Minutes - Brevard County Board of County Commissioners

Commissioner District 1 Katie Delaney , Commissioner District 3

Kim Adkinson, Commissioner District 4 Rob Feltner, and

Commissioner District 5 Thad Altman

Present:

Absent:

Commissioner District 2 Tom Goodson

PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE: Commissioner Kim Adkinson, Vice-Chair, District 3

Commissioner Adkinson led the assembly in the Pledge of Allegiance.

C.1. Budget Overview

Jim Liesenfelt, County Manager, advised that they will start with the Budget Overview; as far as

anyone knows, Commissioner Goodson has not called in yet; the budget overview, a change

from the last few years, they will have Keith Neterer, Interim Budget Director, lead in on the

presentation; and at the end, he will jump in for a slide or two.

Keith Neterer, Interim Budget Director, stated today he will provide a brief presentation on

general government funding in the 2026 adopted budget; this slide provides a list of topics that

will be gone over today including Consumer Price Index (CPI), millages, Charter Cap and

County comparisons, then he will get into the 2026 budget, including the color of money,

sources and uses of funds, and he will close out on some data on homesteaded property taxes;

and Mr. Liesenfelt will provide information on future budget considerations. He went on to

explain, this chart shows CPI over the last 11 years; historically, CPI had been below three

percent, however, in the COVID years, 21, 22, and 23, the County experienced inflation

significantly above that; for Fiscal Year 2027, the County will be using CPI of 2.63 percent; that

is based on calendar year 2025; as the Board is aware, that is important because it is tied to

the Charter Cap and limits the amount of ad valorem revenue that can be collected to three

percent or CPI; in this case it will be 2.63 percent; in addition to tracking CPI, other metrics are

also looked at including construction cost index, the red line, the municipal cost index, in green,

and CPI in the blue; as was mentioned, the ad valorem millages are tied to CPI; there are also

Departments with user fees and non-ad valorem assessments that are tied to that rate as well;

however, many of the costs being experienced are much more in line with what one would see

in the construction costs and index, particularly the large capital improvement projects like

Utilities, Solid Waste, and Public Works. He continued on by saying during this 12-year period,

the CPI increased cumulatively by over 47 percent, the municipal cost index at over 52 percent,

and the construction cost index at over 62 percent; the ad valorem revenue collections are

limited through the Charter Cap by CPI; for the current Fiscal Year there is $208 million

budgeted; if rates were to be set at the Charter Cap, they would be looking at an additional

$5.4 million in ad valorem revenue in the General Fund; in addition to that, there is new

construction on the bottom of the slide and separated because it is excluded from the Charter

Cap and thus is something the County relied on in the last few years; one can see historically

there has been significant growth in that area; however, between 2025 and 2026, that growth

rate has begun to stagnate; and that is something that will be watched for this year. He went on

to say they will get preliminary property values on June 1 and they will get certified values on

July 1; this next chart shows the County’s aggregate millage rate; one can see in 2019, the

County was above six mills, and in 2026 it is just above 4.5; nobody actually pays the entire

aggregate millage rate, what one pays is dependent on where he or she lives geographically

within the County; that jump between 2025 and 2026 was the result of the Board’s investment

in Public Safety through the Fire Control MSTU, as well as adjustments to Parks and

Recreation millages; this next chart is really good visualization of how the Charter Cap works;

one can see the red line is property values, and the blue line is General Fund millage rate;

through the Charter Cap those two variables have a really perfect inverse relationship; one can

see as property values increase from left to right, the County has had to cut its General Fund

millage rate accordingly to stay compliant with the cap; and in theory, if property values

expanded in perpetuity, at some point the General Fund millage rate would approach zero to

stay in line with the Charter Cap. He mentioned how Brevard County compares with nearby

jurisdictions, this chart shows Brevard County, as well as Seminole County, St. Lucie, Osceola,

Indian River, Pasco, Martin, and Lake Counties will hold their millages flat or make slight

adjustments, whereas Brevard is the only County with a Charter Cap, and it cuts its General

Fund millage rate by over 27 percent between 2019 and the current Fiscal Year; according to a

study or report that the Florida Association of Counties put out for 2025, Brevard County has

the second lowest General Fund millage rate in the entire State of Florida, out of 67 counties;

this next chart shows the general government revenues and expenses between 2025 budget

and 2026; he just wanted to show that before getting into the current year’s budget; just to

highlight a few key things, each year the County is required to submit a balanced budget and

one can see the majority of revenues, almost all of the revenues, are coming from ad valorem

taxes and with increases to charter officers, that includes the Sheriff as well as investments in

public safety; and the County cut roads, infrastructure, and other County agencies by almost

$14 million heading into 2026 to achieve a balanced budget for this fiscal year. He stated

Florida Statutes Chapter 129 requires the County and other municipalities to submit a balanced

budget each year, meaning the total estimated revenues must be equal to the total budgeted

expenses; this pie chart looks at just the revenue side of the County budget, however the

expenses are also at $2.5 billion; the key takeaway he wants to get across from this slide is

while $2.5 billion seems like a large number, it is, only less than 50 percent of that is operating

revenue or new revenue that is flowing through the County each year; the other half of the

budget is carried forward in departments like Natural Resources, Utilities, and Solid Waste

where there are large multi-year capital projects; and each year those balances are brought

forward as those projects progress, and the County collects $1.19 billion at least in 2026, in

operating revenue. He noted the Board has heard of the color of money concept before; he will

provide a brief overview of it; the next few slides will follow the color scheme that is shown here;

General Fund in green, which are the most flexible and discretionary sources that the County

has; special revenue is in pink and these are restricted to very specific purposes, debt service

in yellow, capital projects in orange, enterprise funds in blue, where these are departments that

operate like a business and they charge residents or user's fees for services based on how

those users use those services, and finally, there is internal service funds in gray; of that $1.19

billion of operating revenue, this chart breaks down how much of that operating revenue

belongs to each fund group; of the $1.19 billion, almost 50 percent of that is in special revenue

funds that include programs like Save Our Indian River Lagoon (SOIRL); there is enterprise

funds at just under 20 percent, and it includes departments like Utilities and Solid Waste; there

is the internal service funds at eight percent, which is mostly insurance premiums; and then on

the top left is the discretionary and flexible funding the County has through the general

government program at 24 percent. He mentioned the lighter green shade seen 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 the County were to consider reallocating

them, it would likely not have that revenue to begin with because it is generated from a service;

the next few slides will breakdown what makes up each component of that operating revenue

that was in the previous pie chart; for the general fund, obviously as valorem taxes are the

primary revenue source; there is also communication service taxes, FPL franchise fees,

State-shared revenues, local half-cent sales tax, and other operating revenues which is going

to include interest earnings and indirect cost allocation revenue; on the right side in the lighter

green, these are revenues that are within the General Fund; however, they come from very

specific purposes that generated that funding; for example, the Sheriff at $18 million, those are

contracted funds that they get from other municipalities in Brevard for performing law

enforcement services in those areas; there are also places like Planning and Development that

includes Planning and Zoning fees as well as Code Enforcement fines and forfeits; and the

other General Fund at the bottom, $1.5 million is primarily the medical examiner and

Commissions to the Tax Collector and Property Appraiser. He went on to say this slide

continues the color of money through the rest of the fund groups that the County has; special

revenue is the largest operating revenue fund group with the departments like Natural

Resources Management in there with a lot of grant funds and SOIRL tax revenues; below that

is Fire Rescue at $102 million that is going to include the Fire Control MSTU non-ad valorem

assessment and ambulance billings; on the left side, it gets into the enterprise funds, these

departments operate like a business, Utilities, Solid Waste, and Transit would be the largest

groups in that fund type; below that is internal service in gray, employee benefits is insurance

premiums, and risk management is also insurance premiums through auto and property

insurances; and for the rest of the PowerPoint presentation he is going to focus on the General

Fund sliver of operating revenue, because that is the County’s discretionary and flexible

funding that the Board can allocate. He noted the sources and uses at the bottom of the slide

are balanced and that is in compliance with Chapter 129 Florida Statutes; this slide includes

both operating and non-operating revenue and that is why it is slightly different than the

numbers from just a minute ago; he covered the revenue that are within the General Fund so

he is going to go through the uses on the right-hand side and spend the rest of the time going

through how General Fund dollars are allocated in the current fiscal year; first there is the

Charter Officers which includes the Sheriff, Tax Collector, Property Appraiser, Supervisor of

Elections, and Clerk to the Board for a total of $177 million in the General Fund 2026; and it is

worth noting these funds do not represent these agencies entire budgets, just the General

Fund support component that the County provides; and it is also worth noting that any unspent

General Fund dollars at the end of each fiscal year must be returned to the County as excess

fees, as the Board has seen Items to that in the past. He continued by saying now moving into

mandates, these are governed by various Florida Statutes and include Medicaid, Court

Operations, Baker Acts, Pre-Trial Detention of Juveniles, and other mandates that include the

Value Adjustment Board, East Central Florida Regional Planning Council, indigent burials, and

a few other miscellaneous mandates; Medicaid is the largest mandate and it has increased

significantly from recent years; they were at 8.7 in the prior year and before that, they were at

$7.5 million in 2024; all counties in the State of Florida are required to contribute to the State’s

Medicaid Program and the $9.5 million represents Brevard County’s contribution to the State;

next, getting into other obligations, at the top is the Reserves and that is set at 10 percent of

the County’s operating revenue in general government in the current Fiscal Year which equates

to $30.3 million and aligns with Board Policy BCC-21; there is also some general government

debt in the General Fund and the General Fund Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA)

payments at $8.1 million; and the Board has heard that prior Boards have instructed staff to

renegotiate its agreements with CRAs to reduce their life span and focus their funding on

infrastructure, and through those agreements they have already seen CRAs like Satellite Beach

and Palm Bay sunset. He added it is worth noting that the County will make its final payment to

the City of Rockledge in the current Fiscal Year; and that CRA will sunset at the end of this

year. He went on to say next is Public Safety and infrastructure; the Public Safety allocation,

excluding the Sheriff, from the General Fund is $33.5 million and the majority is in Emergency

Medical Services (EMS) at $25.3 million; that is a sharp increase from last year where they

were at $14 million and is a result of the recent Labor Contract that was ratified in July; there is

also Ocean Rescue, Public Safety which includes the Medical Examiner and Emergency

Management; below that is the projects that are funded directly within the General Fund and

includes Wickham Road Fleet Site, detention center infrastructure, the Medical Examiner

chiller, and other infrastructure which is primarily parks and hurricane repairs that are funded in

the General Fund; those total $26.2 million; the allocations to Public Works, Facilities, and

Parks and Recreation for 2026, Public Works is scheduled to receive just over $33 million, a

decrease from what they had in 2025 where they were budgeted to receive over $36.7 million;

Parks and Recreation is just under $13 million for this year and also a significant decrease from

2025, where they were at $16.48 million and a result of the County balancing its budget with

the investments in Public Safety; in addition to funding those programs, the general

government program also funds many other agencies within the County and there are also

some operating expenses of its own to include separations of services, which includes leave

and severance payouts, there is facilities and IT charges, an annual grant to the Economic

Development Commission (EDC), and contracted and professional services at $1.7 million

which is the internal and external audits, financial and disaster consultants, and things of that

nature; and the other general government expenses at $1.1 million is primarily postage and

notification expenses. He mentioned there is also Solid Waste assessments, various insurance,

and facility maintenance costs that are housed within general government; getting into the

various programs that the General Fund funds throughout the County, 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 will leverage additional millions from

State and Federal groups using that money as local match; this rounds out the remaining

General Fund allocations that the County has; some of these Departments this may be the only

revenue source; other Departments may use this to supplement other grants or charges for

services that they have like Natural Resources Management at over $700,000 which will be

used as a local match again for additional grant funding; and that is the brief overview on how

general government funds are allocated in 2026. He stated he wanted to provide some data on

homestead exemptions; everyone has heard a lot about various legislations floating through the

State of Florida to change how Florida handles property taxes; they worked with the Property

Appraiser to develop this data using their online database; they have an incredible access

database with hundreds of thousands of rows out there on properties; through that database it

is estimated that almost 50 percent of Brevard County’s parcels have a homestead exemption

on them, totaling just over $30.6 billion in total taxable property value; this is important because

a lot of legislation that is being seen looks at potentially increasing the homestead exemption; it

has been seen through a phase-in approach where the homestead exemption will increase

each year, it has also been seen some drafts where the property will be fully-exempt from taxes

and any homesteaded property will not pay any taxes; all legislation at this point does include

protections for law enforcement and public safety to ensure that if the tax funding is reduced

that those agencies are not reduced as a result of that; and at the bottom of this slide is the

Charter Cap millage calculation and the rollback rate millage calculation. He explained the

rollback is what the Department of Revenue (DOR) uses to determine if the County is going to

advertise a tax increase; if one looks at both of these calculations, the numerator in both of

them looks at the prior year ad valorem revenue and the denominator looks at the taxable

property value in the current year; in the event that homesteaded properties were removed

from the tax role, that would significantly decrease the taxable property value thus yielding

much larger Charter Cap millage rate maximums and much larger rolled back rates as well;

obviously that is all dependent upon how the Board sets millage rates when it does that in July

and September; and that completes his presentation for today.

Mr. Liesenfelt stated he knows the Commissioners who have been here a little bit have seen

this presentation, the new Commissioners saw it last year, but the emphasis he wants to show

is at the last Board meeting there was a citizen who said the County’s budget is $2.5 billion, but

a lot of that is multi-year projects, and there is SOIRL out there; the real value that they have to

work with is somewhere in the neighborhood of $370 million, and of that $370 million a lot is

already allocated; Medicaid takes a lot of functions, and add courts; he wants to show people

with the color of money that it is going from $2.5 billion down to $371 million that the County

actually have to work with and move around; that is the big takeaway from Mr. Neterer’s

presentation; and he did a nice job. He went on to say he is going to talk about property tax

legislation in just a second; future budget considerations as staff goes through the budget, they

will be talking to the Board in March; he wanted to make sure for those listening online, the

County is an employer as well, it provides plenty of services; its health insurance program,

there is always the pressure on health insurance premium increases; and over the years, the

County's balance of its health insurance funds has been going down, so there might be an

adjustment to what it does with its health insurance, staff will be looking at that. He added

Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) reimbursements, Mr. Neterer touched on it

briefly; he cannot recall which hurricane, 2017 or 2018, the County lost a bunch of boat ramps,

and a lot of damage in the north part of the County; the way to get those funds back up and

repaired quickly, money was borrowed from the insurance pool and thye went out and fixed it;

the County still has not received all the FEMA reimbursements that have been asked for from

those projects and it has been seven or eight years now; FEMA reimbursements, there is still

plenty of millions in requests out there that have not been received, as of yet and he is not sure

what is going to go in the process; second point of FEMA, reading online with different stories

and hearing different things, FEMA may not be the same FEMA next year, or this coming year,

as it has been in previous years; there is talk of them reducing their staff or block granting it to

states, or even not reimbursing as much; that could be a consideration; he points out Parks and

Recreation, there was millions of dollars in damage, estimated at $12 million and he thinks they

ended up fixing it for $5 or $6 million; the County would get about 90 percent of that back; but

in the future there may be $5 or $6 million in damage that the Federal government will not

reimburse for, so that affects the Reserves and what the Board wants to do with that money.

He stated population and service demands, Parks and roads are great examples; Mr. Neterer

talked about the Charter Cap and the revenue is all based on taxable value; demand for parks

and roads has nothing to do with taxable value, it has to do with population; there is this cap of

2.63 percent for how the County can raise revenue, but if population goes up 10 percent, that is

10 percent more children trying to get on a soccer field, 10 percent more people trying to get on

Babcock Street or driving here on Stadium Parkway; it never jives perfectly and it is always

something they are looking at and trying to balance; and they are going to have to definitely talk

Facilities needs in March. He mentioned there are lots of Facility needs out there; the six–story

is always being worked on, as well as this building; they are still fixing up Central Fleet where

Public Works and Central Fleet is located; that will be a very nice project, but there are a lot of

Facility needs out there; a lot of the Library buildings are going to be 30 years old and need

repairs; the Parks and Recreation buildings, the County taxed itself in 2000 and 2006 to build

those and the millage that one sees, there is only one left on debt and that is going away, but to

fix or replace those buildings it will have to be taken out of operations, because there is not a

separate ability to put debt out, a different millage that will not affect operating, causing a future

issue in the next few years; and last but not least, before property taxes, is the need to remain

as a competitive employer. He noted being an old Transit guy, the County is always making

sure they try to become competitive in the market for bus drivers, Parks and Recreation have

maintenance workers, Public Works have entry level maintenance workers, but they are also

competing against keeping engineers around and staying competitive because with drainage,

the projects cannot get done without engineers to design them and get them going; and there

is a building examiner, a friend of his whose uncle works for the County, he is 80 years old and

a wonderful building examiner, but it is tough to be competitive in that market because when

one retires it is hard to get them back; and the County is struggling on how to remain

competitive. He commented he will not go into details, but he will let the Board know the County

has developed career ladders, different job audits and descriptions, and they are trying to stay

competitive, but like everything else, the County is out there competing with the private sector

for employees and with other cities; the good news, in the staff meeting today he found out they

are a little competitive with the City of Melbourne and another city for some type of workers, but

they are working hard on that; and the last thing he wants to focus on, he ran into a business

owner yesterday and talked to him about the County's cap and the reduction, and he saw a

newspaper article this morning, and the one bill that seems to be moving is House resolution

203 and that is phase out elimination of non-school properties for homestead. He went on to

say he forgets the exact number, but every year after the next nine years a person’s

homestead exemption goes up by $100,000 per year over the next nine years and at the end of

10 years, if one is homesteaded, he or she will not pay property taxes outside of non-school

and public safety; driving in this morning he thought the County has a lot more ad valorem out

there that is not just General Fund; there is Libraries, Mosquito Control, Fire Control, five or six

Recreation Districts, Law Enforcement ad valorem, seven Multiple Service Taxing Unit

(MSTUs) for Road and Bridge, and then Environmentally Endangered Lands (EELs); what Mr.

Neterer has pointed out, that 40 or 45 percent of properties are homesteaded so this is looking

at two different things; it is looking at a reduction, if this bill would pass and then the voters vote

for it, over the years of half the revenue, or basically, the math does not work perfectly, but off

the top of his head, it is doubling the millage rates; and that is assuming what the legislature

allows the County to raise the rates by each year. He mentioned what he has been thinking the

last couple of days is this is really going to hurt the General Fund, but it is going to hurt a lot of

other services out there; the bill will hold law enforcement, public safety harmless, so this

morning when he added it up, looking at the two millages along with what is done with the

General Fund, that is $220 million between the millages and General Fund that is put into the

Sheriff’s Department and Fire Rescue; if the County does not raise revenue or millage, that

does not leave a whole lot of room for other services; one can see the list, there are a number

of Departments that get a few million dollars; and he would hate to get into details that he does

not know the answers, but holding public safety harmless, somebody has to buy their fire trucks

and that is Purchasing. He stated the Human Resources Department manages the insurance

program, the Clerk to the Board who provides all the documentation; he does not see in there

the Supervisor of Elections so how would the County run elections if there are less and less

General Funds; and over the next two months people will know what is going on at the

legislature, but he does not honestly see how this bill does not reduce services unless the

County raises taxes double on the non-homesteaded folks; and the non-homesteaded folks are

people who live in apartment buildings and the business owners, which is a pretty big pill for

them to swallow. He noted that does not seem realistic to him; he asked the Board to keep an

eye on it; he does not know what the final bill is going to be, but if it is something like this, it is

big impacts and it would show up in Fiscal Year 2027-2028 budget; it will not be seen this year,

but in the coming year; and they will be talking about that in March, hopefully there will be a

better idea of what is going on in the legislature, and then provide some of the impacts that

could be seen down the road.

Commissioner Delaney asked if anyone knows about recouping the ambulance money or if

there is an update on that.

Mr. Liesenfelt stated he does not have that one; and he inquired if she is talking about how

much is billed, how much is recovered, and much is in collection.

Commissioner Delaney explained the County was collecting funds because it was owed funds

and she was wondering if anyone knew where that was at and if it was still on track to get

everything back; and Mr. Liesenfelt can just email her.

Mr. Liesenfelt commented he will get that information to the Board.

Commissioner Delaney stated she was wondering how much the City of Rockledge allocation

is, that is being sunset this year, as it was mentioned it is the last payment.

Mr. Neterer advised it is $1.2 million in the current year, but it is not exactly apples to apples,

the County will not have $1.2 million less in CRA payments, because as property values

increase, and depending on what happens with millage rates, the County’s CRA payments to

the other CRAs will grow, so the full $1.2 will not be realized, but a portion of that will obviously

be a part of 2027 budget.

Commissioner Feltner mentioned he looked up HJR 203, there is not a Senate companion yet,

but that does not necessarily mean anything at this point; and they could certainly do that, but

is it 60 percent in each Chamber that is needed for joint resolutions.

Chair Altman responded affirmatively, stating wave the rules.

Commissioner Feltner continued by saying to put something before the voters, it is 60 percent

in each Chambers.

Chair Altman responded affirmatively.

Commissioner Adkinson mentioned about what Commissioner Delaney said, she had personal

experience with the billing for the County ambulance and it happened again recently, so just

since she has been a Commissioner, three times her person would not have paid her bill if she

had not been a Commissioner, so she thinks the Board has some work to do there; and she

does not know what that looks like or how much, but that is her two cents.

Mr. Liesenfelt stated he will get her that information.

Chair Altman stated he thinks the Board should have its lobbyist work hard to include Mosquito

Control as a part of the Public Safety; mosquitos kill more people than murderers; that is a

public safety hazard; and it should be included, especially here in Florida.

Mr. Liesenfelt commented if the Board is good with that he will let them know; and he has also

had a couple conversations with the Federal lobbyists to keep on the FEMA reimbursement and

what is happening on the FEMA side.

Chair Altman stated that was a very good overview.

C.2. Natural Resources Department / Public Works Department (Stormwater/Drainage)

Jim Liesenfelt, County Manager, advised there will be six different people in three different

Departments because the title is Brevard’s Water; what is in front of the Board is the

presentations; Marc Bernath is the Public Works Director, Rachel Gerena is the Deputy

Director for Public Works, Virginia Barker is Natural Resources Management Director, Amanda

Elsmore is Deputy Director for Natural Resources Management, Billy Prasad is Planning and

Development Director, and lastly Bach McClure, Stormwater Program Administrator; and they

are going to jump in between on the 30-40 slides.

Virginia Barker stated she is kicking of the presentation on Brevard’s water with a focus on

stormwater and drainage; she will be providing a 10,000 foot view of the role of water in

Brevard and the various departmental roles related to water management; next Rachel Gerena

and Bach McClure will provide an engineering prospective 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, followed by Amanda Elmore and Marc

Bernath 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, Emergency Management Director, is not speaking today but did provide data and

input for this PowerPoint; and it is a big topic with many players. She went on to say the map

on the left shows water to the left of her, water to the right of her, and water down the middle;

water is one of the most defining features of Brevard County; take a moment and recognize the

incredible ways that water shapes the Brevard communities, culture, heritage, economy, and

contributes to an extraordinary quality of life, whether it is the beaches, the marshes, the

Lagoon during the day and at night, the wetlands, or the St. Johns River, most of the time

people love the water, take pride in the quantity and quality that provides surf and sandy

beaches, boating, fishing, swimming, and countless other activities; Natural Resources in

partnership with the Tourist Development Council (TDC), State, and Federal partners invest

millions maintaining beaches and dunes for coastal protection, recreation, and tourism; and the

Save Our Indian River Lagoon (SOIRL) Program, in partnership with State, the Water

Management District, and National Estuary Program invests millions maintaining the Indian

River Lagoon for the economy, public health, and happiness. She continued by saying multiple

Departments, State, and Federal rules work together to manage growth adjacent to the prized

water assets to safeguard the wet feathered golden goose, 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 it is 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 streets, yards, and

homes can become a threat; in 2008, during tropical storm Fay, Brevard County received 27.65

inches of rainfall which is basically the height of the tabletop that she measured before this

meeting, and that much water fell throughout the County on land, on water, on streets, on

driveways, on yards, and what ran off of the rooftops just added to that 27 inches; and new to

stormwater at the time, while quickly assessing problem areas and arranging emergency triage,

she was amazed at how well the network of over 1,000 miles of ditches and canals kept most

homes dry inside and that will be the drainage system being discussed today. She stated of

course flooding become intolerable when it threatened health, safety, and the 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 and people who choose to live

in the subtropics expect hurricanes; people who choose to live in this water wonderland must

expect puddles and acknowledge the risk of flooding; the question is what is Brevard County’s

tolerance for extra standing water, what are the County’s drainage level of service goals, and

how does it fund achieving and maintaining those levels of service goals; she has been asked

how the SOIRL Program can help with stormwater funding, and it certainly can within existing

guidelines; the SOIRL Program has funding to reduce the amount of stormwater pollution

reaching the Lagoon; not all stormwater flows to the Lagoon, some goes west to the St. Johns

River; and if one looks at the map in the middle of the slide, there is a little arrow at the top that

is about to run down the topographic divide. She explained the St. Johns River and the IRL

drainage divide roughly follows the yellow-orange topographic high points along the old dune

ridge that was left by the prior sea level; in South Brevard the IRL watershed extends west of

this ridge where large tributaries, Crane Creek, Turkey Creek, and the Sebastian River cut

through the old Dune Ridge; re-diversion projects like the C-54, the C-1, and the recent M-1

re-diversion projects seek to restore the natural drainage divide; the SOIRL Program has

completed 58 projects and has 35 underway; of about 2,000 catchment basins in Brevard that

drain to the IRL, 167 more have been identified as top priority basins for stormwater treatment,

these are where stormwater projects could stop the most pollution; the SOIRL program is

flexible allowing these funds, currently $61 million remaining, for these priority basins to be

spent in other basins that drain to the IRL; but the funding amount is reduced according to the

new actual pollution reduction benefit. She mentioned the SOIRL program funds any best

management practices, the list is on the right hand side of the slide, but funding is based on

using the most cost-effective tool for pollution load reduction; there is no extra funding for

choosing a more expensive project type or for adding flood control to these pollution reduction

projects; 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; over the course of

the last nine years with plan updates, the SOIRL funding for stormwater infrastructure has

increased from $10.4 million to $86.7 million; beyond the IRL program who does what; the first

row says the National Pollution Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) Permits and many

water decisions are driven by State and Federal requirements as itemized in the NPDES

permit; a NPDES permit is required for the County to be able to drain water to State

waterbodies, including the IRL and the St. Johns River; this pollution elimination permit requires

many of the lower rows on this table; the legislature continues to raise the bar on stormwater

treatment and mandatory level of service for drainage maintenance, including Senate Bill 558

that is on the move currently; and Planning and Development reviews permit applications for

finished floor elevations and lot drainage. She went on to say Public Works focuses on

drainage within the right-of-way, plus stormwater treatment required for road projects and

permits that expand impervious areas; 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 violations; and the Emergency Operations Program

collects crisis data from Departments and residents during emergencies and manages the

County’s local mitigation strategy. She stated 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 happened 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 commonly referred to as Low Impact

Development (LID), 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 is often referred to as LID, it can provide both quality and

quantity benefits, but it often costs more to install and it definitely costs more to maintain; it will

not work and should not be used if there are not sufficient funds and commitment to keep it

maintained, it will make things worse; it requires a long-term commitment to go that route; and

slide six shows three flavors of water management, flood control, water quality, and resilience.

She continued on by saying Public Works mostly focuses on flood control via drainage

maintenance; the SOIRL Program focuses on water quality; the stormwater utility does both but

has a relatively small budget; Resilience Grants were added by Governor Ron DeSantis to

adapt and mitigate flooding and sea level rise; the best example 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 it was able to get that project funded was through

grants and by using water quality and quantity funds as a local match to secure those grants;

and future State funding is uncertain for resilience projects under the next Governor.

Rachel Gerena, Deputy Director for Public Works, stated when talking about drainage they

wanted to start with a picture, a picture is better than a thousand words, it really gives a good

idea of where the County has been, where it is going, and what areas do have concerns; since

2012, staff has documented quite a bit of flooding and drainage concerns throughout the

County; they have overlaid that over the incorporated areas just to give everyone an idea; the

areas that have been documented are the unincorporated areas; where one sees big blank

spots on this map it is because they are generally in incorporated areas; generally speaking,

there are drainage and flooding concerns across the County because it is flat; and this data

was collected from various sources, crisis track, documented flooding, and drainage complaints

since 2012. She mentioned the lighter polygons on this map are historical drainage studies that

have been done throughout the years; the darker ones are the studies that are currently in the

hopper; as one can see, everywhere that has a drainage concern has been touched in some

manner or another; staff has to study when it does not know what the cause is; they will not

spend money on a project if they do not know if it will fix the issue; the first step in any process

is to study it; and everyone will also notice that some areas overlap and that is because general

drainage studies are giving more of a holistic view. She continued on by saying once they get

into specific areas they may have to study at a more detailed level to really drill down into what

projects need to be done; from those studies, come projects both in Public Works and Natural

Resources; and the two various pink polygons are currently in the Capital Improvement

Projects (CIP) funded list for Public Works and Natural Resources. She noted what Public

Works has been doing since 2012 is a lot; the light green dots are structural pipe linings and

the dark green dots are Public Works Road and Bridge culvert replacements and they are not

representative of each and every pipe, but representative of the areas of pipes and each dot

may represent multiple pipes that went in in one location; the red dots are representative not of

maintenance level pipe replacements, they really are those projects that have come out of

drainage studies throughout the years that unfortunately, for one reason or another, did not

have funding available to complete them and they get placed on an unfunded list; this unfunded

list has been seen and talked about in various budget presentations throughout the years and

currently just drainage related, unfunded, is at almost one-half a billion dollars; each red dot is

not a specific location, it is a centralized location for the project; think of each project being

more of a polygon, but for clarity on the map because it is getting really full, they are

representative of a specific location; and last but not least, the County received a grant for a

Countywide vulnerability study, and Mr. McClure will drill down into that a little bit more.

Bach McClure, Stormwater Program Administrator, stated as one has seen from the maps,

there are hundreds of funded and unfunded projects, both large and small, spread out across

the County in every District; staff has identified many of the key assets and areas of risk; they

continue to receive valuable feedback from property owners and residents whether they own

property or not; Ms. Gerena touched on why they keep modeling and studying the County, but

the quick answer is there is a requirement from the State to perform a vulnerability analysis and

there is grant funding that allows them to study the entire County, including eight of the

municipalities that were lacking in staffing and wherewithal to move forward, and there was 100

percent funding from the State to include those municipalities; and when they apply for permits

and try to leverage County dollars with grant funding, they need to be able to show each of the

projects they are doing is the right solution in the right location and it will not create unintended

impacts for neighboring areas. He continued by saying the pie chart on the right shows how

stormwater project costs typically break down, with 20 percent going to planning and design

and typically helps avoid costly mistakes in land acquisition and construction; because a typical

storm water project takes about seven years from planning through construction, being

thoughtful about which projects to launch and when is critical to avoid wasting time and

resources; while the vulnerability assessment will be Countywide, and a great tool for helping

prioritize projects to pursue through grant funding, it will not replace the need for more detailed

project specific studies and modeling that will be required by the permitting agencies; for

example, this is a large area flood mitigation project and was completed as part of the

multi-phase Crane Creek – Hickory Ditch Master Plan and it is a great example of how things

move when there is already modeling and preliminary design work in hand; and for years the

permitting agencies told them that jacking and boring under I-95 was not feasible and they

would not be able to get a permit for it. He advised then there was tropical storm Fay in 2008

and about 800 homes in Lamplighter Village were flooded along with hundreds more in the

surrounding area, and the project quickly became a priority; they installed three 48 inch culverts

under I-95 beginning in July 2009, with remaining improvements rolling out through Fiscal Year

2009-2010; they had additional water quality treatment components which were required and

completed in 2015; from a performance stand point, the conveyance improvements reduce the

peak flood elevations by about 18 inches for the design 100-year event; and the project also

included upstream and downstream improvements along with the creation of a 20-acre

stormwater treatment pond east of I-95 and that pond now treats roughly 2,300 acres of older

development in the John Rodes Boulevard, Sarno Road, and Ellis Road areas before it

discharges to the St. Johns River. He mentioned in terms of funding, they were able to increase

a Federal Emergency Management Association (FEMA) hazard mitigation program grant to

cover 75 percent of the total project cost and the local match was made possible by delaying

other stormwater improvement projects in District 5; they had to come up with the money for

match from some place and that was done by delaying construction of other projects; these are

some pictures of the conditions near Lamplighter Village after Fay and while construction was

underway; as high as the water appears in the photo by the John Rodes entrance to

Lamplighter Village, the water on the west side of Lamplighter Village, near I-95 was even

deeper due to the sloping of the property; and it essentially turned into a lake and the bottom of

the lake was lower near I-95.

Amanda Elmore, Deputy Director Natural Resources Management, stated now she is going to

walk through the stormwater projects in each District starting in the north end of the County in

District 1; she will highlight some of the larger and more notable projects on each of the slides;

as was mentioned earlier, most of the stormwater assessment funds are both collected and

invested in District 1; there are a number of major projects underway with about $30 million in

total construction costs; they are Board approved CIP that often span many years, sometimes

even decades; they typically pull from multiple funding sources as staff works to leverage the

County dollars; across the board, they are designed to deliver overlapping benefits where

possible, improving water quality to meet State requirements and reducing flood risk to make

our communities more resilient; and if they were to take the largest project in this District as an

example, West Cocoa, the District 1 portion of this project, there is also a portion in District 2,

that one will see on the next slide, focuses on improving the drainage channel and upsizing

culverts in key areas like Adamson Road, Lake Drive, State Road 520, Pluckebaum, and

Burnett Road. She mentioned this is part of a larger multi-phase regional stormwater plan;

between Fiscal Years 2018 and 2026, the County has been acquiring land and easements,

completing design and permitting, and starting construction which is scheduled to wrap up in

Fiscal Year 2027; 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 is about $13 million; on the next

slide one will see an additional $2.5 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 Cocoa

improvements; each piece that is completed 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, there is still about a $4.1 million unfunded gap after Fiscal Year

2027; that means they will not be able to move forward with every recommendation from the

study right now for this area; and they focus on prioritizing the projects that deliver the biggest

benefit for the most amount of homes and structures and have funding available. She

continued by saying 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 cannot adequately prevent flooding of roads and private property, so the

solution here is an upgraded system that includes an exfiltration component; survey work was

completed there in 2018/2019; redesign and permitting are scheduled throughout the end of

this year and started in 2024; and construction is planned for Fiscal Year 2027. She went on to

say moving on to District 2, they have about a dozen projects with a total value of roughly $19

million; she talked about Mud Lake on the last slide; this project focuses on improving control

structures and creating a regional flood empoundment in West Cocoa; they have been working

through design and permitting over several years, from Fiscal Years 2020 through 2026; land

acquisition has been ongoing during that same period; the goal is begin construction in 2027;

another major effort is in the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) drainage

improvements project; this area in North Merritt Island, just north of State Road 528, is

experiencing significant flooding multiple time and was the focus of the study; and an analysis

showed that the most cost-effective solution was installing a permanent electric hydraulic pump

with a diesel back up along Hall Road to reduce how long flood waters remain after storm

events. She mentioned planning and initial design started back in Fiscal Year 2017, followed by

land acquisition, design, and permitting through 2020; construction took place 2021 through

2024; this year they will finish project closeout; a note about the pumps, just a PSA, they are

significantly more quiet than one would expect; they often hear complaints that they are not

running during storm events when they should be, they are on; they have installed a light on the

outside of the pump building to alert people that they are running even though they cannot hear

them; on the next slide they have combined Districts 3, 4, and 5; in District 3, the Micco central

project addresses long-standing drainage and flooding issues around Central Avenue; it adds a

stormwater pond with nutrient reduction features; they have been working on this one for

several years; and land acquisition began in 2018 with survey design and permitting continuing

through 2025, and construction planned for this year. She stated in District 4, the Kings Mill

project installs a stormwater pond at the upper end of the Eau Gallie system to capture

sediment and reduce nutrients before water reaches the Indian River Lagoon; construction is

planned for 2025 through 2026 and directly supports State-mandated nutrient reductions;

although this project has had dozens of other elements over many years that reduces flooding,

they are now moving into the water quality portion of this hybrid project; also in District 4, West

Arlington and Flamingo in South Patrick Shores added a denitrification bioreactors at a County

cul-de-sac and in-County right-of-way respectively; Arlington is recently completed and already

helping to treat groundwater and stormwater before it discharges to the Lagoon; and Flamingo

is finishing up now. She added these projects are nutrient reduction projects and not flood

control projects; they often get questioned about these areas with people saying there is no

flooding in these areas; they are absolutely right and there is 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 denitrification bioreactor

and sediment removal system on County property near the Lagoon; design is complete with

construction planned for this year; and it will reduce stormwater pollution entering into the IRL.

She mentioned this is part of multi-phase improvements to the Riverside Drive area in

conjunction with Public Works; she believes there are seven total phases right now; this is a

snap shot of the budget for the stormwater program; this is stormwater assessment revenue

only; Mr. Neterer has already walked everyone through the color of money, and as a reminder

that the pink are restricted revenues; all the stormwater assessment revenues, by Ordinance

and Florida Statute, can only be used to support stormwater projects and the ongoing

maintenance of those projects; the County funds and maintains its stormwater program by

collecting about $6.7 million per year; all of those projects listed in the tables earlier, 34 projects

and 13 of which are primarily flood control projects, are funded with that $6.7 million per year;

and that amount collected is pretty consistent year-to-year. She went on to say notice there is a

large balance forward on the left and that is because of the multi-year nature of the projects;

this year they are also leveraging those assessment dollars; there are about $8 million in grants

that have to be managed and about $3.75 million in American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds

that have to be expended this year; however, that allows the County to stretch its local dollars;

this slide is a breakdown District by District; each District operates as its own stormwater utility

which means the funds collected in each District are spent in that District, on flood control,

resilience, and water quality improvements; and one can see the largest revenues are collected

in Districts 1, 2, and 4, in that order. She continued by saying that is largely because those

Districts contain the greatest number of unincorporated properties, which is where those

stormwater 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 does not always line up evenly year-to-year, but with the current

slate of projects through the life of construction through those projects about 44 percent of the

funds are going to be expended in District 1; District 2 also has a significant number of projects

moving into construction, accounting for about 28 percent of total expenditures; and that is

where they are hearing the concerns for flooding the most, Districts 1 and 2, and so those

funds are greatest there and are returning there. She added they leverage every dollar they

can to put as much money back into each District that they can. She explained District 4 shows

a higher share right now as well; that is driven by the Kings Mill Aurora phase two

improvements, which are soon commencing or the second water quality phase is soon

commencing; and those benefits extend into District 5.

Ms. Gerena stated in regards to Public Work’s budget in Road and Bridge, Road and Bridge is

primarily budgeted from maintenance operations and MSTU, there is no dedicated funded

source specific to drainage, it funds all of their operations; maintenance operations covers all of

the salary and benefits for Road and Bridge, as well as major projects, materials at

approximately $33 million; the largest project is the Road Program that comes out of that

budget; and approximately 29 percent of that funds the staff associated with drainage. She

went on to say as far as MSTUs across the board, they are looking at about $6 million

cumulatively throughout all of the MSTUs; that pays for all the maintenance of the roads,

drainage, trees, guardrails, and everything, not a lot of funding for all that; staff believes that

they also fall into the health and safety category, ask anybody that is flooding and or in an

accident on the side of the road; those little red dots for the unfunded list, they cannot get a lot

done with $6 million when there is a $500 million backlog of projects; they need to find another

opportunity to address those; but as far as MSTU funding, it has pretty much stayed the same

and has varied very little over the last 10 years; and the maintenance operation budget is

actually trending down, so there are lots of concerns.

Natural Resources Department / Public Works Department (Stormwater/Drainage)

Billy Prasad, Planning and Development Director, stated Ms. Gerena showed an image earlier

that is worth a thousand words; if one looks at this image of a topographic of a neighborhood,

in his opinion it tells the story of a lack of words in the form of a strong Code; Brevard County

did not even have a Comprehensive Plan until the late 80s, let alone the modern Subdivision

Code that it has today; in 1986, after the State adopted new rules regarding stormwater

management, the County followed through implementing some standards in its initial Comp

Plan; however, as one 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

stormwater management codes in 1993 and the Subdivision Code was adopted in 1995, which

for the first time, instituted modern Subdivision Code that is worked under today; that includes

requirements that communities be planned out and long-term shared infrastructure is

accounted for; that gives a macro view of subdivision requirements; but the specific lot

drainage part of that Code, Section 62-2891, looked like this in 1995, the highlighted yellow

portion, and it is pretty small; it consisted of two sentences, the first sentence had to do with, if

in a flood zone it has to be consistent with Federal Emergency Management practices; and the

second sentence is where it said if protected trees exist on subdivision lots, it could only bring

the minimum lot amount of fill, basically, if one did not happen to be building in a flood plain in

which one would need to follow already existing regulations, or if one did not already have

protected trees, as far as lot drainage requirements and Subdivision Code, it did not even apply

at that time. He mentioned by 1995 there was 130,000 residential structures instituted with this

Code in place; meanwhile, the Florida Building Code was passed by the State and was

instituted State-wide in 1998 and was adopted by the County under that mandate in 2002; it

was not until 2015 that the Board ultimately amended that lot drainage Code that he talked

about earlier, to look like it does today; it is far more robust, and more importantly, is what is in

it; he thinks the very first section really tells the purpose, and it is pretty straightforward,

subdivision lot design shall ensure that the drainage of surface water from lots is diverted to a

stormwater conveyance or other drainage improvement designed to receive surface water so

as not to create a hazard, lot grading and elevation of building pads shall also be designed to

drain surface away from buildings; finally, the County has a piece of Code in the subdivision

area that says to keep the water away from structures and ultimately get to a drainage system;

and that is in 2015 and by then 175,000 residential structures were built in Brevard County,

noting that the numbers are Countywide because the data from the 80s until now, the only

common metric he could find was it was Countywide, so it included cities. He went on to say

assuming development trends were pretty consistent, there are a lot of structures by the time

this Code existed, specifically 90 percent of the structures that exist today approximately, were

built prior to 2015; today there is somewhere in the neighborhood of 194,000 residential

structures, large, small, multi-unit, single-unit condos, and so forth; while he is not saying that

the Code could not be improved, subdivisions today are subject to a comprehensive review by

experts in the field, with a Code to back that review up; what about the existing neighborhoods

that one can see on this slide, 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

stormwater system; eventually, those vacant lots get developed and there is nowhere for that

water left to go but in people’s yards, at best; now with that said, they have made some

improvements in that area too; for example, in May 2024, just before SB180 had been

retroactively applied to the County, thankfully, before that, the County had created a new Policy

to review new single-family residences that have no discharge or available connection to a

County ditch or drainage feature to provide, and now it requires them to have a site drainage

plan designed by a PE to provide stormwater calcs to the 25-year, 24-hour storm event or to

provide two inches of on-site retention and ensure that proposed fill does not create ponding or

flooding on adjacent properties; it is pretty straightforward basic requirements; and with that

said though, they do not expect new infill construction like that vacant lot there to essentially

fulfill the role of a subdivision style drainage system for the entire community that they are in.

He noted there is a balance of interest at stake, and in order to go further than what the Code

and policies dictate, it would require Board action; he is telling the Board that with full

knowledge that the authority has been limited by SB180.

Ms. Gerena stated before leaving this slide she would point out a few things on this picture; this

photo is from the County, is purposely generic, but very representative of what they see; the

lowest areas are the blues and greens, with white being the highest, followed by the browns; as

one sees, historically, whether the property owners that live there now or those that lived there

before them have impeded the rear lot drainage that was there originally; the people on the left

bottom built a pool and filled in the entire backyard; the one above that also filled and now that

water cannot even get out to the road; there are sheds and fences in the way; 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 is not going to that lot; and this

is what they are seeing systematically across the County.

Commissioner Feltner stated if that is in an HOA, that HOA has some responsibility for the

drainage; they have their own rules to keep things away from the lot line and some of those

other impediments; they typically have their own…

Ms. Gerena interjected by saying some HOAs are better than others.

Commissioner Feltner continued by saying they have their own stormwater retention; and that

neighborhood could not be built today without stormwater retention plan.

Ms. Gerena replied in the affirmative. She advised today there would be stormwater retention,

rear lot easements, it is up to the HOA on how active they are in making people maintain those.

Commissioner Feltner stated the HOA is responsible for their own stormwater retention system.

Ms. Gerena responded in the affirmative.

Commissioner Feltner commented they have the incentive to make sure that that works well

versus this neighborhood that predated any kind of stormwater retention plan.

Ms. Gerena replied correct.

Morris Richardson, County Attorney, advised most modern HOAs are going to be subject to St.

Johns River Water Management District (SJRWMD) permitting requirements and things like

that that they have to adhere to; and their covenants, conditions, and restrictions will reflect

that.

Commissioner Feltner mentioned he has had a little experience with an HOA calling about their

retention pond and what they need to do; they have to call SJRWMD because they are the

agency that they had to deal with in the first place on that whole plan for the modern

neighborhoods; but they have the incentive to make sure that it works well, a modern

neighborhood will have that incentive.

Commissioner Adkinson stated for the County right now, with SB180, anything the County tries

to do that could be construed as more restrictive or burdensome, gets in the way of the County.

Mr. Prasad stated that is correct; and if the Board were to try to strengthen existing Policies to

do more, for example, to require them to convey the water in a certain way, that does not exist

today, he thinks that could be an issue.

Ms. Gerena stated people will see that as a reoccurring challenge throughout these slides;

things do take time to get changed so if there was something that the Board felt strongly should

be looked at for the future, they could not implement anything but could certainly head down a

path; continuing with concerns with historic subdivisions, these are three bubbles of causation,

they fall into three categories; legacy conditions where they were built before permitting, that

has already been talked about; inadequate and aging stormwater, and even floodplain

development; Mr. Prasad talked about the regulation as it related to the floodplain; there are

areas that were built just below the flood zone entirely, there are development pressures from

the infill lots, there are higher rainfall intensities that are being seen in shorter periods of time;

there are increased water tables and water levels; there are private impacts and she talked a

little about that in fences and other improvements, and also unmaintained historic systems;

there are some historic subdivisions that actually have ponds, but the HOAs were dissolved

years ago and nobody maintains anything; there are also unpermitted modifications, and the

agricultural areas which are a thing in and of themselves, where it is not even regulated by the

County, it is regulated by the State; and primarily they are looking at water quality in terms of

their regulations, not necessarily water quantity. She commented all those are added together

for shared impacts, increased flooding risk, increased infrastructure strain, downstream

impacts, higher maintenance costs, and retrofit costs; as far as what they can do to mitigate it,

Code modifications, funding more retrofit projects, modifications to enforcement, or just buying

out areas that are not able to be retrofitted; all of those come with challenges; obviously SB180

is the theme of a lot of discussions, but they have staffing and funding challenges, eminent

domain challenges, and when they approach projects a lot of times it is with the understanding

that they are going in there and if the property owners are willing to help with the needed

easements and that type of thing, they can do the project; but if they get into having to buy

property and that kind of thing it is going to be cost-infeasible; and one property owner can kill

an entire project or cause costly redesign for retrofit projects. She continued by saying if they

are really committed to doing a project and doing it right they have to be committed all the way

through; and as far as the agricultural areas, they may not have the jurisdiction to do and

regulate what it wants.

Commissioner Delaney stated to be fair with that, a lot of the issues that are coming in the

agriculture areas is because of rezones, not necessarily the agriculture land.

Ms. Gerena stated Commissioner Delaney is getting ahead of her; that was the historical stuff

and now she will talk about the new stuff; there are new subdivisions and development and

there are opportunities with new development that allows them to regulate under the Code; it is

a group effort in the fact that everybody has a piece of the pie on what they review for; Public

Works reviews for retention, discharge, and right-of-way drainage; building reviews for finished

floor elevations in regard to impacts within the flood zone, and for lot drainage; and Natural

Resources gets involved with flood zone impacts and compensatory storage, wetland impacts,

as well as tree preservation and buffers. She went on to say the County has a lot better Code

now; the Code requirements address a lot of issues currently; it requires development design to

take into consideration the current water tables; it requires discharge rates pre-post to be equal

to or less than the pre-condition, that is for the 25-year, 24-hour storm event; it requires no

increased staging when a project is impacting within a flood zone, as well as if there is historic

drainage going through an area, 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. She noted there is still room for improvement; there

are still physical challenges out there and they are seeing increased water tables in areas

because with new Codes sometimes one has to build higher and then the ponds get higher,

everything gets higher, so there is a cumulative impact that is not readily noticeable; there is

increased rainfall intensities that are not captured in the Code; those are changing things,

inadequate downstream rates and volume capacity; a lot of the Code is that 25-year, 24-hour

but it is a rate, not a volume; when talking about not sending it at someone faster, but may be

still sending more cumulatively; if it cannot be gotten rid of faster, then more water is coming

that way; inadequate and historic natural systems where one can preserve a system but if it is

undersized to begin with, they are losing opportunity to negotiate an improvement in that

system ahead of time; and there are unforeseen impacts that are identified during construction,

maybe someone did not get that one low spot between the survey shots that were taken. She

reiterated there are Code changes that could be done should the County ever be allowed to

change the Code. She mentioned they could require groundwater modeling, do a system-wide

model similar to what they did on Merritt Island, where developers have to plug into the County

model and show no adverse impact; they could adopt the National Oceanic and Atmospheric

Administration (NOAA) rainfall intensities to stay up-to-date with what they are seeing

weather-wise in requirements, as well as require people to use all the great new technology

that is available to supplement surveys to identify better the historic drainage and that kind of

thing; and they could require, if the County had a model that demonstrated the need for a

historic system to get improved, it could be required improvement and dedication; but that

would also require the County to pay for that impact; some of those challenges, SB180,

increased development costs, land acquisition and property rights so they would have to

address that cost; they would have to have the money to do a system-wide model to that level

of detail; and as is seen with a lot of the Codes that have gotten stricter over the years, when

one does not like it they annex and then the County loses all of its leverage on making sure

that they are not going to cause an issue.

Mr. McClure stated this slide shows the current design requirements for various situation and

the rainfall amounts; these are based on a 24-hour idealized storm which is like taking an

average of what one would see of rainfall rate and intensity over a 24-hour period; 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 that the County has; he will talk about that a little and the bottom portion is

estimate that that staff worked up of what it would cost to go from the current 10-year, 24-hour

storm to a higher level of protection; in this case they had to make some broad assumptions,

there is not a lot of information literature to support how to do this, thus making some

reasonable assumptions with the engineers working some of this stuff up; and to go from the

10-year to the 25-year would double the cost of just buying the materials and installing the

pipes. He noted to go to the 100-year it is tripling the cost and to go to the 500-year it is five

times the cost; the City of Titusville recently discussed requiring designing to the 100-year

storm event 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; they went through the adjustments and estimates and there

are obstacles to requiring this especially for non-public projects which might see substantial

increase in cost for the stormwater system and impediments such as SB180; the current

retention ponds are required to be designed to the 25-year, 24-hour unless they do not have a

legal positive outfall which means they do not have an easement or an adjacent existing

drainage system that they can tie into, in which case they have to hold the 96-hour storm which

is more rainfall, more volume over that period of time; there is a lot of misunderstanding and

misuse of the terminology; for the 10-year storm that is a 10 percent likelihood that the storm

will occur in any given year, or a one in 10 chance in a given location; it does not mean that the

storm happens once every 10 years; and it can occur multiple times in one decade or not at all

and it can occur in multiple locations within the County. He went on to say for example, they

were not 10-year storms, but to take the October storms that the County got hit with, they

impacted multiple areas in the northern portion of the County but southern end of the County

has minimal impacts; the County could get a storm this Spring or Summer that flip flop those,

and get major impacts in the southern portion and not much in the northern; saying they were a

1,000-year event, but they were in different locations; counting the County as a whole and one

location, then yes, but if counting the particular location that received that rainfall, it is a

different matter, therefore one, it depends on how one is analyzing the statistics and what

areas are being looked at; and the 10-year storms which are used for design, are relatively

frequent, smaller scale storms, relatively speaking, but they can still cause significant runoff

and overwhelm local drainage systems, especially if they are aging or have had other

problems. He noted for design they typically use the

10-year storms for urban systems, small dams, and culverts to ensure the specific relatively

high intensity and shorter duration rainfall events; designing stormwater systems attempts to

balance the cost versus the capacity and it is usually determined by the governmental agencies

based on recommendations from researchers, statisticians, professional organizations, and

other stakeholders and then implemented into rule and law by the governmental organizations;

for Brevard County on can see on the table that it is using the 10-year, 24-hour, 7.9 inches; and

looking at the NOAA charts over in Tampa, it is 6.3 inches, showing there is variation

throughout the State and even across the County depending on what event is being talked

about based on the statistics. He went on to say 25-year storms are more intense and is nine

inches in Brevard County and that is 25-year, 24-hour, but if that same nine inches fell in six

hours that would equate to a 200-year event; one would not expect those to happen very often,

but if one is getting dumped on by nine inches of rain in six hours, it does not matter where one

is sitting it, he or she is going to get wet; and as a point of information, NOAA is currently in the

process of rolling out new statistics supposedly next year that will not only potentially affect the

projected rainfall amounts, but also allow for projecting future rainfall rates and frequencies

under future conditions.

Ms. Elmore went on to say even if staff were to receive Board direction to design to more

intense storms and triple or quadruple the public project construction budget, they need help

from property owners; she just wants to highlight what the Natural Resources Enforcement

Officers have been seeing in the field; obviously, the residents are experiencing these more

frequent, more intense storm events and naturally they are seeing ponding and standing water

on their properties and trying to engineer their own solutions; and it is important to remember

that more than half of the homes in Brevard County were built before those modern stormwater

systems, as Mr. Prasad pointed out, and again, 90 percent before the more robust County

drainage regulations. She stated what they are seeing more often now is tree removal, wetland

filling or excavation, and even diking within floodplains; while these actions are well intentioned,

they often make flooding worse both for the property owner and for neighboring properties;

they currently have three environmental Code Enforcement Officers managing hundreds of

cases throughout the County; one the next slide one will see a sharp increase 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 costly restoration; and that is when

there is a permitted system or regulated environmental resource that they have language to

enforce. She mentioned in older historical drainage areas where no permitted system exists

and no regulated resources impacted, they do not have enforceable Code language; those

situations typically become civil disputes between neighbors; addressing historical drainage

would require legislative direction from the Board for a Code change after SB180 is resolved,

and likely additional enforcement resources; and they would probably need another Code

Enforcement team of three if they were to enforce historical drainage. She continued by saying

starting with the middle photo, this is in District 3 and is an active case where the property

owner excavated a trench on the left and constructed a dyke in wetlands which redirected

historical drainage onto neighboring properties and one can see all the ponding on the left, in

the middle photo; there is also some ponding below that is more difficult to see; there was also

a private culvert that was partially blocked, restricting flow; that culvert has been restored and

the case is now waiting on confirmation of enforcement closure through Florida Department of

Environmental Protection (FDEP); and another thing to note, when there are environmental

cases, usually they are working with St. Johns and FDEP, so it takes a while to get through

those resolutions to work hand-in-hand with them. She went on to say on the right is in District

1, a case where wetlands were cleared and filled; the owner attempted to make a dyke or road,

one can kind of see the roadway running back towards the house in the picture; that work has

since been removed; one can see the wetland vegetation, the ferns on the front left of that

picture; the wetlands have been restored and the case is now closed; but it took almost two

years from the initial report to final compliance. She stated in the top left, this is also in District 1

and is still an active case; it involves a pond being altered in what is believed to be a wetland

area, staff is still trying to confirm that; this is in the Parkland neighborhood which recently

experienced flooding; it is also an example of a neighborhood built before stormwater 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 which can disrupt the drainage patterns;

unfortunately, there is not a simple fix for this one; if the 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 one is in District 2, and a newer case reported

in October 2025; it is for a permitted subdivision so they are not only seeing homeowners trying

to solve individual problems, they are seeing even where the 12 or 13 permitting agencies have

gone through months of review and sent out the very best permit that it could; these were

wetland impacts that occurred beyond what was permitted and waters being discharged

improperly onto neighboring properties; and the case in ongoing with staff coordinating with

SJRWMD to try and reach a resolution there.

Commissioner Adkinson stated Ms. Elmore said something that struck her; and she inquired if

the Board gave them money for all these projects, they would still have to hire people to do the

work.

Ms. Elmore advised they would have to hire people to enforce the Codes, help with design and

buildout of those projects, administrative staff to pay invoices because of prompt payment

deadlines that have to be complied with and move projects forward.

Commissioner Adkinson stated the Board has to remember it is not just the job, it is all the stuff

that supports it.

Ms. Elmore responded affirmatively. She stated this slide shows the increase in cases that

have been seen in the northern part of the County over the past few years; case reporting is

not exceeding even pandemic levels where folks were at home and more likely to notice and

report issues; they also saw that in 2009 when the economy had that downturn, folks were

home and there were a lot more cases; they really need the public’s help here; the preference

is before anyone starts excavating, clearing land, or placing fill that they reach out to 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 protection, storage, or water quality benefits they may not even be aware of; and

once they have had that conversation they can help guide residents towards more effective

environmentally sound solutions like bio-swells or rain gardens. She noted these approaches

use plants and natural storage to manage water more effectively and can often solve drainage

problems without creating new ones; rain gardens are just one example of green stormwater

infrastructure which many have heard about during the last citizen efficiency and effectiveness

discussions; the environmental Codes are written to support, encourage, and even incentivize

green stormwater infrastructure and low impact development; and there is nothing that impacts

residents from using these strategies on their own property as long as they are installed in the

right locations and do not impact environmentally sensitive areas.

Natural Resources Department / Public Works Department (Stormwater/Drainage)

Marc Bernath, Public Works Director, stated now he is going to turn to maintenance

responsibilities; in this slide is a theoretical drainage system; properties and developments may

discharge into the County’s system, a city, a town, or even Florida Department of

Transportation (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 perfect in the foreground; it is meant to

highlight how interconnected drainage is; it is recognized how far they are from perfect, and

resourced only to be reactive, but one can quickly see that this ditch has a strong likelihood of

backing up into the County’s drainage system and rights-of-way due to downed trees,

overgrowth, and general lack of maintenance in the background; the County’s Public Works

Road and Bridge teams maintain swales, ditches, and canals, public structures and bridges, as

well as pumps associated with the rights-of-way; and they also perform clearing and mowing,

swell rehabilitation, inspection, and vac cleaning, culvert replacement and curb and gutter

rehabilitation projects, as well as oversee contracts for many other related tasks. He continued

by saying all five District maintenance teams have approximately 15 to 20 personnel each to do

this, plus all of the road work, sidewalk, bridge maintenance, and repairs, on top of it; he will get

into the 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 staff makes a Code change, adds staff or equipment, that does

not mean that the other cities, FDOT, or private land owners are going to do that; Natural

Resources Management (NRM) performs some similar maintenance functions to Public Works,

but their efforts are focused on a broader, non-right-of-way specific area, flooding concerns

with heavy emphasis on water quality and resilience; and they oversee maintenance on

treatment ponds and baffle boxes before nutrient removal, and oversee contract street

sweeping to minimize fines getting into the storm system. He mentioned they also perform

stormwater inspections and illicit discharge investigations throughout unincorporated Brevard

County; he will now touch on private drainage in this next slide; 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 private driveway

culverts, and private bridges; they are often asked why the County does not clean this or fix

private pipes; many years ago the County did, but it was changed in the Code due to the

enormous cost, as well as these pipes, are solely for the private owners benefit to access their

property; additionally, in cleaning those private drainage pipes, it previously opened the County

up to many allegations that the County caused private structures to fail, possibly held together

by the rust or dirt itself, but it costs 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 drainage; however, the latter is often blocked by sheds, trees, fences, or filled

in and the Code provides no recourse to enforce. He noted similar challenges exist for

agricultural drainage, which pertains to a large amount of the County’s systems; they are

regulated through FDEP and the SJRWMD, not the County, and are exempt from many of the

permitting requirements; it is not regulated to the same level of design review that would

otherwise be enforced for new family single homes and subdivisions; they are generally based

on previously approved best management practices focused on water quality; artisan wells is

something that was recently addressed during a prior Board meeting, which is overseen by

SJRWMD or the Department of Health (DOH), not Public Works or NRM; and lastly, on this

slide, many complaints are related to private drainage concerns for which the County has no

authority to enforce, no authority to go on to private property, and if staff had permission of the

property owner, they lack the resources to address what has already been assigned to them to

maintain. He stated this slide attempts to provide an overall summary for the most critical

needs as it is very easy to get lost in the details; even what he is about to say is going to be

quite lengthy; they took an unconstrained view of what could improve drainage level of service

within the County; every single thing asked for is needed, but it is 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, they literally passed out a long white menu of things that the Board could

decide to choose from; sometimes one buys a combo, other times one orders appetizers, a

single dish, or a side dish separately, each thought has so many possibilities and solutions;

while staff spent a lot of time coming up with them, much more work is needed if it were to be

implemented; staff would need Board direction such as spend up to X amount of dollars or only

consider Y and Z categories and then come back with an executable plan; and it is important to

note that the status quo funding means less level of service every single year. He continued by

saying staff has addressed in the past, and to some extent earlier in this brief, but road and

bridge maintenance MSTU funding has been relatively flat for 10 years; the equipment fleet is

aging, there is a lack of sufficient resources, and inflation continues to outpace the Charter cap,

severely eroding the purchasing power to buy materials and equipment, as well as fund

projects and personnel; the average contractor or consultant also costs two to four times what

they spend in house to do the same service; he will briefly start out with a quick overview and

brief specific history of road and bridge maintenance and drainage; first and foremost, they are

first responders and their actions are driven by resourcing, which directly affects the public’s

health and safety; as was discussed in the last budget workshop, they are the first there and

typically the last to leave; there are 421 total ditch miles and 527 swale miles that are

documented; and each year the inventory grows as they run across new information and gather

greater fidelity. He went on to say as he briefed last year, in the not so recent past, there were

some ditches that had not been maintained for 20 to 30 years; prior to COVID-19, receiving

prison labor each weekend for ditch cleaning, mowing, and other related tasks across the

County at all of the Road and Bridge shops was routine; however, due to Brevard County

Sheriff’s Office own challenges, they now only receive that on rare occasions; from 2018 to

2024, and likely in years prior, they also received free supplemental help from the Brevard

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 literally taught

across the County’s many ditches and canals by cleaning them for the County; those resources

are no longer available; when trainees graduate the program, they often benefited by gaining

new employees; and currently, there are no Brevard Career Source grants for these types of

programs. He mentioned the normal district maintenance teams play an enormous role in

drainage maintenance, namely routine maintenance such as mowing and debris removal, as

well as culvert replacements and structure reconstruction; they also supplement ditch

maintenance and swale maintenance, as the schedule allows; throughout other parts of the

year, they are focused on other things such as roads, sidewalks, and bridge maintenance;

during the growing season, it is very hard to see in September that they accomplished anything

if they mowed it in May because it is typically regrown based on current size and staffing levels;

that is even if it was mowed in that particular year; and he will get into it in a moment but they

have ditch cycles, and depending on whether it is a primary or secondary tertiary, staff may not

get to it for five years. He noted they also have less field staff than in years past; in addition to

normal district maintenance teams, prior to 2017, they only had one dedicated Countywide

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 he just

talked about from the maintenance team; for areas with no access, there are Kaisers to utilize;

in 2018 and 2020, the Board provided them funding for two more crews and equipment

respectively, therefore there are now three crews across the entire County, of four people,

making it 12 people dedicated fulltime to ditch cleaning. He stated getting to the chart and the

handout, in the left most column, they are proposing the addition of two additional Countywide

drainage crews going from three to five; 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

1,000 miles he mentioned, and they 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 recommendation; primary ditches, just to be clear, are usually the large arterial canals

conveying lots of water; and secondary ditches collect from the tertiary, or local neighborhood

ditches, which make up the largest quantity of ditches. He mentioned in the next column they

are proposing doubling the road and bridge and support-related staff; they 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 would be needed to help support the field

efforts at the pointy end of that spear, the ones doing the work; it would further increase the

level of service by further focusing on primary and secondary ditches as well as cutting tertiary

ditch maintenance cycles and accelerating maintenance and culvert replacements, as well as

providing an increased level of service for emergency response; this is not intended to replace

the two additional drainage crews he just mentioned, but rather it is in addition, as well as to the

one that he will talk about in a moment; and obviously he recognizes that this is likely not going

to go too far because of its high cost, but any bit of this would be helpful. He stated in the

middle column they are proposing four additional vac trucks and camera crew trucks for a total

of five trucks, meaning they have only one truck today; that would be $2.7 million in capital

equipment plus $600,000 in recurring labor, fuel, and maintenance helping to address a prior

unfunded State mandate known as SB 180, which mandates them to conduct proactive

drainage inspections on the County’s roughly 20,000 culverts and pipes, which is not done

today; currently, with only one vehicle, they actively respond when there is a known flooding

issue and do not inspect any of the drainage ditches which SB 180 has required them to now

inspect; in the two potential bills now being moved within both the Senate and the Legislature,

neither one addresses this issue; it would help establish a proactive seven-year inspection

cycle by having five trucks with crews dispersed around the County and over that seven-year

period they would get through 20,000 culverts and pipes; and by then they would have to

repeat that. He went on to mention in the next column they are proposing increasing new and

replacement capital equipment funding; they are asking for $2 million annually in capital

equipment funding; currently, there is $15 million in equipment backlog, with $10 million related

to drainage alone; there is only approximately $1 million a year over the last several years all

coming out of the very little MSTU budget that Ms. Gerena referred to earlier in the slide; what

this has done is decreased the departments level of service further due to delays in downed

equipment and it has increased the repairs costs by over 30 percent by keeping equipment that

is beyond its useful service life over the last five, and it continues to rise; in the handout they

also propose a variety of other equipment, he is not going to specifically get into in this

presentation, but it goes back to his comments earlier; and in the last column they are

proposing an additional one engineer per every $10 million of added unfunded projects. He

noted this is not a hard and fast rule, but rather a rule of thumb, approximately one engineer for

$10 million is easier to manage than if there were 10 projects that are $1 million and are

complex projects; that would be a sliding scale, but it is just to give the Board a perspective

because as previously stated they have $500 million in unfunded projects, so if the Board were

so inclined to find that money, it could not just expect the Department to do it with existing staff,

they would need a lot more staff; not depicted here are additional positions on that handout

such as additional contract coordinators, accountants, and the like as Ms. Elmore had

mentioned earlier; it really depends on how much project funding is being given; in the last

column on the bottom the proposal is five additional field inspectors, $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 culvert can singularly flood an entire

neighborhood; staff is very reactive in addressing these, either it is because they have received

a neighborhood complaint, Code Enforcement might have received that complaint, or it is

because they are going into a neighborhood over the next one to two years to perform the swell

rehab that he talked about under the Countywide drainage crew; and at that point, they are

looking at that specific neighborhood to see if we see any issues and then they issue failed

culvert notices. He continued by saying at the pace they are going, there are neighborhoods

that flood that they will never get to or it will be many years; they have the ability to send out

letters and then engage Code Enforcement if needed because this is the County’s right-of-way;

in the Code it is specific that the homeowners are required to maintain their drainage culverts,

their driveway culverts, for their unimpeded access, but it is over the County’s right-of-way and

is often failing or has failed, being a problem for staff; and this whole process is time

consuming, especially if they go through Code Enforcement, to get them to address it, all the

while, water is backing up and houses and/or property are potentially flooding.

*The Board recessed at 2:54 p.m. and reconvened at 3:06 p.m.

Mr. Bernath noted he was talking about the last column on the slide at the bottom, the

drainage, the need for inspectors, and he was saying how they were able to engage on this

because it is actually the public’s right-of-way; they do not have the staff that does this and this

is why he is asking for five; that would be one for each of the road and bridge maintenance

districts; right now as was mentioned, it is only when they go in to do a neighborhood that they

do it at that time, therefore being very reactive; this is different than side and rear lot line

because that is on private property, even if there are easements, there is no historic drainage

code as Ms. Elmore had mentioned earlier, to enforce that; as was mentioned a few times,

there is additional equipment and staffing on the handout; and he recognizes what he just went

through is a lot and that there is even more on there, that is why he really tried to focus on

some bigger stuff realizing that the money is not there, but if it were, they could scale all of this

and that goes back to his comment about really needing some Board direction on where it

would like for them to focus. He stated there is also one other big one that he wanted to hit on

and that is on the list, increasing current telemetry; they are placing that around the County

right now in cooperation with Natural Resources Management; that is going to give better

real-time flood data as the storms are happening; they are looking to continue to expand that,

as well as add automation for the pumping and the weir gates so that they have real-time

monitoring and response during flooding; right now what happens is if there is a hurricane and

the pumps are running at 40 miles per hour they are hunkered down just like everyone else is,

until the storm dies down; having monitoring and then automatic gates would help control them

even during the storm and would be an additional $3.5 million in capital equipment and

$150,000 in recurring maintenance, fuel, and monitoring costs; he would be remiss if he did not

add that the Board cannot look at doing any of these things without staff, in order to solve these

drainage problems; and it really needs to recognize that they are currently unable as they have

unmet staffing challenges now, significant unmet challenges, which he understands will be

talked about at a later date. He commented if the Board decided to give them 20 positions or

five positions, they have a significant vacancy rate today; and he will give it over to Ms. Elmore

and then finish up for the final slide.

Ms. Elmore stated the Board has heard about a lot of issues and potential solutions; to talk

about potential additional funding, this is specific to stormwater utility assessment, non-ad

valorem funding; it is not a part of the cap; the stormwater utilities were established in 1990,

thanks to Commissioner Altman, in Districts 3 and 5, and District 1, 2, and 4 followed in 1991;

the Board can direct staff to prepare changes to the current rate which is $64 per Equivalent

Residential Unit (ERU); that is defined as a 2,500 square feet of impervious area; a typical

home, typical homes are obviously getting larger and there is more impact now and that rate

has not increased in about a decade and there is automatic CPI adjustment built in so they are

losing buying power every year; if the rate had simply kept pace with inflation, it would be about

$85 per ERU today; they are also well below the State average by about 40 percent and behind

most of the larger stormwater utilities in Brevard County, as well as Volusia County; and

comparatively the County’s rate is on the low end. She advised when the Board last adjusted

the rate structure in 2014, it phased that rate increase in over the next couple of years; it also

changed how the stormwater dollars were allocated, therefore, shifting from 50 percent

between flood control and water quality projects to 70 percent water quality and 30 percent

flood control; that change was driven largely by impaired water bodies and the need to meet

nutrient reduction requirements; that allocation can, however, be adjusted by the Board through

ordinance and does not require 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 of recurring revenue per year; any rate change would require an

ordinance, not referendum; if the Board wanted that to take effect next fiscal year, staff would

need direction sometime next month to be able to do the mailers; and the mailers cost about

$100,000 for each resident would get a mailer. She added on more thing, there is only one

major utility nearby, lower than the County’s rate, and that is Melbourne, and they do not do

flood control projects like the County does.

Mr. Bernath noted this is the big money slide; the Board has seen this before, he presented it at

the last couple budget workshops; they also put together a revenue generating report; as

discussed earlier they have approximately $500 million in already identified unfunded drainage

projects in the backlog; as will possibly be shown with the Board’s support in the next budget

workshop, drainage is only part of the overall revised Public Works unfunded backlog; if the

Board wants to hear more about that in March, staff would like to talk about it; when looking at

Facilities, transportation, traffic, and Road and Bridge, which all fall under him, the revised

unfunded backlog is now $3.6 billion; it 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; Mr. Neterer had shown

the Board that the construction cost index outpaced what CPI is significantly; and between the

two, the backlog has gone up tremendously from last time he presented, but he would be

prepared to present that if the Board wants to get into all of that. He commented the revenue

generating report shows that they could potentially garner up to $179.6 million more in revenue

every single year if all of the revenues on this chart are adopted, similar to a lot of other

counties; he went into detail which counties do which one of these at the last budget workshop;

he does not have all those details with him today, but a lot of other counties do some or many

of these; the report provided to the Board in 2025 provides a lot more detail than what time they

have here; there are a lot of pros and cons for the five potential revenue sources; the biggest

urgency and putting this as part of the drainage slide today and not waiting for the Public

Works brief in March, is urgency of schedule; and based on what is already being seen, there

may be more cuts needed this year and if the Board plans to act for drainage and or

transportation facility shortfalls, they would need to brief before the budget workshop,

legislative intent and permission to advertise an ordinance in February for at least the two

surtaxes. He went on to say that is because the notional schedule is that they would do that in

February, in March and April they would need to have public hearings and enter into interlocal

agreements with the two major cities; in May, they would need a final ordinance or resolution

due to the Office of Program Policy and Analysis and Government Accountability; in June, they

would file with the Supervisor of Elections and then it would be on the ballot for November; that

is the big reason to bring it up again today, whether it is for drainage or any and all of the Public

Works shortfall; just as a short 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 funds, depending on the rate implemented; at one percent the County

share could be $100 million per year; it requires a simple majority to be place on the

referendum; it could be used for broad transportation needs, including roadside drainage, and

can last for 30 years; however, as was mentioned as a surtax, it requires public hearings,

negotiations with cities, and approval by the Office of Program Policy Analysis and

Government, as well as a certified public audit. He continued by saying the local government

infrastructure discretionary surtax is also on goods and services purchased for the County; it

has the second largest potential to generate funding, but would compete with SOIRL;

combining the ask could drag SOIRL down; implementation and limitations are the same as the

Charter County and regional transportation systems discretionary surtax that he just went over;

the public service tax has the potential to generate roughly $33.4 million; this is based on FPL

funding or franchise fees that are already being collected; by increasing the amount taxed on

other utilities such as natural gas, water, and etcetera, it is considered a General Fund

revenue; once it is received it 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 the traffic operations; and the referendum is required per County Charter, but has no

requirement to share. He advised the final two on the list is the ninth cent fuel tax, the unleaded

motor fuel at $2.7 million, which is not that much more money relatively speaking compared to

the needs, but every little bit would help; certainly, when combining it with LOGT fifth cent, it

could make up approximately the $9 million that was cut out of Public Works budget this year;

and further, it requires no requirement to share with the cities, and Board by supermajority vote

could implement it even without a referendum, or by simple majority, it could add it to a

referendum. He noted it could be used for any legitimate operations and maintenance purpose,

public transportation need, which again would include roadside drainage; finally, the LOGT fifth

cent is not an enormous amount either at $6.4 million; he has 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; and it could be approved as well by supermajority vote by the Board and or added by

simple majority, but it requires an Interlocal Agreement (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 as far

as dollars for the effort, but again it could help offset the costs.

Commissioner Delaney stated on the third slide one of the things she wanted to point out on

this map is that all of the water that is west of that black line, goes out west to the St. Johns

River, then it goes north, it gets bottlenecked north of North Brevard in Lake Harney, and then

they have a second flood in Mims, in North Brevard; she wanted to point that out that all the

water is getting pumped out of the rest of the County, a lot of times they experience the first

initial flood that everybody experiences, but then get a second whammy because of that

bottleneck; and she has some questions about the monitoring is that is she under the correct

understanding that when the County does the monitoring in North Brevard, it is the Highway 50

monitoring well.

Mr. McClure asked if Commissioner Delaney is talking about water quality or the lake levels.

Commissioner Delaney advised she is talking about lake levels.

Mr. McClure explained there have historically been two water level gauges in the North end of

the County; with ARPA money, Public Works had recently added several more; that will help

with the monitoring levels that they will be doing; the other thing is as they move forward with

both the vulnerability assessment and the other studies they are trying to implement towards a

real-time flood forecasting, those will give a starting point for the model of the forecast, of this is

current existing condition, now they run the model forward based on the forecasted rainfall and

the other things; and they are trying to get to a robust system.

Commissioner Delaney commented a lot of times the secondary flooding in North Brevard does

not necessarily reach 50 and she is hoping they can start looking more north while they are

monitoring these things.

Mr. McClure advised they will be. He noted he thinks they have talked about this with

Commissioner Delaney before, for the rest of the group, the water management district has a

model constructed now for the main St. John’s River from SR 520 south to the bottom of the

contributing area; they are working on a model from SR 520 up through Orlando and Orange

County into Volusia that is supposed to be done in about a year and one-half, hopefully sooner;

and as soon as they can get their hands on that they will be using that to improve Brevard

County’s modeling efforts as well.

Commissioner Delaney asked to go forward five slides, and she inquired when this is through;

and she noted it says 2012 but inquired is it through a certain amount of time, or is it current to

today.

Ms. Gerena advised it is current up to two weeks ago.

Commissioner Delaney asked to move forward to the District 1 stormwater project slide; she

mentioned obviously there is a lot of projects going on here; and she wanted to point out that a

lot of these have to do with nutrient levels and not necessarily flooding.

Mr. McClure stated correct.

Commissioner Delaney inquired if the majority of the money being spent is other than Mud

Lake which is pretty much a done deal; it might have a few things left in it but that is pretty

much a done project; but the rest of them, the majority of the money is going towards nutrients

not flooding.

Mr. McClure stated that is correct.

Ms. Elmore interjected by saying about two-thirds is going towards flooding because West

Cocoa has a flooding project that is $13 million.

Commissioner Delaney commented what she is saying is if they were to take out the West

Cocoa one, because that project, at least when she was first elected, it had been talked about,

but…

Mr. McClure stated they are pretty far forward; and there is still a shortfall to fully implement,

but she is correct that is the majority of the funds.

Commissioner Delaney continued by saying because they did not get hardly any flooding in the

last storm and that kind of stuff; it is obviously a successful project that is doing well; and the

point she is trying to make is the County is now experiencing a lot of issues in the Mims and

Scottsmoor area.

Mr. McClure noted as well as the Parkland area that Public Works is trying to address.

Mr. Bernath added his are mostly the dots on the map; he did not print something out, but he

shared during a previous Board meeting they are in design on both Dixie Village and Westwood

projects with both being about $7 or $8 million combined; they would look for hopefully State

help in the future, but even that with State help, one would normally have to come up with 50

percent; those are worst case scenarios; if they can get some easements those costs may go

down; but they are working on it. He commented the other thing being worked on right now, it

will come to the Board at the next meeting, is permission to get an HMGP grant which would

look specifically at the Parkland area and that watershed; and it will request Board permission

to have authority to go do that.

Natural Resources Department / Public Works Department (Stormwater/Drainage)

Commissioner Delaney stated project will help a little bit but there are still going to be ongoing

issues in that area; and she inquired if that is correct.

Mr. Bernath answered yes; he noted he would say that if the St. John’s rises, there is nowhere

for it to go unless they are looking at seriously buying property to store water, ditches, etcetera;

they will still have challenges but they may be able to mitigate it; and the other thing he wanted

to share with the Board is they are meeting with the City of Titusville staff on Monday to discuss

what had happened in October to see if they can get them on board with something like this

study that has been talked about.

Commissioner Delaney stated one of the biggest things she is hoping to chat with the Board

about today is looking forward she knows a lot of the Board focused his or her campaigns on

infrastructure and public safety; the Board has done a really good job getting the Fire

Department into a better place; she still thinks there is a little more work to do, especially in the

work life balance piece; but the infrastructure piece she thinks District 1 is desperate for some

major changes; she worries that if the Board continues to prolong this that it is going to be

getting into a pretty massive situation like Volusia County had, the massive buyouts and things

of that nature; she knows that when she was walking in some of the neighborhoods after

October, there were so many homes that did not fill out that paperwork that had been asked of

them to fill out; and people are still dealing with effects of the October storm, even today, and

their homes are still torn apart and whatnot. She continued by saying there are still water issues

being dealt with; she does not know how the Commissioners feel about these numbers that Mr.

Bernath brought and also the stormwater numbers that were brought; she personally feels like

one of the ways to handle this is expanding the scope of the infrastructure sales tax; not that

she wants to take away what SOIRL is doing because she thinks that work needs to continue,

but she thinks the Board needs to expand the scope of where those monies can go to, even

possibly consider the idea of bumping it up to a one cent, because with the property tax

looming over its head, she would hate to move forward with the one-half cent sales tax as it is

today, that pigeonholes the Board into a situation where it does not have the monies needed to

deal with the County’s current issues, but with future issues when the funding could be taken;

and she does not know if anyone on the Board has any thoughts about that.

Chair Altman stated before getting into general policy discussions, there is still a presentation

with Utility Services so wrap that up to get a look at the total picture; he knows there will be time

and opportunity to talk about these; they are really good points, and things the Board does

need to talk about; he knows he has questions; one of his questions is the time frame of all

these decisions; and he wants to get Utility Services out of the way.

Commissioner Delaney informed Chair Altman that they had mentioned February.

Chair Altman commented he saw that in the one slide; February is close; and if the Board is

finished with that, he wants to go to County Utilities.

Commissioner Feltner stated February for fees and such, and then notices, but as far as

whether something is going to be put before the voters, ultimately the Supervisor of Elections

needs to have that in August; and he asked if the Board is clear on that.

Mr. Liesenfelt stated August 15/17, something like that.

Commissioner Delaney asked if April is worst case.

Mr. Liesenfelt stated for April he would have to do a little research; the big thing if someone is

looking at a penny sales tax that the County would need to work with the cities because they

would get a percentage; it is the same like the County does for the Indian River Lagoon where

it has to come up with interlocal agreements with the cities on it too; and there is a lot of leg

work to get it on the ballot.

Commissioner Feltner asked if half would potentially go to the municipal governments.

Mr. Liesenfelt commented he assumes it works the same as the SOIRL money because it is

the same type of tax structure. He stated for Utilities there is Eddie Fontanin, Utility Services

Director, and Lucas Siegfried, Engineering Manager, for the Utilities Department.

C.3. Utilities Department

Eddie Fontanin, Utility Services Director, stated just to give a little overview, the Department is

broken up by operation into what they call north, central, and south area; what he has there is

just a geographical of the utility services boundary based on the amendments or changes that

were made in the Comp Plan pending approval; as one can see, Merritt Island is obviously

covered, Port St. John area, and the Mims area have been extended to the Volusia border; he

has provided a quick overview of the assets in each of these; central, this is what is known as

Viera, Suntree, and Palm Shores area; there is an area in West Cocoa and also provide

service to the landfill for that; the south area, as on can see is everything south of Pineda and

the beaches, just to the Melbourne Beach area, but not its entirety; then there is the

unincorporated Barefoot Bay and the remainder of the unincorporated area down to the

Sebastian River; and west of that is the service area of Palm Bay. He went on to say they are

an enterprise fund; there are times when discussions are made about Utility Services being

associated with General Fund or ad valorem, but that is actually incorrect, they are not allowed

to receive any of those funds, as this Department generates its own; this slide is an overview,

and as he dives into it he will be talking about not only what State and Federal mandates are,

but also about growth; as was discussed growth is also associated with capacity so this gets an

overview of what the capacity is on the existing wastewater and water treatment plants; and

please note that the percentages shown are based on the current permitted capacity and that is

where the calculation is from. He continued by saying utility accounts can vary, there are

multiple categories from single-family homes to commercial to light industrial, but in its

summation by a quantitative number, there are 67,000 and that is growing, that is a snapshot

from November 2025; water, there is 3,400-plus in Mims and 5,800 in Barefoot Bay; they also

do reuse; and this slide is an introduction to financials. He explained these are their sources

and as one can see the balance forward is getting smaller and smaller; a lot of that was

generated when they were receiving FDEP grants and ARPA funds; those were being used as

priorities based on deadlines which caused the backlog with the utility funded projects, but

those are now in the mix of being implemented; the majority of the revenue with regard are the

user rates; the expenditures are shown as such; the operations includes operations, salary, and

benefits; he always says they are a $50 million per year operation to keep the lights on the staff

going; and obviously, as they expand that circle, it talks about not only their obligation of debt

service, but also the expenditures with CIP and operation projects. He noted they currently

have debt service and the slide is a bar graph with the yellow/gold depicting the County-wide

system and the red depicts Barefoot Bay; he knows that one of the questions that gets brought

up is, when is Barefoot Bay’s debt service complete and the answer to that is the end of 2029;

this slide gives an overview of the grants, bonds, and loans; they do actively try to capture

opportunities for funding that can stretch the dollar further with regard to fees that are currently

collected; FDEP once or twice per year will open up opportunities for grants; this gives an

overview, all except the bottom one under grants, are FDEP grants; they feel good about that

summation that they have received; they do have existing bonds Countywide and Barefoot Bay;

and they also have three existing State revolving funds for current projects that have been

completed or nearly completed. He stated the number one type of revenue source are the user

rates; they do permitting and inspector fees, connection fees, fats, and oils, and grease is

where Brevard County is the only public depot associated for those fats, oils, grease, and

septage; there is a fee structure for that and as mentioned before, the grants that they do

received they recognize; there are rules associated with how they can use those fees; user

rates can be used for anything whether it is for personnel, operations, or CIP as long as it is

used within the Department for Department purposes, same goes with regard to the fees that

are collected from permitting and inspection fees; connection fees are where they start to get

into rules, what they have to recognize, and where they are really dealing with capacity

expansion; he knows so much of the attention is brought to the treatment plants, but main lines,

12 inch or bigger are viewed as regional lines and since they have a regional benefit,

connection fees can be used for that; and as explained earlier about the fats, oils, and grease,

they are associated with the operation, upkeep, and improvements of those facilities. He

mentioned they have looked at opportunities on upgrading and getting current on the rate

structure; the user fees were updated in February 2022, and he will touch a little on the

dynamic of that; developer fees were last updated in October 2024 and they are now current

with the remainder of other departments within the County on how they charge developer fees,

prior to that they were not updated and it was 1972; for connection fees, they have gone back

and found a rate Resolution from August of 1993 that shows the connection fees to be the

same as what is being applied today; years ago he had staff that had been around a while and

claimed that even goes back to the 80s but he could not find the resolution, therefore for factual

purposes he is using 1993 as the year mark; and for fats, oils, and grease they incorporated an

indexing as it did with other fees during the February 2022 rate Resolution. He noted for any

utilities wherever one is at in Florida, they are bound by regulations, the Environmental

Protection Agency (EPA) and the FDEP; to not lose track of Brevard County, the EPA, Title 40

of the US Code of Federal Regulations is where all the legislature is related to the EPA, as the

Board has had conversation about Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS) and whatnot

that is where one will find it located; FDEP were in Chapter 403 of the Florida Statute and also

in the Code, Chapter 62 of the Florida Administrative Code; when they go through projects, or

are working with their consultants, they are making sure that those projects meet the

compliance of what FDEP, 403, and Chapter 62 state; they also have the Brevard County

Ordinances so under Chapter 110 is the Utility Ordinances; and within that Ordinance, it talks

about the utility service design criteria which is in the design manual and criteria, which when

they do updates, they bring them back to the Board for approval. He stated when talking about

the specific laws, rules, and agencies, how it impacts the utility and the investment that is

needed, emphasizing on must not should, the EPA, as he mentioned under Chapter 40, part

141-142 is specific about the PFAS reduction by 2029; FDEP, 403.064, is the zero discharge

by 2032, 403.067, is the nutrient reduction within a Basin Management Action Plan (BMAP),

which all of the areas are now within a BMAP; 403.086 is Advanced Water Treatment (AWT)

for reclaim if in a BMAP; 62-604, ties back in with 403.064, about discharges; and also on the

slide it points out that the water management district, although they are not a regulatory in

regard in their central springs east coast regional water supply plan, which is what the County

falls under, is their recommendation urging to use the upper Floridian aquifer as a water

source, which is where Reverse Osmosis (RO) would be applied in lieu of continuing use of the

surficial well system just for reliability purposes because there is a concern one day when those

wells go dry, utilities will not be in a position to just remedy that quickly. He went on to say in

addition to that, they are also looking, talking about regulatory, to also talk about the other

component which is growth; Brevard County is growing by looking at the data; Bureau of

Economic and Business Research (BEBR) is one component that looks at a Countywide

growth analysis; in addition to that, they have hired a consultant to do an evaluation of the

growth, specifically within the utility service boundary; when doing that they took a different

approach; they took the Future Land Use Map (FLUM) by its density and used that as a

calculation to come up with an estimation of growth per service area; this slide provides a brief

overview, and as one can see, the top line is the high end of BEBR and the second from the

top is the middle line; by service area it shows estimated; these are not people, they are

Equivalent Residential Connections (ERCs); and this is basically the equivalent of single-family

homes to give one an idea. He continued by saying as he goes through this slide, he will talk

about treatment capacity using those projections that were just shown in the previous slide,

based on the effort by the consultant; it gives an estimate when they do these future projects

for treatment plants specifically in pipes and what this is being sized around; it does not

necessarily all have to get built at once, but it gives an idea on how to plan for these facilities to

know what that ultimate estimated number to be is. He stated currently this is the 10-year CIP;

there is a lot evolving of what is going on with their budget; it shows here that in 2027 there is a

$450 million expenditure; two Board meetings ago, it approved about the CMAR approach; now

that staff is actively looking at that, they are looking at an approach similar to what Solid Waste

did, knowing it has an investment of $130 million, but not spending $130 million immediately;

with the cooperation or the team of their consultant and the future contractor, they can look at

phased approaches and by doing that, it can be spread out over more years to get that number

down further; the summation will be there, it will just be spread out a little further; currently,

based on expenditures, this shows an overview of the projection of revenue versus projection

of expenditure; there are a few things that they want to look at that as he shared how they are

evolving their budget and trying to find ways as he talked about with the CMAR approach that

should drive the expenditures down further, but further out, so it will drop it down slightly but

further more years out; none-the-less it is a question of how to bridge that gap; and so the

Board should brace itself because he is going to be talking about needing more money. He

noted it is connection fees right now; when talking about connection fees it is because in 2022

they did user rates and he understands that, but also recognizing that connection fees are to

pay for growth; this would be an opportunity to take that 1993 connection fee rate and get it

current, understanding it is not going to fully bridge it, but at least at a future year, if he needs

to update the user rates, the question could be said, the answer can be said, that yes, the

developers are paying their full share; right now they are low and he will talk about that; an

overview of connection fees, it is related to capacity increase; connection fees have not been

updated since 1993; he likes to use statistics; and to take construction cost index and swag it, it

is 167 percent compounded, and obviously, showing plus or minus, that there is a separation

from what construction costs were in 1963. He noted their fees are not called impact fees, they

are connection fees and the benefit of that is that the impact fee law of 163.31801, is the

impact fee; if one were to do a Google search of Florida Statute impact fee, that would show

up; as being aware of impact fees that were adopted two or 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; when getting into updating connection fees, they do not

have to worry about exceeding a percentage increase over so much as an impact fee would;

and he is going to allow Lucas Siegfried an overview on how connection fees are calculated.

Lucas Siegfried, Engineer Manager, stated when looking at connection fees, they are looking at

what the capital investment is per gallon, how much it cost to get a gallon of treatment or a

gallon of capacity in a pipe in addition to what it already has; and that is multiplied by the level

of service, in this case it is gallons per ERU, to get the overall connection, which then comes to

dollars per ERU, so it is really looking at what that cost for the capacity being gained versus the

level of service, how many gallons per residential unit that they want to serve and multiplying

those together to get that fee.

Mr. Fontanin stated to give a little background, there is methodology to do connection fees just

like an impact fee; they hired a rate consultant and have worked with them for months in order

to come up with how they got there; by overview the existing water impact fees are $1,903 and

wastewater is $2,257; by calculation, they are looking at increasing them to the $8,500 and

$4,500; to explain on the association of why the water looks higher, it is because they only

have two water plants, so by remaining capacity they do not have as much per se by math, of

remaining capacity of sewer, that is the methodology; and this is not necessarily him seeking

approval, he is giving an overview of what he hopes will be a future agenda item. He noted

working with the consultant, he has shared ideas of how this could be phased if the Board felt

that a one-time change to the connection fee was not an option; the Board will see the same

slide as the report will follow in the Agenda Report to give options; and he wants the Board to

know they have considered that. He continued on saying everything is based on a projection; if

one connects 200 homes per year, he believes that is what the calculation was, they increase

their revenue he believes by $4.8 million; the intent of the $4.8 is not to pay as they go, but it is

to use that for debt service; the dollar amounts associated with these projects exceed what they

can pay as they go; they are looking at how they can stretch this out over a 20-30 year period,

but still be able to make those payments; this slide just highlights some of the components, the

source of water, he is talking about RO so there is a component to that proximity of where the

wells are; and the type of treatment because today as was showed with the Florida Statute,

everything has to be AWT availability, level of service, and whatnot. He mentioned this slide

gives an overview of what the summation of dollars are, the projects that would be eligible to

receive portions of connection fees; connection fees are not necessarily 100 percent, but

anything, again going back if they are going from one million gallons per day treatment plant to

two, the additional one million gallon can be paid for by connection fees and that is engineering

land and whatnot to support that component; these are the total dollar amounts; just to give the

Board an idea of the big picture and the big part of the reason that concerns him in how to

fund this; and with that being said, he wanted to provide a sneak preview, optimistic, hopeful

that they can get this on a Board Agenda and for those that have not been through it, it is step

one for an Agenda Item for permission to advertise; that would be put out for 20 days and then

come back at a subsequent Board meeting for a public hearing; and then at that point the

Board decides.

Mr. Liesenfelt stated hopefully he is helping Mr. Fontanin by telling this little story; Mr. Fontanin

brought in the rate consultants to him, a couple nice guys in a suit; everyone knows when one

sees suits, he or she zips up the wallet; they were explaining the connections fees, and the

short thing why they are bringing this forward is Mr. Fontanin has all this all this capacity,

amongst replacement, that he has to put together; there are large numbers on the connection

fees, but not large enough to cover the capacity, but one of the consultants said if they do not

raise the connection fees then it comes out of the rate payers; that was the message, he got

that message, and he got it quickly; that is why it is there today because a bunch of this has to

do with capacity; and Mr. Fontanin is looking everywhere he can to find the funding, if they can

do less debt, if they can go through the connection fee that helps, through the water; and as

they had the discussion a couple weeks ago, they have to do a lot of these projects. He added

they are already looking for ways not to hurt the existing rate payers to get this job.

Mr. Fontanin went on to say this is the right time to do this; he can go through any of those

major projects; the Department is already moving forward with this; what they are not seeing is

the time they are spending with the consultants in order to generate the plans and whatnot; for

not only the water plant in Mims, but the one in South Brevard, they have already submitted the

consumptive use permit; he can tell the Board that is an 18-month process alone, sometimes

two years depending; staff has been proactive and it is at the spot where this is the right time

because they are ready to get engaged with contractors by that agenda that he referred to the

Board about CMAR; as that progresses, they are going to continue to be active on seeking,

they have received $35 million, and they are not done; they received two in the last

appropriation; and he knows it is two out of something, but everything counts.

Commissioner Delaney commented the first slide he had existing treatment plant capacity

used, and he said the percentage capacity based on the FDEP permitted capacity per

treatment plant, and she asked opposed to what.

Mr. Fontanin stated for example, Mims, right now, the permitted capacity at the Mims water

plant is 2.4 which is why, and he does not have it in front of him right now, but he thinks it is 37

percent.

Commissioner Delaney stated 47 percent, and corrected herself by saying 37 percent.

Mr. Fontanin noted currently because one of the trains is down, the question got into the

dialogue of where are they at; just to keep everything at an apples to apples they are basing

that; and once that gets back online, they will be at 37.

Commissioner Delaney asked how many years out are they on that.

Mr. Fontanin answered he thinks they are looking at first quarter of 2027, a year or so from

now; and work is already progressing.

Commissioner Delaney stated the only reason she brought that up is because she gets

complaints all the time at her office about flow and water pressure in the Mims area; the one

she was really wondering about was the wastewater treatment plants because those numbers

tend to fluctuate quite a lot.

Mr. Fontanin agreed saying they do.

Commissioner Delaney noted that is what she is wondering about; and she asked how to get

this snapshot of time and are they planning for worst case scenario, because she feels like

these numbers are not worst case.

Mr. Fontanin stated they will get into some peak flow; a treatment plant, when doing the

calculation it is based on an average daily flow; a treatment plant does have the capacity to go

above that number it is called peak hour or peak flow; it is a calculation that has to be done as

part of that; a lot of times they associate projects like this is only a six million gallon plant and

seven million gallons went to it; by calculation it can sustain that, not for long durations when it

gets into the rainy season; and they tend to look at it from an average flow in presentations like

this.

Commissioner Delaney asked about the connection fees that the consultants are working

through, and if those numbers are based on the worst days or best days, or an average.

Mr. Siegfried stated when looking at the new connection fees being proposed, they were

looking at what the new capacity is to her point, worst case, best case, they evaluate what the

average capacity is; say they do two Million Gallons per Day (MGD) plant, the average daily

flow is rated for two, but it might have a peaking factor of six, which he believes is

Commissioner Delaney’s question of what is the overall flow; the plant would be able to peak at

six MGD gallons for a short duration, but only be a two MGD plant; when they look at the

population projections and what that capacity need is which he does not recall what slide it is,

but it shows it on there that it is based on the cost to build whatever plan it was based on …

Commissioner Delaney interjected by saying based on the numbers that are in here.

Mr. Siegfried responded affirmatively.

Chair Altman commented those are phenomenal presentations; he is really happy in this

budget workshop to get through it all; he would encourage the Commission members, and he

knows there are probably a lot of questions and they probably want to follow up individually; he

wants to mull through some of this information; staff has done some phenomenal work giving

some good information; and the Board members will definitely follow up.

Commissioner Delaney asked if there is going to be Board discussion on this because she

really values all the information that staff put forward today; she is worried and does not want a

repeat of last year, and she felt like staff thought there was not a lot of clear direction in what

way the Board was going; she feels passionate about the Board talking about this in public so

that people can be involved; and she wants to make sure the Board is working together as a

group and going toward a direction.

Chair Altman stated he thinks the Board should; and he asked what it has as far as Board

workshops.

Mr. Liesenfelt replied March 18, 19, or something like that is the next scheduled Budget

workshop.

Chair Altman asked if that is going to cover everything.

Mr. Liesenfelt advised what the Board would have is they would bring back Public Works and a

couple of items they had with the last slide on Mr. Neterer’s presentation, nothing like it had

before; and it would not be anything just a heads up on what they see coming.

Chair Altman noted he thinks the Board needs to schedule a workshop or date to just talk about

strategy, what items the Board members might want to consider putting before the voters or

hearing, and the budget process; that probably would be a discussion in a meeting in and of

itself; he would concur with that, if it were the wish of the Board; but he thinks there needs to be

significant discussion with the staff individually, review a lot of these items, and then come back

and do that.

Commissioner Adkinson stated that is what she thinks; and she thinks the idea of talking to

staff individually makes her happier, and then being able to go to a workshop.

Chair Altman stated then the Board will plan on doing that.

PUBLIC COMMENTS

Commissioner Adkinson asked if there is public comment.

Commissioner Feltner commented he does not think there were any cards.

F.3. Katie Delaney, Commissioner District 1

Commissioner Delaney stated she just wants to remind everyone who is listening, the FDEP

meeting is tomorrow from 4:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. at the Ag Extension on Lake Drive; she hopes

everyone can make it there; and she thanked staff for the presentation.

Adjourn

Upon consensus of the Board, the meeting adjourned at 4:06 p.m.

ATTEST:

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RACHEL M. SADOFF, CLERK

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THAD ALTMAN, CHAIR

BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS

BREVARD COUNTY, FLORIDA