Village Council - workshop

All right. We're here for a capital improvement workshop. Sure.

I'm going to turn it over to Ms. Quickel and the rest of the crew to kick us off. As you can tell, Ms. Pants and Mr. Reinshold will present most of the items today. Yes. We're here for the capital improvements workshop, which is a good component, large component of our upcoming final budget adoption.

And Ms. Wadley is joining us by Zoom. And so we'll get started with that. So in our proposed fiscal year 27 budget, we include funding of $11.5 million for utilities capital projects and $8 million for ongoing projects in the governmental funds. These are summarily broken down utilities. You see four major areas listed there, and Ms. Pons will go through these in detail. Her presentation will follow the conclusion of this governmental section. And then our ongoing programs of $8 million, you see the listing of the various areas where funding is included. And this is for the current budget that you're being presented next Tuesday night as well as through September. And again, the total of both combined is $19.5 million. We also look at the five-year construction in progress capital improvement program totals, which is $113.3 million across both of these portfolios, the utilities as well as the governmental. So this is looking at the following years after 2027 going out five years. And we do that consistently, the rolling five years, to see what's ahead and for planning purposes. So when utilities upcoming in those out five years, We see 67.42 million. And in the governmental, 45.86 million. So these are huge programs that we manage and look going forward with and use for our grants applications as well. The fiscal year proposed governmental capital improvement program is the $8 million, and that is in approximately four major areas, parks and recreation, surface water, transportation, landscape, and facilities. Sorry, five areas. And then for the out years, 28 through 31, that's where you see the $37.86 million that we have outlined for those. You'll only be approving the fiscal year 27 when that is presented. But again, we look out beyond that. The first part of this, I'm going to turn it over to Mr. Reinsvold, is our biggest area is the Acme Renewal and Replacement Program and the stormwater budgets. Jonathan.

Good evening, council. Feel free to stop me at any time and ask any questions. I'm going to go through these projects in painstaking detail. So this is the Acme Renewal and Replacement Program. This is the largest program that the engineering department manages and one of the largest programs in the government currently. This portion, excuse me, This part of the budget encompasses $43.8 million over the next 7 to 10 years. $38 million of that is for pump stations 3, 4, 6, 7, and 9. Those pump stations have been the workhorse of the stormwater system, and they will be refurbished over the next 7 to 10 years to like new conditions. We're currently in last year's last agenda meeting we approved the 5.6 million dollar project which will get us kick-started that includes a couple generators lots of electrical upgrades a lot of the pump station vfds which are variable frequently frequency drive pumps that control the pumps that help us control the flow of water those are getting upgraded over time we'll continue to upgrade the trash rakes we'll continue to upgrade the buildings themselves we'll continue to upgrade the intake and the pumps and refurbish as needed over the next seven to 10 years. With that, we'll be looking to upgrade those systems in coordination with the vulnerability and adaptation plans that we also presented to you last council meeting. Those plans will help us apply for the grant projects or apply for the grants and hopefully receive up to 50% of the funding for this. So the $38 million you're seeing there, we're looking to try to cut it down considerably. And it should also be noted that that is non-advorlum taxes as well. So I don't believe that would be affected by the property taxes. Utility money, right?

No. Back me money. Exactly. And explain for people who are watching and haven't watched all of our prior meetings on this topic as to what our pump stations are for, why we have them, why we need to upgrade them, and why that's such an expensive project.

Sure. So the pump stations themselves are designed to move water out of the system. So when we have heavy rainfalls, such as Tropical Storm Isaac, We need to turn the pumps on and turn them on quick and get water moving out of the system as quick as possible. We have seen over the past 10 to 15 years considerably higher storm rates than what we've seen historically. So Hurricane Isaac or Tropical Storm Isaac, for instance, was a storm in 2012 that dropped 18 inches of rain in less than 24 hours. Having the pump stations working at full capacity was key and in fact we needed to turn on an additional pump station on the south corner of the of Wellington that served as an emergency relief valve. And I'll get to that pump station. And in fact, that's part of the program here, pump station number two. So having those pump stations allows us to keep the floodplain down or keep the floodwaters down during a storm and keep your homes dry, essentially.

The $5.6 million that we approved, whenever it was, a week ago, two weeks ago, is that inclusive of the $43.8 million or on top of?

That's inclusive. So coming up with the next seven to ten years would be $38 million.

Roger that.

And one other note, the $650,000 that we received last year as a legislative appropriation, that was for this project. And so that's what that's going for as well.

Great.

Thank you.

So when we show 38.0 for the pump station, that's for the budget. If I look at this, that's for the budget of 26-27. No, that's for 10 years. That's what I wanted to make sure it was clarified and the ones watching know that that's not a one-year. It's a multi-year project. Correct. Correct.

OK. Moving along. So again, still talking about pump stations 3, 4, 6, 7, 8, and 9. This is kind of the location map and how we're appropriating it. $650,000 of grant assistance was awarded for 2026 fiscal year. Unfortunately, the 2027 appropriations was canceled at the Well, it was just canceled. It was vetoed. Yeah, I was trying to say that cleverly, but it didn't work out. Only one way to say it. Yeah, it was vetoed. So we're still going to move forward next year. We're asking for $1.6 million this next fiscal year for improvements to these stations. We'll build off of what we're doing this year. For next year, we're anticipating trash rates to be replaced. And that's what we'll be looking at for the next year.

What could be replaced? Trash rakes. Trash rakes.

Yeah, so trash rakes are when the water's being pumped through, the trash rakes actually just pick up debris, and it rakes it out. Like it sounds.

Mr. Rinesville, can you clarify why this map doesn't correspond to village boundaries?

This is the ACME service area, the ACME Improvement District surface water service area.

And I think generally speaking, it's pretty close to the boundary, with the exception that technically our northern boundary for ACME is on the south side of the C-51 canal and not along southern. But it generally corresponds to it. The kind of other evolution of ACME is the utility department's actually an ACME entity as well. However, this doesn't depict the utility service areas. There are areas within Royal Palm that are not indicated on here that are within our utility service area. But this is pretty close. It's just technically the village boundary that's not in ACME that's not depicted here is to the west of Flying Cow Road. Weakest that is in the Pine Tree Water Control District and same thing with the South Florida Water Management Lands. But that's the only portion that's not the village boundary on here.

Village boundary also extends to the east of 441?

It goes on the east side of 441, and that's outside of ACME, but still within the village boundaries. That's correct. It goes all the way to Turnpike on a portion of it and Lake Worth Road. It doesn't go east of 441.

Thank you.

Marjorie Stoneman is in the ACME. That's correct.

And we briefly spoke about pump station number two. This project is actually fully funded. The location of this project is on the south side of the village. This was one of the original pump stations. It was built in the 70s. It has been slated to be renovated for about 10 years now. We've built up funds to get it done, and we're awaiting the last portion of funding for it through the FEMA folks to approve it. We're waiting for about $1.2 million worth of funding. We have $4 million allocated for it right now, and as soon as that lets, we'll get moving on it. We have a full set of construction plans permitted, ready to go on this one. It is still functioning as of now. Our surface water management team, public works team, they're very diligent about maintaining it and keeping it running, but it is in dire need of renovations, and we're hoping to get that additional funding soon. that the one that you said you uh that was opened up as a relief valve yes this is this is the relief valve for the for the entire basin view okay and staying with the acme r r fund um this is not for next year this is just uh showing you guys uh kind of uh coming events um this is a uh joint effort between the utilities department um the acme r r fund and also the multi-modal pathway So this project itself would add a multi-use pathway and create a corridor for a new force main along Pearson Road. So what we would do here is reconfigure the canal bank. We'd have to reclaim some of the land. and restabilize the canal bank in that area. And at the end of the project, we'd have a multi-use pathway that would connect from South Shore Boulevard all the way to 120th and make that final connection to Village Park. We won't be asking for any funding this year for that project, but next year we'll be asking 0.9 million and the following year an additional 0.9 million. Moving on to the Equestrian Trails Program. Let me go to my notes on this one. There's several projects that are shown in this slide. The Equestrian Trail Program implements the updated Equestrian Circulation Master Plan through footing, drainage, fencing, and crossing improvements. Improvements to the Brown Trail and multiple crossings represent approximately $1.7 million of work that we're working through this fiscal year. What's the nature of those improvements? The brown trail are drainage improvements, footing improvements, fencing, and well, that's it. But it's a long length of project. If you see it, it's within the paddock area. It's the entire brown trail within the paddock area. We're also working through a few projects this upcoming year. We're requesting $750,000 this year for improvements to the white and gray trails, fencing along the pink trail, and the green ryer to Palm Beach Point trail connection. So if you're familiar with the winding trails project, we're making a connection from the winding trails project into the yellow trail, which is along the C-23 canal. It goes down. We'll also be looking into making a safety improvement to the trail at the roundabout, north of the roundabout on Greenbrier and Owsley. There's an issue there that we're working through. Any questions on the equestrian trails? Oh, and I'm sorry, these were all approved by the Equestrian Preserve Committee and vetted by them before presentation to you guys.

We have a $450,000 grant application out for an equestrian trail project as well, but that has not been awarded yet, the application's in.

If awarded, that would contribute to reducing the overall of these two. It would be on top of it. I see.

And this is a project that's being done by an outside vendor or something that?

All these projects would be done by an outside vendor, yes.

And has that already been awarded, as far as I guess? No. OK.

So going into our pathway and bicycle lane projects, currently in the works right now, of course, we have the Greenbrier Boulevard project that is under construction, the CA Canal Pathway project, which is also under construction. We'll be asking this year for an additional $510,000 for bike lane improvement projects to coincide with the mill and overlay projects that Mr. Wagner's team does, which I believe is South Shore Boulevard next year.

How come we can paint bike lane to green, but we can't paint crosswalks green? Is there a distinction between a bike lane and a crosswalk?

That's a million dollar question, Mr. Mayor.

Because I know, I mean, we can do one, but we can't do the other. Both for safety reasons.

It just seems odd. I could not agree with you more. That is a Florida statute that has been implemented. We're saying it's just the crosswalks. It's just the crosswalks, correct. And moving on to our roadway and traffic projects. Of course, currently we have our capstone project, our Lake Worth Road and 120th Avenue intersection roundabout currently under construction. We just let the Village Park at Pearson Road last council meeting. So that'll be starting construction within the next month or two. Of course, we have our traffic signal improvement program. That's underway.

Before we move off the roundabout, what's the plan to work on traffic conditions when school starts next week in that area? Because it's going to be more complicated.

Good question. We do have a traffic plan coordinated with the contractor, with the crossing guards, and with PBSO in order to move the children, students through the area.

We can give you a quick update right after we're done with this. Nicole can give you a quick update of all our conversations with all the principals and what we're doing for back to school.

That's great. Perfect.

And this year's budget request, we're asking $1.6 million for turn lanes and traffic engineering. Upcoming projects include a right turn lane on northbound Stribling Road at Forest Hill Boulevard, currently under design, and also the Village Park entrance at 120th. And of course, we have to shout out to some of our completed projects this year at the Wellington Aquatic Center, Wellington Sports Academy, and the Tennis Center expansion.

Didn't the Tennis Center just win an award, Chuck? Guess not.

Okay, we'll talk about it later then.

And then some of our projects in progress currently. Of course, none of this is budgeted. It's just kind of just telling you what's going on still with capital. We like to keep you guys updated on what's going on. Binks Forest and Bent Creek, it says construction up there, but it's actually under procurement. The Greenbrier Boulevard project, of course, is underway. Wellington Trace and Greenview Shores Boulevard will be starting soon with the milling and resurfacing. And Big Blue Trace will be starting within the next month as well, which is the landscaping project on Big Blue Trace north of Pack Drive.

Can we talk about that briefly as far as the landscaping project? I know Jim's shaking his head because he and I discussed it briefly. I'm wondering if we're opening a can of worms with continuing the fence and the curb across the street from St. Rita's and the school there, if this is a wise decision to make versus just trying to figure out some other solution for Kids being dropped off as well as people parking on those. I think it's like the 1130 mass or something like that that st. We does it's incredibly busy So I'm just wondering is this is this a good idea to do this or are we gonna? Are all of our emails gonna be flooded with hate mail?

Also, Ms. Coates is coming out of the bullpen and getting ready to give some information. She's been working closely with the team at St. Rita's. But this has been an issue that's been going on for a long time. And it was exacerbated considerably when the church was going through the expansion. renovation process, including the parking lot. And ultimately, I think as a matter of practice, you know, when we look at any house of worship, we know there are parking issues generally on, if you're looking at synagogues, high holy days, if you're looking at other churches and houses of worship, you're looking at the usual, you know, where people like to go make Christmas and Easter. Or you're looking at the Capes, Christmas, Ash Wednesday, Palm Sunday, and Easter. And outside of those times, generally, most facilities should have enough parking to accommodate their regular Sunday service. And I think in some cases, that is the case at St. Rita's. Most of the cases, it's just people, it's more convenient. And ultimately, given that that area functions just like the rest of the space along the Big Blue is a swale, we really don't want them parking there. and the use becomes an issue. I think what Ms. Coates has been working on and what they used to do years ago is they used to utilize the elementary school for parking, which I think we're working on to try and facilitate that through our interlocal agreement with the school and also consider given the less drainage facility use of the swale along Paddock Drive between Big Blue Trace and the end of Paddock at the closure at the end of the elementary school property is that certainly would be something we would also consider and look at given that that's more that really doesn't function too much as drainage essentially the rear and the excess right away along paddock so we think that we still would recommend that going forward with the curbing and fencing certainly making sure that we are accommodating the students from walking the walkers and that kind of thing and staging those walkers before they cross and similarly the church is working with the school to allow parking at the church for the pickup. A lot of kids are walking to St. Rita's to get picked up because their parents are parking at St. Rita's. So Ms. Coates has been working on that. She can give some more detail. But just from a public works maintenance engineering standpoint, we would still recommend that we really minimize that parking or eliminate that parking on that portion as well.

That's a good partnership between the school and the church because they don't operate on the same days.

But I was I was under the impression that the school was wanting to charge a parking lease fee.

We're addressing that in terms of in terms of their local agreement as far as the rental fee. I think the only thing that ends up being the need just like it is anytime there's a school use for even us in the local is you would have to pay for either maintenance or public or police to be able to lock and unlock the gate. That's that's the you know.

It doesn't say I mean the parents park at St. Rita's to pick up their children. So why would the school want to charge St. Rita's if... Well, I'm thinking St. Rita's could just charge the school, too. I mean, I think that nobody should be charging anybody.

Because the screen's unlocked. It's just that this is a school district thing.

Because they have to keep their gates locked. Correct. So they have to pay...

AN ACTUAL SCHOOL EMPLOYEE, WE COULDN'T DO IT. CERTAINLY WE HAVE PEOPLE ON STAFF. WE COULDN'T DO IT. IT'S A SCHOOL DISTRICT ISSUE. AND MS. COATS IS CONTINUING TO WORK WITH THEM ON THAT. BUT AT THIS POINT, THAT'S WHAT IT'S DOWN TO. THEY WOULD NOT BE A RENTAL REQUIREMENT. IT WOULD JUST BE THE COST FOR THE STAFF PERSON.

AND ARE THERE TICKETS BEING ISSUED FROM PBSO FOR PEOPLE THAT ARE PARKING IN THE SWILL CURRENTLY?

I'm not going to say that there haven't been, but I think currently, I don't know if they're issuing tickets, I think warnings and that kind of thing. But over the course of the last year or two, there may have been some. I mean, I know there was at one point even a deputy interrupted a mask just to make sure that he would advise that they're checking. And part of it stems back to also this is going back probably three or four years now. Sometimes you don't want to ask a question about who's talking. is basically, in addition to parking along Big Blue on the east side of Big Blue Trace north of Paddock, we also have parking along the paddock on both the north and south side of Paddock, which sometimes is even more problematic, because in some cases, they're blocking the pathway.

Nicole, did you want to chime in?

I think Mr. Barnes covered it all, but you're right. We are working through the interlocal agreement, especially in the high holy days for the church. Right now they're working through just having use of that dead-end portion of paddock, and really that peak time where the church is going to have the need for the overflow is on Sundays at the 1 p.m. Mass. So we are working through that. They're evaluating currently using that dead end area and then the high holy days we are working through the interlocal arrangement and the maintenance for the parking lot. So the maintenance cost is something that will have to be.

And that dead end area are you considering letting them park on that portion of the road to because it's not used no one's going in there so instead of just this whale maybe we can come up with some sort of

some parking lot type.

Make it into a parking lot for Sundays.

I'm going to recommend against that only because if you're parking within the actual roadway. I don't think we want to be in a situation where we're recommending people park on actual roadways. I understand, but no one's using it. Because at some point, somebody's going to park in the middle. It opens up a can of worms. But hey, there's council direction. There's council direction.

The church is allowing for, in the school situation, for the parents during drop off and pick up, they are allowing parents to use their lot. And that's similar to what's happening at Polo Park. saint teresa allows parents to park in their overflow lot too so they've been very accommodating for the school needs and um they are we met with the new principal at wellington elementary she's really great and she's really trying to make it work as well for the needs of the church okay and what's the cost on that uh that portion as far as like the curb and the fencing on what's that number get back to you on that one i'll get you that information okay if i had to guess probably about probably about forty thousand

Okay. Bringing it back to that landscaping, the curb and the fencing is designed to protect students at arrival and dismissal? Really more than a landscaping beautification? Thank you.

It's basically the same function that the curb and fencing has south of Patrick on big blue is pretty what happened is it was even worse by the school said you had parking going on at the same place where kids with bikes and everything.

And they were picking their kids up and the kids were running into the cars on the road. That's why we put a fence outside the village boundary at discovery key elementary.

There's a bloated section of roadway where people do park opposite the school for pickup and dismissal. Is there an opportunity to expand the roadway on the east side of Paddock north of Wellington Elementary to allow that where they're not in the roadway and you get the best of all those situations?

So interestingly enough, I think at Wellington L, that area is already used by the cars for parking. They're staging there and queuing up there. Maybe not to the extent that you have for the eyebrows that are at Discover Key along Lyons Road. But generally speaking, I think there's a lot of that excess area on Paddock, basically north of the school entrance that's already being used.

Go on.

All right.

Thanks, Nicole. Thank you.

Continuing with traffic, these are the in-progress projects that we have going on for traffic and transportation improvements. Of course, we have our traffic signal upgrades at Paddock and Wellington, or at Paddock and Big Blue Trace, ironically enough. Also at Big Blue Trace and Wellington Trace, Wellington Trace and Greenview, and in front of the Wellington High School. um we also have the developer contributed assets in the form of intersection improvements at pearson and south shore and also at south shore and grisita south shore and grisita is complete pearson and south shore i'm happy to report is all paved there will be intersection paving happening soon so there's there's going to be additional work as as far as that's concerned but you won't be driving over base rock anymore, which is nice. We also have our roundabout projects at Pearson at Village Park, Lake Worth and 120th, and the cancer project as well.

Before you change out this slide, can you give an update on what we're looking at for the traffic light at Binks and Bent Creek and where we stand on that discussion?

Sure. So we have sent that out to one of our consultants to do a line of sight analysis. They have preliminarily taken a look at it and determined that they do believe there is an issue with the line of sight there. So they'll be putting together their analysis and submitting it to the county for consideration.

To get the county to warrant the light being active 24 hours a day. Correct. Okay. So that's in progress. It is in progress. Okay.

When you say traffic signal upgrades, what are the upgrades? These are existing signals that are already there, right? Can you give an example of an upgrade?

So each signal is based in the 90s, we'll say, right? So it's still using dial-up. What we're looking at now is to kind of put it on the air, and they're actually doing that in form of adding fiber optic cables to the to each signal. So once they add those fiber optic cables to each signal box, they'll be able to upgrade the box, upgrade the signals, and they'll be able to add cameras as well. So the county will be able to control it remotely instead of doing the guy-by-truck method where somebody has to call it in and say report the outage, and then they have to come out and physically reset it. They'll be able to remotely reset the outage. and control the lights.

So the flashing light on Greenview and Wellington Trace is gone? No.

That's staying forever. Just for you.

And a formal controversy.

All right. And the last two projects we have are just demolition projects. So we have the aquatic center, which is, of course, being demolished at this point. And we're just waiting on a couple items from the contractor to get that final graded off and sorted in and completed. And we're waiting on Little Ranch's bridge to start within the next month or so here. And I think that concludes my presentation. If anybody else had any questions, otherwise I'll pass it off to Julie.

No, we still have a couple more slides. Oh, I'm sorry. Well, I'm sorry. There's a lot more slides in this packet. Have you seen them yet? So Julie will take it. That's good. My first day.

Sorry.

So the other part of this is our grant funding. And we're very active in pursuing grants for our projects, both in the governmental funds and in the utility funds as well. We have awarded $7.42 million. We have pending $2.4 million. And then the village matched approximately $33 million with that. So this page summarizes that information for the various projects that we have, and we have a number of applications in process now, and we continue that. The next page lists the various grants that we have received and have been awarded with that. So we have a whole group that works on these projects between engineering, utilities, public works, and other departments as well.

These are great charts.

We love our grants, so that's a great thing. And then, again, right now this shows the pending ones. Probably the Primrose one will not be awarded that Florida Recreation, those were not included in the budget that was approved this year. So we'll reapply for those. And in the Wellington Aquatic Center, we have a grant that we're working on closing out that one of $1.5 million and also the $650,000 legislative appropriation. So we're very active in continuing with the grant program. And then the major milestones that we have, the tennis center expansion, which is complete. The meter replacement program, which has started. Julie will be talking about that. The aquatic center, which opened. That was this year. Again, in 27. We have pump station number two that we hope will be awarded to get that construction done. All the work that Jonathan has just talked about. And then in 2028, the membrane expansion program. And then upcoming, we have the CIP workshop, which is today. Tuesday, we'll have the budget adoption for ACME Utilities, Solid Waste, and the Saddle Trail District. And then September 8th and 22nd are your public hearings for TRIM as well as the Capital Improvement Program. And now we'll turn it over to Ms. Pons. We'll get your slide presentation up.

Thank you both. Now the really big stuff.

This thing just flew off the table.

It just flew. Oh my god, that scared me. Thank you, Tanya.

right so as as ms quickle mentioned the proposed fiscal year 2027 utility cip totals 11.5 million just for the full picture we're also recommending a 1.5 million dollar amendment to the fiscal year 2026 budget hopefully in september to begin the booster station one rehab project just a little earlier than planned So that project was scheduled for fiscal year 2027. So had that remained, this year's proposed capital budget would be $13 million. Last year's five-year plan anticipated approximately $13.78 million in capital funding for this year. So we're down a little bit from that. So the utility has 10 funding divisions total. This year we're recommending funding in four of those categories. So construction costs, as we all know, continue to be high. Utilities everywhere are kind of dealing with the same thing on this. So we can't do everything at once, so we need to focus our available funding on the projects that are most important for reliability and regulatory compliance, and also preparing the system for future growth. for fiscal year 2027 those priorities are 3.4 million at the water treatment plant primarily to continue the membrane master plan 4.3 million for water supply improvements this includes maintenance of our existing well field and continued funding for the southern wellfield expansion we have 2.05 million for the wastewater treatment plant this is focused on electrical improvements primarily in required regulatory work And we have $1.75 million for the wastewater force main system. This supports the ongoing lift station rehabilitation program and design of the next phase of the South Shore force main projects.

Unless you're going to get to it later, can you tell people what the membrane master plan is and why we're doing it?

Yeah. No, it will be covered in a later slide. We always have to talk about the membrane master plan. So same as Mr. Reinfeldt mentioned, feel free to stop me at any point. We do have a lot of projects kind of jammed into the presentation, so I'm very happy to answer questions as we go. So this slide provides the full picture for the utility CIP for the five year. So you can see in the five year plan, we're a little bit more balanced from a funding perspective. And these amounts show where we expect to invest over the next several years. The majority of the funding is still in those four areas that we're focusing on in the one year plan. So just overall, there's generally less funding program for distribution and collection systems during this planning period. So we're concentrating our resources on projects where we have the greatest need and regulatory impact while deferring work that we can reasonably wait on. So before we get to the capital program, I'll just give a quick update on some current projects. So we recently completed our LiftStation 16 rehabilitation project. This project budget was $519,000. This serves the Wyclef community. So this project included the installation of a new standby generator, along with significant electrical upgrades to improve reliability during power outages. So a portion of this project and our LiftStation 16 project, which is the next slide, was funded through the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program, which helped reduce our cost. this project was completed under budget with 66 000 remaining and the project went very well So construction is currently underway at lift station 16. This is located on Wellington Trace. So a lot of residents have probably noticed construction taking place over the last several months. It's a pretty visible area. So this is one of the two largest lift stations in our system, and it serves a significant portion of our community. So this station was due for a complete rehab. The project also addresses an area where we've experienced two major failures in recent years. Those failures were difficult and expensive repairs, so improving the reliability of this area was a high priority. We also had the grant funding for a new standby generator, so we're very happy about that. Construction's gone very well. We're done with the very deep underground work here, which is the highest risk portion of the project. So it's not an easy area to work in. It's very tight, as you've probably seen. When do we think that'll be wrapped up? So we should start seeing the site getting cleaned up in the next month or so. So as the site work is scheduled for the end of August, early September, you'll start to see the fencing in the driveway. And that's where everything will get cleaned up. And we're tracking substantial completion towards the end of September. So another major project underway is our advanced meter replacement program. We talked about this one quite a bit. So we're now in the third phase of our testing and initial deployment phase. So this is a bigger tranche of meters. We're installing 500 meters between July 27 and August 10. So this phase is really about making sure everything works exactly as intended on a little bit larger scale than the previous deployment phases, where we might have done 25 at a time. So we're testing the equipment. We're making sure everything's communicating properly, running parallel billing to make sure everything works properly. so assuming everything continues to perform as expected system-wide deployment is scheduled to begin around october and as we move closer to that rollout we'll be providing updates and additional information to residents so they know what to expect when installations begin in their neighborhood we're working on a-frame signs and various other communication what have you seen so far since the for the ones that have already been installed It's going well. So this is mostly about kind of working out the little bugs, seeing what we encounter, and making sure we have procedures in place. There's been the normal snafus. It's kind of a tech exercise to make sure, in my mind, to make sure it's a lot of different systems are talking to each other. Because when we go to full deployment, it's 20,000 or almost 18,000 meters, 100, 150 a day. It's all got to be very... streamlined. And then as they find things in the field, we need to make sure we're getting work orders so we can fix things and that kind of thing.

And this project was funded by the State Revolving Loan Fund. It's the low interest rate loan that we have for a little over $11 million.

So we're also moving forward with the replacement of high pressure pump nine at the water plant. So this project provides critical redundancy for membrane plant two, which will operate four high pressure pumps. So that's a pump that pushes the water through the membranes, serving our three newly expanded treatment trains with a combined capacity of 7.2 million gallons a day. So we're in pre-construction phase. No real work has started yet. We're working on shop drawings, ordering of long lead materials, that kind of thing. So construction on this is expected to be completed next summer. So kind of a coming soon. Our next major project, which we hope to bring forward for your consideration in the next month or two, is the booster station one rehab. So this project proposes replacing the existing standby generator. You can kind of see it in the The picture there, all the way to the right, it dates back to the 1980s. It's original to the station. So it's what we call functionally obsolete. Nobody's made parts for a while. Their parts are difficult to get. And maintaining this existing electrical equipment has become progressively more challenging.

So we're looking- We got a lot of life out of it since the 80s.

We did.

And I will confess, we have a few things from the 80s, and it kind of pains me to keep calling it aging infrastructure. But I'm just going to- There's another reference to it in the wastewater plant. But yeah, we did. And it's treated us really well for a long time. But once it gets to the point where we can't get parts or we're having to order from a supplier overseas that was third hand, you just can't find it. It's getting to the point where it needs to be.

Buying stuff on eBay.

yeah that's well that's and that is what we've been doing for a while but eventually eventually that will you know that supply will dry up sure it's just not being made so um but yes we have gotten a very good life out of this um and and the pumps there they're that's original equipment um So this project also has piping modifications that will actually increase our available storage within the existing tank, which is something I'm very excited about. So this will improve our ability to manage water age throughout the western portions of the service area, particularly during periods of seasonal demand. So now we're going to get into the one and five year capital plan for the utility. So first up is the water plant. So over the past several years, council knows we've been successful in construction and expanding new nanofiltration membrane treatment trains. So these trains are the heart of our water treatment process. So going back to your question about what is the membrane master plan overall, we currently run dual treatment. an older style treatment called Lyme softening, which was very typical in Florida in the 70s and 80s. That treatment is has a lot of benefits, but it doesn't remove PFAS and some of these contaminants of emerging concern that we're seeing. So we are transitioning the portion of the capacity we have in that treatment, which is 4.7 million gallons a day, to become an all membrane plant. So that takes care of the new regulatory requirements for PFAS. So there are federal laws that have come out with a timeline of and for utilities to implement advanced treatment to get to a certain amount to make sure you're below a certain threshold for PFAS in the drinking water.

Which gives our residents and customers safer water.

It absolutely gives our residents and customers safer water. And the beauty of membrane treatment is it's not a targeted treatment towards PFAS. It removes all contaminants indiscriminately. So it's a good hedge against that. We do expect future regulations for other things. And this is the best technology available to kind of handle as much as possible. Future-proofing. yeah so there's other technologies um like something called ion exchange which specifically targets pfas but if in 10 years there's another regulation for some other um contaminant you know that's and julie um because we had done some of this membrane replacement before the pfas litigation we were able to recoup

some of those funds that had been expended through the litigation there was a special fund uh for reimbursement for people who had for cities that had you know taken the initiative to replace the membranes

And we'll also be seeking working with the state revolving drinking water fund for grants. They have some grant programs for the membrane PFAS work, so we're going to work on that. That's a long, drawn-out process, as you recall from the meter replacement one, but we're going to be starting on that soon. Okay, great.

So next year's plan proposes $3.4 million in additional funding for the pre-treatment and post-treatment improvement project. So this is plant piping, pre-treatment system, and post-treatment systems necessary to fully utilize all this nanofiltration membrane trains we have constructed. Right now, we really can't use all that at once. So the pre- and the post-treatment, we're limited by the capacity before and after, so we need to get that to catch up. And that was always planned. It was phased. So looking ahead over the next five years, we have $10.4 million in total funding, including construction of the final train in the membrane master plan. We have rehab of some aging chemical systems, projects that had previously been deferred to focus on some other membrane master plan projects, and several smaller plan projects supporting safety improvements and regulatory compliance. So water supply. So water supply is one of the utility's highest priorities over the next five years. So the proposed funding here covers continued rehabilitation of our existing wellfields, together with a significant investment in the southern wellfield expansion program. So these wellfield projects and the plan for the new wellfield were developed concurrently with the membrane master plan. to ensure we have the appropriate water going forward to serve the plant. So just going way back in time for a minute. So prior to the current expansion, the last major plant expansion and original construction of what we call Membrane Plant 2 was done in the 2006 to 2010 timeframe. So that expanded the plant to 11 million gallons a day. So additional wells were actually constructed at that time around 2009 to provide raw water for that new facility. So the last time we expanded the plant in the raw water before this was about 20 years ago. So in 2020, the plant was expanded to be rated for 12.3 million gallons a day. And based on projected future growth, we're planning for a treatment capacity of 13.2 million gallons a day. So that increased our raw water supply needs. Membrane treatment also requires more raw water than lime softening because about 15% of the water that you pull out of the ground is actually rejected during the membrane treatment process. So for every million gallons we pull out of the ground, we make 850,000 of good clean water. And we have what we call concentrate, which has to be disposed. So it's essentially the technology concentrates the contaminants in a small amount of the water. So that's a very long-winded way of saying we've expanded the water plant proactively for growth. Now it's time to do the same with the well field. So the southern well field expansion proposes construction of five additional production wells with the goal of completing the program by 2035. So these wells have already been permitted with South Florida in our consumptive use permit, which is the permit that authorizes us to pull the raw water out of the ground. That capacity was secured in 2019 when the membrane master plan was being developed. We actually required to submit yearly updates to South Florida. regarding the status of the membrane master plan because it ties so closely with our consumptive use permit and our water supply planning so the one-year plan for this proposes 4.1 million for the well field and the five-year plan allocates approximately 9.6 million towards this effort the one and five-year plan include 2.6 million for maintenance and rehab on the existing wall field and additional projects include a fairly short portion of raw water transmission replacement on the plant site and putting overhead electrical undergrounding at a couple of well sites to give us the ability to properly maintain those wells. So the wastewater treatment plan is another big area. We haven't done as much with it in the last couple of years, but the five-year plan includes several important investment. So first on the one-year plan, we're including $1.5 million in the one-year program for an approximately $5.8 million over five years for the rehab of our what we call the RASWAS system. So that's in the lower right corner. That's a picture of one of the RASWAS pump stations. So this is a system of pumps and equipment that move and manage biological processes around the plant. We've completed a design. We had a bid, but the construction costs were incredibly prohibitive. In the current form, it was not something we felt was appropriate to move forward. So we have done some targeted in-house work on that system to essentially kind of buy us some more time while we look at different options, and we're going to continue down that path. So this is another area where a lot of the equipment dates back to the original plant construction, particularly the electrical systems from the 80s. The full rehab will eventually be necessary there so we want to make sure we have the funding in place for that additional wastewater projects for the next fiscal year include a hundred thousand dollars each for our required five-year operating permit renewal and collection system action plan two things required by code and three hundred and fifty thousand dollars for dredging one of the plants sediment ponds as part of some routine facility maintenance So we also have $6.5 million over five years for the rehab and maintenance of plant structures in various facilities. So this is proactive maintenance to extend the life of our plant structures as long as possible. This is an area we really want to be. If you look at our plant, we don't have green space or space to build new things. Those very large concrete structures are very expensive. We think it's in our best interest to extend the life of those as long as possible and be as proactive as possible. um with that we have 1.6 million for the replacement of the aeration basin covers there's kind of a picture of the two aeration basins there and they're they're they are covered these play a very important role in odor control as you can probably imagine the only new item in this five-year plan from previous years and actually i think the whole plan none of its new projects except for this one we have four million program for a likely required replacement of our monitoring well our injection well monitoring well We recently performed a mechanical integrity test. We got some less than desirable results. So we still have to do more testing coordination with the DEP, but more than likely we will be required to replace that.

And tell people what that does.

So we have an injection well at the wastewater plant. So that's how we dispose of the waste. the liquid part of the treated wastewater, basically. So we produce all reclaimed quality water. Some of that effluent is distributed to the system, peaceful waters, the reclaimed system as irrigation water. What we can't use in that is injected actually 3,400 feet deep. So we have over 3,000 feet is injected into an injection well. That is a much larger well. Unfortunately, that one passed, which is great because those are upwards of 20 million. The monitoring well is a slightly, I think it goes about 2,000 feet deep. So that's essentially a well required by regulatory where we can monitor that the effluent that we're injecting is not rising up and coming into different layers where we're not supposed to be, that everything's staying in the different zones that they would like.

And Julia, what depth is our wells off of Southern and so forth that you're dropping? And how do those vary from the injection well depths?

So our raw water supply wells, most are less than 100 feet. I think we have two. Our two bigger ones are in the 100 to 200 foot range. So we pull exclusively from the surficial aquifer. So they're not particularly deep. So this disposal, and this is a very heavily regulated area, so disposal of effluent It's a very difficult, it's just a highly regulated area, heavy permitting requirements. And we have specialists and hydrogeologists that work on this, that are experts in this and work on this with us. But those are two. One is the raw water wells, pull it out of the ground, relatively shallow. These disposal wells, and we actually have two. We have one at the water plant and we have one at the wastewater plant. where we have to, at the water plant, we dispose of the concentrate, the byproduct of membrane that I mentioned. That's also a very similar well. And then the wastewater plant is the effluent, the four million gallons a day or so we put down that well.

Thanks for knowing all that. The East Sediment Pond Dredging. Why is that a requirement? Is that a state requirement, federal requirement?

That is not. So we have the effluent before it's put into the injection well so that it can be staged. We have two. If you look on an aerial, there's two ponds where we can... Where we use for staging, essentially, of the effluent in different parts of the process. So effluent isn't, as you can imagine, it's not perfectly clean. Things settle out over time. So this is just essentially the bottom has a few feet of sediment, muck. Yeah. It has some heavy metals and it has to be disposed of in a specific way. It's essentially just taking it out and kind of renewing the volume of the pond and keeping it. um functional for sure you're dumping out the muck so you can keep filling it with water it's not particularly glamorous work but it's got to be done yeah um sign me up sounds great this is this is being updated since it was built in 1973. the wastewater facility originally built in 1973. That sounds about right. It was before my time. Yeah, I think we have plans that date all the way back to the 70s. It was definitely before I was born. Yeah, the earliest. I had 1976 in my head, but 73 could certainly be. We have records from the 70s. And actually, we have all the record drawings, and it's neat to see how it was built out over the years, because it's dozens and dozens of projects to get to where we are today. So next is the force main wastewater system. So this program includes 1.75 million for fiscal year 2027. The funding supports continued lift station rehab. And the design of the next phase of the South Shore force main improvements. So over the five-year planning period, approximately $8.7 million is programmed for forest main improvements in general. So $6 million is dedicated to South Shore Phase 3 in the five-year plan. This is what Jonathan mentioned. He referred to it as Acme Project 15. So that has the multi-use path, canal bank improvements, So this has been in our plan for quite a while. I think since 2018, we've kind of been contemplating as part of the plan to reroute our major transmission mains out of the polo community. So you can kind of see the overall map. The green is what we've completed. The red is what's existing in a not ideally located location. And then the phase three is the next phase we're planning to construct. jonathan said we're creating a corridor we're creating a wonderful place to put a force main because that's a very crowded corridor so i'm very you know um pleased that we can make this work i think it's a win-win for the residents we'll be able to share some costs and kind of do everything that needs to be done in this at once and not have to disturb that roadway multiple times right and the pathway would be a lot more money if we didn't have uh julie's help i'm just happy to have a place to put it that's a good um So the five-year plan includes $2.2 million for continued lift station rehab. That's ongoing. We have 108. We try to hit a couple every few years. It's just a program we want to keep going. And we have $571,000 for pump upgrades on the eastern side of the system. So that specific funding amount, you'll notice it's a very exact number, reflects developer contributions that were received specifically for those improvements. because of the impacts of developments. And they're now, this is just programming them into the capital plan. So those are the four big areas. So the water transmission system, the five-year plan includes approximately 2 million for just general neighborhood water main improvements. We want to make sure we have something in there in case there's a paving project and we need to do something concurrently. So at this time, we don't have major investments in the wastewater collection system. We did a good chunk of lining a few years ago. We're allowing those projects to be deferred while we focus on the available funding on higher priority needs. Within the technology category, there's approximately $975,000 program for the replacement of the lift station multi-smart controllers. So this is essentially the control computers for each lift station, along with funding for a design study of an eventual replacement of our mesh router communication system. So our five-year plan includes approximately $2.825 million for future planning related to the replacement of booster station one pumps. So those are, like the generator and the electric, those are original to the station. They are in good operating condition today. We're not currently recommending replacement. But since they date back to the original station construction, we think it's wise to begin planning for their replacement before reliability becomes an issue. So last slide, I think. Under general facilities, the plan includes approximately 600,000 to install generator connection points at various utility facilities. The vision here would be to kind of have plugs at individual plant facilities so that in an emergency you could potentially string together a series of smaller generators, which we own, and operate the plant that way. Right now, if we have to bring in a backup generator for the plant, it's on a semi-truck, and it's a big... So this is a resiliency upgrade project. We would be looking for grant funding opportunities to help offset construction costs on this. We've seen some opportunities with resilience type grants. We've had some good luck with that. So we're hoping something comes up for that. We also have $300,000 for Rehab at Peaceful Waters. So this funding is envisioned for general repairs and maintenance of the boardwalk and just other facility improvements to preserve the site for years to come. So With that, I think that concludes our presentation for the utility capital plan, and I'm happy to answer any questions.

I'll just start by saying thank you. You're welcome. This has been 10-plus years of progress at this plant because I think we all know, and new people know, especially now that the To operate, maintain, and upgrade a water facility is an expensive endeavor. And it's needed because water is a public safety. We all assume that you turn your water on, clean water comes out, and the wastewater goes away just like magic. It's not magic. There's a lot of stuff behind all that. And we've probably all gotten comments from residents about utility rates being increased. But everything you do is fully funded by user fees and connection fees. So you're a self-contained business. Yes. The reason the rates have been indexed, which means we raised them, is because it costs more to operate this stuff. And when we did that, we looked around. Other utilities are doing the same thing because they have to raise their rates too because, again, it's expensive to maintain this properly. And we've stayed ahead of the game on making sure that our residents and customers are protected with clean water coming in. So, you know.

Yeah, we've definitely done a lot. A lot of utilities, especially in South Florida, just because of when, you know, South Florida saw so much growth in the 70s, 80s, 90s, and a lot of that infrastructure is coming due for replacement now. So we're all, you know, when we're at conferences, we're all seeing the same thing. We're seeing the same increases in prices, and we feel the same pressure. So we're definitely not alone, but we are very well positioned. We've done a lot. And I think, you know, I'm a big fan of the slow and steady approach. I kind of want to keep chipping away at it. I don't want to have major, you know, I'm hoping we can avoid major swings and, you know, and kind of big, crazy projects where we let things go, just keep things, keep proactively working towards it and keeping our facilities in the shape.

And I've said before if you look around there's municipalities nearby us who've neglected their utilities and they have to come up with a giant pile of cash all at once to fix it. So that's why slow and steady is the way to go. Yep.

I have a question. How many generator plug plant facilities do we have? They're showing a What a few here on this picture.

Yeah, that was kind of a picture. But that's part of our generator yard. So we have the plant we're talking, when we talk about the project for the generator plug, we would talk about... six to eight kind of critical areas. The blower building at the wastewater plant, the lime plant, where if a service failed or something, you can plug it in in a safe kind of code compliant way and just operate just that facility if you needed to and kind of string together. part of our generator fleet. We have a fleet of about 60 generators. Those are actually lift station generators. I was just kind of trying to illustrate that we wouldn't probably have to buy generators to do so. In a storm, I mentioned those 110 lift stations. We have 60 or so generators that we deploy around the village. So in the event of a mass outage, we would actually kind of be manually running the system. We would have a certain number deployed at wells. They would be operating the wells. these other generators running the system. And we would be driving them. If it was a mass outage kind of situation, we would be driving them around and pumping the lift stations down, taking a generator to another one, pumping them down. And that's what our staff would be doing. I really hope we never see that kind of mass outage.

We actually had that happen when Ms. Vance was in college.

I've heard about it. I have heard about it.

During Hurricane Francis and Jean, I just want to say that the crew between Public Works and Utilities did an amazing job. But basically, we didn't lose power at any lift stations officially since our crews drove around throughout the entire night daisy-chaining our different generators. Because at that time, we didn't have permanent generators at any of the locations because it may be one or two. and kept them operational so we never lost power and those locations which means our residents had to continue utility service which is pretty important in a storm particularly the suicide. And so that's on you know, basically having those generators but also really have a staff that during the storm.

And did we not and correct me if I'm wrong didn't we get an award for our water and I mean we've got we've got a lot of recognize.

Yes, we're good water and that's in it, you know in testament to what your department does and yeah, I think it was I can't remember if it's 2425 but we were we did get you know dual outstanding water and wastewater plants, which was you know, that was that was kind of exciting to get both in the same year from the FTP so I think we did you know, we did some stuff with staff and kind of commemorated it but Yeah, no, we have an amazing staff and an amazing team. And they're very proud of the investments that we're making. And they take a lot of pride in them. You can see the care going into them because they see the care going into the plants. And they're taking wonderful care of the system. And they care deeply about what they do.

And so yeah. The border station line station you're talking about her critical of it obviously all that's critical, but those are areas that you said that you may potentially have to bring generators because of whatever those different stations do but has anybody looked at like battery walls to see if there's that's an option that those as well.

No, I don't. We have, we do use a lot of batteries actually to maintain communications in our, so we actually have some really big batteries for our control rooms and things of that nature. I don't think for the kind of the power output we're talking about for the pumps and the memories, I don't think batteries would be feasible. The blowers too, a lot of that. I mean, we've done some. We looked at a solar field once. That was interesting. It wasn't really viable. And I'm sure, actually, as the battery technology evolves, that some of that may change. But I think when you're talking about the blowers and things like, those are very prohibitive power draws. So they would have to be pretty.

It would overwhelm them as far as power draw goes. Gotcha.

Any other questions? Thanks, team. Good job. Appreciate it. Thank you. Mr. Barnes, what else do you want to tell us while we're all here? We have a few more items for you. I had a feeling you weren't done.

One of the items I'd like to go ahead and have Mr. Reinsvold walk us through, and Mr. Sillings can join us. One of the areas I want to talk about is Via Veneto, Via Toscana, which for those who may not be geographically familiar with the location, it's on Wellington Trace, off of Wellington Trace, between... Big Blue Trace and Forest Hill Boulevard and that location will have an exhibit coming soon is an area that over the course of the last several years the condition of the private roadways within the community have progressively gotten more deteriorated and as such at some point we need to make a determination as to how we want to proceed, given that those are private roadways. Certainly, we've, over the years, received complaints from residents that live in the community there. Just some brief background, and Mr. Stillins can correct me if I'm wrong, but generally, I believe that HOA is officially defunct, nonexistent, and I believe based on an actual... proactive action that the residents took to sunset the HOA. And based on that, you don't have a responsible maintenance entity that is responsible for the maintenance of that roadway. Utilities within that roadway, both water and sewer and drainage, belong to ACME. or we have a portion of the drainage and water and sewer in those areas. However, the road itself is private. And at this point, the condition on that roadway, after having it evaluated, I think, within the last year or two by both engineering and public works, to do any kind of... restoration there. It's past the point of doing what we traditionally do, which is a mill and overlay. You'd actually have to do a full debt reclamation, and Mr. Reinfeld can give us a little more information on that, and also a very conceptual level cost estimate as to what that would be. When he gets wrapped up with that, we can talk a little bit what our options are and try and get a feel for where council would like to proceed, if at all.

Because those roads are a real mess.

I'm sorry? I've seen bombing ranges better in better conditions.

Use minefield out there. Sure.

So I'm going to pull up a quick aerial that shows kind of what's going on. Just looking from the aerial view, we have plenty of pictures that we can pull up as well, but obviously a puddle is not supposed to be in the middle of the road there.

For scale, you can use the vehicle just on the northwest side of that exhibit.

It is quite the safety hazard in the area. Unfortunately, as a private road, we have no jurisdiction over it.

They had an HOA at one point or a POA?

They did. They don't anymore. That's correct. So what we, I mean, without speaking technically, it's past the point of no return of just doing the easy, the quick fix, which would be just a melon overlay where you just grind the asphalt off and put a new sheet of asphalt over it. Typically what you see, it's being patched together by the residents out there. This one's kind of gone a little bit too far. As you can see over here, they do have a little bit of patchwork in there. The residents have been going in there doing their own kind of blacktop refurbishment, that sort of thing. But in order to fix the roadway, you would have to come in, pull out all of the roadway, all of the base rock, and just repave a road just like you normally would. So with that said, we're looking at a cost of about $900,000 to do that in today's dollars. And that would be split between, I believe, 43 units.

When you say split, that would be? Assessed. Assessed against them. Okay. And how would we go about doing that? What's the process? If we want to do that, what's the process for doing that?

That's when Mr. Reinsolder, just let me step away for a minute.

Turn to this side of the table.

Ms. Cohen will take us through that. It's important to note, given that it wasn't HOA originally, those are still private roadways, and essentially every property owner owns those roadways.

And do we have to get approval from them to do this?

I can tell you from canvassing those houses that they want it. That's going to be the determining factor. How bad do they want it?

People want a lot of things. Some of you may recall Saddle Trail. We referenced that you'll be approving the assessment for them next week. They're a special assessment. It was a similar type project, different circumstances. But it's a geographic area. The residents wanted something. There's a whole process to achieve that.

There was a vote, right? They had a certain number of properties. Correct.

There's a whole process to go through. Public process outlined and everything. And council previously has wanted to have, I call it a supermajority of the residents, basically two-thirds in favor of such a process because it is an assessment process for a number of years. That is not what the legislation calls for. That would be a simple majority. Or if there is an option for council to impose this, that you vote that they need to do that. But again, the cost for this, this is a very rough estimate. We have to do the engineering, and there's a whole process to determine the cost. But over 15 years at approximately 5%, it would be probably $1,900 per homeowner per year for 15 years. There are only 43 properties. That is the problem in there for a small area. on 20 years. You may be able to go out for a term of 20 years that that would we would have to determine this would probably be alone. That would be around $1600 a year and that's probably your lowest estimate.

I'm just a correction. I don't believe the roadways are owned by the property owners they were owned by the poa but because they would benefit from whatever the improvements are then we could you know we could assess them um because they would their properties would be specially benefited by the improvement so who's the ownership would now absent Nobody. You would have to reconstitute the HOA, and that's not likely to happen. So it would have to be a special benefit assessment, and they would be benefited by the improvements.

If we assess them and fix the roadway, who would own it then?

Well... Potentially. I mean, I'd have to think about that. There is that provision under 95.361. I don't know that we want to actually take on ownership of the roadway. That statute requires maintenance over a period of time, four years or seven years, depending on whether we constructed it or whether it was constructed by someone else. I don't know that just repaving it would trigger that you know they would have to somehow take on the maintenance of that if we don't maintain it we're going to somehow what is the somehow if there's no HOA I mean this is going to reoccur so right if there's a way for us to take over the roadway

in the future i think that's the answer unless they're gonna well i think that the other option form an hoa again well i don't want to go into the uh the the issue of you know how we handled some of the quads where they have to come in for permits for their parking lot but there's no hoa anymore because those things never real to begin with are they joint tenants um with those they had to do a an a you know like an agreement where i forgot like a

party wall agreement or something like that?

But basically, I think that the way for continued maintenance, since technically there wouldn't be a surviving entity that would maintain it, is they would end up rather than going through the traditional assessment process that we did with, say, the wall and big blue trace or saddle trail. And the difference in saddle trail is that those are actual village roadways. They just elected they wanted them paved, so they paved for the paving, but then we still took over the road because it was our road to begin with. This is not the case. You could set up an ACME unit, and an ACME unit is a little bit different assessment process, but still largely the same end result. And the one thing setting up as a separate ACME unit is then that ACME unit could continue to exist with a separate assessment for continued maintenance.

Mm-hmm.

Okay. And has anyone talked to the residents for the cost of this?

Has anyone? We've had extensive discussions, not recently, but we actually had public meetings. Right, I was going to ask when was the last time we spoke about it.

In 2021.

It's been a while. And the reason that it basically died for lack of interest, everybody wants the improvement, but it's... Nobody wants to pay for it. Everybody's got deep pockets but short hands. Nobody wants to pay the cost and the freight for that. And so we went, we investigated. You had a handful of folks that understood to even reconstitute the HOA and possibly just get it turned over so that maybe we would even consider it after the initial, since this is such a different case than say a traditional HOA that's in existence that just wants to unload responsibility that happened and the ship sailed in this case. But we couldn't even get enough interest after meeting publicly with the group, canvassing them, and also sending them individual letters requesting some kind of participation. There wasn't enough interest to reconstitute the HOA in that case. And ultimately, I think it's a situation where we might have to even approach it. And this is where trying to figure out Ultimately, the ownership is do we start the process and look at the basis for us to go in and actually do it even absent a majority or super majorities to go through the code process. Because essentially, that's something that you would be, then you would essentially then say that everybody who is a resident, they're a property owner there, is in violation. And we would look at this as an abatement.

I don't know that we could do that because I don't believe that the responsibility for the roadway maintenance is on the individual property owners. It's not like a condominium where they own an undivided share in the common areas. It's an HOA, which the roadways were dedicated to the actual HOA. And now that it's not in existence, I think the only way that we could undertake that improvement would be through an assessment process is there a language that states that if an hoa is not in existence then the burden is on so and so there's there's nothing not for hoas for condominiums because the condominium owners own an undivided share in the common elements they would be responsible for their share of those common elements it doesn't work that way with an hoa if ultimately we want to take on the uh the responsibility of maintaining these roadways i mean we have the ability to go in and do this work without their approval miss colwyn yes without their approval no without their approval yeah without their approval but um Ideally we would want their approval especially if we're going to be assessing them and then if we have constructed the roadway and we maintain it through this acme unit of development then after Well, we wouldn't necessarily own the roadway. We could either do it as the village of Wellington, in which case we would then own the roadway after the requisite period of time, four years or seven years. Or we could do it through the ACME unit and just continue to assess the property owners over time.

That sounds like the best plan because there's no end in sight if they're not going to have an HOA. This is going to be a recurring thing.

We would not get gas tax money for those roadways, though, because if they're not owned by Wellington or maintained by Wellington, there's no gas tax money for them.

And the recommendation would be that the maintenance would be an assessment? unless it's council's direction that we take on ownership of that roadway which which presents an interesting situation as well because ultimately we would either have to do the initial assessment as wellington and then provided we take over maintenance for the requisite time frame of seven years or what have you and then take it by virtue of that statute provision otherwise you end up in a situation where if ACME is doing it, then it would just be an assessment and it remains a private roadway.

I'd like to see a memo of our options all written out and explained, option one, two, three, what we can do with each one and what the ramifications are rather than just talking it through because I need to see it in writing to understand how we want to approach this, including which ones need resident consent and which ones don't and whether we can assess them without consent because there's a lot of moving pieces here and I'd like to see it all laid out to know exactly what our options are.

And if we could get a dollar amount. And that's fine. Ultimately, this doesn't affect capital long term, because we would look to fund this through a separate vehicle, whether it's a loan, whether it's a bond, what have you. But it's really more to get an interest in flavor. It's just something we want to pursue. Because ultimately, we can still take the position which we have to date, which is those are private roadways and we have no responsibility for them. However, at some point, while, I mean, the picture is somewhat shocking, but you're not going to lose a car in that hole. It's bigger than a car, but it's not, that hole doesn't go.

It's still a public safety concern, so I'd like to see if there's a way to address it that makes sense for us to take on that responsibility initially or permanently.

That's the direction you want to find out today.

And another thing that's going to happen is if, let's say, in the future that the roads are taken over by Wellington, you have, I don't know, 20 or 30 vehicles that are always parked in the roadway along Wellington Trace. So those people are going to have to find another place to park, correct? Because

Well, I mean, I think one of the things we had looked at and we actually discussed with the residents or the property owners there as well when we were trying to look at this project with them is looking at some kind of traffic circulation adjustment or modification, possibly making that loop a one-way loop and allowing for on-street parking. And then you have legitimate on-street parking as opposed to cars pointing in different directions and technically being a code violation as well right now.

Well, we do have Mr. Ronson. He's used to doing those loops and those roundabouts.

Glorious roundabouts, right?

But we wanted to put that up just for discussion to get some general direction, which I think we've gotten some consensus to do that.

Well, so far it's just that we need to see it in writing so we can make a decision. There's really no consensus tonight.

So you're saying there's a chance. I think this is... So basically, I think there's interest in doing something about it as opposed to taking the hands off the road.

And exploring. And exploring. And we'll decide whether we want to do something based upon what our options are.

Ms. Cohen, if you could make sure that we have the dollar amount of what it would cost.

Just remember it's going to be estimates at this point.

And Jim and I have talked about this in length and I think that any part of the village still reflects on the village. So you're only as strong as your weakest link. So if it looks terrible over there, it's a reflection on the entire village. And I can tell you that the residents do want it again at what cost. So yeah, I would be in favor of kicking the can down the road and then potentially surveying not even potentially, surveying all 43 units, owners, and saying, you know, what do you guys want to do here? And this is what it would cost you. And this is what it's going to cost.

And we've done that as well. And so that's the thing, is that at some point, this is not going to be just predicting, unless the ownership's totally changed, this is not going to be something that people are going to line up for and say, I sign up. i'm just i'm kind of i'm looking through the crystal ball and the uh you know you had like i said everybody wanted them fixed very few people said you know we need to do this and work with the village and somehow figure out a way to get assessed for it you had some folks that were out there using cold patch and filling holes themselves but but you had a vast majority of them that believe it was not their responsibility to not want to have the additional cost for it you believe they need to be force-fed the medicine that's correct If it's our intent to be concerned, and rightfully so, about either safety issues, appearance issues, or both.

Got it.

Any other questions on this road? Anything else, sir?

Just a quick update. One thing we're looking at, and you'll see if you look into the detail as far as the long-range capital program, while we've always had a continuing annual neighborhood park improvement program where we assess the condition of the neighborhood parks and playgrounds in particular, and over a course of time as they get to the point of their useful life or we get to the point where some of the pieces are sold that the replacement parts aren't available, much like water treatment plant, a wastewater plant, we actually go in and put in new playground equipment. We're still doing that, but one of the things that we heard pretty loud and clear over the last couple of years, particularly at the visioning, has been now to also look at shade at those parks. So we're going to start in some cases maybe pushing back some of the playground replacement and focusing on looking at shade on a park-by-park basis. And one thing we'll probably look at this year is we have an initial cost proposal estimate to look at shade partially at Scott's Place. Scott's Place already having shade over a good chunk of it. The new swings that were installed as part of the expansion or the expansion area, we'd probably be looking at $100,000 on that. So you'll be seeing that coming before you in the...

Coming months to to look at doing that shade cover and over the next years Having a regular program putting shade in a different neighborhood parks When we say that we're not replacing Some of the playground areas and now we're gonna look at shade if there's a priority at a park that would need the replacement over shade Can we kind of mix it in?

We're not going to sacrifice safety for shade. But what you're going to see is maybe in an area, I mean, this isn't an exact science. We're not running formulas here. When we have a playground that's due for replacement, if we're one year on either side of that, targeted replacement date, I think we're still good. We're never going to leave a situation where you've got anything that violates or is running contrary to the playground safety guidelines. But we're going to not, maybe in some cases, and we were doing two playgrounds a year, we might do one playground a year and do a shade structure.

Okay.

That sounds good.

How many neighborhood parks and playgrounds do you have?

About 26. And all of them, the interesting thing is that as far as shade goes, while they don't all have shade, most of them don't have shade over the equipment. Out of that, I think only two of the smaller playground areas don't have an accompanying pavilion. The balance of them all have some sort of shade structure there, whether it's a pavilion, some kind of canopy that's there in place so that there is shelter, but just not over the playground equipment.

And forgive me because my mind wandered. Did you mention shade over the swings at Scott Place in this discussion? Okay. I had to respond to a work thing. Sorry. I have a second job that keeps my family fit.

I got to pull for that. Yes, I did. And that will be coming to you in the next couple of months. And with that, I'll bring Ms. Coates back out of the bullpen and we can talk traffic, schools, and start a school. One day.

Good afternoon, Mayor, Vice Mayor, Council. I'm just going to provide a very high level overview of the traffic operation. It's called Operation Safe Start, which we do every year with PBSO. And we've met with all the principals and a lot of the staff here have met with every principal. coordinate to go and make sure that our back to school operation is going to be a success. As we know, there's a lot of parents coming to schools that maybe not are familiar with the traffic plan. So this year, we are doing some things a little different with District 8. The traffic operation will commence on August 10th and go through August 21st. We will have dedicated deputies at every school during arrival and dismissal. Typically, the elementary schools are going to have two dedicated deputies. And at the middle school and high schools, well, really the middle schools are going to have three to four deputies. and high schools as well. And new this year is we'll have two additional floating deputies, which are going to help with helmet outreach and micromobility outreach at the schools. So that's new this year, and that was approved by Captain Adazio. A lot of the traffic and safety priorities that the principals have talked about is pretty consistent throughout the village. It could be either the illegal parking or the loading and unloading on roadways that presents, obviously, safety challenges for the pedestrians and violating our traffic control devices. So PBSO is going to be looking for that. Each of the schools kind of had their own unique issues that the good news is a lot of the deputies assigned to this operation are familiar with. So they will be aware of those. And if you have any specific questions on that, just let me know. But... Roadway construction, as Jonathan was mentioning with the CIP projects, we do anticipate some additional up staffing of deputies at New Horizons, Wellington Elementary, Polo Park, and Panther Run to make sure those traffic flow operations go smoothly. And we also provided the principals with the engineering update on those CIP projects so they could share with their parents. So we are making sure everyone's well informed and being good neighbors and communicating there. On the micromobility front and helmet safety, thanks Tanya and communications, we do have actually live today a micromobility page. The URL is wellingtonfl.gov slash micromobility. And that kind of outlines the ordinance that's up for final adoption coming up next week. And we also communicated that to the principals and they shared that with the parents as well. We also shared the flyer on the e-bike safety course and as well as helmet safety because that's going to be a big push as well. We know that's being violated throughout the school zone. So we asked the principals for their support there too on enforcing bicycle helmet safety. signage throughout the village. You might have already seen that around these hot spot areas that have where people are dropping off their students in the neighborhoods. We get a lot of uptick in resident complaints there. So those signs are out and we can enforce that through PBSO. We also use our COPs, which are great, our volunteer COPs to help kind of offset some of those parking issues and make sure people are staying in the school zone traffic lanes and following the correct path to drop off their students um we also did do a reminder for the principals to push out that the speed cameras are going to start enforcing again come monday so we we reiterated that and made sure that that was a friendly reminder as well to watch your speed throughout the village have any of the principals change their drop off or pick up routines in any way any No, I can't say that I've seen any changes there. You know, pretty typical drop-off patterns.

Okay. They have limited options.

Yeah, and we're working on just actually today, too, we're making sure we're checking in with New Horizons for the bike lane project. She definitely had some concerns, too, so we're working through that with her. I don't think anything's going to change there because it's pretty defined where their drop-offs are. Okay. Yeah, and that's kind of in a nutshell what we have going on. I sent an update there, but if you have any specific questions. We do see typically in the beginning, the first two weeks of school, it is a little chaotic. And we do the best to manage that. But as the after-school programs start, specifically the high schools have started that already. But you'll see that in the elementary school and middle school, these after-school programs We'll pick up kind of end of the month. And that provides a little more staggered release. So not everyone's being released at the same time. So that does help alleviate. And then PBSO does have a maintenance plan. So just because this operation's ending doesn't mean they go away. They have a plan to check on the schools throughout the year. So that's our plan. We'll keep you updated. We're sick to it. And they do provide situational awareness updates. So we'll be getting those as Monday morning and afternoon comes by. We'll know what's going on out there.

Thank you. Thank you.

Thanks, Nicole.

Thanks.

That's all we have for you this evening. Is there questions of any of the staff that are here or any who aren't here?

I've got nothing. You all good? Thank you. You good? I'm set. Thanks. And we are adjourned. Great job today.