Hey. Hey. Hey, hey, hey. Hey, hey, hey. Hey, hey, hey. Hey. Hey. Hey. Hey, hey,
Hey, hey, Hey, hey, hey. Hey, hey, hey, hey. I'd like to call a meeting to order. Uh, our pledge will be led by Commissioner Atkinson to the flag of the United States of
America and to the republic for it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, liberty and justice for all. Okay. Uh purpose of our workshop today is the budget overview and we'll begin with natural resources the natural
resources department. >> Sorry, Mr. Chair. Uh we're going to we'll begin with a budget overview at our annual >> Oh, we begin with the budget overview from the budget department. >> Um and just real brief, we're checking as far as we know, Commissioner Goodson has not called in yet. So, just letting
you know that. Um, so, uh, the budget overview, uh, change from the last few years. Um, we're gonna have Keith Neter, who is our interim budget director, is going to lead you in on the presentation, and then at the end, I'll jump in for a slide or two. >> Good afternoon, commissioners. I'm Keith Neter, the interimm director of the
budget office. Today, I'll provide a brief presentation on general government funding in the 2026 adopted budget. Oh, you're good. You're good. Here's a list of topics we'll go over today, including CPI, millages, charter cap, and county comparisons. And then we'll
get into the 2026 budget, including the color of money, sources, and uses of funds. And we'll close out with some data on homesteaded property taxes, and Jim will provide information on future budget considerations. This chart shows CPI over the last 11
years. Historically, we've had CPI below 3%. However, you can see the COVID years in 21, 22, and 23 where we experienced inflation significantly above that. For fiscal year 2027, we'll be using a CPI of 2.63%.
And that's based on calendar year 2025. And as you're aware, that's important because it's tied to our charter cap and limits the amount of advorum revenue that we can collect to 3% or CPI, which in this case will be 2.63%. In addition to tracking CPI, we also
look at other metrics including the construction cost index, that's the red line, the municipal cost index in green, and CPI in blue. As I mentioned, our advalorum millages uh are tied to CPI. We also have departments with user fees and nonadvalorum assessments that are
tied to that rate as well. However, many of the costs that we've experienced are much more in line with what you'll see in the construction cost and uh index, particularly the large capital improvement projects like utilities, solid waste, and public works. Uh during
this 12-year period, CPI increased cumulatively by over 47%, the municipal cost index at over 52% and the construction cost index at over 62%. As I mentioned, uh, our our Advalorum revenue collections are limited through
the charter cap by CPI. For the current fiscal year, we have 28 million budgeted. If rates were to be set at the charter cap, we would be looking at an additional 5.4 million in advor revenue in the general fund. Uh, in addition to that, we have new construction on the
bottom of this slide that's separated because it's excluded from the charter cap and thus is something that we have relied on in the last few years. You can see historically we've experienced significant growth in that area. However, between 2025 and 2026 that growth rate has began to stagnate and uh
that's something that we'll be watching this year. We'll get preliminary property values on June 1st and we'll get certified values on July 1st. This chart shows the county's aggregate mill rate. Uh you can see in 2019 we were above six mills and in 2026 we're
just above 4.5. Nobody actually pays the entire aggregate millage rate. What you pay is dependent on where you live geographically within the county. But uh that that jump between 2025 and 2026 was a result of the board's investment in public safety through the fire control
MSTU as well as adjustments to parks and recreation millages. This chart is really a good visualization of how the charter cap works. You can see the red line is property values. The blue line is the general fund millage rate. And through the charter cap, those two variables
have a really a perfect inverse relationship. You can see as property values increase from left to right, we've had to cut our general fund miller rate accordingly to stay compliant with the cap. Uh in in in theory, if you had property values expand in perpetuity, at some point you would have a general fund
mill rate that approached zero to stay in line with with the charter cap. So, how does Bvard County compare to nearby jurisdictions? This chart shows Bard County as well as Seminal, St. Lucy, Oyola, Indian River, Pasco, Martin, and Lake counties. You can see
many of these jurisdictions will hold their millages flat or make slight adjustments, whereas Bvard County, as the only county with a charter cap, we've cut our general fund millage rate by over 27% between 2019 and the current fiscal year. Um, according to a study or
report that the Florida Association of Counties put out for 2025, Bvard County had the second lowest general fund millage rate in the entire state of Florida out of 67 counties. Uh, this this chart shows the general government revenues and expenses between
2025 and budget 2026. I just wanted to show this before we get into the current year budget just to highlight a few key things here. Um each year we are required to submit a balanced budget and you can see the majority of our revenues almost all of our revenues are coming
from advalorum taxes and with increases to charter officers that includes the sheriff as well as investments in public safety. The county cut uh roads infrastructure and other county agencies by almost 14 million heading into 2026 to achieve a balanced budget for this
fiscal year. Uh, Florida Statutes Chapter 129 requires the county and other municipalities to submit a balanced budget each year, meaning that our total estimated revenues must be equal to our total budgeted expenses. This pie chart looks at just the revenue side of our
budget. However, our expenses are also at 2.5 billion. And the key takeaway I I wanted to get across from this slide is while 2.5 billion seems like a large number, it's because it is. uh only less than 50% of that is operating revenue or new revenue that we have flowing through
the county each year. The other half of our budget is carried forward in departments like natural resources, utilities, and solid waste where they have large multi-year capital projects. And so each year uh those balances are brought forward as those projects progress. And then we collect uh 1.19
billion at least in 2026 in operating revenue. Uh you guys have heard the color of money concept before. I'm just going to provide a brief overview of it. The next few slides will follow the color scheme that you see here. We'll have general funds in green. These are our most
flexible and discretionary funding sources that the county has. We have special revenue in pink. These are restricted to very specific purposes. We have debt service in yellow, capital project in orange, enterprise funds in blue. These are uh departments that operate like a business where they'll
charge residents or uh users a fee for services based on how those users use those services. Uh finally, we have internal service funds in gray. So, of that 1.19 billion that you saw a couple slides ago in operating revenue,
this chart breaks down how much of that operating revenue belongs to each fund group. Uh of that 1.19 billion, almost 50% of that is in special revenue funds. Again, those are going to include programs like sorrel. Uh we have enterprise funds at just under 20%, it's
going to include departments like utilities and solid waste. We have internal service funds at 8%, this is mostly insurance premiums. And then in the top left, we get into the discretionary and flexible funding that we have through the general government program at uh 24%. The lighter green
shade that you see there, these are revenues that are technically within the general fund. However, they are derived from very specific purposes that generated that revenue. And if we were to consider reallocating them, you would likely not have that revenue to begin with because it's generated from a service.
These next few slides will break down what makes up each component of that operating revenue that you saw in the previous pie chart. Uh for the general fund, obviously Advalor taxes are our primary revenue source. We also have communication service taxes, FPL
franchise fees, state shared revenues, local halfent sales tax, and other operating revenues, which is going to include interest earnings and indirect cost allocation revenue. Uh on the right hand side in the lighter green, again, these are revenues that are within the general fund. However, they come from
very specific purposes that generated that funding. for example, with the sheriff at $18 million. Those are contracted funds that they get from other municipalities in Bvard for performing law enforcement services in those areas. You also have places like planning and development. That's going to include planning and zoning fees as
well as code enforcement fines and forfeits. The other other general fund at the bottom, 1.5 million, is primarily the medical examiner and commissions to the tax collector and property appraiser. This slide continues the color of money
uh through the rest of the fund groups that we have. Again, special revenue is our largest operating revenue fund group and you have departments like natural resources in there. A lot of grant funds in there, soral tax revenues. Below that, you'll see fire rescue at 102 million. That's going to include the
fire control MSTU nonadalorum assessment and ambulance billings. Um on the left side, we get into the enterprise funds. Again, these are departments that operate like a business. We'll have utilities, solid waste and transit as the largest groups in that fund type. And below that we have internal service
in gray. Employee benefits is insurance premiums and risk management is also insurance premiums through auto and property insuranceances. Uh for the rest of this PowerPoint, we're really going to focus on that general fund sliver of operating revenue that we have because again that's our
discretionary and flexible funding that the board can allocate. Uh you'll notice here the sources and uses at the bottom are balanced. That's again in compliance with chapter 129 Florida statutes. Uh this slide includes both operating and nonoperating revenues. It's why it's slightly different than the numbers you
saw just a minute ago. And uh I've covered the revenues that are within the general fund. So we're going to go through the uses which you see on the right hand side. We're going to spend the rest of this PowerPoint going through how the general fund dollars are allocated in the current fiscal year.
First, we have our charter officers. This includes the sheriff, tax collector, property appraiser, uh supervisor of elections, and clerk to the board. This total 177 million from the general fund in 2026. It's worth noting that these amounts don't represent these agency's entire budgets.
This is just the general fund support component that we provide. It's also worth noting that any unspent dollars at the end of each fiscal year must be returned to the county as excess fees. You've seen items for that in the past. Now, we'll move into mandates. Uh these
are governed by various Florida statutes. Our mandates include Medicaid court operations, Baker Act, pre-trial detention of juveniles, and other mandates, which is going to include the value adjustment board, East Central Florida Regional Planning Council, indigent burials, and a few other
miscellaneous mandates. Uh Medicaid is our largest mandate and that has increased significantly from recent years. We were at 8.7 in the prior year and before that we were at 7.5 million in 2024. Um, all counties in the state of Florida are required to contribute to
the state's Medicaid program and the 9.5 represents Bvard County's contribution to the state. Next, we get into other obligations. At the top of this is reserves. We have reserves set at 10% of our operating revenues in general government in the
current fiscal year. That equates to 30.3 million and aligns with board policy BCC21. We also have some general government debt in the general fund. And we have our general fund CRA payments at 8.1 million.
>> You all have heard before that prior boards have uh instructed staff to renegotiate our agreements with CRAAS uh to reduce their lifespan and focus their funding on infrastructure. Through those agreements, we have already seen CRAAS like Satellite Beach and Palm Bay Sunset. Uh it's worth noting we will
make the final payment to the city of Rocklage in the current fiscal year and that CRA will will sunset at the end of this year. Next, we get into public safety and infrastructure. Uh, our public safety allocation, excluding the sheriff in the
general fund, is 33.5 million. The majority of that is going to be in EMS at 25.3 million. That's a sharp increase from last year where we were at 14 million and is the result of the recent labor contract that was ratified in July. We also have ocean rescue, public
safety, which includes the medical examiner, and emergency management. Uh below that we have uh projects that are funded directly within the general fund which includes the Wickcham road fleet site, detention center infrastructure, the medical examiner chiller and other infrastructure which is primarily parks,
hurricane repairs that are funded in the general fund. Those total 26.2 billion. Then we get into our allocations to public works and facilities and parks and wreck. For 2026, public works is scheduled to receive just over 33
million. This is a decrease from what they had in 2025 where they were budgeted to receive over 36.7 million. Uh parks and wreck is just under 13 million for this year. That's also a significant decrease from 2025 where they were at 16.48 million and was the
result of us balancing our budget with our investments in public safety. In addition to funding those programs, the general government program also funds many other agencies within the county. We also have some operating expenses of our own to include separations of services. These are leave
and severance payouts. We have facility and IT charges. An annual grant to the economic development condition or the economic development commission. And we have contracted and professional services at 1.7 million. This is going to be internal audits, external audits,
financial consultants, disaster consultants, and things of that nature. The other general government expenses you see there of 1.1 million is primarily postage and notification expenses. And we also have solid waste assessments and various insurance and facility maintenance costs that are
housed within general government. Below that, we'll start getting into the various programs that the general fund funds throughout the county. Uh some of these agencies use this as local match to draw down additional funding from state or federal agencies such as housing at 3.1 million and transit at
2.3 million. They'll leverage additional millions from state and federal groups using that money as local match. This rounds out the uh remaining general fund allocations that we have. Again, uh some of these departments, this may be their only revenue source. Other
departments uh they may use this to supplement other grants or charges for services that they have like natural resources at over 700,000. They will use that as local match again for additional grant funding. That's the brief overview on how general
government funds are allocated in 2026. Uh I did want to provide some data on homestead exemptions. Everybody's heard a lot about various legislations floating through the state of Florida to change how Florida handles property taxes. Uh we worked with the property appraiser to develop this data using
their online database. They have a really incredible access database has hundreds of thousands of rows out there on properties. And through that database, we estimate that almost 50% of Bard County's parcels have a homestead exemption on them. And those properties total just over 30.6 billion in total
taxable property value. Why is this important? This is important because a lot of the legislation we've seen looks at potentially increasing the homestead exemption. We've seen it through a phase in approach where the homestead exemption will increase each year. We've also seen it uh some drafts
where the property will be fully exempt from taxes and and any homesteaded property would not pay any taxes. Um all the legislation we've seen at this point does include protections for law enforcement and public safety to ensure that if our tax funding is reduced that
those agencies are not reduced as a result of that. Um at the bottom of this slide I have our charter cap millage calculation and our rollback rate millage calculation. The rollback is what the department of revenue uses to determine if we're going to advertise a tax increase. And what I wanted to bring
your attention to here is that if you look at both of these calculations, the numerator in both of them looks at the prior year adorum revenue and the denominator looks at the taxable property value in the current year. So in the event that uh homesteaded properties were removed from the tax role that would significantly decrease
our taxable property value thus would yield much larger charter cap millage rate maximums and much larger rolled back rates as well. Obviously all of that is dependent on how the board sets millage rates uh when we do that in July and September. Uh that completes my presentation for today. I'm going to
pass it over to Jim for future budget considerations. >> Thank you Keith and and commissioners. I know you've if you've been here for a little bit, you've seen this presentation. I know for the new new commissioners, you saw it last year. Uh but you know the emphasis we want to
show you and we just had a citizen come what last board meeting said your budget's $2.5 billion. Well, a lot of it is already multi-year projects. There's solar out there. So the the real value that you have that we all have to work with is somewhere in the neighborhood of $370 million. And of that $370 million,
a lot is already allocated. Medicaid takes um a lot of functions. You had courts. So, we want to show folks, you know, we do the color money, you're going from 2.5 billion down to 371 million that we have to work with and move around. So, um, you know, that's the big takeaway I want, um, from
Keith's presentation. Nice job. When you look at the list, I'm going to talk about property tax legislation in just a second. Um, but, uh, future budget fixed it. We still have not received all the FEMA reimbursements we've asked for from those projects. And that's been what, seven, eight years now. So, FEMA reimbursements, there's still plenty of
millions of requests out there that we haven't received yet. Not sure what we're going to go in the process. And then the second point of the FEMA, uh, you know, reading online and different stories and you hear different things. FEMA may not be the same FEMA, you know, next year or even this coming year as it's been in previous years. Uh, there's
talk of reducing their staff or block granting it to states or, you know, or even not reimbursing as much. So, that mean that could be a consideration. So, I point out the parks and wreck, you know, uh, uh, we had millions of dollars of damage. Uh, we estimate, I think, 12 million. I think we end up fixing
everything for five or six million. U, we'll get back something like 90% of that. But in the future, you you may have five or six million dollars of damage that the federal government will not reimburse us for. So, that affects your reserves. It affects what you want to do with your money, how we want to do with that. Population and service
demands. Uh, I'm picking on parks. I hope listening. Um, uh, but parks is a great example. roads is a great example. Um Keith talked about, you know, our our charter cap and our revenue is all based on taxable value. Well, demand for parks and roads has nothing to do with taxable value. It has to do with your
population. Um so we have this cap of, you know, 2.63% for uh how we can raise revenue. But if population goes up 10%, that's 10% more kids trying to get on a soccer field, 10% of more people getting on Babcock Street or driving here on Stadium Parkway. Um so it doesn't always
well actually it never drives perfectly. So, that's always something we're looking at and trying to figure out and balance for you guys. Um, uh, we're definitely going to have to talk facilities needs in March. There's lots of facility needs out there. Sixtory, we're always working on the sixth story. We're working on this building. Um, and
there's, uh, and you saw in there, we're fixing up, I still want to call it C, central fleet there, the where parks and public works and central fleet is located. We're fixing that up. It's that'll be a very nice project, but we have a lot of facility needs out there. Uh, shout out to our libraries. a lot of
their buildings are getting to be 30 years old. They're going to need repair. Our parks and recreation buildings, you know, we taxed ourselves in 2000 and 2006 to build those. And though that milllet, you see, there's only one left on debt. That's going away. Well, to fix or replace those buildings, we'll have
to take it out of operations. There isn't a separate ability to uh put debt out um a different mill that won't affect operating. So, that's going to be a future issue in the next few years. And then last but not least on this list, before property taxes, we need to remain as a competitive employer. Uh
being an old transit guy, we're always making sure we're trying to be become competitive in the market for bus drivers, uh parks and wreck. Again, we have maintenance workers, uh Mark and public works. We have entry- level maintenance workers, but at the same time, we're also competing against keeping our engineers around uh making
sure uh we can stay competitive because the engineers you can't you you're going to see with the our drainage. You can't do projects unless you have enough engineers to design them getting going. Um we have a building examiner, a friend of mine, his uncle works for us. I'm sure he's listening. 80 years old. He's
a wonderful building examiner, but it's tough to be competitive that market if that person ever retires to get them back. So, we're we're struggling on how to remain competitive. I won't go into the details, but I'm going to let you know we've developed career ladders. We're doing uh different job audits and descriptions. We're trying to work to
stay stay competitive. But, so with everything else, we're just out there with, you know, competing against the private sector for employees and with some other um cities. Um the good news, I have to say, in our staff meeting today, I found out we're actually a little competitive with city of Melbourne and uh another city for some type of workers, but we're working hard
on that. The the last thing I just wanted to focus on and it's I admit it's a little incomplete. I bumped into a business owner yesterday and talking to him about our our cap and the reduction and then I saw a newspaper article this morning. But the one bill that seems to
be moving is House uh resolution 203. Thank you. I was going to pull that and that's a phase out elimination of non-school properties for homestead. And that's the first year, I forget the exact number, but every year after the next nine years, a limit, your homestead exemption goes up by $100,000 a year
over the next nine years. At the end of 10 years, if you're homesteaded, you you don't pay property taxes outside of non-school and public safety. Um, and so driving in this morning, I I honestly thought to myself, holy cow, we have a lot more advalorum out there that isn't
that just isn't general fund. You have libraries out there. I'm going to list out what we have. We have libraries out there, mosquito control, fire control. We have five or six wreck districts that are in there. We have a law enforcement uh at Valorum. We have seven MSTOS for road and bridge. And then you have EEL.
And so uh what Keith had pointed out, whatever that number was, 40 to 45% of properties are homesteaded. So you're looking at two different things. You're looking at a reduction if this bill would pass and then the voters vote for it. over the years, you're looking at a reduction of half the revenue or you're
looking at basically and the math doesn't work perfectly but off the top of my head the math you're doubling the millage rates and that's assuming what the legislature allows you to raise the rates by each year. So when we look honestly last couple days I've been thinking well this is really going to hurt our general fund but when you look
at it it's going to hurt a lot of other services out there and the bill is to um it will hold law enforcement public safety harmless and so this morning I went through and I added up if you look at the two millages along with what we do general fund that's $220 million
between the millages and general fund that we put into the sheriff's department and the fire rescue department that doesn't leave if if we don't raise revenue or if we don't raise millage that doesn't leave a whole other room for other services and you see the list there's a number of departments
that get a few million dollars and you know and my thing is I hate to get into details and I don't know the answers you asked me but holding public safety harmless well somebody has to buy the fire trucks you know that's your that's your purchasing department your HR department manages the insurance
program uh you have the clerk's office uh you know that they they're the clerks of the board they provide all our documentation. I I don't see in there um supervisor of elections, you know, how do we run elections if we start, you know, we have less and less um general funds. So, uh we'll over the next month,
we'll get a little bit better. We'll know what or two months uh we'll know what's going on at the legislature. But I honestly, this is Jim, 35 years in the business. I don't see how this bill does not reduce services unless you raise taxes double on the non-homesteaded
folks. and the non-homesteaded folks. Those are people that live in an apartment building and your business owners. That's a pretty big pill for them all to swallow. It doesn't seem realistic to me. So, I'm just asking you for you guys to keep an eye on it if as you see it. I don't know what the final uh bill is going to be, but if it's
something like this, that is big impacts and that would show up in our fisc year 2728 mil uh budget. So, you won't see it this year, but you'll see it the coming year. Um, so we'll we'll be talking to you about that in March because we'll have a little bit better idea of what's going hopefully what's going on in the
legislature and then give you some of the impacts that we could see down the road. So, so if you have any questions for me and Keith. >> Okay. Any other questions? Yes. >> I was wondering if anybody knew about um
the ambulance money recoup if anyone had an update about that. Uh I I don't have that one. We could uh You're talking about how much we build and how much recover and then how much is in the collection >> because we were we were collecting funds
>> and I was just wondering because we were owed funds and so I was just wondering if anyone knew um where we were at with that and if we're still on track to get everything back and you can just email me if >> we'll get you that information to the board. And then I was wondering about um
how much is the city of Rocklage allocation that you mentioned their um sun setting this year? This their last payment. >> It's 1.2 million in the current year and uh but it's not exactly an apples to apples like hey you know we're going to have 1.2 million less in CRA payments
because as property values increase and depending on what happens with millage rates our CRA payments to the other CRAAS will grow and so you won't realize the full 1.2 2, but a portion of that will be, you know, obviously a part of the 2027 budget. >> Awesome. Thank you.
>> Okay. Any other >> I just say real quick, I looked up I looked up uh HJR 2020 203. There isn't a Senate Senate companion yet. Of course, that doesn't >> necessarily mean anything at this at this point. They could they can certainly do that, but refresh my
memory. Is it 60% in each chamber is is what they need >> to for >> for the joint resolutions >> wave the rules. Yeah, I think it's 60 >> to put something before the voters is 60% in each chamber. >> Constitution. Yes. >> Yes. >> Um just about what Commissioner Delaney
said. Um I've had personal experience with the the billing >> for our ambulance and it it happened again recently. Um, so just since I've been a commissioner three times, um, and my person wouldn't have paid her bill
all three of those times if I hadn't been a commissioner because there would have been. So I think we do have some some work to do there. I don't know what that looks like or how much, but just my two cents. >> Well, and I will tell you, I got a text. We will get you the information was my text that I received. So So they're
listening for us. >> All right. I think we should have our lobbyists work hard to to include mosquito control as a part of a public safety. Mosquitoes kill more people than murders. Humans murder. I mean, that's a
public safety hazard and they should at least include that, especially here in Florida. >> Okay. We if the board's good with that, we'll let them know. Okay. And and I should say I've also had a couple conversations with our federal lobbyists to keep on the FEMA reimbursement.
What's happening on the FEMA side too? So >> to make sure. >> Okay. >> Okay. Thank you. Uh it's a very good overview. Um then now we'll go to C2, Natural Resources Department, and then the public works department, storm water drainage. >> Yep. All right. and commissioners, what
you're going to have is you're going to have six six different folks here from three different departments because um and we just you remember I kept telling you a title. We couldn't come up with the title. So, it's Bvard's water. Um but what you have in front of you for the presentations, you have Mark Mark
Bernath is our public works director. Rachel Garena is our deputy director for public works, Virginia Barker natural resources director, Amanda Ellour who is our department deputy director for natural resources, Billy Prasad from planning and development director and
last but not least but Bach Mccclure who's our stormwater program administrator and they're going to jump in between you know all there's some 30 40 slides in there. >> Okay, good afternoon. Um as Jim just said I'm Virginia Barker. I'm the director of the natural resources and I
get to kick off this presentation uh on Bvard's water with a focus on storm water and drainage. I'll be providing a sort of a 10,000 foot view of the role of water in Bvard and the various departmental roles related to water management. Uh next Rachel and Bach will
provide an engineering perspective for public works and the natural resources stormwater utility respectively. Then Billy Prasad will quickly summarize the history of planning and development review related to water. Um followed by Amanda and Mark who will provide the
budget perspectives for natural resources and public works. Emergency operations also works with water for emergency response and mitigation planning. John Scott uh their director is not speaking today but did provide data and input for this PowerPoint. So,
it's a big topic with many players and we'll get rolling here. Um, so the map on the left shows uh water to the left of me, water to the right of me and water down the middle too. Uh, water is one of the most defining features of
Bvard County. Let's take a moment to recognize the incredible ways that water shapes our community, our culture, our heritage, our economy, and contributes to our extraordinary quality of life. Whether it's our beaches, our marshes,
the lagoon during the day, the lagoon at night, our wetlands, or the St. John's River. Most of the time, we love our water. We take pride in its quantity and quality that provides surf and sandy beaches and boating and fishing and
swimming and countless other activities. Natural Resources in partnership with the TDC, state and federal partners invest millions maintaining beaches and dunes for coastal protection, recreation, and tourism. The Save Our Indian River Lagoon program in
partnership with the state, the Water Management District, and National Eshuary Program invests millions maintaining the Indian River Lagoon for our economy, public health, and happiness. Multiple departments, state and federal rules work together to manage growth adjacent to our prized
water assets to safeguard our wet feathered golden goose, uh minimize flood risk, and protect natural water storage features. However, local regulatory actions must keep in mind that at the edges of the county's jurisdiction, if we are significantly
more restrictive than cities, land owners may simply annex to the adjacent city. Despite all the benefits of water, during extreme conditions, the abundance of water can become too much of a good thing. Whether storm surges, king tides,
extreme rainfall, or rising groundwater, excess water in our streets, our yards, and our homes can become a threat. In 2008, during tropical storm Fay, Bvard County received 27.65 inches of rainfall. That's basically the
height of this tabletop, which I measured before this meeting. That much water fell throughout the county on land, on water, on streets, on driveways, on yards, and what ran off of
our rooftops just added to that 27 in. New to storm water at the time. While quickly assessing problem areas and arranging emergency triage, I was amazed at how well our network of over a thousand miles of ditches and canals
kept most homes dry inside. That is the drainage system we will be discussing today. Of course, flooding becomes intolerable when it threatens health, safety, and our economy. Management decisions must carefully balance and optimize the quality of life benefits on
most days when water is welcomed and prized against public safety threats posed during extreme events. People who choose to live up north expect snow and ice. People who choose to live in the subtropics expect hurricanes. People who
choose to live in this water wonderland must expect puddles and acknowledge we have a risk of flooding. The question is, what is Bvard County's tolerance for extra standing water? What are the county's drainage level of service goals? And how do we fund achieving and
maintaining those level of service goals? Been asked how the Save Our Indian River Lagoon program can help with stormwater funding. It certainly can within existing guidelines. The Save Our Annual River Lagoon program has funding to reduce the amount of storm water
pollution reaching the lagoon. Not all storm water flows to the lagoon. Some goes west to the St. John's River. So, if you look at the map in the middle of the slide, um there's a little arrow at the top that's about to run down the
topographic divide. Oops. Go back. Let me try that again. Okay. The St. the the St. John's River and Indian River Lagoon drainage divide roughly follows the yellow orange
topographic high points along the old dune ridge that was left by prior sea level. I was told I should run this arrow a few times in South Bard. The Indian River Lagoon wershed extends west of this ridge where large tributaries Crane Creek, Turkey
Creek, and the Sebastian River cut through the old Dune Ridge. Rediversion projects like the C-54, the C1, and the recent M1 rediversion projects seek to restore the natural drainage divide. The Saber Indian River
Lagoon project has completed program has completed 58 projects and has 35 underway. Of about 2,000 catchment basins in Bvard that drain to the Indian River Lagoon, 167 more have been identified as top
priority basins for storm water treatment. These are where storm water projects could stop the most pollution. The Save Our Lagoon program is flexible, allowing these funds, which are currently 61 million remaining for these priority basins to be spent in other
basins that drain to the inner rule lagoon, but the funding amount is reduced according to the new actual pollution reduction benefit. The save lagoon program funds any best management practice. Um, that's the list on the right hand side of the slide that says
project types, but funding is based on using the most cost-effective tool for pollution load reduction. So, there's no extra funding for choosing a more expensive project type or for adding flood control to these pollution reduction projects. However, the the
lagoon program funds for water quality can be used as a local match for grants that can help with the additional costs to address water quantity or flooding. And over the course of the last nine years with plan updates, the Saver
Lagoon funding for stormwater infrastructure has increased from 10.4 million to 86.7 million. Beyond the Indian River Lagoon program, who does what? So, the first row, I know this is hard to read, um, says the
National Pollution Discharge Elimination System Permit, NPDEES permits. Many water decisions are driven by state and federal requirements as itemized in this NPDES permit. An NPDES permit is required for us to be able to drain
water to state water bodies, including the Indian River Lagoon and St. John's River. This pollution elimination permit requires many of the lower rows on this table. And the legislature continues to raise the bar on storm water treatment and mandatory level of service for
drainage maintenance, including Senate Bill 558 that's on the move currently. Planning and development reviews permit applications for finished floor elevations and lot drainage. As shown in the uh center column, public works
focuses on drainage within the rightaway plus storm water treatment required for road projects and permits that expand imperous area. The natural resources stormwater utility focuses on meeting the water quality mandates that are set in state basin management action plans
and providing broader flood relief efforts covering large areas beyond the right of way. Natural resources funds public works to review stormwater calcs for new subdivisions and commercial development. Natural resources and planning and development both do code
enforcement with natural resources focusing on environmental violations and planning and development on the non-environmental regul um violations. The emergency operations program collects crisis data from departments and residents during emergencies and
manages the county's local mitigation strategy. Drainage is about water quantity, both rates and volumes, rather than water quality. Factors that influence risk include the topography of the land, the
storm event severity and frequency, development that happen prior to comprehensive plan and stormwater rules, and code and environmental violations. Tools to reduce those risks include regulatory code modifications,
additional proactive code enforcement, green stormwater infrastructure, also uh commonly referred to as low impact development, buyouts for repetitive loss properties, routine maintenance, which also requires
sufficient staffing and equipment, and large and small retrofit projects for green stormwater infrastructure. That's often referred to as low impact development. You know, that can provide both quality and quantity benefits, but
it often costs more to install and it definitely costs more to maintain. It won't work if and shouldn't be used if there aren't sufficient funds and commitment to keep it maintained. It will make things worse. So, it's a it requires a long-term commitment to go
that route. Slide six shows sort of three flavors of water management. Flood control, water quality, and resilience. So, public works mostly f focuses on flood control via drainage maintenance. The save our
lagoon program focuses on water quality. The stormwater utility does both, but has a relatively small budget. Resilience grants were added by Governor Dantis to adapt and mitigate flooding and sea level rise. Our best example of
a mitig of a resilience project is along the Max Brewer causeway the wave attenuation devices but the county has no dedicated funding for resilience projects. The only way we were able to get these project that project funded was through grants and by using water
quality and water quantity funds as local match to secure those grants. Future state funding is uncertain for resilience projects under the next governor. >> Good afternoon. So, when we're talking about drainage,
we kind of wanted to start with a picture. A picture um creates it's better than a thousand words. It really gives us a good idea of where we've been, where we're going. um and what
areas do have concerns. So, I won't go over this map because we're going to go over it in detail on the next few slides. So, since 2012, we've documented uh quite a bit of flooding and drainage
concerns throughout the county. Um, we went ahead and overlaid that over the incorporated areas just to give everybody an idea of the areas that we have documented are the unincorporated
areas. When you're seeing big blank spots on this map, it's because they're generally in unincorporated areas or in incorporated areas, excuse me. Um, but generally speaking, we have drainage and
flooding concerns across the county. It's because it's flat. Like to be oversimplistic, um, this data was, uh, collected from various sources, crisis track, uh, documented flooding, drainage
complaints since 2012. So, what have we been doing since then? Um the lighter polygons on this map are historical drainage studies uh that we've done throughout the years. The
darker ones are studies that are currently in the hopper. Uh as you can see, generally speaking, everywhere that has a drainage concern has been touched in some manner or another. uh we
have to study what we don't know the cause is. We are not going to go spend bad money after a project that we don't know if it'll fix it. So kind of the first step in any process is to study it. You'll you'll also notice that some
areas overlap. That's because general drainage studies are giving you more of a holistic view. uh once we get into specific areas, we may have to study at a more detailed level to really drill
down into what projects need to be done. So from those studies uh come projects both in public works as well as in natural resources. Uh the two various pink
um polygons and those are currently in the CIP funded um lists for public works and natural resources. So, what have we been doing since 2012?
We've been doing a lot. We have on the green dots, the light green dots are structural pipelinings. The dark green dots are public works road bridge covert replacements. Uh these are not representative of each and every pipe,
but representative of the areas of pipes. So, each dot may represent multiple pipes that went in in one location. And where do we go? So the red dots are representative not of maintenance level
pipe replacements. These red dots really are those projects that have come out of drainage studies throughout the years that unfortunately for one reason or another didn't have funding available to
complete them and they get put on an unfunded list. You guys have seen this unfunded list throughout the years talked about in various budget presentations. Uh currently just drainage related unfunded is at almost a
half a billion dollars just drainage. So each of these red dots again is not a specific location. It is a centralized location for the project. So, think of each project would be more of a polygon, but for
clarity on the map because it was getting really full, they're represented as a specific location. And then last but not least, uh the county received a grant for a countywide
vulnerability study and Bach will drill down into that a little bit more. Sorry, you you you hit it and I hit it. >> There we go. All right. So, as you saw from the maps, uh we've got hundreds of
funded and unfunded projects, both large and small, spread out across the county and in every district. We've identified many of our key assets and areas of risk and we continue to see receive valuable feedback from property owners and residents whether they own property or
not. The that often leads to the question and Rachel touched on this. Why do we keep modeling and studying the county? Uh quick answer is we we've got a requirement from the state to perform a vulnerability analysis and we have grant funding that allows us to study
the entire county including eight of the municipalities that were lacking in staffing and wherewithal to move forward and we got 100% funding from the state to include those municipalities. uh when we apply for permits and try to
leverage county dollars with grant funding, we need to be able to show that each of the projects we're doing is the right solution in the right location. It won't create unended impacts for neighboring areas. Uh the pie chart on the right shows how a stormwater project
costs typically break down. About 20% goes into planning and designing which helps us avoid costly mistakes in land acquisition and construction. Uh because a typical storm water project takes about seven years from planning through construction, being thoughtful about which projects we launch and when is
critical to avoiding wasting time and resources. And while the vulnerability assessment will will be countywide and a great tool for helping us prioritize projects to pursue grant funding, it won't replace the need for more detailed project specific studies and modeling
that will be required by the permitting agencies. Go to the next one. Uh this is an example of a large area flood mitigation project. This completed project was part of the multi-phase Crane Creek Hickory Ditch master plan
and it's a great example of what things look how things can move when we already have modeling and preliminary design work in hand. For years, the permitting agencies told us that jacking and boring under I95 wasn't feasible and we wouldn't be able to get a permit for it. Then we had tropical storm Fay hit in
2008. About 800 homes in the Lamplighter village were flooded along with hundreds more in the surrounding area and the project quickly became a priority. We installed three 48 inch culverts under I95 beginning in July of 2009 with the
remaining improvements rolling out through fiscal year 2009 and 10. We had additional water quality treatment components which were required and were completed in 2015. For a from a performance standpoint, the conveyance improvements reduced the peak
flood elevations by about 18 in for the design 100red-year event. The project also included upstream and downstream improvements along with the creation of a 20 acre storm water treatment pond east of I95. That pond now treats roughly 2,300 acres of older development
in the John Roads Boulevard, Sonor Road, and Ellis Road areas before it discharges to the St. John's River. In terms of funding, we were able to increase a FEMA hazard mitigation program grant to cover 75% of the total project cost. And the local match was
made possible by delaying other storm water improvements projects in district five. And we had to come up with the money for match for some place. And that was done by delaying construction of other projects. Um there uh these are some pictures of
the conditions near Lamplighter Village after FA and while construction was underway. As high as the water appears in the photo by this John RHS entrance to Lamplliner Village, the water on the west side of Lampladder Village near I95 was even deeper due to the slope of the
property. It was essentially turned into a lake and the bottom of the lake was lower near I95. >> Okay, good afternoon. So, now we're going to walk through the storm water projects in each district starting in the north end of the county in district one. I'll highlight some of the larger
and or more more notable projects on each slide. So um as was me me mentioned earlier uh mo most of the stormwater assessment funds are both collected and invested in district 1. We have a number of major projects underway with about $30 million in total construction costs.
These are board approved capital improvement projects that often span many years sometimes even decades. and they typically pull from multiple funding sources as we work to leverage our county dollars across the board. They're designed to deliver overlapping benefits where possible, improving water
quality to meet state requirements and reducing flood risk to make our communities more resilient. If we just take the largest project in this district as an example, West Coco, uh the district one portion of this project, there's also a portion in district two that you'll see on the next
slide, um focuses on improving the drainage ch the drainage channel and upsizing culverts in key areas like Adams, Adamson Road, Lake Drive, State Road 520, Plucky Bomb, and Bernett roads. This is part of a larger multi-phase regional storm water plan.
Between fiscal years 18 and 26, we've been acquiring land and easements, completing design and permitting, and starting construction, which is scheduled to wrap up in fiscal year 27. A project of this size is a lot like a major roadway project. It takes more
than a decade and a significant investment. In district 1 alone, that's about $13 million. On the next slide, you'll see an additional 2 and a.5 million in district 2 for the West Cocoa portion there and another 3.1 million for the Mud Lake project, which supports
the overall West Coco improvements. Each piece we complete increases the level of flood protection across this area and reduces risk to people, homes, businesses, infrastructure, and natural habitat. Even with that level of
investment, we still have about a $4.1 million unfunded gap after fiscal year 27, which means we can't move forward with every recommendation from the study right now for this area. So, we focused on prioritizing the projects that deliver the biggest benefit for the most
amount of homes and structures and have funding available. Pivoting to a smaller retrofit style project. Breezeway is in an older neighborhood between US1 and the railroad just north of 528. The area has an outdated drainage system that
can't adequately prevent flooding of roads and private property. So the solution here is an upgraded system that includes an exfiltration component. So survey work was completed there in 1819. Redesign and permitting are scheduled for throughout the end of this year and
started in 2024. and construction is planned for fiscal year 27. So, moving uh on to district two, we have about a dozen projects here with a total value of roughly 19 million. And I'll touch on a couple of the larger ones. You heard about Mud Lake on the
last slide. This project focuses on improving control structures and creating a regional flood empoundment in West Coco. We've been working through design and permitting over several years from fiscal years 20 through 26. Land acquisition has been ongoing during that same period and our goal is to begin
construction in 27. Another major effort is the NASA drainage improvements project. This area of North Merit Island just north of State Road 528 has experienced significant flooding multiple times and was the focus of a study. An analysis showed that the most
cost-effective solution was installing a permanent electro hydraulic pump, electric hydraulic pump with a diesel backup along hall road to reduce how long flood waters remain after storm events. Planning and initial design started back in fiscal year 17, followed by land acquisition, design, and
permitting through 20. Construction took place from 21 through 24. And this year we finished project closeout. A note about the pumps, and this is just a bit of a PSA. They are significantly more quiet than you would expect and so we often hear complaints that they aren't running during storm events when they
should be. Um they are on. So we installed this was box idea a light on the outside of the pump building to alert people that they they are running even though you can't hear them. So all righty
on the next slide we've combined districts three four and five. Um, in district three, the MCO Central project addresses long-standing drainage and flooding issues around Central Avenue. It adds a storm water pond with nutrient reduction features. We've been working on this one for several years. Land
acquisition began in 18 with survey design and permitting continuing through 25. Construction is planned for this year. In district 4, the Kings Mill project installs a storm water pond at the upper end of the Ogali system to capture sediment and reduce nutrients before water reaches the Indian River
Lagoon. Construction is planned for 25 through 26 and directly supports statemandated nut nutrient reductions. Although this project has had dozens of other elements over many years that reduce flooding, now we're moving into the water quality portion of this hybrid
project. Also in district four, West Arlington and Flamingo in South Patrick Shores added a denitrification added denitrification bioreactors at the county at a county culde-sac and in county right away respectively. Arlington is recently completed and is
already helping to treat groundwater and storm water before it discharges to the lagoon. Flamingo is finishing up now. These projects are nutrient reduction projects and not flood control projects. We often um get questioned about these areas because we hear well there's no
flooding in these areas and you're absolutely right and there's not a lot to see after the projects are done but they are working invisibly to help reduce nutrients to the lagoon. Finally, in district 5, the natural resources portion of the sand dollar project includes a ditrification bioreactor and
sediment removal system on county property near the lagoon. design is complete with construction planned for this year and it will reduce storm water pollution entering the IRL. This is part of a multifa of multi-phase improvements to the Riverside Drive area in conjunction with public works. I believe
there are seven total phases right now. All right. This is just a snapshot of the budget for our storm water program. So this is storm water assessment revenue only. Um
Keith already walked you through the colors of money and as a reminder you'll see that pink are restricted revenues. So all the storm water assessment revenues uh by ordinance in Florida statute can only be used to support storm water projects and the ongoing
maintenance of those projects. So we fund and maintain our storm water program by collecting about $6.7 million a year. So all of those projects that you saw listed in the in the tables earlier. So 34 projects, 13 of which are primarily flood flood control projects
are funded with that 6.7 million a year. That amount collected is pretty consistent year-to-year. You'll notice a large balance forward on the left. Um and that's because of the multi- nature um multi-year nature of the projects. This year we're also leveraging those
assessment dollars. Uh, so we have about $8 million in grants that have to be managed and about 3.75 million in ARPA funds that have to be expended this year. But that allows us to stretch our local dollars. And this is a breakdown district by
district. So each district operates as its own storm water utility, which means that the funds collected in each district are spent in that district on flood control, resilience, and water quality improvements. You'll see the largest revenues are collected in districts one, two, and four, and those
are in order. That's largely because those districts contain the greatest number of incorporated unincorporated properties, which is where the storm walk those storm water assessments are generated. Because these projects are long-term and often have multiple phases. And because many are currently in active construction or being
leveraged with grant funding, the spending doesn't always line up evenly year-to-year. But with the current slate of projects through the life of construction for those projects, about 44% of the funds are going to be in expended in district 1. And district 2
also has a significant number of projects moving into construction, accounting for about 28% of total expenditures. And that's where where we hear the concerns for flooding most in district one and district two. And so those funds are greatest there and they are returning there. Um we also leverage
every dollar that we can to put as much money back into each district that we can. District 4 shows a higher share right now as well. Um that's driven by those the Kings Mill Aurora phase two improvements which are soon commencing or the phase that second water quality
phase is soon commencing and those um benefits extend into district five. Okay. Well, uh, in regards to public works's budget in Roaden Bridge, Rodenbridge is primarily, uh, budgeted
from maintenance operations and MSTU. Uh, we do not have dedicated funding source specific to drainage. It funds all of our operations. uh maintenance operations covers all of the salary and benefits
for road and bridge as well as major projects materials at approximately $33 million. Um the largest project uh is is our road program that comes out of that budget.
Um, and approximately about 29% of it funds the staff associated with drainage. As far as MSTUS across the board, we're looking at about $6 million cumulatively
throughout all the MSTUs. that pays for all the maintenance of the roads and the drainage and the trees and guardrails and everything. So, not a lot of funding
uh for that. And I'm going to throw in a plug that we believe health and safety and that we also fall into the health and safety category. ask anybody that's flooding or, you know, in an accident on the side
of the road. Um, so that's my plug. Um, but something to notice, um, and I want to pull you back to that those little red dots that talk about our unfunded list, you know, you don't get a lot done
with $6 million when you have a uh $500 million backlog of projects. So, we need to find, you know, another opportunity to address those. Um but as far as MSTU funding,
it's pretty much stayed the same. Uh varies very little uh over the years, over the last 10 years, and the maintenance operation budget is actually trending down. So um lots of concerns.
So earlier Rachel showed you an image that was worth a thousand words. If you look at this image of a topographic uh of a neighborhood, it kind in my opinion tells the story of a lack of words in the form of a strong code. Um Bvard County did not even have a comprehensive
plan until the late 80s, let alone the modern subdivision code that we have today. Um in 1986, after the state adopted new rules regarding storm water management, the county followed through in implementing some standards in its initial comp plan. However, as you can
see with the numbers on the left, by that time there were already approximately 108,000 residential structures in the county. The county then adopted storm water management codes in 93 and our subdivision code was adopted in 1995,
which for the first time instituted modern subdivision code that we work under today that includes requirements that communities be planned out and long-term shared infrastructure is accounted for. However, so that kind of give you gives like the the macro view
for subdivision um requirements, but the specific lot drainage part of that code section 622891 looked like this in 1995. It's just the highlighted yellow portion. I know you can't read the words, but you can see it's pretty small. It consisted of two
sentences. Now, you might say, well, you can say a lot in two sentences, so maybe that's not fair. But those two sentences, the first sentence had to do with if you were in a a flood zone, you needed to be consistent with federal emergency management practices. Okay.
The second sentence is where it said if protected trees exist on subdivision lots, you had you could only bring the minimum lot of amount of fill. So basically, if you didn't happen to be building in a uh in a flood plane, in which case you needed to follow already existing regulations, or number two, if
you didn't happen to have protected trees, this the as far as lot drainage requirements and subdivision code, it didn't even apply to you at that time. So in 1995 by that time there's thou 30,000 residential structures um we had
instituted um um with with this code in place. Meanwhile, the Florida building code um was passed by the state was instituted statewide in 98 and was adopted by the county under that mandate
um in O2. But it wasn't until 2015 that the board ultimately amended that lot drainage code I talked about before to look like it does today. It's far more robust and more importantly uh is what's in it. And I think the very first section really tells the purpose and
it's pretty straightforward. Subdivision lot design shall ensure that the drainage of surface water from lots is diverted to a storm water conveyance or other drainage improvement designed to receive surface water so as not to create a hazard. Lot grading and
elevation of building pad shall also be designed to drain surface away from buildings. So finally we have a piece of code in the subdivision area that says keep the water away from structures and ultimately get it to a drainage system. Again, that's in 2015 and you can see by
then 175,000 residential structures were built in Bvard County. I do want to note with these numbers that is countywide because the data um from the 80s till now the only common metric I can find was was a countywide metric. So that includes
cities but still assuming you know uh development trends are pretty consistent. Um there's a lot of structures uh by that time this code existed specifically 90% of the structures that existed today approximately were built prior to 2015.
Um today there's somewhere in the neighborhood of 194,000 residential structures large and small multi-unit singleunit condos and so forth. So, while I'm not saying the current situation, our code couldn't be improved, subdivisions today are subject
to a comprehensive review by experts in the field with a code to back that review up. But what about our existing neighborhoods that you see here? This is a neighborhood that was probably built outside of the subdivision code and that has resulted in vacant lots
progressively being used as part of the storm water system. Eventually those vacant lots get developed and there's nowhere for that water let left left to go but in people's yards at best. Now with that said we have made some improvements in that area too. For
example, in May of 2024, so just before SB80 has been retroactively applied to us, but thankfully it was before that, we had we created a new policy to review new single family residences that have no discharge uh or available connection to a county ditch or drainage feature to
provide and now require them to have a site drainage plan designed by a PE to provide storm water calcs for the 25 year 24-hour storm event or to provide 2 in of on-site retention and ensure that proposed fill does not create ponding or flooding on adjacent properties. Again,
pretty pretty straightforward basic requirements. With that said, though, we do not expect new infill construction like that vacant lot you see there to essentially fulfill the role of a subdivision style drainage system for the entire community that they're in. Um
there's a balance of interest at stake and in order to go further than what our code and policies dictate we would require board action which of course I tell you that with full knowledge that uh the authority has been limited by SP 180 >> SP 180.
>> So before we leave this slide uh we just wanted to point out a few things on this picture. Um this picture is from our county. Uh it is purposely generic but um but very representative of what we
see. Um the lowest areas are the blues and greens uh with white being the highest followed by the browns. So just in case um so as you see historically whether the
property owners that live here now or the property owners that lived there before them have impeded the rear lot drainage that you know was there originally. You know the gentleman I'm going to call him a
gentleman. I have no idea. Uh but the gentlemen on the left bottom uh obviously built a pool and filled in their entire backyard. Um the one above that also filled and now that water can't even get out to the road. There's
sheds in the way. There's fences in the way. So even if that lot were to develop responsibly and not attribute more water to the rear of those lots, those lots are probably going to see more water
because now their water's not going to that lot. So this is what we're seeing systematically across the county. >> Could I ask a technical question? >> Absolutely. >> Thank you, Mr. Chair. If if that's an
HOA, the HOA has some responsibility for the drainage. I mean, they have their own rules, too. Keep keep things away from the lot line and some of those other impediments. I mean, they typically have their own >> are better than others. >> Well, but they have their own storm
water retention, especially if they're built over after a certain You couldn't build that neighborhood today without storm water retention plan. >> Correct. >> Okay. So >> today there would be storm water retention. Uh there'd be rear lot
easements. It's kind of up to the HOA how active they are in making people maintain those. >> But the HOA is responsible for their own storm water retention system. >> Yes. >> Yeah. So so they they have the incentive to make sure that that that works well
versus this neighborhood that predated any kind of storm water retention plan. Correct. >> Yes. Okay. >> Most modern HOAs, they're going to be subject to St. John's River Water Management District permitting requirements and things like that that
they have to adhere to and their uh covenants, conditions, and restrictions are going to reflect that. >> I I've had a little experience with a with an HOA calling about their retention pond and what they need to do. And you know, hey, you got to call St.
John's, right? because they're they're the agency that you had to deal with in the first place, right, on on that whole plan. Um those for the for the modern um neighborhoods, but again, they have the incentive to make sure that it that it
that it works well. A modern neighborhood is going to have that incentive. >> Correct. >> But for us right now with SB80, anything that we tried to do that could be construed as more restrictive or burdensome gets in the way of us
Yeah, >> that's correct. If you're to try to strengthen existing policies to do to do more for for example require um to them to convey the water in a certain way um that doesn't exist today. I think that that could be an issue that
>> Okay, thank you. >> Yeah, and you'll see that as a reoccurring challenge throughout these slides. Um but things do take time to get changed. So if there was something that the board
felt strongly should be looked at, you know, for the future, I mean, we couldn't implement anything, but we could certainly head down a path. So, continuing with our concerns with
historic subdivisions, um, kind of see three bubbles of causation. um they kind of fall into three categories. So legacy conditions where they were built before permitting, we've already talked about that. Uh inadequate
and aging storm water. Um and even flood plane development. I I mean you heard Billy talk about the regulation as it related to the flood plane and it was just like whatever the feds say. And so
we see areas that were built just below the flood zone entirely. Um we have development pressures from the infill lots. We have higher rainfall intensities that we're seeing in shorter periods of time. Um and increased water
tables and tail water levels. Uh we have private impacts. I talked a little bit about that in fences and other improvements. Um but just also unmaintained historic systems. You know, we have some historic subdivisions that
actually have ponds and but the HOAs were dissolved years ago and nobody maintains anything. Um we have unpermitted modifications and then we have our agricultural areas which are a
thing in and of them themselves where that's not even regulated by the county. that's regulated by the state. Um, and primarily they're looking at uh water quality in terms of their regulations, not necessarily water quantity. Uh, all
those uh add together for shared impacts, increased flooding risk, increased infrastructure strain. Uh, we see downstream impacts, we see higher maintenance costs and retrofit costs. Um,
As far as what we can do to mitigate it, code modifications, funding more retrofit projects, um doing modifications to enforcement, um or just buying out areas that are not
able to be retrofitted. Uh all those come with challenges. Obviously, SB80 is the theme theme of a lot of discussions. Uh but we've got staffing and funding challenges. We've got eminent domain challenges. When we approach projects, a
lot of times it's with the understanding that we are going in there. And if the property owners are willing to help with the easements needed and that kind of thing, we can do the project, but if we get into having to buy property and that
kind of thing, it's going to be cost infeasible. Um, a lot of times that'll make one property owner can kill an entire project or c cause costly redesign for retrofit projects. So if we really were committed to doing it and
doing it right, we have to be committed all the way through. Um, and then as far as the agricultural areas, we may not have the jurisdiction to do and regulate what we want. But if I could to be fair with that um a
lot of the issues that are coming in the agriculture areas is because of reszones. It's not necessarily the agriculture land. >> You're getting ahead of me. Okay. Thank you. So, so that was the historical stuff.
Let's talk about the new stuff. Uh we do have new subdivisions and development. We do have opportunities with new development that allows us to regulate under our code. Um it's a group effort
as you saw in Virginia's early slide. Uh this is also a group effort in the fact that everybody's got a piece of the pile on what we review for. Public works reviews for retention uh discharge and road and rightway
drainage. um building reviews for finished floor elevations in regard to impacts within the flood zone. They review for lot drainage. Natural resources gets involved with flood zone impacts and compensatory storage,
wetland impacts, um as well as tree preservation and buffers. So we do have a lot better code now than we did. Our code requirements do address a lot of issues currently. We we require
development design to take to into consideration the current water tables. Uh we require discharge rates pre-post to um to be equal to or less less than the precondition. Um, we require, but
that's for the 25-y year 24-hour storm event. We require no increased staging when a project is impacting within a flood zone. This is the ones inside the zone, not outside the zone. Um, as well
as if there is historic drainage going through an area, uh, the preservation of that historic drainage within a drainage easement or some other way and the existing conditions are required
to be surveyed for that review to determine those types of items. Um, but there's still room for improvement. We still have physical challenges out there. uh we are seeing increased water tables in areas because as you know new
codes sometimes you have to build higher and then the ponds get higher and everything gets higher. So there's a cumulative impact that isn't um readily noticeable. Um we have increased rainfall intensities
that aren't captured in our code. Those are changing things. um in inadequate downstream rates and volume capacity. So a lot of code of our code is it's that 25 year 24 hour but it's a rate it's not
a volume. So when you're talking about okay you're not sending it at me faster but you may be still sending more at me cumulatively. So if I'm not able to get rid of it faster then more water's coming at me.
um and inadequate historic and natural systems. Um so, okay, you can preserve a system, but if it's unders sized to begin with, we're losing the opportunity to negotiate, you know, an improvement
in that system ahead of time. Uh as well as, you know, there's always unforeseen impacts that are done identified during construction. maybe you didn't get the one low spot between the survey shots that were taken or something like that. Um, so
there are possible code changes that could be done should we ever be a allowed to change our code. Um, we could require groundwater modeling. We could do a systemwide model uh similar to what we did on Merit Island where uh
developers have to plug into our model and show no adverse impact. Um, we could adopt the Noah rainfall intensities to stay up to date with what we're seeing weatherwise in requirements.
Um, as well as require people to use all the great new technology that we have available, LAR, etc. to supplement surveys to identify better the historic drainage and that kind of thing. And
we could require if a if we had a model that demonstrated we needed a historic system to get improved, we could require that improvement and dedication, but that would also require us to be willing to pay for that impact. Um, so some of
those challenges, um, like I said, SB 180, increased development costs, um, land acquisition and property rights. So, we would have to uh address that cost. Um, we would have to
have the money to do a systemwide model to that level of detail. And as we've seen with a lot of our codes that have gotten stricter over the years, um, when they don't like it, they annex
and then we lose all of our leverage on making sure that they're not going to cause an issue. All right. So, this slide shows our our current design requirements for various situations
and the rainfall amounts. These are based on a 24-hour idealized storm. uh which is like taking an average of what you would see of rainfall rate and intensity
over a a 24-hour period. So the assumption is that the storm starts off slowly, gradually peaks near the middle of the time period, and then slowly slacks off again, making a bell curve. Obviously, that does not reflect a lot
of the storms we have. So, I'm going to be talking about that a little bit. Also, um the second portion of the slide, the bottom portion is an estimate that we worked up of what it
would cost to go from the current 10-year 24-hour storm to a higher level of protection. Um in in this case we we we made had to make some broad brush assumptions. There
are not a lot of there's not a lot of information literature to support how to do this. So we we made some reasonable assumptions had our engineers work some of this stuff up. Uh the the to go from the 10 year to the 25 year would would
double the cost of just buying the materials and installing the pipes. uh to go to the hundredyear you're tripling the costs. So to go to the 500y year it's five times. So I'm gonna go I wanted to
introduce the slide. So, the city of Titusville, the reason part of the reason we we did made that effort was the city of Titusville recently discussed requiring designing uh to the 100red-year storm event for for all their retrofit CIP projects, which sounds like a great idea and it solves a
lot of problems, but it comes with a cost. Um so we went through went through the adjustments and and estimates um and there are of course I mean obstacles
to requiring this including I especially for non-pro public projects um which might see substantial increase in cost for the storm water system and impediments such as SB80. Uh the current retention ponds are required to be
designed to the 25 year 24hour um unless there's not they don't have a legal positive outfall which means they don't have an easement or an adjacent existing drainage system that they can tie into in which case they have to hold
the 90 96-hour storm which is more rainfall so more volume over that period of time. Um there's a lot of misunderstanding and misuse of of of the terminology. Um for
the 10-year storm, that's a 10% likelihood that the storm will occur in any given year or one in 10 chance in a given location. It doesn't mean that the storm happens once exactly every 10 years. It can occur multiple times in one decade or not at all. And it can
occur in multiplications within the county. For example, they weren't 10-year storms, but for let's take the October storms for example that we got hit with those impacted multiple areas in the northern portion of the county, but southern portion of the county had
minimal impacts. We could get a storm this spring or this summer that flip-flop those. We get major impacts in the southern portion and not much in the northern. And people say, "Well, that was
let's let's say they were the thousand-year event." Well, we got two 1,000-year events. Well, you got them in different locations. So, we didn't really I mean, if you count the county as a whole as one location, then yes, we did. If you count the particular
location that received that rainfall, it's a different matter. So, it depends on how you're analyzing your statistics and what areas you're looking at. Um, the 10-year storms, which we use for design, are relatively frequent, smaller scale storms, relatively speaking, but
they can still cause significant runoff and they can overwhelm local drainage systems, especially if they're aging or have had other problems. Uh, for design, we use this. I mean the 10-year storm typically for urban systems, small dams,
culverts to ensure they can ensure the specific relatively high intensity and shorter duration rainfall events. uh designing stormwater systems attempts I Rachel brought this up is that it attempts to balance the cost versus the
capacity and it's usually determined by governmental agencies based on recommendations from researchers, statistitians, professional organizations and other stakeholders and then I implemented into rule and law by
the governmental organizations. um for I mean Brevar County as you can see on the table we're using the 10-year 24hour is 7.9 in but if you look at the Noah charts over in Tampa it's 6.3 in.
So there's variation throughout the state and even across the county depending on which events we're talking about based on the statistics. Um the rainfall pattern also assumes uh sorry I already talked about that uh
25-year storms and more intense we've got I mean the 25 year is 9 in in Bvard County um that's a 25 year 24hour but if that same 9 in fell in 6 hours that
would equate to a 200year event. So, you wouldn't expect those to happen very often, but if if you're getting dumped on by 6 in of 9 in of rain in six in 6 hours, it doesn't matter where you're sitting, you're going to get wet. Um,
also just as a information point of information, Noah is currently in the process of rolling out new statistics uh supposedly next year that will not only I potentially affect the
return I projected rainfall amounts, but they'll also allow for projecting future rainfall rates um and frequencies under the under future conditions. Um, and that's
on to the next question. So, even if we were to receive board direction to design to more intense storms and triple or quadruple our um public project construction budget, um, we we need help from property owners.
So, so I'm just want to highlight what our natural resources enforcement officers have been seeing in the field. So, obviously the residents are experiencing these more frequent, more intense storm events and naturally many are they're seeing ponding and standing
water on their properties and they're trying to engineer their own solutions. And it's important to remember that more than half of the homes in Bvoulevard County were built before those modern storm water systems, as Billy pointed out. and again 90% before our more
robust county drainage uh regulations. So what we're seeing more often now is tree removal, wetland filling or excavation, and even dyking within flood planes. And while these actions are usually well-intentioned, they often make flooding worse, both for the
property owner and for neighboring properties. We currently have three environmental code enforcement officers managing hundreds of cases throughout the county. And on the next slide, you'll see a sharp increase in in environmental destruction cases, particularly in the northern part of the
county. These cases are complex and can take months or even years to resolve and often require a costly restoration. That's when there's a permitted system or regulated environmental resource that we have language to enforce. In older
historical drainage uh areas where no permitted system exists and no regulated resources impacted, we don't have enforcable uh code language and those citizens t or those situations typically become civil disputes between neighbors.
Um addressing historical drainage would require legislative direction from the board for a code change after Senate Bill 180 is resolved. Um and likely additional enforcement resources. we would probably need another code enforcement team of three to if we were
to enforce historical drainage. So, starting with the the middle photo here is in district three. This is an active case where the property owner excavated a trench on the left there um and constructed a dyke and wetlands which redirected historical drainage
onto neighboring properties that you can see all that ponding on the left there in that middle photo. There's some ponding below too that's a little bit more difficult to see. There was also a private culver culvert that was partially blocked restricting flow. Um that covert's been restored. So the case
is now waiting on confirmation of enforcement closure through FD. Uh that's another thing to note. When we have environmental cases usually we are working with St. John's and D and so it takes a while to get through those resolutions to work handinand with them.
Um on the right, this is in district one. In this case, wetlands were cleared and filled and the owner attempted to make a dyke or a road. You can kind of see the roadway running back towards the house in that picture. Um that work has since been removed. You can see the
wetland vegetation, the ferns on the front left of that picture. Um the wetlands have been restored. The case is now closed, but it took almost two years from the initial report to final compliance. In the top left, uh this is also in district one. This is still an active
case. It involves a pond being altered in what is believed to be a wetland area. We're still trying to confirm that. This is in the Parkland neighborhood which received uh which recently experiencing experienced flooding. It's also an example of a neighborhood built before before storm
water system requirements with no design drainage system in place. In situations like this, each property owner tends to try to solve their own flooding issues and that can destru disrupt the um drainage patterns. Unfortunately, we don't have a simple fix here. If a wetland is ultimately delineated,
restoration would be required, but even that would provide limited drainage relief for this particular property. Finally, on the bottom left, this is in district 2. This is a newer case reported in October 2025. Uh it's for a permitted subdivision. So, we're not
only seeing homeowners trying to solve individual problems, we're seeing even where we're um all the permitting agencies, the 12 or 13 permitting agencies have gone through months of review and sent out um the very best permit that we can. Uh these were
impacts, wetland impacts that occurred beyond what was permitted and waters being discharged improperly onto neighboring properties. Uh the case is ongoing. We're coordinating with St. John's to try and reach a resolution there. Okay.
>> Can I May I just Yeah, Amanda, I just want to make a comment about something that you said. It struck me. So, >> even if we gave you money to do all these projects, we still have to hire people to do them. >> We have to hire people to enforce the codes. We have to hire people to um
yeah, help with design and buildout of those projects. We have to hire administrative staff to help move pay invoices. is we have prompt payment deadlines that we have to comply with and move projects forward. >> So we can't we can't we have to remember that it's not just the job, it's all the stuff that supports it that
>> Right. >> Yeah. >> Absolutely. >> Okay. Um this just shows this slide shows the increase in cases that we've seen kind of in the northern part of the county over the past few years. Case reporting is now exceeding even pandemic levels where folks were at home and more
likely to notice and report issues. Uh we also saw that in 2009 when uh the economy had that downturn, folks were home and we had a lot more cases. Um we really need the public's help here. Our preference is that before anyone starts excavating, clearing land or placing
fill, they reach out to our staff and request a property review. That way property owners can understand the environmentally sensitive areas that may be present on their site. areas that could be providing important flood protection, storage, or water water quality benefits they may not even be
aware of. Once we've had that conversation, we can help guide residents towards more effective and environmentally sound solutions like bioells or rain gardens. These approaches use plants and natural storage to manage water more effectively and can often solve drainage problems
without creating new ones. And rain gardens are just one example of green storm water infrastructure which many of you heard about during the last citizen efficiency and effectiveness effectiveness discussions. Our environmental codes are written to support, encourage, and even incentivize
green storm water infrastructure and low impact development. There's nothing that prevents residents from using these strategies on their own property as long as they're installed in the right locations and don't impact environmentally sensitive areas. All right, we're now going to turn to
maintenance responsibilities. In this slide, we see a theoretical drainage system. Uh, properties and developments may discharge into our system or a city, town, or even FDOT. But frequently, the water travels through multiple property owners and/or maintaining authorities
before eventually flowing out. Generated by AI, this image shows a tongue-in-cheek view of the county's ditch being uh perfect in the foreground. It's meant to highlight how interconnected drainage is though. Uh we recognize we are far from perfect and uh
resourced to only be reactive. But uh you can quickly see that uh this ditch has a strong likelihood of backing up into our drainage system and rights away uh due to down trees overgrowth and general lack of maintenance in the background. Our public works road and
bridge teams maintain swailes, ditches and canals, public structures and bridges as well as pumps associated with our rights away. They also perform clearing and mowing, swell rehabilitation, uh inspection and vac cleaning, failed uh covert replacement and curbon gutter
uh rehabilitation projects as well as oversee contracts for many other related tasks. All five district maintenance teams have approximately 15 to 20 personnel each to do this plus all of the road work, sidewalk, bridge uh
maintenance, repairs uh on top of it. While we will get into our challenges and limitations in a moment, many cities and towns as well as other organizations have similar responsibilities as well as challenges. design requirements and maintenance levels would need to be
holistically applied to fully realize the improvements. As was noted earlier, just because we make uh a code change or we add staff uh or equipment doesn't mean that the other cities or um FDOT or private land owners are going to do
that. Uh, NERM performs some similar maintenance functions to public works, but their efforts are focused on a broader non-rightway specific area flooding concerns with heavy emphasis on water quality and resilience. They oversee maintenance on treatment ponds
and baffle boxes, perform nutrient removal, and oversee contract street sweeping to minimize fines getting into our storm system. They also perform storm water inspections and elicit discharge investigations throughout unincorporated boulevard. I'm now going
to touch on private drainage. In the next slide, so many private property owners perform little to no maintenance. Under code, they are responsible to perform maintenance for their subdivision treatment ponds for rear and
side lot drainage as well as on uh private uh driveway coverts and private bridges. We're often asked why we as the county don't clean this or fix private pipes. Many many years ago, we did as a county. It was changed in code due to
the enormous costs and uh as well as these pipes are solely for the private owner's benefit to access their property. Additionally, in cleaning those private drainage pipes, it previously opened us up to many allegations that we caused private
structures to fail, possibly held together by the rust or dirt itself, but it cost the county lots of money once those systems were broken or alleged to be broken. Private owners are also responsible for their own lot grading
and to maintain historic uh drainage. However, the ladder is often blocked by sheds, trees, fences, or filled in um and the code provides no recourse to enforce. Similar challenges exist uh for agricultural drainage, which pertains to
a large amount of our systems in the county. They are regulated through FD and the St. John's River Water Management District, not the county, and are exempt from many of the permitting requirements. It it is not regulated to the same level of design review that we
would otherwise enforce for uh new family single homes and subdivisions. They are generally based on previously approved best management practices focusing on water quality. Artisian wells was something we recently addressed during a prior board meeting uh which is overseen by the St. John's
River Water Management District or the Department of Health, not public works or natural resources. And lastly on this slide, many complaints are related to private drainage concerns for which the county has a no authority to enforce, no authority to go on to private property,
and even if we had the permission of the property owner, we lack the resources to address what we already have assigned to us to maintain. So, we have a handout. Rachel's going to hand that while I start talking. This is
um this slide attempts to provide an overall summary for our most critical needs as it's very easy to get lost in the details and even what I'm about to say is going to be quite lengthy. Uh we took an unconstrained view of what could
improve drainage level of service within the county. Every single thing asked for is needed, but it it's not an all or nothing proposition. In fact, the board could support some categories, only part of a couple categories, and every bit
would help. Think of this like ordering off that long white menu at a Chinese fast food restaurant. And literally, we passed out a long white menu of things that the board could decide to choose from. Sometimes you buy a combo and other times you order appetizers, a single
dish or uh a side dish separately. Each thought has so many possibilities and solutions. And while we spent a lot of time coming up with them, much more work is needed if we were to implement it. we would need board direction such as spend up to X amount of dollars or only
consider uh Y and Z categories and then we can come back with an executable plan. It's important to note that the status quo funding means less level of service every single year. We have addressed in the past and to some extent earlier in this brief, but road and
bridge maintenance uh MSTU funding has been relatively flat for 10 years. Our equipment fleet is aging. We lack sufficient resources and inflation continues to outpace our charter cap, severely eroding our purchasing power to buy materials and equipment as well as
fund projects and personnel. The average contractor or consultant also cost us two to four times what we spend in house to do the same service. Let's briefly start out with a quick uh overview and brief his specific history to road and bridge maintenance and
drainage. First and foremost, we are first responders. Our actions are driven by resourcing, which directly affects the public's health and safety. And as we discussed during the last budget workshop, were the first there and typically the last to leave. We have 421
total ditch miles and 527 swell miles that we have documented. Each year, our inventory grows as we run across new information and gather greater fidelity. As I briefed last year, in the notso recent past, we had some ditches that hadn't been maintained
for 20 to 30 years. Prior to COVID, receiving prison labor each weekend for ditch cleaning, mowing, and other related tasks across the county at all of our road and bridge shops was routine. However, due to uh BCSO's own
challenges, we we now only receive that on rare occasions. from 2018 to 24 and likely in years prior. We also received free supplemental help from the Bvard Career Source. They received state and federal training grants in response to
prior hurricane damage. The grants came with heavy equipment and they paid the trainees. They taught literally taught across the county's many ditches and canals by cleaning them for us. We no longer have those resources. When
trainees graduated the program, we often benefited by gaining new employees. Currently, there are no BVARD career source grants for these types of programs. Our normal district maintenance team teams play an enormous
role in drainage maintenance, namely routine maintenance such as mowing and debris removal as well as covert replacements and structure reconstruction. They also supplement ditch maintenance and swell maintenance as the schedule allows. Throughout other
parts of the year, they're focused on other things such as roads and sidewalks and bridge maintenance. During the grow growing season, it's very hard to see in September that we did or accomplished anything if we um mowed it in May
because it is typically regrown u based on our current uh size and our staffing levels. Um, and that's even if we mow it in that particular year. We'll get into in a moment, but we have ditch cycles and depending on um whether it's a
primary or secondary tertiary, we may not get to it for five years. We also have less field staff than we did in years past. In addition to our normal district maintenance teams, prior to 2017, we
only had one dedicated countywide dra uh drainage crew and no formal swell rehabilitation program. Each crew of four focuses exclusively on cleaning ditches and swell rehab to ensure flow, not the routine maintenance that I just
talked about from our maintenance team. And for areas with no access, we have Kaisers that are utilized in 2018 and 20. The board provided us funding for two more crews and equipment respectively. So we have three crews across the entire county of four people.
So 12 people dedicated to uh full-time uh ditch cleaning. So now uh getting to the chart before you as well as the handout in the leftmost column, we are proposing the addition of two additional countywide
drainage crews going from 3 to 5. That would be $2.1 million in capital equipment needed today plus $930,000 in recurring labor, fuel, maintenance, and other related costs. In making this investment, each crew can do
approximately another 27 miles annually of the roughly thousand miles I mentioned, and we will cut primary and secondary ditch maintenance cycles virtually in half as depicted on the slide. However, tertiary ditches would not be improved under this uh
recommendation. Primary ditches, just to be clear, are usually the large arterial canals conveying lots of water. Secondary ditches collect from the tertiary or the local neighborhood ditches um which make up uh the largest quantity of our ditches.
In the next column, we are proposing doubling our road and bridge and support related staff. We would need $10 million in capital equipment plus $11 million in recurring labor, fuel, maintenance, and other related costs. This would add 116
positions consisting of field staff, mechanics, data control specialists, additional supervisors, all the things that we would need to help support the field efforts um at the pointy end of that spear, the ones that are doing the work. It will further increase level of
service by further focusing on primary and secondary ditches as well as cutting tertiary ditch maintenance cycles and accelerating maintenance and covert replacements as well as providing increased level of service for emergency response. This is not intended to replace the two additional drainage
crews I just mentioned, but rather it is an addition uh as well as to the one that I will talk about in a moment. But obviously I recognize that this is likely not going to go uh too far because of its high cost. Um so any bit
of this again would help. Um in the next u or the middle column we are proposing four additional vac truck and camera trucks for a total of five trucks. Meaning we have one truck today. That would be $2.7 million in capital equipment plus 600,000 in recurring
labor, fuel, and maintenance. This would help address a prior unfunded state mandate known as SP80, which mandates us to conduct proactive drainage inspections on the county's roughly 20,000 culverts and pipes. We do not do this today. Currently, with one only one
vehicle, we reactively respond when there is a known flooding issue. We do not inspect any of our drainage ditches which SB80 is being uh which has required us to now inspect. And in the um two potential bills that are being uh
moved within both the Senate and the uh and the legislature, neither one addresses this issue. Um, so it would help us establish a proactive seven-year inspection cycle by having five trucks uh with crews dispersed uh around the
county and uh over that 7-year period we would get through uh 20,000 coverts and pipes. Um and then by then we'd have to repeat that. Uh in the next column we are proposing increasing new and replacement capital equipment funding. We're asking for $2 million annually in
capital equipment funding. Currently, we have $15 million in equipment backlog with 10 million related to drainage alone. Only uh but we only have approximately $1 million a year over the last several years. All coming out of
the very little MSTU budget that Rachel referred to earlier in the slide. What has this done? Well, it's decreased our level of service further due to delays in uh downed equipment and it has increased our repair costs by over 30%
by keeping equipment that is beyond its useful service life um over the last 5 years and it continues to rise. In the handout, we also propose a variety of other equipment I'm not going to specifically get into in this uh
presentation. Uh but it goes back to my alleart um comment earlier. In the last column in the top, we are proposing additional an additional one engineer per every $10 million of added unfunded projects. This isn't a hard and fast
rule, but rather a rule of thumb. approximately one engineer for $10 million is easier to manage than if we had 10 projects that are $1 million and are complex projects. So that would be a sliding scale. But just to try to give you a perspective uh because as we
previously stated, we have $500 million in unfunded projects. So the board couldn't, if if it were so inclined to find that money, couldn't just expect us to do it with existing staff. We would need a lot more staff. And not depicted here are additional alleart positions on
that uh white handout uh such as additional contract coordinators, accountants um and the like as Amanda had mentioned earlier. Um and it really depends on how much project funding we are given. In the last column bottom, we're
proposing five additional field inspectors. That would be 300,000 in capital equipment plus 550,000 in recurring labor, fuel, and maintenance. As alluded to on the last slide, a single private homeowner's failed driveway covert can singularly flood an
entire neighborhood. We are very reactive in addressing these. Either it's because we receive a neighborhood complaint, code might receive a code enforcement may receive that complaint or it's because we are going into a neighborhood over the next
one to two years to perform the swell rehab that I talked about under the countywide drainage crew. And at that point we are looking at that specific neighborhood to see if we see any issues and then we issue failed covert notices.
Uh but at the pace that we are going um there are neighborhoods that um flood that we will u never get to or it will be you know u many many years. So we have the ability to send out a letter and then engage uh code enforcement if
needed. Um because this is our rightway in our code. It's specific that our uh homeowners are required to maintain their uh drainage coververts, their driveway coverts um for their unimpeded access, but it is over our rightway uh
and often is failing and or failed um and that is a a problem for us. This whole process is time consuming especially if we go through code enforcement to get them to address it. All the while water is backing up and
houses or uh certainly properties uh I should say are uh potentially flooding. So again these are >> I think uh let's have a five five minute break here. >> Okay, >> we got some requests. Thanks.
Hey, hey, hey. Hey, hey, hey. Hey, hey, hey. Hey, hey, hey. Hey, hey,
hey. Hey, hey, hey. Hey, hey, hey. Hey, hey, hey. Heat. Heat. Hey,
hey, hey. Hey, hey, hey. Hey, Heat. Heat. Hey, hey, hey. Hey, hey, hey. Hey, hey,
hey. Hey, Hey, hey, hey. feel hey feel hey Hey, hey, hey. Hey,
hey, hey. Hey, hey, hey. Hey. break. >> Mark, you got the floor. >> All right. Thank you, Commissioner. Uh, only another five hours, I promise.
>> That's okay. >> We're just going to throw money at you. Just >> Just take it. >> All right. So, uh, I I was talking about the last column on this slide and and the bottom and private, uh, drainage and then the need for inspectors, and I was
saying how we're able to engage on this because it's actually the public's rightway. Um, we don't have the a staff that does this now. Um, which is why we're asking for five. U, that would be, you know, one basically for each of our
road and bridge uh, maintenance districts. Right now, as I mentioned, uh it's only when we go in uh to do a neighborhood do we do it at that time. Uh otherwise, so it's very reactive. Um and this is different than um side and
and uh rear lot line because that is on private property. Even where there's easements, there's um no historic drainage code as Amanda had mentioned earlier to enforce that. Um so just wanted to point that out. Um, and then as I mentioned a few times, um, you
know, there's additional equipment and staffing on the handout that we gave. Um, you know, I recognize what I just went through is a lot and there's even more on there and that's why we really tried to focus on some of the bigger stuff realizing that u you know the
money uh is not there but if it were um we can scale all this and that goes back to my comment about you know really needing some board direction on where you'd like us to focus. Um there's also, you know, one other big one that I wanted to hit and that is on your list
which is uh increasing our current telemetry. Uh so we're putting that around uh the county right now with uh in cooperation with natural resources. Um that is going to give us better uh real-time uh flood data as storms are
happening. Um, we're looking to continue to uh expand that as well as add automation for our pumping and our weirgates so that we have real-time monitoring and response during flooding. Uh, right now what happens is if we have a hurricane uh if our pumps are running
at 40 mph, we're we're in um you know, punker down uh just like everyone else is until the storm uh dies down. having, you know, automatic uh monitor or having monitoring and then automatic uh gates uh would help us control them even
during the storm. So that'd be an additional 3.5 million in capital equipment and 150,000 in recurring uh maintenance and fuel and monitoring costs. Uh, and you know, I'd be remiss if I didn't um add that you cannot look
at doing any of these things, uh, you know, without staff and, uh, in order to solve these drainage problems. And the board really needs to recognize that uh we are currently unable to we have unmet
staffing challenges now significant unmet challenges which I uh understand will be talked about at uh at a later date. Uh but you know even if the board decided to give us 20 positions or five positions we have a significant vacancy
rate today. I'm going to kick it over to Amanda and then I'll be back for the final slide. >> Okay. So, you've heard about a a lot of issues and potential solutions and so um let's talk about potential additional
funding. Um so, this is specific to the storm water utility assessment. Uh it's a nonad non-adalorum um funding. It's not part of the cap. So, the storm water utilities were established in 1990. Thank you, Commissioner Alman. In uh district three
and five and district 1 and two and four followed in 1991, the board can direct staff to prepare changes uh to the current uh rate, which is $64 per eru or equivalent residential unit. That's defined as a 2500 square
foot uh square feet of imperous area. So kind of your typical home or what was typical homes are obviously getting larger and so there's more impact now. Uh that rate has not increased in about a decade and there's no automatic CPI adjustment built in. So as a result
we're losing buying power every year. If the rate had simply kept place or pace with infl inflation it would be about $85 per eru today. We're also well below the state average, about 40% lower and behind most of the larger larger
stormwater utilities in Bvard as well as Valuchia County. So comparatively, our rate is is on the low end. When the board last adjusted the rate structure in 2014, they phased that rate increase in over the next couple years. They also changed how the storm water dollars were
allocated. So we shifted from a 50% 50% between flood control and water quality projects to 70% for water quality and 30% for flood control. That change was driven largely by impaired water bodies and the need to meet nutrient reduction
requirements. That allocation however can be adjusted by the board through ordinance does not require refer referendum. Looking ahead the board has the option to adjust the rate, add a CPI escalator or both. For example, simply moving to
the state average would generate about $2.7 million uh dollars of recurring revenue a year. Any rate change, like I said, would require ordinance, not referendum. And if the board wanted that to take effect next fiscal year, we would need direction sometime next month
to be able to do the mailers. The mailers cost about $100,000. Each each resident would get a mailer. >> Oh, sorry. There was one more thing. So, there's only one major utility nearby, lower than our rate, uh, and that's Melbourne, and they do not do flood
control projects like we do. >> Okay. Uh, this is the money slide or the big money slide. Um, you you've seen this before. I presented it uh at the last couple budget workshops. We also put together a revenue generating report. As discussed earlier, we have
approximately 500 million in already uh identified unfunded drainage projects in our backlog. As uh will uh possibly be shown with the uh the board's support um in our next budget workshop, drainage is only part of our overall revised public
works unfunded backlog. Um and so if the board wants to hear more about that um in March, um we'd like to talk about it. Uh but when you look at uh facilities and transportation, traffic and road and bridge, which all fall under me, uh our
revised unfunded backlog is now 3.6 billion. Uh went up from 2.2 billion and that primary increase is due to new roads that are nearing or over capacity as well as inflation. Uh Keith had shown you that the construction cost index
outpaced uh what CPI is uh significantly. And uh so between the two, our uh backlog has gone up uh tremendously from last time I presented to you. And we'll we'd be prepared to present that if the board wants to get
into uh that. Um so the revenue generating report uh shows that we could potentially garner up to 179.6 million more in revenue every single year if all of the revenues on this chart were adopted.
similar to a lot of other counties. Um, and I went into uh detail which counties um you know did do which one of these uh last um last budget uh workshop. I don't have all those details with me today,
but uh a lot of the other counties uh do some or uh many of these. Uh so the report we provided to the board in 2025 provides a lot more detail than we have time for here. uh as well as a lots of uh pros and cons for the five potential
uh revenue sources. The biggest urgency and putting this as part of the drainage um slide today and not waiting for the public works um brief in March is uh urgency of schedule. So based on what we
are already seeing um there may be more cuts needed this year if the board plans to act for drainage andor transportation facility shortfalls. We would uh need to brief at uh before we brief at the uh March budget workshop. We would need
legislative intent and permission to advertise an ordinance in February for at least the two sir taxes. That's because the notional schedule is that we would we would do that in um February. In March and April, we'd need to have public hearings and we need to enter
into interlocal agreements with the two major cities. Um, in May we would need a final ordinance or resolution due to the Office of Program Policy Analysis and Government Accountability. In John in June, we'd file with the Supervisor of Elections and then it would be on the
ballot for, uh, November. And so, um, that is the big reason to bring it up again today, uh, whether it's for drainage or any and all of the, uh, potential, excuse me, public work shortfalls. So just as a quick recap, the charter county and regional
transportation system, the discretionary sales tax is on goods and services purchased in the county. It has the largest potential to generate uh funds depending on the rate implemented. At 1% the county share could be hund00 million per year. It requires a simple majority
to be placed on the referendum. It can be used for broad transportation needs, including roadside drainage, and can last for 30 years. Um however as I mentioned as a certax it requires public hearings negotiations with cities and uh approval by the office of program policy
analysis and government as well as a certified public audit. Uh the local government infrastructure discretionary sales tax um or sir tax uh is also on goods and services purchased in the county. It has the second largest potential to generate funding but would
compete with Sorrel and uh combining uh the ask could drag Sorrel down. Uh implementation and limitations are the same as the charter county and regional uh transportation systems discretionary sales serve tax I just went over. The public service tax has the potential to
generate uh roughly 33.4 million. This is based on FPL uh rates that or funding that franchise fees that we already collect. uh but by increasing the amount taxed on other um utilities such as natural gas and water etc. uh it is
considered a general fund revenue uh once it's uh received and can be used on any legitimate purpose. As an example, the county already generates 19 million from the FPL franchise fee, but only 4.4 million goes to fund our traffic
operations. um referendum uh is required per county charter um but has no no requirement to share. Uh the final two uh on this list are the 9th cent fuel tax, the un uh leaded motor fuel at 2.7
million, which isn't that much money relatively speaking compared to the needs, but every little bit would help. And it's certainly when combining it with the uh LOG uh fifth cent approximately the $9 million that was cut out of public works budget this
year. Uh it further it requires no requirement to share with the cities and uh board by supermajority vote could implement it even without a referendum or by simple majority it could add it to a referendum. Uh it could be used for any legitimate operations and
maintenance uh purpose public transportation need uh which again would include roadside drainage. Um and then uh finally the LOGT uh fifth cent is not an enormous amount either at 6.4 4 million. I already mentioned how that
could help offset this year's cuts. It has certain restrictions on operations on maintenance and repair projects, but it could be used for capital transportation projects including roadside drainage. Uh it can be approved as well by supermajority vote by the
board uh andor added by simple majority. Uh but this one requires an ILA with the cities with a majority of the municipal population which at least out of the five makes it a little bit less attractive uh as far as dollars uh for the effort uh but again could help
offset our costs. So with that um does the board have any questions for any of us? The tough ones go to these guys though. >> Okay. Do we have any questions? Yes. >> Um, so if I could just go back to one of
those first, uh, let's see, the third slide. Um, one of the things that I just wanted to point out about this map is that um, all the water that is west of that black line goes out west to the um,
>> St. John's River and then it goes north and then it gets bottlenecked north of North Bard in Lake Harney and then we get a second flood in Mims in North Bard. So, I just wanted to point that out that
while all the water is getting pumped out of the rest of the county, a lot of times we experience the first initial flood that everybody experiences, but then we get a second whammy because of that bottleneck.
Um, and then one of the questions I had about the monitoring is that am I under the correct understanding that a lot of times when we do the monitoring up in North Bard, it's on the lake uh or I'm sorry, it's the um highway 50.
>> So >> monitoring well are are you talking about water quality or the the lake levels? >> The lake levels. So there are there have historically been um two two uh water level gauges up there on the north end
of the county with uh ARPA money public works has recently added um several more. So that will that will help with the monitoring that we're I monitor the levels that we're going to be doing. Uh the other thing is as we move forward
with uh both the vulnerability assessment and the other studies that we're trying to implement towards a real-time flood forecasting those will uh give us a starting point for the model of the forecast of well this is the existing current existing condition. Now we run the model forward based on
the forecasted rainfall and the other things. So we're we're trying to get there to a robust system. A lot of times the the reason why I bring that up is a lot of times um the the secondary flooding that we get in North Bard doesn't necessarily reach 50. And so I'm
hoping that we can start looking more north while we're monitoring these things. Yes, we we we will be. And it will it'll also help. I know I think we've talked about this with with you, Commissioner before, but for the rest of the group, the water management district
has a model constructed now for the main St. John's River from 520 south to the bottom of the the air contributing area. They are working on a model from 520 up through
uh Orlando and Orange County into Valuchia that is supposed to be done in about a year and a half I think it was. Um hopefully sooner but I mean as soon as we can get our hands on that we'll be using that to improve our
modeling efforts as well. >> Cool. And then um if we could go forward five slides. Oh, one back. There you go. Um I was just wondering when is this through? So it says since 2012, but is it through a
certain amount of time? Is it current to today or >> It's current to a few weeks ago. >> Okay, cool. And then If we could move forward to the D1 um storm water project slide.
So I see that you know obviously there's a lot of projects going on here but I just wanted to point out that a lot of these have to do with nutrient levels and not necessarily flooding. >> Correct. >> And so the majority of money that's being spent is other than that mud lake
which is pretty much a done deal. It might have a few, you know, things left in it, but that's that's pretty much a a done project. Um, but the rest of them, the majority of the money is going towards nutrients, not flooding. >> Correct.
>> It's about 2/3 is going towards flooding because the West Coco is a flooding project. That's 13 million. >> Right. But I'm saying if we take out the West Cocoa one because that that project at least when I first got elected, we we had talked about that that it it's pretty much
>> um >> we're we're pretty far forward. There's still a budget shortfall to do fully implement, but you're correct. That's the majority of the >> because like they didn't get any flooding or hardly any flooding in the last storm and that kind of stuff. So, it's obviously a successful project that
you know is is doing well. But I'm the point that I was trying to make was that we um are experiencing now a lot of issues in the Mims Scotsmore area, >> right? As as well as the Parkland area
that the public works is trying to address and >> right >> if I can, you know, quickly add commissioner. So, uh ours is mostly, you know, the dots on the map. We didn't print uh something out, but as I shared during a previous board meeting, we have
we're in design on both um a uh Dixie village as well as a Westwood um uh project and both we're thinking about uh seven or eight million combined and as we shared u you know we would look uh
for hopefully state help in the future. Uh but even that with state help normally you got to come up with 50%. So there, you know, uh those are worst case scenarios. If we can get some easements, we may, you know, those costs may go down. Uh but we are working on it. The
other thing is we're working right now, it will come to the board at the next meeting, uh permission to get a HMGP grant, uh which would look specifically at the uh Parkland area and that watershed. Um, so it's requesting it
will request board permission um to have authority to go do that. >> And that project you said also is it'll help a little bit, but it's there's still going to be ongoing issues in that area, right? >> Yeah. I would say that um you know, one
um if if the St. John's rises, there's nowhere for it to go unless we're looking at seriously buying property to, you know, store water, um, ditches, etc. Um, we're we're still going to have challenges, but we be may be able to mitigate it. The other thing, as we've
shared with you, we're meeting with the city of Titusville staff on Monday to discuss uh what happened in October and um see if we can get them on board with something like the study that we're talking about, >> right? And um do you happen to have an
idea for us um oh never mind you said it before this the 3.6 um billion for unfunded projects. Um, I guess one of the one of the biggest things I'm hoping to chat with the board
about today is looking forward. Um, you know, I know a lot of us focused a lot of our campaigns on infrastructure and public safety. And I'm, you know, we've done a really good job getting our our fire department into a
better place. I still think that we have a little bit more work to do especially in the work life balance piece. Um but the infrastructure piece I think is um we're desperate especially in in D1 um
for some major changes and um I I'm worried that if we continue um prolonging this that we're going to be getting into a pretty massive situation like Valuchia had and the
massive buyouts and things like that that go on. I know that when um I was walking, you know, some of the neighborhoods uh after October, there were so many homes that were not um that did not fill out that paperwork
that we had asked them to fill out. Um and people are still dealing with the effects of the October storm even today. Um still their houses are still torn apart and whatnot. Um, and there's even still water issues uh that we're still
dealing with. Um, so I don't know what everybody feels about these numbers that that Mark brought to us and also the storm water numbers that were brought. Um, I personally feel like
one of the ways that we could handle this is uh expanding the scope of our infrastructure sales tax. And not that we want to take away what Sorrel is doing because I think that work needs to continue, but I think that we need to just expand the scope of where those
monies can go to and even possibly consider the um idea of bumping it up to a 1 cent because especially with the property tax thing looming over our heads, I would hate to move forward with the half cent sales tax as it is today
and that pigeon holes us into a situation where we don't have the monies needed to deal with our current issues but future issues um when our our funding could be taken. So, I don't know if anybody has any thoughts about that.
Why don't we um before we get into general policy discussions, um we still have a a presentation with utility services in front of us. Let's get that wrapped up so we look at the total picture. Um and and I know we'll have a
lot of a lot of time and opportunity to talk about these. These are really good points, things that we do need to talk about. I know I have questions. Um and um and and one of my questions was the time frame that we have of all these decisions.
Where do we where are we in terms of when we need to make times, but I want us to get the utility services out of the way. I would hope >> they mentioned February. I saw that in the one slide. >> Yeah. Um February close like right Yeah.
few days. Um okay, let's move if we're finished with that. Let's let's uh go to county utilities. >> Can I clarify something on that? Uh February for fees and such um and then notices and what have you. But as far as whether something's going to be put
before the voters, I mean ultimately the supervisor of elections needs to have that in August. Am I are we clear on that? >> August 151 17 something like that. >> Okay. Okay. Just just to make that distinction. >> April worst case >> I would say.
>> Sorry. Uh April I mean I'd have to do a little research. Uh the big thing if you're looking at a penny sales tax that we would need to work with the cities because they would get half of well approximately I don't know what that percentage is but it's the same like we do for Indian River Lagoon where we have to come up with interlocals with the
cities on it too. So there there's a lot of leg work to get it on the ballot. >> So half would potentially go to the municipal governments. Correct. >> Yeah. I I'm assuming it works the same as the sorro money because it's the same type of uh tax structure. >> Right.
>> Yeah. Um and and so Mr. Chair, what you have from utilities, you guys want to create some space there, uh you have Eddie Fontin, who's our utilities director, and u uh Lucas Sigfrieded, who is our engineering manager for the utilities department.
Hit escape and get us out of here, guys. Yeah, >> thank you. >> I thought that was right. >> Was it? Oh, yeah. You're the green one. Yeah. Sorry about that. >> No, no, no. It's all good. >> You're good to go. >> Excellent. >> Hello, everyone.
If you're all are ready, we'll uh give you an overview of utility services. And like I said, I'll try to do this in a timely way. Um just to give you an a little overview, we're broken up um by operations. We're
broken up in what we call the north, central, and south area. Um what we have here is just a geographical of our utility service boundary. Um I will say this boundary is based on the um
amendments or changes that we made in the comp plan pending approval but as you can see um you know Merit Island is obviously covered um the Port St. John area and also um the Mims area and we've
extended it to the uh Valuchia border. Um we provide a quick overview of our assets in each of these. Um central um this is what we know is basically the Vieiraa, Sunree, Palm Shores area. Um we
do have area in West Coco. Um and we also provide service to the landfill for that. And south area as you can see is everything south of Panita on the beaches. Um just to the Melbourne beach
area but not its entirety. And then the unincorporated Barefoot Bay and the remainder of the unincorporated area down to the Sebastian River. Um, east of that or west of that is the service area of Palm Bay.
So, just a quick overview, we are an enterprise fund. Um, there are times when discussions are made about utility services. Um, and we're associated with general fund or adverum. That's actually incorrect. We're not allowed to receive
any of those funds and such. we generate our own. Um this is an overview. Um as we dive into this um presentation, we're going to be talking about not only what state and federal mandates are, but also about
growth. Um so as we discuss that um growth is also associated with capacity. So this gives you an overview of what our capacity are on our existing wastewater and water treatment plants. Please note that the percentages shown
are based on the current permitted capacity and that's where the calculation is from. To give an overview um you know we uh from a utility account these accounts can vary. Um we have multiple categories
from single family home to commercial to light industrial but in its summation by a quantitative number. Um you know we have 67,000 and that's growing. That's a snapshot from November of 2025.
Um water um you can see we have 3,400 plus in Mims and 5,800 in Barefoot Bay. Um and then we also do reuse also. Just an introduction to the financials. Um this is our um these are our sources
as you'll see. Um our balance forward that is getting smaller and smaller. A lot of that was generated when we were receiving FD grants and ARPA funds. Um we were using those were priorities based on deadline
which caused a backlog with our utility funded projects but those are now in the mix of being implemented. Um the majority of our uh revenue uh with regard are our user rates.
Our expenditures are shown as such. um our operations, which include operations and salary and benefits. You know, I I always say we're a $50 million a year operation to keep the lights on and the and the staff going. Um and then
obviously as we expand that circle, it talks about the um not only our obligations of debt service, but also our um expenditures with CIP and operation projects. So, we currently do have debt service.
This is a bar graph. Um, the yellow gold depicts the countywide system. The red depicts the Barefoot Bay. I know that's one of the questions that gets brought up on when is Barefoot Bay's debt service complete. And the answer to that
is the end of 2029. Good. This gives you an overview of the grants, bonds, and loans. Um, we do actively try to capture um,
opportunities for funding that can uh, stretch our dollar further with regard to the fees that we currently collect. Um, FTE once or twice a year will open up opportunities for grants. Um, this gives you an overview. all except the
bottom one under grants or FT grants. So, we feel good about that summation that we've received. We do have existing bonds um countywide and Barefoot Bay. And we also have three existing state
revolving funds uh for current projects that have been completed or near completed. So just an overview of revenue. We um our number one source are the user rates. Um we do permitting and inspector
fees, connection fees, fat, oils, grease. That's where Bvard County is the only hall or the depot um at least public depot uh associated for fat, oils, grease, and septage. Um and so we
have a fee structure for that. And as mentioned before, the grants that we do receive, we recognize. So how can we use these fees? There's some rules associated associated to this and give you an overview. User rates can
be used for anything, whether it's personnel, operations, o uh CIP, um as long as it's used within the department for department purpose, it can be used. Uh, same goes with regard to the fees we
collect from permitting and inspection fees, connection fees. That's where you start to get into rules and what we have to recognize. And that's really where we're dealing with um capacity expansion. And I know so much of the
attention is brought to the treatment plants, but main lines um 12 in bigger are viewed as a regional line. So there's a um uh because it has a regional benefit connection fees can be
used for that. And then we as I explained earlier about the fats, oils and grease and we associate that with regard to the operation and upkeep and improvements of those facilities. Uh just to give you an overview, um we
have um we've looked at opportunities on upgrading um getting current our rate structure. Our user fees are were updated in February of 2022.
Um and I'll touch a little bit about the dynamic of that. uh developer fees was in October of 2024. We're now current with the remainder of other departments uh within the county on how we charge
our developer fees. Prior to that, they weren't updated. It was 1972. Um connection fees. Um, so we have gone back and found a rate resolution from August of 93 that shows the connection
fees to be the same as what's being applied today. Um, years ago I had staff that have been around a while and claimed that even goes back to the 80s, but I couldn't find the resolution. So for factual purpose, I'm using 93 as the
year mark. um in fats, oils, grease, we incorporated an indexing as we did with um our other fees during the February 2022 uh rate resolution. So, um, us any utilities, whether
wherever you are in Florida, and I don't want to speak outside, um, we're bound by regulations, the EPA, the FD, and we, let's not lose track about BVAR County. Um, the EPA, the title 40 of the
US Code of Federal Regulations is where all the legislature is related to the um to the EPA in particular. as we've had conversations about PAS and whatnot. That's where you'll find it located. FTE
were in chapter 403 of the Florida statute and also in the code um chapter 62 of the Florida Administrative Code. Um those are um when we go through projects or we're working with our
consultants, we're making sure those projects meet the compliance of what the FD and 403 and chapter 62 state. Um we also have the B um Bvard County uh ordinances. So under chapter 110 is the
utility ordinances and within that ordinance we talk about the um utility service design criteria which is in um the design manual and criteria which when we do updates we bring back to the
board for their approval for those. So breaking down a little bit um you know when we talk about the specific laws, rules and agencies, how does it impact and how does it impact the um utility and the investment they need to
make. Um and the and you know to emphasize must not should. um EPA as I mentioned under um chapter 40 um part 41 14142
is specific about the PAS reduction by 2029 um FD 403.064 064 is the zero discharge by 2032. 403067 is the nutrient reduction within a BMAP,
which all of our areas are now within a BMAP. Um 403086 is AWT for reclaim if you're in a BAP. Um and 62604 is um you know, it ties
back in with 403064 about um discharges. I also point in there that the water management district although they're not a regulatory in regard in their central springs east coast regional water supply plan which is what we fall under is
their um uh recommendation and urging to use the upper Florida and um aquifer as a water source which is where RO would be applied reverse osmosis in lie of
continuing use of the surficial well system just for reliability purposes because there's a concern one day when those wells go dry um we're not you know utilities will not be in a position to
just remedy that quickly. So um in addition to that we are also looking so we talk about regulatory but let's also talk about the other component which is growth. Um Bvard County is growing. We don't say it we
look at data. Um Bieber is one component that looks at a countywide growth analysis. And in addition to that, we um we hired a consultant to do an evaluation of the um growth with specifically within our utility service
boundary. Um so when we did that, we took a different approach. We took the future land use map by its density and use that as a calculation to come up with an estimation of growth per service area.
This provides you a brief overview. Um, as you can see, the top line is the high end of Bieber. The second from the top is the middle line. And then by service area, we show um estimated. Now, these
aren't people. These are ERC's. So, equivalent um equivalent residential units. And this is basically the equivalent of single family homes to give you an idea. As we go through this, we also talk about treatment capacity using those
projections that we just showed in the previous slide based on the um on the effort by the consultant. We it gives us an estimate when we do these future projects for treatment plants specifically and pipes on what are we
sizing this around and it's not necessarily it's got to all get built at once but it gives it us an idea on how we want to um plan for these facilities to know what that ultimate number um
estimated to be is. So, currently right now, this is our 10-year CIP. There's a lot of EV um evolving what what's going on with our um budget. And let me say because as it shows here
that in 2027, there's a $450 million expenditure. Um two board meetings ago, we um you you all approved about the Semar approach. So now that we're actively looking at that, we are looking at an approach
similar to what solid waste did, knowing you have an investment of 130 million, but you're not going to spend 130 million immediately. So with the with the cooperation or the team of our consultant and the future uh contractor,
we can look at phased approaches. So by doing that we can do the we can spread that out over more years to get that number down further. The summation will be there. It'll just be spread out a little further. Currently this based on our
expenditures. This shows an overview of our projection of revenue versus our um projection of expenditure. There's a few things that we want to look at that as I shared how we're evolving our budget and
trying to find ways as I talked about with the Seymar approach that should drive our expenditures down further but further out so it'll drop it down slightly but further more years out but nonetheless it's a question of how do we
build bridge that gap and so um yes brace yourself I'm going to be talking about we need more money. Um and it's connection fees right now. Um we're taking an approach of this. Um
so when you talk about connection fees is because um in 2022 we did user rates and we understand that but also recognizing that connection fees are to pay for
growth. So this would be an opportunity to take that 1993 connection fee rate and to get it current understanding it's not going to fully bridge it but at least at a future year if I need to
update the user rates the question can be said or the answer can be said and yes the developers are paying their f full share right now um you know they're low and we'll talk about that Um so you
know just an overview of connection fees. We talk about that it's related to uh capacity increase. Um you know connection fees haven't been updated since 93. Um you know I like to use statistics. Um if you take the
construction cost index it, you know, swag it's you know it's 167% compounded. So obviously it's showing plus or minus that there is a separation from what construction costs were in 63.
And here's the benefit. We are um our fees are not called impact fees. They're connection fees. And the benefit of that is is that um the impact fee law of 1633181. Okay, if I said that correctly, and
Morris can correct me on that, is um it's the impact fee. So, if you were to do a Google search Florida statute impact fee, that would show up. As you're aware of impact fees that were adopted, what was it 2 three years ago of all the parameters associated with
impact fees? Provision number 12 under that says it does not apply toward water or sewer connection fees. So when we get into um updating connection fees, uh we don't have to um worry about exceeding a
percentage increase over so much as a as an impact fee would. >> If I if I'm going to allow Lucas to give a overview just on how connection fees are calculated. >> Yeah. Hi guys. So when we look at connection fees, we're looking at what
the capital investment is per gallon. So how much does it cost to get a gallon of treatment or a gallon of capacity in a pipe in addition to what we already have? And we multiply that by what's the level of service. In this case, it's gallons per eru to get the overall
connection fee, which then comes to dollars per eru. So it's really looking at what's that cost for the capacity you're gaining versus the level of service. say how many gallons per residential unit we want to serve. Multiplying those together to get that fee. >> And and to give you a little background,
there are there is methodology to do connection fees just like an impact fee. Uh we hired a rate consultant and we've worked with them for months in order to come up with the um how we got there. And I'll share this with you. Um and I
apologize because today I feel like I need glasses here. Um, got it. So, by overview, our existing water impact
fees are 9303. Wastewater is 2257. Um, by calculation, we're looking at uh, you know, increasing them to the 85 8500 4500 number. The reason and let me just
explain on the association on why the water is higher. It's because we only have two water plants. So by remaining capacity, we don't have as much as per se by math of remaining capacity of sewer. So again, that's the methodology.
Um, and this isn't necessarily I'm I'm seeking approval right now. I'm giving you an overview of what I hope will be a future agenda item. Um but also looking at it work talking with our consultant we also shared ideas of how this could
be phased if the board felt that a one-time um a one-time change to the connection fee was not an option. So um you'll see simil you'll see the same slide as the report will follow in the
agenda report to give you options just to let you know we considered that. So you know everything's based on a projection. um if we connect 200 homes uh a year uh I believe that's what the
calculation we um we increase our revenue I believe by 4.8 million and again it's not the intent of the 4.8 aid is not to pay as we go, it's to use that
for debt service. These the dollar amounts associated with these projects exceed what we can pay as we go. So, we're more looking how can we stretch this out over a 20 30 year period but still be able to make those payments.
You know there's this just highlights some of the um components the source of water we're talking about our row so that there's a component to that u proximity of the where the wells are type of treatment because today as we
showed with the Florida statute everything has to be AWT um availability um level of service and whatnot. So this gives an overview of what the summation of dollars are, the projects
that would be eligible to receive um portions of connection fee. So connection fees aren't necessarily 100%. But anything again going back if we're going from 1 million gallon per
day treatment plant to two the one the additional 1 million gallon can be paid for by connection fees and that's engineering land and whatnot to support that component. But these are the total dollar amounts. Um, just to
kind of give you an idea of the big picture of of what of basically part of the the big part of the reason what concerns me in order on how to fund this. So, with that being said, I wanted to
give you a sneak preview. um optimistic, hopeful we can get this on a board agenda and have and the first you know for for those that have been haven't been through it is uh step one is to have an agenda item for permission to
advertise. We would put that out for 20 days and then come back at a subsequent board meeting for a public hearing and then at that point you all decide And Mr. Chair, I want to add, hopefully I'm helping Eddie here. I got to tell
you a little story because, you know, Eddie brought in the rate consultants to me. You know, couple nice guys in a suit. You know, when you see people in suits, that's when I zip up my wallet. Um, but you know, so they're explaining the connection fees. I mean and the short thing I why we're especially bringing this forward to is you know
Eddie's got all this amongst replacement he's got all this capacity that he has to put together and you know that there are large numbers on the connection fees not large enough to cover the whole capacity but one of the one of the consultants said well if you don't raise the connection fees it comes out of the rateayers
so that's that's why you see that was the message I got that completely I got that quickly that's why you're seeing it here because there is a bunch of this has to do with capacity and it it and Eddie is looking wherever he can to find the funding, wherever we can do le if we can do less debt, but if we can generate through the connection fee that helps
us, but everything we can do that through the water and you know, as we had the discussion a couple weeks ago, we have to do a lot of these projects. So, we're looking for ways not to hurt the existing rateayers to get this job >> and this is the right time to do this. We've done the on on I we can go through
any of those major projects. We are we are already moving forward with this. what's uh what you're not seeing is the time we're spending with the consultants in order to generate the um the plans and whatnot. And and let me just say um
you know the um for the not only the uh water plant in Mims but the one in South Bard, we've already submitted the consumptive use permit but I I will tell you that's an 18month process alone. So,
um sometimes two years depending. So, um we have been proactive. Um we're at the spot where this is the right time because we're ready to get engaged with contractors by that agenda that I referred to about Semar. And then as
that progresses, um we are going to continue to be um active on seeking. We've received 35 million. We're not done. We just received two in the last um appropriation. I know it's two out of
something, but everything counts. Um so yeah, >> yes, >> I just had a couple of questions. Um so the slide, the first slide where you had existing treatment plant um capacity used, you said the percentage capacity
based on the FT permitted capacity per treatment plant. Mhm. >> I was wondering opposed to what? >> So, for example, Commissioner Mims right now it's rated at 2 point the the permitted capacity of the Mims water
plant is 2.4 which is why I don't have it in front of me but I think it's 37% I believe >> 47 >> 47 >> oh Mims yeah sorry 37 >> 37 >> so um currently because one of the trains is down the question got into the
dialogue where are we at? So, you know, just to keep everything at an apples to apples, we're basing that. So, once once that gets back online, we'll be at that 37, >> which at um how many years out are we on that?
>> Um I think we're looking at first quarter of 2027, so a year or so from now. >> Okay. >> And work is already progressing, >> right? And the only reason why I bring that up is because we have um I get complaints all the time at my office
about um fireflow and um water pressure in the Mims area. But the one that I was really wondering about was the wastewater treatment plants because that those numbers tend to fluctuate quite a lot. >> They do. >> Yeah, they do. And so that's what I'm wondering about like is how did how do
we get this snapshot of time and are we planning for worst case scenario because I feel like these numbers aren't worst case. >> So we we we'll get into some peak flow. Um a treatment plant there's there's so when you do the calculation it's based
on an average daily flow. A treatment plant does have the capacity to go above that number. It's called peak hour or peak flow. And it's a calculation you have to do as part of that. So a lot of times we associate um projects where
it's like oh it's only a a 6 million gallon plant and 7 million gallons went to it. By calculation it can sustain that. It can't sustain it for long durations but when we get into uh the rainy season and whatnot. So um we
always tend to look at it from an average flow in presentations like this. And so the connection fees for the um for that the consultants are are uh working through those numbers are based on our worst or best days or an average
>> please. >> Yeah. So the connection fees when we're looking at the new ones the proposed we're really looking at what what the new capacity is to your point of like worst case best case right we evaluate
what the average capacity is so say we do 2 million gallon per day plant it's average daily flows rated for two but it might have a peaking factor of say six which is I believe your question of what's that overall flow so the plant
would able to peak at 6 MGD for a short duration but only be a 2 MGD plant. So when we look at the population projections and what that capacity need is which I I don't recall what slide it is but shows it on there. It's based on the cost to build whatever plan it was
based on the >> based on these numbers that are >> based on those. Yeah. >> Okay. Thank you. Those are phenomenal presentations and I'm really happy in this budget workshop we got through it all. So >> I didn't think of that. Yes, there we go. New year. Yeah.
>> I I would encourage commission members to I know we probably have a lot of questions and probably want to f follow up individually. I want to mole through some of this information and uh they've given us some really good they've done staff's done some phenomenal work and given us good
information and we'll definitely follow up. >> I have a question. >> Yes. Are we going to have um board discussion on this? Because I I really value all the information that staff that you guys put forward today, but I feel like I I'm worried. I don't want a
repeat of last year. And I feel like the staff felt like there wasn't a whole lot of clear we're going this way. And so I I just really feel passionate about us as a board talking about this and obviously, you know, in public so
that we can um so that people can be involved and that it's I just want to make sure that we're working together as a group and going towards a direction. That's all >> I think we should I think. What do we have as far as workshops? We have
>> March I just lost the date. March 19th, 18th, something like that is the next scheduled budget workshop. >> Is that going to cover everything though? We'll probably need >> um what we would have is uh we uh bring you back um public works and a couple
items I had at the last slide on Keith's presentation. I mean, nothing like we had before. It wouldn't be anything at death. Just some heads up on what right >> what we see coming. Maybe we need to schedule a workshop or a date where we can just talk about strategy, what items we might might want to
consider putting before the voters or hearing and our budget budget process. Um, that probably would be a discussion in a meeting in and of itself. I I would concur with that. >> Thank you. be the wish of the board, but I think we
probably need to have significant discussion with the staff individually. Um, review a lot of these items and then we can come back and and do that. >> That's what I think. I think that the idea of talking to staff individually makes me happier
and then being able to go, >> right? >> All right, let's do that. We'll plan on that. Good. >> We also just have to I don't think we have any. I think Don sir, we don't have any cards. >> Don't have any. >> No cards. Okay. Thank you. >> And Mr. Chair, I want to apologize and
let you guys know D uh Commissioner Sorry, D2 Commissioner Goodson is he's not on the line, but he's been listening to the meeting. He said he would call in if it was necessary. So, he has been involved in this. So, I'll let you know. >> All right. Okay. Let's go to U board reports.
County manager, >> I have no report. Thank you. Morris >> new report. Mr. Chair. >> Okay. Delaney. >> I just want to uh remind everybody that's listening the FD meeting is tomorrow from 4 to 7 at um the uh a
extension on Lake Drive. So I hope you all can make it there. And thank you staff for this presentation. >> Kimson just Sir >> Rob, >> no sir. >> And I have no report. So I think that uh
concludes this excellent workshop and look forward to the next one. Thanks. >> Thank you. >> The opinions expressed by any member of the public during any period of public comment do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of the board of county commissioners of Bvard County, Florida,
Space Coast Government Television, or the program sponsor and are solely those of the presenter. The board of county commissioners of Bvard County, Florida, Space Coast Government Television, and the program sponsor hereby expressly disclaim any and all responsibility or liability for any defamatory or slanderous statements expressed by any
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