going to continue to grow. He reiterated he is concerned using the CPI for those U.S. cities
versus using the actual costs, because if the Board has the proposals, there is no reason it
cannot back that back into the County instead of having it just based on a CPI for the U.S.
cities.
Sandra Sullivan stated having attended most of the Commission meetings for the last four
years, she has not seen any topic discussed more than running out of space at Sarno; what is
not being told here today is that the County as the decision maker, waited until Sarno was
pretty much out of space; in May 2021, this Board voted to start building the U.S. Highway 192
facility, which will not be ready until 2026 to take garbage; in the meantime, Sarno ran out of
space; in October, the Board voted to buy trucks and pay for services; and at that meeting, one
of the County Commissioners said he or she was not going to vote for this until they know who
is going to pay for it. She went on to say trash is being trucked for five years because this
Board did crisis management, not proactive management, to make decisions in a timely way;
she asked if a hurricane hits and Brevard has a lot more trash like after Irma, who is going to
pay for that; she stated maybe what should be done is proactive management after the fact;
perhaps it should consider using some of the military technology that they developed for
incineration; the County has the land as she looked at the property by Sarno; and the Board
should look at other alternatives for the next five years while trucking trash to other facilities, to
alleviate some of that cost, because what she read in the budget report is the cost of the new
facility is being funded by bonds.
Elaine Ber stated she has a quick question and would like some clarification on a letter that
was sent out; it states in the last paragraph that the assessment will begin in October 2022,
and each year after that through 2025, the rate will increase by CPI for Garbage and Trash
Collection (GIT) until such time that further action is considered by the Board; and she asked if
there is no limit, does it keep compounding every year, is there not an increase for a finite time,
or is it open-ended and can continue increasing every year.
Mr. Mulligan stated the Solid Waste disposal assessments are brought up in the rate
resolutions that come before the Board every year, and that gives the Board the opportunity to
reject them and to put a halt to any further increases according to the CPI.
Chair Zonka stated with any increase, it has to come back to the Board, so they are just
notifying residents of the pending action of the Board; the numbers can change from
year-to-year; and there will be public meetings for people to address the Board. She went on
by saying there is a lot of legal ease in the notice, but perhaps staff can put a more clear
explanation with these kinds of notices; in the County’s efforts to over explain things,
sometimes they can be muddied up; and while the County employees may understand what the
notices mean, it can be very confusing to anyone who does not live in this world.
Steve Dowell stated he thinks the notification letter that went out needs some clarification,
because it is obvious people are confused, they co-mingled the local Waste Management with
what this has to do with; he would like to get onboard with the needs of the County, whatever it
may be in terms of capacity for Solid Waste disposal, but he does not feel the notification letter
was enough to grasp what is really getting done and the importance of it; and he thinks there
are other factors that they as a people in Brevard County really need to understand. He added
the basics of this he really does not understand, and he is wondering if there is someplace he
can go; he thinks everyone who received this notification letter would have benefited if there
was something like, ‘for more information go to this website’ to gather that information that
would help the citizens make the right decision; he wonders how staff knows what the
additional capacity is; he asked how the County knows what that is for the next few years; the
engineering group that has been tasked with costing and what this will be; and he reiterated he
would sure like to understand what those alternatives are and what the actual capacities that
