into percentages, FEMA's share is 62%, the county 10%, and insurance and other sources make up the balance of approximately 28%. FEMA's cost share does range from approximately 90% to 75% based on the storm. The additional remaining cost share is split or intended to be split between the state and the county. We did receive additional state funding for Hurricane Ian and Adalia, which you could see in that SB 4A waiver column. Our insurance reimbursement has been split into two different categories. We have dollars or checks received for insurance claims, which are projected to total $30.4 million. We are then receiving the value of the work that was done or the repairs that were done as part of our carrier's mitigation and turnkey program, which equated to approximately $15.2 million. Now we have closed our Hurricane Ian claim with our carrier. And you could see that our Helene and Milton insurance claim is far less significant than what we experienced with Ian. That's of course due to the nature of the storms and our insured asset list.

Can you go back to slide three? Just a quick question on the county share, 9.97%. So as it stands right now, That's our exposure to all these storms?

Currently, yes.

Okay.

In a perfect world, best case scenario, which we're going to go into more.

Okay, thank you.

Commissioner Constance. Yeah, so that's interesting that you asked that so total projected cost for everything She said was three hundred and thirty five million. So ten percent of that is thirty three and a half million So that's the hurricane disaster fund. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, I looked at those numbers.

Yeah picked up on that. Yeah, I

well then i was thinking if our total exposure with all those storms is is 10 that's pretty good if you ask me i mean to have i mean you want it lower but absolutely if we can keep it under 10 that's it that's a huge win in my eyes any questions on the insurance reimbursement

Okay, moving on to other sources. The primary source contributed to in other sources is our state share. So state share for all of the storms totals 20.4. As I mentioned, we did receive additional state dollars with the SP4A for Ian and Adalio, which was an additional $8 million. And we also received USDA and FDOT dollars of $20 million for Hurricane Ian. Expenses paid to date total $267 million. Reimbursements received are $145.6 million, bringing us to a negative variance of $121.4 million. Now, we did transfer $27.4 million from the general fund and capital projects fund, bringing that cash flow variance to negative $94 million. The purpose of those transfers are included in this side. The intent of the $20.6 million that were transferred from the general fund was to offset the non-reimbursable expenses for Hurricane Ian, Adalia, and Debbie. The capital projects funding was surplus from our capital maintenance plans, our previous programs that were impacted from hurricane damage. The $6.8 million of capital projects dollars that was transferred to the hurricane fund was intended to allow our staff to start category G projects as we awaited FEMA obligation. To date, out of that $6.8 million that was transferred from capital projects, we've spent $2.7 million, and we have a million dollars encumbered, leaving an available fund balance of $3 million. Now, included in these dollars are the design for the peers that Community Services has recently presented. Our intent is that we will receive FEMA reimbursement for these designs. However, for whatever reason, if FEMA doesn't reimburse us at 100% or a portion of those designs, we already have a funding source for the designs for the peers. Okay, so slide 10 was put together to provide information on the fishing piers. We've included our cost estimates. So the far right column is our current construction cost estimates for all of the piers that have been presented. We then included FEMA's current cost share for those same piers. Unfortunately, we are unable to provide what I believe you all expressed interest in, which was a projected shortfall for the peers. None of these projects have been obligated by FEMA at this point. We are still working with them to develop project scope and costing. So at this time, don't feel comfortable with providing you a shortfall. However, I do want to point out that hopefully by providing you the cost estimates, we're giving enough context into what the potential exposure could be for the peers.

Yeah, I appreciate you putting this slide together. It's very helpful.

So unfortunately, commissioners, we still have more questions than we do have answers. I do wanna point out, we did ask for hazard mitigation funds for all of the peer projects. So as you all move through the design options, that stronger timber design should be hopefully obligated and approved for FEMA mitigation dollars in the future. We at this time cannot say how much the county portion of these projects will be, but we continue to work with FEMA to go through the public assistance process. And finally, we'll know more once we have final design cost and we've submitted those to FEMA, they confirm the eligible work and obligate the projects. In regards to the disaster retention reserve, we did modify our reserve policy to include this retention and set the target of $25 million, which was allocated in the most recent budget process. In addition, we were able to increase the current reserve balance by $6 million, moving surplus from fiscal year 25 into this retention fund, bringing our total balance to $31 million. We know that we're still anticipating non-reimbursable expenses for Helene and Milton that approximately at this point equate to $11.7 million. In addition, you all did provide a direction this week on beach renourishment, increasing the subsidy, which is earmarked to be used from this retention reserve of approximately $4.4 million during the life of the next cycle on beach renourishment. Finally, I just want to point out, which we've already touched on, all of the figures that are presented today are based on best case scenarios. They're intended based off of what the public assistance process is intended to do. So if we follow procedures and guidance provided by the federal and state government, we do feel confident that we will receive reimbursement. As you all know, there's still a lot of uncertainty here. So I can tell you that what we've seen since FEMA's come back to work, since our last government shutdown, is they have been aggressively pushing projects to be obligated. Which is good news. However, unfortunately, they are bypassing some of the checks and balances that have been included in the program. So we have been seeing projects move to obligation that we have not had a chance to provide input on the cost estimates or the eligible costs associated with them and the scoping of those projects. So today, we have approximately $6 million of FEMA denials or appeals that are in progress. As you know, we have not been successful in several of our appeals, including soft costs for construction projects. So unfortunately, I believe that trend is going to continue for the remaining projects. So for today's purposes, felt like it was important to be transparent to include this number in what we potentially may need to utilize out of this retention reserve. However, none of this is finalized at this time. With that being said, this would bring our projected reserve balance down to $8.8 million. Any questions on the disaster retention fund or the hurricane financial impacts?

Any questions, gentlemen? Nobody's in the queue. There's no questions. Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Okay, we're going to move on to comments. Mr. Flores?

None today, thank you.

Mr. David? Nothing today, thank you, sir. Commissioner Daugherty? Nothing, sir. Commissioner Constance? No comments. Commissioner Truex? Need more hurricane reserve money. Commissioner Deutsch? Yeah, my only comment is safe travels, gentlemen. Those of you traveling on county business to Jacksonville, drive safe. We'll see you on the other side. We are adjourned.