Commissioner District 1 Katie Delaney , Commissioner District 2

Tom Goodson, Commissioner District 3 Kim Adkinson,

Commissioner District 4 Rob Feltner, and Commissioner District 5

Thad Altman

Present:

PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE

Commissioner Adkinson led the assembly in the Pledge of Allegiance.

COMMISSIONER REQUEST

Commissioner Delaney stated she has a request; last year when she was a constituent, she

was not able to participate in the Board Workshop because the public comments were at the

end of the meeting and she had to leave early for work; she is wondering if there is Board

support to have public comment after each speaker because not only could the Board hear

relative public comments directly after the presentation, but it would give more people an

opportunity to speak during these workshops.

Chairman Feltner stated his one thought on that is that is not something that the Board told the

Constitutional Officers when they were invited to this workshop; he thinks that would definitely

slow things down for them; that is an issue for the Board to consider; and he asked what is the

pleasure of the Board. He noted there being no comments, that public comment will stay at the

end of the presentations.

B.1. Brevard County Clerk of Court

Rachel Sadoff, Clerk of Court and Comptroller, stated she really does not have anything to

bring to the Board except that the Clerk’s Office is moving forward with technology; it will be

getting a new system to be put in; it will be changing the website a little because of that system;

the Board and the County has been very good to her office; and she works well with Facilities,

especially with the changes that have been made to the Melbourne Courthouse and other

offices. She advised her office is a standard three percent increase into her budget; and that is

really it.

Commissioner Delaney asked for a sneak peek of what the new website will look like.

Clerk Sadoff remarked her office has to change everything, because of the Supreme Court

Order her office updates to a new case management system; her office’s case management

system dates back from 1999, when they had a conversion into Facts; Brevard is the last

County to have Facts; and that company is no longer open, so the Clerk’s IT has to support

that. She mentioned that the Board assisted her office with the purchase of a new system a

couple years ago under the previous Clerk; with COVID and other issues there were delays,

like with any organization, finding that employees were not there, so they have worked with

everyone; once that happens, before going live, what she did with efiling, she had workshops,

so the attorneys, paralegals, and the public all came in to learn how to use the portal, and she

will be doing the same thing when that happens because it is important; her office has been

offering classes; she uses this building to give Public Records classes and also Property Fraud

classes; and she will do the same.

Commissioner Delaney thanked her and noted that she always does a great job; and she really

appreciates her.

Chairman Feltner stated while the Clerk is here, she had mentioned the Melbourne Courthouse

and obviously there was a big process to bring some operations back down there; and he

asked Clerk Sadoff if she would briefly speak to that because juvenile is happening down there

now.

Clerk Sadoff stated there was a major change with the courts and it has been very effective

throughout the County for the agencies, both the Clerk and the Sheriff; Melbourne Courthouse

now has juvenile; they are now separated, by law juveniles should not be mixing with the

adults, and it was very hard to keep that compliance in Viera because that building was built

many years ago, now the juveniles are completely separated; there are family cases going on

there; all of those courtrooms are now being used; the State Attorney’s Office is back in their

portion of the building; the Clerk is back in upstairs; the Public Defender is upstairs as well; and

they are utilizing that building very well. She mentioned the County made modifications, the

Clerk worked with them on security modifications that were very helpful to everyone; as the

world has changed in technology, the Clerk is going more to a badging system where she can

see who is coming in and out, it is not a key or a code; the County has worked well with her on

that; and she would say it is working very well. She commented they have many juveniles in the

hallways, unfortunately, but it is working well; in Viera the changes will be the jury room, which

is how this all got started; there was only a capacity for a certain amount of jurors and that

capacity is met almost every week, which becomes a fire hazard; that was a problem for

everyone; in Titusville the jurors had to walk from one building outside to the Courthouse, which

was a problem because of weather and people with disabilities; it was not a good situation; they

have been able to modify all of that; and now all jurors are reporting to Viera which is a big

difference, and also helping caseloads move forward.

B.2. Brevard County Sheriff

Doug Waller, Undersheriff, stated it is always a pleasure to speak before the Board and give it

a little insight on the Brevard County Sheriff’s Office (BCSO); Brevard County has an incredible

Clerk, it is absolutely wonderful to work with her, and he cannot say enough stuff about her,

whether that is true or not he does not know; but they do have a great working relationship. He

commented he has a few bullet points; first on behalf of Sheriff Ivey and the proud men and

women of Brevard County, he thanked them for the invitation to the workshop and the Board’s

support; they are in the process of many generational facility improvements, and with its

support, BCSO recently opened up a fleet evidence training range and an emergency animal

hospital; over his 39 years with BCSO, he was proud to say they had opened up the Barbara

Pill building in 2014 and then the most recent other upgrade to one of their facilities was the

Viera Government Center in the early 1990s; and being able to move into some of these

operational facilities has been absolutely incredible for his agency. He continued by saying as

he speaks right now, BCSO is planning a groundbreaking ceremony for the new West Precinct;

it is going to be on some property located between the Government Center and the Health

Department; they are looking to create, not only a new West Precinct there, but a Regional

Training Center which will provide an opportunity to develop officers from around the State of

Florida; the West Precinct will give the County an opportunity to re-envision some space here in

the Government Center for some of the areas that are buckling; and in the very near future, the

Board will witness the transformation of the County Farm where they are getting ready to

upgrade with a training center and emergency driving pad for practice and training. He went on

to say earlier today BCSO formally ratified all four of the Collective Bargaining Agreements

which will be effective through June 2028, a process that was in absolute partnership with

Coastal Florida PBA; as to recruitment through Sheriff Ivey’s direction and Board support,

BCSO has hired well over 600 personnel over the past three years, that has been a major

positive for BCSO’s ability to retain and hire; through a new design to re-envision the academy

process, academy cadets will now be hired by BCSO, trained by BCSO, and trained inside of

BCSO facilities; and he thinks that will aid in retention being able to facilitate their own people

at their own location and it brings a lot to the Brevard County Sheriff’s Office. He stated the

budget process still has a few unknowns, Florida Retirement System (FRS) and Professional

Insurance liabilities remain unknown until the legislative session is complete; he feels confident

that the BCSO budget increase will be consistent with the current fiscal year; and there is no

plan to exceed the Multiple Taxing Unit (MST) rollback cap; BCSO service contracts continue to

increase with services provided to Brevard Public Charter and private schools, and

communication for Fire Rescue; and law enforcement to multiple municipalities, law

enforcement for Canaveral Port Authority, Canaveral, Cape Canaveral, Melbourne Village,

Grant, Micco, and Valkaria communities. He mentioned the crime rate remains at historical

lows and Sheriff Ivey will continue to provide the statutory services and the highest level of law

enforcement services possible; and he thanked the Board again for all the support to make

Brevard County a special place to live, work, and raise a family.

*Commissioner Altman in present at 1:12 p.m..

Commissioner Delaney stated she wondered if Mr. Waller has any more information about the

contracts that were ratified; and she asked if he could provide some insight, or if they could get

together to talk about it.

Mr. Waller replied they could always get together and talk about it; he can provide copies of all

four; the negotiations started in December 2024 and were completed within the last several

weeks where they were officially ratified and signed today; they have four collective bargaining

units, one for Corrections deputies, one for law enforcement deputies, one for corrections

supervisors, and one for law enforcement supervisors; it is nice to know that they all work

together and got it all worked out; and now there is a ratified Contract through June 2028.

Commissioner Delaney stated she would love to see that.

Commissioner Altman stated the national effort on deportation and immigration has been

getting a lot of press lately and he is curious if it has an impact on BCSO’s budget in any way,

shape, or form, and if it has been factored in when putting the budget together.

Mr. Waller advised he has not factored that into the BCSO’s budget design as of right now

because honestly, there are still a lot of unknowns with that; he knows the Bill has been signed,

but there is still some serious discussions between legislative and the Governor’s Office,

enforcement, Florida Highway Patrol (FHP), and Florida Department of Law Enforcement

(FDLE); he knows there are now discussions for Sheriff offices on their involvement; he is

waiting to see how it all falls out and what the actual responsibilities will be; and BCSO will

remain and continue to be valued partners with the Federal agencies and support the mission

of the Governor’s Office and the legislative branch.

Commissioner Delaney stated she is curious about the regional training center; it is a great

thing that it is coming to Brevard; and she inquired if that was going to be like a revenue source

or if it is just one community helping another community type of thing.

Mr. Waller stated the business model that the Sheriff would prefer is a business model of

developing and creating law enforcement officers throughout the State of Florida and

developing them into the best law enforcement officers that they can; it is not really a model

designed to be a business where BCSO is making money from that; if BCSO could do what it is

planning on doing using its own personnel and facilities, he thinks it could be very cost

effective; and there are no intentions right now to be a revenue generator, it is going to be a

development generator.

B.3. Brevard County Tax Collector

Lisa Cullen, Tax Collector, stated the 210 men and women of the Tax Collector’s Office proudly

provide State services at this local level; as far as budget concerns, of course Brevard County

has an increasing population which means more services need to be provided; one of the

things that her office will be looking at in the budget process, and her budget does not go to the

Department of Revenue until August 1, therefore, her office is last in the process, she will be

looking to see if any additional positions will be needed as Palm Bay is a fast growing area; she

thinks two or three were added down there last year; she thanked Jill Hayes, Budget Office

Director, for the nice increases and everything; they will be dealing with that; and they are just

waiting on the legislature for Florida Retirement System (FRS) rates, and she is sure it will go

up, but nothing out of the ordinary, other than that.

Chairman Feltner asked if the facility at Cogan is good for the Palm Bay location.

Ms. Cullen responded yes, her office doubled the size of that facility when it completed that

construction; it will be feasible to use for several years, as they have calculated the growth that

it needs; and when one goes in, he or she will see several empty stations.

Chairman Feltner stated he has not been down there in quite a while.

Ms. Cullen reiterated there are several empty stations, but it has doubled its size.

B.4. Brevard County Supervisor of Elections

Tim Bobanic, Supervisor of Elections (SOE), stated he came in with some additional material;

the SOE office has some exciting stuff coming up; first is the two special elections; as promised

at the last meeting, he has provided estimates for the upcoming special elections; it is

anticipated that that special primary election will be about $735,000; the general will be about

$749,000; there are differences between these two, there are mailings that go out for both

elections at the primary time; there will be some additional printing and postage costs in the

primary election that does not exist in the general, primarily the Notice of Election; and it is

important to remember that all of these dollars will be reimbursed by the State, therefore, this is

a temporary funding out of the County’s budget, but will be reimbursed by the State. He went

on to say the SOE office anticipates doing that immediately after the conclusion of the election,

that is when all of its bills come due; it could be lower depending on what is ultimately sent out

because the State will only reimburse for exact costs; he has to over-budget a little bit because

they do not know who will vote by mail and who will show up for early voting on election day;

this is very similar to a Countywide election; there are over 450,000 voters in Brevard and

401,000 are in Senate District 19 election; he does anticipate a lower turnout election, so one of

the things that he did was to lower the number of election workers that work the polls and fewer

check-in people because he does not want to waste, whether it is the County’s taxpayer money

or the State’s money, having people sitting around waiting for the trickle of voters coming in; he

still has to staff it with the certain mandatory positions that are required; he has also included

the guidelines from the Florida Division of Elections on special election reimbursements; there

has not been a special election since he has been there; and he does not think even his

predecessor had to conduct a special election, so it has been quite a long time. He continued

by saying moving on to 25-26, his office did the best it could, and wanted to provide some

numbers, so this is a very rough estimate of approximately $7.17 million budget which would be

a 6.94 percent increase from the current year budget; keep in mind last year’s budget was a

14.25 percent decrease; historically, they come off of a presidential election at a 10.7 percent

increase; what is also remarkable about this budget is they are requesting about $930,000 to

upgrade the remaining portions of the election equipment; last week he talked about the voting

machine tabulators, the DS200s that are being upgraded; that is the machines that the voters

place their ballots in; also in 2013, they had purchased the electronic Poll Books which are

used to check the voters in; he received a quote from the vendors on that; they have some of

those in place in early voting right now; the units they have are more like desktop computers

that are encased in a point of sale type device; and they are running Windows 10, which is

going to be going end of life with Microsoft and they are not capable of being upgraded to the

current operating system, which is Windows 11 that has already come out. He stated even with

the increased voting equipment that they have, they are still lower than they were in their

percentage increase from the 2020-2021 budget; they are taking that into consideration, as well

as the numbers that Ms. Hayes provided recently; that 6.94 percent increase, 1.78 percent of

that is strictly the numbers of the cost of living increases, health insurance rates, Workers

Compensation rates, and the unknown FRS rates; his office will continue to monitor the

legislative session; he will provide additional information to the Board once session is over with;

his office always looks at that because it is always right for unfunded mandates; and one of the

things that he is very concerned about is in the Governor’s proposal for the immigration Bill

there was a dramatic overhaul on initiative petitions; and it would completely change how they

are done. He noted they would require him to mail out petitions in the same fashion that they

do mail ballots; voters would have to request and his office would have to mail them out using

certificate envelopes, just like mail ballots; it is a dramatic change from the process that he has

now; and there is no funding mechanism that was in it. He stated when the legislature and the

Governor’s Office were going back and forth that was ultimately stripped out, but it has been

discussed in many of the committees and people that he has talked to, that some version of

petition reform is coming one way or the other; he will have to take a look at that; in addition,

there is currently a Bill that has been filed now that will require uniformed law enforcement

officers to be the only ones to transport ballots back and forth to polling places and uniform law

enforcement to stand guard next to ballot boxes; while he does not think that would actually go

through and pass the legislature for a multitude of reasons, he has discussed this with Sheriff

Ivey as well and he is in agreement this is not the best way to do that, that would be a massive

unfunded mandate for both the Sheriff and his office one way or the other; the legislature is

difficult to predict what they are going to do which is why they are always actively involved in

that; and he is happy to answer any questions.

Commissioner Delaney asked Mr. Bobanic to talk through what the life cycle and warranty is for

the new equipment.

Mr. Bobanic stated he placed a slick sheet on the packet which describes the new units; the

vendor that he purchased them from, VR Systems, guarantees a 10-year life cycle on them,

that is the same guarantee that he has on the existing equipment; he is two years beyond the

guaranteed life cycle and warranty period for his vendor now; they are out of warranty, the

company does not manufacture this equipment any longer, but they can get parts as they are

needed; the new equipment will come with that same 10-year life-cycle guarantee; even though

they had 10 years, they tried to stretch it out as much as possible because they knew two years

ago they were going into an expensive presidential election year; his office always tries to push

things off as much as possible; but it gets to the point where if the equipment is not capable of

running the current version of windows and operating systems and have the latest security

features, then that becomes an issue.

Commissioner Delaney stated she knows that cyber security is on the forefront of everybody’s

mind especially when it comes to election integrity and whatnot; and she inquired if what Mr.

Bobanic is saying basically is that the current equipment is not great.

Mr. Bobanic stated right now Microsoft is still putting Windows security updates out for

Windows 10, but they have already said there will be an end of life on that, therefore he will

have to move forward; his slogan has always been that he wants Brevard to be the safest place

in America to vote; his background is IT and cybersecurity, that is what he was for 11 or 12

years in elections before he became Supervisor of Elections; and that is very important to him.

Chairman Feltner mentioned he has talked with Mr. Bobanic, and he inquired if those old

machines are traded in.

Mr. Bobanic advised they have a trade in on those.

B.5. Brevard County Property Appraiser

Greg Pelham, Senior Finance Director of the Property Appraiser’s Office, stated Dana Blickley,

Property Appraiser, sends her regards but unfortunately she was previously committed to the

Appraiser Association Legislative Conference going on in Tallahassee; unfortunately, he does

not have a lot of information ready yet for the budget request for the coming year; as most of

them have seen coming into the building today, it is homestead application season and it is a

very busy time; after next Saturday when it closes, they will begin their meetings with managers

and operational staff to start discussing the needs for the upcoming year; two of the areas they

are really going to focus on, the Board is aware of the building construction that is going on in

the area around Viera and in Palm Bay, additional staff to handle the field appraisals and

valuations associated with that; and the other item is their Palm Bay and Viera offices are very

tight, therefore, they will be having discussions about additional office space so they can handle

the additional staff and the community coming in. He commented he will be happy to entertain

any questions.

Chairman Feltner noted he has been doing his part in talking to people during the homestead

season; and they are moving along pretty well downstairs.

Mr. Pelham commented they greatly appreciate Chairman Feltner’s help on that, as it is

something he has done over the last few years and it is appreciated.

Chairman Feltner noted he would do anything to save someone from being in the wrong line;

he talks to people every day who are over there to record a deed; he tells them they cannot do

that there they would need to go to the Clerk; and it looks like homestead season is moving

along pretty well.

C.1. Budget Overview

Meeting went into Recess

Meeting Reconvened

Frank Abbate, County Manager, stated there are a couple presentations scheduled today; the

first one is to give the Board an overview from an organization-wide perspective; and that will

be presented by the Budget Office Director, Jill Hayes.

Ms. Hayes stated she will start off with sharing a history of change in the Consumer Price Index

(CPI); as the Board is aware, the Brevard County Charter limits the increase in property tax

revenue to the lesser of three percent or the change in CPI; there are also other revenue

sources such as user fees and non-ad valorem assessments that are tied to the CPI; the chart

illustrates the change in CPI since 2014; as staff moves into budget development for Fiscal

Year 2025-2026, it is looking at a change of 2.95 percent; this is the first time since 2020 where

the County has been less than that three percent; and she will be working with that as the

County moves through budget development. She went on to say she also wanted to provide

the Board with a review of other price indices that affect County operations and its buying

power; the chart reflects the cumulative change in CPI; the blue line is the CPI she just

reviewed on the prior page; the red line shows growth in the construction cost index; and the

green line shows the same for the municipal cost index; one can see in the same time frame

that while the change in CPI has grown by around 44 percent, the municipal cost index has

grown by about 50 percent, and construction is up almost 60 percent; and this is important as

staff is developing a budget, because as one knows Brevard County government has quite a

few capital improvement projects and provides many programs and services that require

procurement of governmental commodities. She added as the Board hears from other

departments, they are going to go more indepth on the budget over the series of workshops

and they will explain more about how some of these price increases have impacted their

budgets as well. She continued by saying this slide shows with that Charter Cap, what that

looks like as the County moves into Fiscal Year 2025-2026; she had just talked about the

change in CPI of 2.95 percent; developing the budget in accordance with those charter cap

limitations and the General Fund Countywide property tax revenue, that would give the County

an additional $5.8 million in General Fund Revenue; the taxable value associated with new

construction is excluded from that calculation, therefore the chart on the bottom provides a

history of where new construction revenue has been over the past 10 years; there has been

growth in new construction; but the County will not receive those valuations from the Property

Appraiser's Office until late May, early June at the latest; and then she will have a better idea of

how much the taxable values are and what that new construction revenue will look like. She

stated the next several charts are going to show how Brevard County millage rates have

decreased over time; this is aligned with the Charter Cap limitations; Brevard County is the

taxing authority for 24 taxing districts and what each property owner pays is geographically

dependent on where that property is located; what the aggregate millage rate represents is the

total of all of the operating tax revenues levied, divided by the total Countywide taxable value;

what happens is as taxable values increase, and over the past three years they have increased

on average of 12 percent each year, therefore, as the taxable values go up the millage rate

goes down to not exceed those Charter Cap limitations; and that is why one can see that the

millage rates have gone down. She mentioned the next slide reflects the same thing on the

General Fund; in Fiscal Year 2018, the General Fund millage rate was at 4.1550 and in the

current Fiscal Year the County is a 2.9207; she would expect that to decrease again under the

Charter Cap, assuming that taxable values will increase; she also wanted to provide the same

chart looking at the Fire Control MSTU and how it has decreased over the same time period;

historically, this has been treated like other taxing districts and that has been based on prior

direction; and this is how that millage rate has decreased since Fiscal Year 2018. She went on

to say the purpose of this slide is to provide a comparison to other counties and where they are

with their General Fund millage rates over the time period that was shown in the previous chart;

Fiscal Year 2018 to Fiscal Year 2025, one can see that Brevard County’s millage rate has

decreased by almost 30 percent; other counties do not have that Charter Cap, therefore a lot of

them keep their millage rates relatively flat; one can see minor increases and decreases, but

Brevard has decreased it by 30 percent; and she wanted to provide that comparison to the

Board. She continued by saying, moving into the Fiscal Year 2024-2025 adopted budget, the

next several slides are going to break that down.

Mr. Abbate stated he thinks it is important enough on this one to provide a better understanding

of what that means; as Ms. Hayes said, there was about a 12 percent average increase in the

last three years; the County reduced it, so it had no more than three percent growth; the other

counties that are shown there, anyone who either remained the same or went up, which was all

but Pasco and Lake Counties, then they received the full value of whatever their increased

appraised value was over that period of time; he explained if they were similar to Brevard, 12

percent, they would receive the 12 percent; when one sees historically during that period of

time that Brevard has gone down 29 percent, that was to keep Brevard at the three percent

cap; they, each year, would have gone up by whatever that amount was; and if it was 12

percent over three years, obviously that is a 36 percent increase compared to nine. He noted

that is one of the distinguishing points that makes Brevard County a little bit different than

maybe some of the other counties in terms of how the revenue stream provides the opportunity

to provide services that their Board of County Commissioners may ask for; even those that

reduced it a little bit over that time, that reduction, it is still very close to having kept that same

millage rate; they went down two percent in one case and 1.5 percent in another over that

period of time, seven years; and one can see Brevard, consistent with the Charter, operates

from a revenue standpoint significantly different. He commented what the Board is going to

hear from the departments are what they have done over time to live within the parameters that

have been established, that the Board has asked staff to try to develop and provide services

under certain budget criteria; that is what staff is looking for from the Board today is to have an

idea as they prepare for the up-coming budget; he asked does the Board want the same type

of parameters or different parameters; he advised staff will be listening to what the Board has

to say as each department makes its presentation to determine how to put that budget

together, that will meet the Board’s guidelines and objectives that it provides them, either

individually or as a Board; and that is really what staff is looking for during the presentations

today, so staff knows how to best put that together for Board consideration during July, August,

and September time frames.

Ms. Hayes went on to say this slide provides a very broad overview of Fiscal Year 2024-2025

adopted budget, which is $2.25 billion; Florida Statute establishes the guidelines for the annual

budgets of counties; one of those requirements is that the budget has to be balanced and that

the County is showing all estimated new revenue, as well as monies being carried forward; one

can see that a large portion of the adopted budget is balance forward; balance forward can be

carried forward for a variety of different reasons, primarily it is capital projects and also reserve

funding that is set aside and reserves for a variety of different reasons; and there are also

transfers that are accounted for, these are inter-fund transfers between departments. She

added for example, revenues might come into the General Fund and then be transferred into

Parks, which would be an example of a transfer as one would see in the red piece of the pie

chart. She continued by saying over the next several slides, she is going to break down this

total budget and she is going to focus on the operating revenue; that is really the new funds

coming in; what she wants to do as she goes through these slides and as they look at that

$2.25 billion budget is show that there are restrictions on how a lot of those dollars can be

spent; there is a variety of different types of restrictions, whether it is by Florida Statute, ad

valorem millages that have been levied for specific purposes, or voter-approved restrictions;

there are also a lot of grants that have very specific restrictions as well; often when discussing

the budget, one will hear staff refer to the concept called “the color of money,” and this is

something that was developed to provide a better understanding of how governmental funds

are allocated; over the next several slides, she will discuss these various revenue sources and

their limitations; as the Board hears from other departments as well, it will see that staff has

stayed with the same color concepts so that as the Board is learning more about the

departmental budgets, it can see anything that is General Fund is showing in green; and that is

where the Board will have the most discretion. She pointed out the pink is going to be the

special revenue funds and are for very specific purposes and she will go over those in more

detail; yellow will be the debt service funds and those are levied specifically for debt and

primarily the Parks referendums that were voter-approved referendums to pay off debt service;

capital project funds are in orange and which most of the capital projects will be seen in pink

because those are handled, Save Our Indian River Lagoon (SOIRL) for example is a special

revenue fund; then there is the Enterprise Fund in blue and those are activities like

business-type activities, such as utilities and solid waste; and then internal funds which are cost

allocations, departments providing services to other departments. She noted the Board will see

those same color schemes throughout the department budget presentations; several slides

back the total operating budget, the new money, was that $1.14 billion budget; this is how it is

shown in the different fund groups; over the next several slides she will break that down even

further; the General Fund represents the funds that can be used for any governmental purpose

and are not restricted; and this is really where the Board has the most discretion. She stated

this slide breaks down those General Fund dollars into two shades of green; the darker green

on the left side represents the general government revenues and she will go into depth of these

specific funds later; the lighter shade of green, while these are not restricted, they represent

user service fees which are generally unrestricted, however, they are generated by the

activities of those programs; for example, the Sheriff’s Office, the Sheriff provides contracted

services to the School Board, the Port, and Cape Canaveral, and if they were not providing

those services, those revenues would not be coming in to support those programs; and those

would go away. She mentioned that is an example; Public Works receives a direct portion of

Florida Power and Light (FPL) franchise fees and communications services tax for public

right-of-way; Parks and Recreation charges for services for campgrounds and things of that

nature; Central Services is primarily fuel and fleet charges provided to other agencies; and

while these are unrestricted, they really are supporting those programs.

Mr. Abbate stated he should stop here to look because talking about a $2.1 billion budget and

people often say, ”can’t you find this money” when there is such a large budget, but when one

really looks at this and sees what the revenue sources are that the Board has discretion on out

of the $2.1 billion, all of that is $276 million are the General Fund, and that is where the money

is; of that, a little less than $200 million is ad valorem, therefore, that really is the property tax

money that is being discussed out of the $2.1 billion budget; that is less than 10 percent; there

are other funds and they are all important to see because they are not within that three percent

cap, but they are going to make up the total part of the pie that is within the General Fund; and

that is the communication service tax, franchise fees that the County gets primarily to FPL,

half-cent sales tax and the County’s share of it; and one can see that ends up being close to or

a little less than $100 million. He noted that pot of money on the revenue side is what is being

dealt with in terms of new money under the General Fund overall; what would be important, he

would think, is the section that says how those funds are allocated; he would think if the Board

has not looked at it before that it would be rather surprised to see how small the pot of money

really becomes when looking at things that need to be paid and continue to be paid; the Board

heard multiple Charter Officers come up, and he does not think there is one of them that would

go significantly below where they are now; when looking at what the Board’s contribution is to

their organization, it is going to be at least that much, if not more, in the future; and he would

encourage the Board, if not today, but to look at it afterwards and start thinking about where the

County ought to be allocating resources to know what the pot of money that the Board really

has discretion over because he would venture to say for the most part, the Board is not going

to want to change or lower the amounts that those offices are going to need to continue. He

stated then there will be other things that Ms. Hayes will also go over; mandated services which

the State says the County is going to do this, so there is not really a choice there; the Board

needs to look at all those numbers; and he will turn this back over to Ms. Hayes.

Ms. Hayes continued by saying this next slide represents the other operating revenues; the

largest portion of that is categorized as the special revenue funds; the largest portion of the

operating revenues are special revenue funds in pink; for example, one can see Natural

Resources is on the top with $138 million; primarily, that is the SOIRL trust fund dollars; there is

also grant revenues, stormwater assessment fees, and those again, are all limited for very

specific purposes; one can also see Fire Rescue, the $80 million is outside of the General

Fund, it is funding they collect from the fire assessment, the Fire Control MSTU, as well as the

ambulance billings; and she is not going to read all of these, but she wanted to provide the

Board with how that budget is broken down with special revenue funds in pink, enterprise

funds, which operate as a business and receive funding from user fees and charges for

services in blue, internal service funds account for those services provided by departments and

the largest portion is employee benefits and the group health insurance fund that each County

agency and the Charter Officers all being part of the health insurance fund, which have to be

used to support those insurance claims, and as she mentioned earlier the capital project funds

in orange are the funds specifically dedicated to capital projects, however, most of the County’s

capital projects are funded with special revenue funds or enterprise funds. She noted the rest

of the presentation is really going to focus on that allocation of the General Fund dollars as Mr.

Abbate had indicated; staff really wants to make sure that the Board has a good understanding

of where those General Fund dollars are allocated; as mentioned earlier, for each fund the

budget has to balanced; this chart shows the revenue side of the General Fund which was

seen earlier in the dark green slide; she has also added in the balance forward and other

non-operating revenues to that and then shown how that is allocated on the General Fund side

to those uses; she is going to go into detail on this over the next several slides; the pie chart

shows the General Fund allocation shown in the previous slide, but she wanted to provide it in

a pie chart so the Board can see, when looking at the Charter Officers and the mandates that

Mr. Abbate mentioned, over 50 percent of that General Fund is allocated to those agencies to

provide those programs and services; then there is additional funding allocated to Public Works

and Facilities which Mark Bernath, Public Works Director, will talk about after the budget

overview; and staff will go into more detail on how these categories are split out.

Chairman Feltner asked Ms. Hayes what she means by mandates; and he noted he

understands those things are imposed on the Board.

Mr. Abbate stated that is coming up in three slides; mandates deal with Medicaid, which is

about $8.2 million, court operations, because under Article Five the County has to pay for it and

that is $4.1 million, Baker Act is $1.7 million, pre-trial detention of juveniles is $1.7 million, and

there are other mandates between $600,000 and $700,000; those make up the mandated

portion of it; he thinks Ms. Hayes wants to get back to it because the $355 million that makes

up the General Fund sources, she mentioned it, but did not go over the numbers; and he really

wants the Board to see that because he talked about the $2.1 billion going down to the number

that was discussed earlier, but now to break that $355 million down to General Fund sources to

how it has been used historically and how it is envisioned to be used in the future as well. He

went on to say Ms. Hayes had mentioned the first number is $162 million, almost $163 million,

for the Charter Officers; when one adds the mandates that he just went over, that is almost

another $17 million; the County operates, and it has been discussed at different Board

meetings, under reserves for any emergency situations or what might be needed; the County

operates under Board Policy at least 10 percent; staff looked at what Government Finance

Officers Association (GFOA) says a County should have and that is two months, which is

significantly more, two out of 12 months, than 10 percent; but the County operates at a little bit

over 10. He noted looking at several other counties, they operate at a higher level; there have

been challenges over the years to even reach 10 percent, not in the last several years, but

before that; even getting to 10 percent was a number, so the County operates under that, but it

is $30 million that is there; Tax Increment Financing (TIF) payments are the payments that

relate to Community Redevelopment Agencies (CRAs) to help those areas in development,

over time; some of those payments the County does not have any choice to, but all of them are

operating under, if they were post-charter, Interlocal Agreements that the Board has approved;

and then one can see the Board of County Commissioners General Fund supported the

departments, which Public Safety, critical infrastructure which staff will go into, Public Works

and Facilities which the Board will get a thorough presentation, today is $36 million; Parks is

$16 million on the General Fund side, and then all the other departments that function under

General Fund operations for the whole organization is $29 million; one can see quickly, that

really large number dwindles down to really what is the Board going to want to change; and that

will come from this pool of current allocations and whatever additional revenues may be

possible. He noted as the Board heard the Sheriff today, what he heard was they will be

coming in very similar to what they were last year, that is what they anticipate; that was

probably between an eight and nine percent increase; to do a simple calculation of what that is

compared to where the County is, it is going to eat up almost, if not all, of the money that Ms.

Hayes has gone over with the Board which deals with both the CPI at 2.95 percent plus all,

what staff anticipates will be hopefully another good year but it is too early to know as the

Property Appraiser has not had an opportunity to complete the assessments and provide any

preliminary numbers yet, but staff will get that at the end of May or early June; historically, if

looking at continued increases in values that the County has enjoyed for the last several years,

it is probably going to be at the up side close to 12 percent, if they get there; he hopes that

helps the Board as they start delving into the departmental presentations and as the Board

starts looking for resources to do things in areas that it thinks is a high priority, so staff knows

what areas need to be looked at on a departmental level; and with that, he will let Ms. Hayes

get back to what she was saying.

Ms. Hayes reiterated she wanted to provide the Board with a very thorough and comprehensive

breakdown of how the County’s General Fund dollars are allocated; she explained this slide

shows the Charter Officers; as Mr. Abbate mentioned, the impact would be eight and one-half

percent impact for the Sheriff’s Office; that would be approximately $11.3 million; that would

take up that new General Fund revenue depending on what the new construction comes in at;

the General Fund allocation to the Tax Collector and Property Appraiser are in accordance with

the Florida Statutes; just of note, the County is also statutorily required to fund commission

payments on behalf of the School Board and the cities to the Property Appraiser and the Tax

Collector; and that is another mandate, but it is captured in the numbers listed. She continued

by saying then there is the Supervisor of Elections and Clerk to the Board; Mr. Abbate already

talked about the mandates and went over those; in the other mandate section there is the East

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

inmate medical expenses, so these are mandates that the County is legally required to fund; for

other obligations, as Mr. Abbate indicated, Board Policy is to keep those reserves at 10 percent

of the operating revenues; the County did look at what other counties are doing and what

Florida Government Finance Officers Association (FGFOA) recommends; and most counties

are around that two-month level which is around 16 percent, but there could be anywhere

between the 10 percent and 20 percent is where they are looking to have their reserve levels.

She advised currently, the County is at 10.4 percent of the projected operating revenues; the

general government debt, the County is currently paying some debt associated with buildings

that, for example, the County Service Complex Palm Bay, the Justice Center buildout, and then

some other refinancing of commercial paper; the CRAs, the next slide shows how those dollars

are allocated; the North Brevard Economic Development Zone (NBEDZ) is around $3.3 million;

and that is the County portion of NBEDZ. She explained this chart reflects the breakdown of the

CRAs, it gives their expiration dates and the payments under the current fiscal year; as

indicated by Mr. Abbate, under prior Board direction, the County Manager and the County

Attorney’s Office negotiated Interlocal Agreements to reduce the life span of many of the

CRAs, as well as to focus the funds on infrastructure improvements; there have already been

some CRAs that have sunsetted under these agreements, Satellite Beach, Palm Bay, and the

Melbourne/Babcock CRA; this slide provides the breakdown of General Fund dollars for Public

Safety, under Fire Rescue Emergency Medical Services; this is just the General Fund

contribution to that EMS program; there is also ambulance billings and on the fire side, which

was previously explained, there are fire assessment dollars and MSTU dollars, but this the

General Fund portion that funds Fire Rescue EMS; and for Ocean Rescue this is just the

General Fund portion. She continued by saying the Board directed to allocate some tourism

dollars in this past budget, at the past Budget hearing; there are additional tourism dollars and

funds from the municipalities that go to Ocean Rescue; Public Safety Services includes

primarily the Medical Examiner’s Office, which is $3.3 million of that $4.6 million; it also includes

school crossing guards and community corrections; then there is Emergency Management

Office which is the Emergency Operations Center (EOC) and that is the General Fund portion

of that; she also wanted to provide a breakdown of critical Countywide infrastructure that was

funded out of General Fund dollars and that is why the Board saw a larger balance forward

number in the General Fund because these are multi-year projects that are being funded; there

is Wickham Road Fleet side improvements, there is also some Detention Center infrastructure

projects that are being funded at $3.5 million; and the County made a commitment to fund

those over the next four or five years. She went on to say the Health Department buildout is

budgeted at $1.4 million and the Health Department is contributing $500,000 of that per the

Interlocal Agreement that was approved; there are some other Countywide infrastructure

improvements as well; there are some modifications at the Medical Examiner's building that

needed to be completed, as well as some other security enhancements at the courthouses;

Public Works and Facilities, Mr. Bernath is going to go in-depth on how the General Fund

dollars are allocated; then the Board will hear from Parks and Recreation, if not today, at the

next workshop; but again, this is just the General Fund portion. She stated the next slide shows

the breakdown of general government General Fund allocations; she reiterated she wanted to

be very thorough and comprehensive; she remarked the general government is where the

County funds expenses that do not necessarily fall under a department, so when looking at the

comp and benefits, this is primarily a separation of services such as leave payouts,

unemployment compensation, also Facilities and IT charges; the Board can see the $1.4 million

for the Economic Development Commission (EDC) is paid out of general government; the

contracted and professional services includes the internal and external audit functions, financial

and investment advisors, Federal and State lobbyists, and things of that nature; and other

general government expenses is trim bill postage and printing, advertisements, memberships

into the Florida Association of Counties, and that is primarily what the other expenses are

there. She explained the rest of the slide shows where the General Fund allocation is for those

other departments where one sees information systems is at $3 million; Housing and Human

Services, those funds help to levy Grant funds and the Board will hear the departments talk

about how they use their General Fund dollars as they go through the series of workshops; the

final slide shows how exactly the General Fund dollars are broken down; and she would be

happy to answer any questions.

Commissioner Delaney stated she would like to go back to the beginning and walk through it all

as she wrote down little notes throughout while Ms. Hayes was talking because she did not

want to interrupt her; and she asked Ms. Hayes if she knows about how money out of the $1.1

billion, the cap is over that money.

Ms. Hayes inquired if the Commissioner is referring to a particular slide.

Commissioner Delaney stated the operating revenue is $1.14 billion; and she asked about how

much of that is the cap over, is it $300 million, $500 million, or $1 billion.

Mr. Abbate advised that the County has not gone over the cap in any of those years; it is only

impacting the General Fund; and staff was directed not to go over the cap.

Morris Richardson, County Attorney, advised he thinks the Commissioner is asking what

revenues the cap applies to.

Ms. Hayes explained in the General Fund portion of that it is around $197 million because

some of those fall in the special revenue funds, which is the pink section, and those would be

the other special districts; and the total operating property tax revenues were just under $300

million.

Commissioner Delaney asked if what Ms. Hayes is saying is that the cap is only over that.

Ms. Hayes explained that is what the Charter Cap is, it is on the property taxes, however, the

County does have some other rates and charges and non-ad valorem assessments that are

tied to changes in CPI as well.

Commissioner Delaney asked as far as the Fire Control MSTU millage rate, is that the 1998

referendum or is that something different.

Ms. Hayes stated the 1998 referendum and she may defer to the County Attorney on this, but it

authorized an increase in the Fire Control MSTU; that increase was .6431 and was to fund

certain expenses; while that was the voter-approved millage rate, it has been established at

different rates over time based on Board direction; but that is the Fire Control MSTU.

Commissioner Delaney asked if this is controlled by the cap.

Ms. Hayes stated it is a voter-approved millage rate so the Charter Cap says it excludes the

voter approved.

Attorney Richardson interjected by saying the portion of it that was voter-approved.

Commissioner Delaney inquired then the .6431 is not affected by the Charter Cap.

Attorney Richardson responded by saying that is correct, the revenues generated by that

millage rate, the County does not have to adjust that millage rate down when there is an

increase in value to meet the revenue cap; but just for that part.

Mr. Abbate advised it does apply to the aggregate millage but not the Charter Cap.

Attorney Richardson responded affirmatively; and he noted that generates more revenue that

makes the aggregate millage do something that it should not as well.

Commissioner Delaney stated the next slide was the one with all the different counties and she

was wondering if there are other counties with a Charter Cap.

Ms. Hayes replied no, not to her knowledge, there are no other counties with a Charter Cap,

unless that changed recently.

Commissioner Delaney stated she is not sure; she mentioned some of these questions are for

the public’s sake; the balance forward because when people see the $2.25 billion budget, and

she appreciates Mr. Abbate when he talked about that is not really the year-over-year budget, it

is about half of that, she was wondering the carryover from Public Works and the general

government, the $84 and the $74 million, is Public Works mostly capital projects.

Ms. Hayes replied that is correct.

Budget Overview

Commissioner Delaney asked if general government is also capital projects.

Ms. Hayes noted that is capital projects and reserves; and if the Commissioner remembers,

later on she showed a slide that was $30 million in reserves and then there was some

infrastructure projects in general government as well.

Commissioner Delaney asked if there is a way to see the breakdown of the transfers, obviously

not right now, but if Ms. Hayes could get that for her.

Ms. Hayes advised she can work on that.

Commissioner Delaney advised that some of the questions she had were answered as Ms.

Hayes went through the presentation so she is trying to make sure she is pulling out the right

ones; she asked if Ms. Hayes could explain the Countywide critical infrastructure is from the FY

24-25 General Fund sources and uses slide.

Ms. Hayes advised she broke that out in another slide; the Countywide critical infrastructure,

this is the breakdown on how those are allocated; and these were projects that funding was set

aside because they were determined to be critical needs, to address these projects.

Mr. Abbate explained for example, Wickham Road Fleet is basically for his entire Road and

Bridge heavy equipment.

Commissioner Delaney noted she remembers hearing about that.

Mr. Abbate went on to say he will be talking about that during the presentations, therefore, she

will get some detail on that.

Commissioner Delaney asked if the Health Department buildout was something that the

previous Board put forward.

Mr. Abbate noted is it was something the previous Board approved; he explained it is on the

second floor of the building next door; if he is not mistaken, he thinks $900,000 is actually being

paid for by the Health Department; they are providing the funding; and the Board is putting in

$500,000.

Commissioner Delaney stated that was going to be her next question.

Mr. Abbate pointed out that is so they can do a buildout; when they initially built that, like the

Tax Collector talked about how she had planned for the future, the same thing happened with

the Health Department building; it is a County building but the second floor was not built out;

there is the Posey Center on the first floor, all the building they are using and the building next

door; and this is finally several years later, they have the resources internally within their budget

to do it, but it was easier to do it through the County. He mentioned they had heard through the

State to let the County do the buildout and they would pay a large share of it; that is what they

did and that is what is going on with that; and the prior Board approved it.

Commissioner Delaney inquired if for future presentations, the other critical infrastructure, if

they could be broken down so that the public sees it; and that was always one of her biggest

questions when sitting on the other side, ‘what does other mean’.

Ms. Hayes advised she can do that; she thinks it is broken down in the adopted budget and the

CIP; a large portion of that is for improvements of the Medical Examiner building; she thinks

there is a chiller replacement and some other critical mechanical components that are needing

to be replaced there; and she can do that for the Commissioner.

Mr. Abbate stated staff can clean that up and provide that specific information at the beginning

of next workshop.

Commissioner Delaney thanked Mr. Abbate for that; she asked to talk about NBEDZ because it

has been a pretty hot topic; and she asked if someone could explain more into how they get

funded and where this money comes from, and all of that.

Mr. Abbate advised it is a General Fund allocation through an annual Agreement that the Board

has with the EDC; and he thinks it comes up every June.

Attorney Richardson commented he thinks the Commissioner is speaking about NBEDZ.

Mr. Abbate stated that $3.3 million is the County’s share of NBEDZ; he thinks Titusville

contributes about $700,000 per year or somewhere in that range; he thinks they have around

$10 to $11 million that is currently in reserve to utilize for existing debt or any kind of incentives

that are outstanding, but have not been earned by whoever has put in the application and had it

approved by NBEDZ; generally what is there is a tax increment which means it is the increase

in taxable value that is earned from the prior year; those dollars go into the geographic location

that was approved as part of NBEDZ that currently exists; and those additional increments go

to NBEDZ to utilize for any projects, he thinks if it is over $500,000 it has to come to the Board,

but for any projects that are going to enhance within that zone, economic development. He

went on to say if the Board recalls one of the big ones that was given was $8 million, years ago;

it is getting close if not already totally paid out; there are a variety of other projects that are out

there and being paid out on an annual basis; staff did a review of that and believe that the

resources that are there will cover all the existing obligations, including debt that needs to be

paid out for join projects between County and City of Titusville, as part of the Economic

Development Zone; and he asked if that was what the Commissioner was looking for.

Commissioner Delaney responded by saying, absolutely. She stated she just wanted to put it

out there that she was very skeptical about NBEDZ before she got into office; now, she has

spent a lot of time with Troy Post, Executive Director of NBEDZ, and he has been extremely

helpful and has really answered every single one of her questions; he has been exceptional

and she has wanted to give him a shout out, just because it was in this presentation, about

what a great job he does; one of the things that made her feel really comfortable was the

clawbacks; the County does not give any of this money without clawbacks; if the businesses

are not holding up their part of the deal, they do not get a cent, for instance like the space

perspective company that just unfortunately went under, they did not receive that $450,000;

and that was her first phone call, she called Mr. Post right away when she saw it in the paper.

She noted she just wanted to put that information out there because it is something that is

talked about in her District a lot; NBEDZ is doing some good work there; there is going to be a

new business workshop that Mr. Post is going to be putting on, and that is a great thing as well;

and she requested that in the future, like for Public Safety Services, if Ms. Hayes could place a

bullet point of who that is, just so people can know and do not have to go digging through.

The Board Recessed at 2:19 p.m. and reconvened at 2:32 p.m.

Mr. Abbate stated he would like to correct one thing he said during the prior part of the

presentation; $900,000 was the County contribution to the changes in the Health Department

building; and $500,000 is the contribution from the State.

C.2. Public Works

Meeting went into Recess

Meeting Reconvened

Marc Bernath, Public Works Director, stated he brought with him a lot of his key staff in case

there are questions because he has a lot of information to try and cover; Susan Jackson,

Assistant Director and Program Manager, is there but she has a hard conflict, therefore, after

he presents her slides, she will be leaving; and also there is Corinna Gumm, Traffic Operations

Manager, Tammy Thomas Wood, Public Works Operations Manager, Skip Bell, Facilities

Manager, Rachel Gerena, Engineering Manager, and Stephanie Boyle, Public Works Finance

Coordinator. He noted there are a lot of slides and he is going to try to skip through some and

keep this moving as quickly as he can; there are some areas that he intends to park on for a

few minutes; this could take several hours, he has a very large department that is broad and

wide; and he will take any questions and staff will answer them as it can.

Commissioner Delaney asked if Mr. Bernath would rather the Commissioners wait until the end

for questions or ask throughout the presentation.

Mr. Bernath remarked that is up to the Commissioners. He stated starting with the first slide,

Public Works mission is to plan and implement projects and services, and create and maintain

a comprehensive transportation and facilities infrastructure; most of the facts on this he is going

to dig into throughout the slide deck, therefore, he is not going to go into each and if the Board

has not noticed, he uses these as section dividers for each of the different programs that he is

going to talk to; to highlight one key item on this slide that he is not really going to delve into

any further, there is currently an 18.5 percent vacancy rate which is 62 vacancies, although 14

selections of that are made, four with tentative start dates; he and his staff have been focused

on both retention and recruitment for quite some time; and they have been inching the vacancy

rate down, but it has still been a challenge with the funding that the County is willing to pay

compared to the private sector, as well as some of the other municipalities. He continued on by

saying he is going to deep dive into some of the programs in the red box throughout this brief

which includes Road and Bridge, Traffic Operations, Facilities, and Finance and Construction

Management; he will highlight the other three Public Works offices and programs listed in the

blue box because he is not necessarily going to get into them any further; part of the

Transportation and Construction Management has Land Acquisition, but it functions effectively

as a separate program; basically, what they do is all the land acquisition for the County, that is

right-of-ways, easements with the exception of Environmentally Endangered Lands (EELS); the

Survey and Mapping Program provides a vital service for new development and subdivisions,

and in fact the County surveyor is required to sign off on all technical accuracy on all plats, by

Florida Statute, before the Board can even consider a plat; that is very critical development for

the County; and it also provides services for many of the County infrastructure improvements,

particularly Road and Bridge, and maintains the County benchmark system. He went on to say

Engineering does design and drafting for most of the Public Works projects; they manage flood

plain management regarding the flood zone, determinations, right-of-way permitting,

construction inspection, and management, and then development review for commercial

development and subdivisions for Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), and stormwater which

impacts the roads; the Board will see a repeating theme as well for each of the budget

sections; this is an overview of the adopted budget; these bins or categories are the large

buckets where money is spent within Public Works; the largest, as one can see, is capital

improvements at $67.6 million, that is for projects; operating is at $48.7 million and includes

repair and maintenance projects, that is running the department; there is also comp and

benefits which is a big number of $27.1 million; and he will get into the CIP throughout the brief.

He stated he is going to shift to the color of money which was mentioned by the Budget Office

Director, Jill Hayes, during her brief; just thinking back to the last slide, every single major bin

would be a rainbow of these three colors; he wanted to show how it was split up in a different

way; in this one there are three major categories; the budget is broken down by fuel tax and

special revenue which is in pink and restrictive funding that is special purpose revenue bonds;

there is general purpose revenue which is in green and that is revenues received such as FPL

franchise fees; and then there is service revenue which is earned through internal services and

for internal departmental services, user fees, or development fees. He went on to say as one of

the largest departments, this looks like a lot of money, however, a lot of it is restricted for

transportation and tied up with multi-year projects; similar to what Mr. Abbate and Ms. Hayes

had mentioned, out of the $176 million, when pairing it down there is a lot less than one really

thinks; $84 million is balance forward meaning multi-year projects and maybe accumulating it

over time, or may be leveraging it for grants and it may not be a bad thing, Public Works

projects, especially transportation, take 10 to 20 years sometimes to do just to save up for it;

that is where a lot of the money is tied and just from the $176 million taking out the balance

forward, he is down to about half of the money that is available; and other than major capital

projects, they always seek donations where possible due to limited funding. He noted each

year after funding the current programs the service, which he will get into, they retain a limited

amount for emergencies; he actually only has $3 to $6 million in discretionary funds for large

projects around the County; quickly, from $84 million down to $3 to $6 million, there is not a lot

of money if the Board wants to continue the operations that Public Works does today when

someone calls and wants a response from Facilities or someone calls Road and Bridge for that

person to go out; a lot of that money is already captured; and it is the $3 to $6 million that, with

County Manager support and Board approval, is where they put on large projects. He stated

this slide is also the color of money, the main difference is there is no balance forward; this is to

give a look at what new money comes in each year; he explained fuel taxes, Multiple Service

Taxing Unit (MSTU) grants, and transportation impact fees that are shown are all fenced and

must be spent on transportation-related items; each one comes with certain limitations or

restrictions carefully orchestrated by his Public Works Support Operations Manager, Tammy

Thomas, and her team behind the scenes, and with the other programs; one example, one can

see there are many different gas taxes here but Constitutional Gas Tax (CGT), 80 percent is

severely restricted by Statute on funding in-house labor; each one has different things that can

or cannot be done with it; his staff has apportioned it to use it where it is best served; the

largest recipient of General Funds, and going back to what Mr. Abbate said, the General Fund

is where the Board really has the most ability to influence where to leverage it; County Facilities

is the largest recipient of that within Public Works as seen by the large green bar over

Facilities, and there really is no alternative revenue source for Facilities; when looking at the

pink polka dot box above the green, that is $5.8 million, but it is a one-time grant for the Moore

Justice Center that was received through Senator Debbie Mayfield; and then there is $1.1

million, which is a loan to help fund jail locks. He explained all the detention center doors were

failing and they needed a strategy a couple years ago of how to actually do that so that is all

one-time money; there is a little bit above that but really it is General Fund that funds Facilities;

for Road and Bridge, the General Fund is primarily the paving program and labor; if the Board

wants to take away that without impacting the roads and the people that serve the County, they

would need to find an alternative funding source; in order to maintain the roads at the level they

are trying to do now and the comp and benefits is really where that money is tied up; traffic and

survey also pay for labor largely with General Funds; but as one can see, much smaller

amounts and again, that is to have someone available to respond when someone calls to say a

traffic signal is not working. He commented General Fund could be repurposed for other Board

priorities, but without finding other sources to pull from, that really becomes a challenge if the

Board wants Public Works to continue the same level of service that it is doing today and would

quite frankly, have a deleterious effect on Public Works' mission, leaving them with a

combination of undesirable options such as short funding the paving program, reducing labor,

deferring capital equipment and facility recapitalization, curtailing maintenance projects

designed to address aging and failing infrastructure, and other reductions as one can imagine;

one possible option for replacing General Fund, as well as to supplement, is the revenue

generating report that he sent out several days ago to all Commission offices; he is going to

delve into that a little during this brief; it is a 12-page report that staff spent a lot of time

developing and it has far more detail than he has time for to go into today; and he will at least

provide some highlights and make sure the Board understands some of the benefits of

entertaining it. He went on to say the first program he is going to get into is Public Works (PW)

operations; it is really a back office function but where the largest amount of money in PW is;

they serve both as the banker and ensuring that the funding goes to where it needs to; they are

also responsible for funding traffic projects, engineering, as well as surveying and land

acquisition; he is not going into everything on this slide; and jumping into the next slide, one

can see the reason for him wanting to bring this up because under that one program it is $61.4

million with $34.1 of it being capital improvement projects, it is the largest bin and there are a

number of slides he will be getting into on some of the major CIPs and where the money is

going, like Sea Ray Bridge and traffic management center, Wickham Road, Facilities, and et

cetera. He stated another large bin, there is capital equipment at $15 million and then there is

also a large capital reserve where there are projects that are not necessarily ready for

execution, PW might be saving up for a larger project down the road; this slide shows actual

Local Option Gas Tax (LOGT) revenue which has been collected and has been tracked for

many years, as it started back in 1986; it is indicative of all fuel taxes, but unlike with LOGT,

and to be clear, it is the six-cent option, because there is a five-cent that he will get into that

PW does not collect; he does not have the historical data for the other gas taxes but it is the

largest one; it gives a historical perspective, as well as what the other fuel taxes are doing; and

as shown in the previous slide, it is the largest amount of fuel tax, and going back a few slides,

one can see the pink version so people can get an appreciation for what tax is what, but one

will see that six-cent LOGT is the largest amount of gas taxes that are received. He went on to

say out of $13.7 million of LOGT that was collected, $5.4 million is allocated to pay bond debt

service until 2036, therefore, that is taken right off the table because PW is paying for projects

that were done many years ago; $3 and one-half million is dedicated to supplement the

General Fund for the paving program, and once that comes off there is really not much LOGT;

as he was saying, when one starts looking at where the money goes, and he only has $3 to $6

million per year, that is because LOGT gas tax is the largest amount and it is already going to

big priorities, one is paying back past projects, and the other is PW paving program; the blue is

the actual revenue and the red is the purchasing power; the Board can see PW has lost

purchasing power over time as those two lines collide; with the proliferation of electric vehicles,

over relying on gas taxes is not advisable as one day it is going to be replaced; those that were

at the recent Space Coast Transportation Planning Organization (SCTPO) meeting that was

discussed and obviously there are a lot of discussions on how else to fund; and right now it is

one of the larger pots, but it is something over time he thinks can go away. He mentioned this

slide is showing another view of the same data and it comes from the local government

financial information handbook, staff just places it into these slides; this is looking at the total

population in blue which continues to rise as the Board is well aware, within Brevard County; in

red, it divides the purchasing power of those LOGT funds; but the total population when looking

at it, it means despite having more people on a per person capital basis, it has remained fairly

flat, as the red line tails down and then levels off; and for example in 2024, PW is receiving

approximately $20 per capita adjusted for inflation and there is approximately 657,000 people

in the County. He went on to say this slide shows where the funds go from between capacity

and maintenance; in 2017 the Board made a conscious decision to focus PWs limited

transportation funding to the much needed paving program and that started in 2018; it also

created a dedicated recurring program with general revenue for that paving program, and he

will get into that paving program a little later; the slide is meant to illustrate how transportation

funds were spent between 2014 and 2017 and then 2018 to 2024; the chart is the actual

expenses of gas taxes and impact fees, but in order to explain and show, he has excluded

grants that were non-recurring because it had a skewing effect on the data and was not able to

really show this point; for example, Pineda Causeway, Barnes Boulevard, St. John’s Heritage

Parkway were all very large one-time grants and it has been excluded from this data in order to

be able to look at a more apples to apples comparison; the other funds allocated to Road and

Bridge that were not directly related to this, such as General Fund and MSTU and some others

which fund salaries and benefits, day-to-day operating as opposed to what goes forward on

transportation were also excluded; and what can be seen is it is meant to depict how the

transportation funds are spent and that maintenance is primarily that of the paving program but

also includes large scale transportation maintenance projects. He continued by saying as the

Board can see, the pie got larger overall from earlier; looking at the top left versus the bottom

right, the pie is larger, but in the prior four years before the paving program, PW spend 73

percent of available funds on capacity and only 27 percent on maintenance; then the reverse is

true because in the last six years they spent 40 percent on capacity and 60 percent on

maintenance; he is going to get into the reasons why PW desperately needed the paving

program, why those decisions were made, and that PW cannot back off the paving program or

it will return to that; he will get into that in a few minutes, but what it translates to is an average

of $7.4 million before and $7 million of capacity per year now, $10.4 million now and $2.7

million for maintenance, neither of which has adjusted for inflation; and that should provide a

general sense of where the funding is going. He explained on this slide he is trying to show the

overall transportation revenues for paved roads and a breakout by surrounding counties with

their total central miles; he will get more into what center line miles means; this shows all

funding and it is based on the local government financial information handbook of 2023; as an

example, PW has 1,232 center line miles and PW puts in approximately $24.5 million between

all funding sources, which translates to $19.95 per mile; as one can see, the Indian River has

707 miles of paved roads and receives $50 million which translates to nearly three times the

amount that Brevard is putting into its roads, at $781 per mile; out of the data collected, only

Polk County spends less on their miles per road; and using the colors of money, he is showing

how each one of those funding sources fits in. He stated now shifting to the revenue generating

report, which was sent to the Commissioner’s earlier this week, he will go through some of the

slides giving some excerpts; there is far more detail in the report that was sent and he would be

happy to answer any questions today or interact with any Commissioner off line to get into

some of the details; it was predicated and updated based on a 2014 Board-driven Blue Ribbon

Committee recommendation, and his staff’s 2022 version; his staff was asked by the County

Manager to dust it off and update it with the last 2 and one-half years of progress, as well as

setbacks; that is what the Commissioners saw in their emails; and it is important to note that no

funding recommendations were adopted either time, back in 2014 or in 2022, which has made

solutions more challenging and costly. He stated starting with the end in mind there are three

attachments to report and he has the excepts on the right side of the screen to give the

summary; the current PW transportation impact fee projects, there are 28 of them, and it

stands at $11.6 million; this is for situational awareness and he has a slide on impact fees a

little later to get into; PW’s 2025 budget submission with some critical changes of unfunded

critical needs listed 182 projects and $252 million that is needed and the way staff looked at it

was if it should or could execute within five years, so it is a subset of the larger unfunded

infrastructure list which is the third one on the bottom; and that shows that there are 299 items

at $2.2 billion of backlog. He noted that is money today that PW believes is needed and there is

no funding source to address; once again, the list similar to what he said moments ago, has

some critical updates, but it was what was prepared last year in preparation for the 2025

budget; as staff is working through the 2026 budget, his program managers and himself will

dust it off, look at the SCTPO list, look at all different things, and then update it with maybe

some new projects, maybe there are projects that were funded for the year; but at $2.2 billion,

PW is in the ballpark and it is not going to go substantially down, will possibly inch up as

additional things are added; every time PW receives a call from a constituent and they want

something, if it is not on the list it eventually makes its way to here; and that continues

throughout the year, and in addition to inflation, is the reason why this number is significantly

higher than the last time he briefed this. He continued by saying PW will begin working on a

revision as part of budget development; this list contains the projects that PW is aware of and

that require funding for either capacity, failing operational needs, et cetera, as well as projects

where PW was requested by the public, in other words, it is not an all-inclusive list, there is no

funded evaluation process within PW other than the paving program where staff goes out to

look in storm pipes, look for failing conditions within County buildings to develop this, this is

other than transportation numbers which the SCTPO goes out each year and determines traffic

volume, everything else is really generated and predicated based on what staff has been asked

to do over time, and it is just collected on a list; and bottom line, the overall backlog exceeds

$2.2 billion, capacity is $1.2 billion of it, and nearly $500 million is just the Wickham Corridor

alone, which has feasibility and affordability concerns given how built out it is. He mentioned

when it comes to capacity, those numbers are ran every year by SCTPO; PW then looks at the

volume of the road and determines what is nearing capacity, what is at capacity, and what is

over capacity; in addition to that, the report starts out by defining capacity as opposed to

maintenance; it then provides a fairly comprehensive overview of where the major sources of

funding goes and their limitations as depicted in slide six from his presentation a few slides

back; it also addresses Transportation Impact Fees (TIF), which will be summarized over the

next few slides; this color map was created this year to try to help with not just what the impact

fee boundaries are, which are the different colors, but where Commission Districts line up; as

the Board can see they overlap and some Commission Districts span multiple impact fees; and

it is important to note up front that PW spends impact fees, at least a portion of the impact

fees, to be allocated by going through a TIF committee, and then recommend approval of

funding and the Board ultimately approves anything that it taps for impact fees, however,

Planning and Development oversees the program and they will be providing some additional

context in addition to what Billy Prasad, Interim Planning and Development Director, has

provided to the Board just recently, as far as the history and what could be done with impact

fees. He stated he is mostly focused on once PW has the fees where they could be used; PW

currently has $11.6 million in allocated funding towards projects which is in appendix A of the

full revenue generating report; what is shown on the right hand side is that there is $15.9 million

unallocated funding across the five benefit districts, and each year on average, the County is

collecting $10.5 million; again, the benefit districts are mapped by color; funds must be spent

for capital or transportation capacity improvements within that benefit district only, that means a

large portion of this is untapped until there is an affordable requirement; he will get into that, but

to be clear the $15.9 million is the balance available that Planning and Development sees is

effectively left in the kitty; and when PW has a project, it goes to the impact fee committee and

request to take money out of that. He explained the TIF funds are insufficient to pay for the

cost of level of service capacity improvements to the road system, even if the fees were

increased, as $2.1 billion is the backlog for capacity today, not in the future; where there are

opportunities that present itself on smaller projects, there is additional congestion or safety

improvement projects totaling $63 million, where PW can find one-half of a million dollars or a

$1 million project, it will look to use these funds; the Board can see that the South Beaches

only has $746,000 in there; the two largest are north and central mainland districts at over $5

million, and south mainland has $2.5 million; the reason for noting that, as one can see on the

next slide, the locations where it is needed the most is where there is the least amount of

impact fees; for example, the City of Palm Bay is within the south mainland benefit district, but

much of it is incorporated and they have their own impact fee program and they collect it; it is

only the unincorporated areas that the County collects; and increasing impact fees is not

elaborated in PW revenue generating report for these reasons, it is not a panacea to solve the

capacity challenges, but with increasing it, and looking at the current boundaries and possibility

of changing them, it could be more useful to PW. He continued by saying this slide is to show

the roadways by capacity and by district; roadway capacity refers to the maximum number of

vehicles that a roadway segment can accommodate; it is typically measured in vehicles per

hour or vehicles per day and is primarily based on the number of lanes and the type of

roadway; each year, as mentioned in last slide, the most recent traffic volume data is provided

by the SCTPO and the current available data that he has is for 2023; staff evaluates and

compares the latest discount data to the capacity of each roadway then comes up with what is

seen here and the map depicts the locations; PW has identified roads that are nearing capacity

in red, over-capacity in black, and roads being monitored in blue; and the current data reveals

there are currently 11.4 miles of County Roads that are nearing capacity, 2.3 that are

over-capacity, and 6.6 miles of County roads that are being monitored for capacity concerns.

He noted there have been fluctuations year to year from the count data and in some cases they

were nearing capacity and now they have retracted but because they were close enough to the

threshold, PW is continuing to monitor it, as the thought is PW wants to try to be ahead and not

behind on some of these areas; the total cost, again, is $1.2 billion and as explained in the

previous slide, the north mainland and central mainland have the most funds available, but it is

not where the greatest capacity needs are; north mainland they really only have Grissom

Parkway which is being monitored because it had receded from nearing capacity; south

mainland has one of the lesser pots and has the most things that need to be done; and it is

really not practical the way the impact fees are structured and set up, to leverage them on any

of these projects because there is really not a $500,000 capacity project out there. He stated in

Appendix A of the report it shows where PW is spending impact fees; there are others out there

and PW tries to balance staff availability, as well as he will get into some Covid funding, and

implementing budget overall; there are some places PW could spend money across the

districts, it is just a matter of getting enough time and bandwith inhouse to work on some of

those projects where PW could spend a little more of those impacts fees; the report also shows

that PW could potentially garner $182 million of additional revenue if it were to fully implement

this chart; it is similar to what was presented in 2022 with some updated numbers; and again,

the report goes into a lot more detail, it provides pros and cons, but he is going to briefly

highlight each of those. He noted as one can see at $2.7 million, the ninth-cent fuel tax which is

the unleaded motor fuel portion is not that much money relatively speaking, but every little bit

helps, and furthermore it requires no requirement to share with the cities and the Board by

super majority vote could implement it or simple majority could add it to referendum; currently

they only collect the ninth-cent fuel tax diesel portion which is statutorily mandated and only

receive $2.2 million for that; for LOGT the fifth-cent is also not an enormous amount of money

at $6.4 million, but considering PW only has discretionary funds of $3 to $6 million, it could

potentially double the discretionary funding that PW has to go towards capacity with its

implementation; and although it does have restrictions on operations maintenance and repair

projects, capacity would be an ideal place for this. He mentioned currently PW received the

LOGT six-cent as mentioned before and that is $13.7 million; $5.4 million goes to debt service

and $3 and one-half million is dedicated to the paving program which leaves very little

discretionary money out of is received; it could also be approved by super-majority vote or

added by a referendum if by simple majority; however, it does require an implementation of an

Interlocal agreement with the cities with a majority of the municipal population, so it is a little

more challenging to implement but still potentially worthwhile. He advised the charter county

and the regional transportation system discretionary sales tax is on goods and services

purchased within the County; it has, as one can see, the largest potential to generate funding

depending on the rate that is implemented; for example, at one percent the County’s cost share

would be $103 million per year and it requires a simple majority to be placed on a referendum

and can be used for broad transportation needs and could last for 30 years, however it does

require public hearings, negotiations with the city, and approval by the Florida Legislature’s

Office of Program Policy Analysis, as well as a government accountability and certified public

audit in order to implement; the local government infrastructure sales tax is also on goods and

services; it has the second largest potential to generate funding, but is limited to only 0.5

percent because as the Board is aware the other half currently goes to Save Our Indian River

Lagoon (SOIRL); and implementation and limitations are the same as the charter County and

the regional transportation system discretionary sales tax; and finally, on this list public service

tax has the potential to generate roughly $32.2 million based on what is seen for FPL franchise

fees.

Public Works

He added this is increasing the amount on other public service related goods and services, it is

considered general revenue and can be used on any legitimate transportation purpose; they

already received $19 million with FPL franchise fees, but PW only sees $4.4 million of that; and

this is one of the easiest to implement because the Board can adopt this by ordinance through

a simple majority vote and there is no requirement to share it with other municipalities. He went

on to say, this chart is meant to show with all of that funding, which he recognizes may not be

something that the Board is willing to go with, but it could solve the backlog challenge and that

is really what this is meant to show; looking at the revenue generating report, it depicts the

current capacity and maintenance funding shortfalls and how that continues to grow through

inflation; this shows if PW implemented all of it, it could solve it in about 13 years, theoretically;

as previously mentioned, this is based on shortfalls in the list today and it does not envision

additional projects that may be added this spring or in subsequent years, but again, it

juxtaposes the overall transportation shortfall of $2.2 billion and adds what it could look like if

they received all of that potential revenue; he recognizes this may not be realistic for the Board

to support any of it, but if it did, it could help tackle the transportation issues, if it started now;

PW does not know yet how much it can mitigate, but they continue to look at things like turn

lanes, intersection improvements, expanding ITS, which will be discussed later in the briefing,

but at the end of the day, that continues to kick the can down the road of the capacity shortfalls,

it buys PW some time, but it cannot buy its way out of it through mitigation; and at some point,

the County needs to face the reality that this is something that needs to be figured out how to

tackle. He mentioned not depicted here but it is lightly mentioned in the report is that additional

staff, capital equipment, other resources would be needed to take on any significant amount of

money, not even if they to receive the full amount, just to take on millions; they would need to

have additional engineers, inspectors, contract types, finance, other administrative, and

oversight; it is impossible to really put a number on that because he would need to have

direction from the Board on which projects out of the $2.2 billion, what their complexity and

dollar value is; for example, four $250,000 projects are far more labor intensive than one $1

million project; he would need to know where the Board is leaning to be able to say what labor

and other resources he would need; he wanted the Board to realize that existing staff could

never implement something like this; PW is also maxed out currently trying to address current

obligations and suffer from an 18 and one-half percent vacancy rate; as a key parameter and

part of the success of the implementation, PW would recommend a phased approach to

properly staff up, expand, plan, design, and then execute; and as such, if the Board wanted to

do this, staff would get with each Commission District, provide recommendations, get

Commissioner feedback at least for the first five years of what the right combination of projects

are, and then for multi-year, multi-district projects, it would come to the Board. He stated this is

just showing the process to implement a referendum should the Board so choose; he

mentioned that the Board could, by supermajority, add the ninth-cent in LOGT tax collection,

although the LOGT does require an Interlocal Agreement (ILA) to institute either the

discretionary sales tax or public service tax; the Board could send it to referendum and then the

County would need legislative intent this month in order to work towards the ordinance; this just

lays out a timeline in order to be able to get it on the ballot; theoretically, staff would work with

applicable County staff to finalize an ordinance and work on ILAs with the cities so it can be

sent to the Supervisor of Elections for the November ballot; again, both discretionary service

taxes also require public hearings, therefore they would need to fit that in; they would need the

legislative office program policy analysis and government accountability 180 days out, as well

as do an audit; this packs a lot between now and the time the County would start collecting

some of these; taxes must be levied on October 1 to be effective January 1 the following year;

and lastly on this slide, a public service tax could just be implemented through a simple majority

with an ordinance at any time. He added that is what he is going to cover for the revenue

generating report, obviously there is a lot that he just through out there but it is all in the

revenue generating report that he had sent earlier in the week.

Commissioner Altman stated this is for clarification, in the revenue, potential transportation

revenue, these numbers that are shown $2.7 million, the $6.4 million that is annual revenue.

Mr. Bernath advised it is.

Commissioner Altman mentioned the $182.6 is annual as well.

Mr. Bernath advised it is. He went on to say assuming the Board said it was going to do it all.

Commissioner Altman asked in 13 years that would solve the County’s problems.

Mr. Bernath remarked that is what this kind of shows, it is a cumulative graph that shows when

one looks at the blue wedge or the current funding, and looks at the potential revenue that he

just mentioned, $182 million year-over-year with inflation or CPI and looking at the backlog, not

adding additional backlog, PW could converge and in 2039, theoretically solve it; could it

actually be done, it depends on design and permitting and all that; this is really just meant to

show that the County could work itself out of this over some period of time; and is it 13, is it

100, is it 50 years, that is for the Board to tell staff what to do.

Commissioner Altman inquired if that assumption would be no bonding and just pay as one

goes.

Mr. Bernath advised that would assume that it is being collected through these various options

and pay as they go; bonding is certainly something than can be done but thus far, if it was not

made clear, staff has not necessarily had the support to increase the funding; and similar

charts over his time and even back before him have alerted past Boards of these concerns.

Commissioner Altman that would be done sort of the way the Department of Transportation

(DOT) does it with a work plan, no bonding, and pay as it goes; it is a good approach and

bonding is also; somebody could discontinue the program as it goes down so there is not the

certainty of the program being built if bonded it does; he likes the way this was put together;

one always hears about problems, but does not get to hear how to solve the problems; he

thinks this is refreshing; and the questions he has is 13 years to fix the problem, as it goes out

further, how many years does it maintain that status of having an adequate level of service on

the roads.

Mr. Bernath noted that is extremely hard to venture because as mentioned every time PW gets

a service call from a resident there might be another looming problem that staff does not know

about, another road might go over capacity; and he tried to just snap a line today, if it was only

todays problems it would take the 13 years, but he does not know about tomorrows problems

yet because they do not have a proactive assessment going out there looking for problems.

Commissioner Altman mentioned it depends on growth rates and things of that nature.

Mr. Bernath agreed.

Chairman Feltner asked if staff has done scanning of the roads, an assessment.

Mr. Bernath responded in the affirmative. He continued by saying he did highlight it before and

he is going to get into during paving, the only place PW really proactively looks at is they do an

assessment for paving about every four years with a third party; they ride every road with lots of

high-tech equipment and provide a report; he will get more into that; but other than that, there

are no teams going out there looking for failing pipes and other issues because PW does not

have the staff or resources to do it.

Commissioner Delaney asked the span of the $25 million to $103 million and the $3 million to

$20 or $32 million what is that.

Mr. Bernath replied, for each one it is either a percentage that the Board can implement or a

specific amount; the revenue generating report actually has that breakdown in more detail,

although on the slide there is a little bit; for example, like the local government infrastructure,

they could levy 0.5 percent or one percent, with one percent being max; and the SOIRL

program already gets half of it so PW could only take the other half if the Board chose. He

noted he is just trying to show the ranges of what staff could do.

Commissioner Delaney asked if the needs include paving roads, as far as all the dirt roads.

Mr. Bernath remarked it has some of the key ones in the unfunded backlog, but it does not

have all 82 miles of roads; but that could be added as they have these discussions with each

Commissioner.

Commissioner Delaney said so basically these numbers are the backlog of things that are

critical.

Mr. Bernath explained he tried to break it out, critical as in what PW could do and should do in

five years that is that small amount of $252 million; then what is the full need because staff

recognizes it will take time to get there; again, that is today’s capacity numbers not 10 years

from now because he does not know what capacity will do in 10 years; and if the County

continues to grow, he could only imagine that number is going to continue to grow.

Commissioner Delaney replied, right.

Mr. Bernath stated this is not an all-inclusive list of the accomplishments that PW did in 2024,

they would be far and wide; unless there are questions, his intent here is just to flash up some

of the larger projects that were done in each of the Commission Districts and push forward; at

any given time PW has about 700 projects going on; these are the bigger ones, but he could

not sit here and answer questions on every one; it is impossible for anyone to be able to do

that; this is one and the Board will see on some of the other projects; and he would be happy to

follow up with any Commissioner off line. He commented this is not an all-inclusive list as well;

the Commissioners may be thinking what about the projects in their own districts; he will get

into it on the next slide showing the Board all of the projects that are capital improvement;

these are some of the larger high visibility ones that PW is working on; in the interest of time he

will hit a few things and plow through; he is going to talk more about bridges so he will defer the

discussions on the two bridge projects; Hollywood widening is something PW has been working

on for a very long time, a decade or more; the current projection is $95.1 million to widen that

road; per past criteria for Federal Grants, it was not going to score well; they do not know yet

where the Trump Administration may change that criteria, maybe they will fare better, but right

now they have not pursued grants, one because they are not quite done with the design, but

have looked at it enough to know it would not score well, and it would be wasting a lot of money

chasing what they know they could not get; they had a better shot at Ellis Road and still could

not get Federal money; but it is still something that needs to be done for the south part of the

County. He went on to say, the other is where there are targets of opportunity to do advanced

acquisition; an owner comes to them and says they know the County is going to want to widen

the road someday, will it buy their property; it is much cheaper today than it will be tomorrow,

especially under the threat of imminent domain; where there is those opportunities, they

continued to buy those properties; they may submit for some additional funding because they

are starting to run low, in order to be able to pursue that; and the third phase is there is a

congestion mitigation study that PW should be finishing in the spring so they are looking at

where those targets may be, maybe it is a turn lane or an intersection, instead of trying to bite

off the whole $95 million project. He noted it will take a long time, but in absence of that what

can PW start doing; that is the three phases on Hollywood; Pineda Causeway and Wickham

turn lanes, PW is expected to start phase one construction sometime in March; there are a

couple hiccups and staff is working through on MOT, but it will get through those; they are still

waiting on St. Johns River Water Management District (SJRWMD) on phase two; Chairman

Feltner knows that well, it is where that extension of that eastbound lane on Pineda; but as far

as the rest of that project, it is moving forward, it has been awarded, and staff is just working

out some of those kinks. He stated Ellis Road is effectively funded for construction, assuming

Florida Department of Transportation's (FDOT’s) tentative five-year work plan is finalized; the

reason for bringing that up here is staff is still anticipating some expenses that are not

necessarily captured by that; if the Board members see a request from him, within FY 2026, he

does not want anyone to be caught off guard because on one hand FDOT is saying it is fully

funded, and there are some issues; for example, FPL has dedicated easements and staff

knows there is a portion that has to be paid but they have not provided what that looks like so

his staff can negotiate with them; he does not anticipate receiving that until May or June; they

have tried to get something earlier for budget preparation and continue to work towards that;

but if they are being kicked out of a dedicated easement there is some exchange of funds,

there is also potentially some for design code updates as well as some inspection, and once it

gets closer he will know that. He added for all intent and purposes, the project is effectively

funded. He mentioned the TMC RFQ proposals were received this week and staff anticipates

starting construction sometime later this summer; rail safety is on hold pending a hopeful

reauthorization from the Trump Administration; he thinks the Board is all aware that about a

month ago there were a series of executive orders that were issued and one of them was to

hold short on grants; PW has previously under the Biden Administration, just received a rail

safety grant for Michigan Avenue, Dixon Boulevard, and Holly Street, but PW was participating

with the City of Melbourne and Cocoa, and working with SCTPO in order to be able to

effectuate that; PW is heavily reliant, it is putting 20 percent match up for the 80 percent they

were awarded for the project; as the President and his team go through determining if these

are the right grants to be put out, staff is waiting with baited breath to know whether or not it is

going to be given the thumbs up, reauthorized, or told to come back and resubmit; and he just

does not know at this point. He went on to say he was talking about some of the key projects

and these are the capital improvement projects that are in the FY 2025 budget, going back to

slides four and five where he noted there is the $67.6 million of projects, and over the next

several slides, he would just say that if the Board has questions or concerns, this is where that

large amount of money is going, and he would be happy to answer those today or offline; the

list is sorted by District, program name, project description, funding sources, and the cost; as

eluded to, each March staff reviews new projects, their status, they true-up the cost projections,

and sometimes it is a matter of only partially-funding a specific phase and maybe PW is ready

for the next phase, with inflation changes, so they relook at the list when resubmitting the PW

budget, and therefore will resubmit a new one for FY 2026; a bunch of these projects are many

year projects so it will be this list plus some modifications; and it is also important to note that

while he has multiple pages of capital improvement projects, there is about 600 or more

maintenance projects that are not listed but he would be happy to send each Commissioner his

or her own District projects. He noted that is very hard to be able to pull together and that is on

top of service calls and other things that his great team does every day; there are lots of slides

of various projects that PW is doing and that is where a lot of the money is going; what he

wanted to mention here is this is one time additional Covid funding and in addition to the

Department budget; it is funding that is held by the Budget office and PW staff has been

working to spend it; the capital equipment that is listed here is fairly easy to purchase; and that

is really just through the different processes of going out on the street and getting the

equipment, by no means complaining about having a problem with too much money, but he

wanted to share that the design and construction projects take an enormous amount of current

staff bandwidth to implement. He commented first PW had to obligate it by December 24 and

now complete it by 2026, so those funds are not clawed back; the pie chart shows 40 percent

or 11 projects that are still in progress; PW had until 2026, but 60 percent of it has already

been completed; this is for things like the Wickham Road Road and Bridge and Fleet

Maintenance Facility, Oak Park Drainage, Remote Telemetry, which he will get into later,

Indialantic Stormwater phase one, North Indian River Drive Road Shoreline Improvement

Drainage Project, Master Plan, Cherokee Bayfield Remedial Stormwater, Titusville, Cocoa, and

Merritt Island Feasibility and Concept, money toward Ellis Road, Evans Road at Hibiscus

Drainage which is kicking off next month, Dixie Village Drainage Design, and Barefoot Bay pipe

repairs all of which were not otherwise possible without this one time funding; however,

spending that amount of money efficiently and effectively is also a great cost to PW being able

to implement that. He went on to say now for the large one, Road and Bridge; it is the largest

program within PW with 174 fulltime equivalent positions which as one can imagine is bigger

than most of the departments and also has the highest vacancy rate at 26 percent; that is

mostly the blue collar workforce where it is very hard when the County is paying $16 per hour

and they could make $20 at McDonalds or in Walmart, while PW is asking them to work

outside in the hot sun; they have a recruiter that is dedicated trying to find people, but people

also have to want to work for what the County is willing to pay; looking at the private sector, the

County can no longer compete, it used to be that the County, or government in general, had

great benefits, but nowadays a lot of those private businesses are offering the same benefits,

therefore, creating a challenge; and that is backed up by, as his supervisors interview people

and they pass on employment with the County, are telling them. He mentioned staff is actively

working to develop programs that can tackle failing infrastructure utilizing the resources that

have been given to them by the Board; although exponential growth and requests, workforce

vacancies, increased costs, and contractor challenges complicate those efforts, they strive to

maintain regular mowing, road grading schedules, plan projects, investigate service requests,

and meet the annual performance goals each year; and he will get into a lot of those concerns

as he moves forward. He stated there is $53.9 million for Road and Bridge and it is comprised

largely of two internal funds, one is the MSTU at $16.9 million and $37 million of maintenance

operations and the largest cost is really operating the shops, responding to calls, and

addressing issues; he will now get into the color of money for Road and Bridge; there are two

major internal fund sources within Road and Bridge; MSTU is ad valorem tax and the

Maintenance budget; thinking back to the earlier slide where he showed all of the funding that

goes to Road and Bridge, it could basically be looked at as MSTU and everything else; a large

portion of it is General Fund but there is also some gas taxes and other fees that go towards it;

and that is why it looks like a rainbow from green to pink. He explained at the bottom of the

chart, below the black line, is the pink polka dot representing the MSTU budget; one can see it

has remained relatively stable; the MSTU budget is ad valorem based on property values and

assigned a millage rate; it has experienced some minor increases and decreases over the

years; balance forward is certainly a part of that, but really it is largely attributed to the rollback

millage to keep within the Charter Cap, so that has not gone up significantly; this money,

specifically MSTU, is used to maintain infrastructure within each District, and that is the roads

drainage, sidewalks, potholes, contracted services, capital equipment outlay, and maintenance

projects; the next slide will show a breakout of MSTU; and benefits, however, as well as major

capital improvement projects, are not part of the MSTU, they are under the maintenance

operations. He stated the maintenance operations budget shown in the green to red,

symbolizes the various flavors of money, slide six actually shows all of those, but it funds labor,

including comp and benefits which is one of the largest portions of General Fund, maintenance

operations, the paving program which is the other large portion of the General Fund,

reconstruction, bridge rehabilitation, materials, fuel, and contracted services; the main

variations here year-to-year are the balance forward and inflation; maybe there are projects

that are multi-year; the MSTU for each District, some Districts as in four, have multiple portions,

like District 4 has a Merritt Island portion, a beach portion, as well as the rest of District 4; each

Brevard County unincorporated property owner has a Road and Bridge MSTU line on their tax

bill; many taxpayers, and maybe the Board members themselves, may be surprised, but if one

sees it, he would say this is not scientific, but when someone calls and says they are not

getting their due, most people only pay $15 dollars per year, some $50, and some $75, but that

is the line item that goes to these numbers, so when looking at it and saying why is PW only

getting $742,000 in District 2 or $647,000 in District 3, it is because it is not generating that

much at that amount; and again, to be clear this is not the total MSTU, rather what is left for

available funding for maintenance and repair after taking out required expenses, and therefore,

slightly lower than he or she will possibly see in the budget itself. He added this is actually what

staff has to spend on maintenance. He continued on by saying this is where most individual

constituent levels at the street and home level get involved; it is never enough, it is limited and

not every good idea can be funded; maintenance projects, there are tens of thousands of

dollars, or hundreds of thousands, that go toward these projects; if one thinks of spending

hundreds of thousands on a few projects, it quickly burns through this money every year;

however, the Road and Bridge Program Manager judiciously manages this for each of the

Districts to make sure to have enough money for the requests coming in, storms, as well as a

number of issues that he has eluded to, but specifically drainage, streets, facilities, sidewalks,

transportation services, landscape services, tree removal, engineering, surveying, and

equipment for the Districts. He went on by explaining this chart shows the primary commodities

purchased by Road and Bridge projects and the increases; although CPI may only be 2.95

percent, it is not what is being seen in the construction industry which presents a challenge; he

knows several of the Board members were at the SCTPO governing board last week because

he watched it, and they had reported in just the last year that earth work was up 131.6 percent,

traffic signals 26 percent, and asphalt five percent; that is not even on the chart but he figured it

was worth repeating; on the chart it is showing some of the most used commodities within

Road and Bridge, limerock has gone up 286 percent since 2005, concrete 147 percent, asphalt

163 percent, and elliptical concrete pipe 214 percent; and that means with a cap of three

percent, seeing these year-over-year inflationary prices, the County loses purchasing power

and accomplishes less every year. He stated this slide breaks out the major assets that are

being tracked each year; PW continues to add more particularly on the drainage side as PW

refines it GIS documentation, they resolve easements and right-of-way issues that arise; one

can see it is a healthy amount of paved roads, to dirt roads, to guardrails, and everything in

between; in addition to that, there are two fixed pumps, one in Pine Island and one on Hall

Road in Merritt Island, there is a Lemay pump station in Cocoa, Deer Run pump in Palm Bay,

and various floodgates, staff gauges, handrail, curb and gutters, retention ponds, and some of

which he will get into; this slide really just tries to show the assets that Road and Bridge is

maintaining; this next slide is trying to exemplify County growth over the last 30 years and the

yellow being the roads that PW maintains; it is clear, even the roads that are not yellow, the

development that has occurred just in east and west Viera; obviously, as one can see, it is

significant, both residential and commercial growth; perhaps it is not as concentrated

elsewhere, such as it is in Viera, although there are pockets in Palm Bay that are going to catch

up to it; Brevard County has grown in population a projected 48 percent over the past 30 years;

and this is indicative of what is being seen around the County, and it was based on the budget

projections as well as US facts as far as the population. He noted while development east of

I-95 was already in progress back in 1995, residential growth has continued and has added on

the west side resulting in not just roads, but additional infrastructure for PW to maintain which

includes curbs, gutters, drainage systems, sidewalks, and bridges that were not there before;

new development in this specific example has led to an increase in population that demands

more services and requires maintenance of the expanding roadway infrastructure; current

staffing levels are strained due to high vacancy rates and limited funding from the MSTU which

is what PW uses to fund some of the things just mentioned; PW did not look comprehensively

at Road and Bridge staffing 30 years ago, mostly because at one point it was a department, but

it has morphed over time; staff pulled up John Denninghoff’s presentation from 10 years ago

and for top line numbers they had the same staffing that they do today, 173.5 people for Road

and Bridge; that is not to say they have not added because they have shifted, subtracted, and

worked with the County Manager during his time, and the Board, to help shift the billets to

where they are most needed, so that has been occurring but just from a topline perspective; but

they have no more people than what PW had 30 years ago for Road and Bridge and the

infrastructure continues to grow. He noted over the last five years, with continued pressure to

respond timely, outsourcing has been key to the strategy to address the high vacancy rate,

providing some of the resources needed to meet service delivery demands, albeit at a three to

four times what in-house sources cost them; PW aims to maintain a strategic balance of

in-house and outsource labor while staying in its approved budget set by the Board; however,

as population continued to grow and develop, areas of the County, especially for high growth

areas like Viera, it is essential to allocate additional resources to meet community needs and

maintain growing infrastructure; and as such, he recommends incorporating reoccurring

funding into future planning to support this growth, or potentially accepting only private

infrastructure as an alternative for subdivisions, as other municipalities have done. He

mentioned he will get into it later on, but on average there is growth of about four and one-half

centerline miles of road every single year, that comes with curbs and gutters, drainage, et

cetera, with effectively the same MSTU as was shown in the chart and the same topline

number PW has had for 30 years. He continued by saying Road and Bridge takes a proactive

approach to maintain these key programs, sidewalks, drainage, bridges, and roads to best that

it can and each one has a rolling five-year strategic plan that he will get into; overall, he would

still describe PW as a very reactive department in that issues and calls come to it and there are

no staff or consultants that go out looking for issues, as he mentioned before; he reiterated that

there is no one going out there saying they see a damaged sidewalk and to add it to the list,

that is largely driven on citizen complaints, or if someone from PW is out there and happens to

see something, but that is not necessarily where PWs attention and focus is; that highlights

PWs top four assets; and there are metrics to monitor progress, track successes, and identify

areas for improvement or adjustment as needed. He mentioned the road program has proven

to be the most successful among these initiatives and has been adequately funded dating back

to 2018 when the Board made a conscience decision to fund the paving program; the other

programs have made great strides but one will quickly see, as he goes through the slide deck,

they face similar recurring shortfalls; the next slides is the major projects for Road and Bridge

for FY 2025, similar to the other ones; he is not going through these, staff will answer any

questions if the Board has any, to make up some time; and staff would be happy to address

any of these offline; not indicative of all Road and Bridge projects being worked but some of the

big ones that PW is working on each district’s behalf. He commented the next slide is the

County’s transportation network; Countywide there are 1,150 paved centerline (CL) miles and

82 unpaved miles for a total of 1,232; from a maintenance perspective, CL miles is an industry

standard which is very misleading, it is the number of miles in length along the center line

regardless of the number of lanes; if there are just two lanes, it would actually be double the

mileage, however, there are many multi-lane roads and turn lanes, et cetera; to provide a better

perspective, one would have to drive from here to Windsor, Connecticut, and back, that is how

much PW’s Road and Bridge program is maintaining within Brevard County, via I-95; the typical

multi-lane roads like Wickham, Fay Boulevard, St. John’s Heritage Parkway, Sarno, Evans

Road, Aurora, they have shorter pavement life cycles, they are much more expensive to

maintain than the local roads, as they require special milling, expensive friction course, and he

just wanted to lay it out that not all roads are equal; and Brevard County has a lot of inventory.

He explained the pie chart shows the breakout of paved on the top, and unpaved on the

bottom; as seen District 1 has the largest number of unpaved roads; and he will get into what

challenges that presents for PW towards the end of the Road and Bridge section.

The Board recessed at 3:50 p.m. and reconvened at 4:02 p.m.

Chairman Feltner asked if the Board wants to stop and have Mr. Bernath continue at the next

budget workshop or power through this.

Commissioner Adkinson asked what that looks like to Mr. Bernath because she does not want

him to leave things out.

Chairman Feltner stated he thinks the Board is requesting that Mr. Bernath resume at the next

budget workshop.

PUBLIC COMMENTS

Sandra Sullivan stated just like last year, there is no public comment on individual

presentations, even though it is better than last year where there were votes taken, but there

was not public comment in violation of State Statute; her biggest concern on the presentation

today was impact fees; one of the things that Mr. Bernath said was he is not collecting impact

fees from municipalities; take Wickham Road for example, a lot of that area is in the City, but it

is a County Road and the County is responsible; the County is dealing with sources of income;

one of the things not on his potential sources of income was increasing impact fees for

transportation; in 2016, it was recommended to be a 67 percent increase on single-family

homes; put all the taxation on ‘we the people’ and not have the developers, ‘we the money’ be

responsible for their share of growth; and developers should also not be exempt under

affordable housing, low income housing, she understands that, not middle income housing.

She pointed out that the Board should be looking at other sources of income; yes, a County

can collect impact fees for an incorporated city within its jurisdiction, but only if there is a formal

agreement, an interlocal agreement between the City and the County outlining specific services

for which the County can collect; she noted she did a records request on what the County is

collecting for impact fees from the areas that it is providing fire service, West Melbourne, Palm

Shores, and another one; her response back was no records found; the County is not collecting

anything but providing services in those areas; that is just throwing away millions of dollars of

potential revenue; then there is the North Brevard Economic Development Zone (NBEDZ), a

big line item that is dedicated, and this is double dipping because there is the Community

Redevelopment Agency (CRA) for Titusville which is taking out tax increment and placing that

same money to NBEDZ; that is taxing all of the County because $4 million of tax increment,

there is no way the County can come up with number just for District 1; and that is taxation

without representation. She noted that was supposed to sunset in 2016, but that did not

happen; she displayed a document, and stated this little graph from a previous budget

highlights an issue; 60 percent of land in Brevard County is not taxable because it is

government land, a lot of it is Federal land; turns out she received some documents, this one

was provided by Dana Blickley, Brevard County Property Appraiser, and it very clearly, by State

Law says the County can collect tax at a local level for those Federal lands when they are

leased to private entities; she has a lot more; and she has reached out to all of the Board

Members offices, with only one office getting back with her. She stated the County can do

better at looking at sources of income and not just putting all the burden on ‘we the people’

which is all she sees the Board is looking at.

Lynne Hartman stated as the Board knows the Commission hires the Medical Examiners in

which there are three for Brevard County; when an infant dies suddenly and there is no cause,

they just do not know why, the Medical Examiner will have an autopsy and he will write Sudden

Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) on it and say that when he or she did the examination, he finds

a small amount of alcohol in the system, that will definitely go right on the autopsy report

because it speaks to the health of the child; but, a vaccine schedule is not attached to the

autopsy, although, unlike a small amount of alcohol, every vaccine could possibly have severe

side effects and even cause death, so it does speak to the health of the child; there is a Center

for Disease Control (CDC) publication with a chapter online about how to conduct an autopsy

on a SIDS patient; and it mentions the immunization schedule can be attached. She

commented that she is not making this up, and it is something the Medical Examiners could do;

when she talked with the Examiners they told her they cannot attach that schedule if they are

not 100 percent sure that a vaccine caused the sudden death, but the alcohol did not cause it

and it was on there; what she would request is for the Board of County Commissioners to

formally ask the Medical Examiners to include the immunization record on an infant that has

suddenly died and they have no idea what the cause would be; and the benefits, of this

improved transparency, will benefit public health, create statistics that will boost trust in the

medical system, and the increased transparency would hardly cost anything, they could just

ask the pediatrician or parents for the record and staple it on.

Chairman Feltner stated he thinks he received an email from Ms. Hartman recently, maybe in

the last day or so about this; he is curious about something; and he asked if an adult receives a

vaccination for Covid, or something like that, and dies shortly thereafter, is that included in the

autopsy.

Ms. Hartman replied she does not know; she called the State first and was asking them; one of

the State examiners told her that he or she could not prove that the vaccine caused the blood

clot; he said that he gets a lot of requests from people in the State of Florida as to finding data,

or getting data, on if the Covid vaccines were causing the blood clots or the heart attacks; she

reminded him that she believes it was Dr. Cole with the Front Line Covid-19 Critical Care

Alliance (FLCCC) that says there are staining techniques that can be done to see if the

modified RNA spike proteins are in the heart, and then he sort of cut her off; she could not get

the State to move on it, but Brevard County could have; and it would also be nice if the adults,

their vaccinations were included. She added so many of the Covid adverse events seem like

something plausible that could just happen to an adult individual, such as a heart attack or

blood clot; if the County were to start this with the infants and they just died from no apparent

reason, at least there would be some statistics on that, although it would be great if the

immunization schedule was included; she brought a moderna insert which is intentionally left

blank; the public is hungry for statistics and knowledge; and the public wants to trust their

doctors, therefore, any transparency would be lovely.

Chairman Feltner inquired if Ms. Hartman has talked with Dr. Kristine Zonka, Brevard County

Health Department Director.

Ms. Hartman explained she has talked to Mike the manager in the Medical Examiner’s Office

and one of the investigators; and she sent an email to the head Medical Examiner, but he did

not get back to her.

Chairman Feltner noted it is an interesting thing and he appreciates that.

Ms. Hartman advised she is a part owner of a Primary care in Indialantic, Iron Direct; they

started during the Covid because government officials told doctors that they could not treat

early, so her son started his own primary care to treat early; and government can have a big

effect on what doctors do, they are very open to suggestions.

BOARD DISCUSSION

Commissioner Delaney expressed her appreciation to those who presented today; she

mentioned the presentations were very in-depth, and all the questions that were answered; Mr.

Bernath’s presentation is truly gold for someone like herself that is very interested in it; and she

appreciates all of staff’s hard work that was put into this.

F.7. Adjourn

The meeting adjourned at 4:15 p.m.

ATTEST:

_________________________

RACHEL M. SADOFF, CLERK

_________________________________

ROB FELTNER, CHAIRMAN

BOARD OF COUNTY COMMISSIONERS

BREVARD COUNTY, FLORIDA

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