Village Council - workshop

All right, we're going to call to order this village workshop for August 24th. We've got at least four topics to cover. Mr. Barnes, why don't you start off with number one?

All right, so we'll go ahead and get started. And just for kind of coming attractions, four items we have today are in the order that we're going to be hearing them. Traffic signal recommendation for Binks Forest Bent Creek will be first. Then we have the Alachua County... Gentlemen, who will be presenting on conservation easements and giving us a rundown of the basis behind the PowerPoint that we had an opportunity to look at and actually Mr. Stillings and Ms. Cohen met with him last week via Zoom to discuss those as well. Third item will be the discussion. We have more information to present to you on Via Veneto, Via Toscana for that area and ultimately how we proceed with those roadway improvements. This is just a preliminary first set of information to provide. And lastly, we'll wrap up with a brief presentation on Amendment 3 and what staff's been doing to date on that.

And with that, I turn it over to Mr. Reinswald to get us started. Thank you, Mr. Barnes. Good evening, mayor, vice mayor, council members. Tonight I have here with me Tricia Barr and Brian Kelly from Simmons & White to give you guys a brief presentation on the Binks Forest and Bend Creek traffic signal. I'm going to go through a brief rundown and history of the project from 2011 until now. and then I'll pass it off to them. So pretty quick, five or six minutes with me, and then I'll hand it off. To keep the discussion clear, we're going to separate this into three issues that have been blended together. Equipment reliability, the conventional signal warrants, and the suitability of a fully functioning signal system. So I'll start with the headline. I won't keep you guys waiting. We are going to recommend a 24-hour operation of this signal. And Simmons and White is going to explain to you why. But I'm going to, of course, give you a quick history of the project. Under the proposed condition, Binks Forest rest green. Bent Creek and pedestrian phases are served only when a vehicle or pedestrian is detected. Tonight, staff is asking council for direction on this. After we give the presentation, we'll ask you for direction on it. If council supports this approach, staff will return at a regular council agenda with a resolution stating that you support the 24-hour function of the signal, if we receive that direction.

All right, start over.

No going back.

No going back. Hi, everyone. To understand the issue, it helps to compare the two operating modes that are currently operating. One during school periods, the intersection operates as a normal red, yellow, green phase. And then off signal, or off times, on school days between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m., it operates as a normal light. And then any time that it's not a school day and outside of 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., it flashes red on Bent Creek Road approaches and yellow on the Binks Forest approaches. The intersection is the same, but unfortunately, when you pull up to it, the intersection, how you traverse the intersection is different for every time you pull up to it, depending on the time of the day. Simmons and White and I agree that that could be a safety issue for the residents coming out of the Bent Creek Roadway. So we hired them to do a line of sight analysis and gap analysis see if the 24-hour signal was feasible. A little bit of history on the project, going back to 2011. the palm beach county traffic engineer did a study 2011 that indicated that the mutcd warrants from 2011 were not met so they did not recommend that the signal go into full-time use sometime in 2018 and 2019 the signal actually defaulted into full-time use for about an undetermined amount of time but from what i can figure out is six months to a year And then when the county, I guess, figured that out, they reverted it back to school time use. So that goes to the 2020 warrant analysis where they looked at it again. The volumes and crash conditions were not met, so they did not recommend full-time usage. That happened again in 2023 and ultimately in 2026 as well. As recently as 2026, they've done a study. If you recall, in 2024, Dr. Mo and I came in. and went over the METCD warrants with council. And at the time, he recommended that the signal not go to full-time operation. And that had to do with the volumes of the cars and the number of crashes at the intersection. It did not take into account the line of sight analysis. So, going back to 2023, or excuse me, 2024, we approved, or you guys approved a $144,000 rebuild of the intersection signals. Those were done. Still had a little kerfuffle. the beginning of this year with the signals turning on for the first day of school that has been addressed so the reliability has been addressed with the signal and we'll also be coming back to you with some pedestrian improvements over the next couple months that actually simmons and white also designed So again, going back, we have four warrant studies that the county provided to us. They all indicate that the warrant was not met. We are not disputing those findings. But however, again, and I keep hammering this home, we're looking at it at a different level. angle. We're looking at this from a line of sight and gap analysis. So these reports themselves were all done based on the MUTCD. And actually, Brian will touch on the MUTCD warrants, because he believes that they would actually be warranted as well. But I'll let him speak to that. And just before I hand it off to Simmons and White, I wanted to give you the indication of traffic volumes. So from 2019 to 2025, you can see that there was a significant drop off in 2020, 2021 due to COVID. Then it steadily rose up, peaked in 2024. And then with the addition of the elementary school in Arden, it backed off a little bit. So our daily traffic is leveled off at the moment. Future growth is obviously going to change that. But we are, at the moment, leveled off. So I'll hand it over to Mr. Kelly now and Ms. Barr to talk about the warrants.

You can give it to Trish. I only have a couple slides that I'm going to give it to her. So thanks, Jonathan, for all that. And it's kind of nice being village consultant and on the other side for once. So I'm going to spend a couple minutes. I've probably explained this in a public hearing at some point how traffic signals are warranted, but I think it's worth mentioning again just to provide some additional context so you can kind of have the full grasp when making this decision. So signals are warranted based on what's called the Manual of Uniform Traffic Control Devices, We call it the MUTCD. It's a Federal Highway Administration publication. It's adopted by pretty much every local agency, from FDOT to Palm Beach County to everyone that I'm aware of. Within the MUTCD, there is a number of warrants that can be utilized to warrant a traffic signal. However, the reality is there's only a few that are most commonly used, and that is the ones I have on the screen here. I'll go through them. The eight-hour warrant is the most common. That's generally what Palm Beach County DOT generally only accept unless in certain circumstances. The eight-hour warrant means that the volumes on the road Both the major street, in this case, thinks forest, and the minor street, in this case, Bent Creek, have to be above a certain threshold for eight different hours of the day. So it's very common you have a traffic signal that may meet it for two hours, but not the full eight hours. In that case, the signal is not necessarily warranted. There's also a four-hour warrant, which sounds very similar. It just has to be met for four hours, but those volume thresholds are higher than the eight hours. Then there's the peak hour. This is only to be used in certain conditions, schools being one of them, where you have a very congested time, but only for a couple hours during the day. There's also a crash warrant. The crash warrant means that there has to be a certain number of crashes that are what's called correctable by a traffic signal within a time frame to warrant a traffic signal. So this is something the DOT and county will also commonly accept. So they look at the crash analysis a lot, and they look at the eight-hour warrant. There's also a pedestrian crossing warrant. So that is a number of pedestrians have to cross the street. over a certain time frame, and that can warrant a traffic signal. So traffic signals can improve operations and safety, but it is not always the case. And it's important to know this because I get asked about it a lot. They reduce those dangerous angle and left turn crashes. Those are the ones we call correctable by a traffic signal, the T-bones. However, anytime you install a traffic signal, you generally get an increase of rear-end collisions, which makes sense. You're now introducing a stop that was not there before that now is, so you generally get an increase in that. However, there's trade-offs, right? The angle crashes are typically much more dangerous than a rear-end collision. It doesn't always have to be that way, but that's typically the case. So that's the framework that I kind of want to start with on how traffic signals are warranted. So they can be a very good thing, but they're not necessarily the solution for everything. Now, this particular intersection, we already have a traffic signal there. So we're not warranting it for the first time. There's already a signal that's fully constructed there. So the MUTCD that I just talked about, it allows for traffic signals to operate in flashing mode like it is now. And during hours, it is not warranted. And this is common in Palm Beach County schools in different locations. So Wellington High School, Palm Beach Central, you name it, you'll see it all throughout Palm Beach County. They will actually have the signal running typically from 6 or 7 AM to 7 PM at night. Weekends, it's in flash. Summer, it's in flash. You're used to seeing that. They're allowed to do that. So the MUTC allows you to do that, but it doesn't require you to do that. Meaning once that warrant is met, you can have it in flashing operation for certain hours, or you can just have it on full time. It's really up to engineering discretion, engineering judgment. The county's policy, I think, typically makes sense. They have it run throughout the day for school. So for example, Wellington High School, that light is only serving Wellington High School. There's no need for it to be on at other times of the day. However, in this particular case, the signal's warranted, obviously, because of Binks Forest Elementary, but it's also serving three other residential communities, what, Hidden Creek, Bridalwood, Pine Trace, and also that commercial shopping center that's right there as well. So I look at this as... More akin to like Greenbrier in Greenview Shores, which is on all the time. I assume, I haven't actually done the study and counted there all the time. My guess is that's probably not warranted for eight hours throughout the day. It's warranted because of New Horizons, but obviously it serves a lot of other uses as well. So decision was made to leave it on. One particular, and Trisha is going to talk about more, when the signal becomes in flash mode, you now introduce sight visibility, and that has to be a concern. So when you have Wellington High School, the sight visibility is fine there. But when you go into flashing, it's now what we call a two-way stop control operation. When you're on that minor road on Bend Creek and you want to make a left or right, you have to make sure there are sufficient gaps on the road and you can see the vehicles before making that crossing turn. that when you have a fully operational signal, you don't necessarily have to do that because the light will turn green and stop the vehicles from going through on Binx Forest Drive. So there's a difference here than other traffic signals for that reason. So I'm going to go ahead and turn it over to Trisha, and I'll be happy to answer questions at the end.

One of the interesting things in Palm Beach County is that typically all our roads are 90 degrees and Wellington provides sort of a unique opportunity that's different than almost all of Palm Beach County. So we typically don't don't have to look at sight distance for a signal. So like Wellington High School, Polo Park, once we introduce if there's a signal there that's warranted for school time, you're not having to consider is there also a sight visibility issue. In Bank Creek coming into Banks Forest, it's actually on a horizontal curve and a vertical curve, which means the roadway is coming and bending down, and it's also curving into it. So it's kind of more like looking at someplace, say, in Western North Carolina, right? We're not looking at the typical 90-degree roads coming at each other that don't make it hard to see the sight distance. and so when i studied this i did not do i did not talk about warrants i only talked about it as an engineer who's looking at when you put a flasher in you are supposed to ensure that you allow for sight visibility for the cars and one of the reasons is is that we have to pull the stop bars back typically on a traffic signal um for variety of reasons um so the car they we have to consider that they'll pull up, but they are farther back. So it creates more of a decision tree. So we went ahead and looked at, with the curvature of the road and the gap selection window, what was happening. So this intersection is in a valley, and the road is curving away from it. It's a four-lane divided road, which we use to determine what the gap selection should be. We also consider this a 22-foot landscape median. There are trees and actually the curve of the road that affect the visibility and, as I mentioned, the horizontal vertical curve. And the roadway is posted at 40 miles per hour. The speed for 85th percentile is typically how you design something is 51 miles per hour. When we did the review, we only did it for 40. I'll go to the next slide. There should be 525 feet at 40 miles per hour. And at 50 miles per hour, 655 feet of visibility from the point where a car would be coming in where the driver can actually see the road. So how we determine that is AASHTO, which is another federal guideline. And also, MUTCD uses it too. somewhere about 14 and 1 half feet behind where the car's nose would be at the edge of the new traveling that they're trying to cross or enter into. So about 14 and 1 half feet back, that's where you strike this visibility triangle. And when you look to the left particularly, um that's why we have this picture up on the screen you can see about 410 feet so we're about 115 feet short of what you should be able to see and if you look in this picture i got this on google earth but you can just see the tip of a truck coming into frame and if you're a driver and you imagine looking there that's at about 400 feet so that's what you could see as a driver to make the decision to enter on this road And when we talk about visibility, we have to consider all things. Traffic poles, that there is at some times of the day people standing there, pedestrians, that there are signs, numerous signs here because of the school situation that there's ped poles. The controller in this case doesn't block the visibility, but the one thing that does block the visibility is just that the sight line goes through the property into... Well, actually, out of the right-of-way and into the property. The trees are blocking the sight line. And as you consider something, you can't consider anything behind the right-of-way that's in private property as visibility. In this case, if you're looking to the right to make a turn, this would be the west approach. To make a left turn, you're going to see trees that are in the median that are prohibiting your visibility as well as a ped pole could be pedestrians as well. So what happens, it's currently in flash if you drive up at any time. I think it's between 6.30 and 6.30 is how the school district does it. So anytime after 6.30 at night up till 6.30 in the morning, you have to pull up. Then you have to scan left and right if you're going to make a left turn. It's not as the... the visibility distance isn't quite as long for a right turn. But if you have to look left and right, then you have to determine that you're going to go into the intersection. Whereas if you were 24-hour actuated, the controller would detect you coming up. It would give you a very short, brief amount of time to get across the intersection and then give control back to the main line. And really, the actuation, if it's actuated for 24 hours, is going to be minimal. It's going to be like three or four, maybe five seconds at most of green time back into the yellow and back into the red. So you're not looking at this just randomly trying to give the side street service. It'll be detection. call on this. So it will detect you and then bring you a call and provide minimal impact on the main line.

It'll change when a vehicle is present on Bent Creek Drive? Yes. Okay. And you can actuate it by the buttons across?

Yeah, there's a there's a little loops on the ground and actually think for pedestrians. Yes And it'll work similar to well exactly like corcus Yeah, and like it it's same in like at the high school if a pedestrian walks up while it's in flashing and hits the ped button It'll give a call same thing, but just will remain the same

All right. And I hope we fully convinced you guys to support our staff decision to move this forward into a 24-7 operation.

And with that, we'll take any questions. Well, I encourage you guys to do this study and find a reason to activate this light 24-7. I drive this road multiple times a day, and I've come out of Bent Creek, and I understand their issue, and I'd like to see this thing active 24-7.

Yeah, thank you. I'm excited about this. My only concern, and I don't know if this was the county's concern, do we believe there'll ever be any backup onto Southern from that area?

so i'll answer that i will say no because remember this light is on during the busiest times already during the day so it's on from 6 30 to 6 30 so the peak hours during school days it's already on so this would only be it would only now be activated when traffic is less so i don't anticipate any further congestion from from it okay thank you and it'll still default green On to Binks, yes. It would only turn green on Bent Creek once it's activated. And even still, there'd be a minimum amount of time that it's always on a Binks forest so that it's not constantly changing.

The primary legitimate reason for moving into a 24-7 signal is because the visual distance is impaired? Correct. Restricted?

I have a question for those that are watching. Can you please talk a little bit about what warrant, the word warrant means in this type of topic?

Sure. So I guess there's a couple things. Number one, I spent some time on that first slide kind of going over when you actually warrant a traffic signal. It's already been determined that this signal is warranted. There's a signal installed there now. So that is not necessarily in dispute. Now it's a matter of engineering discretion whether it's on as it currently is for 12 hours only during school days or on at other times throughout the day or on the weekends in the summer. And that is where we believe, based on the site visibility and for safety reasons, it makes sense. And it's our engineering opinion to have it on for the rest of the time. did that answer. I apologize.

I just want to make sure when we use the word want what does that mean to those that are listening fair fair point.

Yes, it justifies as another necessity engineering justification.

The county warrants to detail says it's not met for the 2 correctable crashes in 2026. What is their threshold.

What's the number it so it's it's actually. It's a moving threshold, actually. It's based on there's a threshold when there is over one year versus over three years and also the type of crash. But typically, it used to be, I think, five crashes over a 12-month time span needed to be angle or left turn. It's actually been reduced now. I think it's four is the current one. I'm looking at Tricia. You can correct me. I think it's four crashes within 12 months that are those types of crashes, the angle or left turn.

okay and we've already rebuilt and modernized this light so to turn it on 24 7 cost us what zero zero that's exactly the answer thank you however we are coming back for um a crosswalk improvements that's yeah but that's just separate got it okay at bank creek yes okay So we're good, everyone? 24-7? Yes?

Yes.

I like it. Yes. Yes. Okay. We'll bring back a resolution for approval. Okay. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. It was a really good PowerPoint, by the way. Nice. Dumbed it down for us. I like that.

We need that.

Next. Mr. Stills can get us started. We're going to be discussing conservation easement, and we have a presenter on Zoom, hopefully.

We should have Mr. Kaye with the Alachua Conservation Trust on Zoom.

Good afternoon, everyone. Can you all hear me all right? Hey, Tom. Hey, wonderful. Appreciate the mayor and vice mayor and the council members allowing me to participate today via Zoom.

mr k were you going to run the powerpoint from your end or were we doing it from our end um i can do it for mine if that works all right for you all can do that now oh we'll start there from the beginning

Can you all see that? Got it.

Yes.

Wonderful. Well, I appreciate it. As was mentioned, I'm Tom Kim, the executive director of Alachua Conservation Trust. We're based out of Gainesville, Florida. We work primarily in 22 counties across the state, mostly in north central Florida. But we do have projects across the state. So we actually hold conservation easements as far west as Okaloosa County and the Panhandle properties even over in St. Johns County on the Atlantic Coast. And we've had some projects dealing with nesting sea turtle habitat as well down closer to your neck of the woods. in monroe county in the keys as well so i'm working on there i've been in this position for 13 years prior that i was in litigation for eight years i've also been adjunct law professor at the university of florida teaching primarily on this matter and transactional conservation law dealing with real estate finance and taxation So they have been brought in and talked to you a little bit about conservation easements and how they might be a tool that might be used by the village in helping to sort of conserve the rural character of the community and protect, you know, the agricultural environment. interest down there which is primarily um you know horses um so just kind of run through basically uh if you got questions feel free to stop me but i'm going to run through just sort of the basics so the general idea with the conservation easement is it is an overlay over an existing piece of property and so they're voluntary this is not a situation where you might have mn domain or regulatory uh type of situation which some people might be used to where maybe a public utility has to come through or a natural gas pipeline like the sable Trail which we've dealt with so it's a volunteer is something that individual landowners enter into freely the second component of that is it's perpetual means forever so once it's put into place it can't it can't come off that piece of property The third component of that, it runs with the land, basically meaning that if the mayor decided to put this onto his property, decided to donate a conservation easement or sell a conservation easement on it, if you decide to then sell that property, that easement will continue to be in play regardless of whether you owned it, your children, or someone else that you sold it to owned it. It would continue to stay with the property. I think another thing that really makes easements something that landowners are interested in entering into is you can customize them. Basically meaning it's not a one size fits all model. I mean certainly there's some communities that have built ones that sort of like take it or leave it. But generally speaking, most of the programs, whether they're state programs, municipal ones, or donated conservation easements, they're customizable. So you can change what the terms are, what might be prevented on a property or prohibited, what might be... reserved or kept by that landowner be able to continue to do on that piece of property the main sort of benefits of conservation easements really at the heart of them there's I often say there's sort of three things are trying to do one of the three is really not relevant to where you all are at but one is limit development future development on that piece of property that might go into conservation easement and Limit subdivision so you know preventing say a larger farm that might be 40 60 80 acres And being broken up even if it's permissible under you know local zoning or planning laws to be broken up into smaller pieces And the third one which I don't list there just because it's really in this case not relevant But worth noting one of the big ones usually is trying to prevent mining activity from half it on that on that piece of property As I noted at the outset, one of the things with conservation easements is that the landowner retains the title, so they continue to have the right to own it. As I note there, manage it, keep control over it. They pay the taxes, the homeowner's insurance. all those things the right to sell it mortgage it all those things but certain things are you know restricted off that piece of property including like the right to build more or subdivide that piece of property going into the future So why do this? I think this is oftentimes thought of as sort of the conservation values or the public benefits. And I'll get into why those are a little bit relevant in here in just a little bit. But generally, what's the rationale? What's the public benefit? Which is ultimately the reason both the federal government and state governments have allowed conservation easements to go and play. Down where you all are at, one of the big things is obviously keeping horse farms as horse farms, keeping that whole rural economy associated with that, that agricultural community associated with that viable. Food's probably not as big as a component down there in Wellington itself. But certainly keeping the polo and horse industry going and all the other parts, as you all know, all the other parts of the economy that are necessary for that, including things like the farm and building supplies, the providers of grain and hay for farms. and everything that's sort of ancillary related to that. Even things like, people don't necessarily think about it, but if you've got horses, you do. Horse trailers, the industries that are associated with that, that are maintaining those things and having those things available there. So other things you can always think about is protecting your waterways, you know wellington backs up basically to the everglades so that's obviously important on preserving wildlife uh and and the habitats for them and then another thing you can oftentimes do with conservation easements you can still have in some cases the ability to develop. So you can reserve certain development rights, but you might cluster them. And we oftentimes think about more in the setting where there's like a regulatory conservation easement, where municipalities might have a situation where they might want to set aside like, you know, you have a hundred acre piece and You're going to allow development there, but you want to ensure that the most environmentally sensitive pieces are set aside so you might protect those parts of it, put them under a conservation easement. We sometimes see this with homeowner associations as well. They'll protect a certain area, cluster that for the community's benefit. and then allow maybe more intensive development around that as a result of that. So that's one of the other things you'll see that happen. Generally speaking, it's happened more with, as I noted, regulatory conservation easements, or what we call set-a-sizer exactions, where it's done as a result of getting, say, a development permit. And a lot of those things I just laid out from a conservation value standpoint, public benefits, they track what comes out of what is the IRS code 170H, which is sort of the qualified conservation contributions. So as a result, if someone donates a conservation easement, they can get a tax benefit from that. Therefore, a lot of times when you're talking about what the values of the of the conservation easement you try to mimic what is in the irs code so that if you're going to do a deduction and it gets audited by the irs you're going to meet those standards and it's going to pass muster and be able to take that tax deduction And that kind of leads into my next slide here. Why would someone want to give up the development rights on their property beyond some of the intrinsic ones I just mentioned, the ecological benefits of them? And there's also financial benefits from it. And there's really threefold. So I just mentioned the IRS code. 178 that's what sort of you know covers all the things associated conservation easements so there is the ability to take that difference between say the value of properties i'm using rough numbers here but say a property is worth a million dollars after you give up the various development rights on a property given the high development pressure there might be near an area certainly that's the case in wellington you know the value of the property might be a half a million dollars afterwards that difference of a half a million dollars could be taken off assuming you get a qualified appraisal, could be taken off as a federal income tax deduction. So we don't have any state income tax, so we don't have a state tax credit that's associated with our conservation easements, but certainly you could take a federal income tax deduction as a benefit. People with very high net worths, particularly who might be thinking about estate planning, have states higher than the value necessary to not be... you know, beneath the threshold there. So if you have an estate that's say more than, I know exactly what the number these days is, 14, $15 million, it may make it easier to pass land on to other heirs as a result of it by reducing that value because if a property's even a bigger number, say it's $10 million and you donate a conservation easement or sell one, you know, you reduce that value of that property down to say $5 million, then you might get below a threshold where you might be hit with estate taxes. So some people do for that. And then finally, I think the other thing that you've probably seen a lot of news here, the state has had a very robust program historically, both through Florida Forever and more recently with agricultural lands, with the Rural and Family Lands Program run through the Florida Department of Agricultural and Consumer Services, cash payments for those conservation easements. There's state programs, there's federal programs through the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Natural Resource Conservation Service, through the Farm Bill program, there's a variety of them, I won't get into necessarily all of those, that do provide cash payments. And then probably more realistically, given the size of farms down over you all are at in Wellington, you thought about creating a local program here in Alachua County. We have wild spaces and public places that will provide funding to purchase conservation easements on people's properties, oftentimes matching state funding or federal funding to reduce the local municipality's contribution to that. So there is the potential for doing that. Marion County is also looking at doing that, where I reside, at doing a bond, or pardon me, a ballot initiative this fall to create a bond. So there's a number of ways of doing that. Some places use sales tax. Some places do a bonding instrument. And in some cases, people also use millage on their property taxes. And there's more options than this. But the fourth one that's kind of common is sort of a bed or tourist tax. communities will tax their visitors to provide the funding to purchase conservation easements or a portion of a conservation easement on a farm or piece of property. So I mentioned 178, that's the larger IRS code associated with this. The enabling statute that allows conservation easements to happen in the state of Florida is 70406. I put up just portions of that. It sort of recites what I kind of put into bullet points there. But basically the idea that the reasons for protecting uh are using the conservation systems and what you're trying to protect there you can kind of see the language there which really tracks the irs code well there if you see that retaining land or water is predominantly in natural scenic open agricultural or wooded conditions and it kind of continues on that language is very similar to the language you'd see in the irs code that's associated with this And then I just kind of highlight the point that these are perpetual, meaning they're run forever and an undivided interest in the property. And it runs with the land. So I think it's important to kind of point that. And so every state in the union bar North Dakota has this enabling statute that sort of tracks the IRS code and making conservation easements permanent. Massachusetts was the first state to have this and then everyone kind of followed suit. I noted North Dakota, their conservation easement enabling statute, I believe only lets it run for 99 years and then you cannot renew it. So theirs doesn't go for basically, what ours is like 365 years, but theirs is 99 years. wouldn't necessarily run through all this uh happy to if folks want to but just want to lay out like what the process of putting a conservation easement looks like on there it's a bit like you know purchasing a piece of property um you know kind of running through it except for the fact that the landlord is going to continue to hold on to it right and so there's a whole process of negotiating unlike an option contract which you might have if you were selling a conservation easement you negotiate in the terms of that conservation easement. And so there's that whole part of that process. But a lot of the other stuff is very similar as far as the due diligence you might do on a piece of property, including title work that anyone that's bought a house knows you gotta go through that process. Possibly a boundary survey. We don't necessarily always do a boundary survey unless there's an issue with like, we think there's an encroachment or a boundary dispute. Otherwise, we can usually rely on the existing boundary survey. particularly in an area like wellington where a lot of these are probably in a pud or something like that so there may already be some restrictions and probably well laid out lots it may not be as necessary and again i think if one other part of it we do due diligence wise like we do with the conservation acquisition is an environmental uh site assessment like a phase one checking for that again unless there was a real concern we probably wouldn't be concerned about that unless we knew there was an extensive cattle operation. There was some concern that there might have been a cattle bat at one time or something along those lines. There's some other agricultural practices where we might be concerned. But I think one of the things is laying that out. Generally speaking, conservation easement done in six months or less. I've knocked them out. in 45 days, 30, 45 days when someone's really got it rushed and they're trying to get a tax deduction in a given year. So that's possible. But usually you want six months. We're the contractor for Alachua County as well, helping facilitate their program. And generally speaking, as you can imagine with municipalities, that process takes a little bit longer and it's usually more like a nine to 12 month process when we're doing conservation easements on their behalf. And then I just note on that back end there, know one one component is uh obviously they're forever so one of the components is a third party whether that's a municipality like the village of wellington or palm beach county or the state of florida or the the water management district or an organization that's uh conservation oriented like act uh ends up holding that conservation easement and there is a uh responsibility to sort of ensure that whatever you've put in on that easement is stayed that way and that some somebody didn't suddenly stick 20 condos on there. So there's an annual monitoring process associated with that where we send a letter out to the landowner and we ideally meet up with the landowner and then do a visit once a year on the property to ensure that they're continuing to do what they said they were going to do with the thing and also make sure that there's not some issue with a neighbor. You're much more intensely developed around there, so you're probably not going to have some of the problems we have up here where someone cuts into the forest, not realizing their boundary, and puts a fence where they shouldn't be. But oftentimes, when we usually have a violation of a conservation easement, it's usually with the neighbor and not the actual landowner who donated or sold the conservation easement. And I'm trying to stay on time here for y'all. One of the things I was asked to sort of touch on real quickly, earlier this year, Senate Bill 686 passed. That was dealing with the Agricultural Enclave Statute. Governor DeSantis signed that into law on April 20th, 2026. And that went into law on July 1st, 2026. And it basically gives us an 18-month window that sort of changed the requirements around the existing Florida Agricultural Enclave Statute, which is 163.3162. And it allows to sort of expedite, or I guess streamline the certification process for properties being put into agricultural enclaves. And this is really focused on agricultural lands that are sort of surrounded by urban development and allows them to bypass sort of traditional comprehensive planning amendment requirements for residential, commercial, industrial development. And the focus really is to qualify for these, and you kind of see this laid out there, It's been in agricultural use for at least five consecutive years. It's owner-controlled by one person or a couple, so it's not some kind of multi-conglomerate or corporation that's holding on to it. I oftentimes think of it as you've got 75% or you cover on three sides by development around you. And that public services are already available. So do you have internet and utility, like water and electric running to the property? And so it's easy to get that in there. You're not going to be blasting down three or four miles of rural roads to get to that site. and be outside of excluded areas. So up here we have strategic ecosystems. So if you had a property that had strategic ecosystems that overweigh by the county, you probably wouldn't be able to do that. And so one of the thoughts is this might be a way, if a property had conservation easement, one, it wouldn't qualify as an agricultural enclave property, and two, it may prevent other properties around it from going into an agricultural enclave. I'd note that the legislature put this in for, right now, 18 months to have this sort of bypass. So I think that was done for a couple different reasons. And happy to discuss maybe what the rationale for that was for one reason or another. But it's going to sunset. I think one of the reasons for that was, one, to see how much demand was there for this. And then also sort of prevent potential litigation. Say, well, look, it's not forever. It's just for this brief period of time. And then we're going to close the door and then reassess the situations. So that's kind of the background on that. I put that slide up here. I said when I spoke with Tim and Lori and others this past Friday, I think one of the things if you're looking at a program like this and whatever it may look like, and there's a lot of different ways you could build a program or sort of... know cheerlead it for back but black a better way of doing that encourage others i guess is a way to think about it uh maybe do some outreach and encouraging maybe some of your your larger landowners down there and doing something with conservation easements i think ultimately being uh that one of the things you need to do is is get the feedback of of the citizens through a series of public meetings like this, and also maybe have some charrettes and specifically inviting people, particularly at times when they're available, so that they can give their input in what a program might look like and what the appetite for that might be. And with that, I'm free to any questions you all might have for me.

It was a lot.

I usually taught that in about 12 hours, you know, just to give you an idea what that normally looks like, yeah.

I mean, these are voluntary steps taken by property owners to put a conservation easement on their property to get arguably a tax benefit and also prevent future development. What role would Wellington have in putting a, helping someone put a conservation easement on their property? Would we have to pay them for it? I mean, how would this work? What's our role in this process?

Yeah, I think that's a great question, and I think there's a lot of different, you know, if you had a decision tree, there's a lot of different ways you could go with that, right? I mean, you could consider just a simple thing of saying, hey, we like this idea, and it seems like there's community interest in it, and maybe it's just helping an outside entity or working with Palm Beach County, if there was some synergy there, and just doing outreach and encouraging that, maybe hosting some meetings to get people to just free donate conservation easements or look at the possibility of seeing if anybody down there would qualify for one of the state or federal programs. That's one vein of going to it. We think this is a good idea, but we don't have the resources for it. I think the second way you could go down a decision tree is say, hey, we're really interested in this. This is something we want to do. As I mentioned, like Marion County, Alachua County, Volusia County, Sarasota County, Lee County, a number of municipalities, primarily counties are usually doing this, but go down that route and we're going to consider creating some funding source to to do a program to purchase conservation easements on people's properties or at least do a bargain sale right so if an easement's worth a half a million dollars we'll we'll kick in 25 percent of that and then they can donate the rest of it or find another program that would match that funding right um you know alachua county is an example when they're doing if they're environmentally sensitive conservation easements through their traditional program they pay the the full like 50 often an easement is worth anywhere from 30 to 70 percent of the value of the property depending on how restrictive it is and how much development pressure is on it but generally speaking just rough numbers make things easy today let's just say it's 50 in an environmentally sensitive property they would pay the full you know say 500 000 on their on their agricultural land easements they made the decision that they're not going to do more than like 25 percent um so of that value of that fifty percent value so it's like half that so instead of kicking in five hundred thousand dollars they'd be willing to do two hundred fifty thousand dollars and then they gotta find money either from the water management district the state uh in a federal source or if there's private dollars available although it's hard to get private dollars for conservation easements to pay for that other part they will or get the landowner to donate that other portion so they might get 250 000 and donate the other 250 000 So that's another path that you could consider. And I know that there's, you know, many different municipalities do different ways of generating that revenue. You know, as a small municipality, I mean, being, you know, if I'm sitting there and being your lawyers, I'm going to say like, that's going to be, I don't know your budget and dig into all that, but that's a bit of a heavier lift. from your community to do but you know one if and taxes are really being driven by you know the county not by you all unless you can correct me on that from from my um sales tax standpoint you can't i don't think you can do that unilaterally on your own so you know that's sort of maybe off the table bed tax might be an option uh you know millage may be an option but again that'd be something you have to work out with the county as well thanks tom go ahead

Mister Barnes we have not attempted to do anything of this nature correct in the past or have we crossed this path before so as the village we have not there has been some community work in the past where there was an effort to set up a private land trust and from what I understand from the folks that were trying to organize it was not. widespread interest in the land trust both either on the provision of property or losing some of the property rights and the mr k is correct in that uh basically you're you're down to three options you're either looking at a private entity like a land trust The village doing it or the county doing it. The county did something similar in the Ag Reserve, you know, with some success as far as purchasing development rights in the Ag Reserve to keep properties in agriculture production. Also, he's also correct in that We really don't have the option to do any kind of local option sales tax without going through the county. We can't do that on our own as a municipality. And similarly, any distribution of bed tax funds would also be done through the county through the Tourist Development Council.

to address the Vice Mayor's question more directly. Ten years ago, before I got on council, I worked with Annabel Garrett to create an open land foundation to try to accomplish this exact same thing to find people who are willing to either put a conservation easement on their property or donate funds to a foundation that would allow the group to purchase property and then put an easement on it. And there was zero traction to get that done because everyone likes the idea until it comes to their property to take the value off their property. Even with the tax incentives, it wasn't enough for anybody.

I think one thing to note related to that is that I think in some cases, while there's been success in other locations throughout the state and actually around the country for this, is that particularly the type of agricultural use that we have here, which is sequestering, not typical agricultural production, many of those properties already benefit from the ag classification. And as a result, the tax benefits are not as attractive because they're already seeing a considerable savings on their assessments based on the ag classification. So that's also something where if you have environmentally sensitive land or land that has other development potential but without the benefit of the ag classification, the tax benefits are far more attractive.

That's an important point that's really important to touch on, the fact that I didn't really bring it up from a property tax standpoint because really two reasons. One, in many cases, farms already have that ag exemption, and it's as good or better than the exemption they might get from the state on their property taxes. If you have a property that's less than 40 acres, you have to go to the Acquisition and Restoration Council in Tallahassee to basically ask to have a Get around that 40 acre rule. So when you got to qualify for that Avalon tax exemption under Florida statute 196 I don't know the subset but 196 is that that that part of the forest statute on that and then they're gonna look at two things They're gonna look at though. It sort of doesn't meet a delineate state priority And then also look at that what I was laying out the beginning is it hitting certain, you know conservation public benefits As part of that as well. So they're gonna look at that and you may or may not get that and we've had some farmers in different parts of the state where they've gotten both the ag exemption and went to the county property appraiser and got a reduction after they put the easement on there but there's really no guarantee and that's why I didn't even put it on the slide because probably in most cases down where y'all are at there may not be that many farmers over 40 acres that we'd be talking to.

Question?

So Mr. K in addition to essentially donating their land they'd have to create their own trust at you you were indicating upwards of a quarter million half million dollars to create the trust and if that's coming from a tax base that we don't have um that would be privately funded to create a trust to donate their own land

So, yeah, just think about that a little bit. I actually had a different slide. I should have kept that one in there. But what you're talking about is, so can I just use the model of a million dollars? If we can just simple, easy numbers. What I'm saying is, you know, you might put a conservation easement on that property. And the property before the fair market value is a million dollars. After the easement is put on there, it's worth a half a million dollars. That's the part you either donate or sell. And what is happening up here, like in Alachua County as an example, and what they're also looking to do in Marion County as well right now is a landowner would donate half that half a million dollars and take that as a tax deduction, right, $250,000. They're not coming out of pocket for that, but that means they're not getting paid for that, and they would then use that to take it off their federal income tax deductions, and the other $250,000 would get paid in from whatever that funding source is, whether that's a local funding source or a state or federal funding source.

So you referred a couple of times to Alachua County and Marion County. I'm looking at the map. Those are very rural, very ag. Do you have any examples where this has been viable in municipalities?

Well, I mean, we're doing conservation easements in and around Ocala, in and around Gainesville. I realize it's not exactly the same thing, but getting much more urbanized. Sarasota is doing it as one example. I think that's probably one of the closer ones because you think about Sarasota being you know, pretty urbanized there, but then the areas further out are rural, and they're certainly doing it down there. Lee County's got a program. I should have pulled up the numbers from Trust for Public Land because they run a lot of ballot initiatives on these, but I believe at this point there is two... either 22 or 27 counties have active uh conservation programs not all of them have you know ag conservation easements as component but quite a few of them do some of them are active reactor or more like urban park things but a lot of them have a have a an agricultural component to them thank you anything else

you tom appreciate your insight it's very helpful thank you you're most welcome thanks tom

back to you sir all right that'll bring us to our next item which is the castanella foresta uh community which is off of wellington trace via veneto and via tuscana and uh mr rhinesville is coming back to the table to run us through you know we we discussed this briefly at our last workshop and um just have prepared some additional information that actually we've been working on probably since 2021 Right.

I think we recognize the road's a mess. It's a disaster. I mean, we can speed through that part of it. We understand this is not a good growth.

We put a finer point on it to give you an idea cost-wise what's entailed. And then once we get a, you know, I want to make sure that everybody understood the relative scope of what we'd be undertaking, the balance of the additional work that we have to then do is to determine the appropriate approach on how to do that, assuming that it's council's consensus and direction to keep going forward with some type of a intervention, we'll call it, given that those are private roadways still. And we generally, as a matter of law and practice, don't maintain or construct private roadways. But I'll have Mr. Reinshold run through the presentation briefly, and then we can answer some questions and kind of look at the next steps. OK. Sure.

GOOD EVENING AGAIN. AS MR. BARNES SAID, THESE ROADS ARE PRIVATE. THE TECHNICAL SOLUTION TO THIS IS PRETTY EASY AS FAR AS ENGINEERING IS CONCERNED, REMOVE AND REPLACEMENT. WE ESTIMATE BETWEEN $450 AND $750 FOR THE COST, AND THE WILD DIFFERENCE IN THE COST SHOWN THERE IS UTILIZING AN ANNUAL CONTRACT FROM OUR ANNUAL VENDORS, WIN&SON'S, USING THEIR NUMBERS THAT THEY HAVE. laid out for us under their contract, and also to go out to private bid and have a contractor come out and do it. So either way, whichever way we skin that cat, it's still going to be pretty costly. These are the limits of the roadway. So we have Via Veneto and Via Toscano. Shown in red there is the area that would be improved. And if you notice, the limits of it stop at the entrance of, I forgot the name of that road, Old Country, I believe. These pictures are from today. So we made a point to go out there today and update our pictures to show exactly what's going on out there. We have some drainage blockage. That's right at the corner of Via Veneto. Also at the corner of Via Veneto and the northern entrance are several areas that have been patched and need to be replaced. And of course our ponding area that continues to grow on a yearly basis out there and plenty of asphalt break up. that's happening out there. There is, believe it or not, on Via Toscana, there is quite a long section that seems to be salvageable. But we would need to do additional engineering analysis in the form of geotechnical cores and get an engineer's judgment on that from a geotechnical firm to see if that would work. If that's the case, that price could go down significantly. But at least Via Veneto and the first, say, 200, 300 feet of Via Toscana on both sides will need to be fully reclaimed and refurbished, along with quite a bit of curbing that would need to be replaced. And as Public Works has mentioned to us previously, cleaning of the entire drainage system as well. So looking back on it again, a lot of drainage, a lot of exposure in the surface and the subsurface. Quite a bit of damage on the roadway. All that patching was done by the residents themselves, we believe. I believe. Okay. I know Public Works has not done that. Thanks Bruce.

He says absolutely not.

Not my work, not my work product. I think they do this one. Yeah.

So what are our options?

Well, the option here for construction. I'm sorry. I think that was a question for Jim. No, go ahead. Keep going with construction. It was. I think we're skipping ahead a bit.

It was more on the financial side. Go on.

OK. So two options. And I do think there's going to be the ability to do that for a portion of the roadway. One would be just a standard mill and overlay on a portion of the road, which is significantly cheaper than this option here. The second option is to take the road completely out, take the asphalt, take about eight inches of the subgrade out, Take it out completely between the curbs, bring in clean base rock, compact what's there, stabilize it, bring in the base rock, grade that out, and then put the asphalt on top of it. That's really the only fix here.

does it require does it require sewer replacement at the same time or how do you how do you clean the sewer as you explained earlier um they're gonna have to be camera yeah so it's actually in that sanitary sewer this is drainage stuff or you need to pick up a pipe and replace a pipe or well we need to camera those um so first the first section what they would do is uh is clean them out then they would camera them um to inspect them to see if they needed to be replaced

Typically, we don't replace residential pipes. We would, what we call is a slip line. So they actually go in there with a fiber form that coats the inside of the pipe and seals it from infiltration. And those typically last 100 years. At least that's what they say.

How long is a road supposed to last?

Roads typically last 10 to 15 years. 15. 15 now with the property taxes.

Going back to Councilwoman Silvestri's question as to how do we go about this, ultimately the first decision has to be made is that we would intervene in the process because traditionally Again, doing anything on private roadways is not something we would do. So to do that, you've got a couple of different options, and that's where, you know, first we need to make the decision to intervene. But the process and Ms. Quickle and her finance folks and Ms. Cohen and Ms. Bosch on the legal side would have to determine the best approach. But you can either do an assessment through Chapter 170 of the Florida statutes. And that's a one-time assessment that basically would fund the project and allow the residents to pay that over time. Or you would handle it as an assessment through the Acme Improvement District, which would require creating a subunit of development within Acme. And that allows for the process not only to fund the initial improvement, but then to also fund the continuous maintenance. Because that would be one thing where after you commit the funds and the residents still have to pay for that, ultimately it's still a private roadway. And in 15 years, or if you even extend it longer, because certainly this hasn't been worked on in 15 years, more than 15 years, You'd be creating the same situation in the future if it's not maintained. The unit of development allows for the continual assessment beyond just paying for the actual improvement to do that. Generally speaking, I think preliminarily based on the numbers Mr. Reinsvold threw up there as far as the range, let's say from 450 to 750. And you generally do the payout, the loan cycle for the life cycle of the improvement, which is the 15 years. It ends up being about $1,000 or almost $1,800, depending on which construction process you go through, whether it's the 450 or the 750 per property owner per year. And that's handled in 15 years. Okay. that's similar to how in the past we've done if you've been on big blue trace the wall on the west side of the road that starts around amesbury and goes to just uh shy of uh wheelchair village was actually done as an assessment of the residents in that community and in that case they actually did a calculation of the benefits depending on where you were located within those neighborhoods and that was the percentage of how your assessments were determined in this case that would be something again would be particularly if it's done as a 298 project uh an acme unit development project you determine the benefit based on your location within the community uh if you look back at actually if you can flip back to the original aerial That entrance road is actually Forest Club Drive. That's the driveway that ties into Wellington Trace on the, we'll make it easy, the left side, the north side of the property. And so technically, the original Casanella Foresta HOA was one of three HOAs for a larger project. Casanella Foresta, which were these multifamily units located on Via Toscana and Via Veneto, you have monterey on the lake which is the single family community on the west side east east side of the property and and then you have the forest club apartments technically if you look at the plat for the overall projects, that entrance apron going to, extending past the entrance of Monterey on the Lake and to the entrance of Via Toscana is actually owned by the HOA and there are portions since it serves Forest Club, Monterey on the Lake and Via Toscana. So when we look at those things as far as the cost and similarly you've got a parking court on Via Veneto, which is on the west side of the property. On Via Veneta, there's a parking court that actually only serves the properties immediately fronting on that parking court. You see that kind of island in the middle, and you've got the red pavement on both sides. The pavement on the west side is the area that... uh is the parking court that again you'd have to calculate since it doesn't really serve anybody else in the community you'd adjust the cost so each property owner is assessed differently based upon it it could be i mean you could make it as simple as possible and say everybody gets to assess the same but you could go down to considerable detail and look at really the the benefit and the different benefit ratios that each of the properties are benefited by uh and it would adjust it it still would not make that big of a difference given the size of the project but it still would potentially be a little bit different for those properties as well as addressing the costs related to forest club drive if any work is necessary there and what kind of solution is there for the parking situation on via tiscana as you guys were out there today i'm sure you saw multiple cars that are parked on the street right up against yeah so i think uh you know it's one of those things to i think one of the first things we would need to do is just go ahead and acknowledge that there's a parking issue there as opposed to saying that we don't allow on-street parking. And one of the things we looked at actually with Mr. Stillings and his team and Jonathan and his team previously was that possibly if we were to be involved and intervene as far as getting it paved and then redoing the roadway to actually look at a minimal change. It might be major for people that live there, but it'd be a change to the traffic circulation and create a one-way loop in a one-way process on Via Toscana so that then you'd have enough pavement to actually have safe travel for the roadway and enough room to actually have on-street parking. And you could actually have coordinated on-street parking where maybe everybody's facing the same direction and that type of thing, as well as also making it more of a uniform approach to the look of the frontage of the property.

Was there a consideration for that, I hate to take out green space, but that green space along Via Veneto and the west side of Tuscana?

I think I may have been the only one that suggested that a few years back, but folks really like some of the material that's in there. That was actually looked at to make that into some kind of a common parking area. But ultimately, since that's beyond the initial scope, that would be something that I would think would be something that the residents would need to at least weigh in on. I wouldn't necessarily, if we were going into this strictly as a mitigation measure to address the potentially safety conditions with a roadway, I wouldn't add on to that project given that that would considerably change the scope as opposed to just the traffic circulation. And the dollar amount. which might not.

Okay.

We discussed last time what the different mechanisms available would be for us to try to come in there and remediate this problem. And I think we've discussed what the problem is in more detail, but what are those, there were like two or three different methods we could have used to come in there and do that.

Well, as far as the actual funding, it's either setting it up as an ACME unit or going through the chapter 170 assessment process those are the ways that we would be able to assess the property now the precursor to that is going to involve some coordination from a legal perspective that that needs to be looked at assuming that we want to keep looking going forward is to determine is there is there a companion um whether it's a you know code issue whether it's a it's some other type of a process that runs concurrent with this that that is the impetus for us to do that or if we're just looking at it which Mr. Rheinsholtz reviewed from a public safety standpoint given that we're looking at we have utilities and water and water sewer and drainage in the area to make sure we protect our utilities as well as for public safety purposes for emergency vehicle access.

So if we don't go the assessment route is this no longer a private road is it?

no it's still it's still a uh i mean we would be setting precedent uh i'm not an attorney i'm not even gonna pretend to i'm not gonna i don't even look at this boss right now but but we we really do not want to be in a situation where we start the process of maintaining or reconstructing private roadways that we don't own because the line would form at the door and would never stop between hoas that would want to unload properties for us to maintain. You've got private roadways that are not village roadways and rustic ranches. And the list goes on. And this was a subject of considerable discussion in the last legislative session where there was actually a bill that made it pretty far away through the process that would allow HOAs to just unilaterally sunset themselves and basically at that point leave the common area maintenance, including roadways, to the local government. Sure, why not?

of the city has a great so your recommendation is to do the assessment yes okay mr. Barnes what kind of interaction have we had with those group of residents that are there how do they feel about the situation because obviously there's no HOA no active owner or maintenance entity I mean basically they're just living there with this issue that they've got another yards

Correct. We had a considerable amount of work going back to 2021, 2022, and we haven't had anything recently. And that's why we're just looking at it again, because clearly in just, what, four years since the last time we were in there and meeting with the residents and looking at the situation, the roads have gotten worse. And there's only so much you can do with cold patch and residents hand tamping cold patch into the different holes. in roadway areas. So generally speaking, I think the residents certainly have a desire to see the roads fixed. There are several of them that believe that it is the village's responsibility regardless. Just as a footnote to that, from our research so far, we've determined that the HOA was voluntarily dissolved back in 2003. uh maybe a little bit sooner than that and ultimately you know we were not a part of that process and part of that decision process um so uh i think ultimately they'd like to see them reconstructed roadways reconstructed however uh there's clearly never going to be 100 agreement on who's responsible to pay the assessment process one of the items that even just trying to get everybody on the same page was to look at rather than having to look at the legal issues of being able to do uh to be able to go in there and do that we said perhaps there was a way that they would be able to grant us easements and that was a challenge as well because the option for that is either for all of them to individually grant us an easement the property owners individual lot property owners or for the property owners to reconstitute the hoa and for the HOA to give us the ability to go in there as well. And there was not any desire to reconstitute the HOA. At least there was not enough interest in that option as well.

So if we take the path of the village doing something about this, which it sounds like that's an option, and it says confirm authority and title pathway, I understand that. Establish funding or assessment mechanism. Is that when we determine what the assessment's going to be in the funding? Right. Is that something we would do on a legal base? We would. Because what I want to make sure, and it's happened in the past, as we know, we've had contracts that we've done. And somehow there's something in there that comes back and hits us with it.

Right. I think before we get to the point of actually getting into a contract for the work, we would establish the process. And that's the one thing, and you think, why do we keep bringing this up? This is not a fast process. Any assessment process we do, whether it's the 170 or the ACME process, it's at a minimum.

A year.

A year, probably 18 months to go through the process and having to set up the... We already have the plans done, but to do the... modification that water control plan if you could do an acme unit to go through the advertising requirements to go through all the steps and hoops to get there before you can even get to the point of saying okay here's the project here's the cost here's how we're going to finance it because ultimately this would be something that that would probably be based on the size it's not you wouldn't do a bond for it that would even cost too much money you would just get a commercial note

The saddle trail assessment, we had the landowners voted for it, right? We're talking about not putting it to a vote of the property owners, but doing it maybe with some of their consent and without some of their consent and going ahead and doing the process, right? Okay.

That's correct.

And let's say that there's an assessment on these individuals and they don't pay it. What happens? Is there, what's the, what's the

It's on the tax bill in the non-advalorum section, so you don't have a choice of not paying when you pay your tax bill.

If you don't pay, it's the same as not paying your taxes. Got it. And that's critical, is that it's not as much like the saddle trail assessment. That's really, for lack of a better term, just a pass-through. We're not really, they're paying us through their assessment on an annual basis, and we're paying off the note that constructed that project. It would be a similar situation. Mm-hmm.

I think we should go out and talk to these homeowners again, let them know their options, and then see what they say.

Because if you get more than 50% that can't afford this, I don't know. I mean, the roads need to be fixed. So I guess if they don't want it, then we have to come back and figure out what's next.

And you were mentioning that... They would always be private even if we were to move forward and fix them, but is there is there an option where they could give up the rights to the the road if we were to fix them if would they and so that in lieu of them being assessed they could say okay here here's the title for the road now velocity so so we'll we'll go into a what-if scenario for a moment so what you would normally do would be similar to the big blue trace wall and

if you were to do it just as a standard assessment, wherein the residents were assessed for the cost of that wall construction. However, once it was constructed and they paid off their assessments over, I think we did that for seven or ten years, once they were paid off, the village owns, maintains the wall. If a car drives through it, We repair it. We paint the exterior. We pressure wash the exterior, that type of thing. So that is an approach. Again, I still recommend that. That's certainly something we can do, but it's something that I would not recommend only because it from my very simple look at it, not even looking at it legally, it just opens the door for us to be inundated with requests from other communities. But that is an option. Like I said, the example for that would be the big blue trace wall, where that was a new item that was requested by the homeowners. and they met the petition requirements but we took over that and that solved the problem for us in terms of the continual issue with fencing and landscaping along big blue trace on the west side for the buffer But there is an option to do that if that's council's design.

So if we were to decide to assess the property owners to fix their roadway, and then what if in three years there's problems with it that's on them to fix it, to maintain it?

Unless we approach it from a standpoint of... the unit of development of Acme, wherein then we would continually assess to include maintenance as well over time. And generally speaking, to Mr. Rheinsfeld's point, you know, basically Public Works looks at a 10- to 15-year time frame based on how the road grades out. But in the interim, the same thing with any maintenance. If an issue comes up, you end up with a sinkhole or something else. That would be the responsibility of the village if we went that route for just the maintenance is still public private roadway, but it's part of the unit of development. The unit development allows you since since it's not limited to private use only it's generally open access, even though they're privately owned where we would be able to set it up as unit development and continue to maintenance. Otherwise, that's correct. It would be back again on the homeowners, which without a collective HOA that's in place, you'd run into, you'd be, you know, redoing the cycle of problems all over again.

I think we visit with the homeowners, like was mentioned earlier, and then kind of request them to start up an HOA again. I think that's probably the only answer because you're going to have a number of people that aren't going to pay. And, you know, I'd hate to deal with that or in the future with more maintenance of the road how we're going to handle that it's going to come out of our our funds again so i think pressing upon them if you want this road fixed start an hoa then we can go from there i think that's probably the best route i'll have mr steeling seriously ryan's will put the show back on the road thank you all right thank you last night brings us to our last item

which is related to property tax Amendment 3 issues and how we've been looking at that as staff and what we see as the potential impacts and issues to date and where we go from here. At this point, basically, we want to walk through Amendment 3 and what the changes are that we would see, not really just, you know, specifically for our residents and businesses and our overall budget and, ultimately, If you noted from Ms. Crickle's initial presentation on the budget back when we set the trim, you know, what our proposed budget looks like. Based on what's proposed in Joint Resolution 1F and also Senate Bill 4F, what we really would see the first impacts if it passes on the ballot in November, we would see it in fiscal year 28. uh and then subsequently in the subsequent fiscal year 29 uh throughout the discussion today we'll be looking at items using our 2025 tax roll so initially to look at where we're at uh it's important to look at kind of what we've got and we've got just a little bit over 23 000 parcels and a taxable value of about 13.2 billion on that 2025 tax roll that we've got. And at our 2.47 millage rate, that produces just a little bit over almost $33 million in ad valorem taxes. And it's important to note, even though I know sometimes the nuance is lost on some folks, that that increase, if you're looking at it from 23 to 24 to 25, that increase hasn't been based on an increase in the millage rate. It's been based on the increase solely on valuation. And we've maintained that same millage rate, 2.47, for the last six years. So it's important to kind of see where we're operating from. so when you look at the current exemptions that we have right now we've got a little bit almost 14 500 homesteaded parcels and just under 8 000 non-homesteaded parcels that we looked at and uh miss fisher and the squiggle and her crew have assembled all this information for us And of that, the homesteaded properties, while it counts for almost 65% of the actual taxable properties, but only just a little bit over 40% of the value based on that distribution in numbers. and that's important because what amendment three really affects it's more than just one thing it affects really those two different groups differently homestead properties receive a much larger exemption while the non-homesteaded properties benefit or will see some benefit from a lower assessment growth cap right now we have a cap of 10 percent And that'll be, if it passes, that'll be limited to 5%. And that generally, you know, anywhere, but specifically in Wellington, that result is just a shift on really where that property tax burden is realized. And we already have, you know, statewide and specifically in Wellington, we have the benefit already of the Save Our Homes protection. So that's why... And you'll see in some future slides where folks in the same home with perhaps the same value right next door to each other based on ownership and longevity and to save our homes are paying different taxes on an annual basis. And so it changes, you know, Amendment 3 will affect both sides, both the homesteaded and non-homesteaded folks. Just to look at kind of where your tax dollar goes, It's important to note, you know, again, this is a typical thing that happens around tax time every year is people get their tax bill and they realize or they think that the total value in that tax bill all goes to the village of Wellington, which it doesn't. And it's important to note that of your entire bill, uh if you just look at it kind of your tax dollar for every tax every assessment and tax dollar you're paying just 19 cents goes to the village and acme the balance goes to all the different agencies the largest of which is the school district and so it's it's important to note that uh and and that that portion of the dollar that goes to the village and acne is how we provide those local services and uh and That's what's going to end up showing when the tax bill changes. So when you look at our revenues, this is how our revenues break down over the course of the budget. And you see the different categories. And property taxes are the single largest source of general fund revenue. Of course, we've got others that are not part of the general fund, but in the proposed FY27 budget, ad valorem taxes are about 45% of our total general fund revenues, and that's around $32, almost $33 million. And basically, that reduction in property tax revenue doesn't just happen on its own. if we were to lose several expenditures, you have to reduce expenditures, you increase other revenues, you have to find a way to replace it. Things just don't keep on happening the way they've been happening if you have that larger reduction in your general fund revenues. And so that's why the timing of it a lot matters. So the current proposed budget, like I said, really, while we've looked at it, we've thought about it, we're going through the exercises of not only one that's mandated by the state as far as, you know, trying to look at a 10% reduction across the board, what have you, but we're also looking, you already see a reduction in the current FY proposed 27 budget that but it's still we haven't really seen the impact yet should amendment 3 pass and Really in the next two budget years and when you'll see that that immediate impact. So let's look at That House Joint Resolution 1f and it's really there's multiple parts to it. We'll break it down a little bit And this is what's going to the voters on november 3rd there are three major parts first as we mentioned before homestead exemption and uh that's for non-school taxes it increases to 150 000 initially in the first year uh if it passes it would be effective tax year uh in january of 2027 so it would impact our FY28, which starts 10-1-28. In year two, it goes up to 250. So that's the one part of it which affects your homestead exemptions. The other part of it is what affects the non-homesteaded property. And basically, it drops that cap. Right now, you have a cap on non-homesteaded property that's capped that it can only increase 10% in value each year. With this if amendment 3 passes it's proposed to reduce that increase cap to 5% So again, there'd be a considerable steep still lowering your again ad valorem revenues And then the third puts parameters on the available use that's what basically a lot of folks are still even thinking of the original versions of the bill, but ultimately what was uh approved by the legislature is not what was the original proposal from the governor's office where there were some limitations but basically there's about seven different items that speak to what you can actually use your ad valorem tax dollars for originally there was a carve out for public safety law enforcement and fire rescue however that carve out did not make it to the version that was approved by the legislature the only carve out that's there is on school taxes everything else is is subject to the reduction but of the seven different items the there's a fairly specific it allows you to address you know, pension liabilities, post-employment benefits. It allows you to address infrastructure. It allows you to address environmental restoration, a whole host of other things. But there was some general... missing information as it related to just general operations. Last amendments that were issued prior to final adoption by the legislature included both county operations, and it was specific because for a while there was actually nothing that addressed how constitutional officers were to be funded. And so that was addressed in the last revisions that added those constitutional officers. whether it's a tax collector, property appraiser, clerk of court. And then there was also a general catch-all statement that addressed legal municipal operations. So basically, anything that you would be authorized to do under law, that you would be able to fund that. But it's still not specific, and I suspect people will be waiting, assuming, again, that it passes in November. We'll be waiting for some additional implementing legislation to see what the detail is, if there's any additional detail on that. so if we look at again the changes specifically the first major change is that that the existing 50 000 non-school homestead will be replaced by to 150 and 27 and then to 250 and 28. there's the five-year provision this is something that's also getting a lot of interest and questions is that the five-year provision for people who are not florida residents on december 31st 2026. They would initially receive the existing exemption with the increased exemption beginning the fifth year to the extent, you know, unless anything else changes. The second change is on the non-homestead side, as we talked about, the annual assessment cap from 10% to 5%. Those are the two main items that produce that impact. And as far as this, again, goes to what I just spoke about, as far as those allowable uses of tax revenue, and that's item G is what I referred to as the fund operations administration of county officers and commissioners established under Article 8, and those are the constitutionals, and municipalities and the expenditures approved by such county or municipal governing bodies except those prohibited by law. So anything you're allowed to legally do, you should be able to fund, but again... There's a lack of detail that we'll see what happens with additional implementing legislation should it pass. Here's the actual ballot language as it was changed. Still requires a voter approval to pass and 60% voter approval to pass and implementing legislation, Senate Bill 4F. uh you know was just allowed to exceed the 75 word limit but it was amended recently based on the judge's ruling and the attorney general the state attorney general went ahead and revised that i can provide you a line by line you know basically changed but it it removed some of the language that was more general and put more specific because the the comment was basically reducing the advocacy oriented language that was in the original ballot language and changed it to just what was actually in the bill And again, it's still under review. And potentially, if it's accepted, then it'll stay on the ballot. But potentially, it still could go through another review. So moving on as to how this actually changes where we're going. So from a Wellington standpoint, the homestead exemption, when it reaches the $250,000, and then we've got the non-homesteaded limitation down to 5%. The estimates that basically, based on our numbers, and these are the pre and post joint resolution numbers that the finance department has looked at, The year-round residents would pay around $6.2 million less. Year-round homesteaded residents would pay about $6.2 million less in Wellington taxes, while businesses, rentals, and the seasonal residents would contribute about a million dollars more. And that's the combined effect of both the increase in the exemption as well as still on the redistribution of that in that the tax cap. And so the interesting thing is it's not really, you know, it's one thing that actually I'll credit Mr. Liggins and Royal Palm for initially saying it and it's been used elsewhere, is that what ends up happening, it's not really what ends up happening is a tax shift Because depending upon how those costs are addressed and what those changes show is that while we're maybe reducing it for some, there might be an increase for others, whether it's the businesses or whether it's those non-residential. And it's not just non-residential, but it's just the non-homesteaded residential properties as well. And it's a question of who receives the tax reduction, assuming that then we still have the goal of maintaining the same level of service. Otherwise, we would look to then addressing it from a level of service standpoint. And so as far as how this actually affects the the property values and the properties specifically in wellington so as far as wellington is concerned our properties are homesteaded parcels there are almost 6 000 homesteaded parcels in wellington with a taxable value below 250 right now And about just a little bit over 40% of Wellington's homesteaded parcels. So that's how that breaks down. And the analysis that indicates that the first step of that exemption, the 150 in year one, which would be for us for fiscal year 28, that impact is about $3.2 million in ad valorem revenue. And together, when we look at the second year Fiscal year 28, you're looking at, I'm sorry, fiscal year 29, you're looking at additional $3 million based on the year two of the exemption. So you're looking at the total impact just in those first two years of almost a little bit over $6 million. in revenue, ad valorem revenue. And again, it ends up being an important number for budgeting because that's not just like, oh, we lost a grant for one year or we didn't get a recurring federal delegation of dollars for one year. That's then going to become a recurring loss that's going to multiply year after year. So when we look at an example, you know, when we always compare properties and why it's different, they illustrate, you know, you've got somebody that you've got two properties here that we just pulled. These are actual, Ms. Fisher pulled actual properties, real properties within Wellington. And they've got similar market values. And you can see what different kind of expected savings they have. The dollar value, the exemption is the same for these properties. But the percentage savings ends up being different, potentially based on Save Our Homes, which is already in place now, that has limited the growth of, depending on when you have Save Our Homes implemented, it's limited that growth. And if you've been homesteaded longer, you end up benefiting from that savings. And so Amendment 3 ends up being layered on top of that. which then makes that revenue loss greater. And so the savings is going to be dependent in a lot of cases on your specific actual current save or home scenario, and then Amendment 3 comes out on top of that. You look at even some comparisons when you take multiple, more than just two, multiple properties, all close to the same assessed value, and you look at the different exemption status, and the market value doesn't really tell us how much property tax it generates because of the homestead status. You've got assessed value limitations for same-year homes, other exemptions that affect that. It's important because when we're looking at the Amendment 3, the large exemption doesn't affect, or in this case, benefit properties all the same way. Some properties already have considerable differences in their market value and taxable value. So just as a side note, if you look at property appraisers' information, Market value might be something that you might see if you look at Zillow and what something might be selling for, what have you. And assessed value right off the bat, I think, generally might be in the 80%, 85% of what market even is. And then you've got taxable even lower than that. So when you're looking at the incredible increase in valuation, that's not necessarily translating dollar for dollar for you know your ad valorem revenues because you're not assessing at market to begin with and then when you're looking at assess that's not even uh you've got the exemptions going on a lower number to begin with and so it's again these numbers are based on the actual tax roll as opposed to just applying a percentage reduction to property values across the board uh so when you look at the non-homestead property provisions uh there's about 62 percent of wellington's non-homesteaded properties uh see you know miss fisher looked at it before and it's about 62 of those properties got between five and ten percent uh for a prior year under a five percent cap that portion above 5% would no longer see. We'd never see that benefit in the tax base. So you're looking at a current tax roll, the estimates. That could be, depending on how those numbers shake out. Again, that's just assuming that the trend we saw in the past carries forward. We could see a reduction in ad valorem revenue based on that between almost a half million bucks to almost $1 million in that. And what's important again is that that's more recent sales. It affects that. And important to note, given that this is not going to be a surprise for anybody, that of those affected by tax cap. We don't have a whole lot of commercial in town the way other communities do. So 93% of those properties are actually single and multifamily residential that's going to get hit. The other thing that comes up when you look at what's in the House Joint Resolution, as well as implementing Senate Bill 4F, It also changes the mechanics of how we set millage rates. Ms. Quickle goes through a very extensive presentation, not only when we set trim, but then also when we actually adopt to explain, based on what we adopt at and how we go forward with that, is that basically the one main thing is that in the past, depending on what you needed to have votes to set your millage rate and what's required of how many votes of council, One thing you looked at when you adjusted for growth was the personal income per capita growth that was applied statewide. So that's been removed as a result of Amendment 3. And if that passes, so basically what ends up happening now, as far as you don't even get to account for that additional growth in personal income, you're looking at the simple majority. You would have to go to rollback for that, just a simple majority vote. Beyond that, you would look at a supermajority requirement, two-thirds supermajority vote to go anything above that rollback rate. And then beyond that, If depending on the number, you could actually see a requirement where it's either unanimous vote or ability for the residents to look for a referendum. So it changes also how we look at our millage when we set millage year to year. Here's a specific A little too far. Hold on trying to get this to work. I'm just going to go to. We'll start from the beginning. I'm going to work it from the computer.

Thanks, but let the engineer do it.

Engineer inside. There we go. So basically, during the prior calculation, the majority of vote maximum was 2.462 with Senate Bill 4F. Basically reduced it to the 2.6, 2.359 rollback rate. That's what we just talked about. So the 2.47 rate requires a two-thirds supermajority vote of council to move forward if we stay with that. see here we go so just to give you an idea where our general fund expenditures for fy 26 currently and for our proposed fy 27 budget that's kind of how your general fund expenditures and potential funding reductions that you'd have to see if you were to kind of spread it across the board and uh that's of course assuming that you just take those numbers and and don't move forward without a specific plan uh for the current budget we're not looking at making any proposed cuts right now we're already seeing a reduction overall budget's been reduced by uh almost six million dollars and i believe there's uh one point three one point six billion reduction in general fund as well so so we're without we're not necessarily looking at what happened to the amendment three just part of our regular budgeting process we're showing that reduction in the current proposed budget already what we'll have to do is look at you know where we end up assuming this passes in November. And if the measure passes, then we need to go back. And we still haven't really left it. We continue to use a priority budgeting-based approach to our budget process. there'll be some definite decisions as to where we go with the actual levels of service that we currently provide. And it's one of those things that's important to note. The initial reductions or changes in level of service or choices, the last ones we make, end up being consequences. And that's why it's important to really step back and try and figure out, OK, across the entire organization across the entire village how do we want to move forward assuming the amendment three passes and reallocate the the funds to adjust the levels of service where we want them whether it's related to infrastructure maintenance drainage that's parts that aren't covered by acme roadways which are funded through general fund whether it's recreation and the number of programs and events whether it's community services where we provide certain support services for different parts of the population those types of decisions are what we're going to look at more so going forward to be certainly looking at a regular basis. But all things that will have to be reviewed as far as level of service also revenue generating.

Absolutely. Across the board. Visiting, again, maybe that fencing around the amphitheater and charging a fee for non-residents.

That's not going to generate $6 million a year.

I'm not saying it's going to, but every little revenue-generating...

I think we would we would look across the board not only at cutting but also at just figuring out how to bring it to offset the revenue loss from ad valorem to bring in additional revenue whether it's increased fees for services which you referenced and we've gone through in the past, whether it's in some cases privatizing certain aspects of the operation, whether it's just changing the actual model on how we deliver some of those services where you might look at outside partnerships or looking at shifting that burden someplace else. looked at that before. We continue to look at it annually as far as priorities, but we've not been in a situation where we've had to make some decisions that are where you've got a substantial reduction like we're potentially looking at in the first two years of Amendment 3 if it passes. And, you know, that those are going to impact levels of service without a question unless we look at finding sources for alternatives to bring the same amount of revenue in. Just to give you an idea how that compares, I think we ran a quick calculation on our team to if we were to try and offset the revenue loss with ad valorem and what we would have to increase our current millage rate to be able to bring in the same value. and so that's that additional incremental uh total there from 2.47 adding in the 0.575 and you'll see how that compares still with the current uh millage rates of other communities around us and in the county it just again truth and truth and advertising it's important to note that the cities of Boca Raton, Palm Beach Gardens, Delray Beach, and Boynton Beach all have in-house public safety with police and fire. Jupiter just started its own fire department, whereas Wellington, Westlake, and Lake Worth Beach both utilize fire rescue. and PBSO. Important thing to note for us, as with those other communities, we fund PBSO as part of our budget, whereas fire rescue is done through a separate ad valorem millage that shows up on the individual residents' tax bills through Palm Beach County. But that still keeps us below the 10 mil cap set by the state. And we still would have a comparatively low millage rate compared to some of the other communities.

If you add the Palm Beach Fire Rescue into our millage, do you know what that nets out at, roughly?

I think there were three and change. 3.45. 3.45. So there you go.

It's at the top.

So we're still, even at that rate, we're still below the 10. And that is something we look at when you're looking at the state limitation.

So looking at some of your numbers, we're 65% of our taxable value comes from homesteaded properties, which generates about $32 million a year in ad valorem. $14 million of that goes to public safety, which leaves you with $18 million

on more like 12 million that 13.8 it's 40 that's not just pbs show.

But that gets you down to 18 million an ad valorem to run everything we do and then if you take 6 million dollars away from that to 33% cut an ad valorem which is how we run everything in the village that's not a paper paper services.

Right and then you made the made this step which I'm not disagreeing with of not

cutting public safety right people people don't like public safety right now i understand and that that presumes we'd be able to keep the 2.47 millage rate which we couldn't do unless it was a super majority vote to do that because otherwise we'd go to the rollback rate which would mean the added form collected be even less correct okay okay that was a great summary i had no slides so so where we're at now basically is just uh we are at uh

We're planning accordingly. Like I said, there's not been any real direct impact yet on the current proposed budget, given that this won't take effect until the year later. Not that we're not thinking about it. As I mentioned, we have already shown the proposed budget to have upwards of $6 million reduction from the prior year budget. And of that, probably $1.3 million, $1.4 million out general fund reduction specifically and but I think the key is looking at Some policy changes in some direction as it relates to what our priorities are if amendment 3 passes and And how we go ahead and use those priorities to determine their coming years budget millage rates and overall the general any adjustments we need to do to levels of service or again looking at a wider range of options for revenue generation redistribution of the actual cost of doing business and ultimately you know how we plan for that going forward because ultimately that's the other issue is that as you go through future years, your changes from year to year are not one-time changes. It's a compounding effect. If you lower your military, while that's a positive, that still prevents you in the future. Again, you're severely limited in what you can do in the event there is something that requires us to raise it going forward. That's something else that also, again, it's not a one-time reduction. It's something that it's a compounding effect year to year. Similarly with the with the effect on the property values. The increased reductions are again just going to show in future budget years more more clearly as again people benefit from the reduction that's proposed in amendment 3.

Mister on site the current language that was just amended I understand conversation that I've been told that there's a possibility of another push of another amendment. What is the deadline for this language to be set in stone for it to go on the ballot?

That's a great question. I don't know the answer to that, but we can find out. Because it's currently the amendment that was proposed and released on the 14th of August by the Attorney General, still under review. And I think there could still be one more time, and there'd be enough time to still make it for the November 3rd. November ballot for Amendment 3, but I don't know the exact date, but we can find out. What happened was the judge that ruled on it initially actually combined all three lawsuits that were filed and ruled collectively on all of them based on the language.

So bits and pieces of it all.

There could be more changes. That's true.

solid work. I mean, putting a lot of numbers together to get to a clear presentation of the problem.

Is there, it's probably a crazy question or silly question, but is there, let's say that we were to raise, hypothetically, raise the millage rate just to have a nice nest egg of cash there in case of whatever. At the end of the year, has there ever been a a municipality, or is it possible to give the residents a rebate if the funds aren't utilized at the end of the year?

I'm not going to say it's impossible. In fact, we looked at that here in Wellington, not related to our general tax rate, but we actually did a special assessment for solid waste related to hurricane cleanup that ended up, since it got covered, ended up being refunded. If I'm correct, I might be mis- But we had this issue back in 2004. 2005 during the Francis Jean Wilma scenario. So clearly, you know, it's not something that's impossible to do, but rebates can be exceedingly challenging.

Tanya, what do you think?

I see you looking like, I hate you, Mr. Because it's paid through, you know, your tax bill. that those funds are collected by the county and remitted back to us. And again, portions of that actually come through the state, the shared revenue as well. So it's fairly challenging, a different animal, to consider it from that direction.

Or maybe not so much a rebate like an actual check being mailed out, but maybe a credit toward the following tax year?

It would sound like the challenge is in the calculation, not the method of remuneration.

Well, and again, because we've had refunds on other things before, and it's, you know, people sell their homes in the middle of the year, who actually paid and who's actually on the property because some things go with the land. So it can get interesting from that perspective, but definitely not impossible, but it has some very challenging aspects to it.

Great. Good job. Any other questions? I'm good. I'm tired. This was quite the workshop. I think we lost Anna. We lost Anna back there. She's still there. She's still here.

All right. I don't think I said anything that the finance team didn't want me to say. I tried to follow the rules.

She's right next to you.

She would have made sure you stayed on track.

They present the budget in September at this rate. Let's not get crazy.

If that's everything, then we are adjourned.

That's all we have. We have nothing else unless you all have questions. I'm adjourned. Let's adjourn.

Let's go.

Thank you.

Thank you.